Why Israel (Secretly) Loves the Islamic State

Boundaries of the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS or the Caliphate) shift from day to day. Currently most of the Islamic State territory is a good day's drive from northern Israel, about 350 miles. But pockets of Islamic State control are already within a few miles of Israel, or at least the Golan Heights (illegally and apparently permanently occupied by Israel), according to the Carter Center map that tracks the Syrian conflict:



The bottom left of the map touches Israel. Lebanon is to the east, Turkey to the north, and Jordan below the long slant at the bottom.

While many people in the world are upset at the to-date triumphs of the Islamic State, Israel is not. Here, by Israel, I mean the typically ultra-orthodox, nationalist Jews who have controlled the government for some time now. There are still many Jews in Israel that believe in human rights for all peoples, they just have been marginalized over time.

The Islamic State fits perfectly into the National Zionist Zeitgeist Ideology (NZZI) narrative. Zionists like to pretend that Palestine was empty, more or less, before they arrived. The existence of large numbers of Palestinian survivors of the Holocaust of 1948 has always been an embarrassment. Extremist Zionists have always advocated a Greater Israel with various boundaries, but typically including everything south of Turkey and north of Mecca, to be taken in bites, of course.

The Islamic State appears to Americans and Europeans to have no redeeming qualities. ISIS are ultra-orthodox Islamists hell bent on taking over the world and willing to kill anyone who disagrees with them, even other Sunni Islamic sects. Unlike the Palestinians, who traditionally were either moderates or secular, and the PLO, which was Marxist and therefore atheist, the Islamic State has no appeal to anyone outside its own camp.

The Islamic State is the Israeli caricature of Palestinians, Arabs and Islam made into reality.

So if the Islamic State takes over Syria, the Israelis can dust off the old war plans for the capture of Damascus. No one would stop their fighting ISIS, and the people of Damascus might actually welcome them. At first.

If the Islamic State takes Syria it will also take Lebanon and Jordan. Then Greater Israel is just a matter of eating, digesting, and eating again. Enough area can be left to the Islamic State to make it a permanent global threat that justified anything Israel does, including to the Palestinians within its borders.

For the Israelis and Islamic State, it is a win-win situation. Of course, as Hitler learned when he tried to create Greater Germany, things don't always go according to plan.

What is there in Syria? Apocalypse

"Mesopotamia . . . yes . . . oil . . . irrigation . . . we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine . . . yes . . . the Holy Land . . . Zionism . . . we must have Palestine; Syria . . . h'm . . . what is there in Syria? Let the French have that." — Lloyd George during the 1919 Peace Conference, thinking aloud in the presence of Arnold Toynbee [Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, page 381]

What is there is Syria? Not Lebanon or Palestine. Both were traditionally part of Syria, but were partitioned off by the Great Powers (the old French Empire and British Empire) in the early 20th century.

How many people are left in Syria? Maybe 18 million. Note that Greece has a smaller population, about 11 million. So why are we so worried about a debt default in Greece, when the Apocalypse has already come to Syria? Because the Greeks owe the rest of Europe so much money. Syrians made the mistake of not borrowing vast sums of money from America and Europe.

Of course, to borrow vast sums of money from Europe and America, the Syrians would have had to give up much of their autonomy. They would have to undertake a pro-American and pro-Israeli foreign policy. And they would have to use the loans to make profits for the lenders, which was a little hitch the Greeks forgot about.

After the French Empire finished mismanaging Syria in 1945, it was left to the locals to mismanage their country. The French apparently trained the locals well.

At one point, when the two empires were dividing up what bits of the world they had not grabbed already before World War I, the city of Mosul and the area around it was supposed to be part of Syria. Mosul was already known to have oil. The French and British argued. They decided Mosul would be part of British Iraq, but that French oil companies would share the profits from Mosul oil, and would allow a pipeline to be built through Syria so the oil could be picked up on the Mediterranean coast.

Syria may not have much, but people want it all the same. It was building up a respectable tourist industry before the current civil war began. So of course President Bashar Assad and the political and economic elite wanted to hold on. It's not like they were in the position to grab anything else. They could not even grab the Golan Heights back from Israel.

Every system, no matter how democratic or how authoritarian, has its outsiders who would like to become a new part of the old elite, or a new elite. Assad and friends had made enemies, and for all I know some of their complaints might have been justified. In any case protest turned to civil war in 2011.

Civil war is usually a bad choice. Maybe the legally elected regime could have compromised more and averted the war, but I doubt it. The Syrian civil war was always about Islamic radicalism. Sunni Arabs account for about 60% of the population, yet Assad is Shia and the government is dominated by the Shia minority. Politically the government is dominated by the Baath party and its allies in the National Progressive Front, which includes many Sunni Arabs.

Some people just never modernize. They think religious platitudes are actually fact-based. They don't want to tolerate anyone who does not believe in the same fairy-tales as themselves. Apparently there were plenty of these people in Syria, because they flocked to the rebellion. Then the I-am-more Islamic than you game got some momentum. Al Qaeda became prominent, then its even-more-radical offshoot the Islamic State.

Syria may not have anything the British Empire wanted after World War I, but when you have nothing, even Syria may be attractive. The Islamic State wants Syria, and since the U.S. has an irrational hatred of Assad and the Baath Party, it won't be a big surprise if the Islamic State gets what it wants.

Wither then? Turkey? More likely Jordan. The difference is that Jordan has long been a U.S. client state. Whoever is President (of the U.S.) at that point will probably try to get Saudi Arabia or Israel to defend Jordan. But likely at that point, if they are not needed somewhere else in the world, U.S. troops will be deployed in earnest.

Even when you are better armed and better trained, fighting fanatics is not a job any sane person wants. They just keep coming at you. You begin to feel like you are a minor character in the Walking Dead series. You can't let your guard down for a moment. Ask any Vietnam Veteran.

It kind of makes me wish we had just let the old U.S.S.R. have Afghanistan and a free hand to convert the lot of them to atheism.

