Full-fledged martial law may be coming to Chicago in the near future, county commissioner requests the United Nations to police city streets
CHICAGO (INTELLIHUB) — Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin and his team meet with the Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations on Friday to request the organization deploy armed troops into the streets in an effort to curb violent crime and sidestep Posse comitatus which bars the U.S. military to be deployed on domestic soil.
Such a measure would be the first in a new era of globalization and militarization inside of the United States and sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Not to mention, proponents of such a deployment feel the current level of gun violence and ‘genocide’ has become far too expansive and dangerous for state authorities to handle alone as the problem continues to spiral out of control with “horrific levels of shootings,” as pointed out by the commissioner.
“There is a quite genocide taking place in too many of our communities,” Boykin told the press Friday. “Eighty percent of those who are being killed by gun violence are African-American and are often killed at the hands of another African-American.”
Commissioner Boykin said that he feels the U.N. would be a good fit for “peacekeeping efforts” inside of the city to help make sure that residents are safe and says that “we can’t afford to wait.”
“We have had over 600 people killed by gun violence this year alone,” he said. “In my community of Austin, we have had 450 people shot and 80 people killed in this year alone.”
The commissioner said the bottom line is if local authorities can not protect the minority population then something has to be done about it.
“We are loosing to many of our young people, we’re losing too many senior citizens and we quite frankly we have people in this neighborhood that are afraid to walk down the streets,” Boykin explained. “We can never let this become the norm.”
On Monday night, Donald Trump showed Americans that he has one goal in mind — a goal that has been shared by all of his predecessors — and a goal he vehemently opposed until he was elected. Endless, brutal, futile, and, of course, profitable—war.
Just like Obama, Trump ran on a platform of ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing the troops home. And, just like Obama, he lied.
President Obama: "I told you we’d end the war in Iraq. We did. I said we’d end the war in Afghanistan. We are." #PromiseKept
Whether or not he is being controlled by deep state operatives forcing his hand into an Afghan surge or if he’s doing it out of his own stupidity is irrelevant as the result will be the same — dead American soldiers, dead Afghan citizens, and more terrorism.
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Trump knows this too.
Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.
Many of his supporters are now unquestioningly rallying behind his deadly decision to extend the quagmire in Afghanistan all the while ignoring his utter hypocrisy and his entire platform of making America great again.
Since Trump has gotten into office, he’s proven to America that he has no intention of making America great again. Every step forward he takes, like halting the flow of cash from the CIA to ISIS, he takes several more steps back.
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Earlier this year, with no proof and mountains of evidence to the contrary, Trump launched dozens of missiles at the sovereign state of Syria — a de facto act of war — over lies about Assad gassing his own people.
This attack actually aided ISIS by destroying the Syrian Army hold that was defending a Christian town from terror.
Aiding ISIS ≠ MAGA.
His foreign policy, like that of his predecessors, does not fight terror. In fact, it does the opposite by creating blowback, thus ensuring the future and endless creation of terrorists for years to come.
After launching 59 missiles at Syria, Trump took a trip to Saudi Arabia, during which he “completed the largest single arms deal in US history, negotiating a package totaling more than $109.7 billion” boosting Saudi Arabia’s ability to slaughter innocent civilians in Yemen and “reaffirming America’s commitment to Saudi Arabia.”
This bowing down to Saudi Arabia happened in spite of them being the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world and in spite of Trump, himself, admitting they funded the 9-11 terror attacks.
While he’s not bowing down to the Saudis or dropping bombs on civilians in Yemen or fostering terrorism, Trump is at home bolstering the police state whilst playing record amounts of golf and taking long vacations. And this, we are told, is making America great again.
As the mainstream media relentless attacks the president over superficial nonsense used to stoke divide among the citizens, they almost never question his foreign policy — unless, of course, that foreign policy involves halting the flow of weapons into the hands of ISIS. Then, they’ll tell us that it’s a Russian conspiracy.
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The endless cycle of Trump bashing by the mainstream media distracts from the real issue that he is just like Bush and just like Obama when it comes to putting American lives in danger by continuing to invade and occupy foreign countries.
