Most all of the world’s problems do not have military solutions.
Establish American ideals as the foundation of American foreign policy in the following order of importance: Truth, justice, self-determination, majority rule with minority rights, and peace.
• Recognize we have been a primary cause of the current chaos in the Middle East. See references to the Pentagon’s 2001 Middle East war plans at: https://www.youtube.com/... (1)
• Support Plebiscites to determine who should rule where. Demand UN supervised plebiscites in Eastern Ukraine and Kashmir. Recognize past plebiscites in South Ossetia and the Crimea.
• Talk with everybody about everything. We must negotiate with terrorists, though we should not allow a terrorist act to force us to take or not to take an action.
• Subordinate ourselves to the rule of law in general and specifically the International Criminal Court ICC and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea UNCLOS. We have not ratified either statute. If we had been subject to the ICC, President Bush and Vice President Cheney may have been deterred from attacking Iraq, and how can we ask China to follow UNCLOS while we refuse to recognize this Convention?
• All foreign military aid should be reduced over the next five years to nearly nothing.
Islamic State IS Support IS containment then Stop / No rollbacks / No long war
The goal should be to contain not to destroy IS. Stop their expansion out of Sunni Arab areas then Stop. Do not make war on the IS. We can offer no viable alternative. We took out oppressive leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya and then allowed them to be replaced by continuing war, chaos, and corruption. Stop
Just over one year ago we were going to fight with ISIL against Syria’s Assad. I believe we balked at allying ourselves with such extremists, and they are extremists. Even al Qaeda has labeled them overly brutal. But, while they have executed thousands, Assad has targeted and killed tens of thousands of civilians (2). As extreme as they are, they are not as extreme as Assad. We should not be taking on the IS, freeing Assad to concentrate on more moderate groups (3).
Most of Syria’s oil fields are in Eastern Syria. I submit one primary reason we are attacking the IS and not Assad is that the IS now controls those fields.
There is no moderate Syrian force capable of pushing both the IS and Assad out of Syria. The Free Syrian Army FSA is not a viable force. The Syrian National Coalition, the political arm of the FSA, has almost no support in Syria. In October 2013 dozens of rebel groups broke with this coalition (4). The addition of 5,000 well trained fighters to the FSA will not likely be the seed of a future, effective force.
If we limited ourselves to the containment of the IS in Sunni Arab areas, only engaged them to check their expansion into areas unfriendly to them, and left them in peace otherwise, they might be willing to accept these limits and minimize acts of terror against us. We could then allow the IS and Assad to expend themselves on each other.
Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria must bear the primary responsibility for determining how they are to be governed in Sunni Arab areas. The IS in their areas is their responsibility.
Iraq
Iraq’s Sunni Arabs have not been allowed an effective voice in Baghdad for over a decade. According to former Marine Josh Rushing with Al Jazeera most of the IS fighters in Iraq are local Sunni Arabs (5). Iraqi Sunnis must determine if they want to be a part of a reformed Iraq, the IS, or something else. The fate of Western Iraq belongs to these Sunnis not to Iraqi Shiites, not to Iraqi Kurds, and certainly not to Americans.
As President Johnson said/inferred in his 1964 campaign, we should not send American boys to fight a war that Asian boys should fight. Replace Asian with Vietnamese, Kuwaiti, Afghani, or Iraqi and the statement is still true. Stop
America should not deploy any major, ground combat units.
Syria
Syria’s Sunni Arabs must determine if they want to be a part of Syria, the IS, or something else.
President Obama has been criticized for not bombing Syria after the Assad government breached his red line on the use of chemical weapons and for not earlier arming moderate Syrian rebels. Obama established his red line in August 2012. In fact most all of Syria’s chemical weapons were eliminated without American bombing. And, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia began training and arming Syrian rebels in Istanbul in 2012. Unfortunately, much of that effort eventually aided the IS. Obama was correct in refusing to do “stupid stuff” though the US, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan began a different program to train and arm moderate rebels in 2013. (6)
Note - We trained and armed the Iraqi army yet an IS force of 1,000 was able to overwhelm an Iraqi army force of 30,000 and take Mosul, Iraq (7). If there is no political solution, there will be no lasting military solution in Iraq or Syria. Further, our defense industries were paid to arm Iraq with weapons that now arm IS and will likely be paid to rearm Iraq. The world may be in chaos, but there is one constant - war profits.
