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March 5, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:12
Turkey vs Europe: WAR?!?
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So it all comes down to this today, Europe's survival or demise the
The Turkish migrant invasion, which I have been warning about for many, many years, is underway as the Turkish president makes his move in the face of a global crisis around coronavirus and frustration at slow acceptance into the European Union.
Let's look at the situation. These are headlines from around the world.
Greece closes borders, deploys army, helicopters and naval warships to defend Europe from foreign invaders sent by Turkish regime.
Following the military escalation between the Russian-backed Syrian army and the Turkish regime, combined with announcements from Turkey that it would be making good on previous threats to flood Europe with migrants, Greece has completely sealed off its border with Turkey.
It's important to remember. So Turkey just suffered a major defeat in Syria, and this has combined...
To create this crisis, basically on the decision of the president, Turkey is the seventh largest military power in the world.
Another headline, the Greek government has deployed 50 navy warships to protect the Greek islands and 10 helicopters to guard land borders against foreign invaders sent by the Erdogan regime.
German daily tabloid builds reports the army has been called to the northern border.
The seemingly drastic moves come after a veiled threat made by the spokesperson for Turkey's ruling AKP party who earlier had alluded to the fact that Turkey's borders to Europe could be opened.
He said, our refugee policy remains the same, but here we have a situation.
We can no longer keep the refugees.
Although the Turkish government hasn't made an official statement announcing that the border has been opened, a source told journalists from the news agency Reuters that all Turkish border guards, coast guard officers, and police had all been ordered to stand down, according to the Voice of Europe.
A Turkish journalist wrote on Twitter that the Turkish border would be open for the next 72 hours to any and all migrants who would like to make their way to continental Europe.
The president of the European Parliament has said, immigrants coming from Turkey, we must welcome them all!
Probably not into his house, but apparently on the backs of taxpayers, yes.
Now, way back in the day, many more years ago, I talked about the dangers of Turkey holding these refugees.
First of all, they're not refugees.
They're not refugees. Fleeing a war zone does not make you a refugee, according to international law.
So they're not refugees.
You can call them migrants, I suppose, but...
We'll get into what they are down the road a little bit, but this is one of the reasons why I talk so much about Brexit, is that there was no doubt that Turkey was going to weaponize these people and send them to Europe and work to collapse the European system as it stands that way.
And so this is all as predictable as sunrise and as little acted on, I guess, as sunrise.
All right, so let's look at some of the news here.
This is Euronews. Greece is Europe's shield in migrant crisis, says EU Chief von der Leyen on visit to Turkey's Turkish border.
European Union leaders have visited Greece's border with Turkey to show solidarity with the country as it tries to prevent thousands of migrants from crossing.
And this is just from today, 3rd of March.
The visit from leaders from the EU's three main institutions came four days after Turkey stopped trying to prevent migrants, many of them from Syria, from reaching the European Union, prompting clashes with Greek security forces at the border.
So, he says, the border is not only a Greek border, but it is also a European border, and I stand here today as a European at your side.
He said to the Greek Prime Minister, Turkey is not an enemy, and people are not just means to reach a goal.
We would all do well to remember both in the days to come.
I thank Greece for being a European aspida.
The commission president added using the Greek word for shield.
The EU's border agency Frontex is preparing a, quote, rapid border intervention team in response to a Greek request for help.
Wunderland said this would provide several patrol vessels, aircraft and 100 border guards at Greece's land and sea borders.
Some humanitarian groups.
Hmm. Never in the front lines, never paying for it themselves, but with lots of opinions amplified by the media.
Some humanitarian groups have expressed anger at how Greece and Turkey are dealing with the situation at the border, as Greek authorities say they have thwarted another 1,000 attempted border crossings overnight.
So, I will put the sources to all of this below, but let me tell you, I mean, spoiler, this is how it could play out very rapidly, and Europe is in fact hanging by a thread.
