Martin Luther King: ‘We Can’t Keep On Blaming the White Man’
Sounds like the Palestinian's constant assertion.
And:
Has the constant drumbeat of blame caused this? At some point people might become what they are blamed for being?
Far-right, even racist views go mainstream in Central Europe. https://tiny.iavian.net/mb1s
For its interest:The Uranium One Deal Is a Clear and Present Danger to America
And
If polls mean a damn then Trump is gaining: Daily Presidential Tracking Poll. https://tiny.iavian.net/mbmh
So much for the success of sanctions? (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Things have seemingly deteriorated to the point where Trump cannot even tell other nations to quit sending their citizens illegally to our country.
No one in their right mind is against immigration, legal immigration. Perhaps we need to alter some of the terms of our current immigration policies and update them to meet a changing world environment but we want and need continued immigration. Russia's population is demographically in decline and I suspect Putin may try to accomplish a population increase by invading other countries bordering his own. That too is a form of illegal immigration. China is another enormous nation whose population is demographically in decline because of their previous policies of limiting child birth.
That said, we do not need nor should we tolerate floods of illegal immigrants. To even argue otherwise is insane. We lock our doors at night, our cars in the daytime. We are told by the police not to leave packages in plain sight. How then can one contend we should open our borders to anyone willing to go to the trouble of taking a hike to come to America.
Governor Moonbeam is pardoning criminals because he has decided to make California a nation unto itself and separate from America. Apparently large numbers of Californians are beginning to disagree with him and are joining Trump's law suit. regarding sanctuary cities and government funding.
Politics has colored virtually every conversation. In doing so, it has emasculated logic and common sense.
Governments were initially created for one purpose - protection. If you cannot protect your borders and citizens you have no nation. Water acts a a natural border. In the absence of water man must construct them. This is what Trump wishes to do and is willing to 'kosher' those illegals Dacas who are already here and even their immediate family members. In exchange he wanted certain restrictions on future legal immigration etc. He set a time limit in order to force a decision and Democrats would not bend. Now he refuses to negotiate with them and they blame him for being obstinate.
DACA has been politicized and Democrats want to use it as another wedge issue to capture the House. Meanwhile illegal immigration continues, albeit at a subdued rate, but it will pick up as employment and our economy recovers.
Whatever Trump wants to do that resembles sound policy, rest assured, he will be opposed. In the next election Trump and Republicans should tell voters if they vote for Democrats they are voting for the mass media. Pelosi and Waters may have low positive ratings but nothing beats the disgust most American deplorables have for the mass media and the establishment types. (See 2 below.)
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Here is something to think about. This was sent to me by a fellow Marine neighbor and dear friend and fellow memo reader.(See 3 below.)
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Finally, numbers don't lie but they can be manipulated. (See 4 below.)
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Is Trump's proposed pull out from Syria wise? (See 5 below.)
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Martin Luther King, as I oft repeated, was one of my hero's. His death was a tragedy as with all illogical deaths. He pointed the way towards rational discourse through non-violent protests. In doing so he created stark differences that eventually touched people's hearts and sense of fair play.
My father befriended King early on and took a stand with all King was a against.
I will always treasure the fact that my father was willing to be vocal when it counted.
I do not have his courage but in my small way I try to follow his/their path. This is what I hope my memos seek to accomplish. I want to challenge those who read them to think about their messages and to discuss them thoughtfully with whomever.
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Dick
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1) THE WASHINGTON POST
Billion-dollar sanctions-busting scheme aided Iran, documents show
MANAMA, Bahrain — Investigators have uncovered evidence of a multibillion-dollar corruption scheme by a Persian Gulf bank that secretly helped Iran evade sanctions for more than a decade, according to documents filed in a legal dispute.
Records from a Bahraini government audit reveal that the now-closed Future Bank — a joint venture partly owned by two of Iran’s largest lenders — routinely altered financial documents to mask illicit trade between Iran and dozens of foreign partners, the documents show.
