The Road From Damascus

The Syrian Civil War had been going on so long since it started in 2011 that no one outside Syria noticed it was still going on . . . except for those who noticed it and saw that it was a stalemate at best with President Bashar al-Assad having the upper hand.  

Then suddenly it flared up and the so-called experts said that it wouldn't affect Damascus.  Until the rebels entered Damascus and forced Assad to flee to Moscow.

And Tulsi Gabbard suddenly has a lot less currency. 😃

The Syrian people now have a chance to build the democratic republic that Iraq is still trying to be after twenty years.  The Iranians have lost their base of influence on the Mediterranean Sea.  And Vladimir Putin's sphere of influence, as of now, no longer includes countries that were not Soviet republics.  Putin now needs Donald Trump more than Trump needs Putin.

Then again, Trump might need Putin in the near future - when he's driven out of office by his own people.  I hope Vlad's dacha is big enough for two world ex-leaders!

The Week That Is (So Far)

Too much to keep up with, so I'll be brief . . .

The Democratic presidential debate two days ago (October 15) showed that, even if she's not really the front runner for the party's presidential nomination, Elizabeth Warren has surged to the point where she's being taken seriously.  All of the candidates - even Joe Biden - grilled her on her policies, specifically on how she'd pay for Medicare health coverage for anyone, and she ducked and weaved without ever answering the question.  Bernie Sanders - refreshed and ready to move on after his heart attack - as honest about it, saying that taxes would have to go up.  The fact that few if any candidates went after Biden suggests that he's through.  Not so.  Biden is still leading in a few polls and he's well ahead in South Carolina, and he projected strength and resolve in light of Donald Trump's attack on him and his son Hunter in a press conference the day after the debate in Ohio.  Hunter Biden himself was impressive in his interview with ABC's Amy Robach.  Both Bidens have gone a long way toward addressing the involvement or lack thereof in Ukrainian business dealings, but of course there are too many second-guessing skeptics who will say that they're not satisfied.

Even as impeachment is gaining support in light of Trump's mismanagement of a misguided effort to knock Biden out of the 2020 presidential campaign to make Warren the Democratic presidential nominee and give her the full McGovern next November, Trump  has mangled the carefully crafted U.S. Middle East policy to the point where the Turks have turned the Kurdish enclave in Syria into the greatest pocket of misery west of Bangladesh, and the Islamic State terrorist prisoners held there are escaping.  It took House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during a White House meeting on Syria, to stand up - literally! -  to Trump over the matter in full fury while her male counterparts in the room bowed their heads for the shame if being there (stop pussy-whipping yourselves, guys), after which Pelosi - whom Trump called a third-rate politician - and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer stormed out.  And yet Trump may survive all this despite bipartisan fury over his Syria policy simply because he supporters think a Kurd is something that cows chew.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings just died.  RIP. :-(  This could be a blow for House Democrats trying to make a case against impeachment that can persuade at least a few Senate Republicans to vote for conviction in a Senate trial.  Yes, yes, the House Oversight Committee will have a new chairman - I don't know who that would be - but, at this juncture, saying that the House Oversight Committee could get another chairman seems like saying that Led Zeppelin could get another drummer after John Bonham died. :-( 

War in Syria

Now that Turkish forces are going into Syria to fight the Kurds whom they consider to be terrorists - i.e., all of them - the Kurds are now aligning themselves with their old enemy Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which will give Iran and Russia even more influence in the Middle East.

But that's all right, because Trump is going to approve of sanctions against Turkey for invading Syria despite having given Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a green light to go ahead with the invasion, even as Islamic State fighters are now being released in the fog of war. Besides, if Biden were President, his son would be making money off his name somewhere and foster more international corruption!  (Sarcasm.)

Islamic State fighters are probably going to work their way to Europe.  Europeans don't trust us.  (I'd better forget about traveling abroad any time soon or any time later.)  The Kurds don't trust us either.  Even Israel's Netanyahu doesn't like what's happening   Both parties in Congress are angry at Trump and want to undo the chaos he's caused.

Too late.

Turkey Sandwich

Trump may have finally done it.  Even as he is stonewalling the House impeachment inquiry with full Republican support, he somehow managed to come up with a policy that even Republicans can't stomach.

In an effort to get along with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, above (his last name is pronounced "er-du-won") Trump, in a move that I'm sure he would have pursued even if he didn't have financial interest in a real-estate project in Istanbul, decided to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, who were working with the Kurds in the area to contain Islamic State fighters so Erdoğan, so the story goes, could deal with Kurdish terrorist forces wrecking havoc in Turkey - except that Erdoğan considers all Kurds to be terrorists.   Turkish forces are on standby to enter northern Syria and annihilate Kurds we promised to protect in our fight against the Islamic State, which could enjoy a resurgence as a result of Trump's policy change.  Oh yeah, and Iran will have more influence in Syria as well and get its path to the Mediterranean, which Mitt Romney and Jonathan Alter warned about.      