Islamic State compared with St. Bartholomew's Day Roman Catholics

I don't like the Islamic State, or ISIS. I try to be tolerant of people's religions and philosophies, but when a group tries to impose its religion (including atheism) using violence, I take issue.

In this essay I want to provide some historical context for the level of violence that has been practiced by ISIS during the last few years. This is by no means meant to excuse ISIS. It is meant to remind people that religious violence this is a long-term problem that has not been confined to any particular religion or ethnicity.

Historical comparisons to choose from are numerous, but I believe the most appropriate religious one is known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Spin the time machine back to Europe in 1572 and a great religious transformation was taking place. Spurred on by the printing press making Bibles more available, a variety of Protestant groups had broken the monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church on religious life in Europe. That monopoly had previously been enforced by Rome killing anyone who disagreed with it from roughly 400 A.D. onward. Martin Luther was simply the first of what the Catholic Church called Heretics to disagree (in 1517) and live.

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre took place in France in 1572. France was mainly Roman Catholic, but had fairly large numbers of Protestants known as Huguenots. On the eve of the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, August 23, a well-planned slaughter of the Huguenots was executed under orders from King Charles IX. No one knows for sure how many Protestants were killed, but probably at least 10,000 and perhaps many more.

I don't know how many people ISIS has killed, but we should keep in mind the difficulty in separating out murders conducted for reasons of religion, politics, or economics. Were American Indians slaughtered because they were not Christians, or because they were not paid-up members of the white race, or simply because of greed? All are partly true. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre had political and economic components as well.

So too with the Islamic State. While it has a distinctly religious character, it also shows a rather sharp interest in business enterprises. It seems to have its own power-hungry elite. While you might think that its Caliph would seek to unite all Islam against all infidels, so far ISIS seems to prefer killing Shia moslems to converting them.

Today it is hard for anyone to imagine the Roman Catholic Church killing people for not being Catholic, partly because people have short memories and partly because the Church changed. After almost enforcing Catholicism on all of Europe during its Fascist peak in World War II, Roman Catholic armies were rolled back by atheists and Protestants, with atheists suffering most of the casualties. The horrors of the Holocaust and the battlefield and defeat left a widespread disgust with the Church that led to the following decades of pretending to be a church of peace. Maybe it has pretended so long now that it has genuinely transformed itself into a peaceful organization.

Being known to be ultra-violent on the battlefield is often a good way to win battles, as ISIS has shown in both Iraq and Syria. It also cows populations and gives them time to think that they might as well profess whichever religion does not get them killed. Most people in the world today who believe in traditional religions have ancestors who decided to convert under threat of death.

I believe, at this point, that ISIS has to be defeated on the battlefield, if it is to be defeated. ISIS would not exist if the United States had not destroyed the government of Saddam Husein and attempted to destroy that of Bashar Assad. But the U.S. should keep its hands off the region from now on, except for perhaps making economic reparations for the harm we have already caused. Let Iran and Turkey fight ISIS. It is their area, they know the cultural landscape, and will doubtless do much better, given that Turkey is predominantly Sunni and Iran Shia. Both are modern nations where Islam is much more liberal, on the whole, than the ISIS version.

If necessary, let the Saudis send their fat-ass princes to the slaughter, instead of sucking on all the delights of the earth bought with their oil money.

Perhaps August 23 would be a good date for all the good people of the world to remember the victims of religious fanaticism, and to pledge to keep religious conversion efforts peaceful.

Playing Footsie with Al Qaeda

The FBI is making a diligent search for Al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. this week. They want to give them tickets to travel to Syria and Yemen, where Al Qaeda is now allied with the U.S. in the ever changing U.S. War against Terror.

Republicans don't like to talk about it. Democrats don't like to talk about it. The Pentagon and CIA don't like to talk about it. Erstwhile potential candidates for President don't like to talk about it.

In particular Al Qaeda will deny it. Al Qaeda are getting their asses kicked badly enough without being openly associated with their (former) Great Satan, the United States of Christian Crusaders and Jew Lovers.

But the fact of the matter is the U.S. has new enemies, and so does Al Qaeda. The most prominent are ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and the government of Syria led by President Assad.

New enemies means new friends. Al Qaeda was already fighting two major U.S. enemies, Assad and ISIS. But they were also still fighting some of our friends in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Yemen situation is the tipping point, which is actually quite queer, but then you can't find a group of queerer idiots than the people who run the U.S. government and security establishment. They don't like the Houthis (formally Ansar Allah).

As far as I can tell, the U.S. people (except our own ultra-orthodox nut cases) should like the Houthis, but then not only am I not in charge, and Barack won't even return my phone calls.

The Houthis are Shia Islam, which is the nepotistic branch of Islam that believes that actual descendents of Mohammed should be in charge. In any case they started out peaceful, were oppressed by the U.S. and Saudi backed puppet government of what's-his-name (do you have as much trouble keeping track of all the U.S. puppet governments as I do? Could we not just have one Puppet to Rule Them All, or maybe at most one per continent?), and did just what the Tea Party would do: got out their guns.

I won't boor you with detail, but here we are in March 2015, and the Houthis have kicked the butt of the current U.S. puppet, "President" Hadi. They don't control all of Yemen yet, and the International Community (that would be the U.S. and its hand-puppet Merry Olde England) are pretending that Hadi is still the Government of Yemen.

Fortunately Hadi still has some people fighting with him against the "rebels." Guess who. No, Guess again. Have you not been paying attention? Al Qaeda.

Now the circle is complete. I'm not saying Al Qaeda is a U.S. sock puppet. That will come later. But they can't fight those terrible Houthis and ISIS and Syria's Assad without weapons.

You know the type. Well, maybe you don't get around that much, so let me tell you about the type. They say they like Allah and Mohammed, but what they really like is weapons and mayhem. So if you want to be friends, just hook them up with the world's biggest producer of arms and mayhem. The United States of America, Inc. It will make them the Mouse that Roared.