So, what's going to happen is, I hope it's not going to happen, but what is most likely to happen is the migrants, so to speak, are going to pour illegally over the border, the Greeks and others are going to use force to repel them, and the mainstream media is going to amplify and broadcast all possible images of violence,
whether they're real or faked, and a lot of them have been faked, and then they're hoping to provoke an insurrectionist response from the migrants already ensconced in cities, Across Europe, this is the basic reality of how modern warfare is playing out.
This is from FP from March the 3rd, 2020, 4.57 a.m.
Crisis escalated Turkey-Greece border.
Thousands of refugees are trying to enter the European Union after Turkey declared it would no longer stop them.
Thousands of refugees seek to leave Turkey after President Erdogan opens the border.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims victory, blah, blah, blah.
We get to that.
Since Turkey said last week it would no longer stop refugees from crossing into Europe, more than 10,000 migrants, including many from Syria and Afghanistan, have arrived at its land borders with EU countries.
And at least 1,000 have landed on Greece's eastern Aegean islands.
Greek authorities have responded with tear gas and a halt to asylum requests.
The rush to the border is already fueling a crisis.
A child died when a boat capsized on Monday, and Turkish security sources have reported at least one Syrian migrant was killed at the land border.
Although I believe that the Greeks dispute that claims.
See, Well, welcome to the modern world of reality politics.
All laws are enforced at the point of a gun.
That's what they are.
So, the President of the European Commission expressed sympathy with Turkey's difficult situation hosting more than 3 million refugees, but condemned its move to let them leave its territory for Europe.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Turkish President Erdogan directly, calling the decision unacceptable.
Oh, that's good.
Good that she's got some strong words there.
But Erdogan doubled down on Monday.
These figures do not correspond to eyewitness accounts and appear to be vastly...
Yeah, so Greek Prime Minister said Greece would stop taking new asylum requests for a month.
The UN refugee said Monday that it had no right to do so under international EU law, even as the EU rushes to help Greece police its border.
So I guess you can do what is necessary for the survival of your people, or you can bend to unelected bureaucrats overseas writing words on pieces of paper.
Turkey's decision to allow migrants to cross into Europe was intended to get EU leaders to come to its aid against Assad, but so far it isn't working.
Here are some quotes.
This is from Bloomberg. Since Turkey suffered its biggest single-day loss of troops in decades in Syria against Russian-backed forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad in the northwestern region of Idlib,
Erdogan has threatened to unleash another flood of Syrian refugees in Europe.
Remember how everyone says, well, you see, the Europeans, the whites in Europe, they're just not having enough babies, so we need to bring all these migrants in because they're so economically valuable.
But if they're so economically valuable, I don't see Turkey sending masses of bitcoins across, or gold across, or goods or services for free across the borders.
No, they're sending these people from Syria.
Why? If they're so valuable, why doesn't Turkey hold on to them.
I mean, a lot of them are fellow Muslims, and why?
Because they're not. They're an economic burden.
They are an economic burden.
Turkey is the world's biggest host of migrants, with more than 3.5 million Syrians on its soil.
Erdogan has said hundreds of thousands of people are already on the move from Idlib toward Turkey, and the total number could exceed 2 million.
The UN Human Rights Council said Greece had no legal justification for suspending asylum procedures.
Of course, the UN, in its Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, says that all people have a right to their homeland, have a right to not be diluted or have their culture undermined or destroyed by mass migration.
But I guess that's not written.
For Europeans.
And, you know, it's interesting.
So the EU paid a massive amount to Turkey to hold on to these migrants.
And the UN, as far as I know, it is nagging Greece.
I don't think that they're nagging Turkey for breaking its agreement with the EU and unleashing the migrants.
This is what I'm talking about, the 2016 EU-Turkey deal.
So it was proposed as a solution to the migrant crisis in which almost 1 million refugees and migrants arrived in the EU in 2015 and thousands died in mass drownings.
On 20th March 2016, the EU and Turkey made a deal that saw Syrian refugees who arrived on Greek islands sent back to Turkey.
