The US weapons industry and its cheerleaders in Washington DC are determined to keep Ukraine money flowing…until they can figure out a way to gin up a war with China after losing the current war with Russia.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is “not a whole lot of money for us…” Well, that’s easy for him to say – after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!
The ink was barely dry on President Biden’s signature transferring another $61 billion to the black hole called Ukraine, when the mainstream media broke the news that this was not the parting shot in a failed US policy. The elites have no intention of shutting down this gravy train, which transports wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy and connected class.
Reuters wrote right after the aid bill was passed that, “Ukraine’s $61 billion lifeline is not enough.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is “not a whole lot of money for us…” Well, that’s easy for him to say – after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was far from grateful for the $170 billion we have shipped thus far to his country. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine as the aid package was passed, Kuleba had the nerve to criticize the US for not producing weapons fast enough. “If you cannot produce enough interceptors to help Ukraine win the war against the country that wants to destroy the world order, then how are you going to win in the war against perhaps an enemy who is stronger than Russia?”
Rarely has the imperial arrogance of the Washington political class been so succinctly expressed. We are talking about Mitch McConnell’s recent triple bank-shot rationale for inflicting still more misery and death on the god-forsaken peoples of Ukraine.
American support for Ukraine is not charity. It’s in our own direct interests – not least because degrading Russia helps to deter China.
What kind of sick fuck would demolish an entire nation and slaughter tens of thousands of its citizens in order to weaken its neighbor and historic suzerain—all for the purpose of sending a carom shot across the bow of rulers 3,600 miles away. And rulers, at that, who are no boon to their own citizens but also pose no threat to the liberty and safety of the people of Kentucky or any other part of the United States?
Indeed, even when President Truman and War Secretary Stimson ordered the cold-blooded killing of 214,000 Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki their rulers actually did mean America harm and had already killed thousands of its soldiers from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima. But exactly where is the evidence that Beijing is assembling a massive armada of air, sea and land forces to invade the coast of California or is standing up a devastating first nuclear strike capacity to leave American cities in cinders before the awful nuclear retaliatory forces of the US could strike back?
Vladimir Putin wants to keep Russia’s wealth for himself, for his supporters and also for his people. He sees what the globalists have done to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and others. They invaded and destroyed these countries and sucked out whatever wealth they could. And while millions in those lands have been killed and had their lives ruined, the architects of these disasters are well and enjoying their ill-gotten gains. One of them is Joe Biden who had his hand in all these ventures as he was a high government official while they were being planned and executed.
In his recent appearance on Face the Nation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Margaret Brennan:
“The Ukrainians have killed more Russians in three weeks than we lost in Afghanistan and Iraq in 20 years. I think we ought to go into this believing the Ukrainians can actually win. And the way they win is for us to get these defensive weapons system to them as rapidly as possible.”
Listening to this one is seized with despair, because McConnell’s words reveal the monstrous strategy that is being adopted by the western ruling elites regarding the Ukrainian war.
These elites now smell blood in the water. They hope to drag the war on Ukraine for as long as possible, get Russia bogged down and bleed it out, both in terms of human life as well as financially.
This is an inhuman and misguided strategy that is likely to backfire.
To begin with, this war has been provoked by western globalists who were imperiously bent on driving NATO all the way to the Russian doorstep. This was understandably and rightly perceived by Russia as a move that posed a serious threat to its national security.
Russia had for years warned, pleaded, and implored the West not to do this, but to no avail. NATO, lead by the United States, did something the Unites States would never allow were the situation reversed. The United States would never allow a hostile military alliance on its borders. We saw what happened during the Cuban missile crisis when the Soviets were trying to bring military installations to Cuba. The United States threatened both Cuba and Russia and was ready to start a nuclear war if necessary to halt that undertaking. The United States was, of course, justified in its demands then. The Russians now feel the same about Ukraine.
Please watch the lecture below in which one of the world’s most distinguished political scientists Prof. John Mearsheimer explains who is responsible for this crisis. It is sufficient to watch only the first 25 minutes of the video.
Whatever we may be told by the media, the Ukrainians cannot win this war, since they are greatly overpowered by the Russian forces. The main reason why the Russian advance has been slow is because the Russians have been careful to minimize civilian casualties. The Ukrainian fighters have been taking advantage of this by using their own people as human shields.
