Tag: War

Amid the Disasters, One Accidental Success

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The two Koreas and the US-led United Nations Command have agreed to remove weapons in a border village where troops from both sides face off daily, the latest sign of increasingly warm relations between the once-hostile neighbours.

Seoul’s defence ministry said in a statement that, following trilateral talks on Monday, agreement had been reached to withdraw firearms and guard posts from the Joint Security Area (JSA), also known as the truce village of Panmunjom.

The parties will then conduct a “three-way joint verification” for another two days, it added.

The highly symbolic move comes amid the failure of nuclear talks to yield concrete results the complaints from the US that it had not been properly briefed on military agreements between the two Koreas. The approval of the US-led United Nations Command (UNC) is significant given wariness in Washington about the pace of inter-Korean rapprochement and its earlier order to block shipments across the border.

I am not sure how or why this happened, you could ascribe this to Trump, but my guess is that it’s more about the fact that Kim Jong-un, and most of his government, are young enough to not have lived through the Korean war.

It really is about the only thing that hasn’t gotten worse on the world stage in the past few years.

It’s a Damn Shame

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I have mentioned how it seems to me that Rachael Maddow is having a full Mort Sahl styl meltdown on MSNBC.

I’m wrong, it’s the whole f%$#ing network:

As FAIR has noted before (1/8/18, 3/20/18), to MSNBC, the carnage and destruction the US and its Gulf Monarchy allies are leveling against the poorest country in the Arab world is simply a non-issue.

On July 2, a year had passed since the cable network’s last segment mentioning US participation in the war on Yemen, which has killed in excess of 15,000 people and resulted in over a million cases of cholera. The US is backing a Saudi-led bombing campaign with intelligence, refueling, political cover, military hardware and, as of March, ground troops. None of this matters at all to what Adweek (4/3/18) calls “the network of the Resistance,” which has since its last mention of the US’s role in the destruction of Yemen found time to run over a dozen segments highlighting war crimes committed by the Syrian and Russian governments in Syria.

By way of contrast, as MSNBC was marking a year without mentioning the US role in Yemen, the PBS NewsHour was running a three-part series on the war, with the second part (7/3/18) headlined, “American-Made Bombs in Yemen Are Killing Civilians, Destroying Infrastructure and Fueling Anger at the US.” The NewsHour’s Jane Ferguson reported:

The aerial bombing campaign has not managed to dislodge the rebels, but has hit weddings, hospitals and homes. The US military supports the Saudi coalition with logistics and intelligence. The United States it also sells the Saudis and coalition partners many of the bombs they drop on Yemen.

455 to 0.  That makes the Washington Generals record against the Harlem Globetrotters look impressive.

It’s understandable though, as FAIR notes, “In any event, it’s not like any Yemenis are going to pull ads, turn down appearances, or phone Comcast higher-ups complaining. So, who cares?”

Why I’m Generally Inclined to Support Russia in Confrontations with Other FSU Nations

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Because the other former Soviet Republics, when not glorifying genocidal Nazi collaborates, are hosting marches honoring Nazi SS veterans.

Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Each year on March 16, a macabre event unfolds on the square around this capital city’s most famous monument.

Known as the Memorial for Latvian Legionnaires, it is the world’s only march by veterans of Nazi Germany’s elite SS unit.

A handful of them, including nonagenarians in wheelchairs, lead the procession through the Old City to the monument. Some wear the insignia from their old units — the 15th and 19th Waffen Grenadier Divisions — as they receive flowers from young women flanking the procession.


………

The marchers, some of them skinheads wearing fascist symbols, also spark passionate opposition from Latvians who recall how some of the fighters honored were complicit in the murder of Jews. Equally ardent advocates of the march argue that the Legionnaires were either patriots seeking independence from Russia, forcefully conscripted victims of the German Nazis or both.

But throughout the 20-year-old debate over perceived perpetrators, no one had bothered to use the site to remember the victims of the Nazis.

To be fair, there is an attempt by some people bring up the actual history:

Until 2016, that is, when a non-Jewish Holocaust education professional from Riga — whose great-uncle fought for the Germans — started grassroots commemorations at the monument for murdered Jews, reclaiming the site from the far right.

“In order to make something that belongs to the whole of Latvia, it has to be at Freedom Monument,” Lolita Tomsone, the organizer, told JTA.

But the push-back, both social and official has been intense:

In Lithuania, hundreds of nationalists march each year with swastikas and banners carrying portraits of collaborators who helped murder Jews. There, Zuroff’s 2016 book about the Holocaust led to the first debate of its kind about local complicity in the genocide. Zuroff, the Eastern Europe director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, co-authored “Our People” with the popular author Ruta Vanagaite.

