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I’m starting to wonder whether President Trump has any power over US foreign policy at all. Many people believe that the US president is just a figurehead, with actual foreign policy firmly in the hands of the deep state. Trump’s latest dramatic U-turn on pulling troops from Syria certainly feeds such theories.
When President Trump announced just a couple of weeks ago that the US was removing its troops from Syria and possibly reducing troops from Afghanistan, the neocons, the media, the military-industrial complex, and the left-wing “never-Trump” people were livid. They were silent when President Obama made the horrible decision to overthrow Assad in Syria and sent weapons to jihadists to do so. They never said a word when billions of dollars were committed to this immoral and dangerous “regime change” policy. They weren’t interested in the rule of law when President Obama thumbed his nose at Congress and sent troops into Syria.
But when President Trump declared the obvious – that ISIS was effectively defeated and that we had no business being in Syria – these above groups in unison declared that actually bringing US troops home was a “gift to Russia.” They said bringing US troops home would create instability in the regions they left. Well, is there any proof that occupation by US troops actually brings stability?
No sooner did President Trump announce our departure than his neocon advisors began walking his words back. First he had to endure a lunch with Sen. Lindsey Graham reading him the riot act, where, according to the Senator, Trump agreed to no timetables for departure. Then his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, began to tell the world that President Trump’s statements on troop pullout were just empty words, not US policy.
While Syrian Christians newly liberated from the rule of US-backed extremists celebrated Christmas for the first time in years, John Bolton dusted off the old warning to Assad that the US would attack if he “again” gassed his people. With the Syrian president personally taking part in some of the Christmas celebrations, does anybody really believe he’d go back to his office and order a gas attack?
Bolton then claimed that the US would shift troops from Syria to Iraq to continue fighting ISIS and that the US fully backs Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory. Did President Trump even agree to any of this?
Even worse, Secretary of State Pompeo is embarking on a Middle East tour where he will essentially tell leaders in the region that the US president is a liar. According to one State Department official quoted in a report on Sunday, Pompeo’s message to the Middle East will be, “Despite reports to the contrary and false narratives surrounding the Syria decision, we are not going anywhere. The secretary will reinforce that commitment to the region and our partners.”
Calling the US president’s actual words on Syria “false narratives”? How is this not insubordination?
Will President Trump stand by and watch this coup taking place under his nose? Does he realize how his credibility suffers when he boldly announces a US withdrawal and the does a U-turn days later? Has he noticed recent polls showing that the majority of the American people agree with him? Why is he so intimidated by the neocons?
revolting Bolton and plumpeo along with all the other neo cohens should be water boarded 10 times a day in a septic tank until they die of old age
I dunno, threats to his life, the life of his family, or blackmail*? I know Dr. Paul is no naive spring chicken, so is this a hypothetical question?
That’s still another great column by this great Libertarian/Constitutionalist. Thank you, Ron Paul.
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* It seemed to me when Mr. Trump was a candidate that his lifestyle and status as a known playboy gave him immunity to blackmail, just about, but a) maybe there are a few things that’d really bother him for people to know and b) members of his family could be blackmailed.
I recommend giving it a minute. What it looks like now is not what it may turn out to be. I think there’s a great deal more finese going on here than Paul can see.
Yeah, like his promise to end DACA on day one, or his promise to write that EO to end birthright citizenship, or his folding on the budget until Coulter and Limbaugh shamed him into keeping his word. Trump is still playing infinity dimensional chess that only a few can see it.
Trump gets more pathetic every day.
Trump said ISIS has been defeated but now neocon, inc. in the form of Bolton and Pompeo say they are not yet defeated and Trump has yet to correct or rebuke them. So it appears tough guy Trump really isn’t in charge or refuses to invoke his authority as president.
Now flip flopper Trump is saying that we are withdrawing but that there’s no timeline which means we’ll never leave and find some pretext for staying forever since that’s what Israel wants and to go against Israel is to go against gawd himself.
