The latest version of the October Surprise relates inevitably to the recent bout of President Donald Trump with COVD-19, which some conspiracy theorists are attributing to his having been deliberately infected by the Democrats to take him out of the race. There is no evidence to support such a claim and it is not even clear exactly how one would go about getting access to the president and introducing the virus.

Another recent version of the Surprise involves starting a little war to demonstrate national resolve and willingness to directly confront America’s enemies. It has been suggested that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo might be considering staging some kind of provocation or even a false flag operation that would result in open conflict with Iran or even Syria with the U.S. arguing that the fighting is both lawful and defensive in nature. Such as suggestion might be considered insanity, but there are signs that the U.S. in heightening its delegitimization campaign against Iran in particular. Unconfirmable allegations from anonymous U.S. government sources are surfacing about an alleged Iranian plot to kill the U.S. Ambassador in South Africa while Washington is now implementing new unilateral sanctions against Tehran as well as Damascus. The downside that suggests that starting something with Iran might be a bridge too far is the considerable ability of the Mullahs to strike back against U.S. forces in the region. Venezuela might be considered a much softer target, where the U.S. also has sanctions and a naval blockade in place.

But also given the fact that Trump’s taxes and Hunter Biden’s illegal meanderings in Eastern Europe have failed to arouse much public anger, perhaps the most interesting option for staging an October Surprise is already out on the table as it were and has been alluded to by a number of Republican politicians as well as by some of the punditry in the conservative media. It consists of a declassified letter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe. DNI Ratcliffe was responding to Graham’s request for an intelligence community overview of the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane. Crossfire Hurricane was the cover name given to what has turned out to be a possible Hillary Clinton initiated FBI-run largely clandestine defamation campaign directed against Trump and all his associates that may have been launched formally in July 2016.

In the letter, DNI Ratcliffe provided the following declassified information to the Senate committee for its consideration. The letter was received by Graham on September 29^, the same day as the first presidential debate. The key points are:

• “In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

• “According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”
• “On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.’”

Noting the fact that the Bureau did not aggressively follow-up on the claims regarding Clinton, who was expected to win the election, Graham subsequently commented on the letter, saying “This latest information provided by DNI Ratcliffe shows there may have been a double standard by the FBI regarding allegations against the Clinton campaign and Russia. Whether these allegations are accurate is not the question. The question is, did the FBI investigate the allegations against Clinton like they did Trump? If not, why not? If so, what was the scope of the investigation? If none, why was that?”

The Ratcliffe letter was followed by a committee review of the confidential information that supported the claims made in the letter. On the following day, the committee questioned former head of the FBI James Comey who implausibly claimed that Crossfire Hurricane “didn’t ring a bell,” before asserting that his bureau “did not intentionally commit wrongdoing” though there may have been some “real sloppiness” on the part of some FBI employees.

An angry Donald Trump subsequently ordered that all the documents relating to the Russiagate investigation be declassified, but neither the CIA nor the FBI appears to be in any hurry to comply, so there are unlikely to be any new revelations before the election.

So the real smoking pistol that might have turned into an October Surprise may have been the expectation on the part of some Senate Republicans that the story about Hillary Clinton personally initiating an illegal conspiracy involving the FBI and intelligence community to destroy a political rival would take off politically. As President Barack Obama reportedly was briefed on what was taking place and signed off on it, it is plausible that Biden as Vice President was also in the loop. That might have been enough to turn voters against Joe Biden and the party that he represents.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, the U.S. media has not taken the bait. The tale revealed by the Ratcliffe-Graham letter was hardly replayed in the mainstream and there were few in the public space who stridently demanded that Hillary Clinton publicly face the consequences for her illegal and one might even suggest treasonous actions. Hatred of Trump in the media seemingly cancels out all other considerations, particularly when it is the Democrats who are behaving badly.

And now time is running out. If either party has an October Surprise up its sleeve it had better produce it soon. Only about three weeks to go until the election.

Patrick LAWRENCE

In less than a week, a new front has opened in Syria’s 8-year, all-but-over war, featuring hot- and cold-running proxies from its earliest days. Syrian sovereignty is once again violated as casually as a schoolboy cuts across a neighbor’s lawn. The Assad government in Damascus now faces a new threat to its stability. Thousands of Islamic State jihadists may now escape captivity and reactivate their savage campaign to turn Syria, a secular state, into an Islamic autocracy.

