Egypt Very Likely the Next Syria

 

Donald Trump has decided to follow one policy which President Obama used causing great consternation amongst many experts and we expect similar results from President Trump pulling out of the Kurdish region after the Kurdish Militias, particularly the Peshmerga, who pushed the Islamic state back in both Syria and Iraq, opened the path for the liberation of Mosul and the eventual defeat of Islamic State Capital of Raqqa. With the United States deserting the Kurds at the behest of Turkish President Erdoğan who has genocidal aspirations for eliminating the Kurds as he tales their land to reestablish his own Ottoman Empire, or at least the first steps of taking Mosul and Aleppo. President Trump is attempting to avoid getting caught in any quicksand and he knows the Middle East is full of potential sand traps and quicksand. He saw how the Middle East took down both of his predecessors and how even those who pegged their rising star upon Middle East achievements, are now watching those achievements dissolve as if made of sand in a brisk wind. The peace between Israel and Egypt supposedly crafted by Jimmy Carter (it wasn’t and he almost destroyed it trying to tie the Palestinian and Syrian peace onto Egypt which almost sent Sadat running but Begin promised to keep it between the two nations without other Carter presented additions) now leading to a Sinai Peninsula with growing terror and criminal elements running rampant. The other was Bill Clinton’s claim to fame (other than the woman in the blue dress) which was the Oslo Accords which have proven to be a complete fraud and may result in Trump dissolving all hopes for the Palestinian Authority (PA) or other Arab interest ever breaching a peace with Israel and pulling American backing for being the sponsoring negotiator for any Arab and Israeli peace process, especially the two state solution the PA keeps touting as the only hope and then turning down all offers. But our concern with this article is Egypt so let us turn our heads to the Sinai Peninsula for a start.

 

The first group to find the Sinai Peninsula attractive was Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Along with the Muslim Brotherhood came al-Qaeda in the form of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem). Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis in late 2014 became Wilayat Sinai which means Islamic State in the Sinai. Today they constitute up to eighty percent of the Sinai Province’s fighting force. The Islamic State has taken a turn towards disaster with the United States support for the Kurds turning the tide. Now the weakened Islamic State cannot even defeat or hold off the Syrian forces of Bashir al-Assad backed by the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and Hezbollah. Meanwhile Turkish forces are continuing their assaults on the Kurdish forces from the north while the Iranian and Iraqi forces are pushing them from the south in Iraq thus leading to their rapid retreats and decimation. This will, in time, also lead to the remaining Kurdish likely to become terrorists and fleeing to some place where they can likely join up with, oddly enough, the Islamic State. This will have them choosing between the two places where it appears that Islamic State is regrouping, Mindanao (the southern Island in the Philippines) or the Sinai Peninsula. The ones choosing Mindanao will find United States trained and backed Philippine forces with modern equipment and United States intelligence assistance. The ones choosing the Sinai Peninsula will find initially no resistance and a weak Egyptian ability to contain their actions.

 

Recently, two to three dozen “militants” (read terrorists), attacked a mosque in the Northern Sinai town of Bir al-Abed, along the coastal road connecting the main cities in the northern Sinai of El-Arish and Port Said. Utilizing explosives and automatic weapons, they slaughtered over three hundred of worshipers including almost 30 children and injured approaching fifty more worshippers. Almost all of the attackers escaped. Egypt has promised, or at least Egyptian President al-Sisi has promised to take on the scourge which infects the Sinai Peninsula and clear the terrorists and other criminal elements and provide protection and safety for the residents of the Sinai Peninsula. Of course there are those who will claim that the scourge are the residents of the Sinai Peninsula, and they would have a point as it appears that the expanse has become inundated with what President Sisi would qualify as the wrong element. The first step that is required be taken is to get permission from Israel to use armored units, helicopters and conduct air strikes as under the aforementioned Egypt-Israeli peace accords, Egyptian forces are limited to police using light weapons only enforcing the peace in the Sinai Peninsula, as this was to prevent Egypt from stacking troops on the Israeli border and as Israel was returning the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula and not retaining some percentage or large buffer zone for themselves, making the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula a militarily limited zone made sense back in 1979. Even now, there is a logic but the pressing problems of the terrorists and criminal gangs requires Egypt be permitted some latitude in dealing with this menace as this menace would eventually become a security problem for Israel plus would make arming Hamas with better rockets and heavy weapons more probable.

