The Syria Connection

 

One hears rumors of deals and arrangements being touted which predicated the United States departure from Syria. One can only pray that these are valid statements but should plan as if those words were never heard. Does anybody in their right mind believe that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is really going to end his murdering of the Kurdish population in Syria? How many actually are able to convince themselves that once the United States has departed that Bashir al-Assad will not simply begin to slaughter not only the fighters who still oppose him in the eastern parts of the nation but will also choose a genocidal approach to the civilian populations in these regions slaughtering millions of innocents for the crime of being Sunni Muslims or Kurds. There was one promise already kept, but whether the promise was made to United States President Donald Trump or to Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is unclear. The good news is that Russian President Vladimir Putin did lean on Lebanon regarding the Hezballah tunnels dug under the border and into Israel plus warned them to take steps to assure the border with Israel remains quiet. This also serves Russian influences and interests that there does not open up warring between Lebanon based Hezballah and Israel as such a war is bound to spill into Syria even if just to prevent arms from reaching Hezballah from Iran through Damascus, the route usually taken, though of late Iran has begun using Beirut International Airport to transport guidance system upgrades to the massive Hezballah rocket inventory making them deadly accurate missiles instead of launch and pray rockets with marginal accuracy.

 

The problem is that either President Trump has not learned that in the Middle East falsehoods are a way of life and actually demanded of the followers of Islam if that lie furthers the goals of Islam. The American President is accustomed to making deals with people whose word is their bond and such does not exist throughout most of the Middle East, Israel being the exception. This has caused Israel many serious problems when dealing with the Palestinian Authority (PA) as they would often make a promise which they had no intention of ever honoring as that would be counter to their interests, and as they are Muslim, their interests when dealing with Jews is an imperative that they gain specifically when they lie. The PA has not kept virtually everything they have ever agreed upon with the greatest and most obvious lie being that they rewrote their charter removing calls to totally destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. To the credit of the PA, when Washington DC sent State Department monitors to determine if the PA was to alter their charter, they had a vote to form a committee to look into having a committee which would consider making the prescribed alterations. The State Department monitors returned to Washington DC reporting that the PA was indeed going to make the changes required, and that settled that argument. Of course, that committee saw no reason to form another committee to decide if the changes should be made, as obviously they never intended to alter one letter of their charter and nobody in the Western World can understand their charter as it is written in the apparently untranslatable Arabic. We can expect the same for any and all guarantees given to President Trump as conditions under which the United States military could leave the region-claiming job done in the defeating of the Islamic State.

 

That takes us to whether or not the Islamic State has indeed been defeated. That would depend on one’s definition of defeated. The Islamic State lost virtually all of the territory it once held, had its declared capital city taken and has been reduced to sparse groups scattered over many square miles of territory all of whom have melted back into the population, often in the very villages they left to fight with the Islamic State. Such a dispersed group would be next to impossible to hunt down and the effort would make such more and more difficult as time progressed as many of these people would be torn from their communities leading to resentment and making more terrorists. So, was the Islamic State defeated? Well, yes, as much as such can be the case as the remainder has vanished into the countryside and in small towns and villages. The remnants if they were to gather to attempt another power seizure, they would become a simple target which could be eliminated using aircraft from the fleet in the Arabian Gulf or Mediterranean Sea as soon as they were identified. Will the Islamic State ever return and become a new menace? Probably not, or at least not in the same form with the same leadership and it would only take the name Islamic State because there is a history to be found in the ruins of the Islamic State. President Trump was basically correct in reporting that the Islamic State had been defeated, but his move to pull the troops may prove to have been premature.

 

Reports have stated that this was a decision made by the President and only the President. Security Adviser John Bolton argued against pulling the troops out claiming it was premature. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was in so much agreement with Bolton that he tendered his resignation claiming that the President should have somebody supportive of his decision rather than himself who was vehemently opposed to this move. The leadership of the Democrat Party stated that what the President did with pulling the United States military troops from Syria was a form of deserting America’s post in the troubled region. Yes, you read that correctly, the Democrat Party is now in favor of a military campaign half way around the globe to eradicate every last person who ever had any cordial relations with the Islamic State. These are the same people who scream as if somebody murdered their pet puppy any time Israel is forced to act against Hamas, a terrorist group on the immediate border from Gaza yet bemoan the removal of United States military which was fighting terrorists extremely far removed from the American borders. That, our friends, is hypocrisy. But nobody ever honestly claimed that the United States had no double standards when it comes to Israel. Every nation, or virtually every country, holds contrary expectations of Israel which are far and away more restrictive and bordering on making it dangerous to the point of allowing Israel to face destruction while applauding any other nation taking steps for protection from terrorists even if the threat was thousands of miles distant; for example, the United States and Islamic State for whom the United States sent troops to the far side of the planet.

