Pages

Sunday, April 21, 2024

MidEast Africa 13, Notes from Mike Alunan

This is a good post by a friend Mike, a former BusinessMirror columnist, in our viber group Oplas Perspectives. Reposting with his permission, thanks Mike.
----------

Middle East Notes
by Michael "Mike" Alunan
April 20, 2024

America must  learn a lot from numerous lessons in  history,  otherwise  it  is  bound  to repeat past mistakes, to paraphrase a famous quote from George Santayana. As early as the time of the  Greeks,  the collapse of its civilization was a result of the internecine destructive 28-year war  among the Greek city states mainly because of hubris or arrogance and envy among each other. The US is in the same situation, so we are seeing increasingly Pax Americana (US Empire) on the decline.  And may implode  in the long-run with the financial bubble building up again that could burst and result in crisis worst  than 2008. 

Between 1947 and 1989, or the cold war alone,  the US thru its CIA tried regime change 72 times (See 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/23/the-cia-says-russia-hacked-the-u-s-election-here-are-6-things-to-learn-from-cold-war-attempts-to-change-regimes/).
This  excludes the dozens of involvement  in post-cold war military activities like Serbian -Croatia war from1991-95, Iraq war from 2003 to 2011, Afghanistan war from 2001 to 2021  fall of Khadafy in 2011, Maidan coup on Ukraine in 2014, and many more. In fact, ever  since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, or after the so-called "Cold War" the CIA has been involved in many covert operations,  supporting  mass movements  and opposition groups and color revolutions, and in Eastern Europe were  partly responsible for the 5 waves of conversions of most Eastern European states to NATO. Once joining NATO, the US sets up military bases and ballistic missiles, This is fully documented  in a book  in 2021 by M. E.  Sarotte entitled  "NOT ONE INCH: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate" – Cold War.

Let's not forget the CIA has been behind the "terrorsist groups," ethnic  groups  and freedom fighters  like Mujahideen which evolved into what is now Al Qaeda,  and other terrorist groups  like  ISIS,  Al Nustra, Kurds etc, all  involved now in the continuous campaign towards regime change  in Syria. I am not  in favor  of  Iran and its  Islamic theocracy, but let's face it,  It is  Iran  that has  been fighting these  terrorists  like  ISIS and Al Qaeda, backed indirectly by the CIA.  

A great  source  too  of  updated geo-political analyses  are the You  Tube interviews of prolific  book  author intellectual  and deep ex-CIA intelligence officer  Scott Ritter,  who has  about  10 published  books to his  name,  and  is  fairly  objective  in making his  updated analyses  on the recent Ukraine  and  Iran-Israel  conflicts.

On the recent Iran-Israel  conflict,  which could  potentially and dangerously   trigger  a  global economic  crisis  or  possibly  escalate into a nuclear  war, we hope not,  Scott  Ritter, who has  a full  grasp of facts and privileged  intel information,  says Iran  is not  after  a war  with  Israel, for many reasons,  and  has thus kept its cool and  strategic  patience the past  few years  and  decades, and  avoided  DIRECT confrontation, despite getting  hit the past  years and  decades by  a series of  Mossad  assassinations  of its  top  officers,  nuclear  scientists,  its top  general  Sulahmeini,  et al.  Of course, just like the US and Israel, Iran also funds proxy wars  like the Houthis of Yemen,  Hezbollah  and Hamas. Recently,  it is Israel and US, which now appear  like rogue  states, compared  to Iran, owing to their  actual actions.

Iran is more serious at building peace and development and has made peace with its arch rival Saudi  Arabia after fighting for 7-8 years in a proxy war over Yemen,  following a peace settlement  brokered by China. Both Iran and Saudi  have also joined BRICS, along with Egypt, Ethiopia, and United Arab Emirates.  About 31 or 41 more countries have signified their  interest of joining BRICS,  many because  of fears they can also be victims of US sanctions like what US did in freezing  Russia's $300 Billion  assets or Afghanistan's $9 Billion, and other forms of pressures and sanctions, triggering jitters and the current shift to de-dollarization, the increasing interest in BRICS, etc. Jeffrey Sachs, a world-known economist, is also a good source of updates on economic and geo-political trends.  Iran and Russia  are also developing an alternative. Iran is also building together with Russia alternative multi-modal transport alternatives to the Suez Canal, only as a result of the sanctions, etc.   

Iran only struck directly at Israel last April 14,  in retaliation of Israel's April 1 fighter  jet  attacks on Iran's consular office in Damascus, Syria, killing 2 generals and other top  level officials. This obviously violated Article 51 of the UN Charter  and Geneva and Vienna  conventions,  which make the Damascus consulate a sovereign territory  and justifying an appropriate retaliation vs. Israel.  Iran was not serious  with harming Israel, or killing Israelis,  as it even sought UN Security  Council response on Israel's violations of international law, but got no positive response over its complaint over Israel's violation of international law and even Western world's self-imposed "Rules-Based  Order." It also gave Israel and the US 72 hours prior warning on its plan to attack Israel, giving the latter ample time to prepare and move valuable assets. On top of this 72 hours, Iran gave another 5 hours warning before its actual  attack sending initially its drones, which took 4 hours to travel, giving time for Israel, US and other  allies to prepare and shoot down the drones. The missiles followed and hitting two Israeli bases, but  not causing major damages. Except a girl as collateral  damage.  Iran had no intentions of killing people,  otherwise it should  not have  given  series  of prior warnings.      

With his apparent failure at his Gaza genocide project, Netanyahu believes his only way to cling to power is to widen the war in the Middle East and forcibly bring US to its rescue.  Otherwise, Netanyahu will be toppled from power, along with his  zealot Zionist  Knesset  cabinet. We do not condone Hamasy Before the Oct. 7 attack  of  Hamas.

We do not condone  Hamas'  Oct. 7 attack on Israel, but we grossly detest Israel's disproportionate  response towards  a genocide on  Gaza.  Before this  event,  there were  hundreds of thousands protesting against Netanyahu over charges of corruption and  other crimes.  So it seems  Netanyahu;s defense  is  to  go  offense,  and drag everyone down, including the  US,  as  he capitalizes  on the strong  Zionist lobby,  which  actually  also includes some 70 Million Christian  Zionist.  Many Jews  are distancing  themselves  from  the  Zionist, which is  a  racist oligarchic and militarist  ideology, making use of  twisted  biblical tales.
-------------

See also:
Unrest in MidEast-Africa 9: Gaddafi falldown, August 24, 2011
Unrest in MidEast Africa 10: Israel-Hamas War 2012, November 26, 2012
MidEast Africa 11: Egypt, Arab Spring and Capitalism, July 05, 2013
MidEast Africa 12: US-Iran conflict, June 21, 2019

No comments:

Post a Comment