A View From The Left-NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong-Join The Resistance Now!

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

Trump to visit Israel, Saudi Arabia, Vatican in first foreign trip

The president said he will begin his trip in Saudi Arabia, where he will convene a “historic gathering” of “leaders from all across the Muslim world” to form a new push to combat terrorism and Islamic radicalism and confront Iran… The gathering in Saudi Arabia will also include leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as other nations…  Unlike Obama and Bush, Canada and Mexico will not be among the first group of countries Trump visits. The president has clashed with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto over trade and immigration.   More

How Americans Remember (and Forget) Their Wars

While it is natural for people and nations to focus on their own sacrifice and suffering rather than the death and destruction they themselves inflict, in the case of the United States such cognitive astigmatism is backlighted by the country’s abiding sense of being exceptional, not just in power but also in virtue. In paeans to “American exceptionalism,” it is an article of faith that the highest values of Western and Judeo-Christian civilization guide the nation’s conduct -- to which Americans add their country’s purportedly unique embrace of democracy, respect for each and every individual, and stalwart defense of a “rules-based” international order.  Such self-congratulation requires and reinforces selective memory. “Terror,” for instance, has become a word applied to others, never to oneself. And yet during World War II, U.S. and British strategic-bombing planners explicitly regarded their firebombing of enemy cities as terror bombing, and identified destroying the morale of noncombatants in enemy territory as necessary and morally acceptable…  The sanctification of the site of the destroyed World Trade Center as “Ground Zero” -- a term previously associated with nuclear explosions in general and Hiroshima in particular -- reinforced this deft legerdemain in the manipulation of memory.   More

KINZER: Old debts come due in North Korea

Until 1979, the United States worked with focused determination to prevent Pakistan from obtaining banned nuclear equipment and material. In the following years, under terms of our agreement with Pakistan, we abandoned that effort. This allowed Pakistan’s nuclear program to blossom. Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear device in 1998. Along the way, it began sharing secrets with another quasi-pariah, North Korea… Nuclear expertise and equipment from Pakistan gave North Korea the ability to provoke today’s crisis. Pakistan was able to develop that expertise and equipment largely because the United States agreed to turn a blind eye to its global proliferation campaign. Today’s North Korea crisis flows from a decision we made more than 35 years ago. It is a classic example of what national leaders do too often: jump to respond to an immediate problem and leave future generations to clean up the messy results.  More

Why Do North Koreans Hate Us? One Reason — They Remember the Korean War.

North Korean officials make wild threats against the United States while the regime, led by the brutal and sadistic Kim Jong-un, pumps out fake news in the form of self-serving propaganda, on an industrial scale. In the DPRK, anti-American hatred is a commodity never in short supply. “The hate, though,” as long-time North Korea watcher Blaine Harden observed in the Washington Post, “ is not all manufactured.” Some of it, he wrote, “is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.”  … How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?  How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”?  Twenty. Percent. For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population. According to LeMay, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.”  Every. Town. More than three million civilians are believed to have been killed in the fighting, the vast majority of them in the north.   More

Trump and Putin Agree to Seek Syria Cease-Fire

President Trump reopened direct communications with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday and sought to reignite what he hoped would be a special relationship by agreeing to work together to broker a cease-fire in war-torn Syria. In their first telephone conversation since the United States launched a cruise missile strike on Syria’s Moscow-backed military to retaliate for a chemical weapons attack on civilians, Mr. Trump agreed to send a representative to Russian-brokered cease-fire talks that start on Wednesday in Astana, Kazakhstan. He and Mr. Putin also discussed meeting each other in Germany in July…  “President Trump and President Putin agreed that the suffering in Syria has gone on for far too long and that all parties must do all they can to end the violence,” the White House statement said. The Kremlin said Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov would “intensify” their dialogue to “search for options” in Syria.  More

Turkey and Russia push for safe-zones in Syria

Russian representatives had presented the rebels with a proposal for four "de-escalation zones" in Syria where the warring sides would be separated by "security lines"…Putin also said Russian and Syrian government jets would halt flights over the specified zones if all sides respect the ceasefire.  The proposal presented to the opposition in Astana delineates four zones in Syria where front lines between the government and opposition forces would be frozen and fighting halted, according to a statement made by the opposition.  The four zones include areas in the provinces of Idlib and Homs, the Eastern Ghouta suburb outside Damascus, and an area in the south of the country.  The zones, according to the proposal, would be monitored by international observers and allow for the voluntary return of refugees…  Later on Wednesday, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, called on the opposition to return to the talks in Astana "because what is important is also to look at the possibility of an outcome on a de-escalation". He stressed the importance of not destroying "the opportunity of good news" related to this issue.   More

VIJAY PRASHAD: ISIS Gains Power and Innocents Die as Syria Retreats From Peace

In Syria, the armed opposition knew from 2011 that it would not defeat the Assad government without the accompaniment of massive US airstrikes. This is why it has sought to encourage US intervention. Obama’s slogan - ‘Assad must go’ – and the adventures of US Ambassador Robert Ford to opposition protests suggested to the armed opposition that the US cruise missiles were on the way. The shadowy promises from the United States prolonged this war, with the rebels unwilling to come to the table because they assumed that the maximal position (regime change) would be reality. At the same time, the US along with its Gulf Arab allies and Turkey financed and armed the opposition through Turkey and Jordan. This program was known as Timber Sycamore, which was the pipeline for millions of dollars of arms that entered not only the various rebel forces but also the black market. The hope that the US will eventually overthrow Assad remains central to the strategy of even the al-Qaeda proxy. Trump’s 7 April strike merely rekindled that hope and therefore broke the momentum of the peace talks… Air cover came from the base that Trump’s cruise missiles hit, which delivered ISIS a momentary advantage on the ground. ISIS chatter now suggests that defeat in Mosul would be compensated by a victory in Deir ez-Zor. In practical terms, the Trump strike might very well have made this possible.   More

Let's Call Western Media Coverage of Syria By Its Real Name: Propaganda

Syria is proof of how low mainstream Western media are prepared to sink in the service of state power; it’s where journalistic standards, like global jihadists, go to die. Rank propaganda is the order of the day. Honest observers are appalled. Stephen Kinzer wrote that “coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press,” while Robert Fisk described the war as “the most poorly reported conflict in the world.” Patrick Cockburn registered a similar concern, writing that “Western media has allowed itself to become a conduit for propaganda for one side in this savage conflict.” … So the ideology-driven Western media, in allying themselves with the armed opposition in Syria, have helped to create a situation in which it pays to kidnap and murder people who seek to report the truth. Ergo, they have violated the canons of their profession in the most egregious manner possible. And you’ll have noticed that they’re totally shameless about it. None of this gives them a moment of pause. They keep pumping out the propaganda, day in, day out, never stopping to reflect on the potential consequences. When one story falls apart, they move on to the next one. The most, or perhaps only, important thing is to manipulate public opinion so that it corresponds to government policy. Beyond that, who cares?   More