 

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis

 

The first and near immediate consequence of the United States pulling her troops from the region will produce will be Iran establishing a direct route across Iraq and into Syria and Lebanon with the equipment headed for Lebanon and will be utilized by Hezballah. The IRGC will become more active vis-à-vis the Israeli border with more regularly stray bullets just happening to strike somewhere along the Golan Heights and even rockets will stray into the Golan Heights all of which will make soldiering on this front more demanding. Bashir al-Assad will take the American troop withdrawal as a signal that he will be free to do as he pleases while he completes his retaking of Syria. The human rights abuses are simply going to become a major part of the coming Syrian despotic regime returning to power. Assad will definitively punish those peoples he feels were disloyal or critical of his rule. This will include the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs in large part as their Alawite Shiite leader purifies their nation. Once the perceived enemies of the Syrian despot have been cowed, then everything will return to an eerie form of normalcy. Such will take time as the people are going to have to rebuild their lives and their homes in all too many instances. Bashir al-Assad has proven to be at least as great a destroyer of worlds and has exceeded his father’s totals and Bashir is not yet near to the completion of his transformation of his nation and its population. Additionally, Turkey’s Erdoğan will be serving al-Assad by sweeping through and killing the Kurds in the north of Syria while disarming any he allows to remain. We may be on the verge of witnessing the murder systematically of millions of Kurds. In far too many cases, the military troops have been hand picked selected for their proven loyalty and their brutal oppression they are willing to inflict often on innocent persons. The anti-Kurd animosity is very apparent in both the sweeping away of described terror cells and the brutal treatment of all of those who are not them. The Kurds are also facing murderous troops in northern Iraq as the Iraqi militias, the Iraqi military and the IRGC from Iran are sweeping Kurdish territories seeking to kill anyone who ever had even the slightest connection to Kurdish Militias. This sweep may even include what is left of the Yazidis who escaped the Islamic State slaughterhouse by the skin of their teeth. Life outside of Israel in the Middle East can be horrific to the point one simply gets trampled by one despot after another. The United States departure from this region will have detrimental effects, but these will be nothing when compared to what will occur once the United States pulls their support for Israel and no longer provides cover in the Security Council. That is something which is already in the pipes and coming before you know it. Before that day arrives, Israel will require a new and kindly friend who has a permanent veto.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iran, Europe, Israel, Syria and the State of Things

 

Allow us to start with a direct quote from Giulio Meotti’s article titled, “Europe has chosen disgrace” where he stated referring to Europe as a whole, “It has no interest in Israel. Indeed, I will say more: in their intimate thoughts, in their “mental deal”, most Europeans think that Israel, the country most at risk from a nuclearized Iran, is a burden, and that the Middle East would be more peaceful without a Jewish State.” At this point, we need to place a disclaimer, we really do not hate France and we are using someone else’s material and we do have to agree that France did provide the largest target of recent history of anti-Israel bias. Quoting from deeper in Giulio Meotti’s article, we find the following list.

-in 1967, when De Gaulle made the pro-Arab choice and applied an embargo to Israel:
-during the Intifada, when the Israelis were slaughtered on buses and the French ambassador in London Daniel Bernard called Israel “that little country of s….t”;
-with Saddam Hussein, when France ran to sell him missiles and nuclear technology;
-with Arafat, treated like a king by Mitterrand and who died in Paris:
-with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who granted asylum to Khomeini in Paris;
-with the Jews killed in the French suburbs and the French authorities unable to protect them.

