Media coverage of Syria, apart from Carlson, scrupulously avoids the issue that the United States is in Syria completely illegally and has been cynically supporting terrorist groups in spite of its pledge that it is in the country to get rid of such vermin. It is a measure of how divorced from actual U.S. security America’s Syria policy has become that the White House has not hesitated to launch a second illegal cruise missile barrage against a government that hasn’t attacked the U.S. and doesn’t threaten Americans. Bombing the Syrian government hasn’t made the U.S. or any other country more secure, and it will likely weaken President Bashar al-Assad just enough to prolong Syria’s civil war and add to the suffering of the civilian population. It is a perfect example of a military intervention that is being done for political reasons with no connection to any discernible interests or overall strategy.[1]I like the “scrupulously avoids the issue” of illegal war part. It’s typical of American political “debate” now. For example, what is endlessly repeated on the issue of immigration is that we need “comprehensive immigration reform.” What is rarely if ever stated stated is that (1) we don’t need reform of our immigration laws, we need enforcement of them and (2) we don’t need immigration at all. It’s never stated in the MSM because anyone who does state either proposition soon assumes the status of Sunday school picnic whore.
But back to the legality of our war on Syria, it’s amazing that our Constitution and the U.N. Charter are just air brushed out of the picture. Hillary Clinton’s take on the awkwardness of an uncooperative[2] U.N. Security Council suggests the official position on international law:
Russia will never support such a mission [intervention in Syria], so there is no point operating through the UN Security Council.[3]Right. Just operate as though it doesn’t exist, treaty obligations be damned. Fortunately, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, has the opposite view, stating at her confirmation hearing, “I will show [Donald Trump] that the UN matters.”[4] Oh, wait. It doesn’t all that much.
She [Haley] frequently tells Security Council members that if they fail to meet American expectations on UN resolutions, the United States will “go it alone.”[5]Keep this in mind for the next time some cretinous U.S. official or TV personality says something about “the rule of law.”
Notes
[1] "Israel Continues to Wag the Dog for Middle East Wars.." By Phil Giraldi, Russia Insider, 4/18/18.
[2] I.e., insufficiently appreciative of how wonderful the United States are.
[3] Quoted in "Hillary's Sociopathic Wikileaks Emails: Kill Assad, Destroy Syria - Deep State Goal for 10 Years." By Patrick Fleming, Russia Insider, 4/19/18.
[4] "Nikki Haley at the UN: Agree With Us or We Go It Alone." By Barbara Crossette, The Nation, 9/14/17.
[5] Id.
Colonel -
ReplyDeleteI am convinced beyond doubt that (most likely) unknown to the skirt at the UN, Donald uses her as a ruse. She's loud, brash and quick to speak - which keeps the other idiot delegates at bay, all the while giving him mopre than a hint of what her Never Trump Deep State handlers are telling her.
Donald wants OUT of Syria. As I wrote at my joint, how he handled the festivities and fireworks show last Friday evening was clear indication that he was sending a specific message, not to either Assad or Putin, but the deep state. He'll have the troops loaded out of Syria and sitting in the Persian Gulf before our idiotic media comes to some sort of a conclusion about last Friday night.
Just keeping my popcorn hot and my beer cold. The show is getting better by the day!
Well, Haley is sort of a weather vane indicating the direction of DS thinking. The only problem with you idea, I think, is that the vane is stuck and points in only one direction -- endless U.S. intervention and circumvention of the U.N. How many times does Trump have to listen to La Nikki before he gets that?
ReplyDeleteAlso, if Trump wants out of Syria, which I think he clearly indicated in the campaign, he's got a strange way of showing it by attacking Syria. If the attack was some kind of Obfuscatory Ploy(TM), I'm thinking Trump better get on with the loading out part of his plan . . . . :-)
The show is a confusing one and I just wish I had a program. Trump has his moments but more often than not has a deer-in-the-headlights look. Like Sessions (maybe), he's playing a devious long game and every criminal and political opponent will get theirs but even a long game has to have some kind of denoument, some coup de grace.
I think Haley was forced on Trump by whoever has influence over him. They want war in Syria and that's it. What I hope for is that Trump will finally wake up to the fact that his enemies want to neuter him and then destroy him. Playing nice has been a losing strategy and sooner rather than later he's going to find himself a Mark Levin or other war-time consigliere who will devise a scorched earth campaign.
Radical change in the reigning paradigms is rare but one change that is taking place or has taken place is indicated in my post today "Pearls of Expression." The other two changes occurring are the crumbling of (1) the post-WWII vision of America as a blessing to the world in helping to fight red and black leftism and enemy of political excess and (2) the belief that America is possessed of huge amount of economic wisdom that will forever insulate it from the moronic socialist and communist schemes around the world.
These are portentous changes.
By the way, the Old Right, Joe McCarthy, and Diana West have shown that the fight against the dreadful leftism that was born in the 19th century and and nurtured by our own moronic progressives, feminists, and communists was neither begun nor successfully concluded. That is the tragedy of this great experiment in self government and I am very sad indeed that I think Trump has precisely zero understanding of this. He shoots the occasional enemy sentry and blows up the occasional battle tank but he doesn't know where the castle keep of his enemies is.