 

Further, much of the reported actions beyond the slaughter of innocents, have been abnormal and abhorrent activities. There have even been horrific reports of rape, beheadings, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, slave trade, sex trafficking and trafficking of organs taken from African kidnap victims. All of these would be problematic for Israel who shares an approximately two-hundred kilometer border with Egypt much of which is not fenced as of yet plus there is the almost fifteen kilometer border Egypt shares with Gaza through which anything, literally anything, could pass especially should Egyptian guards be scared from their guard posts or simply removed as has occurred in one memorable incident. Jihad militants based in the Sinai attacked an Egyptian outpost killing between ten to fifteen Egyptian policemen at the security checkpoint in Rafah. Then the militants stole vehicles laden with weapons (see pictured below) and tried to breach the Israeli-Egyptian border crossing at the Kerem Shalom terminal using an armored vehicle and one truck. Israeli Air Force aircraft managed to destroy the armored vehicle thwarting the terrorist attempt to cross into Israel. Ground forces intercepted the truck as it crossed the border destroying the truck and neutralizing the sole terrorist inside driving the truck. No Israelis were hurt in the incident. The Sinai Peninsula terrorist problem had been a building problem ever since the fall of Egyptian President Mubarak who was forced out by President Obama and replaced by Muslim Brotherhood’s favored candidate, President Morsi, who was subsequently replaced in a coup by President Sisi who won the subsequent elections, which was no big surprise. During this entire period the Sinai has been protected and policed by fewer and fewer forces leading to the current problem reaching the levels it has. Now more drastic action is required and it may eventually take more than Egypt is capable of addressing.

 

Weapons Cache Stolen in Egyptian Terror Raid Captured by Israel

 

Should Egypt prove incapable of addressing the terror and criminal problems in the Sinai Peninsula, that would bring on some very interesting prospects. Should Egypt turn to Israel for assistance, what might lead to Israel permitting IDF soldiers to risk life and limb to assist Egypt with what is basically a pure Egyptian problem? That would pose an interesting question and one can wonder at the various and potential solutions. There can be little doubt that Israeli assistance would make the effort far easier but one can only imagine what would entice Israel into such a deal. Perhaps if Egypt were to include the removal of terror entities and criminal elements from Gaza as well and offering to take in those Arabs from Gaza desiring to leave Gaza and then turning Gaza back to Israel with the understanding that the remaining Arabs would be permitted to have a semiautonomous area near Gaza City and Rafah. This would remove the problem of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and who knows whom else on the Israeli southern border while providing Egypt with well-trained troops to assist with the problems in the Sinai Peninsula plus it would provide Egyptian troops some lessons in terror control tactics by working alongside Israelis. Some Egyptians might even realize that the Israelis are not all that different from the Egyptian troops having similar difficulties and similar desires beyond their military service.

 

Meanwhile, there are more problems in Egypt which could greatly increase the problems with extremism and terrorists. Quoting the Egyptian government, “Unemployment among Egyptian youth, who have been the jihadi foot soldiers, is above thirty per cent” and even higher for women. This leaves a large and dissatisfied group who are restless and seeing no future for themselves leaving them with growing resentments and anger. Such a situation leads to other problems including drug use, alcohol addiction and potential recruitment into criminal gangs or even terrorist groups. These are both fast tracks to a short life but for some the risk is worth it, as they see no other means. They are attracted by promises of wealth, prestige and living fast. What they are not told is live fast, die fast. Many of these youths will be amongst the first to die should the terror groups believe they have an opportunity to attack Israel with their new recruits and larger numbers but that would be a drastic and costly mistake. These children have little meaning to the terror masters who would sacrifice them as cannon fodder leading the next attack on an Egyptian outpost or whatever their target.

 

The truth of the matter is that should the Islamist State move into the Sinai Peninsula, they would not be much of a threat to Israel as if they could not beat the Kurdish Militias simply because they had United States air support, they would be utterly destroyed taking on the IDF’s combined forces. The only country which would have to worry would be Egypt. Egypt’s two main cities, Cairo and Alexandria, are both hours from the Sinai Peninsula. Additionally, the Suez Canal is extremely vulnerable to terror forces operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Should the Islamic State start shooting at tankers traversing the Suez Canal they could cause incalculable financial losses especially if one of the tankers were to catch fire and block the canal for all shipping for hours, or worse, days. Such an attack would cause worldwide panic as the Suez Canal is a major shipping point used by Europe and Asia for the majority of their trade and alternate routes are not exactly comparable. Further, should the world decide the Suez Canal has become too great a risk, then Egypt would lose its main source of revenue and lose face in not being capable of protecting their own lands and their one major waterway. Soon the Sinai Peninsula problem is going to spill into mainline Egypt and take out the Suez Canal when it does, as the world would not trust the security of their ships to the Egyptian promise of security of the Suez Canal if Cairo or Alexandria were to be attacked by terror forces from within the Sinai Peninsula. How little would world trust Egyptian guarantees of safe shipping along the Suez Canal if terrorists were to cross the canal in numbers for an assault on Cairo? Insurance companies would raise rates on shipping through the canal possibly making alternative routes more affordable.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The World Has Gone Crazy!!!

