Category Archives: Foreign Policy

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Yet another war in which Bill Kristol wants the US involved

I was at the tire shop early this afternoon — the left steering tire on my 2010 Ford F-150 broke a belt and the tire got out-of-round — and tweeted from my phone, at 1:10 PM EST:

I saw a news blurb while at the tire store, in which former and future President Trump said that we should stay out of the mess in Syria, so I wonder how soon the warmongers like @BillKristol and @AmbJohnBolton will want to get involved there.

Well, it didn’t take long!

At least as of this writing, Mr Bolton hasn’t tweeted anything, but Bill Kristol, who turned 18 in 1970 and thus could have enlisted and served in Vietnam — he had a high draft lottery number, and wasn’t conscripted — has, and the man who wants to see the US involved in every war on earth is pushing again.

There are no good guys in Syria. Bashir al-Assad is a murderous thug, while the recently advancing rebel forces are Islamist in nature and a former offshoot of al Qaeda. The Turks are in the north, trying to seize land and attacking the Kurds. Whichever side wins is a loss for Western civilization. President Assad has, reportedly, made overtures to the United States and Israel to help him, in exchange for promises to end Iranian involvement with his government and expel Hezbollah fighters, but if those reports are true, no one could take Mr Assad at his word anyway.

Mr Kristol knows all of that, but he still wants the US involved. In this case, incoming President Trump is right: we should stay out of it!

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World War III Watch: the British and French are discussing sending their own troops to fight in Ukraine

Sometimes there are little things hidden inside of more sensationalized stories.

Though we haven’t seen as much about this recently — our American credentialed media were fixated on the election, and Israel’s war against the Palestinians — meaning that the Russo-Ukrainian War has somewhat faded into the background. Stories about foreign soldiers who traveled to Ukraine to fight the Russians? We heard a lot about them early on, though little recently. Yet this headline from the Associated Press might be seen as either misleading, or at least somewhat disingenuous clickbait.

Russia reportedly captures a Briton fighting for Ukraine as Russian troops advance

Monday, November 25, 2024 | 10:09 AM EST

Russia’s military captured a British national fighting with Ukrainian troops who have occupied part of Russia’s Kursk region, according to reports Monday, as Moscow began daylight drone attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine and its ground forces accelerated gains along parts of the front line.

Continue reading →

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John Podesta makes commitments for our government that President Trump will not keep

Yeah, this might not work out!

Conservatives actually love John Podesta. Thanks to his lax computer security, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was able to hack into many of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, the exposure of which helped her to her strong second-place finish in that election. Mr Podesta helped, in his own inimitable way, to elect Donald Trump!

Cop29: wealthy countries agree to raise climate finance offer to $300bn a year

EU and nations including the UK, US and Australia indicate they will make the increase in exchange for changes to a draft text, sources say

Adam Morton, Fiona Harvey, Patrick Greenfield and Dharna Noor in Baku and Damian Carrington | Saturday, November 23, 2024 | 2:45 AM EST

Major rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.

The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels. Continue reading →

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World War III Watch: John Bolton is a blithering idiot!

When I was in college, back in the days of quill pens and inkwells, my best friend, Ken Vermillion and I used to have fanciful and oh-so-educated discussions about nuclear war. We had deterrence down flat, and Mr Vermillion, who sadly left this mortal vale in 2018, could quote his favorite movie, Dr Strangelove, extensively.

We met in 1973, drinking coffee with several other students in the old Student Center cafeteria, speculating whether an underwater nuclear explosion off the coast of California could trigger a tidal wave to hit Los Angeles.

But we were sophomores, and sophomores can discuss stuff like that with both impunity and the knowledge that we’d almost certainly ever be in a position to wage nuclear war.

John Bolton, now 76 years old, is not a sophomore. Having previously held the positions of assistant to the president for national security affairs (APNSA), commonly referred to as the national security advisor, from April 9, 2018 until September 10, 2019, when he was fired resigned, and as Under Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations under the younger President Bush, he has a reputation which gets him all of the good news channel appearances. But, sadly, he’s just an idiot. He tweeted:

This ongoing threat of a “wider war” in Ukraine could be conventional, or it could be nuclear. If it’s a conventional threat, then where is the Russian army that’s going to provoke this war? And if it’s nuclear, it is important to remember that the U.S. has never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. While these threats should not be entirely disregarded, it’s critical that the U.S. does not fall for Putin’s bluff.

What kind of absolute stupidity is that? Continue reading →

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Hamas leadership beat feet to Turkey

It has frequently been noted that the top Hamas leadership lived not in Gaza, but in wealth and safety in Doha, Qatar. The Qatari government told them to find someplace to stay, so most of them have headed for Turkey. A lot of their families live there, but I have to wonder how long the Turkish government will put up with these cretins.

Hamas officials booted by Qatar last week, now hosted in Turkey, diplomat says

Continue reading →

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World War III Watch: I’m amazed at how many people actually want war!

August of 1914 saw tens of thousands or men marching off to war, amid cheering throngs, knowing that their brave soldiers would be returning home soon, victorious in what would be called the Great World War. The French managed to stall the invading Germans short of Paris, and the armies dug in for what became four bloody years of stalemated trench warfare. On the eastern front, the German army under General Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff used brilliant tactics and railroading to first engage and destroy the Imperial Russian Second Army and a few days later, the First Army.

Machine guns made a real appearance on the battlefields, and tanks came later. There were air battles, but the airplanes of the time were few and flimsy, and not able to make the deep bombing runs into enemy territory that were seen twenty years later in World War II. Continue reading →

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And these are the people the ‘Palestinian’ supporters admire?