In return, Turkey received 6 billion euros, that's 5.2 billion pounds, 6.7 billion dollars in EU aid for migrants and refugees.
So all of these wonderfully economically valuable migrants, apparently the EU is so ridiculously bad at its own self-interest, it's paying billions of euros to keep them away from their economy.
For every Syrian person removed from Greece to Turkey, another would be resettled from Turkey to the EU. The EU agreed to work towards lifting visa requirements for Turkish citizens by the end of June 2016, but given the vast percentage of Turkish citizens who want to go and live in the EU, well, let's say that they have some hesitations about that, and for good reason.
After the deal was agreed, the number of migrants arriving in Greece declined sharply.
And... As usual, they didn't solve the problem.
They just kicked the can down the road.
But of course, solving the problem would involve prosecuting high-level members of the political elite for involvement in the war crimes of the Syrian civil war.
I've done videos on that before.
You can look for those on my channel.
So what is the story with these refugees?
What are they doing?
This is from February the 28th.
Europe is nicer.
Migrants head west after Turkey opens border.
Hundreds of migrants in Turkey started arriving on the borders with Greece and Bulgaria.
As I mentioned, Turkish officials said Ankara would no longer abide by a 2016 EU deal and stop refugees from reaching Europe.
So they took the money, but they don't want to keep the deal.
Of course, right?
So Mohamed Abdullah, 25-year-old Syrian, queuing in Istanbul to board a bus bound for the Greek border, said, there is no work here in Turkey.
Turkey is not nice at all.
Europe is nicer.
Now, that's what they call a refugee.
He just wants to get to a place that's nicer.
In other words, he's a refugee from the horrifying situation of things not being quite nice enough for his liking.
That's what they call a refugee these days.
This is from March 2nd yesterday from FP, Foreign Policy.
Odoyan's empty threats.
Turkey's decision to allow migrants to cross into the European Union was intended to pressure EU leaders to come to anchor as aid against Bashar al-Assad.
It isn't working.
So, because Turkey suffered a major setback in its war, they're trying to pressure the European Union into helping them out and using these migrants as bioweapon leverage.
And so on. And in the past three days, thousands of people have traveled from all over the country to try their luck at a new and more stable life.
The majority are Afghans with scores of Syrians, Iranians, Palestinians, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and migrants from various East African countries.
Now, you know what's kind of true?
How many of those countries are currently even at war?
Not that war gives you the right to be a refugee, but how many of those countries are actually at war?
Syria? Sure. Iran?
Nope. Palestinians?
Nope. Moroccans? Nope. Pakistanis?
Nope. Bangladeshis? Nope.
Various East African countries?
Nope. So the decision by Turkey to reopen its borders, or to open its borders to Greece as well as fellow EU member Bulgaria, came after 36 of its soldiers were killed in an airstrike by the Syrian regime near Idlib on February the 27th.
Many observers see Erdogan's sudden reversal of Turkey's 2016 agreement with Europe as a tool to pressure the EU and international community into supporting Ankara's recent military involvement in the nine-year Syrian war.
Now, of course, it's a commonplace observation, but well worth making still, that it is all young men of fighting age in general who are trying to cross these borders.
You know, what didn't happen, say, in Europe during the First and Second World War, that millions and millions and millions of young men of fighting age tried to take refuge in the Middle East.
Didn't really seem to happen.
They stood and they fought.
So this is from today.
Erdogan warns Europe to expect, quote, millions, end quote, of migrants after Turkey opens borders.
Millions of migrants would soon head for Europe, drawing accusations from EU leaders that he is trying to pressure them into backing his incursions into Syria.
Syria. And this is, I mean, entirely predictable, of course, right?
I mean, this was going to happen.
All they did was, as usual, kick the can down the road.
But when you have millions of economically flaccid migrants on your border, you either enforce those borders, which removes leverage from Turkey, or you fear the mainstream media amplifying and broadcasting the violence.
That's going to inevitably occur when people try to, I don't know, come into your country illegally.
I mean, try driving over a border to America inside of the guards and see what happens.
