Tulsi Gabbard Is No ‘Progressive’ on Foreign Policy

[Belligerent Savant]

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She is no progressive on foreign policy. That seems clear.

How do you define 'progressive'? What, in your view, is the 'progressive' stance on foreign policy?

[Jerky]

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She is no progressive on foreign policy. That seems clear.

How do you define 'progressive'? What, in your view, is the 'progressive' stance on foreign policy?

What's yours?

[Belligerent Savant]

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AD raised this topic. Let's allow AD the opportunity to respond in his own words since he is -- ostensibly -- invested enough in this topic to start a thread about it.


It should be clear by now that my stance is against capitalist/imperialist (neoliberal/neocon) acts of aggression.

[Marionumber1]

https://rewire.news/article/2019/01/24/gabbard-is-no-progressive-foreign-policy/

Tulsi Gabbard Is No ‘Progressive’ When It Comes to Foreign Policy

Jan 24, 2019, 1:26pm Ramah Kudaimi

There is absolutely nothing progressive about siding with authoritarian rulers and states over people’s movements.

[snip]

[snip] In order to justify this brutality, Assad and his backers have insisted that there is a “regime change” conspiracy against him, thus dismissing the legitimacy of the Syrian people’s suffering under his family’s decades-long rule as well as the right of Syrians to protest against their oppression.

[snip]

Whenever Gabbard repeats the lies that what has been happening in Syria is about regime change, she is taking the side of Assad over Syrians. And there is absolutely nothing progressive about siding with authoritarian rulers and states over people’s movements.

[snip]

It's too bad that this article, posted uncritically by AD, is blatantly lying by downplaying at best and denying at worst that there is indeed a regime change conspiracy against Assad. No less of an empire-biased source than the New York Times made that clear:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

Regime change doesn't get much clearer than the CIA assisting the Gulf monarchies and Turkey in arming forces that are trying to overthrow the Syrian government. This is the same playbook behind numerous historical CIA coups that are widely-accepted as such, but the "liberal" press has so successfully propagandized many progressives into believing that what's happening in Syria isn't exactly the kind of thing they condemned in Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, etc. Even if we are to accept this article's claims about the Syrian war beginning as a popular uprising, that doesn't change the fact that it was quickly co-opted by Western imperialists, and the article's dismissal of that fact is pure propaganda.

[American Dream]

By the way, the BS, Jack & Mac are on my ignore list and now coffin_dodger is a fourth. That ain't changing...

Regime preservation: How US policy facilitated Assad’s victory


Assad and Kerry

8 May 2019

Michael Karadjis

This article originally appeared in Al-Jumhuriya: https://aljumhuriya.net/en/content/regi ... 9s-victory

A close examination of eight years of US policy in Syria shows Washington’s objective has never been regime change, but rather “a modified form of regime preservation,” writes Dr. Michael Karadjis in a comprehensive review of the record.

As the military conflict in Syria has been largely decided in favor of the Bashar al-Assad regime, there have been a number of attempts to review the role of US intervention, or lack thereof, in the Syrian outcome. Late last year, Washington’s special envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, clarified that while the US wants to see a regime in Damascus that is “fundamentally different,” it is nevertheless “not regime change” the US is seeking. “We’re not trying to get rid of Assad.” Much commentary jumped on this as some kind of major shift in US policy, or a signal the US had “given up” on regime change.

Yet, as will be shown below, the US never had a “regime change” policy. On the contrary, Washington has always sought a modified form of regime preservation. Jeffrey’s statement was followed by President Trump’s announcement of an immediate US withdrawal from Syria. While the “immediate” was later dropped for reasons of expediency, a more gradual US withdrawal is still on the cards; a process coinciding with a creeping rapprochement with Assad by Trump’s Gulf allies, spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain restoring diplomatic relations with Syria in late December 2018.

Read: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2019/05 ... s-victory/

[MacCruiskeen]

By the way, the BS, Jack & Mac are on my ignore list and now coffin_dodger is a fourth. That ain't changing...

By the way, you are still a spook. That ain't changin' either, obviously.

Regime preservation: How US policy facilitated Assad’s victory


Assad and Kerry

8 May 2019

Michael Karadjis

This article originally appeared in Al-Jumhuriya: https://aljumhuriya.net/en/content/regi ... 9s-victory

A close examination of eight years of US policy in Syria shows Washington’s objective has never been regime change, but rather “a modified form of regime preservation,” writes Dr. Michael Karadjis in a comprehensive review of the record.

As the military conflict in Syria has been largely decided in favor of the Bashar al-Assad regime, there have been a number of attempts to review the role of US intervention, or lack thereof, in the Syrian outcome. Late last year, Washington’s special envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, clarified that while the US wants to see a regime in Damascus that is “fundamentally different,” it is nevertheless “not regime change” the US is seeking. “We’re not trying to get rid of Assad.” Much commentary jumped on this as some kind of major shift in US policy, or a signal the US had “given up” on regime change.