We’ve seen so many demonstrations, by supposedly educated Americans and other Westerners, in support of the ‘Palestinians’, their Islamic culture, ‘settler colonialism,’ and fighting ‘Islamophobia’. Sensible people have mocked them, noting that those protesters are the beneficiaries of ‘settler colonialism,’ being privileged to live in the United States, and especially the “Queers for Palestine,” pointing out that being openly queer in any of the Islamic lands is an invitation to beating, torture, jail, or even execution.

Now we come to this, from, of all place, al Jazeera:

Five children among seven killed in attack on Pakistan polio vaccine drive

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemns attack near a girls’ school in the southwestern province of Balochistan.

All Saints’ Day, November 1, 2024

At least seven people, including five schoolchildren, have been killed and 23 injured in a bombing near a girls’ school in southwestern Pakistan, officials said.

Friday’s attack targeted police guarding a polio vaccination drive in Mastung, a town in Balochistan province.

“The target was a police van which was going to pick up a polio [vaccination] team,” Senior Superintendent of Police Rahmat Ullah told the Reuters news agency.

One police officer and a shopkeeper were also killed in the explosion, senior police officer Abdul Fatah told the AFP news agency.

The blast was believed to have been caused by an improvised device attached to a motorcycle parked near the school.

The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have frequently attacked polio vaccinators, claiming that they were distributing evil, Western medicine. Some believe that the vaccines are prohibited by Islam:

Another population study from Peshawar, Pakistan, reported that 79% of participants were not willing to vaccinate their children as they believe that vaccine was composed of ingredients that are prohibited in their religion.

These are the people the supporters of the ‘Palestinians’ admire!

Of course, the doctors who developed the two polio vaccines were Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, both of whom were Jews, so perhaps that has something to do with the radical Islamists not wanting people vaccinated.

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There’s no threat quite like an empty threat!

“Why do you keep bashing your head into that wall?” ask sensible people.

“Because it feels so good when I stop,” answers Ali Khamenei.

“We are capable of destroying all that the Zionists possess with one operation,” said General Ali Fadavi, the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps deputy commander. So, General Fadavi is telling us that Iran’s two separate ballistic missile attacks on Israel, the vast majority of which were intercepted, and the few that hit doing little damage, were not attempts to ‘destroy all that the Zionists possess’?

Iranian Officials Threaten Retaliation for Israeli Strikes

It was unclear how or when Iran plans to respond, or whether the rhetoric could be bluster. Iranian officials had downplayed the damage of Israel’s last attack.

By Farnaz Fassihi | Hallowe’en, October 31, 2024

Two top Iranian officials on Thursday said Iran planned to respond to Israel’s recent attacks, according to Iranian media, threatening to continue a cycle of retaliation between the countries.

“Iran’s response to the Zionist aggression is definite,” said Gen. Ali Fadavi, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to Iranian media. “We have never left an aggression unanswered in 40 years. We are capable of destroying all that the Zionists possess with one operation.”

General Fadavi’s remarks, made to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television station, were the first statement from an Iranian official indicating that Iran intended to retaliate to Israel’s Oct. 26 strikes on its soil. The escalating tit-for-tat cycle of direct attacks between Iran and Israel over the last six months has taken the region to the brink of an all-out war, but neither side appears to be standing down.

The second Iranian official, the head of the supreme leader’s office, Gholamhossein Mohammadi Golpayegani, also said on Thursday that Iran planned to deliver “a fierce, tooth-breaking response” to Israel’s “desperate action,” according to Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards.

A “tooth-breaking response”? It’s a good thing that there are so many Jewish dentists! 🙂

Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the attack after reviewing the damages reported by military officials, which detailed the strikes across Tehran’s missile production plants and defense systems, including the killing of four soldiers. The attack did not target existing missile stockpiles, meaning that Iran has some left, but the ability of the mad mullahs to have more of them built. The attack did not target Iran’s nuclear weapons research facility, which is supposed to have been seriously hardened against attack.

In one regard, I get it. The Ayatollah has to strike at Israel last, because he feels the need to save face, both for his country and for himself. However, he is reported to be seriously, if not terminally ill, and at 85-years-old, he doesn’t have that much time left on earth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably looks at things the same way, that Israel must strike last, but his concerns are different: Israel faces enemies north and south and cannot afford the slightest sign of weakness. Mr Netanyahu’s political position isn’t the strongest, so there are personal reasons for him to continue to strike.

Iran striking Israel is, in the end, fanaticism. None of the actual nations bordering Israel want war, because they know that Israel is capable of defeating them easily. Iran is 1,000 miles away from Israel, and isn’t an Arabic nation; the people there are primarily Persians. Iran’s grievance with Israel is wholly religious, because the Islamists who control the place hate Jews. There is absolutely no other reason for Iran to want to fight Israel.

But, then again, Iran is ultimately governed by a madman.

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World War III Watch: Will American/NATO weapons be used against North Korean troops inside Russia? With President Biden sinking into dementia, who will take that decision?

This site noted, four days ago, that there were roughly 3,000 North Korean troops ‘undergoing training at military bases in eastern Russia’, and that John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said those troops would become “legitimate military targets” if they should be used in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Now those troops aren’t quite so far away. From The New York Times:

Ukraine Braces for Russians to Assault With North Korean Troops

Several thousand North Korean soldiers have arrived in Russia’s western Kursk region, where they are expected to support Moscow’s efforts to dislodge invading Ukrainian forces.

By Constant Méheut | Monday, October 28, 2024 | 10:53 AM EDT

Kyiv — Ukraine is bracing for assaults involving North Korean soldiers who arrived last week in Russia’s western Kursk region, where they are expected to support Moscow’s efforts to dislodge Ukrainian forces who invaded in August. Continue reading →