Why Is Turkey Still a NATO Member?

"The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea."

"From the first day I entered the political arena, I made it clear that I did not want to fight these endless, senseless wars -- especially those that don't benefit the United States ... We expect Turkey to abide by all of its commitments, and we continue to monitor the situation closely."

"I told Turkey if they do anything outside of what we think is humane ... they could suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy."

U.S. President Donald J.Trump

 

"We will clash against the Turks to not allow them to cross the border. We will use all our possibilities against Turkish aggression."

"[The SDF had turned back the ground incursion near the border town of Til Abyad.] No advance as of now."

"[ISIS] 'sleeper cells' [attacked Kurdish positions in Raqqa, Syria, in the early hours]." 

Mustafa Bali, spokesman, Syrian Democratic Forces 

A photo taken from Turkey's Sanliurfa province shows smoke rising at the site of Ras al-Ain

"[The border areas of northeast Syria] are on the edge of a possible humanitarian catastrophe." 

"[We call upon the international community and those countries fighting against ISIS] to carry out their responsibilities [to avoid a] possible impending humanitarian disaster."

Syrian Democratic Forces,  General Command

 

 "[The country had\s] completed our preparations and action plan." 

"[We are ready to launch a] ground and air operation [east of the Euphrates river, with the goal of establishing] peace [by clearing the region of] terrorists."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

Turkish army soldiers drive towards the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019

"Turkey is one of the countries most affected by DAESH's bloody activities and has fought against this terrorist organization both domestically and beyond its borders with increasing tempo and intensity", the blatantly disingenuous statement by the Turkish Defence Ministry, when it was clear years ago that Islamic State principals had safe haven in Turkey, and used the country as a black market conduit for the crude oil shipments it extracted from the oil installations it commandeered in Iraq and Syria.

 

Turkey's Minister of National Defense, Hulusi Akar, tweeted that the United States, United Nations and NATO, among others, had been informed of its intended offensive operation in northeast Syria at 7 a.m. ET. The response from the United Nations and NATO is absolutely deafening. No ostensible objections whatever. It appears that Syria's mass murdering tyrant Bashar al-Assad was right when he warned in the early stages of the Syrian civil war that disrupting Syria would have far-reaching, profound effects across the Middle East and beyond.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's long-wished-for 'safe corridor' between Syria and Turkey (on the Syrian side) where his intention has always been to forcefully move the Kurdish presence away from the border where the YPG and the PKK have been too comfortable in their shared antagonism against Turkey and its response to their push for a greater Kurdistan to be established on its own heritage territory absorbed within the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey all of which refuse to surrender to the 40 million Kurds what is long overdue.

A tank trundles down from a truck as Turkish armed forces approach the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019.BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)

The perpetually bad-natured, demanding, tyrannical Erdogan has appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump's vanity in pressing him to make a decision he has demanded to yank the Kurdish presence in Syria further from the Turkish border. Resisted halfheartedly to this point, though Trump has always intended to withdraw the U.S. presence from the area. One angrily demanding telephone conversation on Sunday succeeded in convincing Trump that the Kurds were no longer worth defending, despite the U.S. dependence on the Kurdish valiant fighting spirit to challenge and defeat the Islamic State.

Now, the tens of thousands of ISIL terrorists held by the SDF are in danger of breaking free from prison camps no longer as closely guarded by Kurdish soldiers, hurriedly dispatched as a suddenly-imposed priority to the scenes of Turkish attack, in defence of Kurdish towns and villages in direct danger of aerial bombardment and Howitzer attacks by the second largest military in NATO, and one of the best equipped, prepared to shed as much Kurdish blood as it will take to cleanse the border area of their presence under guise of fighting "terrorists".

Negotiating With An Atrocity-Loving Barbarian Brigade

"In the last ten days we've killed over one thousand Taliban."
"If you're the Taliban, conditions have been worsening -- and they're about to get worse."
"No one should underestimate President Trump's commitment to achieving those military goals [he's set out to accomplish]."
U.S.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

"[The move to walk away from 'peace' talks with the Taliban] will harm America more than anyone else."
"It will damage its reputation, unmask its anti-peace policy to the world even more, increase its loss of life and treasure, and present its political interactions as erratic."
Taliban response

What!? The Trump administration erratic? That statement of actual fact may represent the sole true statement ever uttered by a Taliban spokesperson. The greater reality is that the vicious Islamist entity that is the jihadist fundamentalist Taliban never entertained an iota of an intention to bargain for peace. Their bargain was to persuade the United States that its instinct expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump to evacuate American troops from Afghanistan is a safe and sane aspiration intended to end 18 years of struggle to help Afghanistan become a stable, functioning state capable of fending off the Taliban.

Donald Trump's off-again, on-again, vacillating and uncertain determination of the route to take was led by a seasoned warrior against extremism in his role as national security adviser, steering Trump away from trusting the Taliban. John Bolton held no illusions about the Taliban, just as he knows with intimate certainty the true measure of Islamist duplicity, hatred, threats and violence and that the way to counter that threat is to break its lethal hold on conscripting new recruits into the ideology of death deliverance.

That President Trump called off the negotiations with the Taliban, citing their continued and ongoing  and latest bombing attacks against civilian targets (and just incidentally killing an American solider) to spread fear and intimidation to aid their ambitions of conquest, would have been due to John Bolton's urging. It has been this man who has expressed unease and rejection of his president's conciliatory attitude toward formidable enemy forces of brutal ideological-religious campaigns for supremacy.