So, let's look at some of the history here, because people don't really...
Like in Turkey, they get to learn their history in a factual way.
In the West, we don't. We get to listen to mostly communist propaganda.
So... Turkey's ruling party are intent on invading and conquering Greek islands, because they believe that the Greek islands are actually Turkish territory.
So, February the 12th, 2018, the Turkish president said,"...the things we have done so far pale in comparison to the even greater attempts and attacks we are planning for the coming days, inshallah or Allah willing." The head of the state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs has openly described Turkey's recent military invasion of Afrin in northern Syria as a jihad.
The head of the newly established opposition Good Party has also called for an invasion and conquest of the islands.
What is required must be done, she tweeted.
So, it's important to remember this.
Muslim Turks owe their demographic majority in Asia, minor, to centuries of Turkish persecution and discrimination against the Christians...
Yazidi and Jewish inhabitants of the area.
They know their history.
We generally don't.
It goes all the way back to the Ottoman Empire.
We warn those who have crossed the line in the Aegean and Cyprus, Orian declared, continuing, quote, their courage persists only until they see our army, our ships, and our planes, whatever Afrin is to us.
Our rights in the Aegean and Cyprus are the same.
Do not ever think that the natural gas exploration in the waters of Cyprus and the opportunistic attempts in the Aegean Sea drop off our radar.
Just as we disrupt the plots in the region through Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch on Syria, and soon in Mambish and other regions, we can and we will disrupt the plots of those who engage in miscalculations on our southern border.
Our warships and air forces are keeping an eye on the area closely to intervene in every way when required.
Referring to the days of the Ottoman Empire, remember, The Turks ruled Greece for 400 years.
Referring to the days of the Ottoman Empire, Odian went on, quote, Those who think that we have erased from our hearts the lands from which we withdrew in tears 100 years ago are wrong!
We say at every opportunity we have that Syria, Iraq, and other places in the geography map in our hearts are no different from our own homeland.
We are struggling so that a foreign flag will not be waved anywhere where Adhan, Islamic call to prayer in mosques, is recited.
The things we have done so far pale in comparison to the even greater attempts and attacks we are planning for the coming days, as I mentioned, inshallah, God willing.
Right. So what are they saying?
Syria, Iraq, and other places in the geography, in our hearts, are no different from our own homeland.
Right. So...
Hitler felt that way about quite a bit of Europe, and...
What happened there? I mean, this is what's so astounding when you think about it.
It took 29 years for the Young Turks movement to commit a genocide against a wide variety of Christians in the region.
Less than 30 years, 29 years later, they were welcomed into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with open arms because they learned their history and we just don't.
Let's go back a little bit further.
Greece, the cradle of Western civilization and a deeply Christian nation, of course, groaned under the enslavement of the tyrannical rule of the Ottoman Muslim Turks for 400 years.
Men, women, nuns, monks and children were killed for their Christian faith because they refused to convert to Islam.
Young Greek Orthodox boys were taken by force and turned into fanatic Turkish soldiers called Janissaries and trained to fight and kill their own people.
Century after century.
Okay.
For centuries, Greek Orthodox educated monks taught the Greek children their Christian faith and Hellenic cultural traditions and language in the so-called secret schools often hidden in caves high in the mountains of Greece.
The Greek Genocides.
You probably have heard of the Holocaust.
Have you heard of the Armenian Genocide?
I had an expert on to talk about that.
I'll put the link below. The Greek Genocide was the wholesale slaughter of the Christian Ottoman Greek population in Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath from 1914 to 1922.
And of course, the Christian Ottoman Greeks We're slaughtered, we're genocided entirely on the basis of religion and ethnicity.
But hey, let's bring Turkey into NATO, even though they still deny committing these genocides.
It was carried out by the government of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish National Movement against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire.
You know, the Young Turks is named after these people.
Don't see a lot of shows out there called the Hitler Youth.
Ah, well. It's because they learn their history, and we don't.
