Why We Think Trump Had Said NATO is a Problem

 

Donald Trump is doing something of which very few of us will ever understand the difficulty. For people used to blurting out whatever is on their minds, damn the consequences, it becomes even rougher row to hoe. Being of a similar mold and having attempted a run for office you quickly realize that there are some truths you hold close and can never reveal as they are one of many blocks of Kryptonite. The problem arises at some point where your natural nature breaks through and you start to speak one of those truths which must not be spoken and as they start to slip your lips you recover just short of the hidden nugget within which is the real poison to your campaign, so you quickly and abruptly end your sentence as smoothly as possible. The media, the darling little devils, are a devious lot and when they smell an opening, they are like jackals on carrion tearing at the carcass of the bedeviled thought seeking that hidden nugget. When Donald Trump complained about NATO, I got the sense that his problem was not the financial costs as he maintained upon further pressure from many media types. As Trump is closer to a third party candidate where there is no Republican running, he has been pestered and hammered from both ends of the media and his rather combative nature tends to allow for more unforced, though coerced or due to carefully laid traps, misspeaks and half-speaks leading him ever further down the rabbit hole, and wonderland is the worst place for a politician to end up as there it most certainly ends with the Red Queen screaming, “Off with his head,” pointing at them. And who wants to be executed by a horde of red animated playing cards? Such has been the NATO issue and the reason is far more potentially intriguing than the answers we have been giving, not that we disagree with having those nations incapable of providing the troops required to field NATO adequately to its demands having to pay the United States for making up the difference.

 

Thinking of what else Donald Trump might have been told which could include NATO it became obvious when it leaked into our ears, well, before our eyes really, the answer to the riddle and it concerns one of our pet problems with the world, Kurdish independence. The plan is to make Syria a collection of autonomous cantons with the Syrian government responsible solely for those items which cross the borders such as main roadways, money, national defense and others. The first canton mentioned was for the Kurds in the north and northeast of Syria. This was leaked as part of a report by respected Turkish journalist Mahmut Borzarslan who gave information we received in one of our memos from American Center for Democracy concerning a plan being brought forward initially in Syria by the Russians. The initial laying out of the plan while receiving all-out support by the Kurdish representatives was roundly dismissed as pure fancy with no hope of acceptance by the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad be their position less tenable than they may yet realize. What makes this all the more interesting is that the Kurds would be natural allies to the United States as they have proven extremely helpful in Iraq allowing American forces to concentrate on the bigger problems while they basically ruled and kept straight the entire northern third of Iraq and assisted with the pacification of Mosul. Further, the Syrian Kurds, with assistance from their Iraqi cousins, have had the greatest success against the Islamic State defending their own held areas while liberating other areas with some of the toughest fighting coming for control of the city of Kobanê, which they accomplished with some assists in the form of targeting Islamic State positions with bombings, and a remarkably few at that. The Russians will soon point out that if Bashir al-Assad desires to remain among the living and rule over anything he will need to realize two things, he can only hope to rule an Alawite Canton and only that with the second, Russian assistance and if he desires the second he will need to accept the first. This he will understand even if the Russians need ground their planes, silence their artillery and retreat their forces to hold only Latakia and protect their naval instillations there.

 

There is no means on Earth which would make this idea acceptable to President Obama as his new best friend forever and darling of the Muslim Brotherhood since the fall of Egyptian President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government has been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The removal of Morsi and his gang of undesirables proved the Egyptian people more knowledgeable than the United States President and State Department, the latter not that difficult a feat as it takes minimal common sense and does not require literacy, calling on even the military to retake power as they would be a kinder and more beneficent master. The added problem is where Donald Trump and NATO come into the picture. Turkey is a member of NATO due to their geography. They hold the southern front on Russia, formerly the Soviet Union and the reason for NATO, and control the Dardanelles, the waterway and series of straights leading from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and the world and also the Russian access to a warm water access to the Atlantic Ocean (see map below). Being a NATO member, Turkey could claim and likely verify terrorist threats against her by Kurds being aided and secluded by Syrian Kurds making a case for it being an act of war. As attacking Kurdish region of Syria would place Turkish fighter aircraft in space over Russian zones and might even draw Russian assistance to the Kurdish side as the Kurdish actions have aided Russian interests, they could demand military assistance under the NATO Charter. Should the United States enter such a conflict in even the smallest of means; one could bet the Kurds would have no alternative but to request Russian assistance even simply to provide air cover to prevent bombings as the Kurds have no air forces and likely minimal if any air defenses. Remember that Turkey has already downed a Russian fighter jet under somewhat questionable conditions and Russia is not a nation to forget such and jump at an opportunity to repay in kind and then some. This could quickly get out of hand with Russian and NATO, potentially including United States, aircraft in combat against one another. Does any rational person really want to see where such could lead?

