Syria Attacked by Mad Dog

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote:"That’s it. The last remaining election fog has lifted. Instead of an overworked statement about a joint fight against the biggest enemy, Isis (the Islamic State), the Trump administration proved that it will fiercely fight the legitimate Syrian government, in a tough contradiction with international law and without UN approval, in violation of its own procedures stipulating that the Congress must first be notified of any military operation unrelated to aggression against the US. On the verge of a military clash with Russia.

Nobody is overestimating the value of pre-election promises but there must be limits of decency.

Beyond that is absolute mistrust. Which is really sad for our now completely ruined relations. And which is good news for terrorists.

One more thing. This military action is a clear indication of the US President’s extreme dependency on the opinion of the Washington establishment, the one that the new president strongly criticised in his inauguration speech.

Soon after his victory, I noted that everything would depend on how soon Trump’s election promises would be broken by the existing power machine. It took only two and a half months."

[posted on to Facebook by the Russian PM]

Syrian Prime Minister Assad wrote:President Bashar al-Assad’s office said the strike was “foolish and irresponsible” and “revealed its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality”. It said the government would redouble its efforts against rebel groups after the strike, adding: “The disgraceful act of targeting a sovereign state’s airport demonstrates once again that different administrations do not change deeper policies.”

CBC wrote:
Trudeau's comments in New York on Thursday that there were "continuing questions" about who exactly was responsible for the attack proves Canada has been "completely out of the loop" on developments in the region. Trudeau said Thursday the UN Security Council should launch an investigation into who was behind the use of the deadly nerve toxins.

But there have been phone calls from 'Mad Dog' Mattis and Trump himself since Trudeau made those comments Thursday.

Canada was briefed in advance of the U.S. missile strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapon capabilities Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.

The prime minister said he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump Friday morning and voiced his support for the air strikes directly.

Trump has gained some backing from Canada and England but the French and German response has been notably tepid. Germany called the American act “understandable,” but withheld any endorsement, and France did not venture even so far as that.

sputnik.com wrote:
Russia appears to have drawn a "red line" by suspending the air safety agreement, which Moscow and Washington reached in October 2015 to prevent aerial accidents in Syria's crowded skies. By doing this Russia probably shows President Donald Trump that proceeding on the path of escalation will pose a threat to the United States," the analyst said.

The ministry said that it had summoned a US military attache in Moscow to confirm the suspension of a memoransum on flight safety in Syria. Moreover, the Russian Ministry of Defense sent a note on the issue to Washington.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201704071052425538-russia-mod-us-channel-syria/
https://sputniknews.com/politics/201704071052416052-russia-red-line-syria/

Hobb wrote:This situation in becoming a clusterfuck.

We could only wish our elites we Illuminati playing 4-dimestional geo-political chess. The US has had 5+ different positions on Syria over the last week. Half of them if vigorously pursued would lead to nuclear war  with Russia.

Yves Engler wrote:There has yet to be a single question about foreign policy in the NDP’s first two leadership debates.

Tom Mulcair's described the NDP as "proud members of NATO" and Mulcair pushed to strengthen sanctions against Russia while also purging a number of NDP candidates--some elected by local riding associations--that supported Palestinian rights.

A party unable to openly debate its foreign policy is likely to support another war that devastates a small African country.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/yves-englers-blog/2017/04/ndp-differences-international-policy-need-be-debated

INTERNET ARCHIVE wrote:The Free Thought Project was founded in 2013 by Jason Bassler and Matt Agorist. Bassler and Agorist have been activists for more than a decade and have been working in the alternative media for several years. The rest of our team consists of highly experienced journalists and content creators from all different backgrounds and our family spreads from California to New York.

South China Morning Post wrote:“You cannot allow a country like that to have nuclear power, nuclear weapons,” Trump was quoted as saying. “That’s mass destruction. He doesn’t have the delivery systems yet, but he will.”

Trump gave orders on the weekend to send an aircraft ­carrier strike group towards the Korean peninsula. In a later phone call, Trump urged Xi to let North Korean leader Kim Jong-un know that the United States also had nuclear submarines.

Xi was also the first world leader to learn of Trump’s decision to launch a barrage of missiles into Syria on Thursday night in response to a chemical attack.  According to Fox News, Trump told Xi of his decision when they were having “beautiful piece of chocolate cake”. Xi paused for 10 seconds before saying that he was “OK” with the strike.

