The War Machine Strikes Back: Is Trump Finally Reining in on Netanyahu and War-Profiteers?

 by Sean Jobst

18 November 2020

   In my previous post, I mentioned a Zoom call of leftist bureaucrats openly calling for a "coup". They included Maria Stephan, an academic involved with the Orwellian-named Institute of Peace - staffed with various interventionist dregs of the Republican and Democratic Parties. One of her associates at the Institute is ex-Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, whom Trump recently fired in a shake-up at the Pentagon that saw Esper's allies resigning and replaced by Trump loyalists who support his withdrawal from foreign wars. A second Trump administration would likely not include a large number of its current cabinet members, so there's some kind of shift. A series of recent events could shed light on whether Trump is reining in on his close relationship with Netanyahu and purging war-profiteers from the Department of Defense - or whether there's more than meets the eye. As is often the case, the reality seems complicated but is worth decoding.

   Among the world leaders congratulating "President-Elect" Joe Biden after his crowning by the Establishment, was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tweeted on Nov. 8, 12:03 AM: "Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. Joe, we've had a long & warm personal relationship for nearly 40 years, and I know you as a great friend of Israel. I look forward to working with both of you to further strengthen the special alliance between the U.S. and Israel." This came despite four years of Trump's kowtowing: Green-lighting annexation of the Golan Heights; moving the embassy to Jerusalem; brokering and enforcing peace deals with several Arab countries; approving sale of the F-35; and allowing the continued subversion of American hi-tech and cyber-security firms by start-ups linked to alumni of Israeli Military Intelligence's Unit 8200 in spite of the vow to "MAGA". (Biden has his own Unit 8200 links via his two WestExec advisors, Michèle Flournoy and Tony Blinken). 

   Esper was apparently fired for two reasons. In June, he openly disputed Trump's suggestion that U.S. troops be deployed to quash violent Antifa and BLM riots across the nation. More recently, Esper publicly disagreed with the withdrawal from Afghanistan that has been advocated by Trump. The first public announcement by his successor, the National Counterterrorism Center director Christopher Miller, has been an American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan by January 2021. The outcry from the MSM reveals an established consensus that sees the U.S. military's role as carrying out the policies of lobbyists, war-profiteers, and the Military-Industrial Complex abroad, while denying internal security, such as protecting the borders they want unfettered, and deterring the riots they have been inciting. Their vision is of a militarized society, not with an armed citizenry such as the military, but with contractor firms and privately-run militaries overseen by an authoritarian federal government.

   A few days after the Pentagon shake-up, outgoing Syria war envoy James Jeffrey admitted that he and others lied about the number of American troops in Syria, whenever Trump pushed them for a complete end to American meddling in that conflict. "We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there," Jeffrey said. "In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times." Its peculiar that Jeffrey was hired the first place, as one of the signatories of the infamous "Never Trump" letter in August 2016, and now advises Biden. The MSM is so deranged with Trump they framed the story in a way to ridicule Trump, missing the point that this is treason because they have long lied and championed for America's entanglements in Syria and elsewhere. We could expect a return to the Bush/Obama status quo of foreign wars under a Biden/Harris administration, given the assorted Neocons and liberal interventionists surrounding them.

   One of the most noticeable results of the Trump administration has been the realignment within American politics, with assorted Neocons and old-style "Never Trump" Republicans aligning with and coalescing around the Biden/Harris campaign. George W. Bush has openly supported and congratulated Biden. Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney, has been a public critic of Trump, while Biden has praised the legacy of her father. Among the Bush cronies to have supported and endorsed Biden were Colin Powell, the Secretary of State who pushed the Iraq WMD lie; Tom Ridge, first secretary of the Homeland Security department created by that same administration that brought us the bipartisan Patriot Act; William H. Webster, former CIA Director and chief of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Dov Zakheim, staunchly-Zionist Under Secretary of Defense; John Negroponte, the career diplomat with a decades-long warmonger record across the world; Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission that rubber-stamped the official story; and Bush's Neocon speechwriter David Frum. They also include Bill Kristol, the "godfather" of Neoconservatism, and both founders of the neocon think-tank Project for the New American Century, Eliot Cohen and Robert Kagan.