We're not allowed to. So, the Ottoman Empire, Turkish national movement, enacted massacres, forced deportations, including death marches, Bataan style, arbitrary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious buildings, and history, and monuments, tearing down monuments, of course, a fundamental aspect of totalitarianism in that world as in the modern leftist world.
According to various sources, several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks were slaughtered during this period.
This is a time when mass killing was harder and the population was smaller, so multiply that a few times in your mind.
Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece, and so many fled from genuine religious and racial persecution that the population of Greece increased by 25% as it absorbed the refugees.
Some, particularly in the eastern provinces, couldn't make it across and instead took refuge in the neighboring Russian Empire.
Slaughter.
slaughter.
By 1923, out of approximately 2 million Greeks living in Asia Minor at the beginning of World War I, more than 700,000 perished and over 1.1 million were uprooted prior and during the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
By 1923, out of approximately 2 million Greeks living in Asia Minor at the beginning of World War I, more than 700,000 perished and over 1.1 million were uprooted prior and during the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
As a consequence of the deliberate and systematic policy of Turkey for the Turks, approximately 2.5 million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks were murdered or were victims of the white death.
This term was used to describe all deaths that resulted from lack of food, disease and exposure to the elements during the deportations and death marches.
Past and current Turkish governments vehemently denied the Greek, Armenian and Assyrian genocides.
They claimed that the loss of lives of the Christian communities of Turkey was the result of the turmoil during World War I.
Yeah, because nobody ever takes advantages of a world war to commit genocide now do they?
Okay.
In December 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world's foremost genocide experts, officially recognized the Ottoman-Greek genocide.
And as usual, of course, the Ottoman system discriminated against non-Muslims in the population.
You have, of course, special taxes, a tax for freedom, a head tax, and so on.
And, of course, many Greeks fled to other countries, Romania, Russia, Italy, Austria.
And it was, well, an ethnic cleansing of the first order, with the modern equivalent of countless millions killed.
The greatest 20th century Turkish assault against Christians took place in the 1914 to 1923 genocide of Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians, Syriacs and Chaldeans, in Ottoman Turkey.
This did not prevent Turkey, which continues to deny this genocide, from becoming a member of NATO. In 1952.
See? 1923 to 1952.
29 years from genociding white Christian Europeans to being embraced as an ally.
The assault also did not stop Turkey three years after joining NATO from committing a savage anti-Greek pogrom in Istanbul or from forcibly expelling the remaining Greeks from Turkey in 1964.
It is precisely because the Turks have never been held accountable for their criminal actions and aggression that they continue to threaten the security and sovereignty of their neighbors.
So... With that brief sprint through history, let's get back to the present.
The EU offers Greek migration support amid this mounting refugee crisis, millions of euros, fresh deployment of border guards, and so on.
In the coming days, this is Fonda Lion, during a press conference in the coming days and weeks, we will work to ensure we deliver the support that is needed.
The situation is not only Greece's issue to manage, it is the responsibility of Europe as a whole.
And here is a map, of course, with key refugee routes to Greece, of course, the island of Lesbos Chios, and down in Samos as well.
Odian has also accused Brussels of failing to share the burden, despite an EU assistance package earmarked for Ankara worth 6 billion euros.
He said, After we opened the doors, there were multiple calls saying, Close the doors!
I told them, It's done, it's finished, the doors are now open!
Hundreds of thousands have crossed, and soon it will be millions!
Because, you know, people who deny committing genocide, they really do respect all of the wonderful contracts and arrangements that you enter into with them.
Monstrous. Well, maybe people will learn one day.
So this is from the Gatestone Institute.
Greece's migrant crisis, a powder keg ready to explode.
Here are the quotes.
This is from Nikos Tarkilis, community leader in Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos.
People have seen their properties destroyed.
Their sheep and goats have been slaughtered, their homes broken into.
A few years back when there were 5,000 migrants on the island, things seemed bad enough.
Now there's a sense that the situation has really got out of hand.
The North Aegean regional governor says, I fear for the safety of our people, the residents of Lesbos.