The reason Trump, just like Obama, continues killing civilians in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan is because he’s a puppet of the military industrial complex, now being referred to as the deep state.
The military industrial complex knows no borders, no flags, and no leaders. It knows only empire and war profits. Sadly, no president has heeded the advice given to them in 1961 by Dwight Eisenhower.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
As Trump marches young men and women into another quagmire, in which countless innocent men, women, and children will suffer violent deaths, and which will create and foster even more terror, remember that only thing he’s making great again is America’s support for war.
(COMMONDREAMS) In response to the Pentagon’s deployment of about 400 American ground troops to Syria, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is introducing a bill Friday that would block the Defense Department from putting any more “boots on the ground” in the ongoing conflict.
“The bill I am introducing today prohibits the Department of Defense from funding any attempt by the administration to expand our presence in Syria by putting U.S. combat boots on the ground,” Lee toldThe Hill in a statement.
Lee was famously the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization of military force (AUMF) in the wake of the September 11 attacks. As Lee predicted at the time, the AUMF has now been used to bypass Congressional approval for seemingly endless U.S. military assaults throughout the Middle East.
Lee and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Thursday roundly condemned the deployment of additional ground troops to Syria. “Today’s revelation that about 400 additional forces, including Marines, are being sent to Syria is concerning and signals mission creep,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), CPC co-chair. “After years of war and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, it is clear that increased U.S. military action will not solve the crisis in Syria.”
“It is our constitutional duty as members of Congress to place a check on the executive branch in matters of war and peace,” Lee added to The Hill. “We owe it to our brave service members to live up to our constitutional duty.”
The outlet reports:
“Under Lee’s bill, the Pentagon would be prohibited from using funds to send troops to Syria for ground combat operations, award a contract to a private security firm for ground activity, or otherwise establish or maintain a presence of U.S. troops or a private security contractor in Syria.
“The bill would allow for exceptions to “protect, rescue, or remove” U.S. personnel.
“Lee had tried to introduce similar language as an amendment to the defense spending bill passed by the House on Wednesday, but was blocked by the House Rules Committee.
“The language in the new bill is even stricter; the amendment to the spending bill would have allowed for special operations forces.”
“I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in preventing this president from sending our troops into yet another unchecked, ill-advised war without a full and robust debate from Congress,” Lee said.
The escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria comes as the Pentagon also considers deploying 1,000 additional troops to Kuwait — and as independentmonitoring shows U.S. coalition airstrikes have already killed over 2,500 civilians in Iraq and Syria, as Common Dreamsreported.
(ANTIMEDIA) A number of leading outlets, including the New York Times, are now reporting that the U.S. is sending more and more ground troops into Syria. According to the New York Times, the U.S. just sent an additional 400 troops to Syria to help prepare for a looming fight in Raqqa, ISIS’ supposed capital in Syria.
The majority of the public will likely shrug this off as a minor development in the global war on terror because that is how the media presents the story. However, there are a number of issues with U.S. troops being deployed to Syria — issues the corporate media refuses to acknowledge.
War needs a legal basis. A country can’t just send troops to another country because they feel like it. The only check the world currently has to protect itself from unjust wars is a combination of domestic and international legal systems that severely restrict the conditions under which a war can be launched. In the case of the United States, the superpower is bound not only to the international legal principles surrounding war, but also to a number of domestic principles that require congressional authorization to be given first. In the case of Libya in 2011, Barack Obama famously bypassed Congress and launched air strikes on the Libyan government. This was rarely questioned by the mainstream media.
Without permission from the Syrian government, which — whether we like it or not — holds the seat at the U.N. and was elected in 2014, the U.S. cannot legally launch troops into its territory.
Because the media rarely touches on the legality of the U.S.-led war on terror, there seems to be a widespread sentiment that even though the legal implications are quite damning, these operations are still the right thing to carry out given the context. For example, people often ask, “So what should we do? Nothing?” in response to the terror that ISIS has wreaked across Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
So what can one say in response? First, it was U.S. policies that created ISIS in the first place by disbanding the Iraqi army in 2003, leaving hundreds of thousands of military officers without jobs. It was Obama’s policies that put ISIS in Libya and that helped ISIS grow in Iraq and Syria. A good example of this can be seen in the instances where ISIS took its major strongholds in Iraq and Syria while the U.S. completely sat on their hands and did nothing.
