conflict
World War Syria: The outcome in Syria is so important Trump may reach out to Assad
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
The United States is backing anti-Christian ‘rebel’ groups fighting to depose Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. As JD Vance once asked, ‘Why can’t we stop genociding Christians?’ The answer is power. And that power has a lot to do with natural gas.
Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: This article is far more important than it might at first seem. It addresses a very complex situation. If you persevere to the end, you will understand the enormous global significance of what is now occurring in Syria that, among other things, concerns the fate of many ancient Christians in the region.
This was a difficult report to write given the many competing and rapidly changing forces involved. Few will explain this extraordinary situation as well as Frank Wright has done in this article.
The long war in Syria which has recently resumed is not only about the fate of the Christians in that troubled nation, nor about a new migrant wave which would follow its collapse.
It is certainly not about freedom. The incursion of Turkey in the north, and the resurgence of Western-backed takfiri terrorists from Idlib are signs of a Great Game being played whose resolution may redraw the map of world power.
As we shall see, whoever backs Bashar al-Assad will have the keys to the future. If you think that is a surprising conclusion given the news, that is because the news is part of the campaign.
The main “sides” in this war:
Assad: Syrian Arab Armed Forces
Allied: Russian Air Force, Hezbollah, Iran and its Iraqi militia
Versus:
Turkey: Syrian National Army, United States, Israel: “HTS” (Hay’at Tarir al-Sham) – former Al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra “rebels.”
In brief, the U.S., Turkey, and Israel support Islamic terrorists to topple Assad, as they have armed and used terrorists such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS in the past to advance their political agendas.
Assad has been left exposed by his presumed Russian and Iranian allies, who are now rushing to his aid – since the operation to oust him has failed.
Both the U.S. and the Russians wanted Assad gone, to be replaced by someone they could control. Instead, Assad has outplayed them all – and now whoever wants to win has to back him.
Moves are being made by both sides to do precisely this, right now. Here’s why.
‘Moderate rebels’
Arch neocon William “Bill” Kristol has described the “anti-Assad fighters” as a force for freedom in Syria which the U.S. should back to the hilt – as it has before.
In fact, these “rebels” are the renamed “Al-Nusra Front.” You may also know them by their stage names of “ISIS/Da’Esh” or “Al-Qaeda.” They are now called “HTS.” They are labeled a terrorist group by the U.K., whose media is now presenting them once again as moderate rebels.
In 2016, one U.S.-backed “anti-Assad” group beheaded a child. In Aleppo, they are now tearing down Christmas trees.
These head-chopping groups were armed by the U.S. in 2012 following the U.S./U.K. operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya. After that state was collapsed and its leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi murdered, the Clinton State Department sent Libyan army weapons to Syria along the “Rat Line” – in order to arm the “rebels.” WikiLeaks released a cable from 2012 detailing this U.S. strategy to topple Assad.
“[Al-Qaeda] is on our side,” said another.
The goal was regime change. That Libya’s regime had changed from stability and success into a place where slaves are sold and Coptic Christians beheaded was of no account. What mattered was the removal of a leader who refused to bow to Israel, the U.S. proxy in the region – and who presented a threat to the Western debt-slavery financial system.
Israel supports Al-Qaeda
Israel has also said it has effectively supported Al-Qaeda. Former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot admitted in 2019 that Israel had been arming “Syrian rebels.” Foreign Policy reported in 2018 that Israel had been arming and funding “at least 12 rebel groups” in Syria for years.
Here a former Mossad spokesman admits Israel had been treating wounded Al-Qaeda fighters on its border – for “humanitarian” reasons.
Ask yourself why an army of Islamist extremists on Israel’s northern border has never said a word about Gaza, and has never attacked Israel.
Who are the ‘rebels’?
The so-called “moderate rebels” in Syria are backed by the U.S. and Israel. They are called “takfiris” by other Muslims. Takfiris believe that Muslims, unlike themselves, are apostates, and they have a habit of beheading people. Christians, other Muslims, Westerners. There are videos, of course. This documentary, shot in Idlib, shows some of the brutality of the rebels backed by the West.
The mobilization of these “rebels,” said to be fighting for freedom from Assad, is an attempt by the U.S. and Israel to dissolve the one nation on its borders which has not submitted to U.S./Israeli regional rule.
Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan all have normalized relations with the Zionist state. Syria hasn’t. Its Golan Heights were occupied by Israel in 1967 and were annexed in 1981.
Turkey
Turkey has long seen northern Syria as a “security zone” which threatens its own stability. Kurdish groups in the region present a threat to Erdogan, who may face a civil war in future, and so he has mounted repeated military operations in the region since 2011. The Syrian National Army is fighting in Syria now, which is a Turkish proxy. He also backs “HTS” – the “rebels.”
Erdogan’s refusal to remove his troops has seen Assad refuse to meet him for two years. Overtures were made towards Assad in July 2024, along with a region-wide rehabilitation of his regime. The latest violence can be seen as an attempt to cancel this development. It has failed.
Erdogan wanted the U.S. to intervene on the ground in 2011 and is suspected of staging a gas attack to trigger Obama’s “red line” for intervention – as Seymour Hersh suggested in 2019.
