Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED (4/5/018): THE GOOD NEWS: Islamic State Has Collapsed. Of Course, There’s Also Bad, But Predictable, News …

Ann Coulter, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, Terrorism, War

America’s Saudi bosom buddies are displeased, and are objecting loudly to President Trump’s promise to withdraw from Syria. This, against the spectacular news that “Islamic State has collapsed.”

The Economist explains:

FOR a moment it looked as though Syria’s seven-year war, which has killed more than 400,000 people and contributed to the largest refugee crisis in recent history, might be winding down. As 2017 drew to a close, the so-called caliphate of Islamic State (IS) had disintegrated. The forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the rebels fighting to dethrone him had largely stopped killing each other. Russia, which had intervened to save Mr Assad, said its mission was “basically accomplished” and had promised to bring its troops home.

The bad news is that with “the collapse of IS,” a “scramble for territory [has] ensued” between competing powers:

Turkey has sent troops over its border to battle Kurdish forces. Americans have killed Russians. And long-standing tensions between Iran and Israel have flared.

The collapse of IS has also widened fissures among the foreign powers jostling for a say in Syria’s future. In January America’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said American troops would remain in Kurdish-held parts of Syria until IS no longer posed a threat, and a political solution to the war had been found. This infuriated Turkey, a NATO ally, which considers some of America’s Kurdish partners, the YPG, to be terrorists. Days after Mr Tillerson’s announcement, the Turkish army assaulted Afrin, a YPG-controlled pocket of territory in north-western Syria. There are no American forces in Afrin, but Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened to march on Manbij, a town which does have them. This heightens the risk of direct clashes between two NATO powers and their proxies. America’s vow to stay in Syria has also angered Russia, which backed Turkey’s operation in Afrin. Seeking to test America’s commitment to its campaign, the Kremlin may have ordered Russian mercenaries to attack an American-supported base in the east—an attack that left scores of Russians dead.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave.”

MORE: “Why the war in Syria is hotting up.”

UPDATE (4/5/018):

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NEW: John Quincy Adams is Turning in His Grave

Ancient History, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, John McCain, Political Philosophy, War

THIS WEEK’S COLUMN IS “John Quincy Adams is Turning in His Grave.” Read it unabridged on WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, and the Mises Institute’s Power and Market Blog, where it’s titled “Trump’s Call to Putin.” This week’s column appears on Townhall.com, too, where it’s slightly abridged.

And excerpt:

“This is just a truly astonishing moment coming from the White House podium,” tweeted MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt. Like the rest of the media pack-animals she hunts with, Ms. Hunt had been fuming over President Trump’s telephone call to Vladimir Putin, congratulating him on winning another term as president.

Reliably opposed to a truce were party heavies on both sides. Sen. John McCain joined the chorus: “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” he intoned.

Another Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley, told a reporter testily that he “wouldn’t have a conversation with a criminal. I think Putin’s a criminal. What he did in” Iraq, what he did in Libya … Wait a sec? Remind me; was it Putin or our guys who wrecked those countries? So many evil-doers on the world-stage, it’s hard for me to keep track.

“When I look at a Russian election, what I see is a lack of credibility in tallying the results,” sermonized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I’m always reminded of the elections they have in almost every communist country.”

Actually, what the International Election Observation Mission found in Russia’s presidential election of March 18 was far more nuanced. Why, in some ways the Russian elections were very American: In the difficulty dissident candidates have in getting on the ballot, for example.

Ask Ron Paul or all those anonymous, aspiring, independent, third-party candidates about the US’s “restrictive ballot access laws and the other barriers erected” by the duopoly to protect their “de facto monopoly in America,” to paraphrase Forbes.com.

As for jailing journalists, frequently for life: Not Russia, but an American ally, Turkey, is the world’s biggest offender. But hold on. Isn’t Trump turning on the Kurds to pacify the Turks? Maybe it’s something the Saudi’s said. Go figure.

What doesn’t change is the interchangeability—with respect to any peaceful overtures made by President Trump toward Russia—of the Stupid Party (Republicans) and the Evil Party (Democrats). And yet, the same self-interested individuals protest, periodically, that Trump’s recklessness risks plunging the country into war.

The president wants to cooperate with the Russians. International confrontation being their stock-in-trade, the UniParty won’t countenance it. Politicians in both parties have not stopped egging Mr. Trump on, rejecting the détente he seeks with Russia, and urging American aggression against a potential partner. Yet, incongruously, in October of 2017, a Republican Senator, Bob Corker, saw fit to complain that the president was “reckless enough to stumble [sic] the country into a nuclear war.” …

… READ THE REST:  “John Quincy Adams is Turning in His Grave” (Townhall.com) is also on WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, and the Mises Institute’s Power and Market Blog, unabridged.

John Quincy Adams’ Memorable Speech on Independence Day

Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers

As mentioned in this week’s column, “John Quincy Adams Is Turning in his Grave,” the sixth president of the United States (1825-1829), son of John Adams, spoke truths eternal on July 4, 1821. Short excerpt:

… And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for the benefit of mankind? let our answer be this–America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the inde-pendence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. …

… THE REST.

Nikki Haley’s Dangerous, Mushroom-Cloud, Hearsay Hysteria

Britain, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Russia, UN, War, WMD

If the US didn’t go to war with Iraq, RIP, the smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud, warned the insane Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor. Now another blood-thirsty screech is inciting the same against another people. Airhead Nikki Haley is warning that “Russia could use chemical weapons in New York.”

Who told the harridan? The manta that “17 intelligence agencies say so” is not proof, it’s hearsay.

She and mad Rachel Maddow likely agree.

Washington Examiner:

“If we don’t take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used,” Haley told the United Nations Security Council. “They could be used here in New York, or in cities of any country that sits on this Council. This is a defining moment.”
Haley raised the specter of new attacks during an emergency council meeting, held at the request of British officials who have accused Russia of using “a military-grade nerve agent” to target a former military intelligence officer who committed treason. Russian diplomats have denied responsibility for the incident, but British investigators say they have identified the poison as a chemical weapon produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
“Time and time again, member-states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance,” Haley said. “Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable.”
“A hysterical atmosphere is being created by London,” Russian Ambassador Visaly Nebenzia told the Security Council. “We would like to warn that this will not remain without reaction on our part.”

Russia faulted the United Kingdom for taking action before submitting to a formal investigation brokered by Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. “Those experts will not be convinced by their argument,” he predicted.

Does this irresponsible idiot know what evidence means? Does anyone in the West care about evidence? Or is assertion all it take to take the Anglo-American Idiocoracy to war?

Those who object to launching wars for Israel, should abhor the idea of doing the same for the “Perfidious Albion,” aka Britain.