The crux of the matter is that United States has absolutely no Constitutional or legal authority to place military assets inside Syria. We’re not at war with Syria, they haven’t threatened us nor have we been invited by Bashar Assad who represents the legitimate head of state. We’re there cuz Israel.
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that by the time the 2020 election rolls around we’ll have no wall (at least not a 40ft high concrete wall that he promised us) and still be in Syria and Afghanistan. He’ll feed us some bullshit excuses and the MAGAtards will swallow it whole. After four years of Trump all America got was a tax cut which created a few more mcjobs.
Right of center Americans really have no reason to vote anymore. At least the Democrats work hard to deliver for their rabid base while the Republicans virtue signal to the left and deliver for AIPAC and Goldman Sachs.
I hate to say it, but I gotta agree with that assessment.
I have no faith in the resolve of the man.
He folds like a house of cards at every turn.
I am sick of putting my trust in the fool.
Disappointing – BUT – don’t forget that he saved us from the horror of a Hillary presidency.
AGREED!
And the only thing that may save his Presidency is that Ginsberg is barely holding on in 2020 and Trump will pick another SC justice if he is reelected.
I think it was on like day three or four that he started tweeting about how DACA illegals deserved a path to citizenship and calling them “beautiful children”. A week before the election he was vowing to end DACA and deport them.
Just like be vowed to end birthright citizenship before the midterms but has done nothing about it since. You can’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth unless it’s a promise to Israel in which case there’s no 4D chess and beating around the bush.
Dr. Paul again blames neocons for the Deep State – ridiculous! The Deep State is 98% neolib.
Dr. Paul refuses to name the neolib – why? – Not a rhetorical question.
Right of center Americans really have no reason to vote anymore. At least the Democrats work hard to deliver for their rabid base while the Republicans virtue signal to the left and deliver for AIPAC and Goldman Sachs.
I wish this were refutable.
Fake news, man. We’re supposed to believe that they removed two malignant, cancerous growths but sill left her head intact.
try to imagine the kind of world we would have with Hillary as potus.
No more Second Amendment, with all that would mean.
just consider one of the people she was widely touted to appoint to scotus; Sen. Cory Booker, and that pretty much says it all.
If we’re understandably miffed at Trump’s waffling over Syria, please just consider what Hillary would have meant! She would have immediately declared that the ZUS’s position in Syria is that ‘Assad has to go’, followed with a declared ‘no fly zone’ for Syria’s Air Force in Syria.
Please consider what exactly the massive, perhaps nuclear bullet we all dodged by repudiating that vicious bitch.
Here was a story written during the campaign, and just look at how much things have changed.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syria-no-fly-zone_us_57f29ecee4b082aad9bc832b
is there any doubt whatsoever that Hillary would have been a super-war hawk?
With not just the media and all the Democrats all gushing over her greatness for turning the Middle East into a giant Fallujah, but most of the Republicans would have also hailed her as a master stateswoman.
Imagine a ‘drunk on power’ Hillary confronting Putin and demanding his vassalage.
As bad as Trump is, there’s just no way on earth that he could be as bad as Hillary would have been.
Just imagine that acid-shrill psychopathic bitch hectoring us every time you looked at a screen at a sports bar or airport.
Yes, Trump is a huge disappointment in many ways, but so too has he given us much already, and not just on the scotus, but just seeing all these deepstate treasonous rats like Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe and Comey and Brennan – all twisting in their bile.. is a sublime gift to American patriots and all decent people of good will.
Look at how Maxine Waters is unhinged! And imagine her in ecstatic cahoots with potus Hillary to ‘fix all the things wrong with American and the world’.
whew, but did we ever dodge a bullet.
True. She was very firm – unprompted, on multiple occasions – about establishing a no-fly zone over Syria at the time when virtually no sane person (even among her voters) in the US wanted it.
Why is this important?
