Month: May 2016

Sykes-Picot Turns 100

History is a cruel teacher……some even say she is a BITCH!

This month is the 100 years anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement……and some point to this document and the dividing up of the Middle East as the reason that the region is ion such turmoil for so many years…..

A century after the Sykes-Picot Agreement carved up the Ottoman Empire, it is still the root cause of much of the region’s strife.

Source: How the Curse of Sykes-Picot Still Haunts the Middle East – The New Yorker

As usual I feel compelled to offer up a little historical perspective in my small attempt to try and help people understand the turmoil in the Middle East…..

To mark the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, we’ve got a package with an explanatory article about the secret accord (below) . . .

The Sykes-Picot accord was conceived at a high point in Britain and France’s imperial power. Hammered out in the midst of the first world war in anticipation of an Entente victory (the Russian Empire, France and the United Kingdom) over the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria), it was concerned with distributing the territorial spoils of Ottoman defeat.

France and Britain, along with most other European powers, had been convinced of the inevitable demise of the Ottoman Empire for decades. The image of the Ottomans as the “sick man of Europe” was one of the defining images of 19th-century diplomacy.

Source: 100th Anniversary: What did the Sykes-Picot Agreement mean for the Middle East? | Informed Comment

At the end of WW1 the victors set about re-drawing the lines in the Middle East….they were dividing up the old Ottoman Empire for colonial aspirations…

When the map changed….so did the world……

Source: Sykes-Picot: The map that spawned a century of resentment – BBC News

The Arabs felt betrayed by the UK……their promises of an Arab kingdom free from foreign dominance was squished….and the hard feelings have been there for a century……but why the lingering hatred?

The borders of the Middle East were drawn during World War I by a Briton, Mark Sykes, and a Frenchman, Francois Picot.

The two diplomats’ pencils divided the map of one of the most volatile regions in the world into states that cut through ethnic and religious communities.

Later dubbed the Sykes-Picot treaty, the secret agreement was signed by Paris and London on May 16, 1916, to become the basis on which the Levant region was shaped for years to come.

A century on, the Middle East continues to bear the consequences of the treaty, and many Arabs across the region continue to blame the subsequent violence in the Middle East, from the occupation of Palestine to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), on the Sykes-Picot treaty.

In this piece, we revisit the circumstances that led to the signing of this critical agreement and the events that unfolded afterwards.

Source: A century on: Why Arabs resent Sykes-Picot

to this day, many blame the Sykes-Picot Agreement for all the problems in the Middle East….but there is one group that sees history a bit differently….Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)…….they have offered up an opposing look at Sykes-Picot…..I would expect them to do so….I mean they were part and parcel to the dividing and why would they admit they screwed up…..

Sometime in the 100 years since the Sykes-Picot agreement was signed, invoking its “end” became a thing among commentators, journalists, and analysts of the Middle East. Responsibility for the cliché might belong to the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn, who in June 2013 wrote an essay in the London Review of Books arguing that the agreement, which was one of the first attempts to reorder the Middle East after the Ottoman Empire’s demise, was itself in the process of dying. Since then, the meme has spread far and wide: A quick Google search reveals more than 8,600 mentions of the phrase “the end of Sykes-Picot” over the last three years.

The failure of the Sykes-Picot agreement is now part of the received wisdom about the contemporary Middle East. And it is not hard to understand why. Four states in the Middle East are failing — Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. If there is a historic shift in the region, the logic goes, then clearly the diplomatic settlements that produced the boundaries of the Levant must be crumbling. History seems to have taken its revenge on Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, who hammered out the agreement that bears their name.

View full text of article.

I apologize….for these tools want you to become a subscriber and may not allow you access to the piece…..but if you would like to try please feel free to do so….

But if that one did not work out….I found an article in the UK’s The Telgraph along those same lines…..

Exactly a century ago, an Englishman and a Frenchman unrolled a map of the Middle East and drew an improbably straight line across the desert. With one pen-stroke, Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot created the modern states of the region and carelessly lit the fuse of a thousand conflicts that blaze even today.

By drawing a line from contemporary Iraq to the Mediterranean, they ignored explosive ethnic and religious divides. In this way, Britain and France carved up the Middle East after the First World War, jointly committing the original sin that lurks behind today’s tragedies.

So runs the folklore version of the Sykes-Picot agreement, whose centenary falls on Monday. This critique has gained such power that it has entered popular culture, largely because of David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia.