The bank allegedly concealed at least $7 billion of transactions between 2004 and 2015, a time when many Iranian banks were barred by sanctions from accessing international financial markets, the records show.
Auditors also discovered hundreds of bank accounts tied to individuals convicted of crimes including money laundering and terrorism financing, as well as phantom loans provided to companies that operate as fronts for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to confidential court filings obtained by The Washington Post.
Bahraini officials likened the bank to a Trojan horse operating inside the tiny Persian Gulf country, allowing Iran to buy and sell billions of dollars’ worth of goods in defiance of international sanctions intended to punish Tehran over its nuclear program and support for terrorist groups.
Bahrain, in the papers submitted in February before an international arbitration court in the Netherlands, accused Future Bank officials of a “vast range of illicit conduct” with numerous foreign partners, adding that the activities uncovered so far are probably only the “tip of the iceberg” because many transactions appear to have been cleverly concealed.
“Bahrain has never faced violations of this magnitude,” the kingdom asserted in a written summation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. “The ramifications rising from Future Bank’s systemic malfeasance cannot be overestimated.”
Neither Future Bank nor Iran’s mission at the United Nations responded to written requests for comment.
Future Bank, established in 2004 as a joint venture between Bahrain’s Ahli United Bank and Iran’s Bank Melli and Bank Saderat, had previously been accused of helping Iran skirt trade restrictions, allegations that led U.S. and European officials to blacklist the bank and ban it from using the international electronic payment messaging system known as SWIFT. Ahli Bank placed its shares of Future Bank’s stock in a blind trust in 2008.
The new accusations stem from an intensive investigation that began after Bahraini regulators formally closed the bank in 2015. The closure prompted Future Bank’s two Iranian shareholders to file a complaint in The Hague accusing Bahrain of improperly shutting down the bank and demanding the return of frozen assets.
In response, Bahrain submitted hundreds of pages of audit findings that paint a portrait of a financial institution that operated mainly with “the aim of concealment,” the documents state, giving Iranian companies secret access to the foreign markets and the international monetary system.
The audit “revealed crimes and violations of Bahraini and international law of massive proportions,” Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said in a written statement to The Post. He said that criminal proceedings were underway in Bahrain and that the results of the investigation were being shared with other capitals, because they will “also be of concern to the international community.”
Among the practices cited in the report was a systematic use of “wire-stripping,” the deliberate removal or changing of identifying information when transferring money between banks. Auditors said they discovered more than 4,500 instances of wire-stripping by bank officials to conceal Iran’s role as the sender or recipient of funds.
The amount of money known to have changed hands in those transactions totals $4.7 billion, but the true sum is likely to be far greater, Bahraini officials say. Some transactions appear to have been subjected to multiple instances of wire-stripping at different banks, one Bahraini official said, “like layers of an onion, with the originator deeply concealed.”
In hundreds of cases, bank transfers were accompanied by specific instructions to avoid references to Iran or Iranian banking codes.
“Do not mentioned [sic] our bank name, BIC code ref. no., in any message routed through U.S.A. and do not route through New York,” Future Bank officials were instructed in one message from Iran’s Bank Melli.
Other banks, including some in the West, have famously engaged in wire-stripping to conceal payments to countries under international sanctions. In 2010, the Obama administration slapped a $298 million fine on the British banking giant Barclays for using wire-stripping to hide $500 million of financial transactions with Iran.
In addition to the amount accounted for by wire-stripping, the Bahraini bank concealed $2.7 billion in Iranian transactions using an informal alternative to the SWIFT system that is difficult to trace, documents show. The audit also identified thousands of transactions that directly violated international sanctions against Iran, as well as more than 10,000 infractions of Bahraini banking and money-laundering laws, government officials allege. Among the violations cited were 260 instances in which the bank opened accounts for individuals convicted of financial crimes such as money laundering and supporting terrorist causes.
According to former U.S. officials familiar with the case, the findings are troubling because they suggest ongoing deceptive behavior by banking officials at a time when Future Bank was under intense scrutiny by U.S. and Bahraini government agencies.