As in the Arms for Contras campaign, it is a bit too early for Republicans in Congress to berate Democrats as yellow-bellied liberals for refusing to directly send arms and trainers to Al Qaeda to help fight terrorism. No, helping will be done through the CIA/Pentagon black budgets, filtered through Saudi or United Arab Emirate obscure trading companies.

So let me be the first to say, thanks for switching sides! Welcome to the Good Guys! I hear you are good soldiers. I am glad you are now fighting against the enemies of the U.S. If I'm ever in Yemen or Syria, I'll buy you a beer. I hear any one of you is the equivalent of 3 Navy Seals on the battlefield, and at a tenth the pay.

I'm glad you are now fighting for my country. Because I sure as shit would not do it myself.

Obama On Brutality and ISIS

In asking Congress to officially approve his war against the Islamic State or Caliphate (aka I.S.I.L.) President Barack Obama recently said of I.S.I.S.:

"Its barbaric murders of so many people, including American hostages, are a desperate and revolting attempt to strike fear in the hearts of people it can never possibly win over by its ideas or its ideology -- because it offers nothing but misery and death and destruction." [full text]

I don't like I.S.I.S. or violent fundamentalists of any sort. However, the American people should be aware they are being sold a bill of goods. They should know something about the record of the salespeople.

George Washington, the first President of the United States, when he was young had the men under his command scalp a French soldier during the French and Indian War. The Virginia legislature was paying for Indian scalps; George thought he should get paid for the French scalp too. Later, there was the Revolutionary War, which was not a tea party. It involved appalling acts of cruelty towards those who remained loyal to the English king. Nor was our Civil War a picnic in the park.

Fast forward through the near-extermination of native American Indian tribes and the grabbing of northern Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, and you came to the fundamental event of my childhood, the U.S. War Against Vietnam. In that war tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Vietnamese, including civilians, women, and children, were burned to death by U.S. napalm bombings. But no one responsible was ever brought to justice for this.

President Obama himself regularly executes people he believes are his enemies, without bothering to arrest them, to avoid putting them on trial. He refuses to get the U.S. to join the International Criminal Court, which would then be able to charge U.S. citizens with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is just a clever thug, but so are Putin, Obama, Merkel and, as far as I know, many of the world's leaders. Baghdadi is certainly no more barbaric than the Saudi royal family.

I don't want to excuse brutality by pointing to its near universal use by political (and often religious and business) leaders. I believe if the U.S. and other "great powers" would stop interfering, eventually the people of the Middle East would work out states with boundaries that suite them, including a sovereign or autonomous Kurdish state.

Barack Obama proves that going to prep school and Harvard is no insurance against brutality. What should the U.S. government do if we really want peace, democracy, and religious tolerance in the Syria-Iraq region, or anywhere in the world? [Note that I am switching from critical of all violent thugs mode to maneuvering thugs against each other to allow people to get rid of them mode.]

First, we should assist the lesser of the evil brutal thugs in the region, Bashar al-Assad, and his regime. Doing that would win the U.S. a great deal of good will. If Bashar can kick Al Qaeda and ISIS out of Syria, that would perhaps allow the more modern, less religiously orthodox people in Iraq to reduce ISIS back to being a small terrorist group.

Second, we should recognize the Arab state of Palestine. Not only would that win us goodwill in the region, it would tend to dampen the most extreme Islamic elements in Palestine.

Third, we should make peace with Iran. They have done nothing to warrant their ill treatment at our hands.

In fact, we should behave only in the most friendly and ethical way in every region of the world. People have a right to national self-determination. They have a right to not like U.S. policy, or our (admittedly decadent, but fun) culture.

Fourth, we should use our resources to fix our own problems, which are legion. We have brutal drug gang members killing each other daily basis here. We need to offer real hope to all Americans that they can get a fair economic deal without having to turn to crime or subscribe to the hopelessness of permanently working for less than a living wage. We really do need to fix our crumbling infrastructure, help our industries become more globally competitive (and not be cutting wages), and make a much more serious effort to protect the environment and the health of all Americans.

I'd be happy to meet to advise President Obama if he wants to make a turn for the better in his last two years in office. I'd be happy to serve as an emissary to President Bashar if the U.S. wants to make amends. I'd be happy to serve constructively. But in this system, while they may not shoot you just for having peaceful opinions, they certainly are not going to let anyone who is not basically a war criminal anywhere near the ear of any President.

ISIS and Saudi Arabia are Evil Twins

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS [the U.S. government prefers "so called" Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL] is almost exactly like the early Saud family proto-state that eventually became Saudi Arabia.

So it could be argued that the U.S. should stay out of the mess. If we are okay with Saudi Arabia, we should be okay with ISIS.

U.S. governments have long pandered to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. Barack Obama is just the last of a long line of Presidents who have no problems shaking hands and forming coalitions with the Saudis. It does not matter that they are undemocratic, oppressive, women-hating, religious fanatical thugs who finance terrorism. They are strangely pro-American undemocratic, oppressive, women-hating, religious fanatical thugs who finance terrorism and help America in many ways, like being friendly with Israel.

The Saud's emerged from the mess the British Empire made in the Middle East. You'll recall that the British Empire was built by undemocratic, oppressive, women-hating, capitalist fanatical thugs who were not satisfied with conquering Wales and Ireland. No, they were clearly not going to be satisfied until every nation in the world was enslaved. After they grabbed much of Africa, including Egypt, they turned their greedy blue eyes to the Middle East, which until World War I was ruled, more or less, by the Ottoman Empire (an Islamic empire with its capital in Turkey).

The Brits promised the Arabs that if they would just fight against the Ottomans, they would be allowed to set up a Arab state that included the entire Arabian peninsula as well as the Arab majority parts of Palestine and (what are today) Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. They also promised Palestine to the Jews and Lebanon and Syria to their French ally. The Faisal family, who ruled around Mecca and Medina on the west side of the peninsula, took the bait.

