Former JCS Dempsey went around Obama, shielded Assad, aided Russians to enter Syrian civil war

Twice in two days, I'm speechless.

President Obama’s top military commander secretly orchestrated intelligence sharing with military leaders in Germany, Israel and Russia to thwart the president’s policy to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria and lay the groundwork for Russia’s military entrance into the Syrian civil war, because he believed Obama’s anti-ISIS strategies were hopelessly misguided.

That is just one of the astounding takeaways from a 6,800-word expose by venerated investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh that was just published in the London Review of Books. Hersh, whose sources include top senior aides to the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, which commands all U.S. military forces, also described in great detail how Turkey’s president Recep Erdoğan has deceived the White House by siding and arming ISIS and other extremist Islamic militias in Syria, in a gambit for Turkey to emerge as a regional power akin to the Ottoman Empire.

The broad contours of this cloak-and-dagger tale were confirmed by Saturday’s Democratic Party presidential debate. One of the key foreign policy questions was whether the Syrian dictator had to be removed to defeat ISIS. Bernie Sanders said no, voicing the same argument Hersh reported was put forth by recently retired Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey: removing Assad would create a vacuum that Islamic extremists would fill. Ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad had to go, but intriguingly noted that Turkey was not helping matters. This separation of Assad’s fate from fighting ISIS is now moving into the presidential race, but if Hersh’s account is correct it mirrors the thinking of the top Pentagon commander who felt he had to act on his own because Obama wouldn’t listen to the military's advice.

This would be the highest magnitude of hubris -- short of a coup -- by the real culprits of American hegemony, the Pentagon and its weapons manufacturers.  Since the killing of JFK there have been few US presidents that were not secretly cowed by what the generals would and would not do.   Dwight Eisenhower, the most significant of many war heroes elected to the nation's highest office, warned us about what was coming.  Now that so many men -- and soon, a woman -- have been elected commander-in-chief without the 'experience' of military service, the War Machine has only gathered more strength.

The eagerness of the various Republican presidential candidates to have your children, not theirs, go into future battles is the latest tell.  Global conflict is going to be the only sustainable American economic engine for the next generation.  (Beyond the mid-century, an unstable climate -- gradually more toxic air and water, with storms, drought, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes of increasing frequency and strength -- may finish the job "America's enemies" can't.)

It may no longer be possible to end the 21st century doctrine of continuous war.

Even though I put out our Christmas decorations yesterday and took the dogs for an evening drive around the neighborhood to look at all the lights, I'm not so much in the holiday spirit.

Banksy's Christmas card

The card has recently gone viral again because of the holidays, but it is actually a few years old and seems to circulate around this time every year.

The piece first appeared at Santa’s Ghetto exhibit in London in 2005, which followed Banksy’s trip to the Middle East.

Regardless of when the image was created, it sends a powerful message about how divided (Israel and Palestine and the other surrounding Arab states are) on racial and ethnic lines, creating a massive refugee crisis, and widespread ghettos in many parts of the region. This current reality is obviously highlighted by the biblical story of Joseph and Mary, two refugees themselves who were said to travel across those lands thousands of years ago.

When the state of Israel was created, instead of integrating the Arab and Jewish cultures together the ruling class put policies in place that would force the Palestinian people onto unfertile ghettos, separated from water sources and food growing lands by giant walls. The Palestinians were also not given the right to organize, own property, or work, and without these basic freedoms, they remain refugees. These policies would result in a growing hostility between the two groups which eventually flared up in physical violence. This violence has spread all throughout the oil-rich Middle East and has allowed the western establishment to have a permanent involvement in the region’s affairs, just as they planned.

It really is this bad.  In fact it might be even worse than described above.

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I'm at a loss for words.