For the situation to change, many refugees have to be transferred to the mainland, and new arrivals from Turkey must be stopped.
If not, we are doomed. Greek Prime Minister says, We welcome in Greece are only those we choose.
Those who are not welcome will be returned.
We will permanently shut the door to illegal human traffickers, to those who want to enter even though they are not entitled to asylum.
Greek officials have said that the Turkish president personally controls the migration flows into Greece and turns them on and off to extract more money and other political concessions from the European Union.
Well, of course he does!
Of course he does!
He's a genocide-denying dictator!
So, you can read more of this, but, you know, I mean, I predicted this probably half a decade ago, and you can look back if you want on all my...
Presentations on the migrant crisis.
But if the government fail to protect the borders, it will be up to the citizenry to do it.
And they will. And things will get out of control fairly quickly.
And to those who are more cynical, well, that's entirely the plan, right?
I will link this here.
It's very, very important. This is from 2015.
That it's very important to you look into the history of the U.S. hand in the Syrian mess.
So... Syria's current leader, Bashar al-Assad, replaced his autocratic father as president and head of the ruling Baath Party in 2000.
He was only 35 years old.
He was educated in England.
He aroused widespread hopes at home and abroad of introducing reforms and liberalizing the regime.
In his first year, he freed hundreds of political prisoners and shut down a notorious prison, though his security forces resumed cracking down on dissenters a year later.
So there's kind of two cultures in the world, right?
So there's a culture. It generally comes out of the Christian culture, the Greek culture, the Greek philosophical culture.
And what it says is, okay, if you and I are sitting down, we have opposite approaches, opposite perspectives, opposite opinions.
If I make a concession, you will walk towards me.
You will make a concession and we'll find something in the middle that is civilized that we can both live with, right?
On other cultures though, other cultures, if you offer up a concession, that is considered a sign of weakness and you're going to get shafted.
And our failure to understand the distinction and difference between these two cultures is fundamental to the disasters currently raging through the world.
But almost from the start, Assad was mocked by the George W. Bush administration for regime change.
Then, in the early years of Barack Obama's presidency, there were some attempts at diplomatic engagement, but shortly after a civil conflict broke out in 2011, the legacy of official U.S. hostility towards Syria set in motion Washington's disastrous confrontation with Assad, which continues to this day.
Now people say, ah, but there was a drought.
It's like, yeah, well, there have been droughts all over the world.
Droughts in California doesn't mean that that results in civil war.
Well, yet at least. The history of the Bush administration's approach towards Syria is important to understand.
Shortly after 9-11, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned from a Pentagon source that Syria was on the same hit list as Iraq.
As Clark recalled, the Bush administration, quote, wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, to turn it upside down, make it under our control.
Huh! The Middle East really seemed to be quite a big focus of American foreign policy, doesn't it?
Sure enough, in a May 2002 speech entitled Beyond the Axis of Evil under Secretary of State John Bolton, yes, that's right, some people who are stone evil have big mustaches, named Syria as one of the handful of rogue states, along with Iraq, that can expect to become our targets.
Assad's conciliatory and cooperative gestures were brushed aside.
The Assad regime received no credit from President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney for becoming what scholar Kilikbugra Kanat has called, quote, one of the CIA's most effective intelligence allies in the fight against terrorism.
Not only did the regime provide life-saving intelligence on planned Al-Qaeda attacks, it did the CIA's dirty work of interrogating terrorism suspects rendered by the United States from Afghanistan and other theaters.
Syria's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its suspected involvement in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Haridi deepened the administration's hostility towards Damascus.
Covertly, Washington began collaborating with Saudi Arabia to back Islamist opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Seymour Hersh, one key beneficiary was said to be Abdul Halim Kadam, a former Syrian vice president who defected to the West in 2005.
In March 2006, Kadam joined with the chief of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood to create the National Salvation Front with the goal of ousting Assad, thanks to WikiLeaks, another reason why.