Leaked audio of former Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed the U.S. was purposely watching ISIS grow so the terror group could put pressure on the Syrian government to come to the negotiating table. The U.S. clearly cannot claim the moral high ground regarding the war on terror.
Trump’s original travel ban heavily targeted Syria and its refugees. His new travel ban, which removes Iraq but leaves in Iran, still puts heavy restrictions on refugees fleeing Syria. In order to see the point of this statement, just reverse the countries in your head and picture the following scenario: Syria, a rich and wealthy tourism hotspot, has barred citizens of the United States from entering its country. On top of this, Syria is sending trained assassins into the United States without any legal basis.
One country bans the other but sends ground troops to invade its territory at the same time. Sound fair?
In October of last year, Anti-Mediareported on the possibility that the current U.S.-backed offensive in Mosul was just an excuse to push ISIS back into Syria for an upcoming offensive on Raqqa, which would give the U.S. more of an excuse to conduct operations in Syrian territory. The intention of this is, of course, to put added pressure on the Syrian regime, which made significant advances in Aleppo last year with the assistance of Russian air power.
ISIS reinforcements fleeing Mosul and arriving in Syria are putting greater pressure on the Syrian regime. The United States was fully aware of this, but it did not seem to be of any concern to the American air force, which has done nothing but watch it unfold.
In tandem with the arrival of American troops, Saudi Arabia has also expressed its intention to send ground troops into Syria with the express purpose of ensuring that liberated areas of Syria do not fall into the hands of the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, or Iran.
Make no mistake. These operations are laying the groundwork for a direct confrontation with Syria and/or Iran — two countries that have the backing of the Russian air force and have close ties to China and North Korea.
“The upshot is that it’s still unclear who will take Raqqa when Mosul falls,” said one senior official involved in discussions, as reported by the Guardian. “The Americans are still hedging on the Kurds, even though the Turks are adamantly opposed. The Russians want the Syrian army and the rebels to do it, under their tutelage.”
Whose interests are being served here? Certainly not the people of the Middle East, and certainly not the American public, either.
***
While some people naively looked to Trump as a powerful revolutionary who could stand up to the corporate elite, it has become increasingly clear that even if Trump wanted to change America’s foreign policy strategy, his hands have already been tied. Trump’s expansive military budget should quash any discussion on this issue as he seeks to increase the size and scope of the already massive American military.
One thing is for certain, a new sheriff is in town.
Well, the phrase is underwhelming given the enormous power now (unduly) vested in the executive branch. But President Trump’s stylings as an international negotiator and commander-in-chief harken back to a simpler and more brazen day from the Old West, and he isn’t just shaking hands and promising to work on nebulous issues of cooperation.
With promises to build a wall, scale back immigration, send back criminals and welfare dependents and cut off the parasitism from South of the border, President Trump is now demanding that the Mexico President, Pena Nieto – widely viewed as a weak leader – stop the cartels if he could. As the Associated Press reports:
President Donald Trump threatened in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart to send U.S. troops to stop “bad hombres down there” unless the Mexican military does more to control them, according to an excerpt of a transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press.
“You have a bunch of bad hombres down there, and we’re going to get them out,” Trump told Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt given to AP. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”
A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided only that portion of the conversation to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public.
The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.
Openly humiliating another world leader is not the path that the past several presidents have taken. So this is certainly news.
If this report is accurate (Mexico has officially denied it, but another Mexican press agency confirmed that something like this conversation took place), it is a whole new ball game. Sending U.S. troops to take on Mexican gang violence that has claimed that lives of tens of thousands and made true stability and prosperity south of the border absolutely impossible, would be completely unprecedented in the 20th or 21st Centuries, and after decades of officially friendly relations – setting things back to about 1850 when the two countries were last at war.