Yet, as will be shown below, the US never had a “regime change” policy. On the contrary, Washington has always sought a modified form of regime preservation. Jeffrey’s statement was followed by President Trump’s announcement of an immediate US withdrawal from Syria. While the “immediate” was later dropped for reasons of expediency, a more gradual US withdrawal is still on the cards; a process coinciding with a creeping rapprochement with Assad by Trump’s Gulf allies, spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain restoring diplomatic relations with Syria in late December 2018.

Read: https://mkaradjis.wordpress.com/2019/05 ... s-victory/

You are, obviously, also still a fucking liar. But of course that goes with your job.

2012: Obama: Assad needs to step down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6QAW78e-Kc

2013: Obama and Erdogan: Syria's Assad Must Go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvvqrwwkSlM

2015: Assad must go - Obama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSf3efRVIFo

So fuck off back to Langley, you repulsive warmongering spook liar. You are transparent.

[Belligerent Savant]

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By the way, the BS, Jack & Mac are on my ignore list and now coffin_dodger is a fourth. That ain't changing...

How convenient for you. It allows you to simply continue passively (and yet repeatedly, at an aggressive rate) promoting blatant State propaganda without interruption or explanation in what was once a Discussion Board. Disingenuous Entity, you are.

Perhaps you can address Marionumber1's astute points raised in his reply since he isn't on your ignore list, but that clearly won't happen, will it?

You're a bad actor, AD. You ain't foolin' anyone here.

[alloneword]

It's too bad that this article, posted uncritically by AD, is blatantly lying by downplaying at best and denying at worst that there is indeed a regime change conspiracy against Assad.

I guess it's just what's on this weeks hymn sheet.



Can't wait for the 'Gabbard Piss Tapes', or whatever the fuck they'll come up with next.

[Marionumber1]

AD, that article by Michael Karadjis makes some points that appear superficially interesting at first glance, but it really doesn't challenge the evidence that regime change was the goal of the US. Presenting the official government policy -- of trying to negotiate a democratic transition without necessarily forcing the ouster of Assad -- as evidence that that is indeed the real policy betrays a stunning ignorance of how covert warfare functions. We know from WikiLeaks cables that the State Department (i.e. the CIA's "diplomatic" front) had been secretly supporting Syrian opposition groups since about 2006 and continued doing so even as the Obama Administration faked friendly interactions:

Newly released WikiLeaks cables reveal that the US State Department has been secretly financing Syrian opposition groups and other opposition projects for at least five years, The Washington Post reports.

That aid continued going into the hands of the Syrian government opposition even after the US began its reengagement policy with Syria under President Barack Obama in 2009, the Post reports. In January, the US posted its first ambassador to the country since the Bush administration withdrew the US ambassador in 2005 over concerns about Syria's involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The purpose of these efforts clearly was to destabilize the Syrian government and threaten its "legitimacy" (a made-up term used by imperialists to justify regime change):

This cable shows that, in December 2006, the top US diplo mat in Syria believed that the goal of US policy in Syria should be to destabilize the Syrian government by any means available; that the US should work to increase Sunni-Shia sectarianism in Syria, including by aiding the dissemination of false fears about Shia proselytizing and stoking resentment about Iranian business activity and mosque construction; that the US should press Arab allies to give access in the media they control to a former Syrian official calling for the ouster of the Syrian government; that the US should try to strain relations between the Syrian government and other Arab governments, and then blame Syria for the strain; that the US should seek to stoke Syrian government fears of coup plots in order to provoke the Syrian government to overreact; that if the Syrian government reacted to external provocations, it proved that the regime was paranoid; that the US should work to undermine Syrian economic reforms and discourage foreign investment; that the US should seek to foster the belief that the Syrian government was not legitimate; that violent protests in Syria were praiseworthy and exemplary; that if Syria is the victim of terrorism and tries to do something about it, the US should exploit that to say that the Syrian government is weak and unstable, and is experiencing blowback for its foreign policy.

And as the uprising began in 2011, that support went from simply funding protests to providing military aid.

Despite the article's claims about how disappointingly hamstrung the opposition was in terms of weapons, they actually had anti-tank weapons from the beginning:

Syrian armored forces shooting at random are now running into heavy resistance: Awaiting them are anti-tank traps and fortified barriers manned by protesters armed with heavy machine guns.

And almost immediately, NATO was strategizing on how to support the opposition with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime's crackdown on dissent. Instead of repeating the Libyan model of air strikes, NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces.

Indeed, the information which has trickled out about the true motives behind the war reveals that the US government had few tactics that they considered too shameful, even being willing to support an Islamist state in Syria (hm, sound familiar?) if it would give a strategic advantage against the Syrian government:

C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA, AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.

