CrossTalk: North Korea Saga

The Rise of the Generals

By Patrick Buchanan

April 28, 2017 
Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46955.htm

Has President Donald Trump outsourced foreign policy to the generals?

So it would seem. Candidate Trump held out his hand to Vladimir Putin. He rejected further U.S. intervention in Syria other than to smash ISIS.

He spoke of getting out and staying out of the misbegotten Middle East wars into which Presidents Bush II and Obama had plunged the country.

President Trump’s seeming renunciation of an anti-interventionist foreign policy is the great surprise of the first 100 days, and the most ominous. For any new war could vitiate the Trump mandate and consume his presidency.

SOUTH KOREA SHOULD GIVE U.S. TROOPS THE BOOT

Source: http://www.fff.org/2017/04/24/south-korea-give-u-s-troops-boot/

by Jacob G. HornbergerApril 24, 2017

The best thing that South Koreans could ever do, both for themselves and for the American people, as well as the Japanese citizenry, is boot all U.S. troops out of their country.

Isn’t the reason obvious?

If President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA succeed in instigating a war with North Korea, guess who is going to pay the biggest price for such a war.

No, not the United States. At the end of such a war, the continental United States will remain untouched, just like it was after World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all the other foreign wars in which the U.S. government has become embroiled.

The same cannot be said about South Korea and Japan. While North Korea would undoubtedly end up losing a war against the United States (assuming that China doesn’t enter the fray), South Korea will end up as a devastated wasteland. That’s because as it is going down to defeat, North Korea can be expected to cause as much death and destruction as it can.

Behind Trump’s Anti-Iran Tough Talk

Source: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/24/behind-trumps-anti-iran-tough-talk/

By Paul R. Pillar

April 24, 2017

The Trump administration is bending over backward to be, and to sound, hostile and confrontational toward Iran. This effort to flaunt a role for itself as a dedicated enemy of Iran has roots in the same factors that underlie the more widely established anti-Iranism in the United States, staying ahead of which is clearly an administration objective.

These factors include a troubled history highlighted for Americans by the hostage crisis of 1979-81. They include pressure from intra-regional rivals of Iran — especially the Israeli government but also the Gulf Arab regimes — that have an interest in depicting Iran as the source of all trouble in the Middle East and as a demon that distracts attention from problems that are more their own doing.

انشائ کلاس پنجم دبستان

“آنچه که در مورد انقلاب اسلامی و ناجی انقلاب امام خمینی (ره) میدانید بنویسید”

به نام خدا

البته این بر همگان واضح و مبرهن است که انقلاب اسلامی ایران به رهبری ناجی انقلاب امام خمینی (ره) برای نجات اسلام بود. اگر امام خمینی (ره) نبود که اسلام هنوز هم در خطر بود و انقلاب پر شکوه اسلامی موفق نمی‌شد و شاه هنوز هم بود و همه چیز مثل زمان سابق خوب بود. ولی‌ چون اسلام در خطر بود امام (ره) به مردم فرمودند که باید انقلاب کرد. مردم هم انقلاب کردند. آنهائی که می‌گویند نباید انقلاب میکردیم نمیدانند اسلام در چه خطری بود. خارجیها به کمک شاه اسلام را به خطر انداخته بودند و خداوند باریتعالی امام (ره) را فرستاد و موی او را لای قرآن برای نشانه گذاشت تا اسلام را از خطر خارجیان و مخصوصا آمریکا و اسرائیل در آورد. یکی‌ از جملات پر معنای ناجی انقلاب (ره) این بود که میفرمودند که آمریکا هیچ غلطی نمی‌تواند بکند. آمریکا هم همینکه عکس امام (ره) را در ماه دید هیچ غلطی نتوانست بکند. تازه اگر هم آمریکا غلطی میخواست بکند امام مثل آرنولد آمریکا را بلند میکرد و چند بار دور سرش میچرخاند و آمریکا را آخر تکزاس پرت میکرد.

