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US Foreign Policy

Is US Policy To Prolonge The Syrian War?

By Sam Husseini for Counter Punch - Many are claiming that Trump is being inconsistent in illegally attacking the Syrian regime with cruise missiles. After all, he had been saying the U.S. should focus on defeating ISIS, and now he seems to be going after Assad. But contradictions from Trump are a dime a dozen. A closer examination shows a deeper pattern of remarkable consistency in U.S. policy toward Syria that is far more critical than the perennial contradictions of politicians like Trump. To summarize U.S. actions and non-actions in terms of direct publicly announced U.S. air attacks targeting the Syrian regime: In 2013, when Assad was losing the war, Obama refrained from strikes that may well have ended his regime.

Stop U.S. From Making Syria War Even Worse

By Diane Randall for FCNL - This week's abhorrent chemical weapons attack was an act of unspeakable violence against civilians, and we are heartbroken over the deaths of Syrians, including many children. The Trump administration’s escalation is not the solution, and will only cause more killing and suffering for Syrian civilians. The U.S. should fully support the ongoing investigation of the chemical weapons attack and work with the international community to bring the perpetrators to justice. In all decisions about the U.S. course of action, policymakers must recognize that years of direct U.S. military intervention, support of extremist armed groups, and weapons shipments to anti-government rebels in Syria have only added fuel to the fire and put Syrian civilians in greater danger.

Escalation In Syria A Mistake No Matter Who Did Chemical Attack

By Joshua Frank for Counter Punch - It was a false flag! Al Qaeda did it! Why would Assad use chemical weapons when he’s winning the war? It had to be those evil terrorists. These are the petty cries by some on the conspiracy-minded left with regard to this week’s barbaric chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which took the lives of at least 74 and injured another 350. Of course the United States lays all the blame for the attack at the feet of President Bashar al-Assad, who has been implicated in many war crimes over the years. And unsurprisingly, the Russians, Assad’s chief allies, have countered, claiming the Syrians bombed a toxic weapons depot that unleashed the deadly nerve agent.

Another Dangerous Rush To Judgment In Syria

By Robert Parry for Consurtium News - One possible scenario was that Syrian warplanes bombed a rebel weapons depot where the poison gas was stored, causing the containers to rupture. Another possibility was a staged event by increasingly desperate Al Qaeda jihadists who are known for their disregard for innocent human life. While it’s hard to know at this early stage what’s true and what’s not, these alternative explanations, I’m told, are being seriously examined by U.S. intelligence. One source cited the possibility that Turkey had supplied the rebels with the poison gas (the exact type still not determined) for potential use against Kurdish forces operating in northern Syria near the Turkish border or for a terror attack in a government-controlled city like the capital of Damascus.

Trump Meets Egypt’s Sisi, Human RIghts Violations Continue

By Staff of Reprieve and The Hill - This is the state of human rights in Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who meet President Trump at the White House on April 3, 2017. Weeks after overthrowing Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013, Sisi's security forces stormed pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo, killing at least 817 people in one day, the worst peacetime massacre of Egypt's modern history. Since then, the right to protest has all but vanished in Egypt. Police routinely suppress anti-government demonstrations with violence. The authorities have imprisoned tens of thousands of political opponents of Sisi's government, often in appalling conditions, with lack of access to medical care that in some cases has led to death. Police and National Security agents routinely use torture and enforced disappearances against criminal suspects and political opponents alike with near impunity. In North Sinai, the military commits egregious abuses including extrajudicial executions and unjustified home demolitions in its fight with the local franchise of the extremist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Wars Expand As Trump Seems To Give Pentagon Decision Making Power

By Lolita C. Baldor for Associated Press - Week by week, country by country, the Pentagon is quietly seizing more control over warfighting decisions, sending hundreds more troops to war with little public debate and seeking greater authority to battle extremists across the Middle East and Africa. This week it was Somalia, where President Donald Trump gave the U.S. military more authority to conduct offensive airstrikes on al-Qaida-linked militants. Next week it could be Yemen, where military leaders want to provide more help for the United Arab Emirates' battle against Iranian-backed rebels. Key decisions on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are looming, from ending troop number limits to loosening rules that guide commanders in the field. The changes in Trump's first two months in office underscore his willingness to let the Pentagon manage its own day-to-day combat. Under the Obama administration, military leaders chafed about micromanagement that included commanders needing approval for routine tactical decisions about targets and personnel moves.

Blaming Russia For Everything

By Robert Parry for Consurtium News - It’s almost getting comical how everything that happens in the United States gets blamed on Russia! Russia! Russia! And, if any American points out the absurdity of this argument, he or she must be a “Moscow stooge” or a “Putin puppet.” The FX series, “The Americans,” a spy thriller about two deep-cover Soviet spies in the 1980s. When Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign fails seemingly because he was a wet-behind-the-ears candidate who performed like a robot during debates repeating the same talking points over and over, you might have cited those shortcomings to explain why “Little Marco” flamed out. However, if you did, that would make you a Russian “useful idiot”!