An Army carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of Sgt. 1st Class Elis Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Morovis, Puerto Rico, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. According to the Department of Defense, Ortiz was killed in action Sept. 5, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Kabul, Afghanistan. Ortiz was supporting Operation Freedom's Sentinel. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The Taliban's immediate goal was to have NATO and American troops withdrawn to give them a clear field of operation, without the presence of a military competent enough to restrain their intentions of once again installing themselves through violent militant action to regain control of the country. The Taliban insistence that it would negotiate with the U.S. emissary Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, and not the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks to its commitment.

American envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the lead negotiator in Doha with the Taliban, had already announced the finalized deal "in principle", which would lead to American troops being withdrawn. It was at that juncture that the president invited the Taliban and the Afghan government to attend a meeting at Camp David, hoping to seal the deal and produce a triumphant announcement, somewhat like, one might assume, producing a photograph similar to that of then-president Clinton, standing by with an avuncular smile as then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO's Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands. Resolving precisely nothing.

Resolute Support (RS) forces guard at the site of a car bomb explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. The Afghan government says at least 10 civilians are dead and another 42 wounded after a Taliban suicide car bombing rocked the Afghan capital near a neighborhood housing the U.S. Embassy and the NATO Resolute Support mission. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

"It's Been (very, very) Condemned."

"You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. No one wants to say that, but I'll say it right now: You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent."
"There was no way of making a correct statement that early [when he chose to denounce violence 'on both sides']. I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters."
"You can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I call it the fastest outcome to a great verdict . . . You get into legal semantics."
"The driver of the car was a murderer. What he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing."
"You had people in that group who were protesting the taking down of what to them is a very, very important statue."
"What about the alt-left that came charging at the alt-right -- do they have any semblance of guilt? "They came charging, clubs in hand, swinging clubs."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

President Donald Trump pauses while speaking about Charlottesville. Picture: APSource:AP

"President Trump, please, for God's sakes, don't feel like you've got to say these things. It's not going to do you any good."
"Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa."
David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader

People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Picture: APSource:AP

In Durham, North Carolina, 'protesters', unwilling to await a legal permit, as President Trump reminded journalists the alt-left counter-protesting in Charlottesville over the violent weekend of the hard right coming together to protest a move to remove a commemorative statue to Civil War-era Confederate General Robert E. Lee also failed to secure the requisite permit, toppled a monument that had been erected to honour Confederate veterans.

And another monument commemorating Confederate veterans was taken down in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. These illegal and clearly anti-historical acts of reversing remembrance as though to expunge from history transformational events in the United States that led the way toward abolishing the brutal miseries of Black slavery are on tap to appease the righteous and those given to clasping their victimhood in vengeance-seeking when what they do has no effect whatever.

It is a strange thing about human nature when selective blame and anger motivates people who should make an effort to study their own history. Arab Muslim slave traders initiated the slave trade and drove it for the immense profits to be made. Black Africans were transported in huge numbers with no regard to the tragedy of those who died in the process, to the Middle East, to serve as slaves. Europeans were quick to adapt to this new and useful tool in advancing their economies through slave labour.

Before emancipation, many freed Blacks for whom manumission or the ability to buy their own freedom gave the opportunity to advance their own fortunes took themselves to buying their own black slaves, working them just as Europeans had done and Arab Muslims before them. Raiding parties of Arabs to empty African villages of their populations strove to satisfy the demands of a slave-hungry economy based on the labour of Blacks who lived and died to satisfy white dominance and avarice.

The unbelievable ascension of an ignorant, egocentric lout to the presidency of the United States, one who made no effort to disassociate himself from from the underbelly of racist America gave the signal for the bigoted, racist element in society to emerge from the dark spaces they normally occupy into the light of day after the constraints of living under the administration of the nation's first biracial president who represented the affairs of the nation, and of all its people.

Statue of Robert E. Lee, Confederate Civil War General, at Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.   Source:Getty Images

In Baltimore, Maryland Confederate monuments were removed in the dead of night to be hauled off on waiting trucks. Crews began the removal process quietly to complete the extirpation from public view of four Confederate monuments, a decision reached extemporaneously by the city's mayor with no consultation with the public. "It was important that we move quickly and quietly, and that's what we did, as soon as I realized they were easy to move", stated Mayor Catherine Pugh.

The presence of a man whose intelligence was arrested during that phase when as a juvenile he was delinquent in attaining a decent education, resulting in his presence as an elder who enjoys bragging about his people skills and grasp of business matters while mocking those who fail to fully appreciate his acumen and leadership capability even as he makes one misstep after another on the national and international scene, alarming the party he represents and alienating the bulk of the American population, has unleashed the sinister and full-blown pride of racism in America.

Ku Klux Klan protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

Basking In Success

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President-elect.

On that intelligence report, the second part of their conclusion was that Vladimir Putin ordered it because he aspired to help you in the election.

Do you accept that part of the finding? And will you undo what President Obama did to punish the Russians for this or will you keep it in place?

TRUMP: Well, if — if Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability, because we have a horrible relationship with Russia. Russia can help us fight ISIS, which, by the way, is, number one, tricky. I mean if you look, this administration created ISIS by leaving at the wrong time. The void was created, ISIS was formed.

