While Donald Trump golfs, his administration is dangerously ratcheting up tensions against Iran and Fox News trotted out one of its favorite Islamophobic war mongers, who also happens to be a former adviser to the Trump campaign, to argue that “limited” and “rational” military action in response to protesters attacking the U.S embassy in Iraq would be no big deal.
Fox anchor Sandra Smith introduced Phares as a “Fox News foreign security and national affairs analyst” without mentioning he was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign. What’s worse is that while Fox presents Phares as some kind of neutral analyst, he’s a far-right Islamophobe who claimed, during the Obama administration, that the Muslim Brotherhood or “front or ally or sympathizers are performing inside government” and “are producing actual memorandums that become policy.”
Not surprisingly, Phares was full of praise for Trump’s provocations – well, make that Trump's administration’s provocations. U.S. airstrikes on an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq have now resulted in Iraqi protesters storming the American embassy in Baghdad. Trump has been spending his days golfing, though he interrupted his game to go back to his resort, which he dubbed “The Southern White House” in an effort to pretend he’s not a slacker.
Now, Trump has issued a tweet saying Iran will be “held fully responsible” (before resuming his rage tweeting about impeachment).
Phares couldn’t have been more pleased about the saber rattling. He referenced another Trump tweet: “To those many millions of people in Iraq who want freedom and who don’t want to be dominated and controlled by Iran, this is your time!”
PHARES: There are a lot of voices in Washington and elsewhere about what can we do, we are in a big trouble. Not at all. We actually should divide our strategy, if I may say, one, to respond to military actions by military actions, as when the militias attacked our post, we responded in a very limited and very rational way.
But at the same time, you just mentioned it – the tweet of the president. This is exactly what the administration should be doing, starting with the president, secretary of state and, I hope, the Congressional leaders will support – that is to talk to the Iraqi people, talk to the Iraqi demonstrators and telling them this is your time.
What will happen? That would flip most of Iraq. First, the Shia. The Sunni are already against Iran and the Kurds are against Iran. It is a good momentum if you know how to engineer it.
Remember when the Bush administration painted W’s regime-change war in Iraq as “a cakewalk?” This feels a lot like déjà vu all over again.
See what dangers for the country Trump’s favorite network/most trusted source of advice is pushing on him below, from the December 31, 2019 America’s Newsroom.
The clear evidence of government influence if not outright control over the duration of the event (over and above the fact that those protesters actually managed to get near the Embassy at all) should give the Trump administration food for thought. There’s no daylight between the Iraqi government and the people attacked by the American forces.
Thanks to EOF for such a concise summary of the differences between the heavily armed and fortified Embassy in Bagdad and Benghazi which was basically unsecured.
The Marines came in ‘instantly’. Oh, yeah, dumb-ass. Explains why I saw footage of the attack ongoing in the morning. The main thing preventing it from being another Benghazi was the Iraq embassy is the most heavily fortified and expensive US embassy built up to then (and still?). It has multiple layers of internal defenses. Benghazi wasn’t even an embassy but a diplomatic compound with a wall and a safe room that couldn’t even protect Ambassador Stevens from smoke.
The other thing worth noting is the militia that attacked Benghazi were heavily armed. Our Iraq embassy was attacked and partially penetrated by unarmed protesters.
Another thing scumbag Trump mouthed off about was how easy it would be to defeat Iraq in war, should one arise. We’ve heard this BIG LIE before many times. You’d think the obvious mess still ongoing in Iraq would clue the complete moron in on the fact Iran would be a total and bloody quagmire.
Also vomit inducing is the idiot making a pitiful joke out of North Korea threatening the introduction of a new strategic nuclear weapon now that the end of the year deadline for a diplomatic solution has passed. Trump completely blew the entire situation off, deciding rather to spend December playing golf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamadryas_baboon#/media/File:Hamadryas_harems.jpg
Our baboon ass skinned Liar-N-Thief promised to send the troops home. He did in Syria so best bud Putin’s soldiers could take over 3 of our bases. But elsewhere in the Middle East 14,000 military members were sent to deal with a pissed off Iran he cheated by breaking the Iranian Nuclear Deal. Now he’s threatening to send nearly 4,000 more to mop up this self-inflicted mess.
Someone tell his MAGA cult over at Fox News I can’t take any more ‘winning’. You can start with Walid Phares, the last sycophantic turd to drop out of Trump’s butt. Sorry, gang, but I just survived a handful of drunks driving myself home from a friend’s house and all I need is this sorry TrumpTV™ segment to really cheese me off.
And let’s be very clear about the protestors – they’re justifiably angry about the US dropping bombs on them – a situation the Iraqi government that WE INSTALLED had repeatedly warned the Pence White House was likely to occur. This is not a war situation – it’s a desperate attempt by the Pence White House to wave their arms and yell as loud as they can. Thankfully, so far it doesn’t appear that anyone outside Fox News is buying the line.
And then, and then, and then, along came Trump with golf club in hand … the world may end due to something other than climate change after all.