All this was set in motion when President Donald Trump advised Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Turkish counterpart and one of the Middle East’s most unprincipled despots, that U.S. troops would withdraw from positions in northeastern Syria in advance of a Turkish attack on Kurdish forces in the area. Trump spoke to Erdogan by telephone the Sunday before last. The Turkish incursion commenced three days later.

Whether or not Trump “green-lighted” Erdogan’s long-planned attack on Syrian Kurds got a lot of ink last week, but it is not an interesting question. Of course, he did. Here is the interesting question: Is the mess now unfolding along Syria’s border with Turkey precisely the outcome the national security state desired when Trump let the green light shine? Was the perfectly predictable chaos, destruction, and desperation enveloping the region somehow unforeseen? Or was it, from the perspective of Washington’s hawkish, coup-cultivating factions, the fundamental point of this latest travesty on Syrian soil?

By appearances, at least, Washington is now deeply divided on the new Syrian crisis. A firestorm of tweets burst into flame as soon as Trump’s decision to pull back troops hit the news last Monday morning. “If press reports are accurate, this is a disaster in the making,” Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, wrote in a series of tweets. “If this plan goes forward will introduce Senate resolution opposing and asking for reversal of this decision. Expect it will receive strong bipartisan support.”

I am pleased to have reached a bipartisan agreement with Senator @ChrisVanHollen on severe sanctions against Turkey for their invasion of Syria.

While the Administration refuses to act against Turkey, I expect strong bipartisan support. pic.twitter.com/Ph5fIVt7k3

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) 9 октября 2019 г.

Graham got his bipartisan support swiftly and in spades. By the end of the day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a bevy of other Capitol Hill Democrats lined up behind Graham, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican heavyweights. On Wednesday, Graham and Chris van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, introduced a bill in the Senate to impose sanctions against Erdogan and the Turkish military.

The running theme among Trump’s critics is that he has betrayed the Syrian Kurds, who have fought loyally and effectively against the Islamic State for years. Graham called this “a stain on America’s honor” and warned in Twitter-speak that Trump’s decision “ensures ISIS comeback.” This is one side of the story in Washington.

There is another.

That U.S. Air Base in Turkey

The Pentagon, the national security apparatus, and the intelligence agencies have valued Turkey as a sometimes difficult but always essential ally since the Cold War decades. The air base at Incirlik, which the U.S. military built in the 1950s, now hosts roughly 5,000 Air Force personnel and stores its tactical nuclear weapons. Beginning in mid–2015, U.S. planes used Incirlik to fly sorties over Syria. This is the other side of the Washington story.

What happened last week is easier to understand against this background. While press reports suggest Trump acted spontaneously and alone when he telephoned Erdogan, it is highly improbable, if not beyond imagining, that Trump made his decision to green-light Erdogan in isolation. It is far more likely, if it is not certain, that the defense and national security establishments had made a choice by the time Trump picked up the telephone the Sunday evening before last: Long term, Turkey will prove a far more effective check on the government of President Bashar al–Assad, the Iranians and ultimately the Russians than Kurdish militias could ever be. Better to betray the Kurds (for the eighth time in nearly a century) than risk another kerfuffle with the erratic and irascible Erdogan.

U.S. Air Force members at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, talk to President Donald Trump via video link, Nov. 23, 2017.(U.S. Air Force/Jason Huddleston)

It is not difficult to reckon which faction in Washington’s foreign-policy cliques will prevail in this apparent standoff. Striking noble poses is nothing new among the grandstanders who populate Capitol Hill. Let us not forget these are the same people who have long supported an extensive covert action program against the Assad government. When, in any case, was the last time the U.S. did anything anywhere on Earth in the name of principle? (Did someone actually say “America’s honor?”)

There is something decidedly upside down at the core of the past week’s events. Trump has been right since his campaigning days to demand an end to America’s wars of adventure and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from places they have no business deploying. He was right to announce the withdrawal of troops from Syria late last year — an executive order swiftly stonewalled. Now he is right to order the withdrawal of troops from northeastern Syria. Until Washington learns to act in the name of global peace and order instead of imperial hegemony, rarely will it be wrong to propose bringing American troops home.