It appears that Obama decided against intervention at the last minute, which Erdogan sees as a betrayal. He has since undertaken his own operations against the Kurds in the north of Syria, having made a brief alliance in 2022 against them with Assad, a tactic which may explain his July attempt to “mend fences.”
The Kurds are backed by the U.S. Turkey, a NATO member, is going it alone – and is permitted to do so given its enormous strategic leverage. Which brings us back to gas.
Assad’s strategy
Assad has retreated his army to fortify the capital, Damascus. Having moved his troops out of the line of contact, he has ceded ground to the point where the Turkish backed SNA and the takfiri “rebels” are now faced with the prospect of fighting each other.
It would not be the first time. The “rebels” have a fractured history of fighting each other in Syria, as Lindsey Snell reported in December 2023. A now infamous Los Angeles Times article from 2016 showed how Pentagon-backed “rebels” were fighting CIA-backed “rebels.”
Assad has withdrawn to consolidate a position he can hold, leaving the field to a fractious enemy known for infighting. His army, weakened by two years of Israeli airstrikes and defunded by Iran, cannot win in the field, but it can defend his capital.
Killing Christians, again
Why did he do this? The takfiri “rebels” immediately began destroying Christmas decorations in Aleppo, the second city of Syria, as they swept in after Assad’s withdrawal. There are an estimated 50,000 Christians in Aleppo.
Aleppo had the largest Christian population in Syria prior to the U.S.-backed war of 2011, with some 200,000 fleeing the city in the last 13 years – mirroring a dramatic fall in the Christian population throughout Syria.
The Syriac Christians – one of the oldest Christian communities in the world – could face extermination under this new regime of “freedom.” Why is the U.S. backing people who butcher Christians?
If this surprises you, consider that the U.S. invasion of Iraq killed over a million historic Christians. The Turks – a U.S./NATO ally, once killed over a million Christians in Armenia, which is the oldest Christian nation on earth.
As JD Vance asked in May, “Why can’t [the U.S.] stop genociding Christians?”
The answer is power. And that power has a lot to do with natural gas.
The gas line to Qatar
Assad holds the key to a new gas pipeline from Qatar to Syria. Why does this matter?
Europe has an enormous energy deficit due to the shutting down of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany – likely by the U.S. Sanctions on Russia due to the Ukraine war have restricted European access to cheap energy.
Russia’s other pipeline to Europe is seldom mentioned. This is Turkstream, and it connects Russian gas to Turkey through the Black Sea. Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, and the Balkans rely on this gas supply to function as states – and it is described as a “Trojan horse” for Russian power in Europe.
Keeping this supply open means these nations can remain stable, and it gives Russia enormous leverage in Europe. Turkish cooperation is crucial, which is one reason for Russia agreeing to Turkish demands in the agreements which settled the 2011 war in Syria. If Russia also controls Syria, it has cornered the gas market and secures strategic global influence.
Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Astana
Known as the Astana Format, this 2017 settlement saw Russia, Turkey, and Iran agree to cooperate over security in Syria, after the war which followed the 2011 attempt to “regime change” Assad. In recent days, both the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers have insisted on returning to the format to end the war.
The 2023 Carnegie Endowment report on Astana said, “This insistence on the Astana format reveals its true modus operandi: a mechanism for normalizing the military presence of its sponsors, while minimizing interstate friction.”
Russia said it placed S300 air defense systems in Syria in 2018. Following a request from Israel, and to Turkish delight, Russia withdrew these in late 2022, despite Assad having paid for them. This left Syrian airspace open for the Israeli airstrikes which have continued to hit Assad’s army ever since. Russia’s move also discouraged Israel from sending arms to Ukraine.
For four years, Russia never once permitted these systems to fire on Israeli military aircraft which bombed Iranian militias in Syria. Russia was “playing a double game,” as Yossi Melman reported for Haaretz in May 2020 – permitting the weakening of Iran, whilst maintaining its own presence. This is called “deconfliction” – an attempt to balance its presence without direct conflict with the U.S. and its allies.
Iran had been funding Assad since 2011. One credit line ran out in 2019, and Assad had to demobilize many of his troops in July. Iran removed many of its elite officers from Syria in February. Why did the Russians and the Iranians expose their ally like this?
Russia relies on Turkish cooperation and seeks “appeasement” of Israel. Though Russia wishes to retain its influence in Syria, along with its naval base in Tartus and its air force base in Hmeimim, it would go along with Iran but prefer a more pliant leadership. Assad was meant to go.
Assad has refused to bow to the U.S., to the Turks, to Israel, and has refused to dissolve his remaining army in this latest attempt to destroy his state – as the Russians and Iranians appear to have intended.
With his allies weakening him, how can he be said to hold the trump card?
The Great Game in Syria
Syria is not about freedom or friendship. It is the site of the Great Game for world domination. Whoever takes Assad’s deal wins the game. What is this deal and why does it matter?
Assad is now seeking allies with the Gulf States, and key to this is Qatar. This could see a gas pipeline from Qatar to Syria built in order to supply Europe with the energy it desperately needs. Robert Fisk foresaw the significance of this move in 2018. It was described by Assad as the “Four Seas Program” and was announced in 2009. Another source claims Assad proposed this vision 20 years ago in 2004.