The Saud family, putting themselves at the head of Islamic religious fanatics known as Wahabbi [who make the ISIS guys look like Quakers], decided that they would smile at the British, take their offer of arms, and use the war to extend the area of their tribal rule in the central peninsula

When World War I ended the British took Iraq and Palestine for themselves, set up puppet governments [including the Saud area of control] here and there, and gave Lebanon and Syria to the French imperialists. This discredited the Faisal family. By 1932 the Saud's army of religious fanatics (remember, this is to show they are like ISIS) had murdered pretty much everyone who opposed them. The Faisal family got British protection in Jordan as a booby prize.

You have to admire the Sauds, though, in the same way you would admire any highly-effective predator. When oil was discovered in 1937, Ibn Saud double-crossed the British and gave the development rights to American oil companies.

The pro-American nature of the Saud family has always been practical. America has always been the Christian imperialist predator most removed from the Saud terrain and most willing to provide arms to a totalitarian Islamic regime.

It does not seem likely that ISIS will be able to repeat the Saudi feat of establishing a "permanent" radical Islamic state, but then again they might. You can see why the Saudi fear ISIS as much as they fear Iran, Shia in general, and anything that might stir their 30 million or so people to revolt against them.

The problem for ISIS is they are not duplicitous enough. They could get further by using the same strategy of combining diplomacy with militancy that the Saud used. They could also have been more forgiving of their Islamic neighbors, encouraging people to convert to their own particular brand of craziness, rather executing people just for being Shia or whatever.

There is something known as survival bias. We know about the Saud and Wahabbism because they survived. We have forgotten the many Arabic tribes that once rivaled or even dominated them. Perhaps ISIS will soon be bludgeoned back to hiding in caves and basements.

But I would not bet on that,either, not yet. There is a slim chance that the Sauds, not ISIS, will be history in a few years. Trying to appear to be the leaders of the Islamic world while actually breaking bread with the Israelites and Americans is quite a balancing. The Sauds have grown fat, and the entire country knows how corrupt and un-Islamic they are behind closed doors. On the other hand, being fat and un-Islamic probably appeals to quite a few people.

However much the current leaders of ISIS may pontificate, they will go through the usual curve if they survive and prosper. They will maintain a radical Islamic front, and grow a fat un-Islamic rear end.

Woodrow Wilson, Eugene V. Debs, and Bashing Bashar

Double standards are the norm in propaganda, including history as propaganda. Barack Obama regularly has "terrorists" and innocent civilians near them executed without trial (and in many cases based on poor intelligence). Most U.S. citizens don't think twice about it. It is a small price to pay in order to not have to accept God (Allah), and Mohamed as his final prophet, and some self-styled Caliph as as their sole interpreter in present time.

The refusal of President Obama to work with the President of Syria, Bashar Assad, against a common enemy, ISIS, is typically rationalized by declaring that Assad is a dictator, and a brutal dictator who imprisons Syrians who oppose him. Perhaps he has executed some without trial, or at least without the kind of trial you can get in the U.S. if you are not just gunned down in the street, and if you can afford a good lawyer.

Is there a qualitative difference between leaders like Bashar Assad and American Presidents who have arrested and executed their opponents? If so, what are the factors that make the difference qualitative? Is there a meaningful difference between imprisoning or killing peaceful opposition, as opposed to armed opposition in a civil war?

Here I will examine these question in the context of World War I. That will give some historical distance. Yet it was the greed displayed by France and Great Britain during World War I that led to the Middle East being politically unstable since that era.

Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States in 1912. It is difficult today to imagine the politics of that era. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party had liberal and conservative wings; on the whole I think the Republican Party was still the more progressive of the two. William H. Taft was President and ran for re-election as a Republican. Taft had been Vice-President under Theodore Roosevelt, who ran on the Progressive Party ticket after he failed to get the Republican Party nomination. These were the results:

1912	Party	Popular Votes	Electoral College Votes
Woodrow Wilson	Democratic	6,293,454	435
Theodore Roosevelt	Progressive	4,119,538	88
William H. Taft	Republican	3,484,980	8
Eugene V. Debs	Socialist	900,672	0
Eugene W. Chafin	Prohibition	206,275	0

Note that even though Woodrow Wilson was pretending to be somewhat progressive, and Roosevelt ran as a progressive, the Socialist Party candidate, Eugene V. Debs, received a very substantial number of votes, about 6%.

Woodrow Wilson is arguably the intellectual architect of modern segregation. So it should not be surprising that he won every state in the racist, conservative Old South.

Woodrow Wilson was not just a white supremacist, he was a true believer in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxon culture. When World War I broke out in Europe he favored backing the British Empire, which then oppressed about 1/3 of the world's people. But domestic politics, including large numbers of Irish-American and German-American voters in the Democratic Party, kept the President and the United States in a state of neutrality.

Socialism was meant to be an international movement for peace and justice, and before the war Socialist parties in Europe opposed their respective governments militarism. However, after the war started, each nation's Socialist Party tended to rationalize supporting their own nation's efforts.

President Wilson ran again in 1916, rallying voters to the slogan "He kept us out of war." Anyway, he was too busy invading Mexico and a variety of Latin American nations. But the voting went back to the normal Democrat vs. Republican split:

1916	Party	Popular Votes	Electoral College Votes
Woodrow Wilson	Democratic	9,129,606	227
Charles E. Hughes	Republican	8,538,221	254
A. I. Benson	Socialist	585,113	0
J. F. Hanly	Prohibition	220,506	0

Then Woodrow Wilson asked the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany. The vote in Congress on April 6, 1917 was 82 to 6 in the Senate, 373 to 50 in the House; hardly unanimous. Thus we entered the war on the side of the evilest empire in history, the British Empire. We did not fight for democracy; most people in the British empire were not allowed to vote.

