It looks like the war to liberate Iran has begun. This war began according to the decisions of President Trump. The Iranian people would have wanted it when they rose up. Israel would have wanted it last year and certainly not days before the holiday of Purim. No one in Israel wanted the Purim costume of 5786 to be a gas mask.

Iran and its allies and proxies will retaliate to the best of their abilities against the United States and Israel. Iran's partners in Russia and China will only respond in the UN, through other diplomatic means, and above all through information warfare. He propaganda war against Israel and the United States never ended and will only be redoubled now. Sadly, many American Media organizations are deeply tied to the People's Republic of China and even if they weren't, their hatred of President, Trump will color their reporting. We can expect most Democrats to side with Iran, China, Qatar, and China. The same will be true for a good number of Americans on the right, especially among libertarians, the woke right and old right. Iran may have been at war with the United States since 1979, but there has been no Pearl Harbor or September 11th to force them to take America's side in the war.

As I wrote this, armies of bots, trolls, paid influencers, and information warfare specialists have been unleashed by our enemies.

Iran's extensive cyber warfare capabilities have been mostly focused on Israel. Nonetheless, I expect them to use these resources against the United States. And I expect a campaign by citizens from Iran's allies and friends to do the same. Unfortunately, your inbox, phone, web browser, and this app are now on the front lines.

#iran #FreeIran #USA #Trump #israel #Netanyahu #informationwarfare #cyberwar

The Best Way to Stop an Iranian Nuclear Weapon is to let Syria fester

Over the last week there has been an increasing cacophony of calls for aiding the rebels in Syria not just diplomatically, but militarily in a fashion similar to that of our recent Libya campaign. The primary justifications are the nebulous "responsibility to protect", a totalitarian notion that will be discussed elsewhere, and the assertion that liberating Syria will undermine Iran.

This sounds logical, and the loss of its ally in Syria would cost Iran. However, it is not black and white. Russia and China are backing both Iran and Syria. Both have protecting Syria in the UN. Russia has a port in Syria has ships off Syria in a show of force. Would these fire on NATO warplanes; probably not. But, there will be repercussions. Depriving them of Syria will only make their ties with Iran closer, making any move to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon that much harder. Compared to the increase in power and prestige that come with nuclear weapons, the loss of Syria is a pittance to Iran.


If the benefit of overthrowing Assad is questionable, what are its costs? For all the cute "liberal" intelligentsia put up by Western foreigners as the spokesmen of the rebellions, the fact remains that the most organized contingent is the Muslim Brotherhood. If Syria falls to the Sunni majority, the leadership will go to the Muslim Brotherhood just as it has in Algeria, Libya and Egypt. It is no co-incidence that Al Qaeda has come out in support of the Syrian opposition. Are we to wage war for Al Qaeda in Syria as we did in Libya? Shall we blithely hand over Damascus, home to two caliphates, to the fundamentalist Sunnis who wish to create a new one?
In the name of human rights, are we going to help the Syrian Salafis and other angry Sunnis slaughter Alawites, Druze and Christians, just as we helped the Libyan Salafists settled their ethnic grievances, and the Egyptian Salafis to kill Coptic Christian and formally re-impose Dhimmitude upon them? What of President Al-Assad's threat to attack Israel if NATO attacks Syria alone or with the help of Hizbollah? Will NATO be forced to bomb Hezbollah to protect Israel, or will Israel respond angering the Muslim world? And what happens if Al-Assad uses one of his weapons of mass destruction? The price for Israel would then be an end to deterrence or a nuclear response. The implications of that are mortifying, not least of which would be a justification for an Iranian nuclear weapon program and a Saudi and Egyptian one as well.


So in exchange for helping the Muslim Brotherhood encircle Israel and helping Al Qaeda take another state, Israel will be attacked and Russia and China may seek stronger ties to Iran and Iran's nuclear program would be protected.

As callous as it may sound, the best option for the US is to do nothing. The worse the situation becomes in Syria, the harder it becomes for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda to work with Iran. In fact, the more bloodshed there is between the Muslim Brotherhood and any Iranian Quds militia operating in Syria, the less the proverbial Arab (Sunni) Street will care about US and NATO actions to pre-empt Iran's nuclear program.

In a recent article in Tablet Magazine, Adam Kirsch argues that Walt and Mearsheimer's polemic smear, The Israel Lobby, reshaped debate on the US and Israel. In doing so, he underestimates the preexisting hatred of Israel and the perceived Israel Lobby.