Its realization would reduce Israel to a “minor country” in a new Syria-led regional power structure, according to Dr. Imad Fawzi Shoueibi – head of the Data and Strategic Studies Center in Syria. Initially involving Turkey, an alternate route could bypass both Turkey and the former plan to link with China, with both sidelined. Qatar, currently holding the U.S. anti-Assad line against wider Gulf efforts to normalize relations, will do whatever the Americans want. The U.S. wants to win.
In 2000, Qatar proposed to build this pipeline through Syria to Turkey. Assad refused this U.S.-backed initiative, likely because it would hand major influence to the Turks.
In 2006, the U.S. State Department began funding opposition operations in Syria against Assad, as WikiLeaks revealed. The Washington Post reported that a cable from the top U.S. diplomat in Damascus in 2009 said, “[Assad] would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change.”
His regime was a problem to the U.S. grand strategy to build a pipeline to defeat its rivals. What followed, say some, was the “Arab Spring” color revolution which came to Syria in 2011, and the long war we see reigniting today.
U.S. forces remain stationed at the U.S. Conoco Gas Field in northern Syria, whose pipeline was blown up by Iranian militias in October 2023. Qatar has armed and funded the “rebels” ever since, and continues to do so today. Yet its strategy remains aligned with the U.S. – not with the takfiri rebels. The aim was to oust Assad. It has not worked.
If this pipeline gets built it could cut the Chinese belt and road in half and will destroy Russian influence. This depends on where this pipeline ends, and whether it includes or excludes Iran, Russia, and Turkey.
The “pipeline theory” of the Syrian long war was advanced in 2016 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His polemic blames the CIA, “who began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 – barely a year after the agency’s creation [sic].” Another pipeline was in the pipeline – from Iran to Syria – agreed in 2011. This was obviously a threat to the U.S. and the West. “Nothing on this front will happen as long as Assad clings to power” was the view from 2012.
The Qatar-Syria-Turkey “pipelineistan” thesis was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory,” saying the notion was only floated in 2009 – when Assad said on August 1 of that year:
“Once the economic space between Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran becomes integrated, we would link the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black Sea, and the [Persian] Gulf. … We aren’t just important in the Middle East. … Once we link these four seas, we become the unavoidable intersection of the whole world in investment, transport, and more.”
Yet the same report shows the pipeline strategy had been Assad’s vision since at least 2004.
With the game having changed, it is now about who allies with Assad, since removing him has failed.
Energy shocks in the West
Since then, major shocks to the West have accompanied the war in Ukraine, which have once again changed the game. As has the blocking of the Suez – a major route for liquefied natural gas shipments to Europe. This is the argument advanced in Le Monde in 2022, for the revival of the argument of the tremendous strategic power in the proposed Syrian gas line. It would make possible the formerly impossible – the replacement of Russian gas supplies to Europe by Qatar.
Changing the Russian game
The postwar settlement after Ukraine is most likely to result in a renewal of Russian gas supplies to Europe. Germany and its satellites will die without cheap reliable energy. The German government has already dissolved over the economic crisis created by its support for the Ukraine war, and the French government looks likely to do the same.
This gives Russia enormous geostrategic power. Putin’s thesis was written on the subject of “Mineral and Raw Materials Resources and the Development Strategy for the Russian Economy.”
This is the Russian play in the Great Game.
If Assad builds this gas line without Putin, Russian influence in Europe melts away. A new and lucrative alliance will form to bolster the West. The balance of power shifts dramatically.
The loss of the Sahel to Russian-aligned coups meant that a similar pipeline solution running from Nigeria to Algeria became impossible.
The only long-term options for Europe are now Russian gas, or Qatari gas.
Assad the kingmaker
This makes Assad the kingmaker. His move could undermine BRICS, end Russian geostrategic leverage in Europe, and handicap Chinese grand strategy.
This is the reason no one cares whether Christians get butchered en masse. This is the reason the people likely to butcher them are being styled as freedom fighters by people like William Kristol.
Whoever controls Syria can dictate the fate of the world. This is the site of the real world war, the one which will decide who rules the near future. Whoever controls Syria wins the game. With Assad impossible to dislodge – for now – this means whoever backs him sweeps the board.
For this reason, the Russians sacked their general in Syria and replaced him. Russian air and drone support has intensified, striking hard against “rebel” positions.
Iran has also renewed support at this late stage, with Iranian-backed militia arriving – including from Iraq.
Interesting times
In a final series of startling twists, the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates have offered to lift sanctions on Assad if he pivots away from Iran. This would likely normalize relations with Qatar.
The former chief of staff of the Israeli army said in 2013 – and in 2017 – that it is in Israel’s interest if Assad stays in power.
Last weekend, Herb Keinon, an Israeli analyst close to every Israeli prime minister for the last 24 years, wrote in the Jerusalem Post on December 1 warning a post-Assad Syria carries significant risks to Israel – and may trigger military intervention. Later reports show Israeli concerns that the “rebel” attacks’ failure may now empower Iran in Syria.
Assad may pivot to the U.S. He may shake hands with Trump in the New Year. It may seem unthinkable that Assad “switches sides,” but this would guarantee the survival of Syria, and the only regime capable and willing to offer any protection to Christians at all.
If this happens, Russian global power is defeated on the brink of a hard-fought victory. The Chinese global trade network is cut in two. This could revive the U.S. global empire. The nations of the Gulf making overtures to BRICS would realign with the U.S. once more. This would secure the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
The Great Game would be over for a long time to come.
