Does Trump Lie to Say ‘We Have Defeated ISIS in Syria’?

ERIC ZUESSE

At 11:52AM on Wednesday, December 19th, CBS News headlined "White House orders Pentagon to pull troops from Syria immediately”and reported that, “Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a veteran of the US Air Force who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it's ‘simply not true’ [which Trump, had said there, that] ISIS is defeated in Syria.” CBS News didn’t indicate which political Party Kinzinger represents, but he is a Republican, and he represents the rural Illinois 16th Congressional District, where Donald Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton by a 17% margin in 2016. So, Kinzinger is an anti-Trump Republican on this matter. He’s credible about that, not partisan about it. 

Who is telling the truth, Trump’s “We have defeated ISIS in Syria” or Kinzinger’s contrary, and what explains the contradiction between the accounts by Trump and Kinzinger?

As the CBS News report says, “Two weeks ago, Special Envoy Brett McGurk said the end of ISIS will be a long-term initiative, and "nobody is declaring mission accomplished.” CBS's report, however, fails to note that McGurk is an Obama appointee and has been consistently dedicated to America’s defeating Russia and replacing the leadership in all nations that are allied with (or even friendly toward) Russia, including, most especially, Syria and Iran.

At a deeper level, the question is: Which nations are primarily the cause of the considerable reduction in ISIS forces in Syria? If ISIS has been defeated in Syria, then, nonetheless, is it true for Trump to claim, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria,” or is the United States not even the main force which has done that?

On 30 September 2015, CNN headlined “Russia launches first airstrikes in Syria” and reported that, “Claiming to target ISIS, Russia conducted its first airstrikes in Syria, while US officials expressed serious doubts Wednesday about what the true intentions behind the move may be.” The next day, on October 1st, PBS bannered "Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, talks about why Russia deployed airstrikes in Syria”, and Morell, who had always been speaking and writing against Russia and against any Government that is at all allied with Russia, said: "President Putin believes that if President Assad were to depart the scene, there would be even more instability in Syria and, with that greater instability, ISIS would have more running room, and you could actually end up with ISIS in Damascus. So that is the primary reason he's doing what he is doing. Now, the question is why doesn’t he just attack [only] ISIS then because President Assad is under attack from a variety of different groups? ISIS is one, al-Nusra [Al Qaeda in Syria] is one, and the moderate opposition is another. So in order to prop up Assad to keep him in control, to make sure you don’t have more instability, he wants to attack all of those groups, right. But his fundamental focus is on ISIS.” But, then, he argued for US President Barack Obama’s position, against Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria: “If we were to have a transition from Assad to another government that everybody can agree on, then we’re actually going to have more stability in Syria. And I think the President probably argued that as long as Assad is around, he is a magnet for fighters to join ISIS, to join al-Nusra to fight Assad. And you can’t ultimately defeat ISIS and defeat al-Nusra without getting rid of President Assad in the process.” So: Morell acknowledged that Putin’s main target was ISIS, but Morell said that Obama was correct to oppose Russia’s bombing campaign there, because “you can't ultimately defeat ISIS and defeat al-Nusra without getting rid of President Assad in the process.” Then, he said, of Putin, “this guy is a thug. This guy is a bully.” But he said that, unfortunately, America must deal with that “bully”: “"first thing we have to convince the Russians of is that you can’t successfully deal with ISIS and al-Nusra without Assad going away. We have to be able to convince them of that. We really believe that. We really believe that. We really believe that he is a magnet for drawing people to ISIS and to al-Nusra.” He was saying that Assad had caused ISIS, which was trying to overthrow and replace him.

Then, on 9 October 2015, investigative journalist Tony Cartalucci bannered “The Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved” and he documented that ISIS had gotten its Toyota pickup trucks from the US-backed Free Syrian Army, whom Obama called moderate rebels. Whether the FSA had ever had those trucks wasn’t known.

Then, on 14 October 2015, the Financial Times bannered ”Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists” and reported that, “Oil is the black gold that funds Isis’ black flag — it fuels its war machine, provides electricity and gives the fanatical jihadis critical leverage against their neighbours. … Selling crude is Isis’ biggest single source of revenue. … While al-Qaeda, the global terrorist network, depended on donations from wealthy foreign sponsors, Isis has derived its financial strength from its status as monopoly producer of an essential commodity consumed in vast quantities throughout the area it controls.”

