Friday, February 3, 2017

Getting Even








14 comments:

John said...

Perhaps this time the trillions of dollars spent on "defence" will be able to counter a couple of whack jobs on a dinghy.

The world will not be safe until all dinghies are put out of action.

John said...

Maybe this photo opportunity will displace the news that the Trump's lawsuit against the Daily Mail has been dismissed.

Does that mean we can say that the First Lady was a prostitute? Trump married a prostitute. That's "the worst deal ever"! What a "loser"!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/melania-trump-daily-mail-lawsuit-dismissed-maryland-judge

Matt Franko said...

The ledger has to balance John... double entry accounting...

John said...

What ledger? What has Yemen ever done to the US? Saudi Arabia is the source of all this stuff.

These whack jobs have destroyed country after country, and what the US wants to help them do so because, er, these whack jobs hijacked some airliners and murdered thousands of innocent people?

This isn't double entry accounting. This is embezzling from yourself and giving it to your enemies!

Anyway, Trump should "get even" with the First Prostitute in some fashion.

Matt Franko said...

John I get the idea that Trump doesnt like anything about how we have been dealing with that entire part of the world for the past 20 years or longer... "we attacked the wrong country" etc...

He warned about the 9/11 attacks in his late 90's book... then it happened and you had more or less US oil people in there responding to it... Trump's not an oil person...

So the oil people made an s-load of $$$$ coming out of that and they way Trump looks at it we should have at least taken the oil... but we didnt, and the oil people have ripped us off for like the last 10+ years on the oil... he talks about this all the time...

He may be looking at all of this largely in financial terms...

Noah Way said...

I get the idea that Trump doesnt like anything about how we have been dealing with that entire part of the world

I get the idea that Trump doesnt know anything about how we have been dealing with that entire part of the world

There, fixed it for you.

Anonymous said...

'Getting even': the theme of the Mahabharata - revenge goes on and on and on and on .... Duh!

Jake C said...

seriously, why is U.S always sticking up for saudis

they are the ass wholes who did 9/11

what about 'america first'

John said...

Malmo: "Only Saudi Arabia?"

Good point, but it is where the vast majority of it comes from: they even televise this shit. But you can add all the other so-called "US allies" to this: Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Pakistan and Egypt. They all fund the terrorism and train the jihadis, with the money coming from the Gulf mostly. All the intelligence services and the better independent analysts say the same thing.

None of this can be mentioned because they're all extremely important allies, and the jihadi menace has been useful and may yet prove useful again elsewhere. Instead, attention is diverted to Iran, Yemen and Syria! None of these have a Wahhabi jihadi problem until the Gulf States exported it to them. The US didn't have a Wahhabi jihadi problem until it was blown off course by previous CIA "assets" who couldn't get with the program.

John said...

Matt: "I get the idea that Trump doesnt like anything about how we have been dealing with that entire part of the world for the past 20 years or longer... "we attacked the wrong country" etc..."

Then he's about to make the same mistake as his predecessors, only worse. Instead of listening to the religious maniacs in Saudi Arabia about Iran, if he had any sense he'd be the first president to tell the Saudis to cut this shit out, otherwise he'll refuse to cooperate military and on intelligence, the one thing the ruling gangster family needs to keep it from being overthrown by its own people. I don't know about you, but I'll sleep a lot easier knowing that the Saudi royal family have all been thrown off tall buildings and can't fund this fucking shit anymore. But that's just me.

"He may be looking at all of this largely in financial terms..."

There may be every reason to believe he is. If so, he's a dangerous fool and no different to his predecessors, all the way back to FDR, who had a different way of making it about the oil. From FDR onwards the policy was to use client regimes to do their bidding, rather than control it in the colonial way the British had. Trump wants to be different from his predecessors who were all "stupid" and "losers". What's he going to do? Invade and occupy the oil fields of the whole Arabian peninsula? The US couldn't beat the Taliban, who were armed with antique AK-47s and pickup trucks. How in hell would they be able to hold the whole of Arabia? It can't be done. So the strategy has been to control the oil through the client regimes, usually corrupt families, which are hated by the people in these authoritarian countries, but armed to the teeth with US weapons and are therefore extremely difficult to overthrow. He can let them fall, but I doubt it. He's shown his true colours by making it all about Iran and not Saudi Arabia.

Greg said...

"I get the idea that Trump doesnt like anything about how we have been dealing with that entire part of the world for the past 20 years or longer... "we attacked the wrong country" etc..."