This is the most remarkable power struggle in recent history. Its significance dwarfs any other conflict on earth, and its resolution will decide not only the fate of nations, the region, but also who dominates the world for the decades to come.
Syria’s long war is the undeclared world war. This is why it matters, because what happens there decides everything else. As is usual at this level, the human cost is never counted, and there are no friends – only interests. Such is the game. It is being played out now, behind a smokescreen of propaganda and lies, because public opinion is manufactured by those who have the power to do so.
All that matters to state-level actors is who wins. Not how. This is the lesson of the moment.
conflict
RFK Jr. blames US government for Russia-Ukraine conflict: ‘We wanted the war’
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Giving an account which completely contradicts the narrative of Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler, with Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine a brave defender of democracy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. states bluntly, ‘The Ukraine war should never have happened.’
In a brief interview released on January 10, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the reasons behind the Ukraine war are not those which have been supplied to the American people.
Giving an account which completely contradicts the narrative of Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler, with Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine a brave defender of democracy, Kennedy states bluntly that “The Ukraine war should never have happened” – and it was effectively planned by the U.S. Deep State.
“We wanted the war,” said Kennedy, explaining how the U.S. government has acted to provoke and prolong the Ukraine war for years.
“Now six hundred thousand kids are dead. We have spent 200 billion dollars – which we need in this country. We can’t afford to be engaged in wars that are this close to nuclear engagement,” Kennedy concluded.
Kennedy’s brief and stunning rundown of the truth behind the case for war in Ukraine exposes decades of deep state corruption. In this report, LifeSiteNews tests Kennedy’s claims against a historical record rich with evidence seldom seen in the news today.
A diet of deception
Western news consumers have been fed a diet of war propaganda which has seen these facts framed as “Putin’s talking points” – and people who talk like Kennedy smeared as traitors. Yet Kennedy also points out,
“My son Connor went over to Ukraine and fought in the Kharkiv Offensive because he looked at Putin as a bully who had invaded this country,” Kennedy stated.
Kennedy’s own son was radicalized to risk his own life, being prepared to die for this narrative. Yet his father says he was fighting an imaginary war.
“What this war was about was really about security.” Against years of propaganda painting Putin as an expansionist dictator hell bent on conquering Ukraine – and then Europe – Kennedy says, “It was never about territory”.
Why should we take Kennedy’s claims seriously? His remarks are in fact only news because the news itself has been so effective in keeping the truth from its Western audiences.
Everything Kennedy says about this war has been predicted and noted for over three decades. The people who have said what he is saying include George Kennan – one of the most celebrated postwar U.S. diplomats, and President Putin himself. As Kennedy explains that the Ukraine war is the result of years of broken promises made to Russia by the West, his charge that the U.S. government “wanted the war” appears not only credible, but the only rational explanation for the “fatal error” of NATO expansion which predictably led to this conflict.
To the brink of nuclear war
The result of this reckless grand strategy – to bring the borders of NATO to those of Russia – created a security crisis which has rekindled the terrible prospect of all-out nuclear war.
Yet Kennedy says there is a realistic hope of peace promised by the coming Trump administration.
“Whatever you say about President Trump he’s a real estate guy – and he’d rather do a deal than have a war.”
Kennedy, however, warns it is “harder to do a deal now.” Why?
“Everything the Russians were saying about this [war] from the beginning has turned out to be true.” What does Kennedy mean? His explanation shows the evidence leading to the crime scene of the proxy war in Ukraine today.
It began, for the Russians, with the creation of a security threat on its borders.
“Putin was scared that Ukraine would attack Russia.” As Kennedy explains, “Zelensky has confirmed that by a NATO-supported invasion of Russia… in Kursk.”
The invasion of Kursk, undertaken over the summer of 2024, was only one of a long series of reckless actions backed by NATO against Russia. Terrorist and drone attacks have struck deep into Russian territory, and long-range U.S. and NATO supplied cruise missiles have been fired into Russia in a dangerous step up the escalation ladder. This ladder, of course, leads to nuclear war.
Kennedy believes, however, that Trump means to stop it. The question is then, if Trump can get the U.S. out – how should it go?
A warning from recent history is given by Kennedy.
“The Afghan withdrawal was a horrible calamity,” said Kennedy. He argues that the deadline was set for withdrawal for political reasons – setting a goal which was militarily unrealistic.
“It was politically driven by a date that was impossible for the army to comply with.”
The same argument could be made about all the regime change wars from Afghanistan to Ukraine: driven by a political ideology, they demanded the impossible and delivered chaos and destruction in place of the promise of democracy and freedom. All these wars since 2001 have been lost, of course, though some have harvested vast profits from them.
War without reason
They have all been fought for non-military reasons, as Colonel Douglas Macgregor has frequently noted. In 2019 he said Trump’s move to “break with the past” and “climb out of the Afghan and Middle Eastern money pits” were “anathema to the Washington Beltway.”
“The quality of a great leader is the courage to break with the past when the facts change,” said Macgregor, as he explained, “For President Trump, facing facts means change. But real change—ending the Korean War, disengaging forces from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—is anathema to just about everyone inside the Washington Beltway.”
What Macgregor was saying was that the political class benefits from these “money pits,” at the expense of the Americans whose money – and lives – are being poured into them.
