Yesterday’s Panic Leads to Today’s Rant

 

We ended yesterday’s article with a word stretched out as it is sung in a song we love and that word will be the determining factor on whether the Western World had a future, A-m-e-r-i-c-a. Tuesday, November 8, 2016, will determine who will be the leader of the developed world or just another wilted, limp, ineffectual sack of flesh making noise and no ability to lead anybody anywhere, and the world needs a leader and fast. The next American President faces a world in deep crisis and most of the people do not even realize there is a world outside their daily routine. That has been the problem in the last two elections where novelty and personality outweighed abilities and solid knowledge of the world and an idea of the weighty problems which have even worsened drastically in the past months and it continues to gain momentum making the job of slowing the direction to be a sufficient challenge, but turning it around into a positive direction will require dedication and a monumental effort. Within a year and a half by mid-2018 Iran will have announced and tested a nuclear weapon. That might be the turning point in the Middle East and soon spread through North Africa as the Arab Muslim World in MENA will have possibly made the greatest alteration in the history of Islam and the vast majority of Sunnis will decide that the strong horse is Iran and they will overthrow leaders who refuse to fall into the sphere with Iran as their leader. Should such a transformation take place, then we will definitely be facing a terrible war coming. Western Europe may have already surrendered without firing a shot and Eastern Europe will face the hardest years of turmoil as Islamic infiltrators will try to raise a fifth column working through subduction rather than over use of force of arms. Once Iran has demonstrated their nuclear weapons capability, their terror forces will be unrestrained with a nuclear umbrella always hanging over the free world’s leaders making their choices all the more difficult and action appear twice as challenging. Fighting a war on your own lands using only police forces is frighteningly inefficient. The people quake fearing the terrorism and bristling as each new restriction is applied in attempts to alter the field of play in the police’s favor. Police salaries have more than doubled and still finding recruits is becoming more difficult. The Eastern Europeans start to fear that they might need to seek shelter under the heavy arm of Putin’s Russia. What had been a dreaded threat looming for years after a resurgent Russia awoke, now appears as a shining knight, a potential savior. Why would anybody want to lead America with a world this messed up, but the candidates hardly know anything outside the two coasts and maybe Chicago, St Louis, Cleveland and Dallas/Fort Worth; but beyond the borders, they think they have enough problems at home, they are not seeking any new ones from the world.

 

Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton

 

That is the problem, which of the two realistic candidates, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, is at all likely to even realize there is a wider world outside of the economy and holding the line on the southern border, which may be the smartest thing they do except the terrorists are being brought into America as fast as President Obama and his silent team can land them in the deep still of the night as well as in broad daylight. Sometimes a media too lax to dig for the truth and who wait for orders from editors and happily grasping any morsel they are sold by White House story tellers like Ben Rhodes, no wonder the American public has no idea the world is burning. The candidates will mostly snipe about the other and all we will hear is about every sour deal Trump has ever had a part in and they are likely plenty to choose from and in return we will hear about the meaning of is, is and Benghazi, e-mails, Whitewater, the Clinton Foundation and every smarmy thing the Clintons have ever had their blood-soaked hands on. Get ready for a roller-coaster ride where only half the track actually exists and the pitfalls are in every strut and brace with an operator who’s an untrained person with little if anything that qualifies them to be leader of the free world. Hillary Clinton knows something about foreign affairs but is a total incompetent as she proved while pretending to be Secretary of State and as President she would simply be playing at the office enjoying the payoff for her supporting Bill through thick and thin and sometimes so sheer as to be threadbare. Donald Trump knows how to deliver an opening ceremony speech and glad-hand and walk with others nodding knowingly while knowing nothing but still insisting he is the smartest man in the room. Where his ability to delegate is admirable, but people who have worked on things with ‘The Donald’ claim he likes to micromanage things and often makes things far more complicated and difficult. Neither candidate is anywhere near the best their party had to offer but they are what the Americans backed and that is what we are stuck with throughout the rest of the world. If you are feeling that you have been through years and Presidential terms of office where the President seemed to be working against the better interests and fear it is about to happen again, well, feel better as that is unlikely. The worst case scenario is there will be an incompetent in the White House whose husband attempts to help and guide her on foreign policy decisions, that would be an improvement, but she is unlikely to take anyone’s advice as she believes she is all-knowing. The other choice, ‘The Donald,’ might actually choose competent advisors and place good people in the cabinet and if he should actually allow them to lead and follow their prescriptions, that would be a hopeful scenario and if his position adjustments on the Middle East, Israel particularly, after choosing Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman as his Israel and Middle East Advisors is any sign, then Donald Trump has shown signs of sufficient maturity to take advice on things he is clueless. Now we just need to hope he believes himself to be clueless about almost everything it takes at being a great President as that will allow him to listen and reason things out from the different opinions he receives from people who are actually knowledgeable. We are not endorsing either candidate as we may still write in for Allen West and we would gladly endorse Lt. Col. West.