If you do not believe this, please watch Ukrainians soldiers setting up rockets on top of a residential building in the city of Mariupol. Having been scattered by their more powerful foe, this is the only strategy for the embattled Ukrainians left to pursue.
If they keep doing this, sooner or later the Russians will become more ruthless, and the death toll will skyrocket. Whether we like it or not, the Ukrainians simply cannot come out on top in this dreadful conflict. The longer this war lasts, the more people will die and more of Ukraine will get wrecked.
But this is apparently okay with the western ruling elite who see a chance to bleed Russia in the same way we bled in Afghanistan and Iraq. That a country will get completely wrecked and hundreds of thousands of innocent people will die does not particularly seem to bother them.
Not only do they want to prolong the war in Ukraine, they, in fact, want to expand it further.
A couple of weeks ago they tried to goad the Poles into giving their jets to the Ukrainians even though Russia had made it clear that it would consider such a move an act of war. This action would be akin to Russia urging the Syrian government to give airplanes to the insurgents in Iraq while we were conducting military operations in that country. We would have doubtless declared such a provocation an act of war by both Syria and Russia, and we would have taken retaliative actions which would almost certainly include some kind of military punishment of the offending parties.
The Poles, however, saw through the ploy and did not take the insidious bait which would have brought them into direct conflict with Russia. Instead, they called the bluff and turned the tables on the warmongering schemers in Washington, DC. Without consulting the Biden administration, they issued a statement in which they said they would make their jets available by flying them to an American base in Germany, but it would have to be the Americans who would do the actual handover.
Exposed and humiliated, the Biden administration declined the Polish “offer” and promptly dispatched Kamala Harris to Warsaw to pacify the Poles who were seething at such betrayal by a supposed ally.
Now Joe Biden has come to Europe with promises of support and weapons for Ukrainians. He will encourage the Ukrainians to fight until the last drop of their blood. He will do it even though he knows all too well that the Ukrainians can never win this fight and will get slaughtered and shattered in the process.
But never mind. The Washington schemers do not care about the lives or well-being of the Ukrainian people. They are using Ukraine as a proxy in a war with Russia, hoping that their fighters will inflict sufficient damage on the Russian military to destabilize Putin’s regime in Moscow.
It is awful to think that our regime could be so cynical. For their part, they probably soothe their conscience by telling themselves that they are only engaging in realpolitik 101. The Soviets did this to us in Vietnam, which they used as their proxy against us, so we now do the same thing to Russia.
But the question is why do the global elites hate Russia and Putin in particular? They tell us that Vladimir Putin is a bad and corrupt man who stole from his people to accumulate great wealth and luxury for himself. But this surely cannot be the main reason, because the leader of the free world is also corrupt.
It is well-known that while he was vice president of the United States, Joe Biden would sell his influence around the world for his own personal enrichment. This he did through his lamentable son Hunter. Hunter, for example, was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma. Even though Hunter knew little about gas, he was being paid one million dollars a year in an obvious influence peddling scheme. His father, “The Big Guy,” as Hunter referred to him in his emails, would get a cut from the loot.
Rudy Giuliani called the Bidens a crime family. Even though this may sound harsh, it accurately describes their activities. Like some global gangsters, they prowl around the globe filling their pockets through illicit ventures while scheming with some of the most corrupt people in places like Ukraine, China and Russia. The plentiful evidence of their mischief is contained on Hunter Biden’s hard drive. This hard drive is authentic beyond any doubt, which is something even the New York Timeshas recently conceded. And yet our compromised institutions – such as the Department of Justice and the FBI – refuse to investigate these crimes.
The main reason why the globalists loathe Putin is because he does not want to play their game. He refuses to accept their woke ideology and become part of their corrupt global order based on the collapsing dollar and driven by the desire to plunder the world’s resources and populations.
Vladimir Putin wants to keep Russia’s wealth for himself, for his supporters and also for his people. He sees what the globalists have done to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and others. They invaded and destroyed these countries and sucked out whatever wealth they could. And while millions in those lands have been killed and had their lives ruined, the architects of these disasters are well and enjoying their ill-gotten gains. One of them is Joe Biden who had his hand in all these ventures as he was a high government official while they were being planned and executed.
Since Putin does not really want to share the great mineral and natural wealth of his vast country with the globalists, they want to take him out. Once they bring Putin down – or so they think – they will install a puppet in his place who will throw the doors open for multinationals to plunder Russia’s resources in the same way they have done in other places.