Of course, just the opposite has been offered from our neighbor to the South. Former Secretary of Foreign Affairs for Mexico, Jorge Castañeda Gutman, made a veiled threat on CNN to attack the U.S., supposing that if the U.S. ended the incentive for friendly cooperation, Mexico might unleash a new wave of cartel violence upon America – on purpose and with a vengeance.
Mexico has a lot of negotiating chips in this matter, Fareed, but it also has measures we could take in other areas. For example, the drugs that come through Mexico from South America, or the drugs that are produced here in Mexico all go to the United States. This is not our problem. We have been cooperating with the United States for many years on these issues because they’ve asked us to and because we have a friendly, trustful relationship. If that relationship disappears, the reasons for cooperation also disappear.
If anything can stop cartel violence, it may be an end to the drug war and prohibition, which has driven much of the illegal smuggling across borders, and a growing and heightened police state.
Short of that, U.S. troops, or special advisors might make a serious dent, but also risk blowback of counterinsurgency and war in the streets – not only in Mexico, but in the streets of America as well.
Let’s hope the best end surfaces quickly.
Avocados and other produce may skyrocket in price; day laborers may be forced back into their failing country and relations could deteriorate into outright hostility towards the gringo.
Trump is NOT willing to play friendly if playing friendly means congeniality in spite of a slap in the face to American interests. In his very first days, the new President-Sheriff has put Mexico, Iran, China and other players on notice, and has explicitly threatened to use American force to back up his tough words and straightforward demands.
For better or worse, this is something no president in memory or recent times has every attempted. We are in uncharted and very dangerous waters. Let us hope President Trump knows what he is doing.
The use of American troops is only meant as a last resort; but arguably, U.S.-Mexico relations are already there and Trump arrived at that point. Every other policy has failed for the past several decades.
(ANTIMEDIA)— Although in rhetoric Trump appears to differ somewhat from his predecessor regarding his positions on foreign policy, he has already begun continuing some of Barack Obama’s most disastrous policies. In his first weekend after the inauguration, the military pounded Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, with drone strikes. Now, it has been reported that Trump is considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, a failed strategy that continuously plagued the Obama administration.
President Trump reportedly told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani he would consider the possibility of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a December phone call.
“President- elect Donald J. Trump said he would certainly continue to support Afghanistan security forces and will consider a proposal for more troops after an assessment,” an Afghan official told the Wall Street Journal.
When Obama was campaigning for office, the issue of Afghanistan seemed to pass under the election campaign radar as the focus was more on his opposition towards war in Iraq. Similarly, Donald Trump talked openly about bombing ISIS but rarely mentioned the war in Afghanistan during his election campaign.
However, shortly before taking office, Trump told the Times of London:
“I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban – and you take a look at every, every year it’s more, more, more, you know they have the different colours – and you say, you know – what’s going on?”
Eloquently put, as usual. He also stated that Afghanistan is “not going well.”
In 2015, the U.S. warned Russia that if Russia intervened in Syria they would be faced with a cold-war Afghanistan-style quagmire. However, the U.S. appears to have an Afghanistan quagmire of its own. The U.S. has been officially stationed in Afghanistan since 2001, and there are currently 9,000 troops still stationed there to provide support to Afghan forces who are, let’s face it, quite incompetent.
Barely even a month into his presidency, Barack Obama approved a significant troop increase of at least 8,000 marines, as well as 4,000 additional Army troops. Another 5,000 troops were to be deployed at a later date. By November of that year, Obama had announced he was sending over 30,000 more troops to the war-stricken nation, highlighting a major escalation in the war.
Although Obama originally indicated he would wind down the war, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick reported in their book “The Untold History of the United States” that at a national security meeting Obama once told his advisors “I want to take off the table that we’re leaving Afghanistan.” By 2014, he had announced that the longest war in the history of the United States would last an additional two-and-a-half years.
Trump is now expected to take these past mistakes and escalate this war even further in efforts to create an Afghan surge of his own.
This time, his troops will make Afghanistan great again. Maybe they’ll build a wall or something. It’ll be terrific.