Thats probably true but it also doesn't make Trump particularly unique. Guess how many Joe blows on the streets of anywhere USA feel the exact same way! There is a far cry from knowing that something IS bad and knowing 1) why its bad 2) how did it get that way and 3) knowing how to fix it

Now of course there isnt one answer to any of the above items but I have seen nothing out of Trump nor his cronies that they are even curious types. They think they know already and have no interest in really determining if they might be wrong, which is why they are frightening.

Matt Franko said...

Well lets see how non-oil people work this... the Bush people were all oil people... our policy over there has been dominated by the Texas/Oklahoma oil cabal... iow that cabal benefits from the monopoly rent same as the OPEC people when the OPEC people get control of the price.. this is contrasted by Trump when he says "why didnt we at least take the oil?"...

Maybe Tillerson knows the jig is up wrt oil and that is one reason why Trump hired him... he may have technical credibility wrt the oil business and is going to have to break the news to them that we are headed towards oil independence in North America...

the gulf and red sea are still an important route for oil for the ME and Europe the oil goes to EZ and the food comes back... and the sea routes have to have maintained security which US has been doing and cant just drop it cold turkey... maybe Europe is going to have to re-arm...

I dont see those people over there being able to run their own navy they dont have the organizational and cooperative skills ... maybe that is why they want the pipelines thru Syria...

The Iran vs. West thing looks 100% religious to me so not my bag..... and has gone personal with the US military with a potential to get personal with Trump if it escalates from here ...

Looks like the correct Trump model might be Japan with the deal they are bringing next week that is going to be interesting.... Japan has over $1T in their USD account they can bring to the table...

They might say here take these 100s of $B and give us a piece of the equity and guarantee us 3% .... Trump might like something like that... btw Saudi elites saying the same thing they want in too ... China too stupid always a decade or two behind Japan....

John said...

Matt: "Maybe Tillerson knows the jig is up wrt oil and that is one reason why Trump hired him... "

That would be welcome, but apparently during Trump's second call to the Saudis they talked again about Iran but mostly about oil production. There was not one sign of any differences from any previous administrations. Trump's drunk deeply from the Kool- aid fountain of eternal war and Wahhabi jihadism. Even the closest of close allies like Australia got a roasting. Saudi Arabia's mad leaders had Trump's respectful attention on TWO occasions. It's all about Iran and the oil. The rest is mach grandstanding while Saudi Arabia's jihad on everybody continues, and it couldn't be done without Washington's support.

Matt: "the gulf and red sea are still an important route for oil for the ME and Europe the oil goes to EZ and the food comes back... and the sea routes have to have maintained security which US has been doing and cant just drop it cold turkey... "

That's been Washington's line for decades, but there is no evidence that there is any truth in it. The opposite has always been the case, as the declassified papers have shown: a huge offshore presence in case the client regimes require assistance against "communists" and now "Islamic radicals", which are propaganda terms for the general populations of those countries, because the vast majority have never been communists or Islamic radicals but conservative nationalists.

With respect to Japan, it looks like a case of an anti-China policy. Japan loathes China, always has. Japan's thinking towards China has always been that, at best, they should be something akin to slaves. So it's hoping to turn US policy, or be part of the necessary alliance, against China. It doesn't look like the smartest move, but it may work out and allow Japan's sun to rise rather than setting as it has for three decades. Japan's hostility and poisonous racism towards China isn't anything new, and there have been renewed military tensions between the two recently over uninhabited but oil rich seas off the coast of disputed islands. As far as I can tell, the islands belonged to China until about the turn of the twentieth century. Japan conquered them at the time and they have been under its control almost ever since, except during the US occupation. The US occupying power handed them to Japan sometime in the 1970s rather than back to China, or allowing an independent international commission to decide the matter. The islands are just off the coast of China!

Matt: "...and has gone personal with the US military with a potential to get personal with Trump if it escalates from here ..."

It's no secret that Pence, Flynn and Mattis have been virulently any-Iran for over three decades. And their repeated threats can only strengthen the hardliners in Iran, which may be the plan in order to initiate a confrontation. It's all reminiscent of the outright lies about Iraq's knowingly non-existent WMD. Iran's missile test didn't contravene the deal struck with the US, but Trump, Flynn and Spicer immediately condemned it as a provocation and "playing with fire", leaving the rest of the signatories to the deal angered because they understood that Iran's test was perfectly legitimate and it left a strong impression of another unnecessary war in the Middle East based on laughable pretexts.

Matt Franko said...

USN does a lot mine sweeping, anti-piracy, anti-harrassment, sea security, etc.. over there on those routes.. there are other missions from time to time... strike, etc... but these are the core missions out of necessity... if it becomes unnecessary (no US use of gulf oil) then it will probably be stopped ... Trump wont see any "win" in it for the US...