“If you’re engaging in wire-stripping, you’re hiding the nature of transactions from regulators, and possibly even from the bank itself,” said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department counterterrorism official and director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It becomes difficult to know what funds might be going to support activities such as terrorism, or Iran’s nuclear or military establishment.”
Future Bank’s founding as an Iranian-Bahraini venture in 2004 occurred when Bahraini leaders were seeking to mend strained relations between the tiny gulf kingdom and Iran, its vastly larger neighbor to the north. Bahrain’s majority-Shiite population has close cultural and religious ties to Iran, but the kingdom’s Sunni ruling family has closely aligned itself with the Saudi-based Gulf Cooperation Council.
The two Iranian shareholders, Bank Melli and Bank Saderat, have been accused by U.S. officials of helping finance Iran’s nuclear program and what they say is its international terrorism network.
Since 2011, the Bahraini government has struggled to contain a Shiite resistance movement that includes peaceful dissenters as well as violent extremists armed with weapons that independent investigators have traced to Iran. Bahrain has repeatedly accused Iran of fomenting violence against the country’s monarchy, but its actions to stifle opposition groups have led to international criticism over alleged human rights violations.
One of the more controversial allegations in the Future Bank case involves a Shiite cleric with close ties to opposition movements. Bahraini officials criticized Future Bank for allowing the cleric, Isa Qassim, to make cash deposits totaling millions of dollars over several years, and directing some of the money to a charity Bahraini officials have linked to terrorism. U.S. investigators say much of Qassim’s cash appears to consist of tithes and alms collected from worshipers under a Shiite tradition known as khums.
“This is a politically sensitive area, and it is difficult to find hard proof of terrorist financing,” said one former U.S. official familiar with the investigation. “We share the concern over the fact that it involves millions of dollars being moved around in a way that is not at all transparent.”
Warrick reported from Washington.
1a)Why Iran won’t rush to a bomb if Trump pulls out of the nuclear deal
With John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser, the odds have significantly risen that President Trump will abandon his predecessor’s nuclear deal with Iran. But there’s no need for hysteria. If Trump abandons the deal, the Islamic Republic still isn’t likely to run amok, ramping up its nuclear program and killing American soldiers in the Middle East. The calculated caution of Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, will probably win out. His tortoise-beats-the-hare approach to his country’s nuclear quest will be reinforced by the wild card that surely scares the mullahs the most: Trump.
A bit of history. Salehi, an MIT-trained nuclear physicist and the likely architect behind the Islamic Republic’s massive illicit dual-use import network, is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Salehi was dismayed by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rapid accumulation of primitive IR-1 centrifuges, which offered Tehran neither an efficient path to nuclear energy nor an intelligent route to atomic weaponry. These clunky machines are prone to breakdown, and many thousands were required to produce enriched uranium, making their cascades impossible to hide. Salehi wanted to leapfrog to more advanced, high-velocity IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges.
With Hassan Rouhani’s presidential election in 2013, Salehi moved ahead with his ambitious plan to modernize atomic infrastructure. His principal problem: it would take Tehran at least eight years to fully develop a new generation of centrifuges. The clerical regime needed an arms-control agreement that would not just lift sanctions but also be permissive enough to allow the development of these machines. As Salehi has explained: “We do not take that [the Iran deal’s restrictions on centrifuges] as a constraint. So I would say on R&D, the apparent limitations that we have accepted, that we have agreed to, it’s not really a limitation.”
Contrary to the nightmare scenarios of former secretary of state John Kerry, Iran is unlikely to rush to a bomb using one of its monitored facilities and the thousands of IR-1s that such a task would demand. It would take time to reinstall the higher-yield 1,000 IR-2ms currently under the surveillance of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Such stark actions would be detected, likely bringing on U.S. military strikes. The advantage of the most advanced centrifuges is that a small number can rapidly enrich uranium to weapons-grade. Their cascades can be easily concealed in a warehouse, making them extremely difficult to detect. They are key to a nuclear fait accompli.