(ANTIMEDIA)— Although in rhetoric Trump appears to differ somewhat from his predecessor regarding his positions on foreign policy, he has already begun continuing some of Barack Obama’s most disastrous policies. In his first weekend after the inauguration, the military pounded Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, with drone strikes. Now, it has been reported that Trump is considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, a failed strategy that continuously plagued the Obama administration.
President Trump reportedly told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani he would consider the possibility of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a December phone call.
“President- elect Donald J. Trump said he would certainly continue to support Afghanistan security forces and will consider a proposal for more troops after an assessment,” an Afghan official told the Wall Street Journal.
When Obama was campaigning for office, the issue of Afghanistan seemed to pass under the election campaign radar as the focus was more on his opposition towards war in Iraq. Similarly, Donald Trump talked openly about bombing ISIS but rarely mentioned the war in Afghanistan during his election campaign.
However, shortly before taking office, Trump told the Times of London:
“I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban – and you take a look at every, every year it’s more, more, more, you know they have the different colours – and you say, you know – what’s going on?”
Eloquently put, as usual. He also stated that Afghanistan is “not going well.”
In 2015, the U.S. warned Russia that if Russia intervened in Syria they would be faced with a cold-war Afghanistan-style quagmire. However, the U.S. appears to have an Afghanistan quagmire of its own. The U.S. has been officially stationed in Afghanistan since 2001, and there are currently 9,000 troops still stationed there to provide support to Afghan forces who are, let’s face it, quite incompetent.
Barely even a month into his presidency, Barack Obama approved a significant troop increase of at least 8,000 marines, as well as 4,000 additional Army troops. Another 5,000 troops were to be deployed at a later date. By November of that year, Obama had announced he was sending over 30,000 more troops to the war-stricken nation, highlighting a major escalation in the war.
Although Obama originally indicated he would wind down the war, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick reported in their book “The Untold History of the United States” that at a national security meeting Obama once told his advisors “I want to take off the table that we’re leaving Afghanistan.” By 2014, he had announced that the longest war in the history of the United States would last an additional two-and-a-half years.
Trump is now expected to take these past mistakes and escalate this war even further in efforts to create an Afghan surge of his own.
This time, his troops will make Afghanistan great again. Maybe they’ll build a wall or something. It’ll be terrific.
(ANTIWAR) Having arrived in Germany a few days ago, a mass of over 3,000 US ground troops backed by a large column of American tanks began advancing eastward toward the Russian border yesterday, heading across Poland as part of a major NATO operation called Atlantic Resolve.
Unlike a lot of more specific war-games simulating explicit wars on certain fronts, Atlantic Resolve was initially launched just to spite Russia over the civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and seems to be designed more or less to simply antagonize Russia militarily.
And it’s doing it’s job, in that event, as Russian officials expressed serious concern over the matter, saying they believe the advance of a large number of US troops heading toward Russia is a threat to national security. They also added that they don’t appreciate having a large number of troops massed on their European border by a nation that isn’t even European.
In addition to being the latest in a long line of NATO operations against Russia, and the largest such operation in Europe since the Cold War, the operation is seen as part of an ongoing effort within NATO to lock President-elect Donald Trump into a policy of hostility toward Russia.
Trump’s talk of normalizing ties with Russia has been a source of major concern and criticism among European NATO nations, who insist that the US needs to continue to lead ongoing plans for major military buildups in Europe, with an eye toward a ground war against Russia.
Pentagon officials insisted the advance on Russia proved America’s commitment to “collective security” in Europe, while Polish officials insisted Russia had it coming to them because they had accepted Crimea into the Russian Federation.
While this operation is said to be relatively brief, the Obama Administration has already made agreements with NATO aiming to commit large numbers of US ground troops to deploy in the Baltic states on a more or less permanent basis as a “spearhead” force against Russia.
(ZHE) Just days after Zero Hedge reported that the US had begun deploying some 2,800 tanks, trucks and other military equipment to Germany, from where they would be transported by rail and road to Eastern Europe as part of a buildup of NATO reinforcements against “Russian expansion”, the next US deployment has made its way to Europe over the weekend, when some 4,000 US troops arrived in the German port of Bremerheven, on their way to Wroclaw, Poland under a planned NATO operation to “reassure the alliance’s Eastern European allies” in the face of what NATO has dubbed mounting Russian aggression.