 

As per usual, the world is being counterintuitive, obsessive compulsive, defining things upside-down and joining the enemy. The most egregious of these is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has gathered the rightful ire from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) over the recent statements by Abraham Foxman’s replacement as Director of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt. The exchanges all were traceable back to the recurrent statements by numerous leaders from the Arab Palestinian Authority including their President, Mahmoud Abbas demanding that when (not if) their Palestinian State is established in Judea and Samaria with East Jerusalem as its Capital, the lands must be made free of Jews, absolutely devoid of Jews by whatever means may prove necessary (below is a now infamous video circulated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) with translation relating the revulsive commentary by Abbas). Arab Palestinian Authority leaders from the Fatah Party, a political projection of the PLO terror group, had posted claims on their Facebook page as reported in Israel Today with additional details provided by PMW with further corroborative links and information.

 

 

This finally incited a response from Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu who spoke in a formal video released last week (which can be watched below). An excerpt from the beginning of the video Prime Minister Netanyahu makes the statement, “Jewish communities in Judea Samaria, the West Bank, are an obstacle to peace. I’ve always been perplexed by this notion. Because no one would seriously claim that the nearly two million Arabs living inside Israel – that they’re an obstacle to peace. That’s because they aren’t. On the contrary.” Further into his speech, Prime Minister Netanyahu condemns these demands and makes an even wider condemnation of a world which stands idly by with these words, “And this demand is outrageous. What is even more outrageous is that the world doesn’t find this outrageous. Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage.”

 

 

The initial reaction came from the Obama Administration from the State Department where Elizabeth Trudeau scornfully replied as if scolding a child, not answering a statement from a head of state stating, “We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful.”

 

The response which was then released by the ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt stated, “Israel has many legitimate concerns about Palestinian policies and behavior, not the least of which is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s rash accusations that Israel commits acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. However, the charge that the Palestinians seek ‘ethnic cleansing’ of settlers is just not one of them.” He further raised the claim that Israel treats the different Israeli citizens allowing each different rights and benefits with these words, “We want to see Israel as a democratic country that acknowledges and protects the rights of all its citizens, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, Sabra and immigrant, Jew and Arab.” The truth is all citizens also do include Druze, Baha’i, Bedouin, Ethiopian, Indian, Russian and a multitude of others residing legally in Israel with complete equality in all areas of life be they opportunity, employment, political, private, public, residence and any area imaginable replete with legal definitions and protections. Any such claims are simply ludicrous. The ZOA response can be read here.

 

Media have reported on the criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements with one report reporting his equating items, which he had not, with their commentary of, “equates opposition to Israeli settlements with ‘ethnic cleansing’” as he never used the misnomer of settlements but instead referred to them as what they are, Jews, Jews residing in Area C of Judea and Samaria which under the Oslo Accords is under Israeli civil and military responsibility and designated as useable for development by Israel while denying Palestinian Authority from developing in these defined areas as they are restricted to Areas A where the PA has civil and military (security) responsibility and Area B where the PA has civil and the PA and Israel share military (security) control. Some in the Israeli media such as Haaretz also went off the deep end over the Prime Minister’s video quoting the various responses from the State Department reaction as if it were the words from the Angels in Heaven. It is so good to have the prophets of Haaretz giving us unwashed and ignorant ones true vision and leading us to reasoned understandings. Actually, I have found a fair definition of Zionist, or at the least a supporter of Eretz Yisroel, if you generally disagree with most political stances from Haaretz, or the newspaper and source of intelligent and reasoned thought as they would have one believe, then you are a Zionist.