In recent weeks, though, a Lithuanian Cabinet minister submitted legislation that would outlaw the sale of material that “distorts historical facts” about his country – an echo of a similar and controversial bill recently passed in Poland. Vanagaite has left Lithuania amid a smear campaign against her: After she dared criticize a Lithuanian nationalist hero, her publishing house recalled and shredded all of her books.

If you live in a society where it is not only controversial, but unpopular, to say that Nazis are bad,  you need to fix your society, and your politics, and a lot of other stuff.

Would You Like to Play Global Thermonuclear War?

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The Trump administration has announced that John Bolton will be the next chairman of the National Security Council, replacing H.R. McMaster.

Even among the Neocons, John Bolton is known as a foaming at the mouth war monger, and I would expect him to aggressively lobby for military strikes against the DPRK and Iran.

This will not end well:

President Trump named John R. Bolton, a hard-line former American ambassador to the United Nations, as his third national security adviser on Thursday, continuing a shake-up that creates one of the most hawkish national security teams of any White House in recent history.

 Mr. Bolton will replace Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer who was tapped last year to stabilize a turbulent foreign policy operation but who never developed a comfortable relationship with the president.

 The move, which was sudden but not unexpected, signals a more confrontational approach in American foreign policy at a time when Mr. Trump faces mounting challenges, including from Iran and North Korea.

 ………

 Mr. Bolton, an outspoken advocate of military action who served in the George W. Bush administration, has called for action against Iran and North Korea. In an interview on Thursday on Fox News, soon after his appointment was announced in a presidential tweet, he declined to say whether Mr. Trump should go through with a planned meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

We are all gonna die.

Have I Mentioned that the Middle East is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$?

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First, we have an al Qaeda linked group shooting down a Russian jet with a US missile:

Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility Saturday for the downing of a Russian warplane in northern Syria, apparently using a surface-to-air missile to target the aircraft.

 The pilot was killed after he ejected and exchanged gunfire with militants on the ground, the Russian Defense Ministry and a monitoring group said.

 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a powerful rebel alliance that publicly split from al-Qaeda last year, said it had used a shoulder-fired weapon to down the Su-25 fighter jet as it flew low over the opposition-held town of Saraqeb.

………

It also raises questions about the source of the apparent “man-portable air-defense system,” or MANPADS, a shoulder-fired weapon for which Syria’s rebels have repeatedly pleaded from their international backers. The United States has been strongly opposed, fearing that antiaircraft weapons could fall into the hands of the country’s extremist groups.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said any allegation that the United States has provided MANPAD missiles in Syria was untrue, and she denied that U.S. equipment was used in shooting down the Russian plane.

Considering the fact that the CIA has been supporting groups that the US military has been attacking, so take that with a grain of salt.

The rather more shocking news today though is that Israel has been conducting airstrikes in the Sinai with the affirmative assent of the Egyptian government:

The jihadists in Egypt’s Northern Sinai had killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, briefly seized a major town and begun setting up armed checkpoints to claim territory. In late 2015, they brought down a Russian passenger jet.

 Egypt appeared unable to stop them, so Israel, alarmed at the threat just over the border, took action.

For more than two years, unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters and jets have carried out a covert air campaign, conducting more than 100 airstrikes inside Egypt, frequently more than once a week — and all with the approval of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

 The remarkable cooperation marks a new stage in the evolution of their singularly fraught relationship. Once enemies in three wars, then antagonists in an uneasy peace, Egypt and Israel are now secret allies in a covert war against a common foe.

The Israeli airstrikes are not that unusual, but the fact that there has been official (though not public)n approval, and not just grudging acknowledgement, of the Egyptian government.

The obvious conclusion here is that the Egyptian Government (particularly el-Sisi) is desperate, which indicates that the government is far less secure than it would like to proclaim.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Recep

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It appears that even Cypriot Turks, for whom Turkey is a shield against ethnic cleansing by the Greek Cybriots, are taking to the streets against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan:

Thousands of Turkish Cypriots chanting “we want our country back” have taken to the streets of Nicosia despite heavy rain, after calls for a mass demonstration against Ankara’s heavy-handed policies towards the breakaway republic.

Tensions with the Turkish government mounted this week after a mob of hardliners attacked the office of the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Afrika for running a front-page article critical of the country’s military offensive against Kurdish militants in Syria.

Led by the nationalist Grey Wolves, they went on the rampage after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, criticised the newspaper’s stance as “immoral” and “shameless”.