Unlike in Germany, France, and Britain, the Socialist Party in the United States did not give up its peaceful and internationalist stand. It opposed the war, as did the IWW and other organizations and individuals. Wilson's reaction? He ordered massive arrests of those who opposed him.

One of those arrested was Eugene V. Debs, who had opposed him as a Presidential candidate in 1912. In 1918 Wilson was arrested. He was found guilty on September 12 and was thrown in a dungeon. The Supreme Court of the United States, in Debs v. United States (249 U.S. 211 (1919)) ruled neither Debs nor any other American's right of free speech included the right to be for peace during wartime.

Debs ran for President in 1920, from his jail cell, and received 919,799 votes.

So how different is that from Assad putting one of his critics in jail?

Wilson is not alone among Presidents and other powerful Americans in his crimes against humanity. George Washington executed soldiers for desertion even before he was elected President. Every U.S. rebellion has been brutally put down, most notably in the Civil War. Ronald Reagan ordered peaceful demonstrators to be shot dead even before he became President. The list is finite, but large.

I might sympathize with rebels in certain cases, but I don't expect anyone in power to hand over the keys to the government without a fight. Deciding to rebel, as the American slave masters did in 1776, is a hazardous course, not to be undertaken lightly.

Bashar Assad's crime, from Obama and the American Establishment point of view, is not that he has held on to power, or how he has held onto power. His crime is not becoming a pro-American puppet. His crime is doing what he thinks is best for Syria.

Some times there are happy endings. When Warren G. Harding was elected President in 1920 he tried hard to undo Wilson's worst deeds. He made peace with Germany, and he released Eugene V. Debs from prison. Harding was a Republican, and he made the mistake of letting his corrupt friends run the nation. But I'll take him for a better U.S. President any day over Woodrow Wilson.

And I'll take Eugene V. Debs over any elected President in U.S. history.

ISIS Thrives after Demonizing Assad Backfires

Why do we think of kings as better than dictators? Could it be too much Disney, or the old tradition of upper-class Americans sucking up to the Queen (or King) of England? What differentiates an elected President-for-life like Franklin D. Roosevelt from a dictator like Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein?

Americans don't ask themselves these questions, but they should. While this essay is focused on Dr. Bashar Assad [or al-Assad], the current President of Syria, this is just one example of how Americans fall prey to propaganda created by the government of the United States of America. And how lying, especially systematic lying, backfires.

[Note that the U.S. government, with cooperation from Microsoft and Google, has hidden or blocked access to official Syrian government web sites. Try searching "government of syria official web site" or any variation on it if you don't believe me.]

In the Dictator column place the fact that Bashar Assad became President when Hafez Assad, his father, died. On the other hand, we have had two father-son presidencies in the U.S., Adams and Bush, and have come close to having others (Taft).

The U.S. considered Hafez Assad an enemy because he was a leftist, and therefore pro-Soviet, back when we demonized anyone who dared to not let their country become a U.S. colony. But within the leftist — everyone get up in the morning and have a nice day instead of slaving for some capitalist boss — countries, Hafez was a pretty decent leader. Richard Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger's, description of Hafez is worth quoting at length:

"Withal, I developed a high regard for Assad. In the Syrian context he was a moderate indeed. He leaned toward the Soviets as the source of his military equipment. But he was far being from a Soviet stooge. He had a first-class mind allied to a wicked sense of humor. I believe that I was the first Western Leader with whom he had dealt consistently. He grasped the opportunity for some free tutorials on Western political systems. During the Syrian shuttle, almost every bargaining session began with an hour or so of perceptive questioning on the institutions and personalities of the Western democracies."

The quote is direct from Years of Upheaval [page 781], and is about negotiations in the year 1974, the year Nixon was hounded out of office.

Why did the end of the Soviet era not result in the un-demonization of Hafez Assad, which would have meant that Bashar Assad might have been viewed factually, rather than demonized?

Syria, not just the Assad family, had reason to be anti-U.S. aside from being socialist. Syrians know Syrian history. Add that to the ability of the state of Israel to look covetously upon any lands adjacent to their own, and the enormous pro-Jewish bias of America, and you have your answer. It never had anything to do with Islam, though it will pretty soon if ISIS adds all of Syria (except that part already occupied by Israel) to its new Caliphate.

Syria is in the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of civilization, as far as we know. It has had its ups and downs over the past five millennia. When industrialization gave the western European powers the ability to take any colonies they wanted, starting around 1800, for a long time Syria was "protected" by the Ottoman (Turkish) empire.

Contrary to popular mythology (taught as history) in the U.S., World War I was started by England (the British Empire), France, and Russia mainly in order to grab the lands governed by a weakened Ottoman empire. France had already grabbed Algeria in 1830 and Tunisia in 1881, and after the war grabbed Syria (sending in troops to depose Faisal I in 1920), with the fig leaf of calling their colony a League of Nations mandate. This is despite the fact that the British Empire had promised that a united Arab nation would be created, which would have included present-day Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

France, of course, was allied with the United States. France became Vichy France during World War II, a Roman Catholic dictatorship allied with Nazi Germany. A sucked-dry Syria gained independence in 1946, unlike other French colonies like Vietnam and Algeria. American support for the continuation of the French and British empires led not just Syria, but most newly-independent nations, to be rightfully suspicious of the United States.

And so Syrians were not pro-American, and had to be demonized, long before the first Assad came to power in 1971. But it is political suicide for anyone in a position of power in the U.S., like Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, or members of Congress, to stand up and say "Bashar Assad is okay." The other dogs would rather use such an incident to rip their rivals apart, rather than change U.S. policy to reflect reality.

Not to mention Zionist Israelis and Americans. Say anything nice about Bashar and money just would drain from the campaign funds, and the slush funds, and the other indirect bribes that make America a pseudo-democracy.

American foreign policy has a way of shooting itself in the foot. We helped France grab its former colony of Indochina after World War II, and ended up fighting the Vietnam War. We helped radical Islamists throw a modern, Soviet-backed regime out of Afghanistan, and they morphed into the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We talk about democracy, but when the people of a nation decide not to elect American puppets, we back military coups. We are allied with the Dictator of Saudi Arabia, but opposed to a democratic regime in Iran.

