John Chuckman

COMMENT ON EVENTS IN SYRIA INCLUDING THE KILLING OF ISIS LEADER ABU BAKR AL-BAGHDADI AND THE SENDING OF AMERICAN TROOPS BACK INTO PART OF NORTHEASTERN SYRIA, THIS TIME WITH HEAVY ARMOR

 

Well, the United States is claiming that it has killed the fabled leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in northern Syria.

The United States has made such claims in the past, and they’ve always proved false, so much so that many have speculated that al-Baghdadi was always a Western agent. More than one source has speculated that al-Baghdadi was an American agent or asset, possibly even an Israeli one, and there are some grounds supporting such suggestions.

There are old photographs of the late John McCain with al-Baghdadi and some others. McCain was, after all, America’s tireless peripatetic advocate for bombing runs everywhere.

The ISIS operations in Iraq and in Syria generally served American objectives, giving it a reason for illegally keeping well-armed troops there and building bases in someone else’s country with no permission. There is absolutely no record of ISIS ever attacking even the most minor Israeli or Saudi interests, the very groups, along with any Americans who happened to be around, who would be the prime targets for the kind of Jihadi group ISIS is supposed to be.

Now and then, the United States may have targeted elements of ISIS, but, after all, when you are dealing with kind of rag-tag mercenary killers and adventurers attracted by such outfits, you do get some folks who don’t follow directions well or who get ideas of their own, or who, much like Trump himself at a G-7 meeting, sit with scowling looks on their faces and their arms tightly folded over their chests, refusing even to respond to others in the room.

If so, they are easily enough brought back into line by bombs, and they have no one in the West sympathetic with them. While their past theatrical shows of brutality were deliberate efforts to terrorize the very people the United States wanted terrorized, they served also to advertise to the West what an ugly bunch it was that America “was bravely fighting.”

The Syrian Army, supported by Russia and Iran as legal allies, has done all the heavy-lifting against ISIS, treating it always as the terrorist organization that it is, one consistently working to hurt Syria. The whole past record of what ISIS attacked and who it hurt is very much in agreement with the idea of its serving American and Israeli aims.

Much of America’s past bombing – as also that of its allies, Britain and France – really has been more of a covert operation against Syrian infrastructure, to hurt Syria’s national government while pretending to attack ISIS. America has been sarcastically described in the past as providing an air force for ISIS. And American and Israeli helicopters in the past have been observed moving around ISIS groups. The same for other terror groups, as al-Nusra, doing pretty much the same work.

The Russian military, fairly recently, said that if there was one place al-Baghdadi was not to be found, it was in northern Syria where Trump is claiming to have killed him, and no one has any better intelligence on the region than the Russians who have been so active in the air and on the ground.

The United States just loves blubbering about killing “masterminds,” just as it did for Osama bin Laden, but such talk is often pure comic-book stuff. The notion appeals to the black-and-white thinking Washington loves to foster while it pursues its many shadowy projects. Black-and-white thinking is the thinking useful to propaganda because it is easily absorbed by large numbers of people who appreciate having an “explanation” for what is mysteriously going on.

In a sense, it is almost irrelevant whether the new claim is accurate or not. Al-Baghdadi ‘s “death” now serves a useful purpose. It helps justify America’s turnaround in evacuating all its troops from Syria, sending some back in from the places in Iraq they also illegally occupy, accompanied by heavy armor. “See, we told you, ISIS is still a threat in the region.”

The place where al-Baghdadi is said to have been killed was quickly destroyed by American air strikes. How very convenient.

Just as when Osama bin-Laden’s body was buried unobserved at sea. I don’t think there was any suspicion of Osama’s having worked for American interests, but many believe he actually died long before his “killing” in Pakistan by American special forces. I don’t know or make any claim that way, but such is the stuff that swirls around all of America’s secretive, murderous work in the Middle East.

I should qualify the first part of that last sentence. Osama did effectively work for American interests in the 1980s, when he helped fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He was with the mujahideen groups who were covertly subsidized and supplied with weapons by the CIA. By all accounts, he was a brave and able fighter, and the Taliban faction, who came later to rule Afghanistan after a post-Soviet period of chaos, gladly gave Osama, a Saudi, refuge in recognition of that fact.

And “we need to protect Syria’s crude oil fields from falling into the hands of ISIS, who would use them to finance their evil operations.” ISIS is an outfit that has served a lot of useful American purposes in the region. Of course, what the United States is doing is undoing much of what Trump has bragged about doing in recent days.