Striking a hopeful note, Macgregor said of Donald Trump five years ago:
Washington hates him for doing these things, but most Americans and future generations of Americans will love him for it.
Can Americans expect this sort of strength – and leadership, from the new administration? A break with the past would hopefully mean a break with the sorry tradition of excluding wise men and their wisdom from American grand strategy.
Macgregor spoke truth to power
A strong critic of the “forever wars,” it has been said that it was his wise opposition to continuing any of them which finished his career.
As Responsible Statecraft said of him in 2020, “Senior military officers quietly admit that in terms of sheer intellect, no one quite matches Macgregor.”
This peerless intelligence had no place in the neoconservative grand strategy of forever war. The same article records that Macgregor told U.S. war planners to “[t]urn the governing of Iraq over to the Iraqis, then… get out.”
The report quotes a former West Point colleague of Macgregor who said, “I think it was at that point that Doug’s career ended.”
“Macgregor’s outspoken and often too-public critique of his own service hurt his chances for promotion. Macgregor questioned everything: why are we staying in Afghanistan? Or Iraq? Or Syria? Why are we prosecuting these endless wars?”
With little chance of Macgregor being present in person to shape policy, it is encouraging to see his vision of an alternative to forever war is shared by Kennedy.
The price of principle
Set for a significant role in the coming Trump administration, Kennedy echoes a position made so courageously by Macgregor over twenty years ago: that the U.S. has been waging war endlessly for no good reason. At least, no good reason from the point of view of the American people and their national interest.
A man as wise as Macgregor must have known that speaking truth to power could very well be fatal to any ambition.
He put country before career, and in trying to stop the needless killing his chances of promotion were buried instead. Macgregor reminds us there is a difference between a job and a vocation. His calling was to the truth, and he told it regardless of the cost to himself.
With Kennedy and Trump comes the hope of a deal in place of the business of death. The new administration seems to speak here for the cause of life, of the truth, and of a new vision for America.
Another break with the past?
Kennedy’s consistent position on the war in Ukraine is a direct contradiction of the “boomer neocon” foreign policy of the last four decades.
Heavily influenced by Zionism, it has resulted in the routine “genocide of Christians,” as JD Vance pointed out last May.
“Why can’t we stop genociding Christians?” he asked, noting the Iraq war alone resulted in “the slaughter of over a million historic Christians.”
He said it was “weird” that in a so-called Christian and “conservative” Republican Party that, “No one makes this argument that traditional neoconservative foreign policy keeps on leading to the genocide of Christians. But it does, which is one of many reasons why neoconservative foreign policy is strategically and morally stupid.”
Vance, soon to be Vice President, said this in a speech, “Towards a Foreign Policy for the American Middle Class”. Like Kennedy, he chose his words to count the cost in human blood and American treasure of “the last 40 years of American foreign policy.”
He said the “fruits” of these four decades was disaster.
“Disaster in Iraq…disaster in Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, it’s on issue after issue after issue.”
Vance appears to be serious about change, and a break with the broken “slogans” of the past forty years of the “endless wars” which Trump has long vowed to end – a view apparently shared by those he has chosen to staff his new government.
Yet a troubling precedent was set in the previous Trump administration – in which Macgregor said Trump was trying to break with this awful past.
To help make this break, the man who was promoted instead of Macgregor to National Security Chief under Trump was General H.R. McMaster.
McMaster was “ousted” after only one year in post, following a lobbying campaign to remove him by the Zionist Organization of America.
Though no wars were started under Trump, the struggle for control over U.S. foreign policy appears to have been decided in favor of the Israel lobby if the picks for the incoming admin are any indication.
This lobby has a powerful partner in keeping neoconservative war policies on track: the mainstream media.
Kennedy himself is now under attack from the pro-war press. A report from January 7 in The Atlantic compares “populists” like Kennedy and Trump to Rasputin – the mystical priest of the household of the murdered Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Author Anne Applebaum sees in the promise of peace a sort of madness, which she says is a sign of “The End of Enlightenment Rationality.”
In the bizarro world of the permanent war faction celebrated by “defense industry propagandist” Anne Applebaum, people who “promote ‘peace’ – a vague goal” – as she styles it – are crooks and cranks peddling “conspiratorial and sometimes anti-American ideas.”
The enemies of peace
It was arch neocon and co-founder of the Zionist Project for a New American Century who said people who want the forever wars to stop are unAmerican – and “intolerant.” Writing for Foreign Affairs in 2021, Robert Kagan instructed Americans that it was their duty to support, pay for and even die in the wars he and his wife Victoria Nuland have devoted their careers to starting.
Nuland herself gave credence to Kennedy’s claim, again made in the video, that the U.S. had compelled Ukraine’s Zelensky to abandon a peace agreement with Putin.
“Biden sent [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson to force Zelensky to tear up that deal,” said Kennedy.
That deal would have seen the 2022 war come to an end only weeks after the Russian invasion. Responsible Statecraft said of her comments in September 2024, “Victoria Nuland’s comments lend further credence to the proposition that a settlement between Russia and Ukraine was on the table in Istanbul, that the West played a role in shaping Ukrainian thinking on the desirability of pursuing negotiations, and that Western leaders apparently conveyed the view that it was a bad deal.”
Nuland masterminded the coup which began the longer war in Ukraine in 2014. Though she is no longer at the U.S. State Department, her husband continues the family business of promoting war to this day.