We, led by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, decided to encourage the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria. Instead of just demanding elections, the pro-U.S. faction, which would have lost elections, started a civil war. This provided an opening for radical Islam, which before had been minimally present in Syria. Not only has ISIS grabbed much of Syria, but it used Syria as a base for grabbing much of Iraq.

President Obama is befuddled. If he helps Assad, the Republicans will accuse him of helping Iran, another unfairly demonized nation. If he helps the non-ISIS rebels against Assad, most likely ISIS will take over the entire country. So Obama's best domestic political bet is to do as little as possible and hope that Assad's popularity will enable him to defeat ISIS, and of course the pro-U.S. rebels, without U.S. assistance.

The Israelis are stone-cold crazy too. If they had any sense they would let the Palestinians have their rump independent state in the West Bank and come to the aid of Bashar Assad. ISIS is the equivalent of the Jews after the Holocaust: it has come through the fire, and if it has the resources of both Iraq and Syria at its disposal, it will probably take over Jordan and Saudi Arabia too and then drive Israel into the sea.

Hillary will likely be our next President. Despite the liberal gloss, Hillary is America's Margaret Thatcher, a cold-hearted imperialist who will kill anyone who gets in her way, including women and children. That is why everyone is trying to get their battles won before January 2017. No one who knows her expects any mercy or humanity from President Clinton II.

Should the U.S. Arm Syria to fight ISIS?

ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is no ordinary group of rebels bent on becoming a new government. ISIS is ultra-violent and ultra-orthodox, and worse still, ultra-competent in both military and economic matters.

Sometimes the least bad choice is the best choice. ISIS is clearly (from our secular, freedom-and-equality oriented American perspective) the worst choice for governance of the Arabic/Islamic nations.

It could be argued that Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally, and that the rulers of Saudi Arabia are as religiously oppressive and dictatorial as ISIS. We believe the U.S. should not be allied with the Saudis, but then again they have grown soft on their oil money and don't represent a regional threat. We should continue to recognize the de facto, if democratically illegitimate, government of Saudi Arabia.

When it come to ISIS we have choices, both short term and long term. In the short term the only realistic choices are supporting the de facto governments of Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian government has long opposed U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, but for good reason. The Arabs have been beat up by European nations and the U.S. for about two centuries now. People are angry, and that anger has now been distilled into ISIS.

The Syrian government is headed by Bashar al-Assad, and in some ways resembles a dictatorship. But opposition parties are allowed to participate in elections, and Assad seems to be genuinely popular among much of Syria's population. In particular, when it comes to religion Assad has been non-sectarian, more so than most U.S. politicians.

ISIS was able to grow in strength in Syria because of the civil war against the Assad regime that broke out after the Arab Spring. That civil war has devastated the country, but it has not lead to the pro-U.S. rebels replacing the current government. At this point in time the pro-U.S. rebels are rapidly being squeezed between ISIS and the government of Syria.

President Obama, in consultation with those few members of Congress who are not suffering from hardening of the brain, should make a dramatic change in U.S. policy.

By giving support to Assad, including both military and economic support, the U.S. could put a stop to ISIS before it gets further out of control. ISIS running Syria, or Iraq, or Syria and Iraq, would be a disaster and would probably lead to an ISIS takeover of Jordan and then Saudi Arabia. With all those resources, global Islamic jihad would certainly be on the agenda.

U.S. support for Assad could be contingent on his government pardoning the pro-U.S. rebels and encouraging them to participate in the next election. The U.S. could give economic aid to compensate for the damage done. U.S. military aid would go a long way towards defeating ISIS. Done right, this might even eventually swing Syria into the U.S. camp, or at least into a tolerant neutrality.

Human rights activists will protest that the Assad regime has committed crimes against humanity. That might be true, but in a civil war it is hard to separate out civilians from resistance fighters. The U.S. failed to make that separation in its wars against Vietnam and the Philippines, and when it dropped firebombs and atomic bombs on the cities of Japan, and many, many other times. When the big fish have been fried, including George W. Bush, perhaps then we can go after the small fry.

If Assad defeats ISIS without U.S. aid, that would be fine, but it would create a long-term dynamic where Syria remains unfriendly to the U.S.

I simply would not bet on Assad' crew beating ISIS. It is too dangerous of a bet.

[Originally published at Mendoday]

Caitlin Hayden Delivers Obama's Declaration of War on Syria

Caitlin Hayden, speaking for the National Security Council (NSC) announced yesterday President Barack Obama is requesting $500 million from Congress to fund a war against Syria. [See White House Caitlin Hayden press release, June 26, 2014]

This amounts to requesting a declaration of war, and if acted upon would constitute a war crime under international law.

Americans have trouble understanding how criminal their international actions are. Imagine that nations are actually equal under international law. Now imagine the Syrian government openly giving $500 million in weapons to a U.S. opposition group to overthrow the U.S. government. Any U.S. President would feel justified in declaring war on Syria in that circumstance.

Giving military aid to groups trying to overthrow their government is an act of war. Sure, it is an act of war the U.S. has gotten away many times since 1776. We act as if we are above the rules of international law and common decency.

Barack Obama has always been a slick lawyer-politician. Note he should ask the Congress to declare war on Syria, as the U.S. Constitution requires. Instead he is raping Syria through the backdoor. [But Congress declaring war, if Syria has not invaded the U.S., would still be a war crime.]

It will take time for the new "Counter-Terrorism Partnerships Fund," of $1.5 billion (of which $500 million is designated to be used against Syria) to become law. It is part of the Administration's Fiscal 2015 Overseas Contingency Operations budget. Congress could reject it, but with almost every Congressional district containing either a military base or major military contractor, the chances are Congress will pass it. A few congress people with anti-war constituencies will preserve their electoral chances by voting against the measure, while going along and benefitting from the system.