And technical problems are compounded by politics: President Trump obviously unsettles Tehran’s oligarchs. The regime follows Western media. The Europeans, much of the U.S. press, and especially former Obama officials are palpably scared of the president’s perceived bellicosity. Bolton’s appointment has amplified that fear. A headline in a Revolutionary Guard publication sums it up: “Trump’s Raging Bull Has Arrived.”
So it’s reasonable to assume that Tehran will not want to challenge Trump and his new team, at least until the Iranians have had a chance to take their measure. It is worth recalling that the Iranian hostage crisis came to an end when Ronald Reagan, the “reckless cowboy,” replaced the hapless Jimmy Carter. Tehran temporarily froze its atomic program when George W. Bush geared up to invade Iraq. What Rouhani once explained about that decision is as applicable today to Iran’s actions if Trump abandons the nuclear accord:
“Back then [the United States] was drunk with pride and victory. Had we shown passivity or radicalism, we would have given the knife into the hands of a drunk Abyssinian [George W. Bush]. We managed to put that phase behind us by prudence. . . . We managed to pass through that perilous curve. . . .
Salehi cannot do much to speed up the development of advanced centrifuges. It routinely takes a country at least a decade to design and construct a new generation. Which is why Salehi, Khamenei, and Rouhani and their nuclear scientists want to preserve the agreement and thus their ingenious accomplishment.
The clerical regime may still embark on some nuclear activities as a gesture of defiance to Trump. It may reinstall some of its mothballed centrifuges and continue to perfect the IR2ms. It may stockpile uranium currently committed to shipping abroad. It may even enrich uranium to 20 percent.
All these moves are troublesome and will provoke hyperventilating headlines, but they hardly constitute a mad rush to the bomb. Tehran cannot have a realistic weapons option until Salehi finishes work on the advanced centrifuges. As the French tried to argue before the nuclear agreement was concluded, the West actually had more than one option to slow down, possibly halt, Iran’s atomic ambitions. It wasn’t, as President Barack Obama argued, his way or war. Paris was willing to take a slower approach, make fewer concessions, and let sanctions bite more deeply.
Alone now, Washington has to be willing to play hardball with Tehran by insisting that it does have military options. But our primary task ought to be to squeeze the theocracy relentlessly. Enormous economic pressure can still be brought to bear on Tehran. As the recent nationwide anti-regime demonstrations in Iran revealed, economic frustration and political disgust are widespread in areas the mullahs had assumed were still faithful to theocracy.
We should always want a different regime. The Islamic Republic is a discredited relic of the twentieth century, and the sooner we can expedite its demise, the safer the Middle East will be.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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2)This trap was set well before Trump won++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++By Charles Hurt
ANALYSIS/OPINION:So this is the new standard for electing a president here in America, the greatest living experiment in self-governance.A man can run the gauntlet against more than 20 professional politicians and come out victorious.He can win more than 40 Republican primary contests and beat every professional political campaigner out there, earning the votes of more than 14 million Republicans.He can then turn his attention to beating the most powerful, entrenched political machine America has seen in nearly a half-century. (That corrupt machine had just pulled off its most devious and dishonest scam ever — rigging a presidential primary to snatch the party’s preferred Socialist candidate away from Democrat voters.)In the end, President Trump won the presidency fair and square, earning the votes of more than 60 million Americans and — crucially — winning the 30 states he needed to take the White House.These are the long-agreed-upon standards for winning the White House. This is how self-governance works.Through a combination of representative democracy and a balancing of state power against federal power, we the people pick our president.Unless, of course, the president we the people pick turns out to be a grave and odious threat to the powerful established bureaucracy in Washington that — like cancer itself — is entirely dedicated to its own preservation and spread.And damn the innocent host! The more devastating the cancer is to the very body politic that gives it life, the better!It is the truest form of injustice. Singular evil. Blind hatred.So they changed the rules. We can pick our president. But then the powerful established bureaucracy must conduct a massive, sprawling, limitless investigation into any and all aspects of the president we pick.The basis of this “investigation” is an increasingly debunked frame-up designed and drafted by the Kremlin and paid for by President Trump’s political opponent in the presidential election. And then spread to all four corners of the globe by the oldest creatures of the powerful establishment in Washington.At the height of the presidential election, the administration of the outgoing president of the United States — Mr. Trump’s most powerful political enemy — handed over the controls of America’s spy apparatus to begin moving against Mr. Trump and his campaign.They exposed people, spied on people and began setting the trap just in case the stupid people of America picked Mr. Trump to be their president. They lied, conspired and held secret meetings.So special counsel Robert Mueller’s endless investigation in search of a crime should have been no surprise. It was cooked up long before Mr. Trump even won the election. Of course, these people were going to do this.It is the new standard for “self-governance” in America. The people can elect any president they want. But then these people will do everything including assassinate their character to hound them from office.Truly, these people cannot fathom how much innocent taxpayers despise them.