 

The easiest way to show the hyperventilation over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements is beyond the pale is simply to ask what would have been the reaction had Israel been demanding the making of East Jerusalem Arab free East Jerusalem as it is to be part of the unbreakable and complete Capital City of Israel. There would be explosive denunciations and ethnic cleansing would be the least horrific of the criminal accusations thrown at Netanyahu and when Mahmoud Abbas denounced such a declaration he would be lauded and receive invitations to travel the world repeating his condemnations and he would be presented before the United Nations General Assembly to personally present the condemnation message they would all but unanimously vote to make it an official General Assembly denunciation of the entire State of Israel. There might even be calls to evict Israel from the United Nations and declare Israel no longer recognized by the United Nations as a nation. This would be reconsidered as without an official state of Israel, who could the United Nations Human Rights arm denounce at the start of every meeting?

 

The double standard where the Arab Palestinians can make any statement and nobody ever takes exception and if they even actually question the helpfulness, they explain that they understand the frustration felt and driving the Arab Palestinians as Israel simply refuses to take a national day of swimming towards Gibraltar leaving the entirety of the lands for the Arabs to take. The regard for everything Arab understandable and excusable and everything Israel to be questioned and called into doubt is appalling. From the very beginning the British enforced the ban on firearms ownership against the Israelis and often took the confiscated weapons and accidentally lost track of their whereabouts after storing them briefly with Arab leaders’ compounds before forgetting them as somehow they had disappeared.

 

During the war to annihilate the Jewish state immediately after her founding in 1948 found a strange set of bedfellows with both British and Nazi officers assisting the Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians and other Arab armies with tactical and strategic efforts from their various headquarters. The initial invasions routes are shown in the map below. Still, with some assistance with arms shipments from Czechoslovakian and few others, though there are stories of other clandestine arms shipments, Israel managed to hold much but not all of her territory. One of which I read about many years ago, and have been unable to find corroborative evidence ever since, told that some of the largest electronic transformers, the sixty-six-thousand volts down to two-thousand volts, being shipped to Israel from Baltimore weighing the correct tonnage but upon arrival they were opened and resembled an arms piñata with even reportedly tanks being in at least a few shipments. The Israelis managed to form a defense force from various groups which these eventually formed the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) whose storied history is well-known.

 

Initial Invasion Routes by Arab Armies on May 15, 1948

 

What is not as well-known is how desperate state of the first hours and some of the most horrific events in the early hours and days of that desperate war which had been misnamed Israeli War of Independence as it was Israeli war to avoid a genocidal invasion bent on the murder of every Jew they could find. One of the most gut wrenching was the slaughter of seventy-nine from a convoy including doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members, a few Haganah fighters and a British soldier. The convoy consisted of ten vehicles consisting of two ambulances, three buses of medical staff, and three logistical trucks, escorted by two Haganah armored cars. The convoy set off for the hospital at 9:30 am carrying 105 passengers. An armored car usually meant for the Israelis a regular vehicle which may have some metal plates welded and a hole in the roof allowing for one man armed with a machine gun to stand and shoot. These were definitely not the halftrack many visualize when they hear armored car. They were ambushed using an electronically detonated mine to stop the convoy which was immediately raked with rifle and machinegun fire resulting in the dead. Some of the rear vehicles turned and fled back to central Jerusalem forgetting reaching the hospital. They carried most of the twenty wounded from the ambush. Much, actually virtually all, of the convoy personnel were unarmed medical personnel and patients leaving them all but completely unarmed. This tragic event is usually ignored as the only stories usually made public paint the Israelis who were fighting for their very existence and facing more than the invading armies as many Arab villages inside Israel and behind the front lines were organized and attacked supply depots, reinforcements on their way to the front, injured being transferred for treatment in the rear and sometimes engaging the rear of units fighting the invading Arab armies.

 