Kagan’s latest piece in last week’s Atlantic warns that “Trump is facing a catastrophic defeat in Ukraine” – by seeking to stop the killing.
In her report Applebaum sneers at the notion that the populist “right” can be serious about peace. She charges that Donald Trump is in league with Viktor Orban, who she frames as a thieving “autocrat.” Her view of Trump is of a criminal who “harasses women.” Of the new administration and its vision for the world, she says: “When conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too.”
It is breathtaking that a woman who has made a career out of defense industry-funded war propaganda should accuse anyone of what she has done herself.
The evidence, as Kennedy points out, points to the fact that the U.S. “wanted this war, and now 600,000 kids are dead” – at a cost of 200 billion dollars to Americans. Is that not evidence of a crime? Who is guilty of this crime? Surely people like Applebaum, who has been well paid for years to sell this and other wars to Americans would feature on that charge sheet.
In a curious twist, she is married to disgraced former foreign minister of Poland, Radoslaw Sikorski. He briefly attained fame at the scene of another crime – the detonation of Germany’s NordStream gas pipeline. Here is an image of his now-deleted tweet thanking the U.S. government for bombing a vital part of Europe’s strategic energy supply.
Spotlight on Russia war hysteria
As far back as 2017, the Ron Paul Institute warned that “Neocon Anne Applebaum has never seen a bed she did not expect to find an evil Russian lurking beneath.” In it, Daniel McAdams reveals her One Great Trick to keep the money rolling in.
“Applebaum is, like most neocons, a one trick pony: the U.S. government needs to spend more money to counter the threat of the month. Usually it’s Russia or Putin. But it can also be China, Iran, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam, etc.”
This trick relies on countering evidence against the case for permanent war by smearing anyone who presents it – as Applebaum does. McAdam describes her type, common in the mass production of pro-war talking points.
“She has apparently made a tidy fortune warning us that the Russians are coming, but she wants even more. She is buried in defense industry funded think tanks and she does the bidding of her masters. Every intelligent American reader should ridicule her as the propagandist she is.”
The GrayZone’s Dan Cohen reported in 2021 how leading “U.S. national security reporters serve at [a] pro-war Pentagon-funded think tank.” Called the Center for a New American Century, it promotes the neoconservative Zionist worldview of the Project for a New American Century – founded by Robert Kagan and William Kristol in 1997. Its members directed the United States to remilitarize after the Cold War – and launch the “war on terror.” What followed were decades of regime change wars which produced, among others, the crisis in Ukraine.
In addition to selling wars by demonizing alleged enemies and smearing sanity, neocon propagandists like Applebaum frame legitimate concerns as fantasies, and the dangerous dreams of neocons as the only rational point of view. They completely disregard the God-given sacred value of every human life, from innocent babies to the elderly, cruelly destroyed in each of their profitable wars.
An earlier report by McAdam from 2014 recalled how Applebaum had written of “The Myth of Russian Humiliation” for the Washington Post – in which she describes the expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders not as a threat to Russian security – but as a “success.”
This of course runs counter to the evidence presented by Kennedy. Following George Kennan, who predicted in 1997 that NATO enlargement would be “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era”, Kennedy pointed out in his video interview with Christian channel Daystar that, “In 1992 when Gorbachev disbanded the Soviet Union” U.S. and U.K. leaders promised “we would not move NATO one inch to the east. Since then we have moved it a thousand miles to the east.”
Kennedy says former U.S. Foreign Secretary James Baker, then-President H.W. Bush and former U.K. Prime Minister John Major “all said we will not move it one inch to the east.”
This promise has been repeatedly framed as a lie, as Russian propaganda, with “fact checkers” calling it “Putin’s Myth.”
According to the National Security Archives of the U.S. government, however, “Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion [made] to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner.”
Documents from the meetings between President Bush, Gorbachev – and a range of Western leaders, show that these promises were indeed made to the Russians – and broken.
Nothing gets the fact checkers busier than an outbreak of the truth – of course.
The “debunkers” escalated their efforts after Putin himself raised this point in his annual news conference of December 2021.
Replying to a question from the U.K.’s Sky News about Russian negotiations, Putin said the question was about whether Russia could trust any security guarantees given by the U.S.-led West, “We remember, as I have mentioned many times before and as you know very well, how you promised us in the 1990s that [NATO] would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly: there have been five waves of NATO expansion, and now the weapons systems I mentioned have been deployed in Romania and deployment has recently begun in Poland. This is what we are talking about, can you not see?”
Most people in the West cannot see, of course, because the mainstream media never show them. What is there in reality is too controversial to be seen by the public, because it would lead them to realize they have been misled in the march to war with Russia.
Putin made an additional point – who is threatening whom?
“We are not threatening anyone. Have we approached U.S. borders? Or the borders of Britain or any other country? It is you who have come to our border, and now you say that Ukraine will become a member of NATO as well. Or, even if it does not join NATO, that military bases and strike systems will be placed on its territory under bilateral agreements. This is the point.”
This is the point that Kennedy is trying to make to Americans. There are reasons for this war we are not being told by a media whose main function today seems to be to sell them all to us – and silence the voices of sanity. Some of these voices warned us almost thirty years ago against creating the crisis we now inhabit.
