John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

 

“President Trump Understands What Congress Does Not: Syria Is Not America’s War”

 

He does?

That sure comes as news to me.

All he has done in Syria is play election games with the different interest groups. The “withdrawal” was about re-attracting the alienated anti-war vote of 2016. He had done nothing about the wars as he had promised he would, and his own base constituency – the Wall and hate-migrants crowd – is just not quite big enough to re-elect him.

Well, as soon as you touch anything in Syria, you touch Israel because it is at the center of what the proxy war was always about, weakening Syria for Israel’s benefit and maybe even breaking the country into pieces.

He thought he had done enough for Israel – in the way of giving away things he had no legal right to give, such as Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights – so that he wouldn’t hear complaints over a withdrawal that they strongly disapproved of, that they would understand his political need going into the next election.

But he was wrong. You can never give a man like Netanyahu enough of almost anything.

The truth is that Trump has no foreign policy. His “policy” is a set of ever-changing responses to various political pressures. They display absolutely no principle or understanding concerning Syria, or indeed any of other places receiving his malign touch.

He is madly driven by a compulsion to be re-elected, to receive that personal adulation, and he is ready to try just about anything to get what he needs – in votes, campaign funds, and favorable publicity.

So, now the “withdrawal” – which has gone through several shape-changes and flip-flops, and never was all that much to start with since the number of troops in Syria never was large – has been turned into an Election Foreign Policy Political Blue Plate Special by withdrawing just enough troops to get some favorable headlines back home for anti-war voters while sending more troops back in, reinforced with heavy armor and ready to steal Syria’s oil, to get favorable headlines in Israel.

The only understanding displayed in any of it is that of a truly manic politician responding to various pressures. None of it can be graced with the term, “foreign policy.”

Now, he’s literally stealing Syrian oil because one interest group – that for Israel – wanted a consolation prize for losing the long proxy war against Syria, a country towards whom it has long displayed great animosity.

The oil Trump is stealing is not about greed for resources, as many seem to believe, so much as it is a mechanism for hurting Syria, although I’m sure the revenue will be happily pocketed. America is deliberately hurting Syria as it faces the needs for massive post-war reconstruction, a reconstruction Trump has made a number of efforts to be very unhelpful about.

How can anyone say Trump shows understanding when he has shown only contempt for that basic building block of all societies and of all relationships between them, the principle of rule of law, in his mad rush to insure his re-election?

He did so again with his arbitrary behavior over the Iran nuclear agreement, a smoothly-working, much-praised international treaty for about four years, and one representing the interests of half a dozen other states who were signatories.

Trump just ripped it up like an angry child, in defiance of everyone else’s interests. Then he hurled harsh, war-like sanctions against eighty million people in Iran who had been meeting all their obligations and made serious military threats, even once incoherently talking about their “obliteration.”

Why did he do that? Because immensely important political contributors back home wanted to see what had long been a demand of Netanyahu’s fulfilled. Netanyahu has always thought it fitting that a huge, proud, and ancient country like Iran should be reduced to a supplicant in the Middle east, rather than a competitor for influence.

Trump’s violation of basic principles hurts everyone on the planet, and it will come back to haunt America. To hurt the people he wants to hurt with sanctions, he has effectively weaponized the dollar, using America’s various mechanisms and institutions controlling the dollar to impose what is a set of American domestic laws upon seven billion people, something widely resented, by friend and foe alike.

The dollar is gradually losing its special place in the world for various reasons, just as America’s relative economic importance declines. Trump’s efforts only increase the rate of decay. And the same goes for America’s place in the hearts even of allies. How do you trust a law-breaking, dishonest state which behaves like a schoolyard bully?

In the end, you cannot.

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON IMPEACHMENT DEVELOPMENTS

 

I tend to doubt Trump will face actual impeachment.

The reason for saying that is because impeachment is a political measure, not strictly a legal one. Each Senator voting in a trial really only has to answer to his or her own political constituents about the vote, whether it is more widely regarded as warranted or not.

The trial is conducted in the Senate where the Republicans command a majority. It is a slim majority, but conviction requires a super-majority of two-thirds of members.

Despite Trump’s countless blunders and stupidities, I doubt, as things stand, that a case can be made that would command a super-majority vote.

However, that could change. Politics does resemble Heraclitus’s metaphor for history, the impossibility of being able to step into the same river twice since the waters were always flowing.

The House Committee investigation works to associate Trump’s name with something unpleasant day after day in the press. They will, of course, constantly monitor for shifts in public opinion. And, in the course of going through evidence, they could always come up with a surprise.