   Its inexplicable why Trump hired some of the people he did in the first place, the likes of the warmonger John Bolton and others who showed their interests were always for Israel and not America. The darkest spot around Trump for me has always been the people he surrounds himself with, such as a Chabad-linked Jared Kushner or the Israel-obsessed religious fanatic Mike Pompeo. I called out these foreign policy links even before the 2016 election, yet these four years I have seen Trump pull away from these wars. The Overton Window has shifted towards non-interventionism for a large segment of the Republican Party in a way I never saw before. I agree with what IT security specialist Patrick Bergy said (as often cited by Australian researcher Brendon O'Connell): "They're using it however it benefits them. If it benefits them to attack Trump, they will attack Trump. If it benefits them to use Trump to hurt their enemies, then they will use Trump to hurt their enemies. It has nothing to do with politics. It's all about power and profit. People have to get the politics out of their mind with this. Once you can accept that, it starts making sense."

   As O'Connell has noted, among the worst of the activist network around Trump is Roger Stone, who continues to be tied to certain Neocons and sidelined Steve Bannon who at least criticizes Kissinger, the "party of Davos", and international bankers (even while failing to see the Israel component of that power-order); and "former" CFR member and Kissinger associate, Steve Pieczenick, who seems to have enabled Kissinger back into the White House despite Kissinger's previous criticism of Trump at the World Economic Forum on the very day of Trump's inauguration. Aware of an American public more awake to the reality of these wars, the CFR has been positioning Kissinger as representing "realism": "Welcome Back to Kissinger's World: Neoconservatism has died, and liberal internationalism is discredited. Perhaps it's time to return to the ideas of one of the last century's greatest realists." The reality is that he doesn't represent a shift, but is part of the synthesis under a new name between those two poles of interventionism - part of the political realignment we see under Biden/Harris.

   It could be that the network has something on Trump, or he sees something of his own personal interests in those who so blatantly disregard any "MAGA" agenda. Despite being called a "Fascist" by large segments of the Left, Trump's approach has been remarkably hands-off and less authoritarian than previous Presidents, a corollary of which is his enablement of certain other appointees who have their own agendas. An illustration of this trend is the person of Miles Taylor, who was an "internal Resistance" leaker while Chief of Staff to former Homeland Security Secretaries Nielsen and McAleenan. (As we see with the recent firing of Chris Krebs, who denied any fraud in the election, and the Biden affiliations of Ridge and Webster, its no surprise the DHS hired Taylor). He is a CFR member who epitomizes the convergence between Big Tech and Bureaucracy. Having earlier been a Cheney intern, he endorsed Biden because Trump wasn't interested in his pet foreign policy proposals: "What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying. We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue—cyberattack, terrorism threat—he wasn't interested in those things. To him, they weren't priorities."

   One of the possible counterbalances to this network could be Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, recently hired as Miller's Senior Advisor at the Pentagon. In an interview on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, Macgregor shed light on the inexplicable: "I think President Trump lost control over the whole appointment process and staffing the government shortly after the election. I don't know the details, but he ended up appointing large numbers of people who subsequently brought in their friends, almost all of whom were opposed to Donald Trump and his agenda." Macgregor's foreign policy views are complex but generally he is skeptical of interventionism.

   An initial supporter of the Iraq War, by 2008 Macgregor admitted that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars "produced very serious and negative consequences for American national-security interests." He has been outspoken on European affairs, including a courageous criticism of Angela Merkel's migration policies and the shame/guilt complex forced upon Germany as a "sick mentality". Unfortunately, Macgregor has often appeared on Kremlin-state media supporting Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine and denying a distinct Ukrainian identity there. Given this, what we can expect from him is the positive trend of an American withdrawal coupled with the negative trend of America's place simply being taken up by the Russian partner of the "multipolar" alliance (with Israel and Communist China). A truly "America-First" policy would advocate a final end to these wars and adventures overseas, coupled with a vigilance about this multipolar alliance and its subversion of the American hi-tech sector. 