Kennan’s warning of a fatal error
In his 1997 piece warning of the “fatal error” of NATO expansion, George Kennan asked, “Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?”
Kennan was the U.S. national security chief who is credited with decades of steering U.S.-Soviet relations away from the brink of nuclear war.
His grand strategy of Soviet “containment” saw him mobilize the production of Western culture in tandem with the CIA in what he called “Organized Political Warfare.”
An architect of Deep State propaganda and a master of diplomacy, his prescient warning of a “fanciful military conflict” was discarded. Why? As with Macgregor, speaking the truth about this new neocon power was simply inconvenient, and so it was dismissed.
In the video, Kennedy stresses the urgent danger of this reckless strategy of escalation in place of sane diplomacy.
“We walked away from two strategic missile treaties [with Russia] – which would have prevented us from putting missiles in Ukraine that can [now] hit Moscow.”
Why else do the Russians have a “legitimate security concern” over Ukraine, as Kennedy claimed? He explained, “The last time the Russians were invaded through Ukraine Hitler killed one in seven Russians” – about 27 million people, a number vastly exceeding the lives lost by any allied nation, including the United States. It was the Soviet Union, above all, that defeated the Nazi regime.
The simple truth of the war in Ukraine is explained in five minutes by Kennedy. His brief account of the facts of the case opens up a decades-long legacy of disaster by design, directed by a political and media class captive to a lucrative war machine.
It is to be hoped his presence in the new administration – and his championing of the wisdom discarded by a corrupt political class – will finally see America make a break with the awful past of permanent war and death by design.
conflict
Sending arms to Ukraine is unnecessarily placing American lives in danger
U.S. President Joe Biden signs the guest book during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Ukrainian presidential palace on February 20, 2023, in Kyiv, Ukraine
From LifeSiteNews
By Bob Marshall
Joe Biden’s direct military support, coupled with ignoring peace efforts and sidelining containment principles, could spark global conflict.
To understand why a congressional budget fight over continuing or possibly expanding the Ukraine-Russia war is so fraught with dangers, some background of the relevant history and politics must be considered.
Ukraine-Russian hostilities
On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated what he designated as his “special military operation.” He undertook this action in Ukraine which was an extension of the hostile acts that started in February 2014 with a U.S.-supported coup of the Ukraine government. But, recall that Putin approached Biden in late December 2021 through mid-February 2022 with proposals to forestall or avoid Russian military action mainly centering around assurances that Ukraine and other countries would not join NATO, an expansion policy which had its proximate beginnings at the end of the Cold War right after the reunification of Germany.
Putin did not approach Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with such proposals because the United States, and specifically President Biden, was the sine qua non for making such a decision regarding Ukraine’s entrance into NATO both for the U.S. and NATO. Basically, Biden told Putin there was nothing to talk about, especially with regard to reaching any agreement on Ukraine not entering NATO.
Biden rejects Ukraine-Russia peace agreement
Biden and British Prime Minister Johnson refused to accept bona fide peace agreements reached and worked out between Ukraine and Russia during the first weeks of this unnecessary conflict achieved with the assistance of Israel’s 13th prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Former Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote that Biden and Johnson urged Zelensky to reject a more than 100-page peace treaty, “each page of which had been initialed by both sides, and its essence accepted by the Kremlin and by Kyiv,” and that by trusting the U.S. and Britain for military assistance, eastern Ukraine could be protected and Ukraine would not have to make concessions to Putin.
For these reasons, Biden and Great Britain own this war and bear partial responsibility for the Ukraine, Russian, and other lives lost as well as other war costs incurred after the treaty’s rejection.
So, American, Russian, and Ukrainian citizens now suffer the political, economic, and military consequences of the myopic and imprudent judgments of Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and perhaps much less so by Volodymyr Zelensky who apparently believed promises of continued economic and military support from Biden and Johnson.
Biden trashes Kennan Containment Doctrine
In one feckless and politically vindictive act, Biden put our troops and the American homeland in harm’s way. He obliterated George Kennan’s highly successful “containment” policy, which our country has skillfully employed since 1947 in Europe and East Asia as a means of avoiding a direct military confrontation with communist governments across several conflicts and near conflicts and the resulting horrors of nuclear exchanges with Russia, China, and North Korea.
Containment worked! America avoided nuclear war.
Direct U.S./NATO Attacks on Russia
The headlines, of course, say that “Ukraine fires UK-made missiles” and that “Russia says Ukraine attacked it using U.S. long-range missiles.” Not so fast. Zelensky may have given the order to fire, or maybe even pushed the buttons, but the White House needs to explain to the American voters who paid for these weapons, who guided the missiles to their targets in the Russian homeland, and why it is not constitutionally and morally irresponsible for Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to risk a much wider or even a worldwide nuclear holocaust to call Vladimir Putin’s bluff.
On November 24, Rebekah Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, told Fox News that “we are now on the escalation ladder inching towards a nuclear war. Those ATACMS do not fire by themselves.”
Even if Ukrainian soldiers technically pushed the button, “the targeting of the weapons systems, ensuring that there is a proper flight trajectory of the missile, that it destroys the right target, and the actual battle damage it achieved that we wanted it to achieve, all requires U.S. personnel and U.S. satellites. This is why the Russians have stated that the United States and European targets are now in the crosshairs. In every wargame that we conducted back in the intelligence community ended up in a nuclear war.”