If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability.

Now, I don’t know that I’m gonna get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there’s a good chance I won’t. And if I don’t, do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me? Does anybody in this room really believe that? Give me a break.

OK?

January 11, 2017

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were hopeful they could reset relations between the countries. (Joshua Roberts/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via Reuters)

"I want to thank him because we're trying to cut down our payroll, and as far as I'm concerned I'm very thankful that he let go a large number of people [755 American diplomats out of a total of one thousand to be expelled from Russia in retaliation for the latest sanctions that Trump reluctantly signed off on, as a result of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election] because now we have a smaller payroll."

"There's no real reason for them to go back. I greatly appreciate the fact that we've been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We're going to save a lot of money."

Droll statement by U.S. President Donald Trump

In the tradition of the best laid plans of mice and men this one took no time heading astray. That is, if we are to take at face value -- and we should -- that skulduggery in cyber espionage was launched by Moscow to interfere with the outcome of the American presidential election, with a view to manoeuvring the electorate somehow to reject the Democratic candidate through releasing damaging data and emails that would further demolish Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency. With the idea on the part of Vladimir Putin that Donald Trump would be even more malleable than his predecessor.

Unfortunately the too-clever Vladimir Putin's clumsy calling cards made it all-too-evident that he was inextricably linked to the intrigue that may have had a hand in delivering the White House to the Republicans to place the presidency in the hands of a man who had expressed a rather friendly attitude to Russia and Putin in particular. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin is a master manipulator. He is also a man who rabidly reacts to anyone standing in the way of his achieving any of his goals.

It's not quite possible to ask the opinion of those challengers who piqued Mr. Putin's anger by their inconvenient and outrageous protests against Putin's increasingly autocratic measures and his success in persuading ordinary Russians that he is a strongman they fervently wished to maintain in power forevermore, simply because they all, politicians, former colleagues, journalists, met untimely and most unfortunate deaths. The message is clear; to cross Vladimir Putin is to foolishly sign one's own death warrant. 

And moving to another country for haven and security is no guarantee of safety since distance hardly acts as an impediment to assassination whether by stealth betraying foolish trust, as with polonium poisoning or by being shot a point-blank range, in the back of the head, a stone's throw distance from the Kremlin on a dark and beautiful summer evening.

The stakes were high; the potential for 'restoring' U.S.-Russian relations which had deteriorated so badly as a result of naive misunderstanding on the part of the United States. Russia's affairs in Georgia and Ukraine, in Eastern Europe altogether and in Syria are Russia's affairs alone. That the U.S. led an effective sanctions campaign resulting from the annexation of Crimea and the incitement of ethnic Russian Ukrainians to own eastern Ukraine represented an error in judgement, which Putin felt could be turned around through chummy relations with a man after his own dark heart.

Unfortunately, Mr. Putin's own clumsy manoeuvring left too many clues readily decipherable by American investigators and now those are aspirations that moulder in the shadows of unrequited overtures to heal wounded relations. Both houses of Congress overwhelmed the possibility of a presidential veto when with 522 votes cast for sanctions against Russia to be enhanced, only five votes registered as opposed.  And nor is the crisis in the White House over the Russia file eased with the impanelling of a grand jury.

Vladimir Putin, that crafty, morally challenged, full-on-corrupt czar simply outwitted himself. Managing through his imagined window of opportunity to somewhat permanently deep-chill a relationship that was on the brink of sliding over a cliff at the outset.

The Russian president rides a motorbike with The Night Wolves biker gang Getty

Twisting Knots for Profit

"In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I've often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net."
"Now I'm letting my guard down."
Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Now free from the constraints of running [?sic], Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules."
"In these pages [forthcoming book, 'What Happened'], she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterwards."
Simon & Schuster publishing bumph

"Hillary Rodham Clinton has written a new book. Except maybe she hasn’t. It all depends on what the definition of 'written' is."
"The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state had some help on her new memoir, 'Hard Choices.' Clinton employed a phalanx of aides and associates in producing the volume, which is being released Tuesday."
"But don’t expect to hear much about Clinton’s 'book team', as she calls those who helped her write the book, which carries her name alone on its cover."
"Clinton’s acknowledgment of her three-man team — Dan Schwerin, a former Senate and State Department aide to Clinton; Ethan Gelber, another State Department aide; and Ted Widmer, a Clinton adviser and Brown University historian — appears in just a few sentences on Page 597 of the 635-page book. Their exact contributions, however, aren’t spelled out."
"Such is the lot of the ghostwriter."
Paul Farhi, The Washington Post, June 9, 2014

HiIlary Rodham Clinton listens before signing a copy of her book, "Hard Choices" at Barnes and Noble bookstore in New York. (Bebeto Matthews/AP)

On Thursday the announcement of this latest work of fiction from Hillary Clinton was made public.
Instant sensation. The title of her new book leaped forward from its position number 3,350 to 17 on Amazon.com. It is now the 'must-have' tell-all of the month, presumably. Ever hopeful, people who plan to read the exculpatory tome written by someone, certainly not Hillary Clinton, though viewed through her personal lens, will be treated to a version of events that put this woman in high dudgeon until she managed to recover, consoling herself with the assurance that it wasn't her fault.