To get a successful opposition in Congress would require massive, nationwide popular opposition to the legislation. To get that Americans would have to care that they are a war criminal nation led by war crimes parties, a war crimes government, and a war crimes military-industrial establishment.

Note that this illegal attack on the government of the sovereign state of Syria is not about dictatorships or democracy. The current leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, was recently re-elected. Close by we have the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, which has a far worse human rights record than Syria. Women have no rights in Saudi Arabia; they do in Syria. Syria has religious freedom; Saudi Arabia does not. In terms of crushing any opposition, Saudi Arabia is worse than Syria.

So why is the U.S. government (it was U.S. policy long before Barack Obama lied his way into the Presidency) attacking Syria instead of Saudi Arabia? Because Saudi Arabia is a pro-U.S. woman-oppressing radical Islamic dictatorship.

Caitlin Hayden, war crimes spokesperson for Barack Obama

Barack Obama, like President George W. Bush and many others before him, is a war criminal. I would love to put him on trial and prove it. But that is not going to happen. I'm much more likely to be put on trial, or jailed or murdered without trial for telling the truth, than he is for his war crimes.

As to my friends in the Democratic Party and Republican Party, I just want to remind you that you, too, are war criminals. Your fate should be the fate of the Nuremberg Trials defendants and the members of their organizations [See denazification]. Check out the Nuremberg principles if you are not sure if you are a war criminal, or member of an organization of war criminals, or the specifics of what constitutes a war crime.

ISIS Surprise, Dynamics of

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) looks like it took the U.S. intelligence community by surprise. You would think the CIA and other intelligence services would have seen this coming. But, looking at past failures of intelligence and analysis, I don't think the CIA is much at fault (purely on intelligence gathering and analysis. The ethics of imperialism are another matter, which I write about frequently, but not in this particular story).

The historical analogy that leaps to mind is the rapid collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China during the years following the end of World War II. In retrospect everyone, including Chiang, should have seen it coming. So why was it (the rapidity) such a surprise (even, to a large extent, to the Chinese Communist Party, which expected a much longer civil war to be required to take power)?

In both cases, the rising power was stronger than appearances led people to believe. More important, the existing power was weaker, to the point of being a sham.

ISIS does not have the long history that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had by 1946. Nor did it have, in say 2012, the base areas that the CCP had. But there are some similar characteristics.

ISIS is driven by radical Islam, which apparently is quite the motivator of men. The CCP was driven by a Chinese version of Marxism, later called Maoism, which also was very motivational.

External factors helped both groups. China had been invaded by Japan, but had been in chaos long before the Japanese decided to risk their lives to try to "restore order." Similarly Iraq had been invaded by the United States (USA), also allegedly to create a democratic, peaceful order there.

The government as run by Chiang Kai-shek was incompetent and corrupt, in many cases amounting to little more than the rule of warlords. Most Chinese felt oppressed by the "Nationalist" government, and had heard the CCP governed base areas were far better off. While the government of Iraq has support in some sectors, particularly among the Shia sects, among the Sunni sects there has long been a belief that the government is an enemy.

In the most obvious parallel, the United States armed and financed Chiang Kai-shek, as it still arms and finances the Iraq government.

The Chiang regime might have gone on ruling China incompetently had it not been for the emergence of the CCP, with its high levels of skill at both governance and war.

Apparently ISIS also has a great deal of competence at governance and war. ISIS leaders may be ultra-conservative Sunni Islam, until recently affiliated with Al Qaeda, but about two years ago they began to prioritize finances and governance. Ascetics themselves, they gained popular support by redistributing wealth to the common people, much like the CCP and the New Deal Democrats in the USA. They also used their taxing power to build up a well-trained army, and apparently to bribe both tribal leaders and many members of the Iraq army.

It is said, perhaps with some exaggeration, that Chiang's troops were defeated with the very U.S. weapons that were supposed to solidify his regime. The troops did not like the way they were treated, so they just went over the the Red Army, taking Chiang's shiny new U.S. manufactured weapons with them.

I doubt ISIS can take over all of Iraq, and I doubt they want to. By unifying the Sunni portions of Iraq and Syria they might create a new, viable state. If the lines had been drawn that way when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, a lot of trouble might have been saved. Instead the French, British and American empires drew lines in the sand for their own convenience, creating the modern states (not really nations) of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.

Perhaps the Kurds will finally get their own nation. Given Woodrow Wilson's pious, if hypocritical, yammering about national self-determination after World War I, again a lot of trouble could have been saved by just doing it then.

But of course the imperialist powers, the U.S. more so than Britain and France, do not want rational borders in the Middle East. They want a weak Middle East, and that requires lumping together Shiites and Sunnis, so that they will fight each other and be U.S. puppets, rather than gaining true independence and equality within the world community

The current version of Iraq is not yet done. A democratic and united Iraq could still emerge, but it will be a lot harder now. The government of Iraq has more popular support than the Nationalist Chinese government ever did (Chiang never risked having an election, for instance). Also, ISIS may alienate the very people who welcome them today. It would not be the first time in history that has happened.

Bombing Syria, War Crimes, and Marijuana Priorities

Politics is first of all about lying, followed by deceit, then corruption, with the public good seldom coming in better than fourth in the list of politicians' priorities.

Two seemingly unconnected events happened this week. The Obama administration (but not Obama himself) announced it would issue instructions to federal officers and prosecutors that set new priorities for the federal enforcement of marijuana laws. This is largely the result of 21 states (if you include the city of D.C.) having legalized medical marijuana, with two, Washington State and Colorado having also legalized recreational marijuana.

It took Barack Obama only six years to figure this out. The preponderance of voters are now for marijuana legalization, and the Democratic Party has been taking a lot of heat on the issue for years. The new priorities for busting people are: when the weed crosses state lines; when it is sold or given to minors; when the proceeds are used to fund other criminal enterprises; when the entrepreneurs have not made donations to the Democratic Party. In theory at least medical marijuana gets a pass in the states where it has been legalized, as does recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington State.