 

From the Sevastopol Docks and Shipyards
Across the Black Sea then
Through the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles
to the Mediterranean Sea and thus the Atlantic Ocean

 

For this reason and numerous others, it will be best left until after the United States Presidential Elections and the late January inauguration before any serious negotiations on such a solution can have any hope to progress. This is where Hillary Clinton can claim that Putin would prefer Donald Trump as both she and dear Vlad know theirs would be a tumultuous relationship at best and adversarial at the very least. If there is to be any cooperation between the United States and Russia on Syria and a host of other areas, then Donald Trump need be the next United States President. Hillary Clinton has already made it clear that her foremost foreign policy objective will be to humble and force Putin to bow before her will from the very first moments of her reign. This is also one of the main unspoken fears, dare we say horrors, many foreign policy theorists and experts foresee. The guaranteed irritant on so many trouble spots and potential disasters would result from a continuation of an American shirking of international responsibilities. Should America continue leading from ever further behind soon to never even arrive, added to a focus on pressing only Russia and President Putin frustrating him while continuing to arm “rebels” in Syria, could lead to an ever greater set of conflicts. Add the blindness to Islamic pressures and subversions would bring much of the ensuing violence down initially upon Europe and soon thereafter on the United States as well. As learned, or not, from both world wars, the United States sitting on the sidelines refusing to lead the powers of democratic governance, freedom and liberty against the powers of darkness and human bondage; be it physical, mental, spiritual or otherwise; only prolongs the insufferable carnage and adds, nay, multiplies the numbers of combatants and innocent civilians slaughtered and can even place the final outcome in doubt as was the reality in World War II where had the Nazis broken through Stalingrad and connected to the Arabian oil fields the outcome may have been very different. Of course should Donald Trump become complacent concerning the possible designs Vladimir Putin may be considering for Eastern Europe and many of the former Warsaw Pact nations, that too could lead in a very threatening and dangerous direction. Oh the trials and tribulations of trying to run the world with so many other actors filling the stage. The solution in Syria will never resurrect the visions of Bashir al-Assad and he may become the sole obstruction to an agreement all the other groups agree with once the Islamic State has been vanquished, an inevitability no matter who wins the election. Such a position would make Assad a problem for Russia, and even worse, for Putin which would make Assad no longer desirable. That would be a very nasty place to be standing surrounded by Russian military and special agents and further, Bashir al-Assad is not unreplaceable with a new and compliant Alawite leader and there are likely quite a few just waiting for such an opportunity. Assad should remember the Arab Code, “Me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Stabbing Their Way to a State

 

It seems that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians can perform with the utmost perfidy and still it will be Israel whom gets blamed by the vast majority of European politicians without any brains. The most promising of European politicians without any brains this week is Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom. Her latest performance which could be titled repeat the same worn out tropes about the Jews did it and they now deserve whatever evils befall them because I would rather be liked at the dinner party circuit at the Hague than stand up for anything which might have the slightest bit of difficulty and do not question me as I was once in sixth grade the Great and Powerful Oz and pay no attention to the anti-Semite in the blue dress, oh, you figured me out, oh well, I will repeat myself once more and hope it works.

 

 

 

 

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom has had a lot of company in their little corner of Europe which has led to the thriving Jewish population in Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, to have dwindled down to a mere six-hundred souls and we expect that will continue its dive as the newer and apparently more popular residents continue their campaign, one that some have told is backed by a sizeable minority of the towns long term residents of which a former mayor may have been their group-leader as his advice to the Jews when approached for some assistance with providing security during one outbreak of anti-Semitism in Malmo which saw an attempted firebombing of the synagogue was for the Jews to move as there was nothing he could do, then again, that might have been the most honest truth they were to ever hear. Sweden had ceased being the safest place on Earth for Jews, but outside of Israel and looking to the future a decade or two down the road, other than possibly the United States as well, the world is starting to turn in a difficult direction and may reach a tipping-point beyond which there will be no turning back. That is exactly why Israel may be able to continue to play the Let’s Try to Please a World Gone Mad game through the 2016 Elections and then act accordingly as either Israel will once again have a friend in Washington or Israel may need to address the fact that she need go it alone and strike out on a new path where no ally can be considered dependable and you take what you get and make sure that you never again become dependent on others for the items required to keep the nation safe and well protected.