That Ms. Clinton, the infamously famous woman who imagined herself entitled through a long apprenticeship to sit in the White House, not as a 'first lady' but a First Lady, wrote yet another book is a risible absurdity, and an insult to those who actually labour at the task of writing books. Her name is always front and center as the author of the books in her name, while sometimes the actual name of the person who wrote the book, like the writer of 'It Takes a Village', Barbara Feinman Todd, Georgetown University lecturer and writer who spent 7 months writing it, went unnamed.

These incidental oversights appear to be endemic to Hillary Clinton. She has a casual approach to so many vitally important nods to responsibility and honest revelations, with a penchant toward portraying herself as misunderstood and under-appreciated. Clearly she was misunderstood when she spoke of the type of wretched American voters to whom Trump appealed as presidential material. Just as she was massively under-appreciated when so many of the U.S. voting public felt her past performance revealed too much about her personal style that was unappealing to them as presidential potential.

And perhaps it somewhat stuck in the craw of the ordinary American who struggles to make ends meet living in a society that favours the enterprising and the wealthy -- a nation that prides itself on its exceptionality as a democratic republic that views all its citizens with equanimity in an equal light of opportunity, however disadvantaged a large demographic is when seeking health care, unable to afford what they need to remain healthy and able to maintain employment -- that this woman never missed an opportunity to enrich herself.

And good gracious, here she is, doing it again. Letting her guard down in a mission to explain her lapses in judgement, not those lapses that painted her as unlikely presidential material, but those in failing to understand and connect to the needs of those not as privileged as she. To whom her adversary did appeal and connect with, an issue that in the larger scheme of things, made all the difference. Her defeat at the polls, a 'stunning blow' to someone who expected to breeze into the Oval Office was definitely not her fault. Cue the Russian card. And then-FBI director James Comey; both scuppered her, undeniably.

She talked a good line in excusing herself, from her email server to her State Department response on Benghazi, and her embroideries about being under fire in a field of combat. The field of combat that really mattered to her might have seen a lot of people souring when word of her use of State Department contacts to embellish the charitable enterprise of her husband certainly did her no good. She has a certain way of evincing indignation at suspicions of her self-interested motivation; there we go again, misunderstood.

A flawed candidate in capital letters. In capital letters though she would not have enhanced the status of president while basking in the euphoria of representing the first American woman to hold that position, surely her win at the polls that fateful election day would have been preferable to the election of that uncouth, ignorant, vengeful, egotistical habitual liar whose lack of knowledge and certainty of his personal wisdom is destroying whatever is left of the dignity of political office in Washington.

Bring Us Your Tired, Your Ill, Your Poor And Disadvantaged...

"I just wish I could get President Trump to come and see this. The people here are Mr. Trump's constituency, they're his voters, and it drives me up the wall."
"If he saw what was happening I'm sure he'd do something about it. Unfortunately ... I don't tweet."
"This organization was designed to parachute into the most God-awful places. I expected to see stuff like this in South Sudan and Haiti, but it's right here in the United States of America."
Stan Brock, 80, British philanthropist, founder, Remote Area Medical charity

"I love Trump. ObamaCare don't pay for false teeth and glasses and I blame the Democrats."
"I'm diabetic and I can't hardly see you. I need glasses but I ain't got $400 to pay for them. I know Trump will get it done for us."
Margaret Harris, 54, Wise, Virginia

"That's not Trump, [responsible that he has no insurance] it's the people in Congress. I know he's trying to help us and I'm still with him."
"We need to vote out the people in Congress who aren't helping him."
Robert Hicks, 75, former truck driver

"People are dropping out of that Obama Care. I believe if Congress would get together with Mr. Trump we would all be a lot better off."
"Repeal it and replace it with something better. Good luck to him."
Lois Black, 91, Trump supporter

Photo: Stephanie Klein-Davis, The Roanoke Times: People lined up to enter The Remote Area Medical Clinic before the sun comes up on Friday, at the Wise County Fairgrounds

"[The Senate repeal bill would be] absolutely devastating [something Trump's supporters should realize]."
"Take any president's name out of this and ask people, whoever they voted for, about massive cuts to Medicaid."
"That's taking care away from kids, folks with disabilities, parents and grandparents in nursing homes."
Tim Kaine, Virginia senator, (Clinton presidential election running mate)

Photo: Earl Neikirk, BHC - A patient gets her eyes checked at the Remote Area Medical Clinic at Wise County Fairgrounds

Senator Kaine was present as a volunteer at the county fairground in Wise, Virginia, where the British-based charity Remote Area Medical, was holding a medical workshop for the weekend, offering basic medical treatment to area residents unable to receive the medical attention they required through conventional means by attending a local hospital.

With rotting teeth, high blood pressure, some people on crutches or using oxygen tanks limped along as the morning greeted the departing night's darkness. Many had camped overnight in a field. Many other had slept in their cars, anxious to be seen, hoping to be first in line for medical attention. Staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists, thousands of people were treated inside a barn at the massive free health-care event.

Within the barn, animal stalls had been transformed into makeshift medical facilities where teams of optometrists tested for glaucoma. Mammograms and skin examinations were carried out in trucks.

Though the hugely imperfect ObamaCare limped into law through a prolonged struggle, enabling 20 million Americans to obtain health insurance, it became a popular issue during the 2016 presidential campaign where Republicans, characterizing it as an unworkable system based on an expensive overreach by government, supported their candidate's promise to repeal it.