What the US Aristocracy Are Demanding

Source: http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/04/14/what-us-aristocracy-demanding.html

By: Eric Zuesse

Originally Published on April 14, 2017

Donald Trump has reversed his national-security policies 180 degrees, and is now focusing it around conquering Russia, instead of around reducing the threat from jihadists. The reason for this drastic change is in order for him to be able to win the support of the U.S. aristocracy, who had overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton during the Presidential contest, and who (and whose ‘news’media) have been trying to portray Trump as «Putin’s fool» or even as «Putin’s Manchurian candidate» and thus as an illegitimate President or even traitor who is beholden to 'America’s enemy’ (which to them is Russia) for Trump’s having won the U.S. Presidency — which they had tried to block from happening.

US Aristocracy Panics that Maybe Trump Is Serious

Link to Source: http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/01/08/us-aristocracy-panics-that-maybe-trump-serious.html
By: Eric Zuesse
Published January 8, 2017

On January 2^nd, the U.S. Republican Party’s Wall Street Journal headlined «Tensions Within GOP Rise Over How to Handle Russia», and reported that the policy toward Russia by the incoming Republican President Donald Trump is being opposed not only by Democrats in the U.S. Congress, but also by some Republicans, and perhaps even by enough Republicans to jeopardize confirmation of his nominee for U.S. Secretary of State, as well as some nominees for other crucial diplomatic and military positions.

A key insightful passage in that news-report was: «‘What you are seeing on Russia within the Republican Party is in some ways more a symptom of realignment across the board within American political parties,’ said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Washington-based Kennan Institute. ‘This speaks to something very critical that’s going on in our political system right now.’»

زن ذلیل، یا زنِ ذلیل؟

زن ذلیل عبارتی است که در دهان مردان میگردد و همیشه با تمسخر بر لب آنها جاری است، که بطور استعاره مانند خود را ذلیلِ زن می‌نمایانند. آیا این استعاره بطور ضمنی در واقع ‌ مرد سالار بودنِ گوینده را تائید نمی‌کند؟ در جوامعی که مردان همیشه در بالای هرم سیاسی، اداری، فرهنگی‌، و بخصوص مذهبی‌ بوده‌اند، و سیستمی‌ به وجود آورده‌اند که برتری مردان بر زنان بطور مشخص تثبیت و قانونی‌ میشود، چگونه یک زن میتواند حقوق برابری را دریافت کند. صحبت صرفا بر سر جامعهٔ ایران نیست. این یک روش جهانی‌ است که از زمانی‌ که مردها به دلایلی که ذکر خواهد شد قدرت یافتند، در تحکیم و استوار نگاه داشتن قدرت خود کوشش کردند، تا جایی که زن به صورت یکی‌ از املاک خصوصیِ مرد در آمد.

Neocons Have Trump on His Knees

By Robert Parry

April 10, 2017

Source:  https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/10/neocons-have-trump-on-his-knees/

After slapping Donald Trump around for several months to make him surrender his hopes for a more cooperative relationship with Russia, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist allies are now telling the battered President what he must do next: escalate war in the Middle East and ratchet up tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.

Star neocon Robert Kagan spelled out Trump’s future assignments in a column on Sunday in The Washington Post, starting out by patting the chastened President on the head for his decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at an airstrip in Syria supposedly in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack blamed on the Syrian government (although no serious investigation was even conducted).

Trump Withholds Syria-Sarin Evidence

April 12, 2017

By Robert Parry

Source:  https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/12/trump-withholds-syria-sarin-evidence/

After making the provocative and dangerous charge that Russia is covering up Syria’s use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration withheld key evidence to support its core charge that a Syrian warplane dropped sarin on a northern Syrian town on April 4.

A four-page white paper, prepared by President Trump’s National Security Council staff and released by the White House on Tuesday, claimed that U.S. intelligence has proof that the plane carrying the sarin gas left from the Syrian military airfield that Trump ordered hit by Tomahawk missiles on April 6.

The Spoils of War

The Spoils of War: Trump Lavished With Media and Bipartisan Praise For Bombing Syria

Glenn Greenwald

April 7 2017, 7:43 a.m.

In every type of government, nothing unites people behind the leader more quickly, reflexively or reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how true that is, as the same establishment leaders in U.S. politics and media who have spent months denouncing him as a mentally unstable and inept authoritarian and unprecedented threat to democracy are standing and applauding him as he launches bombs at Syrian government targets.

Trump, on Thursday night, ordered an attack that the Pentagon said included the launching of 59 Tomahawk missiles which “targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars.” The governor of Homs, the Syrian province where the attack occurred, said early this morning that the bombs killed seven civilians and wounded nine.

