By Any Means Necessary Discussion of John Bolton's Criticisms of Trump (6/22/2020)

Liberal #Resistance Embraces 'Warmonger' John Bolton Amid Book Release

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Jim Kavanagh, a political analyst and contributor to Counterpunch and ThePolemicist.net, to talk about former National Security Adviser John Bolton's new book, why "#resistance" pro-establishment Democrats have largely embraced the far-right neocon despite his bellicosity, and the reactions by the international community to his claims.

Listen to "Liberal #Resistance Embraces 'Warmonger' John Bolton Amid Book Release" on Spreaker.

Trump’s Syrian See-Saw: From Pullout to Pillage

thegrayzone.com

To withdraw, or not to withdraw? That is the question Donald Trump, in his own inimitable way, has answered both ways.

First came the withdrawal. It was real, and had a significant effect. Trump ordered the removal of US troops from Kurdish areas, putting an end to the prospect of an independent Kurdish statelet, split off from Syria. Such a partition was always implausible, given the general balance of forces in the region and the specific refusal of NATO-member Turkey to accept any such thing. (Turkey had already invaded Syria in 2016, and the Obama-Biden administration ordered the Kurds to accept it.) It was also a lynchpin of the longstanding Plan B for dismembering the Syrian state. As I argued in a previous article, agreeing with ”the entire spectrum of US-imperialist politics and media,” Trump’s withdrawal decision “marked ‘a major turning point in Syria’s long war’ and has, indeed, ‘upended decades’ of imperialist and Zionist plans for the Middle East.” 

But, as I also noted, Trump is impulsive, shallow, and weak, and “surrounds himself with neocon deep-state actors on whom he depends and who often ignore or actively oppose…his non-interventionist instincts,” and who “may yet get him to reverse that [decision] or over-compensate for it.”

And thus it came to be. Kinda-sorta.

Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back

globalvillagespace.com

rusvesna.su

It was a helluva week on the Iran front. It started with attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman on June 13^th and ended with Donald Trump ordering, and then calling off, a military attack on Iran on June 20-21. How we got from beginning to end of that chapter in the ongoing US-Iran saga is worth close consideration.

Studied Ambiguity

Like everyone else who can say “Gulf of Tonkin,” “Remember the Maine,” and “Iraqi WMDs,” my instinctive reaction to the attacks on two tankers, a month after explosions hit four oil tankers in the UAE port of Fujairah, was: “Oh, come on now!” We know the United States, egged on by Israel and Saudi Arabia, has been itching to launch some kind of military attack on Iran, and we are positively jaded by the formula that's always used to produce a justification for such aggression.