Al Qaeda Talk
They were our allies in 1980s Afghanistan and recently against the IS. The al Nusra Front is al Qaeda’s primary affiliate in Syria. Al Qaeda and al Nusra broke with the IS in June 2013. On 02/23/2014 the IS assassinated Abu Khaled al-Suri, al Qaeda’s primary representative in Syria. Recognize al Qaeda is more a multi-national militia than a terrorist organization with most of its members militiamen not terrorists. They do not have to be our enemy on this front.
The Khorasan Group – I believe this fiction was created as an excuse to attack the al Nusra Front. Our war plutocrats don’t want to be allied with al Qaeda against the IS and hope to bomb them all into reconciliation.
Ahrar al Sham
We bombed its Babsalqa, Syria headquarters on 11/06/2014. It is part of the “Islamic Front” coalition, supports theocracy over democracy in Syria, but does not fight for global Jihad. It is not affiliated with al Qaeda though some of its leadership have had ties to al Qaeda. It has cooperated with the al Nusra Front as have more moderate Syrian groups.
On 9/9/2014 its then leader Hassan Abboud and 27 others in the group’s leadership were killed in a suicide bombing by the IS. In an interview with the BBC last June, Abboud condemned the Islamic State: "Isis does not reflect Islam in any way. Islam is a religion of peace. It is not a religion of slaughter. Isis represents the worst image ever of Islam." Abboud said his group wanted a Syria in which women were able to drive and Christians, and even Assad's Alawite sect, would be safe from harm. Source: http://www.bbc.com/...
Ahrar al Sham is not on the US list of terrorist organizations (8). It appears the current plan is to kill everybody and let God sort them out. Except Assad (9)
Turkey
Turkey must recognize it is a pluralist state with a Turkish majority and an18% Kurdish minority. These Kurds are not ethnic Turks, but they are Turkish nationals. Turkey has good relations with Kurdish Iraqis, and there is no reason it could not also have good relations with Kurdish Syrians and, most important, Kurdish Turks. Turkey needs to support Kurdish Turks’ language, culture, values, and loyalty to the Kurds of other nations. Value and help all the people of Kurdistan. Whether or not there is ever a state of Kurdistan, all Kurdish people should come to value their ethnic Turk neighbors. The Ottomans, with exceptions, respected multiple cultures within their domain. Their descendants need to do the same.
Kurdish Syria’s democratic workers party PYD is closely tied to Kurdish Turkey’s PKK, and the PYD’s armed wing is now defending Kobani. These ties to the PKK are one reason Turkey has been slow to aid Kobani, but if Kobani is allowed to fall to the IS, current peace talks between Turkey and the PKK could end.
Gulf Monarchies
Demand they end their governments’ and citizens’ support for the military wings of terrorist organizations including the Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas, Taliban, etc. They must end all contributions to terrorists. Establish, if necessary, sanctions on the flow of Gulf oil until they end the flow of funds to terrorists.
Israel/ Palestine
* End our support for greater Israel Zionists, for the blockade of Gaza, and for the occupation of the West Bank.
* Condemn Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza civilians. Demand Israel produce the Intel on all 17,000+ civilian homes which they believe made those homes legitimate military targets. They were not.
* Cease all military aid gradually over five years or abruptly if Israel refuses to leave the West Bank by 11/01/2016.
* Recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland and a pluralist state with a majority Jewish population and a 20% minority Palestinian, primarily Muslim population.
* Recognize the State of Palestine. Support Palestine’s full membership in the UN.
* Talk with Hamas. Condemn Hamas as collaborators with unending terror rationalizing unending occupation and blockade, rationalizing unending terror, rationalizing unending occupation and blockade... Demand Hamas commit to and forever stop indiscriminate shelling/ bombing.
Iran
* Establish relations with a new embassy in Iran. Formally apologize for our actions in 1953 and our support for Saddam Hussein in the Iraq Iran war.
* Unilaterally eliminate an American military option in pursuit of a nuclear free Iran.
* Support her right to unlimited centrifuges under intrusive supervision by the IAEA.
India
Demand a plebiscite in Kashmir. India cannot claim to be a democracy if she will not allow self-determination in Kashmir.
Pakistan
* Demand it end its military support for the Afghan Taliban and Kashmiri terrorists.
* Cease all military aid gradually over five years or abruptly if Pakistan continues to support these groups.
Afghanistan
We would stop losing wars if we only fought just wars.