But they seem to forget that they cannot kick Putin around in the same way they did Saddam Hussein and Moammar Khadafi.
For one thing, Putin has more nuclear warheads than anyone else on earth. If backed into a corner, it is likely he would use them.
We would do well to remember the wise warning of John Quincy Adams who advised us not to go abroad in “search of monsters to destroy.”
We should always try to pursue peace and not warmonger, especially in places like Ukraine where we have no vital national security interest.
To get ourselves bombed with thermo nuclear warheads over Ukraine would be a terrible mistake indeed.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) knocked a last-minute deal in the House to reauthorize expiring intelligence programs, saying its reforms to the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) fall short.
“The ‘Deal’ on FISA is weak sauce diluted [and] made impotent by A.G. Barr. None of the reforms prevent secret FISA court from abusing the rights of Americans. None of the reforms prevent a President of either party from a politically motivated investigation. Big Disappointment!” Paul tweeted early Tuesday evening.
His comments come after House lawmakers announced on Tuesday that they had struck an agreement ahead of the March 15 deadline for expiring provisions in the USA Freedom Act, a 2015 law that overhauled the country’s intelligence programs.
The agreement includes more privacy protections and transparency in the FISA court process, including requiring legal representation for an individual targeted if the government’s application “presents exceptional concerns about the First Amendment rights of U.S. persons.”
It also bolsters penalties for those who abuse the FISA court.
But Paul, a long-time critic of the FISA court, wants language that would prohibit a FISA warrant being used against an American citizen, and prohibit FISA information from being used against an American in domestic court.
The House deal was largely negotiated without the input of senators, a potential curveball in its chances of passing the Senate this week. It is expected to go to the House floor for a vote Wednesday.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has also advocated for changes to FISA, told reporters shortly after the deal was announced that he was still reviewing it.
“Based on earlier drafts of it I don’t like it at all,” he said.
Because of the tight time frame to get legislation through Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is going to need consent from every senator to speed up consideration of the bill.
That could give leverage to senators like Paul and Lee to try to push through changes or force a lapse of the expiring USA Freedom provisions.
Paul previously used the Senate’s procedural tools to force a brief lapse of the post-9/11 Patriot Act.
A spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a question on Tuesday night about what his tweet means for his willingness to let the House deal move quickly through the Senate.
Beneath Article I, there is not a single crime listed — no treason, no bribery, no extortion, no high crimes.
What kind of impeachment is this, with not one crime from the list the Founding Fathers designated as impeachable acts?
Carter Page, once considered a dupe of the Russians, is now seen as a patriot who assisted his country’s intelligence services only to be made a victim of injustice who saw his civil rights be trampled upon by his own government.
Thus did the member from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, declare last January to be the goal of the 2019 House Democratic Caucus.
Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the goods.
The House impeached President Donald Trump on a straight party-line vote. Not one Republican signed on to the most partisan impeachment in U.S. history.
Yet, as we head for trial in the Senate, Democrats seem to be having nervous second thoughts over what they have done.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for the Senate to subpoena four new witnesses the House never heard. Nancy Pelosi signaled Wednesday night that she might not send over to the Senate the articles of impeachment the House had just approved.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor both Wednesday night and Thursday morning. To have the Senate, which is judge and jury of the impeachment charges, to start calling witnesses whom House prosecutors failed to pursue “could set a nightmarish precedent.”
Said McConnell, Schumer “would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them.”
Schumer’s plea for new witnesses is an admission that the House’s case for impeaching Trump is inadequate and deficient and could prove wholly noncredible to the American people. After all, if you need more witnesses, you probably do not have the smoking gun.
The message sent by Pelosi’s call for more time before the trial, and Schumer’s call for more witnesses, is one of fear that not only could the House’s case for impeachment fail, it could be laughed out of the Senate. And the American people might be fine with that.
The Democratic Party has bet the ranch on the impeachment and removal of Trump for imperiling our “national security.” But are Schumer and Pelosi behaving as though the republic is in mortal peril?
Schumer’s call for new witnesses also underscores the thinness of Article I of the impeachment, Trump’s alleged “Abuse of Power.”
Beneath Article I, there is not a single crime listed — no treason, no bribery, no extortion, no high crimes.
What kind of impeachment is this, with not one crime from the list the Founding Fathers designated as impeachable acts?