One last quote from the article and then we will add our commentary. Giulio Meotti further reports, “The day after the US left the nuclear agreement with Iran, trying to build a Western alliance to stop Iranian expansionism, French President Macron called Iranian President Rouhani on the phone with the aim of ‘continuing to implement the nuclear agreement and to maintain regional stability’”

 

France aside, Germany, Britain and much of Europe allowing the European Union to all agree that business with Iran is far more important than siding with some American cowboy businessman and his insult to his predecessor’s efforts to reach the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) which, as far as the European powers are concerned, is a simply perfect agreement which at least delays the Iranian nuclear program. Anyways, the Iranian nuclear program is no threat to Europe, they chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and not Death to Europe. Iran is doing business with the Europeans and everybody is sharing technology and making profits and getting what they desire from one another. Sure, some of the goods being exchanged could be adapted for use in the production of advanced nuclear devices, but the treaty will prevent that, so what could possibly be the harm. The Europeans are once again doing business with the greatest evil governance on the planet under the illusion that it would never target them, there is an agreement. Some places never learn from history, something which appears to be a problem the world over. At least our readers know of the foreboding warning given by writer and philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” So, where can we go from such a beginning?

 

Map of the European Union

 

There is the entirety of the mess in Syria which has much to do with Iran. Without the assistance of Iran, Bashir al-Assad would have been removed from power as the Russians would have simply reached an agreement with one of the dissident groups, be they Sunnis or Kurds, and in return for retaining their airstrip and naval ports, they would have allowed one to form a new government. Russia might have even permitted the breaking up of Syria into three separate nations allowing the Alawites to retain governance over their areas, the Druze to rule their mountainous regions, the Kurds to join with the Kurds in Iraq and form a new Kurdistan and the Sunni to have their own governance. Such an agreement would have ended the Syrian debacle and shut down its meat-grinder and made the region safer for many of the refugees and desperate people remaining within Syria to return and rebuild their homes and cities.

 

The problem is Iran requires that they have complete control over all of Syria such that they have a route direct from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. So, it was at the insistence of Iran that all of Syria had to be brought back into their fold and under the rule of Bashir al-Assad and the Alawite Shiite Islamic power base. Russia could have lived with an agreement with the Alawites by exchanging Russian protection of their western region and coastal Syria for using the ports to service the Russian Mediterranean and Atlantic fleets and their airstrip assuring them they would also retain Damascus. Russia and the Alawites along with al-Assad would have even gained the support of the United States had they gone for such a solution. Europe would have been less taxed as the numbers of refugees would have been reduced significantly. The only country which gains by continuing the civil war in Syria is Iran and their insistence for ruling all of Syria through their puppet al-Assad so they have a direct route to the Mediterranean and to the Israeli northern border. It is the Iranians attempt to become the hegemonic power lording over the entirety of the Middle East and using this as their power base in order to spread their power even further. This is where the Europeans are making their mistaken assumptions that the Iranians have no designs on Europe in their future. The Mullahs of Iran have designs not only on Europe, but on every corner of the globe, as their eventual rule, according to the Quran, will be the entirety of the world. The only variable is how long this conquest will take and that will depend upon their first two apparent targets, Israel and the United States.

 

Another item which should be pointed out is that Europe is anything but a monolithic culture or has any political uniformity. There is a definitive demarcation line dividing the culture and body politic within Europe and it can be drawn between the Warsaw Pact nations which emerged from the rule of the Soviet Union and the older nations of Western Europe. Where Western Europe is largely secular humanist, Eastern Europe has had a resurgence of their religious base which they had been denied for so long. Even Russia has been experiencing a resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church. These Eastern European nations largely refused to accept the refugees from the Middle East and North Africa between a combination of refusal to permit their entrance to having military assure that they travelled straight through in the trains and left on the farthest border. Many of the refugees were passed in such manner from one Eastern European country to the next until the refugees could be dumped in Germany. This was great as far as many of the refugees were concerned as their target nations of choice were Germany and Sweden with France and Britain following initially. Soon after BREXIT, the British conservative government of Theresa May closed their border to the refugees to limit their influence and numbers. Should she be replaced by the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, we can expect that decision to be reversed, to the detriment of Britain. This European split is further born witness as the Scandinavian countries are suffering from a similar malaise as the Western Europeans as they too have adopted the secular humanistic vision and socialist polity, a seeming disease with horrific consequences. There is one problem which extends throughout Europe, reproductive rates well below replacement rate. Replacement rate is defined US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health as, “In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman. In countries with high infant and child mortality rates, however, the average number of births may need to be much higher.” The European levels of reproduction range from below to well below the required rates to provide sufficient replacement levels (see chart below). For a socialist based economy, low reproductive rates are a death knell, as such governance requires, at a minimum, replacement level reproduction and works best while the population is increasing. As long as there are more workers than retired people and others dependent on government welfare, then the socialist economy is possible, even if not necessarily desirable. The lack of reproduction at replacement levels pressures governments to open the borders for immigration to provide the needed and necessary workers. Problems arise if the immigrants who arrive are unaccustomed to the work ethic at the center of the Judeo-Christian ethics, as they simply add to the welfare rolls and making the economic challenges even greater and possibly far too formidable to overcome.

