Category: Uncategorized

The collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian government in late November and early December 2024 occurred with stunning speed. There was little question that Joe Biden’s administration and several U.S. allies, especially Turkey, were pleased with the outcome. Washington had worked diligently to force Assad from power since 2011, even though the effort triggered a civil … Continue reading “Washington’s Long Flirtation with Syria’s Extreme Islamists”

Here is a very strange thing. For years, western media outlets and politicians have been recklessly indifferent to the fact that Hamas is not a jihadist movement, like al-Qaeda or Islamic State, but a specifically *Palestinian* national resistance movement – if one underpinned by an Islamist ideology that distinguishes it from secular Palestinian national movements … Continue reading “The Day the Media Decided Militant Jihadism Was Respectable”

My first reaction to news earlier this month that the Syrian government had been overthrown was, how much did we have to do with it; how involved was the CIA; and how much is it going to cost. As with Saddam and Gaddafi before him, we know that Assad was no libertarian hero. But unleashing … Continue reading “What Are We Doing in Syria?”

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly expressed concern that Iran could develop a nuclear bomb on his watch. In considering his options to prevent that, The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is considering the possibility of airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Reports that Trump could be open to such an action are not inconsistent with … Continue reading “The Hypocrisy of Bombing Iran”

Also, rights groups decried secret executions occurring in Iraq.

On November 21, 2024, Senior Judge Marsha J. Pechman of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington issued what seems likely to be her final order in Kinnucan v. National Security Agency et al. The order came more than four years after the federal case was first filed in September 2020. The … Continue reading “Deadly USS Liberty Attack Records Remain Secret – For Now”

During the course of an FBI written response to a Freedom of Information Act request asking about the trade names and suppliers of surveillance software the FBI had purchased, the government has yet again quietly acknowledged its antipathy to constitutional provisions that all of its employees have sworn to uphold. Since we are dealing with … Continue reading “Will Donald Trump Stop Domestic Spying?”

About 17 years ago the insufferable former general, Wesley Clark, reported on a talk he once had in the Pentagon: “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” Well, it took several … Continue reading “The Syrian Fiasco”

In 2016, Donald Trump ran for president as a kinda-sorta, maybe-a-little-bit, “antiwar” candidate. Once in office, however, he escalated every war he had inherited, ending none of them, “surging” US troops into Syria and Afghanistan, making a public head-fake at withdrawing from Syria before changing his mind, abrogating the Iran “nuclear deal,” and negotiating a … Continue reading “Brian Mast As Foreign Policy Indicator: New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”

The long-harboured aspirations of the US, Turkey and Israel to topple the Syrian government, mainly through their rebranded al-Qaeda allies, succeeded at lightning speed. Damascus fell days after Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces under Abu Mohammad al-Jolani surprised observers by breaking out of their small north-western enclave in Syria and seizing the country’s second city, … Continue reading “Syria’s Assad Has Fallen – Just as the Pentagon Planned 23 Years Ago”