[snip]

C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN).

No big surprise, given the documented facts that jihadists were used in the Soviet-Afghan War and then again in various attacks throughout the 1990s to destabilize central Asia (see Sibel Edmonds on Operation Gladio B). And in those cases, foreign governments like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey served as CIA intermediaries to allow the US government a plausibly-deniable distancing from these operations. So when Karadjis's article makes it seem like the US was lackluster in arming the Syrian opposition and any real support came from the other governments who were involved like Saudi Arabia, that doesn't exactly ring true to anyone who knows the history of CIA operations in the Middle East.

It is entirely in keeping with the principles of covert war to say that you're not providing support to militant groups that you in fact are providing through secret channels. Do you think the US government was telling the truth about its CIA coups while we lived through them? It took time for the truth to come out and then afterwards it became accepted fact. Until it did, those who were telling the truth were attacked as conspiracy theorists and apologists for the Brutal Foreign Dictator of the day.

[American Dream]

I hear you Marionumber1- though I'm not sure "Gladio B" has really been well corroborated- but this reorients the Wikileaks documents you cite:

US military document reveals how the West opposed a democratic Syria

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Le Monde diplomatiqueUS military document reveals how the West opposed a democratic Syria↑


Bashar al-Assad propaganda.

US military documents from 2011 and 2016 reveal that although officials wanted a Syrian regime change in theory, they thought it was highly unlikely to actually happen — and hoped that if President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, he would not be replaced by an opposition-led Syrian democracy but, rather, the same Alawite-Baathist ruling structure would continue. The end result was to be the decimation of the democratic opposition, the consolidation of Islamist forces and regime preservation.

‘The US has given up on the overthrow of Assad in Syria’, wrote Robert Fisk this summer. Indeed, as the Russian-backed Syrian army prepared to execute its final offensive on Idlib, western governments appeared to signal their acceptance of a bloody victory for Assad, despite the ritual denunciations.

But at the last minute, Russia and Turkey agreed a truce to ward off a Russian-led attack for at least a month, and establish a buffer zone to protect 3 million civilians. The deal will involve hashing out how to remove extremist rebels from the buffer zone, and Turkey has announced it will send more troops into Idlib.

As the Idlib offensive loomed, the West, curiously, did little of substance in any particular direction. According to two newly uncovered US military documents, western reticence might be because the US was never really committed to overthrowing Assad, due to a self-serving strategy that has been wildly misunderstood.

The documents suggest that both early on and toward the later phase of the conflict, senior US military officials had not given any credence to the democratic aspirations of Syrian protestors, but had merely sought to use them as a tool to sideline expanding Iranian influence. Toppling the regime was dismissed as a highly improbable scenario, with officials indicating they believed the survival of an authoritarian Baathist governing structure — with or without Assad — was inevitable.

Predicting opposition failure
According to a US secret draft military document obtained via the Wikileaks archive, as far back as August 2011 (six months after the Syrian uprising began) US military officials were highly ambivalent about ‘regime change’ in Syria, on the grounds that opposition forces would never win. Supporting the rebels, the officials hoped, might encourage forces within Assad’s regime to remove him while maintaining the Alawite-dominated authoritarian power structure. But military intervention was not on the cards.

The document, reported here for the first time, is the draft of an internal US Marine Corps’ (USMC) Intelligence Department forecasting paper, produced jointly by analysts at the private intelligence firm Stratfor and senior USMC officials (1).

‘The Syrian Alawite-Baathist regime led by President Bashar al Assad will weaken significantly over the next three years, but its break point is unlikely to be imminent’, it states. ‘Fractured opposition forces in Syria are unlikely to overcome the logistical constraints preventing them from cohering into a meaningful threat against the regime within this time frame.’

The document was meant to be an internal USMC intelligence assessment and was never formally released to the public by the agency. It saw regime change as desirable in theory, but unattainable in practice, warning that Syria would experience ‘a violent, protracted civil conflict, one that will enflame sectarian unrest... The potential for the regime to collapse cannot be ruled out, but the road to regime change will be a long and bloody one.’

While the document does not strictly rule out regime change, it marshals abundant evidence to argue that a regime change effort would be futile. In particular, the document concludes that opposition forces would be unable to overthrow Assad: ‘... the opposition in Syria does not yet have the numbers, organization or capabilities overall to overwhelm the regime forces. Syria’s opposition is extremely fractured and is operating under enormous constraints inside the country.’

