You have to trust someone’s judgement on issues one knows near nothing about, and David Archibald is one of my go-to people on foreign policy. He has now written this article, Mattis was no good, which begins like this.
American Thinker readers were warned about General Mattis over a year ago in this article. Briefly, Mattis was and remains a supporter of global warming.
The issue of global warming continues to be a reliable and simple litmus test. If someone believes in global warming, then you can be sure he is a globalist who loathes Western civilization.
Then there was his support for the Islamist Anne Patterson, loathed by the Egyptian people for her support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Then there was the matter of allowing one of his underlings to throw Fox Company, of Task Force Spartan in Afghanistan in 2007, under a bus so he could advance his own career.
And on it continues. He had me at global warming, the surest dye marker for incompetence and a sell-out for our Western way of life. The rest just adds more detail and substance. A great name “Mad Dog”, but past that happy to see him on his way.
With the Deep State found at every turn, it is hard to know where to look for sense on PDT’s pull-out of American forces from Syria. The one person whose views I therefore most wished to hear were those of Caroline Glick at The Jerusalem Post. She has now published this, which the headline writer described as: TRUMP’S DECISION TO PULL FORCES OUT OF SYRIA HAS UPSIDES. In the article itself, she is more positive, with this her conclusion which she links to Nikki Haley’s speech to the UN last week:
By abandoning the anti-Israel fake “peace process” and striking out on a new path based on reality, and by walking away from Obama’s pro-Iran policies in Syria and Lebanon and backing Israel in its efforts to defeat its enemies, the Trump administration is demonstrating what pro-Israel really means. So long as it is true to its word, Israel is safer and stronger for it.
OK. But there are two sides to this as she makes clear.
For the past two years, the Trump administration has continued implementing Obama’s pro-Iran policy in Syria. Efforts to change the US mission have failed, largely due to Pentagon opposition. During his visit to Israel in August, National Security Advisor John Bolton said that the mission of US forces had been expanded to block Iran from asserting control over Syria. But since the administration didn’t request a new mandate from Congress, the mission remained officially what it has been since 2014.
It is true that on the ground, the US forces in Syria do far more than fight ISIS. They block Iran from controlling the Syrian border with Iraq and so prevent Iran from controlling a land route from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea.
US forces also have blocked Turkey from taking over Syrian Kurdistan and have prevented Turkish President Recep Erdogan from carrying out his pledge to destroy the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces. If the US chooses not to arm and supply the SDF, once the Americans leave, Syria’s Kurds – America’s only loyal allies there – will either have to cut a deal with Russia and Iran or face Turkey alone.
US forces in Syria also block Russia from taking over Syria’s oil fields. On February 7, forty US Special Forces troops blocked hundreds of Russian mercenaries from seizing the Conoco oil field on the eastern side of the Euphrates.
Finally, US forces in Syria act as a deterrent against Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah aggression against Israel. With US forces on the ground, they fear that provoking a war with Israel will be tantamount to going to war against America. With US forces out of Syria, their fear of attacking Israel will diminish.
Nevertheless, she still sees the positives, and it is quite striking that the Israeli reaction generally has been so quiet. It is the same people who oppose a border wall in the US who are also the ones most critical of Trump’s decision. The one certainty is that there is no certainty, no matter what you do.
Almost a year ago, on Jan. 19, 2018, that same editorial board raked the president over the coals for even daring to continue America’s policy of military adventurism. The Times expressed concern that more American troops beyond the 2,000 initially deployed could soon be sent overseas in a mission without any clear goals. “Syria is a complex problem. But this plan seems poorly conceived, too dependent on military action and fueled by wishful thinking,” The Times said.
Who would depend on these people to protect our way of life?
Meanwhile, in The Oz, this is the headline story in the paper – allies warn as Trump pulls troops out of Syria – but it’s no news anywhere else, including at The Jerusalem Post, where the top story at the moment is “SODASTREAM TO OPEN FACTORY IN GAZA”. In fact, you can already barely find the story in the online edition of The Oz.
Then in the realm of manufactured news, we have this:
I am hardly the only one who wonders whether this is an anti-Trump fit of hysteria, in part through a Deep State effort in selling off shares, and in part through the Fed having raised rates for the seventh time since Trump was elected. They really are out to get him, and they are utterly indifferent who ends up paying the price.