It’s very likely that everyone on the planet – and their dog – would have been dead by now if Cankles ended up as a winner. She was promising a guaranteed WW3 scenario to a small subset of messianic Jew paymasters.
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Now that’s a very late start, so to speak.
I agree but that doesn’t mean I am not disappointed in his fecklessness.
As long as they dress her corpse every day and keep things going ala “Weekend at Bernies”, there is nothing we can do.
You have described, in a very sober and lucid way, the reality of the American power structure.
The question that begs an answer is this: if a president elected by the American public with a clear mandate to roll back the American, very expensive and destructive military worldwide deployment, is hardly able to have his way in marginally significant Syria, then short of a very costly disaster, who can?
May be that is why I have read and heard American stories about the White Hats who are plotting to take on the savagely entrenched establishment; this idea seems to me an indulgence in wishful thinking by people engaging in dreams in fantasy land.
Let us hope that the insurrection of the Gilets Jaunes in France will snowball to the point that it will inspire the American public to clamor for peace, and turn on the out of control MIC.
As for your description of that sick and sychopatic hag Killary, let us highlight that her thesis was about Saul Alinsky, a man who has blithely declared his preference to the company of Satan than that of God.
Hard-headed realism is the first step towards understanding the limitations of the US presidency and the failings of the American so called democracy, but the second step is moral courage by the people to dare and stare the fiend in the eye without blinking, which is what it takes to start redressing the fascist state of the American power structure, that mixture of state and corporate power as defined by Mussolini who by comparison is a benign dictator since he subordinated the corporate sector to the interest of the public.
If Trump reneges on this – and US troops are still in Syria in 6 months’ time – then he will have folded. Supporters can expect nothing from the man. They must look elsewhere at the next Presidential election. Syria is a make or break decision. Simple as that.
Session at Ruth’s will be reviewed soon by Steve Sailer.
That sounds like s a software-hacker thing. I wouldn’t dismiss people in a real movement like that readily either. That’s the world today. Messing with the software can cause more havok nowadays than “a thousand people in the streets … some singing songs, some carrying signs … mostly saying ‘hooray for our side’”.
There’s battle lines being drawn … (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,)
I meant to add, good comment, Joe (along with Rurik)!
Hard-headed realism is the first step towards understanding the limitations of the US presidency
The President has more power than he realizes BECAUSE the Congress is a bunch of pansies. Do you think if Trump declared an emergency and built the wall, the useless Congress would actually do anything? Sure some leftist judge would order that the work be stopped. If Trump ignored him and went ahead what would happen? They would have to impeach Trump for doing something the people wanted.
Instead he keeps begging them to do what he wants. If you are a leader, lead. If the American people support it, nobody in government is going to stop you. It would also end the government shutdown – Trump wins twice.
“They must look elsewhere at the next Presidential election.”
Why? Haven’t these elections been pretty much exposed as frauds at this point? They are engineered so that no matter who you vote for nothing ever changes. Maybe we need a new system.
Trump is a member of the Deep State.
On issues that matter Trump and Hillary are members of the Deep State. How does anyone know what Hillary would do with the issues being touted here? It’s a a charade to get the gullible to perceive a difference.
Candidate Donald Trump CAMPAIGNED on no published timetables.
Enemies & adversaries strategize around our timetables.
There is a long line of living ‘Organ-Donors’ who are offering vital body parts to RBG.
They are COMMITTED to Planned Parenthood Eugenics.
To the death.
Bolton, Pompeo and Mattis nullified Trump’s agreement with Kim as well as his orders to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan. And these are not the first open mutinies by the Deep State/Cabal.
I remember that during the Kosovo intervention a reluctant Pentagon slow-walked Clinton’s orders to provide transport to the Europeans, delaying their intervention by several weeks.
And more recently, the Pentagon publicly repudiated a deconfliction agreement negotiated by Obama and Putin. That led to Lavrov’s famous comment that the US was incapable of negotiating.
Seeing how easily the Deep State/Cabal override Presidential decisions, it is easy to believe that American Presidents are in the same class as the presidents of European parliamentary governments.