The irony is that the very people who are most in need of the benefits of universal health care coverage from the state are the very demographic that gave their unconditional support to the election of Donald Trump the president who vowed to swiftly oversee the dismantling of President Obama's derided and despised legacy project.

In a wealthy country which has distinguished itself by being alone among the world's advanced economies lacking a public, universal health-care system covering its population's needs.

An investigative reporter for the Daily Telegraph interviewing a handful of Trump voters who were seeking out health care at the fairground found that each and every one remained loyal to the very man who plans to destroy the system that allows them a bare vestige of coverage. Each said that in their opinion ObamaCare should be repealed and that having been done, President Trump would install a much-improved system to benefit them all.

There were those who, under ObamaCare had indeed gained health insurance coverage, yet were incapable of paying for the rising cost of their monthly premiums. All, without exception, were convinced that President Trump meant to improve matters on their behalf, and that he was hampered by a retrograde Congress that cared nothing for their welfare.

Buddy Howington saw his ObamaCare premiums rise to an annual $2,500, while he earned $7.25 hourly at a local supermarket. He abandoned coverage "Then they fined me $300 for not paying. I couldn't afford to pay for ObamaCare so they fine me. Makes no sense. I don't know what's going on in Washington, but I think Trump will help eventually", the 48-year-old there to have his teeth extracted, said trustingly.

Photo: Stephanie Klein-Davis, The Roanoke Times ... Dental vision and medical care was offered free by volunteer health professionals at the Remote Area Medical event at Wise County Fairgrounds

Asserting Trump Control

"MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change."
"[Most of other 28 NATO member states fail to pay their fair share of defence; [not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

Stills from video with Trump elbowing Montenegrin president aside: I'm in charge here!

Is it because he cannot believe he actually persuaded enough American voters that he has what it takes to make America great again, to vote him into office, that President Trump throws his considerable weight around, in the process reassuring himself, while alternately infuriating, amusing and alienating other world leaders by his abrupt, uninformed, arrogant and insulting manner? Or could it even be remotely possible that this man thinks of himself as not only the first but the only authority among world leaders?

"The time when we could completely count on others is a little bit in the past. That is what I have experienced in the past few days. That is why I say that we Europeans must really take our own fate into our own hands ..."
"We have to know that we must fight for our own future and destiny together as Europeans."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel

"[That interminable grip of a handshake] was not innocent. We don't make little concessions, even symbolic ones."
French President Emmanuel Macron

"The future of Europe is perhaps in our hands. [Europeans must] speak more forcefully than in the past."
"[But] that does not mean that we forget the importance of our transatlantic relationship. The United States remains an important ally but that does not mean that we renounce certain principles about which Italy is very clear."
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni

"Leaders who think we can hide from these changes [climate change, trade, refugees] or turn back the clock are wrong. It is our responsibility to harness these changes and make them work for people."
"[Yes, the stakes are high and] yes, the United States was an important part of the discussion..."
"We have to recognize that on matters of values and the desire to give our citizens the same opportunities, we share the same values as the United States."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

So a united G7 and NATO have become somewhat insecure and a trifle disunited of late. The United States has long been the essential glue that kept the disparate parts together in a common contract, based on similar values and aspirations. During the eight years that former President Barack Obama occupied the leaders' throne thee was a gap in the role and a little insecurity crept in now and again but goodwill remained constant and so did a self-assuring future that the compact was secure.

Now, the gruff and crude entrance of a man whose instincts are firmly lodged on his imagined personal magnetism that brooks no dissent when his abrasive rejection of all that the aggregate in the alliances rely upon to maintain integrity of purpose and trust has been destabilized leaving the others gasping for the oxygen of a leadership assurance that has been summarily kicked out of alignment. The parameters have been re-aligned and any who disagree will be shoved aside.

The issues of immigration, inter-faith relations, free trade versus protectionism, defence spending and the Paris Agreement on climate change have been yanked out of their common agreement and they lie in disarray, twitching in an agony of uncertainty. Just as Trump's first instinct was to deny American interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving it dead in the water, the G7 are now wondering whether their alliance has been permanently pulled asunder.

As for NATO, the musketeer approach of "one for all and all for one" appears to be in jeopardy. The nation that always represented itself as the foremost among almost-equals appears no longer to be prepared to act as the big brother whom all the little brothers call upon to face up to the schoolyard bully. NATO's ultimate principle of self-defence lies in an agonizing funk of leaderlessness.

At least one thing has been resolved; the nervousness and trepidation with which other G7 leaders viewed the entrance of the new president has been resolved; he is every bit as churlishly ignorant in his state of arrogance as they feared.