 

Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman
Trump’s Israel and Middle East Advisors

 

Shall we move on to the rest of the world? As we have discussed the European Union (EU) appears to be planning on merging with the greater Muslim world and according to their own releases which we discussed in our article referencing the release titled The European Union Actually Planning Empire the EU not only plans on expanding its borders and control, or at least sharing the control in some manner, with the nations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and on to central Asia and Central Africa so as to include all of the main body of Islam, spreading and advancing the joint economic conditions sharing technologies and using resources jointly while sharing in religious practices and cultural activities and celebrations. From the way it is weakly worded one could deduce that the EU would facilitate Islamic takeover of Europe religiously but with the proviso that there be no forcing Islam on those worshiping other faiths or none at all. This proviso is not likely to last more than a few moments before the pressures start to appear and then build and eventually we all know how this will end, we just cannot be sure as to how long. Our guess is eighteen months, but we have been known to be a bit optimistic. The culture would also tend not to remain very European for long and the only defense the Europeans would be able to hide behind would be limiting the movement of peoples from MENA into Europe and vice-versa. Still, the EU is based on free movement and it would not take very long before the MENA populations began moving into EU central nations for the benefits. The employment, benefits, healthcare, free schooling, minimum income and the plethora of other benefits which are largely financial and would offer these people wealth beyond their wildest dreams in exchange for nothing would attract tens to hundreds of thousands. The opportunities for disaster in the EU plan, well, let us just say it is fraught with opportunities for disasters for the current heart of the EU. It is not like the EU is not experiencing any difficulties such as the entire British Isles voting in favor of the Brexit referendum recently ending the near stranglehold the EU had on almost every major producing nation in Europe. Now the second greatest economic engine after Germany has started the required steps for exiting the EU. What makes the Brexit all the easier was the fact that the British retained their currency, the Pound Sterling. Britain is the only nation of the EU intelligent enough not to surrender their own currency and rely solely on the Euro. So far the worst predictions for Britain are coming true and we would, if we knew anything about investments, advise our investor, if we had one, to invest heavily in the pound waiting another eighteen days and then buy Pounds and wait for their recovery which should be scary great. Remember, we are not investment counselors and thus this is not investment advice unless it works, then we would like 5% thank you.

 

Meanwhile, the EU is very likely moving towards their destruction which will be realized when Islam finally decides that any agreement made really does not apply to limit the spread of Islam as that is demanded by Allah and that trumps the EU. This if backed by a Shiite thermos-nuclear stockpile of warheads and the ballistic and ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile), whose range is anywhere on planet Earth, with which to deliver said warheads as was demonstrated with the EMP attack on North America presented to a joint committee of Congress in a simulation, easily displaying how the grid would be destroyed with almost all the main and secondary transformers in the United States and Canada obliterated. They would not even need to do something that drastic as the Iranians could simply launch an ICBM which flies across the lands of the North American continent landing in the opposite ocean with a three ton dummy warhead which the Iranians permitted the United States to recover and also set off a thermonuclear device about the same size making delivery of such no longer a debatable issue and instead into solid fact. Add the productive capacity of the EU to the Mullahs of Iran’s dream of world conquest and Islam’s drive to defeat the Sunni Islamic world and place Shiite Islam as the new master of Islam and the leading candidate for the new Caliph and the leaders of Islam taking over the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil fields solidifying the world’s oil supply, or at least 65% of the world’s oil, under Shia control meaning that there will very likely be another oil embargo making gas a luxury once again in the United States as they require more than can be domestically produced even after adding the rest of the still free world’s oil supplies.

