Last Wednesday, US President Donald Trump signed new sanctions into law against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The legislation was supported so overwhelmingly in Congress that President Trump’s ability to veto the legislation was rendered completely ineffective.
Even anti-interventionist Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard voted in favor of the bill, once again proving that Republicans and Democrats always find common ground when it comes to beating the drums of war against sovereign nations who have taken very little unwarranted hostile action — if any — towards the United States.
But these are just sanctions, not acts of war, right? There’s nothing wrong with economically bullying other countries into submission over non-compliance with the current global order, right?
Not quite.
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Sanctions are always a prelude to war. Though few are aware, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was arguably in response to America’s attempt to cripple Japan’s booming economy through embargos and asset freezes, ending Japan’s commercial relationship with the United States and provoking the desperation that led to their attack.
In August 1990, the US began a sanctions regime against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 1991, the United States invaded Iraq and completely decimated its armed forces, also directly targeting its civilian infrastructure. Following this devastation, the US extended and expanded these economic sanctions on Iraq as further punishment. The U.N. estimated these sanctions led to the deaths of 1.7 million Iraqi civilians, including between 500,000 and 600,000 children.
When Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was questioned on these statistics, she intimated that the price was “worth it.”
These sanctions only came to an end after the US invaded again in 2003 (and the complete international sanctions regime was only lifted in December 2010).
Libya also faced American-imposed sanctions beginning in the 1990s, as well, and we all know how that story ended.
In May of 2004, the US imposed economic sanctions on Syria, supposedly over Syria’s support for terrorism and its “failure to stop militants entering Iraq” – a country the US destabilized in the first place. In reality, these sanctions were a response to Syria and Iran’s growing relationship as the two countries had reportedly agreed to a mutual defense treaty that same year.
Syria has been the target of a regime change operation since as far back as 2006, and the US has been openly bombing its territory under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump; the US has already bombed the Syrian government multiple times over the past year. If it had not been for the Russian intervention, the US most likely would have ousted the Syrian government by force before Trump even took office.
Iran has been battling with sanctions for some time now, with the anti-Iranian sanctions regime serving as a smokescreen for regime change in the same manner that Libya, Syria, and Iraq were targeted previously.
In the case of Iran, the underlying motives are quite clear: the renewed set of sanctions is designed to undermine the 2015 nuclear agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even though the Trump administration is aware that Iran is in full compliance with the JCPOA, Trump has made it an official policy of his own to deliberately erode the deal.
Why would he do that?
As explained in the book Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran, authored by an ex CIA analyst who promoted the 2003 invasion of Iraq:
For those who favor regime change or a military attack on Iran (either by the United States or Israel), there is a strong argument to be made for trying this option first. Inciting regime change in Iran would be greatly assisted by convincing the Iranian people that their government is so ideologically blinkered that it refuses to do what is best for the people and instead clings to a policy that could only bring ruin on the country. The ideal scenario in this case would be that the United States and the international community present a package of positive inducements so enticing that the Iranian citizenry would support the deal, only to have the regime reject it. In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context – both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer – one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. [emphasis added]
This paradigm brilliantly explains why hawkish members of Trump’s team are completely opposed to Trump unilaterally derailing the JCPOA: These officials don’t want the blame to rest on the US, as it will ignite new tensions within the international community and directly affect the US dollar.
That being said, if the US government continues to undermine Iran with sanctions that target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – a very powerful entity within Iran – the US may end up forcing Iran to walk away from the deal, anyway. In that scenario, the US will have the outcome that they long have desired.
North Korea has been on the receiving end of a US-led sanctions regime for years, as well, and the American military is now flying bombers over its airspace, provoking the country to respond in kind.
The only question now becomes: who will Trump set America on a warpath with first: Iran or North Korea?
Trump is reportedly setting the stage for a confrontation with Iran as early as October, having found a new strategy to demonize Iran should the sanctions regime fail to bring about the war he desires before he is due to certify Iran’s compliance for the following 90-day period. This strategy involves Trump tasking his team with setting up spot-inspections at Iranian facilities in the hopes of finding ways that Iran is not complying with the JCPOA.