Why did the Democratic House not impeach Trump for conspiring with Russia to steal the 2016 election? Answer: The House could no more prove this charge than could Robert Mueller after two years.
Other events are breaking Trump’s way.
The James Comey-FBI investigation Mueller inherited has begun to take on the aspect of a “deep state” conspiracy.
According to the Justice Department’s IG Michael Horowitz, the FISA court warrants used to justify FBI spying were the products not only of incompetence but also of mendacity and possible criminality.
The “essential” evidence use by the FBI to get the FISA judge to approve warrants for surveillance was the Steele dossier.
An ex-British spy, Christopher Steele was working in mid-2016 for a dirt-diving operation hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign to go after Trump. His altarpiece, the dossier, we learn from Horowitz, was a farrago of fabrications, rumors and lies fed to Steele by a Russian “sub-source.”
In the four FBI submissions to the FISA courts for warrants to spy on Carter Page, there were “at least 17 significant errors or omissions.”
And all 17 went against Team Trump.
Moreover, the discrediting of the Comey investigation has just begun. U.S. Attorney John Durham will report this spring or summer on his deeper and wider investigation into its roots.
As IG of Justice, Horowitz’s investigation was confined to his department and the FBI. But Durham is looking into the involvement of U.S. and foreign intelligence in the first days of the FBI investigation.
Attorney General Bill Barr and Durham have both said that they do not share Horowitz’s view that there was no political bias at the beginning of the investigation of the Trump campaign. Durham’s writ is far wider than Horowitz’s and he has the power to impanel grand juries and bring criminal indictments.
Among the fields Durham is plowing are reports that agents and assets of the FBI and CIA may have “set up” Trump foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos. Possible purpose: to feed him intel about Russia having dirt on Hillary Clinton, and then entrap him, put him in legal jeopardy, and turn him into an investigative instrument to be used against Trump.
With the Horowitz report confirming what the Trumpers have been reporting and saying about Comey’s investigation for years, and the newly proven manipulation of the FISA courts, the media hooting about “right-wing conspiracy theories” seems to have been toned down.
Carter Page, once considered a dupe of the Russians, is now seen as a patriot who assisted his country’s intelligence services only to be made a victim of injustice who saw his civil rights be trampled upon by his own government.
The Senate on Monday rejected an effort by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to place an across-the-board spending cut in a domestic funding package being debated by lawmakers.
Senators voted 24-67 on the amendment from Paul, which would reduce spending by 2 percent compared to fiscal 2019 levels.
The amendment, had Paul been successful, would have been added to a spending package that includes commerce, science and justice; transportation and housing and urban development; agriculture; and interior.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, urged senators to oppose Paul’s amendment.
“His amendment will slash spending below the bipartisan budget act that we all negotiated,” Leahy said from the Senate floor ahead of the vote…
“Our commanders need funding. Our men and women in military need support. Congress needs to do its job. So later this week, the Senate is going to vote again to advance defense funding,” McConnell said on Monday…
The Pentagon and the CIA will just have to continue inflicting death, suffering, and destruction on foreigners on a perpetual basis until the war is “won,” that is, when all the Muslim terrorists are finally eradicated, which just might be never, especially since the interventionism produces a never-ending stream of anger and hatred toward the United States.
I’m convinced of it. Politicians definitely live in a parallel universe, one that could easily be called Bizarro World.
Just read a recent op-ed in the Washington Post by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It provides irrefutable proof that these people live in an alternative universe.
The title of McConnell’s article is “Withdrawing from Syria Is a Grave Mistake.” As you can tell from the title, McConnell, like the good little Republican he is, is an interventionist . That means he believes that the U.S. government should intervene in the affairs of other countries, like with coups, assassinations, invasions, bribery, extortion, sanctions, and embargoes, even while lamenting when foreign governments (e.g., Russia) intervene in the affairs of other countries in the same ways.
Okay, so Republicans are interventionists. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they live in a parallel universe. It just means that they are seriously misguided. The proof that McConnell lives in an alternative universe comes through the analysis he employs to justify his interventionism.
Number 1. McConnell says that that interventionism is necessary to combat “Islamic terrorism.”
What? Is he kidding? He obviously doesn’t get it. He still believes that the terrorists are targeting America because of their supposed hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” He still doesn’t understand that it is interventionism itself (which he ardently supports) that is the root cause of the anger and hatred that foreigners have toward the United States. Stop the interventionism and anti-American terrorism dissipates.