Beneath the headline “one more occupation from Turkey”, Afrika drew parallels with Ankara’s 1974 military operation in Cyprus when Turkey seized the island’s northern third.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe condemned the attack as an assault on free press and freedom of speech.

Ahead of the protest on Friday, Sener Elcil, a trade unionist, told the Guardian: “The attack was very violent and very humiliating for Turkish Cypriots, who no longer feel secure in their own country.” At least 5,000 people were believed to have taken part.

“In Turkey, all the intellectuals, journalists and writers have been imprisoned. There is no opposition, but in Cyprus there are people who believe in democracy and peace,” he said.

If history is any indication, an overreaction in Cyprus by Turkish troops might very will go pear shaped in a hurry, and if Turkish troops are expelled from Cyprus, that would be the end of Erdoğan.

One can only hope.

This is Insane

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It appears that the Pentagon is planning for nuclear retaliation in response to cyber attacks:

A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.

For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.

The draft document, called the Nuclear Posture Review, was written at the Pentagon and is being reviewed by the White House. Its final release is expected in the coming weeks and represents a new look at the United States’ nuclear strategy. The draft was first published last week by HuffPost.

It called the strategic picture facing the United States quite bleak, citing not only Russian and Chinese nuclear advances but advances made by North Korea and, potentially, Iran.

“We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” the draft document said. The Trump administration’s new initiative, it continued, “realigns our nuclear policy with a realistic assessment of the threats we face today and the uncertainties regarding the future security environment.”
Continue reading the main story

The Pentagon declined to comment on the draft assessment because Mr. Trump has not yet approved it. The White House also declined to comment.

This is full, “Protecting our purity of essence,” (Dr. Strangelove) nsane.

Remember Those Apocryphal Stories of Vietnam Vets Being Spat On?

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One Case, and it was a war suppporter

There have been many claims over the years that returning Vietnam vets were spat on by protesters.

It turns out no one had been able to find a single contemporaneous report of this ever happening.

Well, someone has finally found one, only the veterans being spat on were VVAW members protesting the war, and the spitter was a war supporter:

A couple of days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Jerry Lembcke “The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester.” Lembcke wrote a book a few decades ago debunking that myth but it is still going strong… stronger than ever, actually. The trope of “they’re spitting on our veterans” is popular with anti-kneeling fanatics who maintain that athletes who protest during the national anthem are “spitting on the graves” of those who died to defend the flag and the freedom to do as you’re told and stand during the national anthem.

I have always found Lembcke’s argument and evidence compelling but I don’t like to take anything for granted. So I did a little extra digging. Some of that was digging through a stash of old Amex/Canada magazines that I have held onto for 45 years or so. A Vietnam veteran named Al Reynolds wrote an account published in the May-June 1973 issue reporting on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War contingent in the “Home with Honor” parade staged in New York City at the end of March of that year.

………

So there it is, folks. The making of a myth. An older woman in a fur coat, with carefully teased hair, her face distorted with rage, spitting at Vietnam veterans protesting against the war is transformed into a Legionnaire, with a red face, waiting at the airport gate to spit on returning G.I.s for not winning the war and finally into anti-war “maggots” protesting poor little John Rambo who was just doing what he had to do to win. So where does that leave us in October 2017? My, my, look at all the rhinestone Rambos!

There you have it. One report, and it was a war supporter spitting on veterans who were trying to end the war.

Not exactly what draft-dodger Sylvester Stallone raged about in Rambo.

The Latin for This Is Cui Bono

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The US these days seems to be engaged in any number of failed diplomatic and military initiatives, and it is clear that these are failed initiatives.

This raises an obvious question; why we continue on this path?

The answer is that there are powerful elements of our foreign policy and military-industrial complexes that profit from these failures:

Certain themes of critical importance have been constants in my writing here, in some cases for more than a decade. (See the two collections of Alice Miller essays discussed in this post, for many examples.) One of those themes is captured very accurately in the title of an essay from five years ago that I once again draw to your attention: “The Infinite Human Capacity to Deny the Obvious.”

 I was reminded of that article because I recently read still another piece by a well-known “antiwar” writer bemoaning the fact that U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been a miserable failure. Not only that: it’s been a miserable failure for 16 years! (The particular article and the specific writer are of no consequence, but I’ll probably address a few aspects of this category of analysis in the next few weeks, using that and other examples.)