Then, on 16 November 2015, the New York Times bannered “US Warplanes Strike ISIS Oil Trucks in Syria” and reported that, “United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group [ISIS] has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said. … Until Monday, the United States refrained from striking the fleet used to transport oil, believed to include more than 1,000 tanker trucks.”

Two days later, on November 18th, the Pentagon said at a press conference, that “This is our first strike against tanker trucks” of ISIS.

Moreover, on November 24th, Zero Hedge bannered “'Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away’: US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes” and reported that the US Government were doing this oil-tanker-truck bombing only for show, because Russia had actually started the serious effort to conquer ISIS in Syria, and so the US needed to do something, for PR purposes.

Yet, further evidence also exists that the US Government supported ISIS against Syria’s Government: 

On 24 March 2013, the New York Times bannered “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.”, and reported that “From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons,” and that “‘A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment,’ said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms transfers.” The US Government tried to hide its involvement in this, by doing it through allied “Arab governments,” which were named in this news-report: “Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey,” and all four of these Governments (US, Sauds, Turkey, and Qatar) were trying to overthrow Syria’s Government. Then, on 8 September 2014, AFP headlined “Islamic State fighters using US arms: study”, and they reported that the US Government was supplying ISIS. On 1 September 2017, Russian Television reported that the US Government was secretly supplying weapons to ISIS and that an anti-Assad fighter had even quit the CIA-backed New Syrian Army because of that.

US President Barack Obama started the US policy to arm ISIS, and it was continued under the current US President.

There is considerable other evidence that the US Government has invaded, and been occupying, parts of Syria, solely in order to replace Syria’s Government by one that would be controlled by the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia.

It is definitely a lie for Trump to say: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria.”

A big turn in these events had been the failed 15 July 2015 coup-attempt, to overthrow Turkey’s Government, and which Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan, says was engineered by the Gulen organization headquartered in the US, which is connected to and protected by the CIA. After July 15th, Turkey increasingly has allied with Russia’s Government, against America’s Government.

The present withdrawal of the US Government from Syria is actually due to the success of Vladimir Putin’s and Tayyip Erdogan’s plan (which I described on 10 September 2018, and which they jointly announced a week later, on September 17th) for Turkey to handle the military task of conquering the jihadists in Syria’s Idlib province and of Turkey’s forces then moving eastward to compel the US Government to end its occupation of northeastern Syria — that nation’s crucial oil-producing region. If Russia’s troops, instead of Turkey’s, were to do that task, it would risk bringing on a US-Russia war, but, since Turkey is still in NATO, that danger doesn’t exist when Turkish troops and armor (backed by Russian air-power) do that highly sensitive job.

Instead of “We have defeated ISIS in Syria,” the truth, from the US Government, would be “We have been defeated in Syria.” However, Putin (and Erdogan, and maybe even Assad) will not be crowing about their victory. Syria’s Government has successfully resisted the US Government’s effort, since 2009, to replace Syria’s Government by one that would be controlled by the Sauds.

ERIC ZUESSE

American writer and investigative historian

John Wayne is Back: as Donald Trump

Hollywood fiction as a metaphor for White House reality

Firoz Osman

Donald Trump turned his menacing gaze from Turkey to South Africa, tweeting that land from white farmers was being seized. The implication was that it was an illegal act and he asked his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate this claim.

White farmers have recruited Zionist mercenaries to train the former to kill blacks. Having honed their murderous skills in killing innocent Palestinian men, women, children, and babies, the Zionists are eager to put these into practice in South Africa as well. The implications can be horrendous.

The US declared “economic war” on Turkey after the failed coup d’etat two years ago. The financial war has caused Turkey’s currency to fall in value by more than 40% since the beginning of the year. Trump has also banned immigrants from “shit-hole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean, and vilified Mexicans and Muslims, blocking citizens from seven Muslim countries to enter the US. He wants to even change the laws concerning legal immigration.