Russia
Our leadership vilifies Putin with extreme hypocrisy. They still condemn Russia’s invasion of Georgia but always fail to mention that Georgia first invaded South Ossetia (See Addendum). Georgia was the aggressor just as America was the aggressor in the Iraq war. Last March Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov claimed the Ukraine could not function as a unified state and should federalize. Secretary of State Kerry responded about federalization, “It is up to the Ukrainians” (unless of course they’re Crimean). We refused to recognize Crimea’s referendum.
Diplomacy requires us to see the other’s point of view. I submit the following combined to threaten the future of Russia and its Black Sea fleet:
• NATO had moved ever eastward. Pro West Ukrainians had pursued ties and a future membership with NATO.
• The West trained and armed Georgia before Georgia invaded South Ossetia in August 2008.
• In September 2008 Ukraine’s pro West, then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko ruled out Russia`s Black Sea fleet staying in the Ukraine after its lease ends in 2017 (10a).
• In April 2010 under pro Russia President Yanukovych, Russia’s naval base leases were extended after encountering stiff opposition in Ukraine’s parliament and passing by only 52%. (10b)
• Ukraine’s pro Russia government was replaced without a popular vote by a pro West government. On 2/22/2014 328 members of Ukraine’s Parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych. (11)
It was not unreasonable for Putin to be concerned and to take actions to reduce future threats. I concur a Crimean referendum should have preceded any Russian military action. But, I also believe Putin would not have annexed the Crimea if its plebiscite had not supported Russian annexation. He will not annex Donetsk and Luhansk unless most of their citizens support Russian annexation.
NATO Expansion - The inclusion of former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet Republics in NATO will not make Europe safer. I submit a primary reason for their inclusion is to create profits for Western defense industries from retooling Eastern Europe’s militaries. It’s about money not security.
Eastern Ukraine Plebiscites
Russian and Ukrainian forces could work together in Eastern Ukraine to maintain order during a UN plebiscite. All sides could make it clear they will comply with the results of this plebiscite. I suspect Donetsk and Luhansk would vote to be autonomous republics but within Ukraine, not in the Russian Federation given most of their people, though Russian speaking, identify as Ukrainian (12). The plebiscites should be UN supervised to ensure all citizens’ freedom to choose, ensure fairness, and to be acceptable to both the Ukraine and Russia.
I believe the Crimean plebiscite was legitimate given most of its people are Russian speaking and identify as Russians. If there are legitimate questions as to its legitimacy, another UN supervised plebiscite could be held. The same could be done in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
I submit if 1938 Sudetenland had been allowed a plebiscite, it would have voted to join Germany. After the annexation, Sudetenland had one of the highest concentrations of Nazi party members in Germany (13). No democratic state could have legitimately condemned such a union though some equitable adjustments may have been necessary to compensate Czechoslovakia for its prior investments in Sudetenland. I submit the Munich Agreement with equitable adjustments would have been acceptable, and diplomacy is most always preferable to war. What was not acceptable was Hitler’s invasion of the rest of the Czech Republic six months later. WWII began with this invasion on March 16th 1939 not on September 1st 1939.
Putin is not Hitler, and we need Russia as an ally to check China’s aggression.
China
Communist China has shown its belligerence from the invasion of Tibet in 1950 to its current claim over 90% of the South China Sea. It is absurd that China has territorial disputes and/or exclusive economic zone EEZ conflicts with Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Shouldn’t China first conquer Vietnam and the Philippines?
* Talk, support the rule of law, and play a major diplomatic role.
* Support a military option to help Asian countries check China’s military expansion though the primary responsibility remains with these countries. I submit any military actions should be multilateral with the US in a minor supporting role. Don’t send American boys to fight a war that Asian boys should fight.
Our war plutocrats
* Demand our Congressmen end their collaboration with these plutocrats.
* We may be corrupt beyond nonviolent redemption. Support a military option against these plutocrats.
It is not ok to kill hundreds of thousands of foreigners to protect a few thousand Americans from terrorists created by our killing hundreds of thousands of foreigners. Stop
Sources and Footnotes:
(1) The Pentagon’s 2001 Middle East war plans
Retired General Wesley Clark states there was an American foreign policy coup in 2001 calling for military campaigns against seven countries in the Middle East. He thought it may have been to enhance American control in the area. Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/...