 

Should the EU try anything drastic before the new President, then it little matters who wins the election for President. As such is next to impossible for them to affect the United States election but the the EU will heavily depend on who wins the United States Presidential elections. Hillary Clinton claims she will continue the President Obama disastrous withdrawal from the world. She will likely initially do exactly what President Obama would pursue leaving the EU to its own devices as Hillary Clinton simply walks away from anything allowing for the world to continue degenerating even before Iran manufactures their broad front terror war. These wars initially and by themselves will not appear to be anything, but in reality they will be nation after nation being subsumed inexorably by the Iranian leadership leaving the surrender of the EU to be the final nail in that coffin. Donald Trump might not surrender as readily but he too will be also sacrificing one nation after another as well. This will be the aftermath of the calculus performed by Iran in arranging for them to develop nuclear weapons in secret right under a blind world’s eyes which by treaty will be seeking to change the very nature of war. Needless to point out that warfare will remain a contest between ideologies for dominance of one over the other in the realm of ideas and principles. This will be the war being fought by alternative means of which the surrender of the EU gifting all of Europe with the exception of Britain to Islam while the United States honors its commitment to trust and not even bother to verify that Iran is obeying their side of the treaty. It will become obvious that Iran is not living within the treaty confines and is instead gearing up for a long war of attrition. Once again the war will appear as have the past two world wars with Britain holding the line at the English Channel and Russia double-crossed holding the eastern front against Iran who will hold much of the world’s oil reserves, the one weakness which finished off Hitler will not be even an inconvenience for the Mad Mullahs and the Aryan march to impose the perfect society will pick right up where it rested at its apex holding the continent of Europe but this time allied with the nations of MENA making for an even stronger and more dangerous front against the world order.

 

All of this will be happening because of and under the nuclear umbrella of Iran made possible, and even inevitable, by the Iran Deal whose consequences we attempted to approach in our article What is Already Resulting From the Iran Deal? Further, one can read one of the versions of the Iran Deal as each nation apparently had their own translation under which they were operating, and we found the Russia interpretation likely to be the closest to the Iranian interpretation which has never been released. The Russian version of the Iran Nuclear Agreement 7/14/2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is worth suffering through as it is how Iran likely sees the agreement. If we had to point to the greatest failing of the whole idea behind President Obama and his administration it would be the understanding that words have meaning and that meaning gives words the power to move mountains as if they were mole hills and turn mole hills into mountains. We are not speaking of rhetoric as that was one place President Obama soared, he could paint such pictures using hundreds of words that when subsequently parsed were found to have said absolutely nothing but they sure excited the useful idiots to whom sounding great is being great, no accomplishments necessary. This was most evident when President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of his rhetoric during the first campaign and the immediate aftermath. Shakespeare defined President Obama to a fine point with his phrase found in Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28 with which we shall close today’s article.

 

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Is Military Intervention in Syria Desirable?

The conversation debating militarily intervening in Syria due to chemical attacks which are presumed to have been carried out by the Syrian military on orders of President Bashir al-Assad has intensified considerably within the past week. The reports that a chemical weapons attack has been perpetrated in the fighting of the civil war in Syria came from the same sources as have the previous reports over the past year, namely France, Britain and Israel intelligence services. There have been urgent calls for a response to the use of chemical weapons from officials of Britain and Turkey even without first receiving approval for such attacks from the United Nations Security Council, alleging the near guarantee of a Russian veto and strong possibility of a Chinese veto of any such resolution. The main difference this time is the concurrence from officials within the administration of United States President Obama. All the calls for a punitive strike on Syria is targeting only the Syrian military and laying all suspicions and blame for the attack upon Syrian President Bashir al-Assad and ruling out the possibility that the use of chemical weapons by the any of the rebel forces. Despite all the noise one needs to question whether such an attack is necessitated, correctly targeted, desirable or even setting a sensible precedent.

 

As far as whether an attack on the Syrian chemical weapons stores may appear to be a responsible action, making such an attack now after two years does take away some of the moral basis behind such an attack. If the desire of an attack is to remove the possibility to use chemical weapons on troops or civilians by bombing the stores out of existence, such a move begs the question of why now so late in the game and not within the first few months of the Syrian hostilities. If the existence of chemical weapons and the availability making their use a clear and present threat, then why now as this has been true since the onset of violence especially when one takes into consideration the previous use by former President Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present President of Syria, on the city of Hama in February 1982 where it is presumed that the Syrian military had used hydrogen cyanide to cleanse some areas. With the hope of the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors being unable to carry out their assigned inspections as their convoy coming under sniper fire on their way to the scene forcing them to turn back and abandon their mission for now, and probably forever as it is probable they will draw fire whenever they set out for anywhere other than the airport to leave Syria. The possibility of gaining a United Nations resolution sanctioning such an attack is now probably impossible without any serious confirmation by the inspectors with which to push beyond a Russian veto.

