Dec. 21, 2018 - Steve Pieczenik
04:45
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi, this is Dr. | |
| Pachenik and it's before Christmas time and guess what? | |
| Our President Trump once again gave America a very special Christmas treat. | |
| We're pulling out 2,000 troops, American troops, from northern Syria as well as southern Syria. | |
| Why? | |
| Because he said we don't need to be there. | |
| And furthermore, why should we pay the billions of dollars when in fact it's the requirement of the countries that are in that area that should be maintaining the peace? | |
| Iran, Syria, Russia, France, and Israel. | |
| So what has he really done? | |
| Most people find that that's inappropriate. | |
| Many of the Senators in the State Department said, oh my God, this is going to be terrible. | |
| The answer is no. | |
| As many of you know, I went to Syria before the war. | |
| I explained to MI and G2 and others involved in national security. | |
| I was interrogated by the Syrians and I found out very clearly that the Syrians were not interested in the war. | |
| They were not interested in occupation by the Saudis and they were not interested in having homes in Hama. | |
| The two cities that were Sunni taking over Damascus. | |
| Nevertheless, thanks to the obstinacy of the Obama administration and Hillary, the Secretary of State, and Brennan, the CIA, they went in and tried to overthrow Bashar Assad. | |
| I warned everyone, don't do that. | |
| I know Bashar Assad. | |
| He is a diplomat of the Ophthalmological Society. | |
| He is smart. | |
| He is tough. | |
| His wife is an investment banker. | |
| And more importantly, I worked with his father, who was even tougher. | |
| So no one is going to depose Bashar Assad. | |
| More importantly, Trump understood that number one, the business of foreign policy is business. | |
| And what did he do? | |
| He said to Erdogan, guess what? | |
| I'm going to get out of Syria, but in return for which, you're going to give me $14 billion worth of dollars in order to buy our military equipment so that we can leave and I can get something out of it. | |
| In the same way he said to Saudi Arabia, you know what? | |
| I'm not going to negate your efforts. | |
| And I'm not going to go after Mohammed bin Salman, but in turn, you're going to pay $140 billion for all the equipment that you need from our military. | |
| So what happened? | |
| In effect, Trump has said the following. | |
| You, Erdogan, will be the number one Sunni nation of the Middle East. | |
| As I had predicted 20 years ago, Turkey has always been the Sunni nation. | |
| Number two, he said Iran will be the predominant Shiite power in the Middle East. | |
| Despite John Bolton's protestations, Iran will nevertheless be the predominant Shiite power. | |
| Why? | |
| Because Turkey has a very close relationship with Iran. | |
| And more importantly, Syria will have its own country. | |
| And that will be guaranteed by who else? | |
| But our very good friend Vladimir Putin. | |
| Contrary to all of the hoopla that came in this past three weeks, Vladimir Putin has been a very loyal ally to the United States. | |
| And to our interests in the Middle East, in fact, they took over our interests and will guarantee the peace between Turkey, Iran, Syria, Israel, and it will be Russia. | |
| And in turn, Russia doesn't have to ship its S-400 intercontinental ballistic missiles and instead we will be providing them, the countries with We're good to | |
| go. | |
| And we're going to shift our interests and our concerns to the Far East, where SYNC PAC, with a quarter of a million our men, are positioned in such a way that the South China Sea can be still controlled by the United States without getting into conflict with President Xi. | |
| So, let me remind you of the following. | |
| A friend of mine who I worked with at the State Department and had become Deputy Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, once said, the business of foreign policy is business. |
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