It sure helps to have a big diversion on hand when you reverse yourself as extremely as Trump has, a diversion identifying you with something good in the comic-book world, like killing an evil “mastermind.”

If Trump isn’t going to have quite the withdrawal of troops that he thought he’d have as a key bragging point for his re-election (vis-à-vis any of the war-supporting Democrats who are likely opponents), at least he has this to demonstrate why he needed so quickly to alter his plans.

The real reason is that Israel and its supporters have been extremely unhappy at the idea of the United States returning northeastern Syria back to Syria’s national government. This grabbing with armored columns of an important national resource has no other reason but to weaken Syria and make a little profit while doing so.

Russia spy-satellite photos have shown that the United States has been stealing oil in the region already. Russian officials are calling America’s behavior, “banditry,” and it is hard to see how any informed person can argue with that.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LARRISON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

‘Trump with a Plan to Divorce Syria’s Kurds but Not Her Oil

‘Trump: “I don’t want to leave troops” in Syria except to “secure the oil”’

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/trump-with-a-plan-to-divorce-syrias-kurds-but-not-her-oil/

 

This is not really about oil.

The notion of leaving two hundred American special forces in Syria and perhaps interfering with Syria’s access to its own oil represents a hastily, and badly, conceived scheme to placate Netanyahu and the Israel lobby in the United States for the de facto loss of a long and costly proxy war.

Trump essentially has no foreign policy, policy implying a well-thought out set of goals and strategies. Trump takes whatever steps he thinks will secure his re-election, even when the next step seems to contradict the previous one. That’s all the Syria withdrawal was ever about.

Indeed, it is what drives all his efforts abroad, efforts which may be characterized as being consistent only in their inconsistency.

He isn’t a sound pragmatist and strong logical thinker like Putin. Although you might regard his bending every situation towards his own re-election as a kind of pragmatism, it really is not.

It is chaotic because it depends on Trump’s own faulty and fickle judgment, and it involves no other, larger considerations at all. He sacrifices basic principles in his various lurches and drives, principles such as always respecting allies and always acting so that the world regards America as consistent, stable, and dependable.

He needed a “withdrawal” to try re-securing the support of that portion of 2016 voters who have been alienated from him, the anti-war voters who do not necessarily agree with any of his other belly-over-the belt attitudes, such as the importance of building a costly, cumbersome wall on America’s southern border or the benefits of starting international trade wars.

His natural political base is simply not quite large enough to elect him. He must draw a bit of additional support from somewhere, and the anti-war crowd represents his best possibility.

The Democrats have made no effort to offer the anti-war constituency anything. The few who have are treated as pariahs by members of their own party in a shabby public name-calling spectacle, and they will be prevented from winning the nomination.

After all, the Democratic Party in 2016 displayed to the world just how willing it is to manipulate democratic contests for a pre-determined end, in that case for the nomination of Hillary Clinton over a firebrand challenger.

Interestingly enough, the Democratic Party’s anti-democratic efforts in 2016 ended by getting Trump elected. Sanders would have defeated him handily at that time. Hillary is not a well-liked or trusted figure and has always been a cheerleader for war. She provided Trump with just the opportunity he needed.

If they prevent a thoughtful, articulate anti-war candidate like Tulsi Gabbard from getting the nomination, which they almost certainly will, they will repeat history. Trump will win. That’s why they are becoming serious about impeaching him. As I’ve explained before, impeachment in America always is a political act. It would only be otherwise if a President were caught committing a serious felony or a treasonous act, both quite unlikely.

The withdrawal from Syria deeply conflicts with Netanyahu’s fervently declared wishes. Trump undoubtedly thought he had done enough for Israel in the form of lavish giveaways and favors that he wouldn’t hear any complaints over his relatively minor Syria withdrawal.

But he was wrong. There has been noise and pressure. Netanyahu’s capacity to ask for more of almost anything is virtually limitless.

America’s entire set of efforts in Syria – both covert in supporting jihadi-looking mercenaries and overt in occupying certain areas and doing plenty of bombing while pretending to fight ISIS – has had from the beginning nothing directly to do with oil. Syrian oil only came into play as a way to finance some of the terrorist activity and as something valuable of which to deprive Syria’s government.

American efforts have always been about destabilizing or destroying a government that does not toe its foreign policy line, which of course, would involve Syria’s paying homage to Israel, America’s Middle Eastern privileged special-status colony, as the dominant regional power, just as Saudi Arabia, under its usurper Crown Prince, has now effectively done.