I found that the debate changed earlier. The left has been treating Israel like South Africa since at least the mid-1990s. (Every concession Israel makes is proof of their sin, every Arab action is a response to Israeli evil, every attempt at defense is Nazi like) The anti-Semitic right uses the same language, even if they like South Africa. The real game changer was September 11, 2001 and then the Second Iraq War. Since the left could not hold Islamists responsible, the root causes had to be imperialism and economic oppression. This inevitably led to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Who else would they blame; the USSR or the US for walking away from helping Afghanistan in 1990? The build up to the Liberation of Iraq "proved" Zionist control to many on the left and right. Because of liberal silliness, we lost the ability to defend war in terms of American national interest. A war based on questionable intelligence, Bush family revenge, and the interests of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (and ironically Iran) was preached in terms of Israel. That the Israel government cared more about Iran was irrelevant. Israel because an excuse to get liberal Democrats onto the war. Hence the misappropriation of Israel, and proof that Israel has no control of its purported lobby, instead became ultimate proof of the powerful central lobby. It was at this time that Pat Buchanan and his "Jesus is a Palestinian" heresy believe sidekick, Scott McConnell stated "The American Conservative" in an attempt to undo William F Buckley's mainstreaming of Fusion Conservatism and expulsion of anti-Semites from the mainstream right..

Similar rhetorical mistakes are made today. Iran's government has been killing Americans since 1979, when it sacked and occupied our embassy, an act of war. "Death to America" is a common chant at rallies. The Ayatollah Khomeini called for the end of the "Great Satan". But preventing a nuclear Iran is portrayed only in Israel's interests. This undermines the security of the US and Israel and yet our elites cannot get their heads out of this retarded rhetorical trap. The interests of the US and the Sunni countries go unnoticed by the new anti-Semites. It is all Israel, all the time. And if we are attacked, they will blame Israel.

Why I don't normally comment on the crayon scribblings from the asylum known as Antiwar.com

http://antiwar.com/justin/justin122908.php

Yet again Dennis Raimondo sinks leftist tripe in his pathological hatred of Israel. One would think the fact that hundreds of rockets were fired on Israeli towns and cities during the Hudna/ceasfire and the fact that Hamas declared an end to the ceasefire last week would figure into the rants of the bigot. Likewise the fact that Israel freed over 200 Palestinian Prisoners last week in an attempt to keep the violence limited to a handful of attacks on Israel/day would count for something. But not for those who hate Israel’s existence.
What else do you expect of one who speaks of 300 dead, without noting that 250 are Hamas fighters? Or one who fails to note Israel has been going out of its way to warn, by leaflet of telephone call, civilians being used as human shields?

It is true that the Kadima junta running Israel are using this for political ends. But they did not declare an end to peace, Hamas did.

“I won't bother answering the "talking points" of Israel's powerful lobby in the U.S. – the Palestinians are terrorists, they deserved what they got, those missile barrages fired in recent weeks (in which not a single Israeli was killed) were ample provocation, etc. The whole world knows that none of these have anything to do with the latest Israeli military action.”
Of course he won’t because the facts are irrelevant to him. Similarly, Hamas’s declaration that the ceasefire was over is of no importance. The only thing that has values is the leftist paradigm that weakness equals virtue and darker people are better. The libertine Fannonite deserves no mention at a conservative site, save derision.

“The entire operation is, instead, part and parcel of a long-standing concerted campaign by the Israeli government to further marginalize and drive out the remnants of the Palestinian people who still cling tenaciously to what's left of their land.”
Considering the fact that Israel ethnically cleansed Gaza of all Jews and then handed it and new infrastructure over to the Palestinian authority, I don’t know what Raimondo is thinking.


“It is a policy of military and economic warfare, aimed at making life impossible for the Palestinian helots….As the new Sparta of the Middle East runs roughshod over the laws of morality and basic human decency, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. is going into overdrive in an effort to prettify one of the ugliest incidents in a decade of unmitigated cruelty and brutality”
Such big words from a man whose knowledge of ancient Greece is pining for the Sacred Band of Thebes or Spartan barrack life along with the occasional flourish of epistolary onanism. Does Raimondo realize that Israel is a parliamentary democracy, 1/5th of whose citizens are Arab beneficiaries of affirmative action? I doubt he knows anything outside of CAIR and communist press releases on the subject.

“All the familiar "progressive" voices – with certain sterling exceptions – are suddenly stilled: we hear nothing from our Democratic politicians, those fabled agents of "change," except expressions of support for Israel's war crimes.”
Such a conservative, Raimondo is. He calls for leftist activism, while using imaginary “war crimes” as reason to empower the internationalist left. Does he imagine that the US would be immune from such trans-national socialist judicial activism, or is his primary loyalty hatred of Israel?