 

There will always be that measure of doubt over whether the Syrian army or the rebel forces were the perpetrators of the chemical weapons use. This doubt is exaggerated by the limited numbers of casualties reportedly caused by this use of chemical weapons as any use of chemical weapons in an amount to be considered tactically significant would have caused tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties and have done so over a broad generalized area. This presumed use of chemical weapons causing minimal casualties in a relatively small defined area implies that the perpetrators releasing these weapons possessed a small amount and were unable of dispensing the chemical weapons in sufficient concentrations over a significant area of the battlefield which makes it somewhat doubtful that this was a Syrian military usage as their access to chemical weapons is extensive meanwhile the rebels are the side with a minimal if any access to chemical weapons stores and a resultant limited capability to use such weapons in any manner other than a relatively small front.

 

As for the questioning of whether such an attack would be desirable, we take a stance that this is an unwise move just as we said when taking our stand in Libya. The parallels between the current situation in Syria and the situation before the military intervention in Libya are very nearly identical. Both were internal conflicts where foreign fighters had joined one or more of the disparate forces involved in the civil wars. Just as was claimed by Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, Syrian President al-Assad has also made the claim that the majority of the forces his country is fighting against are made up predominantly of terrorists. We agreed with Gadhafi back then and do so again with Syrian President al-Assad and somewhat more people in agreement this time. Hindsight has definitively corroborated the claims by Gadhafi and will do so in Syria as well as such is beyond any shades of doubt and is accepted fact already. Knowing that the rebel forces are so predominantly made up of terrorist jihadists from al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood aligned groups and allying on the Syrian military’s side is members from Hezballah, also a terrorist force, and suspected members from the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps), an Iranian group which is suspected of organizing terrorist forces outside of Iranian borders throughout the world, there actually are terrorist forces fighting on both sides, making the Syrian civil war even less desirable for any intervention supporting either side.

                           

Then there is whether or not an intervention now would be setting a dangerous precedent which makes it necessary to comment on the general intents of those who have supported the concept of R2P, the Right to Protect. The origins of the R2P concept came about during the lead in to the Libyan intervention with some unsettling reasoning behind it. It was touted as the significant response required in Libya in order to protect the people from human rights abuses, especially those human rights abuses committed by a sitting government. The truth about R2P is it was initially introduced as one of the concepts which supported the intervention in Yugoslavia in support of the establishing of Kosovo as an independent nation by NATO, another intervention that this author was strongly opposed to and for which received many condemnations. During the arguments supporting the NATO intervention despite the lack of United Nations sanctioning resolution depended heavily on the R2P concept which was argued strongly by Samantha Power. For those who can’t quite place the name Samantha Power, she is the current United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former Senior Security Adviser to President Obama. What was interesting about the arguments around the R2P concept even before Kosovo when it was first being put forth by such human rights self-proclaimed groups such as the Open Society Institute was that R2P could be utilized as a means for intervention to be taken to force the formation of a Palestinian State even against all objections which might be proffered by Israel.

 

What was basically required for such a forceful intervention under R2P in Israel by the European Union, United Nations, United States or whatever coalition could be cobbled together would be the previous application of R2P in situations where there was strong international support and any military intervention could be promoted as necessary, popular, supportive of human rights and moral, especially moral. The discussion in many of the self-assigned human rights NGOs claimed that should R2P be used as the driving reasoning behind successful and acceptable military interventions, even if it had to be applied as having been useful and a necessary measure in the initial reasoning after the fact, it should be given sanction by such situations. Then, after R2P had been mainstreamed and given the purification of general acceptance as a positive means of addressing instances of human rights offensives, then it could be applied to the Palestinians plight and used against Israel giving sanction to the utilization of force against Israel in order to establish a Palestinian State along the lines of the full demands of the Palestinian Authority leadership, even if it resulted in the destruction of the State of Israel. Whenever one is to examine the reasoning behind interventions, especially military interventions, it is necessary and vital that all possible ramifications are considered. It is necessary to look beyond the immediate situation and to try and look forward to and predict any other situations which might come under the same criteria thus demanding an intervention in other situations which cry out for such interventions. Quite often the most sensible and good sounding ideas which are placed into the general public discourse are introduced not into the situation where the actual designed use is desired but first is vetted in controlled instances, sometimes even injected into arguments after the fact, in order to have the idea receive acceptance and become understood as a no-brainer whenever it is brought in as an argument for actions such as interventions simply to utilize it to justify and sanctify an intervention which may have otherwise caused stronger resistance had such a concept not been applied thus dressing the cause in a cloak of morality. R2P is being molded in such a manner and it will be used to sanctify actions which will be more and more questionable in the future once it has been amply established. That is the danger posed every time outside forces intervene in conflicts and other situations, no matter how dire or undesirable, which are internal to a single nation such as civil wars or popular uprisings as is currently occurring in Egypt and Tunisia.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