And one wonders when was the last time that an American President controlled either the Department of Defense, the State Department or the CIA. Was it Eisenhower? How much control did Kennedy have? Did the Pentagon and CIA impose the Vietnam War on Johnson? Did the Pentagon or CIA or FBI kill John Kennedy for disobedience? Or RFK? Or MLK? I no longer believe the official stories.
2020?? You think the tribe can keep her alive until then? F*k I want her gone NOW!
Good post.
Well ‘Slurpy Dog’ Mattis is gone.
Hopefully Bolton is there only to keep the NEOCON beast at bay and Trump easily overrides him…but of course you never know i.e., his shameful visit to Israhell.
Pompeo is a more difficult ‘nut’ to crack. He’s been intrenched in Trumps administration for two years now. First as CIA director and now as Sec. of State. He is a ‘meat head’ Zionist stooge but Trump keeps lavishing him with praise.
There is only so much abuse a body can take, especially when you are old. I doubt she has the strength for another major surgery. My Dad has already been told that.
The last 3 presidential elections have certainly seen, pick the lesser of two evils. And we have been “lucky” so far that way, as McCain, Romney, and H Clinton would have started WW III. Trump may not be getting much done because of neocons blocking his foreign policy and obstructionist federal democrat judges blocking all his executive actions on immigration, plus the Mueller(disenfranchise white people ) Circus, and all three of these are what are halting Trump’s platform and making him look ineffectual, but he was a far better pick than Hillary, and this will hold true next election as well. The Democrats have a bunch of bad and weak picks. You would want any of them president , with their finger near the button and their irrational desire to go to war with Russia and Iran ?. Of course the same can be said for their Republican other halves. Trump though is really an outsider to both parties, and he is no lawyer, and he does not want to go to war with Russia. If he gets nothing done but prevent WWIII, this term and next term , is about the best we can hope for.
The bigger question to me is,”Will Trump want to run again?”. Sure now he has become president , no need to do it again. And considering the drain on anyone when they are president, and Trump’s age , and basically time left to live, he very well might want live less “taxing” , then what do we do? And who get elected after Trump is gone? Half the republican party hate all the Big IZ neocon focus, and won’t vote for a neocon , which explains the last three elections. Give the “sellout” repubs they will run a neocon stooge and the Democrats will get a Hispanic in. Funny to say , without Trump in an election that Cortez chick has a good chance.(sort of an Obama clone but Hispanic and also a woman), several plus factors and factions in her favor atm and of it continues. . I don’t know, will see. I expected an Hispanic president nominee the last time if not for Trump “showing up” with a breath of fresh white air.
Trump needs to pull out of Syria now for no other reason than it would show the rest of the country that we pulled out and the world did not end as the MSM told them it would. The Dems won’t be able to run on the US fighting Israel’s wars and Trump would pull a lot of Dems sick of the party reflexively supporting war because Trump is President.
I just hope that a LOT of Democrats are willingly carved up, as she dies.
Kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
Thanks Joe (and Achmed E.),
Well Joe, perhaps not un-ironically, we’re on an article thread written by the very man who tried heroically during his tenure at congress to accomplish that very thing; by reining in the Fiend ((Global Central Banking)) whose minions are known as the deepstate, and whose machinations include both world wars, 9/11 and all the subsequent wars.
Dr. Ron Paul.
Because if somehow we’re ever able to return the ZUSA back into the USA- by ending the Fed, and printing sound money, then that is the one and only way the world’s people will ever stop the looming menace of Eternal Wars for Israel, and the neo-liberal spiritual rot debilitating the moribund Western world- as America squanders every last drop of its blood and treasure in slavish fealty to all things zio.
It’s like this scene from a movie, where the leadership of the West is completely under the thrall of a fiend.
and the only cure is sound money – the very thing Ron Paul spent his career advocating.
It is our (Western civilization and its people’s) one and only hope.