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares that Israel has "the right to defend itself," without deigning to inform us as to whether the Palestinians have the same right.”
And if they were shooting the Hamas Jihadis using them as cattle/human shields the Palestinians would be acting in self defense.

“For all those hysterical ultra-Zionists in both Israel and the U.S. who thought Obama's election would be disastrous to the Zionist project, and their own efforts to expand it beyond its historic borders, let this be an object lesson in the danger of jumping to unwarranted conclusions.”
Historic what? Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza for 30 years, or 11 more than the 1949 ceasefire borders were in effect. Israel’s historic borders would include the territories it ceded for the “piece process”.

“If they'd listened before they jumped – or paid attention to what they read on Antiwar.com – they would have realized how utterly misplaced their paranoia would turn out to be.”
Considering Dennis’s basic lack of recent history, why trust anything he publishes including his false name? (His actual name is Dennis, Justin is his working name.)

“Obama has been in the Israel Lobby's back pocket from the beginning, as his speech to AIPAC – a masterstroke of groveling – made all too clear.”
So 30 years of radical anti-Israel affiliations, as well as his leftist internationalist picks for office are to be ignored, but political pandering is gospel. What is Raimondo mainlining?

“Like all U.S. presidents since Bush the Elder, this one is committed to maintaining and elaborating on our Israel-centric Middle East policy, of which the Iraq war was only the most dramatic chapter.”
You mean the same George HW Bush who toppled an Israeli government (The Shamir administration), after forcing it to accede to Syrian control of Lebanon for his own oil war, who then foisted the Madrid “piece process” on Israel?

“Obama may have opposed that particular war, but he will do nothing to reverse its consequences, the most dramatic of which appears to be the unleashing of the Israeli military machine on the region. First it was Lebanon, followed by the buzzing of Syrian airspace and the bombing of an alleged "nuclear facility" that turned out to be an ordinary weapons dump. Now we have the end of "disengagement" in Gaza and the opening up of a new front in Israel's relentless war of expansion.”
Other than at the center of Raimondo’s paranoia and lies since 9-11, where has Israel been expanding?

“It is a war that has been financed by U.S. tax dollars and fought with American weapons, with the active collaboration and support of our government.”
Those damn Israelis, responding to attacks by the Gaza offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood, while the US is at war with Al Qaeda, one of whose constituent groups, Islamic Jihad is a sibling of Hamas.

“We have paid for the radical expansion of the Israeli "settlements" by armed bands of ultra-nationalist fanatics, Israel's version of the Taliban.”
What expansion is he blathering about? Besides, where is the repression of women exporting of terror in Gush Etzion? Raimondo should go there and then to Hamastan. Or not. He would be stoned to death as a homosexual, unless they made an unprincipled exception for an ally, as they do with communists.

"Indeed, Israeli opinion is moving rapidly in the radicals' direction, and the victory of Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right Likud Party in the upcoming election is virtually assured – with even more extreme elements waiting in the wings for their moment."
Ah, that crazy Likud party, which calls for economic liberty, while also demanding security. Sounds like the GOP to me. In fact until last week, Netanyahu was spending almost as much time attacking true Israeli nationalists, as he was blathering about the need for Kadima to be his junior partner.

“As the leaders of a settler colony implanted in the midst of Arab lands, the founders of the Israeli state were faced with a conundrum from the very start. No matter how enlightened and progressive the early settlers considered themselves, they could not escape their status as unwanted interlopers, the advance guard of what was essentially a foreign invasion. Living in their utopian kibbutzes and thinking they were constructing an egalitarian paradise, what they were really building was a rigidly hierarchical society, a caste system with the settlers and their descendants at the top, arranged in tiers according to their origins in the "diaspora," with the Palestinians at the very bottom – a displaced underclass forcibly segregated and routinely subjected to Israeli state violence.”
At least Dennis is somewhat honest in his pathological hatred of Israel. Hence all attacks on it are just and any defense illegitimate. This is rank hypocricy, given that he lives in his own settler colony in North America, known as the United States. I believe in the right of conquest. Dennis just admits his anti-conservative hatred of America's founding with his aping of Fritz Fannon's "wretched of the earth". That is assuming he understands what he is writing.