 To call U.S. policy in Afghanistan a failure is, of course, unutterably wrong. Whenever you hear someone peddling this line, you can quickly and safely move along to find an analyst who actually knows what he’s talking about. In my article from five years ago linked above, I discuss Robert Higgs and what I call The Higgs Principle. Here is that Principle, direct from Mr. Higgs himself:

As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent “failed” policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money.

If U.S. policy in Afghanistan were truly a failure — a failure, that is, to the actual powers-that-be — it would have been changed in five years at the outside, and probably sooner. The fact that it has not changed, certainly not in terms of essentials, means that the powers-that-be are achieving precisely what they want. In addition to the benefits identified by Higgs, there is one additional over-arching goal that the damnable powers-that-be share, and believe in to the core of their putrid, twisted little hearts: that the United States is entitled to and must have geopolitical dominance.

(emphasis original)

I would also argue that maintaining geopolitical dominance, even while ruinous for most of us,  DOES serve the self interest of the elites who benefit from either the cost of maintaining such hegemony, (defense contractors) or those who benefit from the US’s unique status in the world. (Finance, IP, Pharma, etc.)

The question therefore is how to break the power of these elites.

What a Surprise………

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America’s state security apparatus is using the classification review process to suppress a book that details torture at Guantanamo Bay:

A former NCIS investigator who worked at the wartime prison during the Bush administration has written a book, “Unjustifiable Means.” Now his civil liberties lawyers are asking a bipartisan group of senators for help getting the Pentagon to clear it for publication.

Retired 27-year career federal worker Mark Fallon’s manuscript “has been held up for more than seven months in ‘pre-publication review,’ and we are increasingly concerned that some in the government are committed to suppressing Mr. Fallon’s account,” the lawyers write six senators. They include Republican John McCain, the former Vietnam War prisoner, and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee when it drew up the so-called Torture Report on the Bush administration’s secret CIA prison network.

The lawyers’ letter describes what might be troubling Defense Department officials about the book:

“ ‘Unjustifiable Means’ concerns the Bush administration’s policies authorizing the cruel treatment and torture of detainees. It is an insider’s account of the moral and strategic costs of those policies and the many ways that honorable Americans working in government protested and resisted them.”

Between 2002 and 2004 Fallon was Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Defense’s Criminal Investigation Task Force, and was responsible for some interrogations and evaluating intelligence with an eye toward prosecution by military commission. He has been outspokenly critical of decision making during that period, telling the Miami Herald last year that some captives were brought to Guantánamo based on “the sketchiest bit of intelligence with nothing to corroborate.”

The did the same thing with Valerie Plame’s book.

This sh%$ is getting really old.

When Donald Trump is the Adult in the Room………

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Donald Trump has decided (IMNSHO correctly) that Afghanistan, aka, “The Graveyard of Empires,” but the very serious people in his security establishment want to continue doubling down on failure:

President Donald Trump’s top national-security advisers are searching for a way to overcome the commander-in-chief’s reluctance to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan as divisions on the National Security Council complicate strategy for the 16-year-old war, officials said.

The president’s reluctance to embrace an open-ended commitment has resurrected discussion of other options, including proposals to scale back the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan or to hire private contractors to play a bigger role. Top Trump administration officials met to discuss the options Thursday after Mr. Trump asked his team for alternatives, according to current and former Trump administration officials.

The search for a strategy for Afghanistan comes amid upheaval at the NSC following the removal of three staff members by H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser. The three officials were hired by his predecessor, Mike Flynn, before he was forced to resign after 24 days in the post.

………

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had hoped to have a new Afghan strategy in place by mid-July, but White House talks bogged down as Mr. Trump challenged the need to send more U.S. forces into a fight with no clear plan for success, the officials said.

At a meeting last month with his national security team, Mr. Trump questioned the leadership of Gen. John Nicholson, the Kabul-based commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, the officials said. The president’s criticism, reported first by MSNBC on Wednesday, drew a brusque response on Thursday from Sen. John McCain, (R., Ariz.).

Trump is right, and the US foreign policy establishment, aka, “The Blob,” is wrong.

This should be no surprise.  The Blob supported Libya, and supporting al Qaeda in Syria, and fomented a coup in the Ukraine, and they were all disasters.

Rule 1 of foreign policy:  The Blob is always wrong.

Rule 2 of foreign policy:  See rule 1.

Damn

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Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee said on Tuesday that Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan stripped her amendment, which would have repealed authorization for the use of military force against ISIS, from a defense-spending bill.

“Ryan stripped my 01 AUMF repeal amdt from DOD Approps in the dead of night. This is underhanded & undemocratic. The people deserve a debate!” she tweeted Tuesday night.