 

Population Statistics for Europe

 

Europe’s sagging economies which are barely, if even, meeting their financial requirements which was part of the reason so many had all but their contractual obligations to support the NATO treaty. President Trump made a demand that the Europeans remember and honor their obligations if they desired remaining in NATO. President Trump, contrary to the claims of his detractors, has gathered advisors who also see the future challenges looming larger and larger on the distant horizons. The winds are blowing in just such a way that unless care is taken, then there may be some very dark clouds troubling the world all too soon. The initial targets may not be as they seem. Iran has lately tested the mettle of the Israelis with a barrage of rockets launched by their Quds Force. The Israeli response was swift and definitive. The response came the next morning from Tehran where Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated, Iran does not want “new tensions” in the Middle East. Rouhani told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone call, according to a statement on the website of Iran’s presidency and quoted by AFP and Arutz Sheva, “Iran has always sought to reduce tensions in the region, trying to strengthen security and stability.” What Rouhani did not bother to inform anybody, though he knows the Supreme Leader’s thoughts on the issue, stability in the Middle East to Iran would mean that Iran ruled the entirety and were working towards expanding beyond either into North Africa or across Europe. This is why the basic assumptions of the European Union and the Western European and Scandinavian nations that the Iran treaty is simply all that is required to contain Iranian ambitions. The Europeans simply ignore the broadcasts from Tehran and reports coming from cities across Iran of crowds chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” as simple boasting for internal consumption. They tell themselves that all the bluster is simple nonsense and, after all, such things are of no concern to the Europeans, they are above such things as waring and fighting as their societies have evolved and taken the world into the age of treaties and talking out differences. To the Europeans, nobody would resort to waging wars anymore as World War I and World War II and atomic weapons have made war something obsolete and too awful to even contemplate. Further, the Europeans are so sure of their knowledge of the world that they are betting their lives, their culture, their future and the peace of the world on it. That begs the question, what if they are wrong?

 

From here forward, unless some drastic changes come over what many call Old Europe, the remainder of history will be written without their input and very possibly their consent. The age of Europe leading the world have waned and their light has dimmed. This, at least, is the belief of New Persia, the identity which the leadership of Iran has taken. They believe that Europe is an empty land full of people with no stomach for conflict. They believe they are using Russia bending President Putin to their will in Syria. Here, there is more than a modicum of truth to their reasoning. Russian President Putin has sought to find some means of extracting the Russian forces thus far withdrawing them to protecting their naval bases and their airfield. They are no longer working to combat the enemies of al-Assad, as the Islamic State has become something that forces allied with the United States are mopping up the remainder. There are no longer any threats which Russia needs commit herself to defeating in Syria as the Syria conflict has become an Iranian war. Iran is fighting the Syrian War, the Yemen War, remains of the Iraq War, Sistan-Baluchestan insurgency and some other intra-Iranian conflicts. The coming conflicts will largely come from objectives as set out by the Iranian hunger to gain their hegemony. This is the reality which all too many have chosen to ignore. Those who are not ignoring it, many are simply unprepared to face the reality and unwilling to take the needful steps to make a difference, and, lastly, the few who have seen the coming challenges are being belittled and pecked at by media and left wing subversions. These false fronts crowd the real news off the pages and from the newscasts leaving much of the world’s public completely uninformed. The future conflicts will initially not even be considered worthy of coverage by the media unless they can be spun against Israel or President Trump. This will allow those desiring to commit mischief the freedom to do so all the while moving towards their desired ends. When things reach the fevered pitch making them unavoidable and are thus reported upon, they will claim that everything came out of nowhere and would never have become this way if only the correct people had been elected. This will be the beginning of the next great deception, something we will talk of more in the future. For now, watch Iran, Russia and the Middle East. There will be two other nations of interest which may have much to offer in the future, India and China as they are rising powers who have the luxury of time.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Potentially Imminent Syria Sinkhole

 

First please allow a small personal note. I had a senior moment two weeks ago today and am now typing left-handed as the right hand resembles a plaster club and is even less usable than normal. Surgery was performed on the one finger I was unable to set; so physicians, surgeon types, were employed. Now back to our regularly scheduled editorials and other stories.