This is direct engagement.
In September, Vladimir Putin explained why a decision like Biden’s is radically different from all other “redlines.”
[T]his is not a question of whether the Kiev regime is allowed or not allowed to strike targets on Russian territory. It is already carrying out strikes … using Western-made long-range precision weapons. … This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or U.S. satellites. … [O]nly NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. … Therefore … It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not. If this decision is made … this will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia.
Biden finesses radical policy change
Biden has still refused to take public ownership of his radical departure from George Kennan’s Cold War containment policy of communist powers when he committed the one cardinal sin of American diplomacy: authorizing the direct military attack of a nuclear opponent, however “small.”
The initial press coverage from the Associated Press on November 17 announced that President Biden had authorized Ukraine, for the first time, to use U.S.-made long-range missiles for use by Ukraine inside Russia, “according to a U.S. official and three people familiar with the matter…. The official and the people familiar with the matter were not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.”
The stark refusal of even one Biden official to put their name to this monumentally dangerous and radical policy change is astonishing. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) noted on X that, “Joe Biden just set the stage for World War III[.] Let’s all pray it doesn’t come to that[.] Otherwise, we may never forget where we were [t]he moment we received this news.”
AP also noted that “Biden did not mention the decision during a speech at a stop to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil on his way to the Group of 20 summit.”
Press disguises Biden policy switch
Biden’s “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” approach to not acknowledging the political-military consequences of his own actions was received with favorable “silent” coverage from the nation’s compliant mainstream media.
Indeed, none of the following news organizations told readers that Biden has converted American military personnel and civilian employees into warfighters who are directly engaging Russian troops, equipment, buildings, and territory by his direction: Associated Press, New York Times, NBC-Washington, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg News, ABC-News, Public Broadcasting, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Miami Herald, and The Hill.
Checking the White House, the State Department, and the Defense Department websites for this period reveals no press releases, fact sheets, or acknowledgments about the unprecedented and radical missile policy change with Ukraine or any of its particulars. However, Biden’s White House website posted a note on November 20 expressing sympathy with the Transgender Day of Remembrance but is silent on the possible escalation toward World War III.
Even a week later, National Security Advisor John Kirby still did not acknowledge that Biden has authorized direct attacks on Russia in obvious disregard of Kennan’s successful policy of avoiding nuclear war by avoiding direct military to military conflict with nuclear powers. Below is an exchange between National Security Advisor John Kirby and a reporter at an “on the record” press gaggle:
QUESTION: In the past, you kind of downplayed [the] potential impact of the ATACMS on the battlefield and warned that allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia could lead to escalation by the Kremlin. How do you see it now?
KIRBY: Right now, they are able to use ATACMS to defend themselves, you know, in an immediate-need basis. And right now, you know, understandably, that’s taking place in and around Kursk, in the Kursk Oblast. I’d let the Ukrainians speak to their use of ATACMS and their targeting procedures and what they’re using them for and how well they’re doing. But nothing has changed about the – well, obviously we did change the guidance and gave them guidance that they could use them, you know, to strike these particular types of targets.
Biden’s war escalation ladder
At this point, in light of the grim statistics about a completely avoidable war killing and maiming young men and women, Americans are entitled to the truth, not to a rehash of tired legalisms about Ukraine’s right to defend itself.
On November 25, Judge Andrew Napolitano cited 27-year veteran former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, a frequent guest on Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom” podcast, as confirming that Biden made the decision to let Ukraine use the ATACMS missiles without any input from his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, which is highly unusual.
Biden and weakening Russia
Previously, Austin admitted on April 25, 2022 that the point of the war is “to see Russia weakened,” and Zelensky told The Economist on March 27, 2022, that “there are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.” As Leonid Ragozin wrote in May 2024:
The West has crossed many red lines and is willing to try even more, but it is impossible to predict how the close-knit group of criminally inclined individuals which rules Russia will act if their country begins losing. It has always been a tough proposition to play chess with a guy who is holding a hand grenade. And it makes no sense, as Biden’s predecessors knew very well during the Cold War.
Biden initiated direct but “lower level” hostilities with Russia on November 19, and Biden ally, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, followed suit with similar hostile bombardments of Russia on November 20, partially fulfilling the goal of British and American war hawks attempting to push Russia into larger hostilities under Biden’s lead, or that of his “handlers,” to turn the second cold war with Russia – the aspirations of Washington and London’s armchair generals – into a conflict more likely in their minds of bringing Putin into a more contentious and uncontrollable situation that would relieve Putin of power.
This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.
-
Uncategorized2 days ago
Taxpayers Federation calling on BC Government to scrap failed Carbon Tax
-
Bruce Dowbiggin2 days ago
No, Really. Carney Is An Outsider. And Libs Are Done
-
Business1 day ago
Donald Trump appoints Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to Hollywood
-
Business2 days ago
Conservatives demand Brookfield Asset Management reveal Mark Carney’s compensation
-
Artificial Intelligence1 day ago
Death of an Open A.I. Whistleblower
-
Business2 days ago
Google Rejects Eurocrats’ Push For More Censorship
-
Alberta1 day ago
Why U.S. tariffs on Canadian energy would cause damage on both sides of the border
-
Business1 day ago
Trump’s oil tariffs could spell deficits for Alberta government