The American soldiers landed in Wroclaw, home to a key NATO and Polish air base in south-west Poland. The troops will be followed by the roughly 2,800 tanks and other pieces of military equipment which are currently en route from Germany.
The delivery of US Abrams tanks, Paladin artillery, and Bradley fighting vehicles, as well as supporting troops, marks a new phase of America’s continuous presence in Europe, which will now be based on a nine-month rotation.
Why provoke Russia with yet another mass deployment? Because as NATO Major General Timothy McGuire told reporters, last week, when asked if the large deployment was meant to send a message to Russia, “The best way to maintain the peace is through preparation.” And while we are quoting, here is another good line from the movie Spice Like Us: “A weapon unused is a useless weapon.” The US military industrial complex is doing everything in its power to make sure a lot of weapons are used in the future.
As reported previously, NATO’s latest deployment along Russia’s western border falls under Operation Atlantic Resolve, a mission designed to demonstrate to Moscow Washington’s commitment to defend allies in Europe. Atlantic Resolve was launched in the immediate aftermath of the Ukraine proxy war and the partition of the Ukraine, which sparked fears in the Baltic nations that Vladimir Putin was planning a similar land-grab there.
The Polish embassy in Washington said the troops in Wroclaw were the first to arrive in Poland as part of Atlantic Resolve. As the Independent dubs the US reinforcement, the deployment has been described as “one of the largest movements of US troops to Europe since the Cold War.”
Quoted by Reuters, Lt Gen Tim Ray, deputy commander of US European Command, said: “Let me be very clear, this is one part of our efforts to deter Russian aggression, ensure territorial integrity of our allies and maintain a Europe that is whole, free, prosperous and at peace.”
Instead, what the deployment will do is bring the continent that much closer to a new cold, if not conventional, war.
The US troops are expected to be stationed at two training sites in western Poland in the short term before they are sent to sites at six other countries across the region.
In another faux-pacifist justification, Maj Gen Timothy McGuire, deputy commanding general of the US Army Europe, said that, “this is a tangible sign of the United States’ commitment to maintaining peace on this continent. “It is a sign of the US commitment to this alliance and to peace and prosperity in Europe.” Meanwhile, Russia has already deploy nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad in response to this latest NATO build-up, from where it has a bird’s eye view of most of central Europe. It has warned further deployment would lead to even more nukes.
The US Army said the process of deploying to Europe was part of the training and tested how American forces would be sent at short notice to counter Russia in the event of an outbreak of war. Troops will be on rotation in Poland and beyond for between four and six months and will work alongside local units.
The massive deployment means that the arrival of the 3rd Armoured Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, will see the start of a continuous presence and back-to-back rotations of US troops and equipment in the region. Among the deployments to Romania and Bulgaria will be the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment – dubbed the ‘Iron Knights’ and the oldest armoured unit in the US Army. The US is also increasing its presence in the Black Sea and in Western Europe at bases in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
Russia blames the West for worsening relations and says the build-up of NATO troops in the Baltics is a provocation. Expect more complaints from the Kremlin: around 4,000 NATO troops are set be posted to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in the coming months.
In addition, Britain will send an 800-strong battalion to Estonia, supported by French and Danish troops, beginning in May. The deployment was criticised as “truly aggressive” by Moscow.
* * *
Meanwhile, an odd voice of reason when it comes to potential European war has emerged out of German politicians, who have raised concern about the thousands of NATO troops and equipment, along with hundreds of tanks, that have been sent to Poland and countries bordering Russia in what has been touted by Washington as “defense against Russian aggression.”
“It does not help us if tanks will be going up and down on both sides of the border,” Brandenburg’s leader and SPD party member, Dietmar Woidke, told RBB. “I hope everyone will keep calm. I believe that despite all the difficulties, we should seek dialogue with Russia,” he added on Thursday, warning that relations with Moscow could worsen even further.