President Trump at the NATO summit with world leaders in Brussels on Thursday. Credit Matt Dunham/Associated Press

Trump and the Arab Peace Initiative

"Despite their frustration with Israeli behaviour regarding the Palestinians, the Gulf states recognize that Israel is a strong, advanced country with a military that could act against their common foes and that has intelligence capabilities that could mesh very well with the needs and capabilities of Gulf agencies."
Jason Isaacson, associate executive director, American Jewish Committee

"This younger generation [of Gulf State leaders] sees Israel much more in terms of practical alliances."
"So suddenly Israel is not seen in that one-dimensional term of being the occupier of Palestinian land, but rather as a potential partner against the greater evil, if you will, which is Iran."
Stephen A. Seche, executive vice-president, Arab Gulf States Institute, Washington

Suddenly -- as sudden as the change in administration of the United States of America -- Saudi Arabia is happily basking in the limelight of American trust and friendship again. In gratitude to the man who swiftly reversed the collapse of U.S. support and allegiance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during President Obama's eight years in the White House, on impossibly short notice, the House of Saud pulled out all the stops to demonstrate their blissful satisfaction, welcoming U.S. President Donald Trump as though he were the mountain moving to Mohammad.

President Trump, it seems, feels that the Arab Peace Initiative which the Kingdom had devised as a prod to solve the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, signed by the 22 members of the Arab League in 2002 seems the likeliest solution to settling disagreements, leading to a peace agreement and a two-state solution. This is a warmed-up, cooled-down, re-warmed and rejected 'plan for peace'. Calling on Israel to withdraw to 1967 lines before it had gained the opportunity to reunite Jerusalem after yet another combined Arab military attack which failed.

In exchange for peace between the Arab states and Israel, a Palestinian state would be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem -- the Old City of Jerusalem, the jewel in Israel's crown of its immemorial heritage, where its ancient Temples of Solomon stood and the Ark of the Covenant was venerated holding the original tablets of the Ten Commandments  -- according to the Arab League plan, to be handed over once again to Islamic stewardship (as it was when Jordan assumed that unauthorized role and Jews were not permitted entry).

This bas-relief image showing the Ark of the Covenant being carried is from the Auch Cathedral in France. A newly translated Hebrew text claims to reveal the locations of treasures from King Solomon's Temple and discusses the fate of the Ark itself.  Credit: Photo by I. Vassil

Also part of the onus of conditions to be met by Israel was a "just" solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees -- the original 700,000 of whom were said to have fled when Israel declared itself statehood after the UN's offer of Partition -- now grown to over six million declaring themselves Palestinian "refugees". That "just" solution has always been seen as inviting the "refugees" to return to Israel, their presence to obviously overwhelm in sheer numbers the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

Nothing in the Arab League peace plan addresses the forgotten issue of the 800,000 Arab Jews who were summarily expelled, their properties confiscated from Arab lands when the State of Israel came into being. No compensation for them, no just solution considered, no invitation for them to return and retake possession of all that had been taken from them. The issue of the Jewishness of Jerusalem as the centre of life for ancient Israelites has its counterpart in the second most sacred place of Islam's heritage, Medina.

Medina was a place where ancient Jewish tribes had long been settled. When Mohammad was exiled from Mecca and approached the Jews of Medina to forsake Judaism for what he informed them was God's final iteration of Monotheistic piety and convert to Islam, the Jews refused. In response, Mohammad assembled his army of new-adaptees to Islam and besieged the Jewish tribes, slaughtering many, banishing many others.

Is the Kingdom prepared to exchange Medina for Jerusalem, the latter of which is declared the third most holy site for Islam? Where Islamic rulers, after conquering the city from the Christians who held it and who lived among the Jews who never left the ancient city, built their Islamic structures signifying conquest over the ruins of the second destroyed and looted (by the Romans) Temple of Solomon as though this symbolic act transformed the nature and the presence of a city ordained to Israel to one consecrated to Islam.

Under Jewish stewardship of Jerusalem, all faiths now have access to their sacred places of worship. Israeli authorities have sacrificed the right for Jews to pray at the Temple Mount to salve Muslim rage at any Jewish presence. Under Islamic rule of Mecca and Medina -- and Jerusalem, if the Arab League had its way -- only Muslims are permitted to enter those sacred precincts; non-Muslims are strictly forbidden entry.

Even as Saudi Arabia has been busy crassly destroying some of the ancient monuments held to be sacred to Islam to make room for luxurious new hotels and shopping malls.

When the Arab proposal was first announced in 2002, Israel saw no merit in it. The Arab world from the inception of Israel's renewal as a Jewish state to the present has always viewed Israel as an interloper in the Arab world, an aggressor, an usurper of Palestinian 'rights'. For the Koran states unequivocally that land once consecrated to Islam must never be permitted to fall into the hands of non-Muslims.

As for Israel's rights, there are none, but those the Arab world is now prepared, grudgingly, to permit Israel to assume, under Arab conditions.

Conquering (Diplomatically) The Middle East

"Traditional Arab allies welcome the U.S. back because they believe it is largely on their terms: a United States that is clearly anti-Iran and anti-political Islam, a United States that de-emphasizes political reform and human rights, a United States that is in business mode and a White House that seems more accessible than in the past eight years."
"There is a lot of projection and wishfulness in the Gulf view of Trump's America. There is plenty of inflated expectations, issue avoidance or deference and future disappointment in the cards."
Emile Hokayem, senior fellow, International Institute for Strategic Studies

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Donald Trump take part in a traditional sword dance, Riyadh, May 2017. Photograph: Bandar Al-Jaloud/AFP/Getty Images

Perhaps the most obvious way in which Arab leaders are destined to be disappointed in the United States of America that has pivoted from the Obama years to the Trump administration is that this president, like the former one, is still disinterested in having his country commit to intervening in intranational, transnational and intrareligious disputes between allies and those who have fallen out of favour.