Israel has had a tremendous interest in seeing Syria incapacitated because it wanted not only to secure and legitimize its occupation of the Golan Heights, but even perhaps to grab another slice of Syria, a “buffer zone,” in all the chaos of the long proxy war.

Israel has always hated Assad, again for his independent-mindedness, a leadership characteristic which the long series of Neocon Wars, starting with Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, was intended to uproot throughout the Middle East. Or as the worst American imperialists like to put it, in order to make all the killing and destruction sound wholesome, inducing “the birth of a new Middle East.”

So, Israel is working away on Trump to get what it can out of the general defeat in Syria, and that includes any annoyance and irritation that can possibly be achieved in northeastern Syria.

But the notion of a couple of hundred American special forces hanging around to control Syria’s oil for any period of time seems very far-fetched. Maybe it’s a good measure of just how disillusioned and desperate the people who created seven years of terrible war in Syria are.

There’s no way that Putin, after all his immense effort, is going to watch a reunited Syria be reduced by having its natural resources stripped from it. One way or another, this “plan” will fail, even though it may provide difficulties in the meantime.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SOUTHFRONT

 

“IRAQI INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL: ABU BAKR AL-BAGHDADI [LEADER OF ISIS] IS HIDING NEAR PALMYRA, PLANNING TO ENTER IRAQ”   

 

I have long believed that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi actually is associated either with Mossad or the CIA.

That’s why he’s had so many miracle escapes.

That’s why they never catch him and often don’t even know where he is.

And we know that his ISIS never, never attacks Israeli targets or fat Saudi Prince targets.

Those would in fact be the targets of choice for any genuine jihad movement. Not Syria or Iraq, which are two states Israel has wanted to harm or eliminate for years.

ISIS has always been a fraud, a very complex and deadly one, but a fraud.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN IN THE NATIONAL POST

It is crap to say Harper can’t be blamed for the horror of a dead Syrian child lying face down in the sand, Christie Blatchford.

Harper comes across in this emotional public event as the dried husk of a human being he truly is.

Leaders lead and set a tone and spirit for others.

Harper has led nothing, and the spirit of his time in office is Canada is as a completely indifferent place to human suffering and to threats and chaos at previously peaceful places like Syria.

I am repeatedly surprised by the depths of emptiness he displays in matter after matter.

Imagine the leader of a nation with the reputation Canada used to enjoy just letting people rot while he actually joins in the killing in Syria, albeit on a limited scale owing mainly to our not having enough fighter jets.

Well, I’ve always said he really secretly wanted to be an American, and I think he now has joined the hallowed ranks of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and Dick Cheney. They are not conservatives, they are creatures from Madam Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.

One thing is sure, when Harper is swept from office in October, he and Laureen will find a warm welcome in East Texas.

______________________________

ISIS is not responsible for the horror in Syria because it is merely a tool of outside powers, a terror weapon dropped into a beautiful, previously peaceful country.

It is the sponsors, suppliers, and enablers of ISIS – and other terrorist organizations like the al-Nusra Front – who are very much responsible for the horrors.

They are the United States, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia (with some additional money from Qatar).

These gangs of thugs and cutthroats would not even be gangs and they would not be in Syria without massive outside assistance.

The whole aim of the sponsors and suppliers of these horrors is to destroy the beautiful land of Syria and effectively smash it into pieces. The covert, proxy approach being used in Syria is different than the direct, blundering, and murderous American invasion of Iraq, but its goal is precisely the same in the end.

Who cares about the millions displaced, the hundreds of thousands killed, the historic treasures destroyed? Not America. Not Israel. Not Turkey. Not Saudi Arabia.

The chief beneficiary of all this horror is America’s nasty little colony in the Mideast.

And come to think of it, isn’t that same American colony one of Harper’s most intense and continuing focuses, to the point of having made, and causing some ministers to make, the strangest sudden outbursts of loyalty to it without any seeming context or cause on a subject, arbitrarily selected from the affairs of the world’s two hundred or so nations, and of no special interest to most Canadians?

And aren’t Canadian apologists for the colony’s own many atrocities among Harper’s keenest campaign contributors and supporters?

I suspect there is an unspoken but direct connection between those supporters and the idea of not taking in tens of thousands of Syrians, as we very much should. Of course, making no emergency effort in this regard comes easily to Stephen Harper, a man who has proved himself virtually devoid of humanity.

After all, the word “terror” is used by some in exactly the way the word “witch” was used in 17th century Europe, being repeated and echoed countless times like a superstitious mantra, although the genuine threat of terror in North America is virtually non-existent.