United States Longest War

Ask most people what the longest war the United States has ever fought and you will most likely get Afghanistan as the answer. The only problem with this answer is it only states the most recent battle of the longest of wars in which the United States has been engaged. The truth is that the war the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq are but battles in a generational contest in which the first shots were fired in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean off of Northern Africa even before General George Washington accepted the final surrender from British General Cornwallis after the battle of Yorktown. The United States was founded already in a state of war which eventually would become known as the War with the Barbary Pirates. After two separate campaigns the Barbary Pirates were forced into signing a treaty ending their attacks and kidnappings on United States merchant vessels. This signaled an end to aggressions as far as the United States was concerned, but not so for their adversaries who simply had made a Hudna, a temporary end to a conflict taken by Muslim forces and nations when their enemy is more powerful than themselves. A Hudna differs in one significant manner from an actual peace treaty, it is a temporary form of a truce which is intended to be broken whenever the Muslims believe they have gained the advantage and are able to defeat their enemy.

 

This war of which this writing refers had its beginning in the city of Medina with the rise of Mohammad as the leader of a tribe who made up the first Muslim Army. Once gaining a strong and able army, Mohammad wrote a whole new set of rules and laws for the religion he was founding. No longer was it necessary to honor other religions or people as had been the case in Mecca where the first parts of the Quran was written. In Medina the Quran spoke of mutual respect and honoring the rights of those who were different. Such was no longer necessary and the sections of the Quran written in Medina spoke of the supremacy of Islam and the requirement to spread Islam until it becomes the only religion on Earth. These two separate faces of Islam has come to serve the Muslims well as it allows them to coexist in peace when their numbers are small and they are the strangers in a new land and to impose their religion once their numbers have reached a critical level. This war which was first declared in Medina with Mohammad and his rise to lead and eventually rule in Medina and set in the Quran the ideology that Islam must become the sole and supreme religion on Earth. Even with the death of Muhammad in 632AD this aim of spreading Islam throughout the world has never died. This long war has lasted emerging out of the Arabian peninsula continuing through the Crusades, the wars between Muslims and the Hindus in India and in modern times between Pakistan and India, the many permutation of the Arab-Israeli war, the Balkans conflict over Kosova, the Chechen conflict with the Russians, and even the current Shiite-Sunni conflict which is an intrinsic part of the Civil War in Syria among other conflicts throughout Islamic history.

 

The actual beginning of hostilities between the Barbary Pirates and the United States was initiated by President Thomas Jefferson despite his strong aversion to engaging in foreign conflicts, treaties or alliances. Thomas Jefferson’s initial contact with Islamic culture came in the company of John Adams when they were the ambassadors to France and Britain respectively when they met the ambassador from Tripoli and inquired as to why his countrymen were attacking American merchant ships and abducting their sailors. The ambassador answered honestly and simply responding, “That’s what we do. We are commanded to do so by Allah. It was written in their Koran that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to Paradise.” When Jefferson became President he decided that paying the Jizya to the rulers in Tripoli who were demanding more tribute every year had become overly expensive and endangered the future of the United States. President Jefferson stopped making the payments which resulted in a first of two wars between the Barbary Pirates and the United States. Where there was eventually a treaty ending that war, the Barbary Pirates once again returned to attacking merchants of the United States resulting in a second Barbary War.

 

Whether the current hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9-11 are actually a continuation of the Wars with the Barbary Pirates would be a stretch, the underlying rationalizations and justifications which led to those conflicts are attributable to the Quran. Don’t believe this article, simply take the words from the al-Qaeda Fatwa issued three years before the attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City which stated, “We — with God’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim Ulama, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.” The supposed original sin committed by the United States and their allies was their response to requests by the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia who requested aid as they felt directly threatened by Saddam Hussein when he attacked and overran Kuwait in August 1990. The United States entered Saudi Arabia in order to defend a Muslim nation from the seeming imminent invasion from a dictatorial expansionist lunatic. For risking the lives and paying a terrible cost in both personnel’s lives, equipment, and funds in efforts to protect a Muslim nation, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda declared a holy war against the United States which led directly to the death of nearly three thousand Americans on September 11, 2001 to which the casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the numerous terrorist attacks since all originating in that initial fatwa. The honestly saddest reality of this is the numbers of casualties and destructive actions are nowhere near reaching an end. How long and the final cost of this longest of wars may not be finished being tallied in our lifetimes, and that is truly the most regrettable of truths.

 

Beyond the Cusp