Day: May 25, 2016

If You First Don’t Succeed

The Pentagon has a new idea for fighting the “bad guys” in Syria…..not as moronic as the “moderate” rebels……nope it is far more idiotic than that…..

After their last attempt to recruit and train a whole new rebel faction for Syria ended in disaster, the Pentagon is angling to try again. US officials are bursting with confidence, saying they have more Arabs volunteering than they know what to do with.

Described as an “eclectic” group, the new recruits seem even less suited to the role than the last ones. One US military adviser described them as “raw, literally civilians coming off the streets,” which plays well to the US narrative of locals rising up to resist ISIS.

But the US training missions have struggled enough with training proper militaries and rebels with considerable existing experience. Carving a whole new fighting force out of untrained civilians is the very thing President Obama mocked as “fantasy.”

(antiwar.com)

They could hardly do worse than the last attempt, however, with the Pentagon’s previous training attempts not only ending with the “first class” of recruits wiped out in a matter of days, but with the second class defecting to al-Qaeda almost immediately with a large amount of US equipment.

The Pentagon is already trying to same scheme again so soon after such an embarrassment reflects the lack of realistic ideas among US officials on how to win the ongoing war, and continued pressure to “do something,” even if it clearly won’t work.

What was it that Einstein had to say about doing the same things over and over?

Trump’s Five Questions on US Foreign Policy

Are you sitting down?  This post could be a shock to your system…….

I have been a critic of Donald Trump as a candidate for the highest office in the land…..I also have defended him on some of his foreign policy statements much to the chagrin of some of my friends….

As a student of foreign policy and especially of conflict management Mr. Trump has made a few statements that need to be taken seriously…..his statements have made a lot of sense and need to be addressed by the other candidate….

Along with his self-congratulatory bombast, Donald Trump has offered a rare critique of Official Washington’s “group think” about foreign policy, including the wisdom of NATO expansion and the value of endless war, notes John V. Walsh.

“Only Donald Trump (among the Presidential candidates) has said anything meaningful and critical of U.S. foreign policy.” No, that is not Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, speaking up in favor of the presumptive Republican nominee. It is Stephen F. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, a contributing editor for The Nation, that most liberal of political journals.

Cohen tells us here that: “Trump’s questions are fundamental and urgent, but instead of engaging them, his opponents (including President Obama) and the media dismiss the issues he raises about foreign policy as ignorant and dangerous. Some even charge that his statements are like ‘Christmas in the Kremlin’ and that he is ‘the Kremlin’s Candidate’ — thereby, further shutting off the debate we so urgently need.” (Cohen’s comment about the lack of a meaningful critique of U.S. foreign policy also covers the statements of Sen. Bernie Sanders.)

Source: Trump’s Five Questions on US Foreign Policy – Consortiumnews

It is time for the “presumptive” candidate for the Left to start addressing the foreign policy of this country…..as it is she looks like a neocon in progressive clothing…..maybe now she will be forced to take a “real” stand.

Please this is NOT an endorsement of Donald Trump’s candidacy….it is just a statement of fact that he has said some things that make a lot of sense….they may not necessarily become policy if he is elected…..but it does give one something to think about….that is if anyone does that sort of thing anymore.

 Vietnam Offers a Roadmap for the Mideast

In my studies of conflicts (war if you will) I have always looked for alternate policies that would help remove the US from its massive troop build-ups and its interventions…..

We need a new plan for the Middle East……a re-think if you will….

The request by a U.S. Army captain to a federal court for a declaratory judgment about his constitutional duties regarding going to war is the latest reminder of the unsatisfactory situation in which the United States is engaged in military operations in multiple overseas locales without any authorization other than a couple of outdated and obsolete Congressional resolutions whose relevance is questionable at best.

Of the many ways in which the U.S. Congress has fallen down on the job, this is one of the more important ones. There are several reasons that Congress should take up without further delay the question of an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF). Getting out of the legal netherworld in which current U.S. military operations exist is one of those reasons.

Source: A Need to Rethink Mideast Wars – Consortiumnews

Is there a way of approaching the Middle East that does not involve intervention and war?  I found an op-ed that I rather like…..and I believe it could work….if only our leaders would try……

Just recently the US president has offered support to an old enemy….Vietnam….and that agreement could be a template to be used in the Middle East…..like it or not.

As President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam and the lifting of the arms embargo to that country represents his “pivot to Asia,” his simultaneous killing of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, and the U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s announcement of an assault to free Fallujah in Iraq illustrate why the […]

Source: Trajectory of US Policy in Vietnam Offers a Roadmap for the Mideast – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

There is no argument that we need to find people that can think outside the box that the M-IC has constructed…..armed conflict only makes their business more and more profitable……and afterall that is the American Way, right?

Our Military Needs to Defend the Country, Not Undermine American Security

I am one of those people that thinks starting wars around the globe is NOT defending the country…..as a matter of fact it is making things worse….at least to our security.

The last couple of presidents have spent a lot of resources and treasure attacking others in different parts of the world….and NO where has it made this country any safer from attack.

But it seems that the presidents cannot stop themselves….they feel the necessity to push those damn buttons to the point that everyone is either “for” us or “against” us……

And yet the American people are oddly silent on the use of military force…..as if they think it is a bloodless sport…..this election will be one where the world will come to the brink….yet again.

As President Obama visits still-communist Vietnam, a former American rival, in his “pivot to Asia” to recruit more countries to shelter against a rising China, the trip only serves to illustrate the global American Empire’s overextension. At the same time, he is opening missile defenses in Europe, quadrupling U.S. military spending there, and deploying more […]

Source: Our Military Needs to Defend the Country, Not Undermine American Security – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

Americans need to pull their heads from the sand…..they need to ask….what are American soldiers dying for?

Saudi Press Just Accused US Govt of Blowing Up World Trade Centers as Pretext to Perpetual War – The Free Thought Project

I recently wrote a couple of posts about those 28 pages of the 9/11 report that was somehow not part of the release to the public…..there is a move afoot now to have those pages “declassified” and released to the public….it seems that there is some evidence that the Saudis were somehow more involved than we were originally told…..

Let’s be honest….you thought you have heard just about everything that could be printed on the 9/11 incident that turn the world upside down, right? Maybe not so much?  There seems to b…

Source: Yet More 9/11 Stuff – In Saner Thought

And now there are Saudis that claim the 9/11 attacks were an American operation…….

I would like to thank my friend “Mr. Militant Negro” for bringing this article to my attention…..go to my blogroll and visit his site…you will not be disappointed…..

“9/11 was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S.” Because the “U.S. cannot exist without an enemy.”

In response to the U.S. Senate’s unanimous vote to allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia in federal court, a report published in the London-based Al-Hayat daily, by Saudi legal expert Katib al-Shammari, claims that the U.S. masterminded the terror attacks as a means of creating a nebulous “enemy” in order garner public support for a global war on terror.

The report by al-Shammari, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), claims that long-standing American policy is “built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities,” which the U.S. has now turned toward the Saudi regime after being successfully employed against first th
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/saudi-press-drop-truth-bomb-america-u-s-govt-911-terrorist-attacks/#i2aRIT9S0U8PQShi.99

Source: Saudi Press Just Accused US Govt of Blowing Up World Trade Centers as Pretext to Perpetual War – The Free Thought Project

Okay….who wants to believe this version of the attacks?