Source: A century on, don’t blame Sykes-Picot for the Middle East’s troubles

And finally a good debate piece on the Agreement………

Source: A century on: What remains of Sykes-Picot – AJE News

I know it is a lot to take in and the Agreement has some many aspects that ity can be confusing….but maybe the fact that so many Americans are dying in the region would make it worth the read and a bit of understanding…..

Now you have both sides of the story……you may chose which ever of the fairy tales you care to believe……there are two sides to every situation…..I could not find a non-interested party to take the side of the US and the UK in this……

Class dismissed!

How the World Ends

For eons man has been predicting the end of the world…..and with the advent of social media now everyone that can type can have their say as to just when the fateful will arrive……in the last week I read at least three separate predictions…one was because of transgender stuff….the other was refugees and finally there is the one I like best…..Clinton will bring about the end of the world as we know it….

And then while surfing around news sites I found this one on Unz Review……the author is Philip Giraldi…who is a notorious skeptic of social media…..

Baiting Russia is not good policy

Last week I attended a foreign policy conference in Washington that featured a number of prominent academics and former government officials who have been highly critical of the way the Bush and Obama Administrations have interacted with the rest of the world. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago was on a panel and was asked what, in his opinion, has been the most notable foreign policy success and the most significant failure in the past twenty-five years. The success was hard to identify and there was some suggestion that it might be the balancing of relationships in strategically vital Northeast Asia, which “we have not yet screwed up.” If I had been on the panel I would have suggested the Iran nuclear agreement as a plus.

As for the leading foreign policy failure there was an easy answer, “Iraq” which was on everyone in the room’s lips, but Mearsheimer urged one not to be so hasty. In reality the Iraq disaster has killed hundreds of thousands, has cost trillions of dollars and has unleashed serious problems for the Mideast region in general while allowing the rise of ISIS, but in “realistic foreign policy terms” it has not been a catastrophic event for the United States, which had hardly been seriously injured by it apart from financially and in terms of reputation.

Source: How the World Ends – The Unz Review

I found it an interesting read…..but I would like to hear what my readers have to say about it…..

Speaking Of Libertarians

We all know of Ron Paul and his son Rand and their Libertarian leanings….even some within the GOP have these leanings….but that is all there is ….leanings.

As popular as people think Libertarianism …….they are probably mistaken….there some parts of the political philosophy that they will use to their advantage….but a total Libertarian is a thing from the past…..

I have tried to explain this belief to some of my friends and acquaintances….but have been fairly unsuccessful…..the truth is that I also find some of their policies acceptable….but only a few……mostly in the field of foreign policy.

But how do you explain Libertarians to others that are not so sure of what they are or what they believe?

Good question!  And I think I have an answer for them……

Libertarians have a problem. Their political philosophy all but died out in the mid- to late-20th century, but was revived by billionaires and corporations that found them politically useful. And yet libertarianism retains the qualities that led to its disappearance from the public stage, before its reanimation by people like the Koch brothers: It doesn’t make any sense.

They call themselves “realists” but rely on fanciful theories that have never predicted real-world behavior. They claim that selfishness makes things better for everybody, when history shows exactly the opposite is true. They claim that a mythical “free market” is better at everything than the government is, yet when they really need government protection, they’re the first to clamor for it.

Source: Here are 11 questions you can ask Libertarians to see if they’re hypocrites

These days a libertarian belief is one of convenience…anything to be elected and stay elected….whatever is useful to gain that end…..including Libertarianism.

Speaking of “getting elected” as a Libertarian…….

There’s a guy who’s “having a good day” and emerging with surprising poll numbers against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but he’s someone FiveThirtyEight says is easy to confuse with “that plumber who fixed your running toilet last month or your spouse’s weird friend from work who keeps calling the landline.” Who? It’s Gary Johnson, the probable Libertarian Party candidate for president, and based on recent numbers, FiveThirtyEight thinks he’s someone to keep an eye on. The ex-New Mexico governor went up against both Clinton and Trump in two May polls, and while Trump and Clinton hovered within 3 points of each other in both polls—Clinton got 38% to Trump’s 35% in a Morning Consult survey released Tuesday, while Trump came out with 42% to Clinton’s 39% in a Fox News poll conducted May 14-17—Johnson walked away with 10% in both matchups. And FiveThirtyEight doesn’t think these polls are necessarily May outliers, citing a Monmouth University poll from March that gave Clinton 42%, Trump 34%, and Johnson 11% in a three-way runoff.

