Trump’s initial announcement of a decision to bring the troops home was a response to the fact that vast numbers of people in the US oppose the endless wars and militarism. His backtracking reveals that it was never more than an empty political stunt.
President Trump’s announcement in December that he would withdraw US troops from Syria and Afghanistan was met with confusion and criticism from both parties in Washington. A month later, however, it’s clear the question is not “how” the troops will be brought home, but whether they will be brought home at all.
Trump has hinted that troops in Syria will merely be moved to Iraq and continue to be sent on illegal excursions into Syria – or relocated to the Mexican border, to fire weapons into Mexico at civilian asylum seekers. Airstrikes in Syria have actually intensified since Trump’s claim that troops would be withdrawn. In Afghanistan, revelations of new CIA-trained death squads show that Trump has no intention of ending America’s war in that country, either.
And in recent days, under pressure from war hawks in both parties, Trump administration officials have declared that any withdrawal of troops from Syria will be put on hold all but indefinitely.
Trump’s initial announcement of a decision to bring the troops home was a response to the fact that vast numbers of people in the US oppose the endless wars and militarism. His backtracking reveals that it was never more than an empty political stunt.
The only way wars end is when people mobilize to demand the troops be brought home. Instead of Trump’s fake withdrawal plans, the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition supports building an independent anti-war movement that demands a real end to the wars and US militarism.
Troops Home Now — Out of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Off the Border!
◊
Truth is not fake news. Justice is not fake news. Please support Rise Up Times now and share articles widely. The people, Yes!
◊
4 Comments
Comments are closed.
Subscribe via email
Enter your email address to follow Rise Up Times and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Join 3,899 other followers
VIDEO: Militarism, Climate Chaos, and the Environment
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Well Sue Ann you are mixing up the notion that someone–certainly not me–thinks Trump is a good guy or has good intentions with his latest order for ground troops to leave Syria (and also reducing ground troops in Afghanistan). Of course that’s not the case. As you say, Trump has his own reasons for his long-time promises to end the war on Syria and other places. Which he long criticized the Bush and Obama war gangs for having launched. But ironically the greater reliance on bombing these countries instead of ground forcees, that goes along with reducing “boots on the ground,” IS exactly what Obama did. And Trump certainly doesn’t care if Israel bombs Syria. In fact that is probably how he assuaged Netanyahu. That goes along with Trump’s constant notion that our “allies” have to pick up the slack and not depend upon the U.S. to bomb or fight their wars for them.
You have to separate the facts from the Trump derangement syndrome that has unfortunately turned liberals into warhawks. The use of the emotional vulnerability to hate and fear is very similar to the use of hatred of Saddam, Gaddafi, Putin, Assad, etc.
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you thought Trump had good motives for wanting to remove troops from Syria. But I have seen a number of articles on social media that suggest that he does.
Mostly I leave this kind of analysis to you on Rise Up Times. And am very content to do so, as you do an excellent job and I do not follow the political scene the way you do. I see it, read some of it, but am not tied into the nitty gritty daily detail. My primary interests lie elsewhere, which is reflected in what I post on Rise Up Times. And since you cover it so well, it makes a good balance, I think. I post quite a bit on my personal FB page as well, and I am more likely to post the more political (as in the sense of DC politics) on my FB page, not on RiseUpTImes.org, if I post them at all.
best,
Sue Ann
I read the article by Gareth Porter, who I certainly respect for his writing and careful research. It just seems that Trump went back to the original proposal by Jeffrey in spite of everyone trying to convince him otherwise. Who ever knows what Trump will do? I am more cynical than you I think. He will do anything that draws attention to himself. People keep praising him for supposedly pulling troops out of Syria. But it looks like Israel continued its bombings in Syria. Here is a quote from an article dated January 13, 2019. Just happened.
“Just in the last 36 hours, the air force attacked Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the international airport in Damascus,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “The accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria, just as we promised.”
The rare admission came hours after the Israeli military announced that it had exposed the sixth and final tunnel under its border with Lebanon, which it says the Iranian-backed organization Hezbollah dug, wrapping up a six-week operation to seal the cross-border tunnels.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/world/middleeast/israel-iran-strike-syria-tunnels.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSyria&action=click&contentCollection=world®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
So they are continuing Jeffrey’s original proposal of trying to contain Iran by bombings rather than US troops on the ground.
I guess the question is, are they containing or pushing Iran toward war. Also, Trump does not like Muslims any more than Israel does. At least he is attempting to ban them from coming to this country.
The idea of reducing the troops was originally Trump’s according to Gareth’s article. So no wonder he kept pushing it. I just don’t give him credit for having any kind of a caring reason or antiwar reason for bringing the troops home. Maybe he can put them on the border in Mexico. And use emergency funds to build his wall. People keep trying to give him credit for doing something good. On the surface it may seem that way, but whatever the political analysis is with all the players and countries involved, I just don’t trust his motives. Here is a man who is a bigot, full of hate whose main agenda is to generate more hate and fear. He uses women and treats them like dirt, like objects and spurs people to commit acts of violence against people of color (Extreme examples, Charlottesville, Seattle attack on a Muslim woman and the knifings, killings of blacks, and so on.) He bans Muslims and wants to build a wall to keep the people of Central America out. Why would such a person try to do something good by pulling the troops out of Syria? As the saying goes “it does not compute.”
He will do anything to get attention. Even elbow his way in for a photo op between Saudi officials he has been negotiating with. That is one image I will never forget. Such hubris. So I tend to think that everything he does is for effect. To promote himself.
Sometimes I think he really must hate himself to project such hate and fear out into the world.
Sue Ann
Actually you might want to read Gareth Porter’s latest article. Always the careful historian, he’s writing that Trump was able, so far, to essentially thwart Bolton’s and Netanyahu’s efforts to keep the US military in Syria. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-the-israeli-effort-to-keep-trump-in-syria-failed/?mc_cid=c78a0d724e&mc_eid=8967491413 Now this might not last because Bolton is determined to keep pushing for war on Iran, but nonetheless this MPAC statement does not seem accurate at the present time in important respects.