3)The Wall
A little history most people will never know.
Interesting Veterans Statistics off the Vietnam Memorial Wall
There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall, including those added in 2010.
The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 36 years since the last casualties.
The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth , Mass. Listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965.
There are three sets of fathers and sons on the Wall.
39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.
8,283 were just 19 years old.
The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old.
5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock was 15 years old.
997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam ..
1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam ..
31 sets of brothers are on the Wall.
Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons.
54 soldiers attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia . I wonder why so many from one school.
8 Women are on the Wall. Nursing the wounded.
244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall.
Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons.
West Virginia had the highest casualty rate per capita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.
The Marines of Morenci - They led some of the scrappiest high school football and basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town of Morenci (pop. 5,058) had ever known and cheered. They enjoyed roaring beer busts. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest. And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci's mining families, the nine graduates of Morenci High enlisted as a group in the Marine Corps. Their service began on Independence Day, 1966. Only 3 returned home.
The Buddies of Midvale - LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played ball at the adjacent sandlot ball field. And they all went to Vietnam. In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 deaths.
The most casualty deaths for a single month was May 1968 - 2,415 casualties were incurred.
For most Americans who read this they will only see the numbers that the Vietnam War created. To those of us who survived the war, and to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these numbers created. We are, until we too pass away, haunted with these numbers, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. There are no noble wars, just noble warriors.
Please pass this on to those who served during this time, and those who DO Care.
I've also sent this to those I KNOW do care very much, and I thank you for caring as you do.
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4)Today, I placed my Glock 9mm pistol on the table right next to my front door. I left its full clip beside it, then left it alone and went about my business.
While I was gone, the mailman delivered my mail, the neighbor's son across the street mowed the yard, a girl walked her dog down the street, and quite a few cars stopped at the "stop" sign near the front of my house.
After about an hour, I checked on the gun and it was quietly sitting there, right where I had left it. It had not moved itself outside. It had not killed anyone, even with the numerous opportunities it had been presented to do that. In fact, it had not even loaded itself.
Well you can imagine my surprise, with all the hype by the Left and the media, about how dangerous guns are and how they kill people. Either the media is wrong, or I'm in possession of the laziest gun in the world.
The United States is 3rd in murders throughout the world. But if you take out just 5 'left-wing' cities: Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, St Louis, and New Orleans -- the United States is 4th from the bottom, in the ENTIRE world, for murders.
These 5 cities are controlled by Democrats. They also have the toughest gun control laws in the USA. It would be absurd to draw any conclusions from this data, right?
Well, I'm off to check on my spoons. I hear they're making people fat!
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5) Trump is as bad if not worse than Obama on Syria
Even as President Trump and his reckless collaborators are planning to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, without a viable fallback, Trump is handing Iran — and Russia — a huge win. The Post reports:
4)Today, I placed my Glock 9mm pistol on the table right next to my front door. I left its full clip beside it, then left it alone and went about my business.