In McConnell’s universe, the “war on terrorism” goes on forever because, in his mind, the Muslims will hate America forever. The Pentagon and the CIA will just have to continue inflicting death, suffering, and destruction on foreigners on a perpetual basis until the war is “won,” that is, when all the Muslim terrorists are finally eradicated, which just might be never, especially since the interventionism produces a never-ending stream of anger and hatred toward the United States.
Number 2. McConnell says that America’s post-World World II regime has brought an “unprecedented era of peace” to the world.
Is he kidding? Has he never heard of the Korean civil war in the early 1950s, where the U.S. government intervened and killed millions of North Koreans and sacrificed tens of thousands of American soldiers for nothing in an illegal war, given that the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA waged it without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war?
Has he never heard of the Vietnam War, another illegal war that was waged without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war? In that war also, the U.S. national security establishment killed millions of Vietnamese and sacrificed tens of thousands of American soldiers for nothing.
Has he never heard of the CIA’s invasion of Cuba, a country that has never attacked the United States? Has he never heard of the U.S. government’s decades-long brutal economic embargo against that nation, which has targeted the Cuban people with death and impoverishment for the sake of regime change? Is he unaware of the fact that U.S. interventionism against Cuba brought the world to the edge of worldwide nuclear devastation?
Has he not heard of the many state-sponsored assassinations of innocent people by the CIA and the Pentagon since World War II?
How he never heard of MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s secret drug-experimentation program that deliberately murdered innocent people? Has he never heard that the CIA secretly employed Nazi war criminals to help the CIA with its operations? Has he never heard of Operation Northwoods?
Has he never heard of the many regime-change operations, such as in Chile, Guatemala , Libya, and, yes, Syria, which have not only destroyed democratic and non-democratic regimes alike but also subjected millions of innocent people to death, suffering, impoverishment, rape, indefinite detention, torture, execution, or chaos?
Has he never heard of the U.S. government’s undeclared intervention in the Persian Gulf War, which brought about the massacre of thousands of Iraqis? Or the Pentagon’s intentional destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants with the aim of killing people through infections and malnutrition? Or the 11 years of brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people, which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children? Or UN Ambassador Madeline Albright’s infamous declaration that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions, while hard, were “worth it.”
Has he never heard of President George W. Bush’s undeclared war of aggression against Iraq, which violated the principles set forth at Nuremberg as well as the U.S. Constitution, which succeeded in killing hundreds of thousands of more Iraqis as well as destroying the entire country?
Or the undeclared war against Afghanistan, which has killed hundreds of thousands of more people, 99 percent of whom had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks?
Number 3. McConnell says that American had a “comforting blanket of isolationism in the 1940s.” Is he kidding? How can he not know about President Roosevelt’s interventionist machinations to embroil the United States in World War II? How could he not know about FDR’s Lend-Lease program with England, his military assistance to British forces, his oil embargo on Japan, his freezing of Japanese assets in the United States, and the humiliating dictates he issued to Japan, all with the aim of provoking Germany and Japan to attack and kill U.S. troops, so that he could manipulate the American people into having to enter World War II? How can he not know that that war, which is so beloved to Republicans (and Democrats), delivered Eastern Europe and East Germany into the hands of the Soviet Reds, which was then used to justify the Cold War and the anti-communist crusade (and, later, the anti-Russia crusade), and the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a totalitarian form of governmental structure?
How can McConnell not see such things? There can be only one explanation. McConnell is, in fact, living in a parallel universe, one called Bizarro World?
The recent Washington Post op-ed by Senator Mitch McConnell, “Withdrawing from Syria is a Grave Mistake,” is very disappointing. Rather than acknowledging and taking responsibility for the blunders U.S. foreign and military policy over the last 30 years, Senator McConnell and 69 other senators want the US to continue doing what has proven to be disastrous to world peace and US national security.
Having served two years in Iraq and six years in Afghanistan as a field-level civilian advisor, I witnessed daily the death, destruction and hardships these two Wars of Choice inflicted on the local populations. The aftereffects of these wars continue to this day. The current Congressional and media outrage over the plight of the Kurds in eastern Syria pales in comparison to the ongoing humanitarian tragedies that Washington’s intervention foreign policy caused in these two countries — not to mention Libya, Syria and elsewhere under Congress’ open-ended War on Terror. There was no significant Congressional or mainstream media outrage or resolutions of disapproval when tens of thousands of civilians were being killed as a result of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t recall any Congressional leader writing an op-ed titled, “Invading Iraq in 2003 was a Grave Mistake?”