At the same time, we have other developments and possibilities. Like some real dirt coming out on Joe Biden in connection with Ukraine. And the same even for Obama and his key people. The coup in Ukraine was a dirty operation, so again there could be surprises in store. The same may be said of Russia-gate efforts. That was a dirty operation with authority undoubtedly coming from the highest level, and it is always possible, but I think not very likely, that we could see some big-name politicians unpleasantly surprised.

Trump himself can change the dynamic. His announcement that he just won’t cooperate with legal demands for documents is not a really terrific way to proceed, but then this is a bull-headed man represented by a bull-headed lawyer. Something of a Constitutional crisis could develop along the way.

Trump is working to change the political calculation, too. I think that’s at least in part what his move in Syria represents. There is a significant number of 2016 supporters who have been alienated by his complete failure to deliver on promises about getting out of the Middle East and establishing better relations with Russia.

What he has done in Syria is a small step, and it may not be enough to recapture the alienated.

But even that small step has aroused anger from other quarters, including some Republican politicians. That’s because his decision touches Israeli interests, literally the third rail of American national politics. Trump likely thought he’d bought enough good will with all his giveaways to Israel to get away with a decision he must surely have known would not be viewed favorably.

If so, he figured wrong. Netanyahu and other prominent politicians in Israel are used to getting just about everything they want now from the United States. And they wanted American forces in northwestern Syria helping Syrian Kurds fight the Syrian government, creating a big ongoing problem for that government.

Now, instead, they see a situation whose outcome is uncertain. One that could even possibly see the government of Syria re-establish its authority in the northeastern region by working with the Kurds while Putin whispers helpful things in Erdogan’s ear about not going too far with his invasion, and they don’t like it. The Israelis have big clout with traditional Republicans.

So, again, in terms of the political calculus of impeachment, it is not clear whether the initiative in Syria made his situation even worse.

 

AFTERNOTE:

Not long after writing this, I find in a major news source: “Trump Agrees on Need for Sanctions Against Turkey, Wants Something ‘Tougher Than Sanctions’” And this comes only just after the Turks have got rolling.

See what I mean about the third rail?

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MARKO MARJANOVIC IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“Senator Graham Threatens Turkey With Sanctions He Failed to Enact on MBS

“When have we heard Lindsey Graham thunder like this before?”

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/having-failed-to-enact-promised-sanctions-on-mbs-senator-graham-issues-more-sanctions-threat-vs-turkey/

 

Lindsey Graham is likely the most absurd man in the US Senate, although there is ferocious competition for that title.

Extremely dishonest, too, because he doesn’t talk about what really motivates him, bringing to the boil all that sputtering righteous indignation.

I think he must have received a call from Netanyahu advising him that it was time to perform. Graham is Israel’s official junkyard dog in the Senate, always creating a stir when the interests of that state are being mentioned.

It is Israel who wants some kind of rump Kurdish state created in northeastern Syria as a way to weaken the Syria emerging from an unsuccessful proxy war that was intended to topple it.

The concept had multiple attractions for Israel: depriving Syria of its crude oil deposits, offering rule on the far end of Syria by a group who might prove very friendly to Israeli interests, giving a further sense of legitimacy to Israel’s own stolen piece of Syria, Golan, and annoying the hell out of Turkey’s Erdogan, a man truly hated in Tel Aviv.

But it has never seemed realistic, given especially Erdogan’s acute allergy to Kurds and Turkey’s keystone position in NATO at a time of so many disagreements between Turkey and the US.

As to Graham’s propensity to explode over the concerns of Israel, I think there are several contributing factors. First, he is simply one of the most knee-jerk imperialists in the Senate, always ready immediately to send in the “boyz” and do bombing runs for dear old America and the cause of freedom.

Second, he may be reflecting the interests of some of his Southern Baptist constituency, fundamentalists with their own special “Second Coming” attitudes towards Israel.

And, third, I’ve long suspected that he was once the target of an Israeli honey-trap and that he knows some very compromising photos exist, photos that would deeply trouble Southern Baptists since Lindsey is gay.

Actually, contrary to the opening lines, we have heard Lindsey Graham like this before. But of course, not about anything like the Saudi Crown Prince’s many bloody crimes. After all, the Crown Prince is a Netanyahu favorite, a genuine “blood brother.”

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Trump defends decision to pull U.S. troops back from Syrian-Turkish border

“Democratic and Republican lawmakers condemn decision, fear a Turkish offensive”

 

The only people who ever seriously fought the Jihadists in Syria are the Syrian Army, their Iranian allies, and their Russian allies.

America has many times used the excuse of Jihadists to stay somewhere in Syria where it doesn’t belong. It is not an ally of Syria and has never been given permission even to be there, let alone create military bases, train rebellious people, distribute weapons and supplies to them, and generally to encourage mayhem.

What it has really been doing in the Northeast is to assist the Syrian Kurds in opposing Syria’s government and encouraging the notion of a Syrian Kurd rump state. Anything to weaken Syria.