In the meantime, America continues its unilateral policy of bullying non-compliant states, further isolating itself from its traditional post-WWII allies. For example, Germany does view sanctions that target Russia favorably, as these sanctions hurt Germany’s own economic interests.
Not to mention that American-led sanctions push these defiant countries into the open arms of one another. Iran and Russia just signed a $2.5 billion deal last Monday, going about business as usual and giving Donald Trump the political middle finger in the process.
If the US continues to use its global stranglehold over the financial markets as a tool to weaken other countries, these countries will also have no choice but to ditch the dollar and to seek alternative currencies through which to complete transactions. Not surprisingly, Russia has just responded on Monday by announcing it will seek to end its reliance on the US dollar.
Make no mistake: the US is at the crossroads of its dying status as a global superpower. In order to stay afloat, it has only one real option – to continue down the warpath it has set itself on and confront those countries that seek to rise up in the post-American led international order.
The newly signed sanctions regime is just the beginning, and there will be a difficult road ahead. Cooler heads may ultimately prevail, given the way these sanctions are already being seen to backfire.
It will be almost impossible to sell these wars to the American public and the international community at this stage considering the evidence shows the US is acting rashly and out of order with the rest of the world. However, if the US can provoke Iran or North Korea into doing something regrettable first, the US may finally reward itself with the justification to go to war which it so desperately needs.
And when that happens, all bets will be off the table.
Reprinted with permission from The Anti-Media.
When THEY want a war they’ll get it one way or another. If it’s Iran or, god help us, Russia it should be a very entertaining experience. After all those decades ‘fighting’ basket case nations that couldn’t defend themselves we’ll all get a chance to see how it goes against a foe that actually can fight back. My money is on some a-symmetric tactics. Why fight the u.s. on their terms using their preferred weapons of WW2 vintage? Why not branch out? Cyber warfare, biological weapons? An EMP blast? Throw in a MIRVed ICBM or two. Fun for the whole family. I sure hope it happens after the 21st. I really want to see that solar eclipse from this side first.
I may be naive or stupid, but I don’t think Trump is quite as sociopathic as the members of congress who voted for that stupid sanctions bill. I don’t think we’re going to attack anyone. I think Trump will attempt to kill Bill Kristol by making him have a heart attack at our total non-attacking of anyone.
Russia ditching the dollar – keep your eyes on this one….
First Matt Drudge tweeted that something “big” was coming. Then, recently, Sean Hannity’s nebulous “tick, tock” tweet.
Now McMaster v. Bannon:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcmaster-and-the-commander-1502234710
and Pence’s power move:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/mike-pence-nick-ayers-241423
The posts from Drudge are puzzle pieces. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?
THUMP ! That’s the sound of my jaw hitting the floor when I read the following article.
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/articles/warfreem.html
@ Searcher – Here is the money quote IMO:
“This, too, is the meaning of ‘War is the Health of the State’: war is the death of individualism.”
I think we should start a new acronym–the MMI. Media/Military/Industrial complex. The media, daily promotes and propagandizes for war. The Military stands ready to use our sons and daughters to play their dangerous games with real life flesh and blood and of course–the Industrial or weapons manufacturers who profit handsomely from every bullet & missile shot, every jet fighter run, every high-tech spying venture and every large or small incursion.
Lest we forget–the TBTF banks who lend them all of the money so that they can play.
It’s just us citizens who are on the hook to pay back the bills, send our children to die or become mutilated and us citizens who watch our lands invaded by the “refugees” they create when they destroy these foreign lands.
PS: I’m going to add this at the bottom as it is rather lengthy–this is why Trump can NEVER drain the swamp, it’s just too big and even if he had vetoed the sanctions, with a 99% vote in favor of santions, his veto would have just been as a show anyhow ( and only furthered his ostrization and isolation by both sides)
A hat tip to David Greenfield’s investigations…….