The Pentagon’s statement said the attack was “in retaliation for the regime of Bashar Assad using nerve agents to attack his own people.” Both Syria and Russia vehemently deny that the Syrian military used chemical weapons.

ریاست جمهوریِ تکان دهندهٔ ترامپ!

در تصور چه کسی‌ میگنجید که دانالد ترامپ بیشترین آرا را بیاورد و در صدر بزرگترین دمکراسیِ دنیا قرار گیرد؟ با توجه به سخنان نژاد پرستانه، زور گو، مرد سالار، خودخواهانه، زن ستیز، و اسلام ستیز، او چنان تصویر تنفر برانگیزی از خود نشان داده بود که انسان در شگفت میماند که چگونه او توانست اکثریت آرا را سهم خود بکند؟ علاوه بر آن، چگونه دستگاههای امنیتی نتوانستند از نفوذ روسها در سیستم انتخاباتی جلوگیری کنند؟

Demobilizing America

Source: http://americanempireproject.com/blog/demobilizing-america/

A Nation Made by War and a Citizenry Unmade By It

by Tom Engelhardt

On successive days recently, I saw two museum shows that caught something of a lost American world and seemed eerily relevant in the Age of Trump.  The first, “Hippie Modernism,” an exploration of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s (heavy on psychedelic posters), was appropriately enough at the Berkeley Art Museum.  To my surprise, it also included a few artifacts from a movement crucial to my own not-especially-countercultural version of those years: the vast antiwar protests that took to the streets in the mid-1960s, shook the country, and never really went away until the last American combat troops were finally withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973.  Included was a poster of the American flag, upside down, its stripes redrawn as red rifles, its stars as blue fighter planes, and another showing an American soldier, a rifle casually slung over his shoulder.  Its caption still seems relevant as our never-ending wars continue to head for “the homeland.”

“Violence abroad,” it said, “breeds violence at home.” Amen, brother.

U.S. Weighs “Saturation Strike” Against Syrian Government in Response to Chemical Attack

Source: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/06/u-s-weighs-saturation-strike-on-syrian-government-in-response-to-chemical-attack/

April 6 2017, 2:05 p.m.

Matthew Cole

The Pentagon has developed plans for an airstrike against Syrian government targets in response to this week’s apparent chemical attack by Syrian government forces, according to two U.S. military officials.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis will present the proposals to Donald Trump later today at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

One of the proposals drawn up is a “saturation strike” using dozens of cruise missiles designed to hit Syrian military targets — including military air fields — in an effort to limit future Syrian Air Force attacks on rebel positions, according to the two U.S. military officials.

The officials asked for anonymity to discuss classified plans.

The proposed strike would involve launching Tomahawk cruise missiles to overwhelm Russian air defense systems used by the Syrian military. The Russian government currently helps maintain the air defense sites and advises the Syrian military.

According to both U.S. military officials, the current proposal would likely result in Russian military deaths and mark a drastic escalation of U.S. force in Syria.

One U.S. military official said the decision to allow the strikes, which would kill Russians, signals a significant change in policy by the Trump administration. A decision by Trump to go forward with the plan would be a reversal from the Obama administration, which denied multiple airstrike proposals that would likely cause Russian personnel casualties in Syria.

The Bashar al-Assad government placed many of its air defense systems in civilian areas, putting Syrian civilians at risk, according to the U.S. military and intelligence sources.

President Trump said yesterday that the Syrian government “crossed many, many lines” by conducting an apparent chemical weapons attack in Idlib on Tuesday. The attack has killed as many as 100 Syrians.

The proposed airstrike was prepared by U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in Syria, where a civil war has resulted in an estimated 500,000 Syrians killed, millions displaced, and an ongoing refugee crisis.

Neither the Pentagon nor CENTCOM responded to requests for comment.

Shocking Trump’s Presidency!

Who knew Donald Trump would become the president of the leading democracy in the world, achieving show of hands of majority of Americans? With his racist, bullying, male chauvinist, egotistical, misogynistic, anti-Moslem remarks, He had such a ghastly presentation of himself in his campaign leading to the election that makes one wonder how he could win majority of the votes. How anyone seeing through him could have voted for him? How could the secret service not protect our electoral system against Russian hacking?