That said, the deceit inherent in Senator McConnell’s op-ed is more alarming than its hypocrisy. He uses counterfactual claims to justify and support the Washington establishment’s interventionist foreign policy that he champions as Senate Majority Leader.
In his op-ed, Senator McConnell repeats the neocon canard that President Obama is responsible for the creation of ISIS because of “his reckless withdrawal [of US troops] from Iraq” in 2011. This assertion is just as erroneous as the charge that ISIS will “regroup” and ” bring terror to our shores” now that US troops have left Syria. (ISIS itself has never conducted a terrorist attack in America.) This contrived construct is needed to support Senator McConnell’s and the neocon community’s worldview that US militarism abroad conducted under the guise of “no substitute for American leadership” advances peace and security in the world. With the corollary being, the withdrawal of US of troops from civil wars that this US itself created (in the case of Iraq) or aided and abated (in the case of Syria) represents America returning to “the comforting blanket of isolationism in the 1940s. With over 800 foreign military installations around the world and ongoing combat operations in 80 countries, President Trump’s decision to relocate 1,000 US soldiers from eastern Syria to western Iraq hardly represents a return to America’s pre-World War II noninterventionist foreign policy.
I was in Iraq when Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf, Iraq’s most influential Shi’a cleric and the most authoritative voice in the country, pronounced publicly in July 2008 his opposition to the proposed Status of Forces Agreement and US soldiers remaining in Iraq. I was glad I had lined up a job in Afghanistan because I knew with Ayatollah Sistani’s pronouncement, “the fat lady had sung.” There was no chance of US troops staying in Iraq beyond the December 2011 date agreed to by the Iraqi Parliament and the Bush Administration. Had Ayatollah Sistani’s decree been disobeyed, it would have started a Holy War with Shi’a Iran intervening to supports Iraq’s Shi’ite majority in an epic battle to drive the infidels out of the Shi’ite part of Dar al-Islam (the Muslim homelands created in the 7th and 8th centuries).
That said, Senator McConnell is correct in saying the president’s action “have set back the United States’campaign against the Islamic State and other terrorists.” So what? All the local and regional actors who will “fill the vacuum” (favorite neocon expression) created by the US pulling out of Syria – the legitimate Syrian Assad government in Damascus, Turkey, Iran, Russia, and both Iraqi and Syrian Kurds – are more committed and capable of fighting and defeating ISIS and (other Sunni jihadi terrorists) than the US military. (Being able to speak Arabic – as all Muslims learn to read the Koran – is instrumental for being effective and respected in this part of the world.) These local actors all have skin the game. They will fight the Sunni jihadi terrorists for their own reasons – as Iran showed in its defeat of ISIS in Iraq. Contrarily, deploying US military personnel to fight in this region’s centuries-old ethnic, religious and territorial disputes is counterproductive. As I witnessed over my eight years in war zones, US soldiers are perceived as intruders and infidels in the Islamic World. This fact makes the US military’s presence in the Middle East inherently destabilizing.
Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao “repeatedly used her connections and celebrity status in China to boost the profile of [her family’s shipping] company, which benefits handsomely from the expansive industrial policies in Beijing that are at the heart of diplomatic tensions with the United States,” according to a New York Times exposé on Monday that builds off research from Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book Secret Empires.
Chao, who is also the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has been the subject of intense criticism over the years due to the deep financial ties between her family’s shipping business and China’s communist regime.
The nearly 6,000-word Times article begins by recounting an urgent email sent to the State Department in 2017 by an official at the American embassy in Beijing. The subject line read “Secretary Chao – Ethics Question.” According to the Times, the email concerned “a series of unorthodox requests” Chao’s office made in the run-up to her first official trip to China as Trump’s transportation secretary. Her requests included “asking federal officials to help coordinate travel arrangements for at least one family member and include relatives in meetings with government officials.”
Chao “abruptly canceled” her trip to China “after the ethics question was referred to officials in the State and Transportation Departments,” the Times reports.
Chao’s father, James Chao, is the owner of Foremost Group, a shipping company that has done substantial business with the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and has received loan guarantees worth hundreds of millions of dollars from China’s state-owned bank…
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