10/3/2007 Commonwealth Club/ www.fora.tv
Winning Modern Wars by Wesley Clark (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 130. In this book Clark describes his conversation with a military officer in the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 regarding a plan to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in five years: "As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran."
(2) I define “targeting” to include area bombing/ shelling where most of the casualties were civilians. Sources:
09/27/2014 The Economist p.25 stated there had been 200,000 total deaths and 9.5M refugees in the Syrian civil war. “One Syrian NGO reckons IS has killed 830 Syrian civilians, compared with the regime’s 125,000.” (I suspect the NGO here is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights SOHR and the 125,000 includes the deaths of Syrian rebel forces. The Observatory’s 4/2014 report included those forces in their civilian death count. See below for corrected figures. I still join with the Observatory to conclude Assad remains the greater evil with his use of area bombing/ shelling, chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and torture to create a much higher civilian body count than the IS.)
http://antiwar.com/...
150,344 total casualties including 24,274 Syrian rebel forces’ deaths and 51,212 civilian deaths 34.1% reported by the SOHR.
06/27/2013 San Diego Union p.A8 “Congress balks at lethal aid to Rebels” from the AP. The SOHR reported most of the 100,191 killed in Syria were combatants. 36,661 were civilians.
(3) http://www.voanews.com/... 10/31/2014 Voice of America VOA
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday that Assad seems to be taking advantage of the American-led airstrikes against the Islamic State group, using the coalition’s air offensive as an opportunity to increase his own air assaults on opponents.
Abu Muhammad, a moderate Islamist insurgent commander, told VOA the Syrian president realigned his forces once the coalition airstrikes began — shifting some troops from eastern Syria to reinforce his offensive against moderate and Islamist rebels in the key city of Aleppo, and to strengthen his defense of the town of Idlib, to the west.
In an assessment last week for a Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, security analyst Anthony Cordesman warned: “The Assad forces are using the U.S. and allied campaign against the Islamic State to make a massive step-up in air attacks on other rebels.”
(4) 10/17/2013 San Diego Union p.A9 “Rebels break from Syrian Opposition” from the AP
(5) http://hereandnow.wbur.org/...
(6) 10/04/2014 San Diego Union p.B8,”Syria’s Proxy War” by David Ignatius from the Washington Post
(7) 06/21/2014 The Economist p.47 “Why Iraq’s army crumbled”
(8) 11/7/2014 San Diego Union p.A4 “US Airstrikes target al-Qaeda affiliate (al Nusra) in Syria” from The Washington Post.
(9) 11/15/2014 The Economist p.50 The war in Syria - “America’s decision to hit jihadist groups other than IS has further splintered the fractious rebels. Some have defected to extremist groups… convinced that America’s coalition is in effect an ally of Mr. Assad’s. Revelations that President Barack Obama promised not to attack the Assad regime in a secret letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei… have deepened such Sunni fears.”
I could not confirm this promise from another source, but promise or not, the Coalition has not attacked Assad’s forces.
(10) http://en.wikipedia.org/...
(10a) with original source http://www.unian.net/...
(10b) with additional source - Parliamentary chaos as Ukraine ratifies fleet deal, World (UK: BBC), 27 April 2010
(11) Pro Russia President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown because he is alleged to have ordered the 2/20/2014 Black Thursday shooting of sixty protesters at Maidan Square yet he has not been pursued by the international community for crimes against humanity.
Gennady Moskal, head of a Ukrainian parliamentary commission investigating the shootings, said the bullets found did not match firearms issued to the special anti-riot police unit Berkut which unlike most police units are allowed to carry lethal weapons. Mr. Moskal said there was no forensic evidence linking the mass killings in Kiev on 2/20/2014 to the Berkut.
Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told the EU’s Catherine Ashton, “There is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers – it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition… they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” Police and protestors were killed “by the same kind of bullets.” Mr. Paet confirmed the accuracy of the recorded statements.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
See additional and some conflicting information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Nine Berkut unit officers were arrested, and the unit disbanded though additional special police and/or military units were alleged to be involved - units such as the SBU’s Alpha Unit and the Russian FSB. Why would pro government forces shoot their own police? If it was to provoke a crackdown, why lose sympathy by killing so many protesters? Why hasn’t Yanukovych been indicted?
(12) Polls suggest 2/3rds of people in the south and east want to stay part of Ukraine and not be annexed by Russia per 04/26/2014 The Economist p.50. See the Public opinion section of http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Referendums were held in rebel areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts on 05/11/2014 where voters are alleged to have overwhelmingly approved declarations of independence for the two republics.
