Sunday, November 3, 2019

Anyone can imagine what cannot be predicted

Do something that neither the Nazis nor the bigwigs of the imperial Japanese entourage did three quarters of a century ago: Imagine them asking each other what would happen if they lost the wars they started.

Had they done that, would the Nazis have accepted paying the price they did at Dresden, and the price of being reviled as they have for the atrocities they committed throughout Europe? Would the Japanese have accepted paying the price that they did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki for what they committed at Pearl Harbor?

Nobody can predict the future, of course, but we were endowed with a brain that can imagine what would happen if the scheme we're working on backfires, if we fail to achieve the success we hope for, and if we'll be required to pay a price for our failure. In fact, most people do just that, which is a human trait we recognize as wisdom even when it is rooted in fear rather than virtue. Yes, there are times when wisdom is based––wholly or in part––on self-deterrence for fear that if we proceed in a certain direction, the push-back will be so severe, it will turn the adventure we contemplate undertaking into a destructive one.

As individuals, we can all understand that. But how did it escape institutions such as those that had the power to stop the warmongers of the twentieth century from inflicting on the world the horror that they did? The answer is that the thought of losing the war escaped these people because they were under the illusion that their military was unbeatable, therefore will not be called upon to account for their actions.

It is that the illusion which took years to build as they prepared for war, was able to overpower the imagination of what might happen, a thought that took an instant to appear and a mere instant to dismiss. The warmongers of yesteryear were all drunk with the illusion of glorious victories, which made it impossible for them to imagine a potential defeat; a thought that should have stayed long enough to dampen their enthusiasm for war, but did not.

Can this happen again somewhere on this planet? The answer is yes, it can happen again. In fact, it has been happening every time that the self-described hawks of America urged the commander in chief to order the military to go overseas and execute an expedition that was not authorized by Congress. Troops were sent to places where America lost by not scoring victories of the kind that the world might have approved of.

You see, my friend, winning in the style of the big wars of the twentieth century are not going to happen anymore because the world has changed a great deal. What constitutes winning in modern times happened only once in the last four decades when an Arab/American coalition formed to push back Saddam Hussein's ill-advised aggression against Kuwait. Most everything else has been freelancing by the American President, and the gang of bloodthirsty hawks that is never too far from him.

The hawks are at it again, urging President Donald Trump to stay in Syria and continue fighting in the Middle East, if not to achieve a decisive victory –– which they resigned themselves into thinking is illusory –– but fight to achieve goals that America must attain to assert its long term security, according to their claim. And this is when questions were asked as to the wisdom of such an undertaking in view of the fact that the Middle East has always been a quagmire from which America never knew how to extricate itself.

It happened that Donald Trump was the first American president to see the wisdom of getting out of the Middle East by getting out of Syria. Alas, he has a weakness that the warmongers are aware of. He has a colonialist streak that makes him dream to laying his hands on the petroleum riches of the Arab and Muslim countries. For a time, he thought he could grab the oil of Saudi Arabia, a dream he shed when he met with the Saudis, and decided it was better to work with these people than try to rob them.

But when the Syria opportunity opened up to him, he grabbed it, and started dreaming of taking the oil riches of Syria. This entailed the sending of troops and armored vehicles to Syria, which he did with the declared desire of taking Syria's oil wealth. And this is when a number of non-Jewish pundits tried to knock wisdom into his head, a strange bony cavity that's intoxicated with the vision of billions of dollars looted from the Arabs and the Muslims, and taken to benefit dwellers of the American swamp.

Of the many articles that were written on this matter, three were picked to illustrate how the debate has been progressing so far:

First, Tom Rogan came up with an out-of-the-box idea which has it that America must secure the oil fields of Syria, not for America's benefit but that of the Syrian Kurds and Sunni-Arabs. Rogan's article came under the title: “America must decide whether eastern Syrian oil goes to friends or foes,” published on October 28, 2019 in the Washington Examiner.

Second, Daniel Davis came up with an article he wrote under the title: “Why America Can't Afford to 'Take the Oil,'” and the subtitle: “US dependence on foreign oil has shifted. Thus, America's interests are no longer as vulnerable to negative events in the Middle East as they were in 1980.” The article was published on November 1, 2019 in The National Interest.

The point that Daniel Davis makes, is that the world has changed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War. And yet, he sees that many who advise on Foreign Policy live in the past and still think as if the Cold War were on. The Syrian question being a small blip on his radar screen, he preferred to talk about the tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, cautioning America to stay out of this dispute. And of course, it must be taken that what applies to Saudi Arabia also applies to Syria.

Third, Paul R. Pillar, wrote an article under the title: “Donald Trump's 'Take the Oil' Strategy in Syria Is a Mistake,” published on November 1, 2019 in The National Interest. Pillar's point is that the propaganda of the terrorists, is rooted in the idea that the US and the West are out to plunder the resources of the Muslims, which is why America should not get involved with the question of Syria's oil.

What Paul Pillar says is true, of course, but it will do no good because it misses the target by so much, it is almost irrelevant. In fact, it was decades before the terrorists had appeared on the scene, that the Arabs and the Muslim realized the West was there to plunder their resources. They did not need the terrorists to tell them what they were seeing.

By labeling that reality a terrorist propaganda, people like Pillar are doing nothing to nudge the brain-dead zombies of the Washington Beltway to imagine what future generations will say about America, or be motivated to do what's necessary to end the madness of the superpower taking its orders from Tel Aviv, and staying in the Middle East to get in the way of the Arabs and the Muslims to the end of time.

Paul Pillar and those like him should tell it like it is. They should make it clear to America's leaders that Israel's gains are America's losses. The game of the Middle East has always been a zero-sum game. The Jews knew that but conned the political cockroaches of the Beltway into believing that it was a win-win game where America benefits when the Jews suck its blood and send it to Israel.

The time has come for that fantasy to be unveiled, and for the paradigm that’s built on it to be discarded.