The years after the Israeli surprising victory in the Six Day War of June 1967 forward, the Arabs realized that destroying Israeli militarily was not going to be possible, let alone easy. After their failure after being able to surprise the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 and still having Israel reestablish their defenses and push the Arab armies back and beyond the starting points in the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal and pushing towards Damascus, Syria and Cairo and Alexandria Egypt; the world demanded Israel cease and return to the Golan Heights and Suez Canal. The Arabs decided that they needed a new approach and in cooperation with KGB planners they made plans to change the perception of the strong Arab world against Israel into a weak Arab surrogate against the stronger Israel. This birthed the using of the PLO which had been established in 1964 to carry out a terror war against the Israeli enemy. The PLO was already sworn from their start to liberate the lands from the Jews. In 1964 Jordan held Judea and Samaria, what they called the West Bank, and Egypt held Gaza, so what was the PLO intending to liberate? Israel itself, that is what they were determined to liberate. They intended to kill the Jews and take Israel or at least make life so impossible that the Jews would simply leave. They never could understand that the Jews not only did not intend to leave, many had nowhere to go as they were themselves exiled from Arab nations which had forced all but a remnant of their Jews to flee for their lives often without their wealth as they were limited to a suitcase, two at most and no jewelry or other items of value. These are the almost million Jews which Israel simply welcomed and incorporated into Israeli population and not held in camps demanding the Arab nations take them back and reconstitute their wealth as the Arabs have done with their “refugees” who mostly fled at the urgings of the Mufti of Jerusalem.

 

The Palestinian ploy making Israel the powerful oppressor has been adopted throughout much of the world and with the assistance of the remains of the socialist remnants from the Cold War, their latest alliance with Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the college and academic anti-Semites are educating and fermenting in the colleges and universities of Western Civilization are reinstating a general sense of anti-Semitism using Israel as the modern Jew. They claim they are not anti-Semites as there are Jews who are amongst their ranks and they are only against the Israeli policies against the Palestinians. They support the Arab claim that all the land of Israel is their natural homeland and the new anti-Semites are those claiming that the Jews are the only people of the planet who must not be permitted their own nation. While there are those including many Israelis who are calling for the formation of a homeland for the Kurdish people, but the Jewish homeland is coming increasingly under fire from international bodies and this is only the first wave. When today’s college and university elite graduate and there has been a decade of these trained anti-Israel graduates coming to power across the Western World, then Israel will hopefully have weaned themselves from the United States and become what she must, completely self-reliant. The reality is Israel is about to stand alone in the world. She will still have trade with some select few nations but she will have no friends with power. Her friends will be unable to assist other than with trade and perhaps provide raw materials Israel may absolutely require to survive; but Israel can expect to be evicted from the United Nations and find no friend on the Security Council which means a world poised to do the unthinkable, destroy the Jewish nation and the Jews worldwide once and for all. That was a day which the prophets foretold and it is not going to be a pretty day. Do not believe anyone knows how that day ends as that may not be as expected. It will be the final day after which the world may end in a whimper. As the poet T S Eliot predicted in his immortal poem in its entirety below he wrote, “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The Hollow Men

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Turkey Tanks Attacking Kurds, not Islamic State so Much

 

Turkey announced that their armor supported troops rolling southward into Syria with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claiming they are there to confront Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish rebels. This appears to be somewhat absurd to use the problems caused by the Islamic State in order to destroy as much of the Kurdish forces before retreating back north of the border claiming whatever excuse necessary to excuse their not confronting Islamic State. This is a mission to weaken the Kurdish Militias, Peshmerga, in order to make the Kurdish vulnerable to the al-Nusra Front, Islamic State and whatever other Arab forces are able to take advantage of the Turkish weakening and degrading of the Kurdish ability to defend themselves. This attack by Turkish forces is all about Erdogan’s detestable hostility towards the Kurds and has no footing in reality and is fully due to the visceral desire to destroy the Kurds from spite. The Kurdish forces in Syria have always been fixated facing southward in order to face threats from al-Nusra, al-Qaeda aligned terrorists, Alawite forces of the Syrian Military, and, of course, against Islamic State (formerly ISIS or ISIL). At no time have the Kurdish Militias in Syria taken any hostile steps against Turkey and have little if any connection with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê ‎) which the Turkish government has labeled as a terrorist group.

 