Donald Trump Jr. Retweeted wrote: Donald Trump Jr. Retweeted
AmericaFirstPolicies‏
Verified account @AmericaFirstPol 10h10 hours ago

Good news for @POTUS effort to 'end the war on coal' :)
China rejects North Korea coal, ramps up imports from U.S.

WIKIPEDIA wrote:
The madman theory was a feature of Richard Nixon's foreign policy. He and his administration tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile. According to the theory, those leaders would then avoid provoking the United States, fearing an unpredictable American response.


Nixon's Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, wrote that Nixon had confided to him:

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.^[1]

South China Morning Post wrote:“Xi was also the first world leader to learn of Trump’s decision to launch a barrage of missiles into Syria on Thursday night in response to a chemical attack.  According to Fox News, Trump told Xi of his decision when they were having “beautiful piece of chocolate cake”. Xi paused for 10 seconds before saying that he was “OK” with the strike.

Hobb wrote:I'm not against anti-war libertarians (in fact I link to one in the first post) but their economics are always heavily pro-austerity/privatization. That movement basically supplanted the anti-war position when large portions of the liberal/left stopped being anti-war during the 8 years of Obama.

counterpunch.org wrote:
Trump’s martial pronouncements are generally too truncated and disarticulated to ever embody something so substantial as a trope or a theme. Indeed, many of these public utterances are so garbled that they defy translation by even the most gifted linguists. They are more like the petulant bleats of an overgrown adolescent testing out a rack of video games, blasting away at one zombie invasion after another until he tires of it and seizes on another scenario. It might be said that he practices the Man-Child theory of foreign relations: belligerent, shallow, easily bored.

Naturally, Trump’s arm-chair Janissaries are all fired-up by these weekly flirtations with global catastrophe, but they also must be a little confused. Syria, Yemen, Somalia, North Korea, Mexico, Iran, Canadian dairy farmers? Which of these are the real foe? Where will the next war start? Will it be the big one they’ve been waiting for?

Is Trump bluffing overseas?

Perhaps he is.  The number of his veiled or unveiled threats against foreign actors seems to multiply every day.

1.  The president said at his presser with the Italian that Iran has not lived up to the "spirit" of JCPOA.  What does that mean?  As I recall the agreement's finalization was immediately followed by cries from Congress that the Iranians should expect no lessening in hostility from the US.  Was that in the "spirit" of JCPOA?  This is ridiculous.  The bi-partisan warhawk nationalists in Washington want Iran on its knees begging for forgiveness,  The question asked should be - Or what?  US air strikes designed to fight a war that Israel wants but cannot accomplish?  A naval war in the Gulf?  Or what?

2.  The president has said that North Korea "should behave."  Or what?  Some military gesture to demonstrate US disapproval of their nuclear weapons/ballistic missile programs?  Or a full blown war to the death on the peninsula?  Really?  Does Trump or the evidently mad duo of Mattis/McMaster fully grasp the scale of the destruction and people losses that would ensue?  Some of the people of SST have suggested that maybe NOKO could actually be bargained with if we adopted a different attitude toward the little bastards.  Really?  What a thought!

3.  Tillerson went to Moscow to bring the Russians to heel on various matters and left with nothing to show for his trouble   NATO keeps moving assets into Eastern Europe to confront the Russian menace.  The prevailing idea in the Borgist foreign policy establishment in Washington and London seems to be that the US (with UK advice) must guide human events and any thought of national independence anywhere in the world must be stamped out.  Really?  How is that to be enforced?  With war? With yet more economic sanctions that drive Russia toward China?

4.  Mattis (without producing evidence) insists that Syria has retained some indeterminate number of tons of chemical weapon materials.  This is a transparent effort to justify further aggressive action against Syria.  At the same time AQ connected guerrillas, heavily armed with US TOW are attacking to re-capture the southern Syrian border city of Deraa from government forces.  these forces are heavily supplied with US material support from sources in Jordan just to the south of the city.    Will Mattis/McMaster justify direct US intervention there to create a "safe zone" in preparation for partition of the country or as a base for a drive on Damascus to unseat the government and install the jihadis?

All of this raises the question of why the Trump Administration is placing itself in position in which if we are defied we will have to fight a number of bloody wars simultaneously  Why?  pl

http://turcopolier.typepad.com wrote:I do think it's posturing (AKA bluffing). We know this is a bad thing for the reasons you note. However, I think that they believe they can control the message so thoroughly that, behind the scenes, they can back down, make whatever deals they need to, etc. and then get the media to send out whatever propaganda they need to cause the American people to not understand whatever is really happening.