That the America they fondly remember which reliably mounted invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and whom the Arab nations could then turn upon bitterly as interfering in Arab and Muslim affairs, has been sucked dry of that propensity. The American public has long since soured on international military missions to North Africa and the Middle East that have drained the nation's treasury and sacrificed its soldiers for far too long, for little meaningful results.

Drawing, in turn, the deadly ire of Islamic jihadists at war within their own communities and extending their morbidly vengeful victimhood in terrorist attacks far from the Middle East, happy to demonstrate to North America and to Europe that migration has benefited their capacity to move about to infiltrate national security in a reversal of what they see occurring in their home countries, and at the same time calling to jihad faithful expatriates who have never integrated into the culture of countries they immigrated to.

President Donald Trump responds to flattery, and Saudi Arabia did not disappoint, with adulation symbolic of the conquering hero brought out in the full array of blaring trumpets, booming cannons and streaking fighter jets with red, white and blue contrails. So much for the U.S.; for its new leader giant billboards with his avuncular visage festooning public squares and thus commenced diplomacy and politics of a new era in relations between the U.S. and the Middle East, with Sunni Islam once more recognized over the minority Shiite faction.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has once again been recognized as the major motivator of terrorism, overlooking that Saudi Arabia and Qatar both have dedicated themselves to the Sunni version of same, but the lines are drawn and it is the majority version once again recognized as a great friend and ally of the United States; or its reversal. "We are closely co-ordinating our efforts in terms of how to counter Iran's extremism and its export of extremism", announced U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Riyadh, standing alongside Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir, confidence restored.

Goodwill prevailed in abundance, smiles lit up the chambers where assembled heads of state of Arab countries found a renewed sense of common cause with the great arbiter of North America, like the mountain moving to Mohammad, foreseeing a new, hugely improved future. Where the Persian Gulf region is reassured that all the most costly, advanced military engineering in warplanes, helicopters and ballistic missiles American munitions manufacturers are famed for can be theirs for surrendering a substantial portion of oil wealth in exchange.

Lockheed Martin and General Electric heads are beaming with approval. While American Democratic senators are fuming that more arms in the volatile region equates with more conflict, and more deaths; how illogical can one get, to impute to such diplomatic, political overtures such devious ends? For after all, President Trump ventured out on this historical trip to 're-set' the battle against Islamist terror, in the process demonstrating he is not at all adverse to Muslims, at least not where they belong; elsewhere than in the United States.

While King Salman greeted the regal Trumps emerging from Air Force One on a red carpet, he forgot to invite them to visit Mecca with him to show off the impressively sumptuous new hotels and upscale shops crowding that Islamic jewel, the sacred seat of Islam. But the trip went superbly well, said a beaming President Trump, satisfied with the deference and the spirits of welcoming appraisal highlighting the first leg of a trip.

Onward to Jerusalem! The capital of Israel, its historical heritage city of ancient lineage as a Jewish capital. Not only has Trump left a personal note and a self-photo at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, he was not forbidden, as a non-Jew from doing so. The great deal-maker has sent a note to the Almighty that he will now have a front-row seat witnessing Israel and the Palestinians coming together in good fellowship and forgiveness in the creation of side-by-side friendly states.

Donald Trump on Monday became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest place of prayer

Jerusalem, Israel's Indivisible Capital

"No way. Why is this your business? This is an area that is in dispute, the Western Wall is not Israeli territory and is located in the West Bank."
"This is Trump's show; all the rest are extras, including Prime Minister Netanyahu."
U.S. White House spokesman

"These comments, if true, were not authorized by the White House."
"They do not reflect the U.S. position, and certainly not the President's position."
White House official

"No Israeli leaders [will be permitted to accompany Trump to the Western Wall]."
"He's going to the Western Wall mainly in connection with the theme to connect three of the world's great religions ... and to highlight the theme that we all have to be united against the enemies of all civilized people."
H.R. McMaster, Trump National Security Adviser

Psalms 137:5-6, “If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy.”  Indeed, Jerusalem is mentioned 349 times by name in the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, demonstrating its centrality to Judaism

How cavalier is that? Pretty well on a par with the United Nations' UNESCO (Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), guided by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation declaring three consecutive resolutions that there is no "legal validity" to Israel's historical heritage claim to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (Western Wall/Wailing Wall), all that is left of the historical Temple(s) of Solomon dating to 957 B.C.E., the one destroyed by the Babylonians who laid sack to Jerusalem and slaughtered almost a million Jews in 586 B.C.E.

The Jewish population of ancient Israel was scattered into forced exile. In 538 B.C.E. Jews were given permission by Cyrus the Great to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in its second iteration. In the year 70 of the Christian Era, the Roman Emperor Vespasian responded to Jewish refusal to obey the edicts of Rome, sending his son Titus to sack and destroy the second Temple. And once  again the Jews were sent into exile, the great diaspora where Jews were scattered around the world, though some Jewish presence always remained in Jerusalem.

By the 7th Century Islam was founded, based by the Prophet Mohammad on the tenets and sacred writings and the prophets of the Old Testament of Judaism and on Christianity. When Muslim rule prevailed, the Muslim caliph ordered an Islamic shrine to be constructed over the ruins of the Second Temple, where the Dome of the Rock sits, since 691 C.E. The al-Aqsa Mosque dates from roughly the same period, standing in the courtyard of the ancient Temple. To deny Jewish claims on its own heritage is a sacrilege of history.