Republicans, like Democrats and Western governments, are solidly against this.  Even Pat Robertson is against this policy, saying it will harm Syrian Christians and affect the security of Israel (although he seems to have no regard for Muslims in the area).  When you depend on votes from evangelicals and you lose Pat Robertson, you're in trouble.

Trump's move to placate Erdoğan could (will?) send the entire Middle East in turmoil.  The upside?  Higher oil prices, which means that you'll be seeing less of these on the highway . . .

. . . and more of them at the bottom of the ocean for use as part of artificial reefs.

I try to see the bright side in everything.  Really.  

Headed For a Cliff

Just when Michael Flynn agreed to cooperate more with the special prosecutor's office investigating Trump, Trump goes haywire and pulls troops out of Syria before the job fighting ISIS is done and he may end up firing Robert Mueller before his job - and the calendar year 2018 - is done.  And now Defense Secretary James Mattis - the last person in the administration keeping Trump at bay and the one person who could have served in an O'Malley administration (and still could have done so in 2021 if not for having take n the job under Trump first) - is quitting over Trump's Syria decision.  Trump is so hell-bent on isolating the United States that I have to remind everyone what I once said about his wall - it can keep people in as well as keep people out.

Speaking of the wall, Trump has vowed to shut down the government over funding for said wall to the tune of five billion dollars.  Congressional Republicans are scrambling to stop a shutdown Trump says he is proud to be responsible for.  This could be politically disastrous for congressional Republicans and the White House, but who cares when all that matters to the GOP is to destroy the Democrats (before the Democrats have the pleasure of destroying themselves)?  Similarly, although Republican senators are increasingly calling out Trump for his foreign policy, who cares, when Trump can do whatever he wants on the world stage? 

America is about to go over the cliff.  We'll barely get through the rest of 2018, but I fear that no one will get out of 2019 alive, in which case talk about the 2020 presidential election will be moot. 

This is all giving me a headache . . ..   

But Syri-ously . . .

Donald Trump is being applauded for working with the British and the French on a trilateral approach to handling the humanitarian crisis in Syria by lobbing a few missiles in Bashar al-Assad's chemical-weapons facilities after a chemical attack by the Syrian government against its own people.  Let's break down that premature acclaim:

Trump's manly posturing against Syria's benefactor, Russian President Vladimir Putin, doesn't back up the attack.  The Western allies attacked three specific targets in the country but avoided Syrian air bases, lest the U.S., Great Britain and France provoke Russian forces - and there were certainly no attacks on Russian installations despite Trump's earlier tweet.  This attack does nothing to deter Assad; an attack on a chemical-research facility lauded as having set back research work on lethal gases.  I don't think the Syrians need to do any more research on the subject; they've finished their homework.

Assad is still winning the civil war.  The rebels have been forced to surrender all over the country, and now it's only a matter of time before he puts down the rebellion completely.  There's no justification for Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people, but this strike against him isn't going to deter him.

If we are really concerned with the welfare of the Syrian people, we should let in more Syrian refugees and take the burden off Europe. But Trump isn't willing to do that.   

Trump has suggested that this attack could lead to negotiations to end the Syrian civil war.  The President has taken the lead in establishing possible negotiations - President Macron of France, that is, who is quickly turning out to be the de facto leader of the Western alliance.   American involvement is already nil, what with the Russians, the Iranians, and the Turks having held high-level summits on Syria at which the Americans were not invited.  But then, Trump was against continued military involvement in the Islamic State-dominated areas of Syria - and thus against against continued military involvement in Syria period - as recently as a week earlier before he was for it.

Abstaining from an attack Russian forces at least prevents a third world war, but it also shows how much Trump wants to pretend to get tough on Putin when Putin likely has him under his thumb.

"What?  James Comey just put out his memoirs?  I didn't hear about that!"  Exactly - because of Syria.

Hillbots will likely sneer at me for going third party on the Democrats in 2016 in part because Hillary Clinton was thinking of establishing a no-fly zone over Syria could provoke the Russians.  I can hear Hillary supporters now - "Green Party voters said that if I voted for Hillary, we'd have a war in Syria - well, I voted for Hillary, now we have a war in Syria!"  Ha ha ha. But I'm not laughing.  And yes, I still think Martin O'Malley (you knew I was going to mention his name) was right; we shouldn't do anything in Syria that could provoke a wider conflict simply to get rid of Assad, and Putin's involvement in Syria will be a blunder for the Russian leader.  Getting involved in that bed of thorns for a base or two on the Mediterranean will only come back to bite the Russians in the rear just like our involvement in Iraq bit us.  