Derek Harvey was a man who saw things coming. He had warned of Al Qaeda when most chose to ignore it. He had seen the Sunni insurgency rising when most chose to deny it.
The former Army colonel had made his reputation by learning the lay of the land. In Iraq that meant sleeping on mud floors and digging into documents to figure out where the threat was coming from.
It was hard to imagine anyone better qualified to serve as President Trump’s top Middle East adviser at the National Security Council than a man who had been on the ground in Iraq and who had seen it all.
Just like in Iraq, Harvey began digging at the NSC. He came up with a list of Obama holdovers who were leaking to the press. McMaster, the new head of the NSC, refused to fire any of them.
McMaster had a different list of people he wanted to fire. It was easy to make the list. Harvey was on it.
All you had to do was name Islamic terrorism as the problem and oppose the Iran Deal. If you came in with Flynn, you would be out. If you were loyal to Trump, your days were numbered.
And if you warned about Obama holdovers undermining the new administration, you were a target.
One of McMaster’s first acts at the NSC was to ban any mention of “Obama holdovers.” Not only did the McMaster coup purge Harvey, who had assembled the holdover list, but his biggest target was Ezra Watnick-Cohen, who had exposed the eavesdropping on Trump officials by Obama personnel.
Ezra Watnick-Cohen had provided proof of the Obama surveillance to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. McMaster, however, was desperately working to fire him and replace him with Linda Weissgold. McMaster’s choice to replace Watnick-Cohen was the woman who helped draft the Benghazi talking points which blamed the Islamic terrorist attack on a video protest.
After protests by Bannon and Kushner, President Trump overruled McMaster. Watnick-Cohen stayed. For a while. Now Ezra Watnick-Cohen has been fired anyway.
According to the media, Watnick-Cohen was guilty of “anti-Muslim fervor” and “hardline views.” And there’s no room for anyone telling the truth about Islamic terrorism at McMaster’s NSC.
McMaster had even demanded that President Trump refrain from telling the truth about Islamic terrorism.
Another of his targets was Rich Higgins, who had written a memo warning of the role of the left in undermining counterterrorism. Higgins had served as a director for strategic planning at the NSC. He had warned in plain language about the threat of Islamic terrorism, of Sharia law, of the Hijrah colonization by Islamic migrants, of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of its alliance with the left as strategic threats.
Higgins had stood by Trump during the Khizr Khan attacks. And he had written a memo warning that “the left is aligned with Islamist organizations at local, national, and international levels” and that “they operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies.”
Like Harvey and Ezra Watnick-Cohen, Higgins had warned of an enemy within. And paid the price.
McMaster’s cronies had allegedly used the NSC’s email system to track down the source of the memo. The left and its useful idiots were indeed entrenched at the upper level of the bureaucracy.
Higgins was fired.
Like Harvey and Watnick-Cohen, Higgins had also become too dangerous to the Obama holdovers. Harvey had assembled a list of names and a plan to dismantle the Iranian nuclear deal. Watnick-Cohen had dug into the Obama surveillance of Trump officials. And Higgins had sought to declassify Presidential Study Directive 11. PSD-11 was the secret blueprint of Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Pete Hoekstra, the former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, linked PSD-11 to the rise of ISIS and called for its declassification.
Replacing Harvey is Michael Bell. When the Washington Post needed someone to badmouth Dr. Gorka, they turned to Bell: the former chancellor of the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University. Bell suggested that Dr. Gorka was an uneven scholar. And Dr. Gorka was accused of failing to incorporate other perspectives on Islam.
The pattern has never been hard to spot.
McMaster forced out K.T. McFarland from her role as Deputy National Security Advisor. Slotted in was Dina Habib-Powell.
McFarland was an Oxford and Cambridge grad who had worked at the Pentagon for the Reagan administration. Dina Habib-Powell had no national security background. She was an Egyptian-American immigrant and former Bush gatekeeper whose pals included Huma Abedin and Valerie Jarrett.
Powell, who has been described as the Republican Huma, said that Abedin “feels a deep responsibility to encourage more mutual understanding between her beliefs and culture and American culture.”