 

There is way too much talk about Syria and what the Western nations, particularly Europe and more-so the United States must do to address the problems being exasperated by the horrific five years of the ongoing warfare. Much of the talk centers around seven major topics: refugees, no-fly-zone, safe-zone, containing Russian expansionism, ending the rule of Bashir al-Assad, strengthening the Iraqi government’s hold on central Iraq, and establishing America’s position, standing and unrivaled hegemonic superiority across MENA (Middle East and North Africa). On concluding the discussion of the pitfalls and awaiting disasters surrounding each and every one of these subjects, we will carry them to their inevitable conclusion if any of these paths are followed and then pinpoint exactly where things went off the tracks leading to each of these now end alternatives, disastrous alternatives. Let us simply start with some of the best of news for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the initial starting point for much of these situations were initiated during the President George W. Bush Administering of the area and even stretch back to principally French, British, Italian as well as the rest of the Allied Powers from World War I and particularly Sykes-Picot Agreement and the underhanded meddling for fifty years on average after a thousand years and more of Arab and Islamic rule. Let us look at what all this has wrought.

 

The Sykes-Picot Agreement is the underlying deceit which set the Middle East and eventually North Africa into a situation where the untenable borders set levels of internal intra-tribal rivalries vying for supremacy once the borders were released as independent nations. There are two dirty little secrets as to why to this day the nations which constitute MENA are a cauldron of explosives always roiling and why Europe is blamed. Europe gets the blame as they were the ones left holding a region where borders were traditionally meaningless and each tribe ruled by the oasis and wells they controlled. For over a thousand years either an Arab, Kurd, Alawite, Tripolitanian, Cyrenaican, Fezzan, Wahhabi, Houthis or a dozen others and this is indicative of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and throughout MENA and beyond (see map below). There are multiple clans, tribal and even nation of origin divisions throughout the “Palestinian” populations in Hamas controlled Gaza, Fatah controlled areas of Judea and Samaria and within the “refugee” population (a fair number of which are now also Syrian refugees or Islamist rebels in various groups including al-Nusra and Islamic State presumably fighting against one another). The warring tribes rapidly led to one tribe being the dominant leader often through favor and arming by the departing Europeans or due to historic realities from the Ottoman Era or the Caliphate and even back to the Byzantine and even the Cyrenaic Greeks. These tribes ruled each country as drawn out by the Sykes-Picot Agreement often requiring an iron fist style dictatorship. The nations surviving the best, a relative term, would by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, the Gulf Oil Sheikdoms and Israel. The world of MENA is very much in flux and it will take quite some time and a great potential for violence beginning within and having a strong predisposition to drag much of the world into the coming maelstrom if the world leaders continue on their current course.

 

Sample of Potential Tribal Influences which
Could Decimate the Borders of Saudi Arabia and
Has Split the Borders of Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya

 

Let us look now at the pressing seven problems starting with the refugees now streaming into the West from all across the MENA nations and beyond into the Horn of Africa and Central Africa. Other than Jordan and Turkey there are no other Arab States taking in refugees and Jordan is keeping them in camps with the intent of their returning to whatever remains of Syria if and when the war ends. Turkey is either placing their refugees in camps, largely women and children, or passing the men mostly with sufficient women and children, around fifteen percent on a good day, for Western media to have their touching pictures to pluck heartstrings. The reality is the flow of selected refugees is an infiltration and when their population breaks ten percent they become bold and past twenty percent they turn belligerent and start demands backed by violence to force their religious edicts and demands on the rest of what has now become a victim population. Once the Islamists pass thirty to forty percent the war begins and continues until the Sword of Islam has submitted the population or the prey of Islam grew in strength and found their reason to stiffen their backbones and stand breaking the Sword of Islam. There will be no middle ground as Islam, in its current Islamist form, allows no middle ground. Either all will be Islam or few to none can be Islam. That is why Europe, the United States and the rest of the world taking in Muslim refugees need demand changes before allowing another refugee to enter. First, the numbers of women, children and the elderly must outnumber the numbers of fighting age men. Second, the refugees will be required to pass a rigorous vetting process which validates their standing past, present and, with hope, future. Third, and possibly most important, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and other stable Islamic nations must collectively take in twice the numbers of refugees than the rest of the world. Forth, the refugees must take an assimilation program and allow them to be placed outside of the Muslim concentrations taking work and show true assimilation efforts or be returned from whence they originated. These refugees have long not been from Syria as they are from failed nations lacking order or a working economy as well as infiltrators, organizers and training personnel from various Islamist organizations and terrorist forces including but not limited to the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hezballah, IRGC (Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; Persian: سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), Hamas, al-Nusra Front (which left al-Qaeda according to the United States State Department and has been cleared to receive weaponry, training and other assistance –cash- and is a favorite of the Clintons) and numerous less or even unknown terror groups. The entire refugee system and assimilation of Muslims needs to aid them in learning, understanding, experiencing, appreciating freedom and finding the higher self-worth which comes from an independent life which once existed within Islam in their Golden Age. This could be the last hope of kindling the spark of freedom and liberty of the soul deep within Islam and perhaps finding a path to mutual acceptance instead of perpetual conflict.