Then there is Syria. Some group of people there (the lone gunman theory not being bought by anyone in this case) used some type of nerve gas agent on a sufficient scale to kill hundreds of people, who are usually described as civilians. It is generally agreed this happened to a neighborhood of Damascus that is pro-Rebel and anti-President Bashar al-Assad. But Bashar denies giving the order, and a U.N. investigation team has not formed conclusions yet.

Nevertheless, former law professor, now President Barack Obama wants to bomb Syria. It won't be to help the rebels, supposedly, especially since the rebels are now led by Sunni Islamic fundamentalists. It's just a sort of international spanking, grounding (economic embargoes) having not done the trick, so far. If Syrians just go back to killing each other with small arms, artillery and the occasional beheading, Obama will be alright with that.

War crimes are a funny (odd, legally peculiar) thing. War itself is a war crime, since all wars have to be started, and starting a war is a war crime. Once a war is started there are a set of rules both sides are supposed to adhere to. If the war has a winner, the winner usually prosecutes the losing side for war crimes. Winners usually don't prosecute themselves for war crimes, though in a few cases low-level soldiers or officers have been prosecuted.

Obama can't easily try Bashar for war crimes, not without a successful invasion of Syria. But there are all sorts of war criminals he could prosecute. He has simply not chosen to make that a priority for the Justice Department.

There are the Vietnam era war criminals, many of whom are still alive. They started a war with North Vietnam, which was a war crime. They killed vast quantities of civilians both in South and North Vietnam, which was a war crime. They used chemical warfare in the form of napalm and Agent Orange, which was a war crime. They also invaded Laos and Cambodia, also war crimes. They supervised the South Vietnamese murdering civilians and POWs, which was a war crime. These war criminals would be easy to arrest and not too hard to prosecute. But it isn't a priority.

Among the other war criminals milling around Washington, D.C. and the various united States are those who initiated wars on Grenada, the states formerly known as Yugoslavia, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Libya. I probably left out a few.

Perhaps this illustration of the importance of prioritization is a mere coincidence. After all, Obama did not time the nerve gas incident, unless it was the work of the CIA. You may not realize it, but for those who plan ahead, like politicians and their stockholders, this is the gearing up time for the 2014 elections. One-third of the U.S. Senate seats will be up for grabs, as well as the entire House of Representatives. While incumbents almost always win, you can never be sure. Fundraising is in full swing and potential opponents are calculating their odds. Primaries are only a few months away.

Here in Mendocino County, where Republicans are distinguished mainly by their having enough money to smoke more than their fair share of the dope, there will be a backlash against both of Barack Obama's policies. Only the most loyal of Obamacrats want him to bomb Syria. More important, everyone is nervous about the price of marijuana. It is bound to drop as more people enter the market. To some extent that can be compensated by growing more, but at some point trying to sell marijuana will be like trying to sell houses in 2008.

Some people might have to actually make money with their real jobs, instead of just using them to launder cash.

But it is not Mendocino County that the Democratic Party bigwigs are worried about. It is the districts where the two war crimes organizations known as political parties are about evenly balanced. The competitive districts that determine which party gets to spend the loot gathered from taxpayers.

Bombing Syria makes Obama look tough, which is generally considered to be a positive thing with the voters. But it might alienate the peace-loving wing of the Democratic Party. The new marijuana policy is meant to placate that wing.

Its hard to tell what dose will work out best. Just enough dope to get people to calm down and forget about all the ways Obama has disappointed the hopes they had for him. Not so much dope as to be too out of it to vote the Democratic Party ticket come election day.

Pray for Freedom in the Vatican

The New York Time's Christmas day edition (Web edition) has a front page headline: Pope Prays for Freedom in China and Peace in Syria.

I always wonder: is this just another NYT contribution to corporate security state propaganda, or does someone there really think it is news? Do they believe the Pope's hypocrisy is so blatant they don't need to point it out to their readers?

In the accompanying picture Pope Benedict XVI looks like a horror story cutout from the 1930's, which the former Hitler Youth member pretty much is. He is flanked by two very fruity looking middle aged men I would not trust to leave alone with a child under any circumstance.

Focus on China. Religion is not illegal in China. The only real limits on religion are sensible: it can't be used for fraud or to foment rebellion or to conduct criminal activities. Pretty much every religion in the world has people living and worshipping in China, no problem. That is possible because the vast majority of people in China are reasonably Modern atheists or agnostics who don't mind some lost souls playing make believe, as long as they don't use it as an excuse for criminal behavior.

Contrast the Vatican City state. What religions are tolerated there? Only one.

The Vatican does not even tolerate dissent in its own ranks. For the past 30 years it has purged priests and bishops for crimes like sympathizing with the poor, pointing out there is little or no Biblical authority for much of Roman Catholic doctrine (including the dictatorship of the Pope), and suggesting that women and homosexuals should be treated as equals. At the same time it has protected priests and bishops who sexually assaulted children.

The same article notes the Benedict has excommunicated Chinese Catholic bishops who were elected by their fellow bishops, rather than appointed by dictator Benedict himself. Talk about tyranny and attacking freedom of religion.

The Pope tries to cover a lot of his global criminal activity by publicly praying for peace. Apparently either God does not listen to the Pope, or does not have the power of peace, or does not exist. Peace, like war, is a human endeavor, and the gods help those who help themselves.

The Pope and his archbishop henchmen should stop and read the New Testament before running down the more enlightened leaders of our world. Mathew 7:3, "And why beholdest thou the the mote that is in they brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" I quote from the King James Version of the Bible, the possession of which in Catholic Spain during the reign of Francisco Franco resulted in imprisonment. And yet Benedict wants to make many of Franco's minions into new Catholic saints.

When the Pope opens his mouth, evil has a voice. A dictatorial voice.