Of course, Julian Assange remains a political prisoner, being basically tortured to death through neglect.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, we know that key Lebanese politicians acting in concert with Saudi leaders urged Washington to support Qaddam as a tactic to accomplish, quote, complete regime change in Syria, and to address, quote, the bigger problem, quote, of Iran, now being addressed by its perhaps bioweapons work with China.
Meanwhile... The Assad regime was striving mightily to reduce its international isolation by reaching a peace settlement with Israel.
It began secret talks with Israel in 04 in Turkey, and by the following year, quote, had reached a very advanced form and covered territorial, water, border, and political questions.
That's nice for them to try and seek peace with Israel.
I'm sure that's going to work out just fine for them.
A host of senior Israelis, including former heads of the IDF, Shin Bet, and foreign ministry, backed the talks.
But the Bush administration nixed them, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak confirmed in January 2007.
Oh, are you pursuing peace, Mr.
Al-Assad? Well, we here in Washington can put a big stop to that pretty damn quickly.
The Bush administration's role in scuttling any peace accord was decisive.
C. David Welsh, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, sat in at the final meeting, and two former senior CIA officials were present in all those meetings and sent regular reports to Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
Just wretched.
In March 2007, McClatchy broke a story that the Bush administration had, quote, launched a campaign to isolate and embarrass Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The campaign, which some officials fear is aimed at destabilizing Syria, has been in the works for months.
It involves escalating attacks on Syria's human rights record.
The campaign appears to fly in the face of the recommendations last December of the bipartisan Iraq study group, which urged President Bush to engage diplomatically with Syria to stabilize Iraq and address the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The officials say the campaign bears the imprint of Elliott Abrams, a conservative White House aide in charge of pushing Bush's global democracy agenda.
So you can read more on this.
I just want to touch on this a tiny little bit more.
Attempting once again.
To break the impasse, Cheney, of course, was an implacable opponent of engagement with Syria.
Attempting to break the impasse, Syria's ambassador did the U.S. call for talks to achieve full peace agreement with Israel in late July 2008.
We desire to recognize each other and end the state of war, Imab Mustafa said in remarks broadcast on Israeli Army Radio.
Here is then a grand thing on offer.
Let us sit together, let us make peace, let us end once and for all the state of war.
Three days later, Israel responded by sending a team of commandos into Syria to assassinate a Syrian general as he held a dinner party at his home on the coast.
A top-secret summary by the National Security Agency called it, quote, the first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate government official.
Known. Just two months later, U.S. military forces launched a raid into Syria ostensibly to kill an Al-Qaeda operative which resulted in the death of eight unarmed civilians.
The Beirut Daily Star wrote, quote, the suspected involvement of some of the most vociferous anti-Syria hawks at the highest levels of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have combined with the U.S. silence on the matter to fuel a guessing game as to just exactly who ordered or approved Sunday's cross-border raid.
Anyway, it just goes on and on and on.
I won't read you the whole thing. You can read it yourself.
But that's why, you see, earlier I was kind of talking about war crimes.
And you see, this is how strange the modern world has become relative to human history, with the possible exception of the late Roman Empire.
So, in the past, if country A wanted to invade country B, country A would gather its armies and its air force or whatever, its spears, and would charge into country B. Country B would resist and fight back.
And if country A overtook country B, they'd take over the tax structure, they'd ship off all the art and gold and sometimes the women and so on.
And that's how It used to work in the past.
Now, there's a very odd situation where you can go into a country as a refugee, and some of them are legitimate and all that, but, you know, there's a lot that aren't.
And I think it was only two or three percent of the asylum claims in Italy that were found out to be legitimate.
So you can go into that country, and you can, using the power and the force of the welfare state, extract resources from that country for your own benefit, You can earn 10 to 20 times more on welfare in Germany than you would earn in a job in the Middle East.
So you can go and sit on the taxpayer's dollar and extract resources without crossing the border with any weaponry.
Without any armies, you can go and get resources from the host country through the armed redistributionist power Welcome to my show!
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