Category Archives: War

Nattering Nabobs of NATO

America, Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, Military, Russia, Uncategorized, War

NATO concluded a two-day summit in Chicago on May 21. Srdja Trifkovic, at Chronicles Magazine, distills the “impressively vacuous waffle” issuing from these publicly financed officials. This particular self-important convention, concludes Srdja, could have been avoided. A “day-long teleconference—preceded by a few thousand e-mails among a few dozen civil servants—at zero cost to U.S. taxpayers and zero inconvenience to the citizens of Chicago” would have done the job.

I’d go one better: There is no need for NATO. The sooner the US disinvests from NATO, the better off will “The American Interest” be served.

Alas, there is more at stake than the good of the people allegedly represented by NATO “leaders.” Thus, as Srdja points out, “The alliance will continue to expand its capabilities in spite of economic austerity.”

All of the key decisions on Afghanistan are made by the Obama administration.
It cannot be otherwise. That war has always been an American operation, with some peripheral support from a number of NATO countries. …
…the future of Afghanistan belongs to the Taliban. For 11 years, survival was all the Taliban needed to accomplish in order to win. Once the American and other NATO troops leave, the ANSF will collapse, President Karzai will seek refuge in the Emirates, and Afghanistan will revert to her premodern ways. It does not matter: The country is irrelevant to the security of NATO members, and it should never have become a theater of NATO operations.

On the American cold-war hangover of kicking Russia despite its co-operation, Srdja observes the following:

When Obama addressed the summit on May 21, he publicly thanked Russia and her Central Asian neighbors “that continue to provide critical transit” into Afghanistan. Therefore, it is remarkable that a major irritant in U.S.-Russian relations—the prospect of NATO membership for Georgia—was revived at the summit: “we have agreed to enhance Georgia’s connectivity with the Alliance, including by further strengthening our political dialogue, practical cooperation, and interoperability,” the declaration says, and “we appreciate Georgia’s substantial contribution . . . to Euro-Atlantic security.”
This is nonsense. Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia in August 2008 was one of
the most destabilizing events of the last decade in the Euro-Atlantic region. Imagine the reaction in Washington if Russia were to offer a military alliance to Mexico, equipped and trained the Mexican army, and guaranteed the inviolability of the Rio Grande frontier. Any further expansion of NATO along Russia’s flanks would confirm Moscow’s suspicion that, after the end of the Cold War, the underlying raison d’être of the alliance remains enmity with Russia. …
…Russia’s security interests demand a friendly “near-abroad” along her extended frontiers. Having a hostile Georgia on her southern flank—ran by an arguably unstable Mikhael Saakashvili—is a problem. Accepting Georgia into NATO would be seen in Russia as a security challenge of the highest order. Moreover, it would be detrimental to U.S. interests because of the security guarantee contained in Article V of the NATO Charter—the cornerstone of the alliance—which theoretically obliges the United States to risk an all-out war in defense of Georgia’s sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Srdja’s analysis in Chronicles is always highly recommended. Subscribe to the magazine once the editors complete their lineup with The Paleolibertarian Column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive (rightist) libertarian column, also on RT.

Rebel Atrocities Repackaged

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Propaganda, UN, War

Via Daniel McAdams, at LRC.COM,:

A respected mainstream publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung(FAZ), has reported that the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces.

Highlighted in the National Review, of all places, the FAZ investigation was exhaustive and convincing.

NRO reports on the original FAZ story:

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

“the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

For weeks, alternative media analysts and even eyewitnesses had been poking enormous holes in the suspiciously convenient Western narrative that Assad’s forces slaughtered the villagers, cutting and killing at close range. No one paid attention, as usual.

The NRO piece continues with a fascinating story from a Christian monastery in the vicinity:

“Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. ‘Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,’ Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.”

Either Mother Agnès-Mariam is a liar or Hillary Clinton is a liar. You decide.

Follow the article links. This is a must read.

Slaughter in Syria

Crime, Islam, Middle East, Military, Morality, War

To evoke W. H. Auden’s reflections in Letters from Iceland, what “… an extraordinary vision of the cold controlled ferocity of the human species.”

“BBC News: “The village of Taldou, near the town of Houla in Syria’s Homs province was the scene of one of the worst massacres in the country’s 14-month-long uprising on Friday. United Nations observers on the ground have confirmed that at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women. Some were killed by shell fire, others appear to have been shot or stabbed at close range.But at whose hands they died remains a matter of contention. …”

Keep It Regional

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Islam, Middle East, Neoconservatism, UN, War

Al Jazeera, “headquartered in Doha,” “is the “broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation.” Toward Syria, the Gulf state of Qatar has adopted the regime-change policy of Saudi Arabia (in particular), the Arab League (in general), John McCain’s, Sean Hannity’s, and as many liberals. While Qatar intensifies its efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar, it is, simultaneously, supporting Bahrain’s crackdown on dissent. (An Al Jazeera correspondent out of Beirut was so enraged by the network’s bias that he resigned.)

In the Middle East it all boils down to faction and tribe.

Not so long ago, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, ruler of Qatar, asserted that “Arab countries should send troops into Syria.”

We can agree with the Sheikh that the US has no business in Syria. But good luck to him in handling Arab civil wars regionally. South African President Jacob Zuma’s attempted to deal with Libya locally (in the Continent), but the “gorgon who heads Caesar’s state department” (Hillary) would have none of it.

Not even the African Union, which has a good working relationship with warlords, could keep the Über dogs of war of (America masquerading as “NATO”) from leveling Libya. The rest is history.