 

As for the latest on the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians front, they have the cutest little new commercial they are displaying on their social media amongst other places which uses the term “so what” in reference to a hashtag appearing on Palestinian social media as a slogan used to encourage Palestinians to continue rioting, throwing rocks and using violence against Israelis. The hashtag {#so_what} is a Palestinian response that makes light of Israel’s alleged crimes, showing that Palestinians don’t care. It also implies that no matter what Israel does, the Palestinians will continue not to care, and they will continue to riot, throw rocks, carry-out stabbing attacks and vehicular rammings amongst other assaults or attempted homicidal attacks. The video posted to ‘Jerusalem Intifada’s Young People’s Coalition’ Facebook page depicts a girl from Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza repeatedly saying, “So what” and ends with her slashing with a large knife and repeatedly chanting “Stab! Stab! Stab!”

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile IDF commandoes and medical teams continue to work solely under the cover of darkest night to retrieve, treat and return injured people, often men of fighting age and other times civilians who are victims of the war. The IDF commandoes cross only at a preselected point taking great cautions to assure there is no ambush or other traps including explosives connected to the injured who are regularly left for pickup and intensive care not available in Syria and treat men who in the past or may be in the future soldiers who war against Israel. Risking their lives, these IDF soldiers make exchanges and take these injured into Israel where they receive treatment. Do not wait for any kudos from The Hague or Brussels and the European politicians without any brains as none are forthcoming. There are numerous videos and images showing the steps and risks taken to serve humanely even one’s enemies and seeing them first as human beings in need of help and providing that help. These victims of the horrific war raging in Syria for years have been provided countless hours of surgical care and recuperative assistance and rehabilitations by Israeli medical personnel and treated with the greatest of care by the IDF commandoes who carry out the nighttime retrievals and returns of the treated individuals at the arranged exchange spot. The full and extensive story can be viewed here with the Mail Online whom we give ample credit for covering this tale little told. These exchanges have gone on ever since the Syrians began leaving originally just civilians and later fighters who were beyond the capabilities in Syria with complete faith that the Israelis would treat them and not torture or execute them. Perhaps the best tribute one can claim is the trust of their enemies to do the right thing in any and all situations. We are using but one of the pictures to give one last enticement to go read and view heart-stopping videos of these chivalrous knights of the modern battlefield.

 

 

Team of IDF commandos look on as their
comrades take the treated militant on the
dangerous journey back to war in Syria
as they have done countless times
providing humanitarian aid
regardless of fighters origin

 

 

The jaded European politicians without any brains would look on the above story and find some rationale or angle to accuse Israel of having committed. When Israelis treated Arabs who call themselves Palestinians who were severely injured when shot to prevent their continued rampaging and stabbing more Israelis there were accusations that the Israelis were stealing their organs. There are the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians were shown whole after surgeries, even the young Arabs who called himself a Palestinian that Mahmoud Abbas used as he proclaimed that the Israelis had executed him and not taken him for treatment, and they often are heard to claim what idiots the Jews were for saving their apparently soulless bodies because they plan to return to stabbing Jews as soon as they are healthy enough and still their physical therapy continues to get them healthy so they can carry out their threats. How so many of these youths who owe their lives to Israeli physicians and many may have been treated by Arab doctors and they blindly curse their healers and swear they will murder them at their earliest opportunity. How does one continue to treat somebody so bent and twisted as to demand they will choke the life from your body given even the slightest opportunity? But that is what human beings, true human beings with a soul and a strong belief in Hashem will do time and again despite the threats as it is the only hope one can ever have of reaching any spark of humanity which has not been bled from their souls through the constant drumbeat of hatred and encouragement to murder and destroy those who have no malice in their hearts for you but you must hate and destroy because that is what Arabs who call themselves Palestinians do. It is sad and it is bothersome to write about such hate while never quite ever being capable of understanding their hate but perhaps that is what one must feel when one considers their entire life is defined by hate and blood lust. It truly is sad that three generations have grown up under this tutelage of death and destruction and so many Arabs who call themselves Palestinians are lost to this hate, this soul wrenching hate.