It seems John Wayne, the pistol-packing actor idolized for his role as the all-American gung-ho cowboy in Hollywood western and war movies has been resurrected. In his new incarnation, Wayne appears as a dangerous racist and reckless Donald Trump. One of Wayne’s memorable lines to the outlaw hiding in a building was, “Come out with your hands up. I promise you a fair trial and a clean hanging”!

White racist Americans revered films like The Searchers, The Cowboys, The Shootist, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as masterpieces, where Wayne represented characters that were rough-and-tough as well as racist. In perhaps his best-remembered film, The Searchers, he nearly kills the young niece he has spent a decade looking for because she has been tainted by living with Native Americans, thus making her something less than human.

His movies from the 1950s and 1960s are still screened regularly to inspire and motivate military conscripts and young film directors championing whites pitted against the demonized Native Americans. The latter are depicted as howling savages and terrifying villains that lack such human qualities as emotions. The only treatment they deserve is death. “The only good Injun [Indian] is a dead Injun,” was one of Hollywood’s favorite lines in cowboy movies!

The movie exhibits old Hollywood racism that persists to the day. John Wayne refers to his part-Cherokee nephew as “blankethead,” making a distinction between Comanches and humans, and slaughters a herd of buffalo so his Native American enemies will starve.

Is this not redolent of Trump’s economic wars? John Wayne’s 1971 interview in the soft-porn magazine Playboy, reflects his racist views on the genocide of the indigenous American “Indians.” He said,

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that’s what you’re asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

The “Indian Removal Act,” gave way to the “Trail of Tears,” in which native tribes had to endure forced relocations subjecting tens of thousands to suffer from exposure, disease, and starvation. These cruel acts resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. Native Americans weren’t even considered innocent victims, but rather necessary collateral damage in the name of “Manifest Destiny.”

Wayne remains a popular white supremacist, conservative icon. Aissa Wayne, the actor’s daughter, endorsed Republican front-runner Donald Trump for president at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Iowa in 2016. She proudly said, “If John Wayne were around, he’d be standing right here instead of me.”

“He stood for those big American values that we know and we love,” said Assemblyman Travis Allen, a Republican from Huntington Beach. Wayne “believed in white supremacy” and “didn’t understand why people insist that blacks” have been denied their right to an education,

I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people. We can’t all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks [same interview from Playboy magazine].

The international sheriff Donald Trump refused to condemn the white supremacists who are campaigning for him. Trump sidestepped many opportunities to renounce white nationalist and former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke, who said that voting for any candidate other than Trump is “really treason to your heritage.”

Trump also condoned the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester. At a campaign rally in Alabama, Trump supporters physically attacked an African-American protester after the man began chanting “Black lives matter.” A video of the incident shows the assailants kicking the man after he had already fallen to the ground. The following day, Trump implied that the attackers were justified, “Maybe [the protester] should have been roughed up,” he mused. “It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”

Trump disparaged the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, a young decorated Muslim US Army Officer who died while serving in Iraq. Candidate Trump insulted Khizr Khan and his wife, the deceased officer’s parents, while campaigning leading to the October 2016 presidential elections. He also claimed a judge was biased because “He’s a Mexican; we’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can’t even believe.” Trump called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists.”

President Nelson Mandela, in an interview with the Guardian (April 5, 2000), accused the American government of encouraging international chaos by ignoring other nations and playing “policeman of the world.”

This began with the European settlers’ slaughter of the Native People disparagingly referred to as “Red Indians” at Wounded Knee and continued with invasions and massacres of indigenous people all over the world for nearly 200 years. Their forces have intervened around the globe more than 200 times, dropped bombs on more than 23 countries. They have carried out 20 coups against independent-minded rulers, and are responsible for half a dozen assassinations of heads of state.

Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison, torture, renditions, assassinations, arming of dictators, slavery, exploitation, killing of civilians by drones and so on make a mockery of their claims to be champions of peace, security and democracy in the world. The danger lies in Trump acting as an international sheriff. He can destabilize South Africa, as he did Turkey, given Pretoria’s economic and political vulnerability. This is no Hollywood movie.

Dr. Firoz Osman is an executive member of the Media Review Network, an advocacy group based in Gauteng.

 

Firoz Osman