Lee’s amendment, which received bipartisan support, would have repealed the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and made Congress pass another one to continue the campaign against ISIS.

You knew that this was going to happen.

If the Republicans weren’t willing to repeal the AUMF under Obama, who they loathed,  they won’t do it now.

It is cowardice.

Because of the 2001 AUMF, they don’t have to vote to authorize the next war, and the members of Congress do not want to own that decision.

OK, I Did Not Expect This

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In 2001, Barbara Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) following 9/11.

She found it over-broad, and has been trying to repeal it ever since.

History has proved her right, as it has authorized dozens of military actions, the majority having nothing to do with the original attack, since then.

Lee has been trying to roll it back ever since, and the House Approriations Committee has finally voted to add repeal of the AUMF it its latest appropriation bill:

In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) was the only member of Congress to object to an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a resolution in response to the terrorist attacks that paved the way for the war in Afghanistan.

In the 16 years since, the resolution has been used by President George W. Bush, President Obama and now President Trump as justification for more than 35 military actions in nearly 20 countries around the world — which means those presidents have not gone back to Congress for new permission to send troops into harm’s way.

On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee opened the door to ending that 2001 authorization when it added Lee’s amendment to a Defense Department measure. Congress would have 240 days to debate a new authorization. At the end of that time the 2001 authorization would be repealed.

Lee has lobbied hard just to get to this first step, which was approved by a voice vote in the Republican led committee.

“I’ve been working on this for years and years and years. I’m just really pleased that Republicans and Democrats today really understood what I’ve been saying and I’ve been explaining for the last 16 years, and that is, this resolution is a blank check for perpetual war,” Lee said.

I don’t expect this to make it through the House, and if it did I would not expect it to make it through the Senate,  and I would expect a veto threat from the White House, so I don’t expect this to make it into law, but it is a first step.

Do You Want some Cheese With That Whine?

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PNAC co-founder, and charter member of the frothing for more war crowd, vehemently condemned Donald Trump because he was not sufficiently warlike during the campaign.

Now that Trump has “won” the “election”, he offered his services as a foreign policy expert.

The Trump transition team told him to go Cheney himself:

A former George W. Bush official warned Republicans hopeful of earning a federal appointment from President-elect Trump Tuesday to “stay away” from his “angry” and “arrogant” team.

Eliot Cohen, a senior counselor for the Bush State Department from 2007 to 2009, had counseled conservatives offered positions in the Trump administration following the election to “say yes,” despite recognizing potential pitfalls, in an open-letter published in The American Interest. But on Tuesday, Cohen changed his tune, posting on social media that an interaction between him and Trump’s staff had made him change his mind.

“After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away,” he tweeted Monday morning. “They’re angry, arrogant, screaming “you LOST!” Will be ugly.”

I would note that in his “open letter,” he stated that Trump was worse than Clinton, because, I guess, Trump has expressed occasional reticence in wasting American treasure and blood on foreign soil.

Now that Trump has won, they are all screaming, “We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs!”

I am experiencing near toxic levels of schadenfreude right now, but it feels good.

These guys have been wrong about everything, particularly in their vociferous support of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and in a sane world, they would already have been run out of town on a rail years go.

What is Flat and Glows in the Dark?

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The world during Hillary Clinton’s first term.

Here’s a an under-reported bit of war-mongering from one of Hillary’s speeches to the Vampire Squid:

US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has said the US could claim the Pacific Ocean as an “American Sea” if China claims all of the South China Sea, according to excerpts of her speech contained in hacked emails revealed by WikiLeaks.

In a speech the Democratic candidate gave to bankers from Goldman Sachs in October 2013, she said the Chinese “have a right to assert themselves” in the South China Sea but the US needed to “push back” to keep Beijing from getting a “chokehold over world trade”.

………

In the paid speech to Goldman Sachs, Clinton said she confronted Chinese officials about the South China Sea during her tenure as secretary.

“I said, by that argument, you know, the United States should claim all of the Pacific. We liberated it; we defended it. We have as much claim to all of the Pacific. And we could call it the American Sea, and it could go from the West Coast of California all the way to the Philippines.”

She said in the speech that she had told her Beijing counterparts the Chinese claims to the South China Sea were based on “pottery shards” from “some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere”, whereas the US claim to the Pacific would be based on “convoys of military strength” in the second world war and the claim Americans “discovered Japan”.

She described this line of reasoning as “one of the greatest arguments that I had”.

Clinton said that as the debate became “more technical”, the Chinese said they would claim Hawaii, and that she had countered by saying the US had proof of purchase.

Oh

My

God

We are so screwed.