 

Back on the European politicians without any brains front we have the recent comments by the European Union Ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen who stated quite clearly that first he was one European politician without any brains and further who opined in a radio interview earlier on Tuesday that, “ISIS is organized terror and it should be countered with force. Palestinian terror should be met with diplomatic and political means.” Ah, so deadly terror attacks on people other than Israelis is serious and should be dealt with thusly while terror against Israelis by Arabs who call themselves Palestinians is completely understandable and should be coddled and could we dare say encouraged as that is exactly what the trillions of Euros thrown at the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians produces, more terrorist murderous attacks on Israelis which, as you stated, is simply wonderful and the European Union I presume will buy even more by rushing the next donation? Earlier that day similar remarks were uttered by Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, which explains how Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom managed to get appointed. I guess that closes our European politicians without any brains section for today, I need to go cleanse myself, have a nice day.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

United States Picks Between Wrong Sides in Syria

President Obama’s Administration reached a decision to, in theory, begin to send small arms directly. This is being sold as the United States will begin to send arms to the rebels in Syria. This implies that the United States was not arming the rebels before this decision. If only they were that discerning in their decision making. What this is actually announcing is that with Turkey now falling into chaos with riots in every major city across the nation, the United States has lost their go between which had allowed them to funnel arms to the Syrian rebels, mostly originating out of Libya, through Turkey while being able to pretend in the domestic news to appear to not being at all involved in the Syrian Civil War. The question the American public needs to decide is has their country chosen the right side to support. The obvious answer is they have not but the reality is that there was no correct side to choose. All that is being chosen in Syria is which terror groups will lead the Islamic world for the immediate future in any future engagements with the rest of the world. Perhaps some inspection and tracing the history behind this decision will make things more understandable.

 

Perhaps the first item would be to attempt to discern who gets the credit or blame for deciding to support the rebels in Syria. The first item we need to state is that, like or hate the choice, President Obama really did not have much of a choice in which side to support. He chose whether or not to support a side in the Syrian Civil War, but the side was chosen all the way back in 1953 and possibly even earlier. It was that year the United States backed Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi in the 28 Mordad coup, date of the coup in the Persian calendar, with Operation Boot under the title of the TPAJAX Project during the end of the Truman Presidency, replacing the democratically elected government in Iran which was proposing to ally with the Soviet Union. Needless to point out that this alignment and access to the oil fields were the driving motivations for the United States and no altruistic reasons were present. This was purely a case of we will put our man in for the oil and to spite our adversary, the Soviet Union. Perhaps it was attempting to make amends for the previous devious actions that inspired President Carter to back the revolt which brought the Ayatollah Ali Khomeini to power establishing an Islamic religious regime which remains in power today under the second Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The miscalculation by President Carter was quickly made evident as the new leadership in Iran chose to ally with the Soviet Union soon after coming to power. Perhaps there was just a bit of schadenfreude felt by the Iranians and Soviets from these turns of events. This resulted in the current alignment with Russia aligned with the Shiites and Iran and the United States aligned with the Sunnis and Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Hopefully that is sufficient historical reference.

 

The current excuse for a Civil War in Syria has in all actuality become a power struggle for preeminence of the Muslim world between its two main groups, the Sunnis and the Shiites. The Alawite Ruler of Syria, President Bashir al-Assad, is backed predominantly by Iran which has provided him with troops from the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and Hezbollah terrorist troops from Lebanon, another satellite of the Iranians. These are the Shiite Islamic forces in Syria. The rebels originally consisted of one side representing secular interest and the other representing Islamist interests. The secular rebel forces have basically been all but removed from the conflict and have virtually no hope of prevailing in the conflict. That leaves the Islamist forces which consist of two camps, those with the Jabhat al-Nusra Front which has declared their alliance with Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda and those supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. The challenge in this is to find which side consists of the good sides, or at least the less bad side. President Bashir al-Assad has utilized intimidation, torture, rape, and other equally abhorrent instruments of oppression to retain his hold on power and his two supporting groups are equally renowned for cruelty and ends justify the means reasoning. This does not necessarily make the rebels any more benign. There is not much that needs to be said about al-Qaeda beyond World Trade Center terror strike and the horrors of a fateful day in September 2001 and their compatriots in the conflict, the Muslim Brotherhood, are not the choir boys who have, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “…an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.” In truth they are exactly the opposite but somehow possibly still preferable to al-Qaeda as long as one ignores such aligned subgroups such as Hamas. So, this pretty much defines the adversaries from which President Obama has now presumably chosen one side to support. Perhaps he simply chose the side which was not supported by the Russians, but one might hope that such a decision was made with deeper concerns that just that.