Morning Consult notes that percentage is nearly twice as high as what Johnson got in most 2012 tracking polls when he ran against President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney. And Vox notes that if the experienced Johnson is picked as the Libertarian nominee at his party’s convention in Orlando, Fla., this weekend—along with William Weld, an ex-Massachusetts governor who could become Johnson’s running mate—the Libertarian ticket “could have a real opportunity this November to run a real race against two of the least-liked presidential candidates in recent history.” What FiveThirtyEight also says Johnson has in his favor: history, via other third-party candidates who did fairly well nationally (e.g., George Wallace and Ross Perot). And the Washington Post says the case for a third-party candidate is growing. But FiveThirtyEight also adds Johnson only won 1% of the national vote in 2012 and that he still needs to secure the nomination. (Don’t know Johnson well? USA Today takes you on a “speed date.”)

I am sure that there are some that are pleased with these numbers……but that will quickly disappear on election day.

Welcome To Fallujah (Again)

Fallujah…..a term that will strike many chords to many people….Fallujah has been the focal point of several major battles….especially in the 21st century…..

The first battle for Fallujah was in 2004 or Operation Vigilant Resolve…..was an operation to root out extremist elements of Fallujah and an act of retaliation to, as well as an attempt to apprehend the perpetrators of, the killing of four U.S. contractors in April 2004.

On 1 May 2004, the United States withdrew from Fallujah, as Lieutenant General James Conway announced that he had unilaterally decided to turn over any remaining operations to the newly formed Fallujah Brigade, which would be armed with U.S. weapons and equipment under the command of former Ba’athist Army General Jasim Mohammed Saleh. Several days later, when it became clear that Saleh had been involved in military actions against Shi’ites under Saddam Hussein, U.S. forces announced that Muhammed Latif would instead lead the brigade. Nevertheless, the group dissolved and had turned over all the U.S. weapons to the insurgency by September

The second battle for Fallujah……or shall we call it Operation Phantom Fury……it became one the bloodiest battles since Tet in Vietnam and the battle for Hue.

Nevertheless, the battle proved to be less than the decisive engagement that the U.S. military had hoped for. Some of the nonlocal insurgents, along with Zarqawi, were believed to have fled before the military assault, leaving mostly local militants behind. Subsequent U.S. military operations against insurgent positions were ineffective at drawing out insurgents into another open battle, and by September 2006, the situation had deteriorated to the point that the Al-Anbar province that contained Fallujah was reported to be in total insurgent control by the U.S. Marine Corps, with the exception of only pacified Fallujah, but now with an insurgent-plagued Ramadi.

After the U.S. military operation of November 2004, the number of insurgent attacks gradually increased in and around the city, and although news reports were often few and far between, several reports of IED attacks on Iraqi troops were reported in the press. Most notable of these attacks was a suicide car bomb attack on 23 June 2005 on a convoy that killed 6 Marines. Thirteen other Marines were injured in the attack. However, fourteen months later insurgents were again able to operate in large numbers.  (Thanx to Wikipedia)

Now the ISIS franchise has been in control of the city for a couple of years…..after many skirmishes the Iraqi Army is now attacking the city to re-gain control…

With the fall and virtual destruction of the Anbar Provincial capital city of Ramadi earlier this year, Fallujah is the major ISIS city that is closest to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, and is the target of a new offensive announced by Iraqi PM Hayder Abadi this weekend.

Fallujah is actually the longesst-held ISIS city in Iraq, falling in January of 2014, when public protests against the Maliki government provided an opening for the ISIS forces to take over parts of the city. Iraqi forces have been surrounding the city in recent months, pending this offensive.

Iraqi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul ordered all civilians to flee the city of some 200,000 people, adding that they are providing “corridors” to escape through. This call came in spite of weeks of Iraqi officials claiming ISIS wasn’t allowing anyone to flee.

The Army prediction is that it is only a matter of time before it falls to the Iraqi Army…..

ISIS is retaliating in the only way they know……

Isis execution squads have appeared in the streets of Fallujah, a city 40 miles west of Baghdad, with orders to kill anybody trying to flee or surrender as government forces advance towards this Isis stronghold. “Groups of Isis fighters are saying they will kill anybody in Fallujah who leaves their house or waves a white flag,” says Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a political activist who spoke by phone to relatives and friends in the city.

Iraqi army units started an offensive east of Fallujah on Monday morning after heavy shelling and airstrikes overnight. Mr Dulaimi said that Shia militias known as the Hashd al-Shaabi were joining in the bombardment with a home-made-rocket called “the Nimr”, named after the leader of the Saudi Shia minority, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed by the Saudi authorities in January this year.

Source: Isis unleashes death squads as Iraqi forces advance on Fallujah – The Unz Review

Now the tally is starting to filter out of the city from the news action to re-take it……Although the offensive was launched on Monday, Iraqi government forces have besieged the city and its suburbs for several months now, resulting in shortages of food and medicines.