The aim is to sabotage the American economy. No one in the deep state, whether they are in the “public service” or George Soros, will be affected. I think higher rates are a positive over the longer term, but everything is now aimed at the next election in 2020. Instability is the aim, so we shall see.
The Republicans in Congress could have built the wall and at more or less negligible cost. Will not do it. Border protection is the last thing on their minds.
And if you want more transformative news on the day, not even mentioned at Drudge. From The BBC.
Syria conflict: US officials withdraw troops after IS ‘defeat’
Image captionAround 2,000 US troops are believed to be stationed in Syria
The Trump administration says US troops are being withdrawn from Syria, after the president said the Islamic State (IS) group had been “defeated”.
I can only hope this is an accurate reflection of circumstances on the ground. The limited coverage in the American media might even mean this is a positive story that could even reflect well on the President.
That was the old soviet joke when the two major papers of record were Izvestia [The News] and Pravda [The Truth]. Nowadays our own equivalent is Fake News which is everywhere. We are living in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four which for most people seems quite a comfortable way to travel. We get our three-minute hate and we re-calibrate by the day who our enemies supposedly are and on we go. The Emmanuel Goldstein of our time is Donald Trump, and everywhere I go, these same three-minute hate sessions show up, with my main effort to try to contain them to three minutes. Truth, what truth? We live in a post-modern age where no such thing any longer exists. So why all this? Because this has just shown up today: ‘Junk News’: Russia Report Done By Anti-Conservative Academics:
A new study has claimed Russia’s online interference tried to aid the conservative movement and Donald Trump. There’s a big problem with that assessment. It comes from a left-wing operation that previously classified more than 11 different conservative outlets as “junk news.” And two of those authors were also involved in this report.
The study was released by the Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika. It argued that fake accounts, ads, and tweets “all clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump”
The Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project had attacked several conservative outlets as “junk news” in previous studies. Those targeted outlets include Drudge Report, NewsBusters, CNSNews, MRCTV, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Free Beacon, LifeNews, National Review, the Federalist, and the Red State. (Three of those are operated by the Media Research Center, which runs NewsBusters.)
Russia’s sweeping political disinformation campaign on U.S. social media was more far-reaching than originally thought, with troll farms working to discourage black voters and “blur the lines between reality and fiction” to help elect Donald Trump in 2016, according to reports released Monday by the Senate intelligence committee.
And the campaign didn’t end with Trump’s ascent to the White House. Troll farms are still working to stoke racial and political passions in America at a time of high political discord.
The two studies are the most comprehensive picture yet of the Russian interference campaigns on American social media. They add to the portrait investigators have been building since 2017 on Russia’s influence — though Trump has equivocated on whether the interference actually happened….
The reports were compiled by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge and by the Computational Propaganda Research Project, a study by researchers at the University of Oxford and Graphika, a social media analysis firm.
The media has been working, in fits and starts, to report the truth, and the lies. Their reward has been a constant stream of attacks from the President, attacks designed to destroy the media’s credibility and the very idea that truth is knowable, but they have kept at it. In part, the media has stayed on the case because the American people have kept at it. Rather than withdrawing, numb, they have stepped forward. An overwhelming majority support the work of a special prosecutor to find out what is true about the conduct of the President and his associates. More people voted in the 2018 midterm elections than in any similar election in memory. Those voters handed control of the House of Representatives to the opposition party. The design of the Founders — that crashing of interests to get at truth — will work to protect our democracy.
In 2018, we defended our values. And that’s the truth.
Not even Orwell could have imagined it, and that was just fiction. This is the real thing, and if you are not actually astonished by just how brazen and corrupt this is, perhaps you too are now part of the problem.
To have been born after WWII and in the West means I have lived my life in the best time and best place in World History. I doubt those who come next will be so fortunate. From Last Days of the European Christmas Markets.
The EU honchos knew — from experience — that periodic terror attacks would be part of their refugee mandate. I contend that this is a feature and not a bug in their plan. They don’t “lack the will” to do anything about it; what we are seeing is their will.