When visiting Egypt, Habib-Powell had assured the locals of how Bush, after September 11, “visited a mosque, took off his shoes and paid his respects.” “I see the president talk of Islam as a religion of peace, I see him host an iftar every year,” she gushed.
K.T. McFarland had written that “Global Islamist jihad is at war with all of Western civilization.”
It’s not hard to see why McMaster pushed out McFarland and elevated Habib-Powell.
Habib-Powell had attended the Iftar dinner with members of Muslim Brotherhood front groups. You can see her photographed at the American Task Force of Palestine gala. The ATFP was originally Rashid Khalidi’s American Committee on Jerusalem. She was there as a presenter at the Middle East Institute after a speech by Hanan Ashrawi. Her achievements under Bush included cultural exchanges with Iran, as well as cash for the Palestinian Authority and for Lebanon after the Hezbollah war with Israel.
While President Trump fights to restrict Muslim immigration, at his side is the woman who had once bragged on CNN, “Over 90% of student visas are now issued in under a week, and that is in the Middle East.”
But that is typical of the McMaster revamp of the NSC. It’s populated by swamp creatures who oppose the positions that President Trump ran on. And who are doing everything possible to undermine them.
President Trump promised a reset from Obama’s anti-Israel policies. McMaster picked Kris Bauman as the NSC’s point man on Israel. Bauman had defended Islamic terrorists and blamed Israel for the violence. He had urged pressure on Israel as the solution. Ideas like that fit in at McMaster’s NSC.
Meanwhile Derek Harvey, who had tried to halt Obama’s $221 million terror funding prize to the Palestinian Authority, was forced out.
This too is part of the pattern. As Caroline Glick has pointed out, the personnel being purged in the McMaster coup “are pro-Israel and oppose the Iran nuclear deal.”
When Adam Lovinger urged that “more attention be given to the threat of Iran and Islamic extremism,” his security clearance was revoked. Robin Townley was forced out in the same way.
Meanwhile, McMaster sent a letter to Susan Rice, Obama’s former National Security Adviser, assuring her that the NSC would work with her to “allow you access to classified information.” He claimed that Rice’s continued access to classified information is “consistent with the national security interests of the United States.”
Why does Susan Rice, who is alleged to have participated in the Obama eavesdropping on Trump people, need access to classified information? What national security purpose is served by it?
The same national security purpose that is served by McMaster’s purge of anyone at the NSC who dares to name Islamic terrorism, who wants a tougher stance on Iran, and who asks tough questions.
And the purge of reformers and original thinkers is only beginning.
The latest reports say that McMaster has a list of enemies who will be ousted from the NSC. And when that is done, the NSC will be a purely Obama-Bush operation. The consensus will be that the Iran Deal must stay, that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, that we need to find ways to work with the aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that Israel must make concessions to terrorists.
If you loved the foreign policy that brought us 9/11, ISIS, and billions in funding to terrorists from Syria to Libya to the West Bank, you won’t be able to get enough of McMaster’s brand new NSC.
And neither will America’s enemies.
The swamp is overflowing. The National Security Council is becoming a national security threat.
Posts like this keep me coming back to TBP every day. Thanks.
If you want an acronym for the Media/Military/Industrial/Banking/Government complex, try “CFR”. Herbert McMaster, Dina Powell, and Susan Rice are members of the Rockefeller/CFR along with Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Janet Yellen, George Soros and Lloyd Blankfein. See the lists of members, directors and sponsors in the CFR annual report.
Let’s sanction and Boycott WDC!
My money is on another “false flag” of 9-11 proportions… then more of your american rights and freedoms will be with held then all freaking hell breaks loose as your red white and blue bombs get dropped on millions more defenseless people. however, as stated above… your new enemy will be friends with a country that will not roll over and let your bravado rule them. it will be the start of the the war to end all wars and humanity as we know it…..
Have they kicked Russian banks off of Swift? War will soon follow that event.
Russia appears to be expecting it, to.