So the message we get today is Trump as President Thor, talking loud and carrying a big hammer, sometimes hurling mighty thunderbolts. America is no longer weak! This appeals to many; even many in government.

Should one of the various threatened countries call the bluff, well, the media can be caused to massage the message to make it appear that the US put them in their place. Or Americans may not even be allowed to know of the transgression. The only instance in which this little scheme won't work is if actual war breaks out, say on the Korean Peninsula. However, it's a reasonably safe bet, in Trump's mind, that war won't break out unless it was going to anyhow. Or, in other words, that his posturing would actually impact the other countries' calculation of whether or not to start shooting.

So, it's all up-side for Trump. The key is control of the media and fooling the audience. Not that I approve of any of this, just guessing that it is how Trump's thinking is operating.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com wrote:
I agree with your framing but would add context.

The last 40 years has reduced the functional United States to two industrialized and fairly modern corridors along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. With the exception of a shrinking constellation of aspiring city states in between, the remainder of the country has been hollowed out and more or less abandoned: that zone is functionally reduced to second or third world status and with regard to infrastructure that status extends right into the heart of the Borg in DC and the Blob in Boston, New York, Seattle and San Francisco.

That bi-coastal, mostly modern state now relies on manufacturing supply chains all over the "empire" outside it's protected borders for its munitions and provisioning and increasingly for properly educated "staff". The elite in this zone is oblivious to enormous and increasing fragility that has resulted in all of its economic and political infrastructure even to the extent of thinking fighting wars with mercenary forces is a good proposition.
I've been wondering the last few years if it's 1988 and we're the Soviet Union or if its 1913 and we're Great Britain. Since November 9th I've been thought maybe it is 1913 but we have our Kaiser Wilhelm.

But the global dynamics are even bigger than that, in the context of what I've just outlined I'm beginning to think Trump has more in common with Muhammad Shah who rode the Mughal Empire down to collapse and dismemberment in the 1750s. In 1988, the Soviets still had a well educated and healthy (minus the alcoholism) population; in 1913 the Kaiser had one of the healthiest and most modern industrial societies in the world behind him: Trump has inherited the desiccated rump of a hollow empire that has systematically monetized the health and education of its population now for two generations, reversing higher earlier levels of education and now actually increasing the mortality rate for its citizens. Ours has become a deeply corrupt and blindly self destructive empire like that of the late Mughals.

counterpunch.org wrote:
Is Mad Dog Planning to Invade East Syria?    
 
The US Special Operation Forces, the UK Special Operation Forces and units from some other countries (Canada?) -have been conducting operations across the Syrian-Jordanian border for a long time. They even had a secret military facility inside Syria where members the so-called New Syrian Army militant group were deployed. However, it was the first time when a notable number of US armoured vehicles was reported there. The US Ro-Ro ship Liberty Passion, loaded with vehicles, had arrived to the Jordanian port of Al-Aqapa few days ago. These moves followed a meeting between the Jordanian King and the US president.

counterpunch.org wrote:
So the President formerly known as Hitler has apparently pulled his head out of his ass and gotten with the global capitalist program. The ruling classes couldn’t be more relieved, as it was beginning to look like they were going to have to carry on with their totally ridiculous “Manchurian President” propaganda indefinitely, or deal with Trump in some harsher way, which, given the paranoid mood in the country and the heavily-armed nature of a lot of his supporters, was going to get a little tricky.

We’ll be able to get back to “normality,” finally. Yes, it will likely take a few weeks for liberals to fully recover from the shock of the cancellation of Holocaust Redux and the Imminent Invasion of the Putin-Nazis, but my prediction is, by sometime this Summer, we’ll have returned to more or less business as usual. That is, of course, unless Putin the Evil hacks the upcoming French elections …

Wolfowitz would be the last person they want Trump to listen to. Long a lightning rod because of the havoc unleashed by the Iraq invasion, Wolfowitz has never apologized for advocating the war, although he has said—and repeated in our conversation—that it was not carried out as he would have wanted it to be. In recent days he‘s jumped right back into the public debate, nudging President Trump from the pages of the Wall Street Journal to follow up his bombing strike in neighboring Syria with more aggressive action—and, he tells me, privately emailing with Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster, both longtime contacts since his Bush days, in hopes they will pursue a U.S. strategy of stepped-up engagement in the Middle East.

http://www.targetliberty.com/2017/04/this-is-it-trump-has-been-completely.html