Continues: https://mondediplo.com/outsidein/syria- ... -documents

[Marionumber1]

Crucially, this article points out that the US government indeed "wanted a Syrian regime change" and viewed it as "desirable". Regardless of any pessimistic official assessments about how likely regime change was to succeed -- as if the CIA doesn't have a history of pursuing coups against better judgment -- it clearly was a goal, and there is no doubt from what I've pointed out above that regime change was being pursued. The longtime support of the opposition through funding and then weapons, and the use of plausibly-deniable CIA cutouts (as in Operation Gladio B, which has been corroborated by the same author you just cited, and is entirely in line with what we know about al-Qaeda activities up to and including 9/11) for these support networks, is straight out of the CIA coup playbook. The wholly unsurprising fact that the US didn't want a democracy in Syria doesn't prove that ousting Assad wasn't the most preferred outcome. My purpose, for what it's worth, wasn't to discuss the entire nature of the conflict in Syria; we have other threads for that. My issue is with your original article making a baseless attack on Tulsi Gabbard for pointing out that regime change aspirations against Assad are a central factor in the Syrian war.

[American Dream]

I meant independent corroboration of Sibel Edmonds' allegations- I see no good corroboration for the existence of a "Gladio B". As to overthrowing the Baathists, I see no consensus from the American powers to do so. If there was such a consensus, I suspect that Uncle Sam's actions would have been quite different all along.

On these things, we just may have to agree to disagree. Am I suffering from confirmation bias? I hope not too much! That said, I don't consider Tulsi Gabbard's foreign policy agenda to align enough with my own to consider it desirable/progressive or "good". Your mileage may vary...

Crucially, this article points out that the US government indeed "wanted a Syrian regime change" and viewed it as "desirable". Regardless of any pessimistic official assessments about how likely regime change was to succeed -- as if the CIA doesn't have a history of pursuing coups against better judgment -- it clearly was a goal, and there is no doubt from what I've pointed out above that regime change was being pursued. The longtime support of the opposition through funding and then weapons, and the use of plausibly-deniable CIA cutouts (as in Operation Gladio B, which has been corroborated by the same author you just cited, and is entirely in line with what we know about al-Qaeda activities up to and including 9/11) for these support networks, is straight out of the CIA coup playbook. The wholly unsurprising fact that the US didn't want a democracy in Syria doesn't prove that ousting Assad wasn't the most preferred outcome. My purpose, for what it's worth, wasn't to discuss the entire nature of the conflict in Syria; we have other threads for that. My issue is with your original article making a baseless attack on Tulsi Gabbard for pointing out that regime change aspirations against Assad are a central factor in the Syrian war.

[Marionumber1]

I meant independent corroboration of Sibel Edmonds' allegations- I see no good corroboration for the existence of a "Gladio B".

From a piece by the same author who you cite on Syria:

Edmonds’ allegations find some independent corroboration in the public record. The Wall Street Journal refers to a nebulous agreement between Mubarak and “the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was then headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri… Many of that group’s fighters embraced a cease-fire with the government of former President Hosni Mubarak in 1997.”

Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, cited U.S. intelligence sources in an article for Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, confirming “discussions between the Egyptian terrorist leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and an Arab-American known to have been both an emissary of the CIA and the U.S. Government.” He referred to an “offer” made to al-Zawahiri in November 1997 on behalf of U.S. intelligence, granting his Islamists a free hand in Egypt as long as they lent support to U.S. forces in the Balkans. In 1998, Al Zawahiri’s brother, Muhammed, led an elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs during the Kosovo conflict – he reportedly had direct contact with NATO leadership.

In recent interviews, two Sunday Times journalists confirmed to this author that the newspaper’s investigation based on Sibel Edmonds’ revelations was to break much of the details into the open.

“We’d spoken to several current and active Pentagon officials confirming the existence of U.S. operations sponsoring mujahideen networks in Central Asia from the 1990s to 2001,” said one Sunday Times source. “Those mujahideen networks were intertwined with a whole range of criminal enterprises, including drugs and guns. The Pentagon officials corroborated Edmonds’ allegations against specific U.S. officials, and I’d also interviewed an MI6 officer who confirmed that the U.S. was running these operations sponsoring mujahideen in that period.”

[Jerky]

Marion, doesn't that seem like 1) a thread in need of a LOT more pulling and 2) kind of an expected "de rigueur" type modus operendi for intel elements in that part of the world than it does proof of something as specific and all-encompassing as a Gladio B?

I'm not trying to shut you down, here, btw. What you bring to the table in this discussion is totally warranted and necessary for greater understanding and context. I would just be wary of reading too much into it, too early. Your suspicions may well turn out to be spot on. I just don't see it from what's been posted yet (nor have I ever seen it from Sibel E, in whom I placed a great deal of hope for great revelations that never really measured up to the pre-release hype... not even close).

J.

[American Dream]

Yeah, while I definitely agree that jihadi/Intel subterfuge is a thing, I haven't seen compelling enough evidence to convince me that Gladio B exists, as claimed.