NATO’s buildup in Europe also came under fire from Germany’s Die Linke party. “Tanks do not create peace, anywhere,” Christian Görke stressed in a statement, RBB reported. Tobias Pflueger of Die Linke slammed the stationing of US tanks and military equipment in Poland, saying this will trigger an arms race and lead to an “escalation in relations with Russia,” Focus Online reported.
Crowds of people marched through Bremerhaven on Saturday to protest the deployment and transport of NATO troops and weapons through the city, RT reported. Hundreds of American tanks, trucks, and other military equipment bound for Poland, said to be the largest arms shipment since the fall of the Soviet Union, arrived at the German port on Friday to be transferred to Eastern Europe. The protesters marched through the city holding signs and banners reading, “No NATO deployments! End the militaristic march against Russia!” and “Out of NATO.”
“There is, starting from Washington DC, a major push to do everything possible in the next two weeks to create unending hostility between the West and Russia that can’t be undone by Donald Trump or anyone else. Even at the risk of open violence, rather than simply Cold War hostility. This is highly preferable to weapons profiteers as against actual peace breaking out, which is their greatest fear,” author and journalist David Swanson told RT on Monday.
“It is clearly an escalation that involves numerous facets including propaganda about Russian crimes in the US media; that includes shipping troops and equipment to the border; that includes expanding NATO and pushing hard on other NATO members to join in this escalation where you have serious protests in Germany by those who want peace [and are] against sending Germans or Americans from Germany eastward, as they should. There are not enough of us in the US similarly protesting,” he added.
Naturally, anyone who shares Swanson’s view will be dubbed a purveyor of “fake news” and promptly deported to Russia on allegations of being a Russian spy.
(RPI– Op-Ed) Last week, as the mainstream media continued to obsess over the CIA’s evidence-free claim that the Russians hacked the presidential election, President Obama quietly sent 300 US Marines back into Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. This is the first time in three years that the US military has been sent into that conflict zone, and it represents a final failure of Obama’s Afghanistan policy. The outgoing president promised that by the end of his second term, the US military would only be present in small numbers and only on embassy duty. But more than 8,000 US troops will remain in Afghanistan as he leaves office.
When President Obama was first elected he swore that he would end the US presence in Iraq (the “bad” war) and increase US presence in Afghanistan (the “good” war). He ended up increasing troops to both wars, while the situation in each country continued to deteriorate.
Why are the Marines needed in the Helmand Province? Because although the foolish and counterproductive 15-year US war in Afghanistan was long ago lost, Washington cannot face this fact. Last year the Taliban controlled 20 percent of the province. This year they control 85 percent of the province. So billions more must be spent and many more lives will be lost.
Will these 300 Marines somehow achieve what the 2011 peak of 100,000 US soldiers was not able to achieve? Will this last push “win” the war? Hardly! The more the president orders military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, the worse it gets. In 2016, for example, President Obama dropped 1,337 bombs on Afghanistan, a 40 percent increase from 2015. According to the United Nations, in 2016 there were 2,562 conflict-related civilian deaths and 5,835 injuries. And the Taliban continues to score victories over the Afghan puppet government.
The interventionists in Washington continue to run our foreign policy regardless of who is elected. They push for wars, they push for regime change, then they push for billions to reconstruct the bombed-out countries. When the “liberated” country ends up in worse shape, they claim it was because we just didn’t do enough of what ruined the country in the first place. It’s completely illogical, but the presidents who keep seeking the neocons’ advice don’t seem to notice. Obama – the “peace” candidate and president – has proven himself no different than his predecessors.
What will a President Trump do about the 15 year failed nation-building experiment in Afghanistan? He has criticized the long-standing US policy of “regime-change” and “nation-building” while on the campaign trail, and I would like to think he would just bring the troops home. However, I would not be surprised if he accelerates US military action in Afghanistan to “win the war” once and for all. He will not succeed if he does so, as the war is not winnable – no one even knows what “winning” looks like! We may well see even more US troops killing and being killed in Afghanistan a year from now if that is the case. That would be a terrible tragedy.