 

So, President Obama has chosen to back the al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood in their attempt to be the preeminent guiding force in Islam while the Russians are supporting the Iranian sponsored terrorist out of Lebanon, oppressive dictator of Syria and the terror specialists out of Iran, the IRGC. The problem is deciding which side is populated with people who deserve the support of the nation which claims to be the bastion of freedom and human rights in the world. Truthfully, the reasoning behind President Obama backing the rebels is more realistically stated as backing Saudi Arabian and Egyptian interests and opposing Iranian interests, not to mention opposing Russian attempts to rise to power over the Middle East. As mentioned before, the sides were chosen far before the Civil War broke out in Syria and goes back to two fateful choices in Iran, the 1953 coup that brought the Shah to power to prevent Soviet Union preeminence in Iran and the 1979 coup that placed the Ayatollahs into power who then chose to join the Soviet Union block of nations despite the attempts by President Carter to make amends for the perfidy under the administration of President Truman. Now all that remain is to have one side prove out victorious and gain, for the moment, the leadership of the Muslim world. Will it be the Shiites with their Russian allies or the Sunni with their American allies? Why does it matter? That is the problematic part of the equation. Which side of this conflict would present the higher likelihood to bring peace to the Middle East? The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood has benefitted greatly from the Arab Winter which was initially represented as the rise of democracy in the Arab and Muslim world but really has simply changed the prearranged winners in every election from some nationalist dictator to some Islamist dictatorial party such as the Peace and Justice Party in Egypt which is nothing more than the Muslim Brotherhood political influence. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood has risen to power across Northern Africa in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya all with backing and praise from the United States. Those changes in leadership were of no consequence to the power structures as the dictators were Sunnis as are the Islamists who have replaced them. Syria is the first place where the Sunni and Shiite both have a serious shot at controlling Syria. Syria is vitally important to Iran as it represents a critical nation in the Shiite Crescent which currently exists starting in Iran and the Persian Gulf and proceeding through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea. Saudi Arabia has the most interest in neutering of Iran and breaking their control through the heart of the Middle East would be an impressive first step. If, on the other hand, the Shiites prevail and retain their control over Syria, the potential for the Shiites to continue their slow spread across the Middle East and, more importantly, the greater oil fields in the center of the Middle East, Iran will continue to spread its strangling tentacles across the Muslim world. Iran had made an attempt at expanding during the Arab Winter revolution in Bahrain in direct opposition to the Bahraini Monarchy, Saudi Arabia. The Shiites were repulsed by heavy Saudi Arabian troops which were sent across the causeway which connects Saudi Arabia with the island nation of Bahrain. This was the second part of the Sunni-Shiite contest for preeminence in the Middle East after the Shiite taking control over Iraq after the United States war to remove Saddam Hussein. Syria will be the deciding battle. Should the Shiites and Iran prove successful the spread of the Iranian influence is likely to continue while should the Sunnis and the Saudi Arabian-Egyptian alliance will present a more stable future.

 

So, what does this mean we should look for in the future that might signal a change in the status quo? Should the Sunni win out in Syria there will be relative quiet, is the Middle East ever really completely tranquil, and the first sign of trouble coming would be the overthrow of the Saudi Arabian monarchy by either the Wahhabi or the Muslim Brotherhood. This would soon result in the final contest to begin for who will lead the Muslim forces in any eventual contest. Should the Shiites prove victorious in Syria their next target appears to be Turkey followed by Jordan. After Turkey and Jordan, choosing their next target will be problematic as their preference would appear to be Saudi Arabia and their satellite nations they provide protection for such as Bahrain, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar and Omar or Egypt in order to begin a march across Northern Africa. Iran is being patient with their slow and inexorable march to gain the preeminent position at the head of the Muslim world. But the first stop of this creeping revolution is in Syria. The worst result that could result in Syria would be actual Russian or American troops intervening in the Syrian Civil War. Should either of these nations transit from arming their chosen side to actual boots on the ground or even fighters in the skies, the other will be obliged to also enter the war. Where that leads is unimaginable and something to be avoided at all costs. The critical point of no return will come when one side appears poised to prevail and defeat the other side and the United States or Russia will have to either accept defeat of their surrogate or intervene. Intervention should be avoided but I seriously doubt that either President Obama or President Putin is capable of accepting defeat. That means that the only end to Syria may be decided across the entire planet and that should scare any reasonable person greatly. This does not bode to end well or even to end any other way than a devastating conflagration.

 

Beyond the Cusp