The amount of misinformation on the topic of Syria and its nasty war, a war deliberately created by outside interventions, is monumental, and with good reason since those responsible don’t want the world really to understand what has been going on. That is the way hybrid and proxy wars work.

The Syrian War was always about toppling a legitimate government by using proxy fighters. The proxies get plenty of publicity as “Jihadists” but they really are for the most part plain old recruited mercenaries playing theater parts. And of course, as with any army, the ordinary soldiers receive very little information about what it is all about. All of their pay and supplies has come from the informal coalition of Saudi Arabia and America and Israel and Britain and France and a Gulf State or two.

Every time an arms cache has been discovered by advancing Syrian forces, it contains weapons made in America or Israel or Bulgaria, a country from which the CIA often buys volume-discount weapons to send to interventions and coups.

The people in Washington who are upset by Trump’s move are using terms like “betrayal of allies.”

It’s ridiculous language if you know any history of the region, but most of the people using the words are themselves being dishonest, not telling people why they really want to assist the Kurds.

First, the Kurds are not allies. They do not even represent an organized state, although they always dream of creating one. They are scattered as a minority in many places of the region, almost like a large population of gypsies. Their fierce hope for a state makes it easy for someone like the United States to exploit them for undeclared purposes, as it has been doing now and has done previously.

Some people tried warning the Syrian Kurds about depending on the United States for help, but they wouldn’t listen. The region borders on Turkey, which has its own substantial and rebellious Kurdish population, and is simply never going to tolerate a Kurdish-run rump state on its border. It regards the idea as a serious security threat, given the aspirations of its own Kurds. So American notions have been at direct odds with Turkey’s interests from the start.

The United States has toyed with this notion about the Kurds in northeastern Syria as a kind of consolation prize for having lost the main war in Syria, the war using proxy forces to destroy the Syrian government. Hiving off an important segment of Syria, a place with crude oil reserves, would clearly hurt the country. Trying to reclaim it, even if eventually successful, would keep poor Syria in turmoil for years to come. Israel, unhappy about the main proxy war having been lost, was keen on the concept.

You do have to put the Syrian War into its proper context. It is part of the long series of Neocon Wars in the Middle East designed, more or less, to pave over everything anywhere near Israel. That’s what the meaningless term, “War on Terror,” going back to George Bush really was about. You cannot have a war on a method, clearly, but the term just managed to jumble things up enough for the public and to feature that witch-like incantation term, “terror,” so that America’s government would never have to account for what it was actually doing.

America had done a full-fledged traditional invasion of Iraq, complete with one pathetic ally to share the shame. It was a terribly bloody and destructive enterprise, and so for the other names on its list of countries in the Middle East to be paved over, it settled for proxy and hybrid efforts.

The invasion of Iraq was not only extremely costly, it produced waves of bad publicity and condemnation, something to be avoided when your public relations efforts focus on words like “democracy” and “freedom.” Proxy and hybrid hostilities allow you to put up smokescreens so that no one quite knows what you are doing. You can even blame other people.

Out of the immense destruction American bombing in half a dozen lands caused in a “War on Terror,” we did see, here and there, some few people seek reprisal and revenge against the very powerful who were abusing their power. Those few instances of “International Terror” served, almost like public relations stunts, to reinforce the government’s explanation of what all the killing was about.

The United States has betrayed the region’s Kurds before, going back to the days of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. American plotting got Iraq’s Kurds to rebel against Saddam, and they ended in a mass slaughter. Suggestions of American support vaporized.

Well, here we go again. Unless new steps are taken to avert it, Turkey is going to do the Syrian Kurds serious damage. This United States move serves also as an important gesture to Turkey about America respecting its interests. After all, America and Turkey have had a number of noisy, public disagreements recently.

No matter how difficult the United States sometimes finds accommodating Turkey’s Erdogan, in the end, it very much wants Turkey to remain in NATO. Its geographical location makes it almost a kind of capstone in NATO’s edifice.

It’s not clear how this will all turn out, but Israel, so immensely influential in Washington, is not happy with anything that could end in any degree of Syrian reunification.

The apocalyptic tone about Trump’s move used by Senator Lindsey Graham – one of the most tireless defenders in Washington of Israel’s narrow interests, so much so he frequently makes himself ridiculous – tells us all we need to know about Israel’s view. Israel does like, whenever possible, not to be heard commenting directly on American military decisions, so it uses proxies like Sen. Graham.

The Kurds, armed by America to fight against Syria, may be able to approach the Syrian government and invite them to take back the region, protecting them against the Turks. It is notable that Russian engineers just completed in record time a new military-style bridge crossing the Euphrates into NE Syria, one capable of supporting armored vehicles.