The Christmas Markets will disappear, as will all the other even nominal acknowledgments to the God of the Bible. For whatever reason, the EU wants to become an Islamic state.
The socialist mafia think they can improve on our Judeo-Christian ethic and civilisation. They cannot, and to adapt a phrase from the past, they shall inherit the whirlwind.
It appears that the two newly elected Muslim Congresswomen are already bringing anti-Christian hate into our federal government with a broadside directed against Vice President Mike Pence’s Christian religion.
The two Muslims ridiculed Pence with a Tweet containing a photo of the VP along with a snide caption reading, “Jesus take the wheel!”
Migration is not a solution to world poverty. Economic growth and development is the only solution. Make poor countries less poor, not make wealthy countries also poor. This is the final para in a post by Judy in The Weekend Oz: World in no hurry to board the Marrakesh Express on migration.
The principal roles of a sovereign government are to protect the nation’s borders and to act in the best interests of its own citizens. To do otherwise is to invite internal dissent, something Macron is beginning to learn. There are lessons for other world leaders.
Such as our own! A few more quotes for those who are paywalled out.
Individual countries are more than capable of sorting out the size and type of immigrants they require….
The final version was belted out across 18 months of expensive consultations. But note that many parties who made suggestions to rework the document — to emphasise the importance of countries’ sovereignty, for example — essentially were ignored.
Last week, a spokesman for the US government summed up that country’s refusal to sign the compact by labelling it “an effort by the United Nations to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of states”….
The central aim of the compact is to convert illegal migration into regular migration, with all the associated privileges accorded to legal migrants…. Economic migration is seen as an inalienable human right….
The compact then dives into equally dangerous water by stating that one objective is to “eliminate all forms of discrimination and promote evidence-based public discourse to shape perceptions of migration”. In other words, descriptions of migration that are not positive and fulsome should not be permitted….
If we look at the attitudes of ordinary citizens to migration around the world, it is clear that a rising proportion is opposed to high migrant intakes. Indeed, in many countries, the largest proportion of citizens would prefer reduced or zero migration.”
One is too young to think of herself as president. But she does. The other is too old to take on the job but wants it anyway.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez has not spent so much as a second in a legislative role anywhere, and will only enter the House as a junior Democrat in January, the youngest female ever elected. Do you therefore think she is out of the running come 2024? Ha!
As he considers running for president, Joe Biden is talking with friends and longtime supporters about whether, at 76, he’s too old to seek the White House, according to several sources who have spoken with the former Democratic vice president.
Of course, Ocasio-Cortez blabs about “socialism,” but her rantings are straight out of Marxism for Dummies. Nothing she says threatens the rice bowl of the zillionaire donor base Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have cultivated. Free college, free medicine, free this, free that – it’s all just more graft for the Democrats to distribute, and it will all come from the pockets of people like you. Do you think the people who write the checks to the DNC are going to end up paying the bill for this nonsense? Really?
I wish it were only money at stake. I’m afraid the future will just have to take care of itself, since you may be sure that these are the sorts of people who will continue to rise to the top on the left. If there is going to be an actual resistance, preventing such people from rising to the top is where it will have to be found.
• The French state has been bankrupt since 2004. A minister finally admitted it in 2013.
• French GDP hasn’t risen above 2% in 50 years. Yes – FIFTY. The average annual GDP growth rate between 1949-2018? 0.78%.
• In 2018, 14% of the population in France live below the poverty line (they earn less than 60% of the median income).
• Worse, more than 50% of French people have an annual income of less than €20,150 a year (about $1,900 US per month).
• The ‘official’ unemployment rate is 10% – about 3.5 million citizens (in reality, it’s much higher).
• The youth unemployment rate is 22%. Yes, you did read that right.
• Astonishing but true: the French government employs 25% of the entire French workforce…and it’s impossible to fire them.
• Because the citizens make such little money, they pay no tax. Less than 50% of French pay any income tax at all; only around 14% pay at the rate of 30%, and less than 1% pay at the rate of 45%.
• The government can’t deliver services without taxes, so it borrows money. France’s debt-GDP is now 100%.
The world of my youth is virtually gone. It’s a fantastic loss. What will replace it? What could replace it?
Law of Markets 