There’s 1 Group Of People Not At All Surprised By Donald Trump Letting Turkey Massacre US Allies
Credit to Author: Zachary Shahan| Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2019 02:22:16 +0000
Published on October 10th, 2019 | by Zachary Shahan
October 10th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan
It’s a shame — you’ve got a poor economy almost completely dependent on one industry (the oil industry) that is controlled by corrupt oligarchs, and that country’s totally corrupt president is apparently running foreign policy for what is supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth. It’s like a privileged, educated 20-year-old with kind and thoughtful parents who has fallen under the spell (or control) of a nasty, corrupt, immoral, drug-addicted street thug.
That is, unfortunately, the story we have today.
Image by DonkeyHotey (CC BY-SA 2.0 license)
Let’s start off with a bullet list of actions and then consider in a second list who benefits from each of them.
Yes, Donald Trump is behind each of those implemented decisions and repeated efforts or proposals, and others — many others — that could have been on this list.
The next task is not that hard, but I think taking a moment to think about each item is useful (and look up the full backstory if you’re not familiar with it). As I said, the task is to now list who most benefited from each of those things. The answers:
Is there a pattern? Perhaps.
What’s the source of the pattern? I’ll discuss some options in a minute, but let’s get to the news first.
Republican allies in Congress, associates in the White House, and high-ranking members of the military were reportedly shocked this week to see Donald Trump announce a full withdrawal of the US from Syria. here are many reasons for the shock, but two things were apparent — Republicans in Congress were definitely shocked, yet this is something Trump knew very well would be opposed by his top party colleagues.
Indeed, Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned from his position in protest after Trump wanted to do this at the end of 2018. Top Senate ally Lindsey Graham reportedly let many issues with Trump slide and defended him in absurd ways time and time again specifically so that Trump would stick to US interests on this matter.
Despite Trump’s previous plan to do this (quietly) around Christmas of last year, Senator Graham, Senator Marco Rubio, and many others are in shock about the decision. The Kurds, some of our best allies for decades, men and women who shared blood (literally) with US soldiers and lost thousands of lives in the fight against ISIS while Americans lost none, were totally betrayed and are already starting to be massacred by the Turkish army thanks to our withdrawal.
Not only that! The US just threw the worth of its word in the trash. The US just showed the world, especially those in the Middle East, that the American word is worth nothing. We didn’t have to do much to continue protecting our longtime allies — we just had to be there.
Over a thousand ISIS prisoners are also reportedly expected to be let loose — left unguarded — as the Kurds struggle to survive against Turkey. This creates a clear and specific threat for the USA.
In the eyes of those who are shocked at the decision, not least of them being Trump’s “friends” in Congress, there is no clear reason for this move. It makes no sense. It is baffling, illogical, heartless, one might even say evil, and it greatly harms US national security. In the eyes of one group of people, it makes complete sense. It is not surprising at all. It was expected.
That group is people who could see — unwilling to choose hope over logic — that Donald Trump is compromised in some way and consistently works to do what is in Russia’s interest, including in many cases when that is directly opposite US interests.
I should really clarify and correct something here — many of these things are actually not necessarily in Russia’s interests, but they are in Putin’s interests. Russia is not a wealthy country and it is not egalitarian at all. It is heavily dependent on oil, it is hugely corrupt, and there’s a known group of super powerful and extremely rich oligarchs who funnel the money their way while letting most of the people of Russia suffer in poverty. Putin’s interests are not often Russia’s interests, but they are expressed that way since Putin is in charge or Russian foreign policy. Let’s get back to the topic at hand though
It genuinely seems like Trump has a clear bullet list of tasks he’s supposed to do for Putin. Maybe it’s not really like that, it’s all more subtle. Nonetheless, Donald Trump is very consistently doing things that only benefit Putin and his oligarch buddies, and specifically harm the USA.
Yes, he’s a traitor. No, this is not that complicated.
This is the open question. There are a few core possibilities, or even just two if you want to consolidate further.
The first topic concerns money. It is well known that Trump had several companies go bankrupt, he was not good at paying back loans (or paying contractors for that matter), and he almost entirely could not get money from US banks after a while. Putin has been grooming him since then, if not earlier. Trump family members have noted the help of Russians on multiple occasions. When bewildered with how Trump properties could keep developing in the midst of the economic crisis, Eric Trump reportedly told a golf journalist that they got a lot of money from Russians.
Very clearly, it is possible (actually, I would say it’s highly likely) that Trump is massively indebted to Russian billionaires.
Even if he wasn’t indebted to Putin and his top oligarch pals, one of the big business patterns in Trump’s life — aside from repeatedly getting bailed out by his dad and family members — is that his properties laundered money for sketchy rich people for decades. Trump’s real estate company has been dubbed “Russia’s laundromat.” So, there are clear subtle, or not so subtle, business entanglements between Trump and Russians, if not Putin himself. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.
The second major possibility — and I guess we should note these don’t have to be exclusive — is that Putin has some serious dirt on Trump and Trump doesn’t want it released. Perhaps Putin has evidence of serious crime. Perhaps he does have tapes of Trump doing some nasty shit with prostitutes in Russia. Perhaps Putin has recordings that could be disastrous for Trump if released. Perhaps Putin has Trump’s tax returns or can proof he’s a horrible businessman who is broke as hell. But with enough leverage over Trump and his fragile public image, it’s definitely possible — probably, even — that Trump is scared of Putin. He sure acts like it!
Whatever the reasons are, there is no longer and decent, logical argument that Trump chooses US interests over Putin’s interests. His score on that is actually approximately 0–30. The score is not even close. Donald Trump is a traitor. The Kurds are learning that lesson much later but in a much more difficult — fatal — way than most Americans.
Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin’ to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He’s also the CEO of Important Media. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA] — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in this company and feels like it is a good cleantech company to invest in. But he offers no investment advice and does not recommend investing in Tesla or any other company.