At least 15 civilians have been killed so far during the offensive, sources told Al Jazeera.

At least 35 soldiers and allied militiamen have also been reported killed. More than a dozen Shia militias are taking part under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilisation Forces.

Source: Fallujah: Déjà vu all over again

The battle is under way….how will this end?  Will ISIS be removed from the city?  How many Americans are part of this operation?

 

We Have a Winner!

We Americans love some winners…..but not all winners are good news….

Recently the US used a drone (the weapon of choice for targeted assassination) to kill the leader of Afghanistan’s Taleban….and this time he is really dead…..not some press release that is retracted in a week or so….nope the dude is dead….confirmed by the Taleban themselves.  (I still would like to know how many civilians were at the location).

After the death announcement was released the Taleban stated that there would be a shura (supreme council) to pick the new leader for the Taleban….and the winner is…….

Senior Taliban members, after successfully evading American drone strikes for long enough to hold a leadership conference, have named a successor to the leader killed in a US airstrike last week. The Afghan Taliban, acknowledging Mullah Mansour’s death for the first time, announced Wednesday that he will be succeeded by one of his deputies, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada. The BBC reports that unlike Mansour, Akhundzada is an uncontroversial choice who has, until now, served more as a religious leader than a military commander and has issued most of the group’s fatwas.

Akhundzada is believed to be a member of the powerful Noorzai tribe from Kandahar, which analysts say will make it easier for him to unite the group. The BBC puts the new leader’s age at somewhere between 45 and 50, though Reuters reports that it’s closer to 60. He is a former aide to Mullah Omar, according to Taliban sources, and like that leader, he is notoriously camera-shy. On the same day Akhundzada was named as the group’s leader, the Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that hit a minibus carrying court employees in Kabul that killed at least 10 people, the AP reports.

Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada

He was said to have been chosen over two key rivals – Sirajuddin Haqqani and Maulvi Yakub – due to his religious background.

Now the question is will the two that were passed over take the loss well?

The next question…at least in my mind is……if the US knew the shura was going to happen why not try to take out the council in one fell swoop?

But I guess that is a post for another day…I would not want to confuse my readers unnecessarily.

Clinton and Trump: Nuclearized or Lobotomized?

There are many in the media that are trying to make sense of the 2016 election process…..it appears that the American people have decided that the two most unfavorable candidates are the best ones for the job….where is the logic there?

I admit that I am struggling to see the allure of either of these candidates….neither should be attractive to the voter….and yet this is where we are today…..

A Clinton/Trump election for the hearts and minds of the American people….and what we will get for the investment of our vote?

I so glad you asked!

Introduction Over half the US electorate views the two leading candidates for the 2016 Presidential elections with horror and disdain. In contrast, the entire corporate mass media, here and abroad, repeat outrageous virtuous claims on behalf of Hillary Clinton and visceral denunciations of Donald Trump. Media pundits, financial, academic and corporate elites describe the prospects […]

Source: Clinton and Trump: Nuclearized or Lobotomized? – The Unz Review

Some where there is some logic in these two choices for the voter….but as of yet it has alluded me.

If you see it then please share with me and my readers….

The myth of the ‘moderate Muslim’

If you arte expecting some long winded diatribe about the evils of Islam then you will be sadly disappointed and maybe should move on…..

There are some in the US that cannot get past the fact that someone is a Muslim…..to these short-sighted people there is only one Muslim and they are the people in ISIS and AQ…..none of the others matter…..that is to some.

Nothing is further from the truth….but of course I will be hard pressed to find many people on the street that has any idea what I am speaking about……When I see the lies spread I have tried to show that their belief is just wrong…..but as usual those posts degenerated into….warning about those darn “terrorists” coming down Main Street chopping off heads……I guess that is easier than admitting you are WRONG!

Deconstructing the mythic “good versus bad” Muslim paradigm.

After winning four pivotal presidential primaries on April 26, Hillary Clinton drew a line between “hard working, terror-hating Muslims” and (Muslim) terrorists.

In front of a raucous audience of supporters in Philadelphia, Clinton – the presumptive presidential candidate for the Democratic Party – only made mention of Muslims in relation to terrorism, and reaffirmed the mythic “good versus bad” Muslim paradigm.

Muslim Americans were either “terror-hating” or terrorists, slotted into one of these two caricatured categories with no space in between, or existential affiliation beyond.

Source: The myth of the ‘moderate Muslim’ – Al Jazeera English

I do not expect that Muslims will get much respect here….but at least there is someone trying to right the wrong thinking of the population.

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?