“Like a caged lion, grievously wounded, which nevertheless manages to roar and occasionally strike out – however ineffectually – at its tormentors, the Palestinian people are unbowed.”
And when will Dennis be justifying AIM and Aztlanista violence against America in his orgy of anti-Western cultural Marxism?

“The Israelis – and the U.S. – rail against Hamas as a gang of terrorists, yet most of the governments of the region started out as "terrorist" gangs. Two were called the Irgun and the Haganah, the revolutionary movements that carried out attacks on civilians, including the British as well as the Arabs, in their battle to establish the state of Israel. Hamas will do no more, and no less, in their bid to establish a Palestinian state.”
Other than Jordan, that is. And Gaza could have been virtually independent had Hamas not tried to use its inhabitants as captive human shields in its attacks on Israeli civilians. Speaking of revolutionary gangs, how long will it be until Raimondo denounces the Sons of Liberty as well as Americans moving past the Proclamation line of 1763?

“If nothing else, this fresh paroxysm of Israeli aggression ought to debunk, once and for all, the neocon talking point that democracies never go to war with each other.”
So is Raimondo's nihilistic lust for Israeli blood motivated by nothing more than pathologically unbalanced rage at neoconservatives?

“Yet here we have a country that styles itself an island of Western-style liberalism in a sea of Oriental despotism going to war with the only other democratically elected government in the immediate vicinity.”
One vote, one time isn’t democracy. I don’t see Israel attacking Turkey, so Raimondo is just proving his utter ignorance. (That was redundant; Raimondo does that whenever he puts 10 words together on the Middle East.)

“Whatever the military outcome of the present conflict – in all likelihood a stalemate – this is a big political victory for Hamas, which ordinary Palestinians see actively defending them against the rampaging Israelis. The moderates on the West Bank are undercut, once again, and that has always been the Israeli strategy.”
You mean like Abbas, who demanded Israel act to destroy Hamas before PA elections?

“Their first target was the decidedly secular Palestine Liberation Organization, which they did everything to destroy and undercut – even to the point of providing legal status and covert funding to Hamas. These followers of radical Islamist preachers began as a religious association, formally registered with the Israeli authorities. Hamas was encouraged as a potentially more compliant competitor with the PLO. Another case of blowback, with a vengeance.”
You mean like the insipid liberalism that forces Raimondo to ignore the goals of Islamic Jihadis to conquer not just Israel, but Spain as noted in Hamas’s charter?

“Having given birth to the monster of Hamas, the mutant offspring of occupation and dispossession, the Israelis will be forgiven if they refuse to acknowledge the family resemblance.”
Of course, the idiot has never heard of the Islamic Brotherhood or read Sayed Qutb.

“Yet it is unmistakable. Both Israel and Hamas-stan are the spawn of religious and ethnic exclusivism and messianism, their leaders fanatics armed with state power. There are differences, of course, a major one being that one side is funded to the tune of $3 billion a year and supported unconditionally by Washington, while the Palestinians – shot at by their fellow Arabs as they try to cross the border into Egypt – stand pretty much alone.
This latest bloody chapter in the tragic history of the region is being written because all the main protagonists benefit: the Israelis, Hamas, and radicals of all stripes, especially those groups aligned with al-Qaeda. As in the case of the Iraq war, bin Laden's narrative of an Israeli-Crusader invasion intent on stamping out Islam is seemingly verified as blood flows freely in the streets of Gaza.”
Because we all know that Israel wants to conquer the world. I don’t know if this is projection, leftist moral equivalence, or the scribbling of one missing their dose of Thorazine.

“The Israeli rampage is not in our interests, and the longer it continues the more it threatens the already tenuous position of U.S. troops in Iraq, endangering them by inflaming the local populace, which is vehemently pro-Palestinian. The Israeli blitz is sending shockwaves through the region that could upset several apple-carts of U.S. construction, including the regime in Egypt, the pro-U.S. Jordanian monarchy, and especially our rambunctious Iraqi protectorate, where anti-U.S. sentiment is not so quietly building.”
So suddenly Dennis wants the neocon experiment in Iraq to succeed. Has he no semblance of honor or intellectual honesty?

“If American interests in the region are to be served, then this unhealthy relationship has to change. Yet it won't change until and unless the political power of the Israel Lobby is broken on the home front. If it takes the prospect of World War III to bring us to that point, it will be far too high a price to pay – yet one that seems increasingly unavoidable.”
The Soviets are attacking West Berlin? Oh, wait he means World War IV, which seems to have started back in 618, when the Muslims began to pine for world domination. Dennis just is unable to pay attention to facts not from the perspective of the communist Nation magazine.