When Donald J. Trump was running for President of the United States, as unlikely then as it appeared that he would succeed, he boasted that he was prepared to recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish state, Israel reborn. Now, he is on the cusp of a visit to the Holy Land, to travel to Israel, to Saudi Arabia, and to the Vatican; touching as it were, the three major religions of the world rooted in Abrahamic memory as their founder. At the same time, purportedly focusing on the conflict with violent Islam. But violent Islam is, in fact, Islam; Muslims are enjoined by their sacred texts to engage in jihad. And they do.

In meeting with the Saudi king, even Donald J. Trump would not suggest he be permitted to visit Mecca, which by Islamist decree is forbidden entry to any but Muslims. Yet this man who understands history as little as he understands diplomacy, integrity and honesty plans to visit the ancient wall, all that is left standing of the most sacred symbol of Judaism, restraining the nation's Prime Minister from accompanying him. It is as though Prime Minister Netanyahu, visiting Washington, made an official appearance at the Lincoln Memorial, forbidding Trump to be present.

Suborning Justice : This President Can Do No Wrong

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."
"As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly."
"In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

"I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authorities and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for this matter [investigation by the FBI into possible ties by the Trump campaign during the presidential election, with Russia]."
"My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination."
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein

"You need an independent assessment of what the president has done, how he has done it and perhaps why he has done it."
"The appointment of Director Mueller is exactly what is needed to attempt to bring credibility to the White House when there are so many questions about the president’s actions and motives."
John S. Pistole, former deputy director, F.B.I. under Robert S. Mueller III

Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director, during a Senate hearing in 2013. Credit Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

Former F.B.I. director James Comey was just too resolutely wedded to the concept of justice for President Trump's satisfaction. He was given the opportunity to redeem himself, after deciding to launch an investigation into the principals involved in the Trump campaign whom it was widely rumoured had troubling links with Russian actors. As an example of Mr. Comey's even-handedness in the prosecution of his job, he first managed less than adroitly to interfere with Hillary Clinton's campaign by awkwardly introducing the subject of her unethical/illegal use of a personal email server at a critical time during the presidential election campaign.

That mortification and its result evidently failed to sufficiently impress upon Donald J. Trump that he had much to thank Mr. Comey for; instead he faulted the man for merely having chastised Hillary Clinton for her arrogance and poor judgement whose consequences may have been critical in undermining the security of the country, instead of charging her with a criminal offence. He himself, of course, could not possibly be charged with a like manner of offense, irrespective of the fact that his penchant for lying is every bit as overwhelming as Ms. Clinton's.

Mr. Comey, on being pressed by Mr. Trump to drop the unfortunate investigation into Michael T. Flynn's Russian contacts, as Trump's former National Security Adviser, deigned not to compromise his integrity through the sought-for capitulation to the president's urging, but did take the precaution of  relating in a narrative memo all that had transpired between them, sharing it with key colleagues in an obvious measure to protect himself in a compromising situation. The blatant transparency of Trump's attempted intervention reflects the man's incapacity to understand fully the consequences of his actions.

His subsequent swift and surprising firing of the F.B.I. director in the clumsiest of ways reflecting Trump's autocratic hubris simply represents yet another of the man's self-serving impulses. Now, a man whom he was instrumental in appointing to a critical post in his new administration, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, has reacted to the firing of Mr. Comey by appointing a man whose credentials for austere incorruptibility is legendary within the American intelligence community, to head the investigation.

Will President Trump turn his maleficent attention on Mr. Rosenstein now? Who may or may not have good reason to investigate Mr. Trump for  his braggadocio toward the two Russian  officials, Ambassador Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, boasting that he was in possession of strictly classified data relating to a terror threat which Islamic State is responsible for. In the process betraying the confidence of a state ally of the United States. Admittedly that ally, Israel, had been forewarned of just such a potential when previous U.S. intelligence agents warned their Israeli counterparts to withhold sharing such intelligence with the Trump administration.

This president of the United States appears to have greater confidence in and respect for Russian intelligence than he does for his own country's intelligence agencies. He had tweeted of his request of Mr. Comey "from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community". This man whose mouth has no connection whatever to a cerebral cautionary system enjoys the privilege he has granted himself to disclose classified information to those from whom it should be withheld, yet holds others to an accounting he has himself devised.

"I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day", came out of the official transcript of the meeting between Trump and the two elite Russian figures. A U.S. official who verified the event described it as a boast from Trump, recognizing that the revelation could conceivably place the source of the shared intelligence meant to be protected, at risk. When informed that he had broken with protocol, leaving White House officials to attempt to minimize any damage, Trump still insists he has "an absolute right" to release "facts pertaining to terrorism" with Russia.

As for Russia, its president, Vladimir Putin must surely believe he has died and gone to a special heaven reserved for leaders incapable of restraining themselves from malicious interference in the state business of other nations. The very ongoing storms of disbelieving condemnation emanating from all sources imaginable, both domestic and foreign at each of the magnificently idiotic statements issuing from Trump's vainglorious mouth represents an ongoing goldmine of entertainment for Mr. Putin. Even while others of his ilk; Kim, Assad, Erdogan, Duterte, Maduro roil the world with their disruptive and violent tactics.