This has more to do with the success of the Kurds in the first of the last two elections where they forced Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to not have an outright majority and thus require making a coalition with another similar Islamic Party. Erdogan took the alternative solution of preventing any coalition from forming thus forcing another election. Between the elections mysteriously numerous Kurdish leading officials and some Kurdish and other minor party candidates met untimely and mysterious ends. The ensuing second election proceeded in giving the AKP a clean majority. After there being no government or other investigations into the mysterious deaths and other strange events, there soon was an entirely different set of investigations to carry out. There was a coup in Turkey presumable brought about by a mysterious Imam who once was allied with Erdogan but they fell out as Erdogan gained in strength and no longer needed his former “friend” and political ally. Now this former ally, Imam Muhammd Fethullah Gulen, could pose a threat to Erdogan despite residing outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, in the twilight of life and became the next great threat. President Erdogan is cementing his power so as to become President for Life, thus the Gulen coup which came apart almost before it got started. There were numerous reports of “Gulen coup allied pilots attaining missile lock of the aircraft carrying Erdogan and having this lock for over five minutes and never firing a single missile or other armament at the aircraft. What coup worth its salt does not shoot down the reigning President’s aircraft when given the opportunity? We’ll tell you; the kind of coup which is engineered and executed by the reigning President who is feeling particularly vulnerable after not winning an overwhelming victory in an election and having to resort to back room politics to win the forced second election balloting. He used goon squads to assure his win in the second election while also intimidating the Kurdish population severely diminishing their numbers voting in the second elections. Then he had a coup and within twenty-four hours of putting down the coup there were more than six-thousands of judges, prosecutors, lawyers and other legal professionals arrested and another six-thousand military personnel arrested and a predicted additional many thousands still on lists to be arrested and an equal number to be placed under investigation. Now there is an armor supported assault into Syria to vanquish the ability of the Kurds in Syria to defend their people leaving them vulnerable to the Islamic State. Meanwhile there will not likely be much, if any, assault by these Turkish forces against the Islamic State as was promised as the main reason for the crossing into Syria. This is highly unlikely as the Turkish forces could very well have their hands full just engaging the Kurdish Militias.

 

Turkish Tank Rolling Into North-Eastern Syria

 

Much of the reason for this attack and numerous other nasty little surprises coming between now and the middle of January of next year is because President Obama’s terms in office are coming to a close and the United States may become a greater presence in the world after the election no matter who wins. Erdogan knows he will be losing his BFF (best friend forever) in the White House and gaining either an unpredictable crazy person who might send troops against you if you upset them on a bad hair day or Donald Trump as the next President. Either way, crazy hair Donald or crazier hair Hillary, you will be looking at somebody far more willing to use the United States military power than you have with President Obama. We have all heard endless tales of how unpredictable and erratic Donald Trump can be but the truth is Hillary Clinton is far more vindictive, ask any of the women who played with Bill and then told, and who has a long list of corpses showing up in her past, think Ft. Marcy Park and the Vince Foster enigma in a puzzle wrapped in lies which the police still have no clue or Ron Brown and air crash anomalies. Donald Trump does not have a trail of dead realestate developers left behind him in a train of tears as does Hillary with political problem people or just problem people. Then there are the select names Hillary has called those who fell short of delivering on campaigns such as reported in the Guardian that she called Paul Fray, her husband’s campaign manager at the time, a… well, we’ll let you look this one up if you are unfamiliar with it. Just for added information, the man was not and is not, to the best of our knowledge, Jewish. So much for even tempered and if given a choice on who has the “football” following them everywhere with the codes to launch sufficient nuclear weapons to end the planet as we know it, I would much have a jolly crazy person who jokes about the size of their “hands” than a vindictive person who cannot even control their tongue, let alone who knows what else.

 

Along the line of the mice playing while the cat is away, or simply asleep at the switch, China is building a naval base in Djibouti fairly close to the major United States post in Africa and is considering more such military ports placed at focal points around the globe. China has even stated in their budgeting that they hope to become a naval force who rules the waves, or at least the commercial shipping lanes. Their claim is this base has been established to fight the piracy in this area and should they succeed in this endeavor as announced, they will receive many thanks from nations around the world who have used the Suez Canal and faced the pirate menace in these waters. We also have the Chinese Island building into the South China Sea and Russia expanding their naval docking abilities in the Mediterranean Sea and using a military airfield in Iran to cover the Middle East under the pretense of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The world could look even stranger and the United States will now face facts on the ground around the globe with adversarial forces and nations who will have taken full advantage of a President asleep at the controls while spending time attempting to cripple adversaries at home, even some in his own party. The problem is the United States will not suffer alone from the adversarial role played by President Obama against the United States historic alliances and capabilities leaving a world vulnerable without any real guidance. At the end of World War II the United States all but neutered the militaries of the allied powers as if their militaries were the reason for the war and promised they would protect Europe from all threats. Well, that appears to have come to an end and it will be interesting no matter who wins the coming elections as both have stated they are want to use American military force unless there is a driving threat which must be met. The definition of such a threat is different between Hillary and Donald but that can wait until closer to the election when people might actually care. Suffice it to say that one of them is not traditional American force projection in their thinking.

 

Beyond the Cusp