The most crazed and unhinged anti-Trump ad I have ever seen in this unusually unhinged campaign, run some months ago by the Citizen Super PAC, which is connected to the Republican party:
If there was a recent Republican administration whose international violence and war crimes evoked memories of Nazi Germany, then it was most certainly the administration of George W. Bush, whose Neoconservative warmongers were responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, torture, kidnapping, black prisons, assassinations, and the mass slaughter and civil war in Iraq caused by their invasion and occupation.
By contrast, Trump has repudiated the mad Neoconservatives (who, incidentally, reacted to Trump with vicious hysteria). He has repudiated nation building. He has said again and again he is for a less interventionist and “America First” foreign policy, which, if anything, is a retreat to a more isolationist American tradition.
Now it is true that he has been hawkish on Iran, which is unfortunate, but his call for cooperation with Russia over Syria may well be the most important of all his foreign policy positions, given the insane drive for conflict with Russia by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton.
The US is heading for a Cuban-Missile-Crisis-style confrontation with Russia, which in extreme circumstances could accidentally escalate into a nuclear war:
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Hitchens was hilarious this weekend...
ReplyDeletehttp://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/10/peter-hitchens-the-falling-pound-is-nothing-to-do-with-your-freedom.html
"Advertising is such a slave of trends. Someone called Helen Warren-Piper, a marketing director for Oxo’s parent company, has actually said: ‘Those advertising scripts where the mum is literally tied to an oven just don’t work any more. It’s clear advertisers need to think beyond mum and do a better job at representing the whole of the modern family or consumers will reject them.’
Ah, yes, you’ll remember those days when mothers were literally tied to the oven, then briefly released to gulp down some gravy before being chained to the kitchen sink. It happened to Lynda Bellingham all the time. No it didn’t. What is she talking about?
And yet this rubbish dominates the world of business and commerce, which now peddle ideas once found only in seething, enraged ultra-feminist magazines."
Hitchens is regularly given over to his budget deficit and government debt hysteria. It is evident in that post.
Delete"The US is heading for a Cuban-Missile-Crisis-style confrontation with Russia, which in extreme circumstances could accidentally escalate into a nuclear war:"
ReplyDeleteMaybe not?
‘ Friday, October 7, 2016
Alexander Mercouris — CONFIRMED: U.S. backs down over Syria after Russian threat to shoot down American aircraft
Obama scotches the bellicose talk coming out of the deep state.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed this speaking to reporters on Thursday 6th October 2016.
“The president has discussed in some details why military action against the Assad regime to try to address the situation in Aleppo is unlikely to accomplish the goals that many envisioned now in terms of reducing the violence there. It is much more likely to lead to a bunch of unintended consequences that are clearly not in our national interest.”…’
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/alexander-mercouris-confirmed-us-backs.html
Critical as many of us on here are of President Obama, his hesitation on getting deeply involved in Syria and directly toppling Assad has been one of his wiser moves. While the state department (especially Hillary's) has been pushing for the US to intervene directly to topple Assad, the military has had much deeper reservations about the wisdom of such a move. The president is listening to the military, and as the clip LK posted demonstrates quite clearly, the military is the voice of reason on Syria. Given President Obama admitted that toppling Qaddafi was a terrible mistake, it's also possible that he learned from that mistake and doesn't wish to repeat it in Syria-which would be the most shocking news of all when it comes to US intervention in the middle east, and certainly isn't true for Hillary Clinton.
DeleteAgreed. Obama really must get a lot more credit for stabilising the present situation than he currently is. There are a lot of hotheads pushing for greater action and he is the one that is preventing much of it. That worries me even more should we end up with Clinton.
DeleteAnd yet in August 2013 Barack Obama was on the point of launching a massive bloodbath in Syria, as Seymour M. Hersh has reported:
Delete“In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.”
Seymour M. Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books 36.8 (17 April 2014): 21–24.
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Obama the peacemaker!?
Obama has (as yet) avoided *direct* military attempts to overthrow Assad.
DeleteHis State Department has nevertheless pursued a vicious policy of supporting Islamist rebels to indirectly overthrow Assad. This was clearly under the influence of Hillary:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-09/hillary%E2%80%99s-wars-pt-2-wikileaks-proves-syria-about-iran-israel
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Obama has clearly supported this.
LK, care to point out in my comment where I suggested Obama was a peacemaker, when I suggested that he did not intervene in Syria at all, or when I suggested that the state department under Hillary wasn’t pushing for us to directly topple Assad? I know I’m not the most articulate person, but I really have no idea how you can interpret my comment as suggesting any of those three positions you appear to be attributing to it. In fact:
Delete“While the state department (especially Hillary's) has been pushing for the US to intervene directly to topple Assad, the military has had much deeper reservations about the wisdom of such a move.”
Indicates I’m well aware that, as the Hersh article points out, the state department has pushed for toppling Assad (especially when Hillary was in charge) while the military has reservations about the wisdom of toppling Assad.
“...his hesitation on getting deeply involved in Syria and directly toppling Assad has been one of his wiser moves.”
Indicates that I’m giving Obama credit for not getting so deeply involved that we’re attempting to directly topple Assad, not giving Obama credit for being a peacemaker, or suggesting that he’s doing nothing. We’ve been in agreement on the absence of Syrian moderates and the stupidity of arming the Jihadists, so why you would imply that I think Obama has done nothing in Syria against Assad is beyond me.
A lot can, and has, changed since 2013, especially in Syria. I have no reason to doubt that Obama was pushing to topple Assad at one point. What I doubt is that he’s still listening to the state department and the other hawks, as opposed to the military, in 2016.
Clinton will be far worse. That's all I'm saying.
Delete...I really need to take more time to proofread what I'm saying before I post comments. Hopefully you fellas find that blather more humorous than you do annoying.
DeleteClinton will certainly be far, far worse, on that I suspect all of us will agree.
People are going off the rails everywhere:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/news/north-carolina-police-gop-office-damaged-fire-graffiti-202714519.html
Hillary's hawkish on Iran, too, so she certainly doesn't gain on Trump in that respect. It's also worth considering whether Trump is completely serious with his anti-Iran talk, or if he's just playing to the base. While I'm tempted to think he's serious, the fact that Trump was calling them the #1 state sponsor of terrorism at the beginning of the debate, but then was referring to them alongside Syria and Russia as countries combatting Daesh at the end of the debate, may indicate that Trump is aware that Iran will play a key role in any cooperation with the Russians and Syrians against Daesh and the other Salafi rebels. Given his priority is toppling Daesh and the terrorists, and his rejection of the neocon legacy, perhaps a President Trump would recognize what Iran has to offer in our mutual war against Jihadists.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty certain that barring an HRC presidency, Iran's alliance with Russia & China will keep us out of war. If she wins, another matter.
DeleteThis is
ReplyDelete1) deranged
2) too damn much like lots of other crap I hear hinting at the same thing
What do you think of Sargon's comparison between the US and the late Roman republic?
ReplyDeleteI'd be really interested to see any reputable scholar of the late Roman Republic who would agree with Sargon's comparison of welfare in Rome to welfare in the US. I seem to recall Sargon also put forward a rather...unique...interpretation of the Kennedy assassination in said video.
Delete