 

The remaining six problems have no solution other than a hope and a prayer. They are all the result of grievous errors in judgement, poor planning, a foreign policy based in defeat, the removal of American presence and a total and singular White House policy to destroy the American influence and assistance in building a world based on mutual respect, liberty, freedom and basic human rights and instead encouraging tribalism and fracture of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and all other Western influences which were seen as an unwanted and negative influence over what was believed to have been the peaceful influences Islam had initiated during the years of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate before that. Someone making these decisions apparently must have missed the five hundred years of Arab and Islamist conquest and the intertribal violence which necessitated numerous severe crackdowns on such problems over the reported thousand years of peaceful existence. The problem was where it oft arises with Western nations who become tired of winning demanding their forces be brought home leaving a vulnerable and usually untenable situation so unstable that if things actually do not deteriorate immediately, then some unfriendly force has likely replaced the Western presence. This time the United States got some of both, Iraq became Iran West and Syria collapsed into a war with more fronts than a strip mall.

 

The premature withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq has had the actual desired effect permitting Iran to establish their presence in southern Iraq and the opportunity to expand into central Iraq permitting Iran to soon establish a second front in support of their interests in Syria, namely Bashir al-Assad. Talking about Syria and Bashir al-Assad; the United States has lately been claiming that their interest is in working out a change of power in Syria but whining that the Russians interests are interfering with any progress. Has anyone ever wondered and remembered how and why Vladimir Putin got his oversized Russian foot in the door. If our collective memories are still firing on all cylinders, then Vlad the Invader (as opposed to Vlad the Impaler as pictured in their element) was all but invited into Syria when President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to issue the “Red Line in the Sand which Bashir al-Assad would pay dearly from United States decisive and determined military action should chemical weapons be used back in 2012. That broad and definitive line got thinner and thinner and faded and faded turning pinker and pinker until it completely faded. Then came Vladimir Putin to the rescue and he has remained guarding Bashir al-Assad and his Mediterranean Sea military ports. Then there was Libya.

 

Vlad the Invader vs Vlad the Impaler

 

Libya was the culminating point where the Arab spring was going to be revitalized. Instead there was another power vacuum created and the nation fell back into its tribal factions while the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood backed terror organizations set up shop. One such group was in Benghazi where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her inner circle made the deal of a lifetime procuring Stinger Missiles for al-Nusra or who knows. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith were to arrange the transfer. The deal went sour resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods all were murdered. There were reports that Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods held their position for eight hours before being subdued in a swarm of mortar fire. For reasons never made overly clear, there were no military or other assets available to ride over the hill and save the good guys. This is how we all got to this point and we are supposed to forget the past eight years of foreign intrigue and foreign affairs which have lighted so many fuses any one of which could be the initiator of the war of Gog and Magog while others lead directly to World War, which one are we supposed to be on, three, four, five or twelve? Those are the easy items to trace but then one must figure on a nuclear armed North Korea with a few more nuclear weapons than the CIA wants to admit, say maybe a cool fifty or hundred more with more than half either thermonuclear weapons or bombs made using the Soviet Union’s plans for their super EMP device. Additionally there is the little problem of Iran also building their own nuclear arsenal probably using the identical weapons plans they received from the North Koreans in exchange for advanced rocketry designs and testing of the North Korean ICBM designs. Well, we really need to continue with this foreign policy direction just to see if aliens are going to drop from the sky and save Earth. The coming ride is going to be interesting; as in the Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, it will be interesting.

 

Beyond the Cusp