The weekend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20500 featured dueling events. One took place in a rapidly constructed arena called ‘The Claw’, the other took place from the Executive Residence of the U.S. president, as social media announcements were released about ending a war….
Category: Mideast Conflict
Two for Today
We offer up two Steve’s today, Steve Schmidt, ex campaign manager of John McCain’s presidential campaign, and Steven Schmidt, founder/editor of Strategic Demands & global GreenPolicy360. The political juxtaposition begins with this Wikipedia ‘disambiguation’ and shared podcast
Another Month, Another War Continues
We understand that the US is on record stating that the newest war in the Mideast is a “defensive war”. It isn’t. The newest war was launched as an offensive operation. It can be, should be, described as a continuation of the ‘Bush Doctrine’, of a pre-emptive war as memorialized in ‘shock and awe’ war […]
Death of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza War — What’s Next?
News reports of the death of the Hamas leader began to leak out yesterday. Today more details are being revealed. One of his last acts, it seems, as Sinwar lay gravely injured by an Israeli tank shell explosion was… to turn toward a hovering drone monitoring him and throw a stick at it…
October Disaster in the Mideast
(Thread) On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups, mainly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with other groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, launched a major attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia | Gaza-Israel conflict) … the multi-year conflict, now as expanding war, is delivering catastrophe and international impact
Official End to the AUMF?
Is an official end to Authorization for Use of Military Force in sight? It is over 20 years since the beginning of AUMF-enabled war in Afghanistan… which begat the Iraq war, which begat two decades of US war in MidEast / CentralAsia / North Africa and beyond. Today, Congress may begin a new direction
As Afghanistan Falls to the Taliban
August in its imperial definition faces another day of reckoning – August 15th, 2021. The president of Afghanistan flees and the Taliban enter Kabul. Negotiations over a reported “unconditional surrender” proceed. U.S. helicopters swoop in to evacuate …
‘Peace Plan’ of Trump-Netanyahu
The ‘long-awaited’ U.S. plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace was revealed today… and by reports, the Palestinian representatives had no part in the announced plan. It showed. The White House ceremony was presented as spectacle without the respective participants needed for peace
Another War? Calculus of War…
The killing of Iran’s general Soleimani is a ‘beheading’. Provocation takes another step forward as the US joins with Iran’s traditional enemy, Saudi Arabia, in carrying out beheadings of opponents as a cultural practice. Swords and falling heads, Religion, politics, oil. This killing with an overhead drone strike in Iraq will have consequences over decades
25th International Climate Conference
COP25 has commenced in Madrid… Conference of the Parties, #COP25… the acronym doesn’t do the global Climate Crisis Conference justice as its goal is security of all nations. The multiplying threats of human-caused disruption and disaster are here. Strategic Demands and associate GreenPolicy360 again deliver the news
Ghosts of Bagram
A war moving toward a 20 year failure …. and centuries bear witness. The war in Afghanistan has a history, a more extended history than most every policy maker, pundit and political commentator has confronted directly or in passing. Roger Morris reminds our readers of a brutal past and of Bagram’s ghosts
A Kennedy Looks at the Mideast Wars
The Dulles brothers are not so far removed from the present-day Middle East. Americans may not know or care to know the origins of conflict throughout the region, but the past holds lessons for future policy
Gas ‘n Oil, Syria, Russia, Turkey, NATO/EU and US
It is a volatile, dangerous mix. The money, weapons and foreign fighters that have flowed into Syria are part of a bigger story of religion and gas/oil supplies, of pipelines through a secular or new religious Syria… it’s about secular Russia versus Salafi-Wahhabism and the House of Saud and its allies. It’s about petrodollars and […]