(13) http://en.wikipedia.org/... with original source Zimmermann, Volker: Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat. Politik und Stimmung der Bevölkerung im Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938-1945). Essen 1999. (ISBN 3-88474-770-3)
Addendum – 2008 Georgia Russia War / Plebiscites / Secession
Sack the Sacks: Saakashvili and Bush 2008 08 23 original version
We need to terminate the presidencies of aggressors such as Georgian President Saakashvili and President Bush.
On August 7th Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (aka Sackash*ti) said he planned to offer South Ossetia “unlimited autonomy” within the Georgian state, with Russia to be a guarantor of the arrangement. Both sides said they were in discussions. Later in the day, however, the Saak ordered a massive artillery attack on Tskhinvali followed the next day by a ground assault. (1)
Zbigniew Brzezinski postulates that “Moscow was waiting for such an act to provide a pretext for the use of force.” (2) Even if this were true, the Saak didn’t have to provide the pretext. I suspect there has been manipulation on all sides. Given the close relationship between America and Georgia, I see the possibility the Administration was fully aware of and fully supported Saak’s plans. The Administration claims to have been blindsided but instead of criticizing Saak’s brash actions, they were instantly gushing with support.
Mr. Bush (our sack) continually emphasizes that Saak was democratically elected and paints Georgia as the offended party. Saak was the aggressor and should be condemned as such. Bush doesn’t recognize this aggression just as he doesn’t recognize his own aggression in Iraq.
Why do Bush and Saak recognize Georgian democracy and not South Ossetia’s democracy? South Ossetia has been a de-facto independent, autonomous region for sixteen years. In a 2006 referendum South Ossetians voted overwhelmingly for independence (3). Russia, of course, suffers similar hypocrisy in recognizing the right of secession in Abkhazia and South Ossetia but not in Kosovo and Chechnya.
How are South Ossetia and Russia to deter future aggression if not by punitive strikes? I would prefer they struck only military targets, but they are within their rights to punish Georgia.
Georgia, as an aggressor nation, should not be allowed to join NATO. If our sack unilaterally attacks Iran, America should be thrown out of NATO. Democracy is not always synonymous with truth and justice; there are just too many sacks in the world.
Sources:
(1) 8/15/2008 San Diego Union Tribune p. B7, “Leaders Err on Ossetia and Georgia” by Thomas de Waal with the Institute of War and Peace.
(2) 8/14/2008 Time.com “Staring Down the Russians” by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
(3) 8/12/2008 Christian Science Monitor “Roots of Georgia-Russia clash run deep” by Fred Weird, Paul Rimple, and John Wendle.
10/14/2009 Update - An independent inquiry ordered by the EU concluded Georgia violated international law and triggered last year’s war with Russia by attacking South Ossetia. The report also found that Russia’s invasion of Georgia after the attack was illegal and unjustified, and that Ossetian militias conducted ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages. (1)
I supported Russia’s punitive military actions against Georgia proper as I saw them deterring future aggression. It appears, contrary to the EU inquiry, Russia didn’t go far enough. Until the recent intervention by the Russian coast guard, US supplied, Georgian gun boats had been blockading Abkhazian ports (2).
My opponents refused to call Georgia’s actions aggression because they interpreted the breakaway republics as the sovereign territory of Georgia disregarding the years of their independence and the wishes of their people. My opponents cannot claim to support self-determination and democracy and still stand in support of forced union and stand against the right of secession.
After 144 years, Americans still haven’t learned the lessons of our civil war. 300,000 Confederate soldiers apparently died for nothing. It is true, they died in defense of slavery their unjust cause, but they also died in defense of the right of secession their just cause. I support the Confederate battle flag as our strongest American symbol of this right. I will only display it, however, in the presence of the black liberation flag or in the colors of the black liberation flag. Those two flags represent the just causes of the civil war, the causes that made the civil war the tragedy it was. A greater tragedy, however, is that half of today’s Americans are mired in cowardice and willful ignorance, unwilling to discern the truth.
Sources:
(1) 10/1/2009 San Diego Union Tribune p.A8 “Georgia, Russia faulted in war report”
(2) 10/5/2009 Newsweek p.10 “Russia is spoiling for another fight” by Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova
John F Scanlon San Diego CA USA 858 538 1434 jfscanlon@aol.com
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