   On Nov. 13, the CNN warmongers at CNN reported with alarm Macgregor's outspoken views against the stranglehold AIPAC has over American foreign policy. His remarks were also picked up by Haaretz in an analysis blocked to non-subscribers (but available elsewhere). In a 2019 interview, he said that Pompeo "has his hands out for money from the Israeli lobby, the Saudis and others", and Bolton "has become very, very rich and is in the position he's in because of his unconditional support for the Israeli lobby. He is their man on the ground, in the White House." Concerning the anti-Iran warmongers: "You have to look at the people that donate to those individuals," because AIPAC has "enormous quantities of money that over many years have cultivated an enormous influence in power in Congress." 

   Macgregor said in a 2012 RT interview: "I think the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and its subordinate elements or affiliated elements that represent enormous quantities of money that over many years have cultivated an enormous influence in power in Congress. I think you've got a lot of people on the Hill who fall into two categories - one category that is interested in money and wants to be reelected, and they don't want to run the risk of the various lobbies that are pushing military action against Iran to contribute money to their opponents." He has been accused of "anti-Semitism" by the thought-police (ADL and AIPAC), but these are belied by his support for the Golan Heights annexation and U.S. embassy moving to Jerusalem. He appears close to Israeli Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who made Macgregor's book "Transformation under Fire" required reading for officials with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and above. 

   Kochavi was Director of Israeli Military Intelligence (Aman) from 2010 to 2014, so would have overseen Unit 8200's activities. And on Nov. 12th, Kochavi held a virtual meeting with U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to discuss "the current situation in the region and Israel-USA military cooperation." This indicates that despite Netanyahu's acceptance of Biden, that cooperation remains either way. So the answer to that question of reining in on Netanyahu is an unfortunate "No" although it should still serve as a wake-up call that any "America-First" policy can never include a "special" relationship with Israel which will always subvert America's actual interests. Bret Stephens, the staunch-Zionist New York Times columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor, said it bluntly: "Israel will not be safe in an America First world." Its no accident that Neocons and other Zionists decry any return to a non-interventionist foreign policy as "anti-Semitic" and specifically denounce even the "America-First" slogan.

   Despite stark differences in domestic policies and vision between Trump and Biden, it would be business as usual with Israel. The tweet indicates Netanyahu sees Trump's fortunes as losing to Biden's apparent coronation - all are expendable when someone else comes along who can serve his purposes more. This should nevertheless be treated like a betrayal for a President who has shown he values personal loyalty with his various firings (including various figures who shouldn't have been hired in the first place). Personal loyalties should at least sway policies where broader considerations of America's interests were ignored before, which is foremost to end the hi-tech and cyber-security subversion by Israeli intelligence in close collusion with Chinese intelligence. 

   The main difference on the latter count is China, with Beijing Biden's deep links to various Chinese government firms documented as are his championing of trade deals that would benefit the Belt and Road as clearly as his domestic policies suits the World Economic Forum's Great Reset. There should not be any special pandering to one country, such as has been done with countless billions of taxpayer dollars delivered to Israel. This also includes reducing the U.S. State Department to being Israel's enforcer, whether its the wars for Israel under the Bush and Obama administrations, or the peace deals for Israel and sanctions against its enemies which are the hallmark of Trump's Mideast policy. Perhaps its time to be a "heretic" in this age of the Big Lie and the same tired old political dogmas as we have been conditioned to accept. 

   The Overton Window has shifted towards ending this legacy of wars and interventions - and this will obviously continue with a second Trump administration. So the answer to the question about reining in the war-profiteers seems to be a firm "Yes", as they seem to be shifting more towards the Democratic Party's strange tripartite alliance of Liberal Corporatists, Neocons, and Far-Left Socialists/Communists. Given the Trotskyite roots of Neoconservatism, this isn't surprising; nor given the fact that Big Business and Wall Street interests have never seen any contradiction between their profits and bankrolling Communist revolutions and movements. This triple alliance is epitomized by a Biden/Harris administration that will turn back the clock to that entire disgusting legacy. Just as there is a shifting in political alignments, there should be a fundamental re-evaluation coupled with an unwavering rejection of that legacy. But for the time-being, all Americans and others of conscience and principles should celebrate this closing of the dark chapters that are America's entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Millions of low-information voters will indeed clap
with enthusiasm as they fall asleep during his wars