And any effort to prevent Iranian access to the Mediterranean through Syria can be checked with that nuclear agreement with Iran - you know, the one Trump and Mike Pompeo want to ditch?

My commentary is done here. 

Russian Dressing

Okay, let me get a few things straight about Russia and Vladimir Putin, who net with Donald Trump this past week in Hamburg . . .

I believe that the Russians hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign this past fall.  I believe Putin had a hand in it.  I do not, however, believe that Russian meddling caused Hillary Clinton to lost the election.  Hillary Clinton caused Hillary Clinton to lose the election.  The suggestion that the Russians manipulated the voters into supporting Trump with false news stories is based on the idea that Hillary ran an effective campaign with a positive message, and that she had a solid lead among the voters.  In fact, her campaign was fundamentally flawed, she did not try to shore up her base or key states that gave Trump his victory, and her only message was that she wasn't as bad as Trump.  And Trump voters - who were only 46 percent of the American electorate - were going to support him no matter what.  The Russians meddled, all right, but Hillary could have gone on the offensive by making her case better, or at all, instead of coasting on "inevitability."  And if Trump did collude with Putin, well, an investigation should find proof of that.  Until then, we have to remember that Trump is innocent until proven guilty.  That's why we have investigations!

Having said that, I also think that Trump didn't do this country any favors by accepting Putin's denial of interfering with the American elections at face value; this only makes these ongoing investigations more difficult to pursue . . . if not impossible.  Trump now wants to work with Putin in ending the conflict in Syria. Good news, until you realize that he is willing to do it entirely on Putin's terms.  The Russian president now has carte blanche to operate as he sees fit, even at the risk of diminishing American interests . . . because Trump doesn't know the difference between détente and capitulation.

It doesn't really matter whether Putin interfered or not.  In Trump, he got what he wanted.

Syria Trumps America

There were probably better ways to react to the government of Syria using chemical weapons in its own people, especially children, but firing fifty Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian air base, as Donald Trump did this past Thursday, was not one of them.  Even though it was a limited strike on a Syrian air base (which was back in operation after the attack), and even though the White House sought to ensure that the Russians would be out of harm's way by notifying them advance, this could escalate an already tense situation.  Maybe we are not headed for a third world war, but this action - which took place one hundred years to the day after the U.S. entered World War I - puts this country in an even more perilous situation as far as maintaining stability in the Middle East is concerned.

The perversity here is that Trump said he had no tolerance for military intervention in Syria or other foreign countries during the presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton was the one supporting tougher action in Syria by establishing a no-fly zone over the country, which, if enacted under any President, could start a bigger conflict with Russia.  And if Trump is really concerned about the welfare of the Syrian people, why doesn't he let Syrian refugees come to America?

One politician, who fervently supported taking in Syrian refugees, was just as fervently opposed to intervention in Syria and was also against "regime change" there.  Speaking particularly in opposition to Hillary's call for a no-fly zone in 2015, he said, "This could lead to an escalation of Cold War proportions because of an accident, and I don’t think that’s in the best interest of the United States."

His name?  Martin Joseph O'Malley.

But you probably didn't hear him say that, because the media were too busy making fun of him for saying in a presidential debate, "I think Assad's invasion of Syria will be seen as a blunder," when he meant to say Vladimir Putin instead of Assad.  Really classy, guys.  :-( 

The Road From Damascus

The PBS NewsHour reported last night on the mass exodus of Syrian refugees fleeing into neighboring Turkey to escape the crackdown by the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, in retaliation against anti-government demonstrations. Syrian authorities talk of instigators having brought on the trouble there (that sounds vaguely familiar), but refugees fleeing Syria into Turkey have different tales - tales of heavy-handed cruelty by Assad's government against his own people. The former dental student, who assumed the presidency of Syria when his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, died in 2000, is suggesting parallels with the sadistic Dr. Szell in the movie Marathon Man.

Assad - who is beginning to feel the heat of the international community - isn't safe, nor are many other Arab leaders. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is recovering from a rocket-propelled grenade attack on him even as his country is falling apart. In Libya, Qaddafi is still resisting a newly resurgent rebellion. Even in Jordan, the motorcade King Abdullah II, perhaps the most benevolent ruler ion the Arab world, was attacked with stones and empty bottles, though the king himself was unharmed. One can only wonder where this will all lead.