Dominican Republic, Haiti & El Salvador Reject US Threats

By Sergio Alejandro Gómez for Granma - Rubio directly threatened the governments of the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Haiti, and in an interview with El Nuevo Herald, stating that the vote of these countries at the meeting on Venezuela of the OAS Permanent Council could have repercussions on economic assistance provided by the United States. Certain politicians strolling through the U.S. Capitol in Washington - the first bricks of which were laid at the time of the Haitian Revolution - still believe that Latin America and the Caribbean is the backyard that the United States must “put in order” from time to time. One such advocate of this obsolete U.S. ideology today is Marco Rubio...

The Surveillance State Behind Russia-Gate

By Ray McGovern and Bill Binney for Consortium News - What President Trump decides will largely determine the freedom of action he enjoys as president on many key security and other issues. But even more so, his choice may decide whether there is a future for this constitutional republic. Either he can acquiesce to or fight against a Deep State of intelligence officials who have a myriad of ways to spy on politicians (and other citizens) and thus amass derogatory material that can be easily transformed into blackmail. This crisis (yes, “crisis” is an overused word, but in this highly unusual set of circumstances we believe it is appropriate) came to light mostly by accident...

What America’s Coup In Ukraine Did

By Eric Zuesse for Global Research - On March 23rd, Gallup headlined “South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering”, and the Ukrainian part of that can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014 imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see it here), which he and his press misrepresented (and still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a ‘democratic revolution’, but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such misery, it’s now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire world.

South Koreans Converge In Seongju To Protest THAAD Deployment

By Staff of Zoom In Korea - On March 18, approximately 5,000 people from across South Korea gathered in Soseong-ri, Seongju County to protest the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system. The action was organized by a coalition of anti-THAAD task forces composed of residents in Seongju and Gimcheon near the deployment site, as well as the Won Buddhists, and joined by similar task forces formed in Daegu/North Gyeongsang Province and Busan/Ulsan/South Gyeongsang Province, as well as a national task force composed of peace/anti-war organizations and a long list of civic groups.

Reality And The US-Made Famine In Yemen

By Kathy Kelly for Antiwar - This week at the Voices for Creative Nonviolence office in Chicago, my colleague Sabia Rigby prepared a presentation for a local high school. She’ll team up with a young friend of ours, himself a refugee from Iraq, to talk about refugee crises driven by war. Sabia recently returned from Kabul where she helped document the young Afghan Peace Volunteers’ efforts to help bring warmth, food and education to internally displaced families living in makeshift camps, having fled the Afghan War when it raged near their former homes. Last year Sabia had been visiting with refugees in "the Calais Jungle," who were fleeing the Middle East and several African countries for Britain.

Government’s Own Data Shows US Interfered In 81 Foreign Elections

By Claire Bernish for Mint Press News - On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed for the first time publicly that the bureau is officially investigating hotly contentious allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election — but, even if proven true, such geopolitical escapades better characterize the routine behavior of accuser than of accused. “The F.B.I., as part of our counterintelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” the director announced, adding the bureau would conduct a probe to discern whether Trump’s associates had contact with Russian officials. Despite that the U.S. has hypocritically exerted influence over foreign elections in all corners of the globe — in fact, it has arrogantly done so a whopping 81 times between 1946 and 2000, alone — with just one-third of those operations undertaken overtly.

It’s Time For The U.S. To Negotiate A Peace Treaty With North Korea

By Ann Wright for NK News - Why are discussions for a peace treaty with North Korea not an option to resolve the extraordinarily dangerous tensions on the Korean peninsula? At long last, experts with long experience negotiations with the North Koreans are publicly calling for negotiations. Many in the Washington beltway think-tanks have finally acknowledged that the Obama policy of “strategic patience” did not result in a slowdown in the North Korean nuclear weapon and missile programs, but in fact provided room for the North Koreans to expand their research and testing of both nuclear weapon and missile technology. They acknowledge that the U.S. government must deal with the reality that sanctions

How To End The Korean War

By Justin Raimondo for Anti-War - for This question is always hard to answer because they don’t call it the Hermit Kingdom for nothing. Very little comes out of the notoriously reclusive – and repressive – Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, and not that much gets in. But occasionally there is a burst of activity that, like the eruption of a volcano, is hard to miss – the recent launching of four ballistic missiles being one of them. The missiles landed in the Sea of Japan, about 190 miles off the Japanese coast, sending shockwaves throughout the region. Both Tokyo and Seoul protested, while the North Koreans characterized the action as a logical reaction to the perceived threat of imminent military action by the US and South Korea.

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