While I was gone, the mailman delivered my mail, the neighbor's son across the street mowed the yard, a girl walked her dog down the street, and quite a few cars stopped at the "stop" sign near the front of my house.
After about an hour, I checked on the gun and it was quietly sitting there, right where I had left it. It had not moved itself outside. It had not killed anyone, even with the numerous opportunities it had been presented to do that. In fact, it had not even loaded itself.
Well you can imagine my surprise, with all the hype by the Left and the media, about how dangerous guns are and how they kill people. Either the media is wrong, or I'm in possession of the laziest gun in the world.
The United States is 3rd in murders throughout the world. But if you take out just 5 'left-wing' cities: Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, St Louis, and New Orleans -- the United States is 4th from the bottom, in the ENTIRE world, for murders.
These 5 cities are controlled by Democrats. They also have the toughest gun control laws in the USA. It would be absurd to draw any conclusions from this data, right?
Well, I'm off to check on my spoons. I hear they're making people fat!
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5) Trump is as bad if not worse than Obama on Syria
President Trump has instructed military leaders to prepare to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria but has not set a date for them to do so, according to a senior administration official.In a meeting with top national security officials Tuesday, Trump stressed that U.S. troops can be involved in current training tasks for local forces to ensure security in areas liberated from the Islamic State, the official said.But the president said that the U.S. mission would not extend beyond the destruction of the Islamic State, and that he expects other countries, particularly wealthy Arab states in the region, to pick up the task of paying for ongoing stabilization and reconstruction, including sending their own troops, if necessary.
It is not clear which if any advisers have recommended this course of action. But if it is a sign of things to come with Mike Pompeo at State and John Bolton heading the National Security Council, it’s a horrible omen for continued conflict, American decline and Iranian aggression.
Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Eric S. Edelman tells me that this is “more evidence of the essential continuity of Obama and Trump’s policies in the Middle East. The rhetoric is a little different, particularly on JCPOA, which Trump may walk away from, but even at the rhetorical level Trump sounds an awful like Obama saying we need to do nation-building at home.”
He argues, “Absent an overarching strategy for dealing with the multifaceted challenge that Iran represents, we may end up being in even worse shape after Trump’s actions.” Ironically the damage done by his Syria policy may eclipse Obama’s red-line fiasco. “Syria represents the best place to start imposing costs on Iran for its aggressive behavior in the region because its proxies are quite exposed there,” Edelman explains. “Moreover, a premature pull out will likely lead to a revival of the ISIS threat much as Obama’s premature evacuation of Iraq led to a void that was filled by ISIS.”
The short-term effects may include further escalation of tensions between Iran and Israel, which broke out into military conflict last month. “The signal is that he is ceding Syria to [Iran],” observes veteran Middle East diplomat Dennis Ross. “Iran can consolidate its land bridge through Syria to the Mediterranean; it can develop military infrastructure for itself and the Shia militias, and that will be used to threaten Jordan as well as Israel.” He stresses, “With regard to Israel, Iran is trying to create an asymmetric reality where it can threaten Israel from Syria and Lebanon, while Israel is far less capable of threatening Iran. It makes war more likely at some point between Israel and Iran/Hezbollah because the U.S. is on the sidelines and not playing a deterrent role with either the Iranians or the Russians.” He recommends that “at a minimum, it would help if we would privately convey to Putin that we will back Israel’s freedom of action if a war erupts and such a war risks escalation and drawing us in. If nothing else, that might get Putin to do more to contain the Iranians in Syria.”
The move should unnerve our Sunni allies who perceive that the United States is receding from the region, leaving them in the clutches of Russia and Iran. Moreover, the humanitarian disaster, thegenocide, that Obama allowed to unfold on his watch (to the outrage of many Republicans) is now part of Trump’s legacy as well. On every level, his decision casts America as the loser — losing its influence in the region, losing its influence as a reliable ally, losing any claim to moral authority and losing the will to enforce international law on use of WMDs.
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