But in acting on his frequently stated conviction two Sundays ago, Trump is effectively serving the very interests he set out to counter when he campaigned for the presidency. These interests have tenaciously sought to destabilize Syria and depose the Assad government since early 2012 at the very latest. In net terms, Trump has just given these efforts a boost it is difficult to believe he intended.

Erdogan’s Involvement

Erdogan’s pernicious involvement in the Syrian conflict dates to its beginning in 2011. By 2013, Turkey was a vital conduit for arms and chemical-weapons shipments to jihadists active in Syria. By 2015 there was plentiful evidence that Turkey was a conduit in the other direction — this time for shipments of oil the Islamic State had pumped from captured Syrian wells. A year later, Erdogan sent troops into northern Syria in pursuit of Kurdish YPG militias, which he terms terrorists even as they have proven the most effective force in northern Syria against the Islamic State.

Erdogan is now newly empowered. Press reports over the weekend indicate that the “Syrian fighters” accompanying Turkish troops are the same murderous jihadists the State Department and the media have infamously labeled “moderate rebels” for the past eight years. Whose interests are served by this recrudescence of savagery? Why is the American press again obscuring the true identity of these ghastly fundamentalists?

Along with Britain, France and several Middle Eastern nations, the U.S. actively armed, trained, financed and equipped these same jihadists from the first months of the Syrian conflict. Washington has also been complicit, in many cases directly and actively, in enabling the Islamic State  since it crossed into Syria from Iraq in 2014. For the disbelieving and the naïve, this was no more than a rerun of the strategy that former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski persuaded President Jimmy Carter to adopt in Afghanistan in 1979: Arm the jihadists and ignore their radical ideology.

President Donald J. Trump in bilateral meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at G-20 Japan Summit, June 29, 2019, in Osaka, Japan. (White House/ Shealah Craighead)

There is no indication covert American efforts to topple the Assad government by arming jihadist militias have ceased. Are we now reading the latest chapter in the story of these efforts?

Trump has a few good ideas on the foreign-policy side, but he is a dreadful statesman. He could have navigated this latest attempt to take a small step back from imperial dominion while averting the contradictions just outlined. The key here is the principle of territorial integrity. Russian President Vladimir Putin invoked it over the weekend. So did France and Germany, which just suspended arms shipments to Turkey. So did the Arab League, in an excellently worded statement issued Saturday.

Washington honors the sovereignty of other nations only when it serves U.S. interests. The corporate press never mentions this principle when reporting on illegal U.S. incursions into nations such as Syria. Trump just missed an opportunity to pull back troops without inducing what shapes up as another bloodbath. When Treasury Secretary Mnuchin threatened Friday to impose sanctions against Turkey, it was intended primarily to forestall Graham’s bill in the Senate — penny-ante politics. Erdogan’s new Syria campaign was in its third day by then — a stark fact on the ground.

As to the Syrian Kurds, they committed Sunday to ally with the Syrian Arab Army against the Turkish incursion. It is where their best interests have lain all along. The SAA will now enter northeastern Syria for the first time in five years. And the Kurds will no longer collaborate with the Americans to keep Damascus from reuniting the nation. This is a positive outcome.

consortiumnews.com

In September 1939, World War II began when Great Britain and France came to the assistance of Poland after the German Army invaded, fulfilling a “guarantee” made in March of that year. What was a regional war, and one that might have been resolved through diplomacy, became global.

One would think that after such commitments were assessed by historians as the immediate causes of two world wars, no one would ever consider going down that road again. But that would be reckoning without Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who has been calling for a “defense treaty” with Israel since last April. In his most recent foray, Graham announced late in July that he is seeking bipartisan support for providing “blank check” assurances to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is hoping to be able to push a complete defense treaty through the Senate by next year.

In making his several announcements on the subject, Graham has been acting as a front man for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and also for The Jewish Institute for the National Security of America (JINSA), which wrote the basic document that is being used to promote the treaty and then enlisted Graham to obtain congressional support.

Speaking to the press on a JINSA conference call, Graham said the proposed agreement would be a treaty that would protect Israel in case of an attack that constituted an “existential threat”. Citing Iran as an example, Graham said the pact would be an attempt to deter hostile neighbors like the Iranians who might use weapons of mass destruction against Israel. JINSA President Michael Makovsky elaborated on this, saying, “A mutual defense pact has a value in not only deterring but might also mitigate a retaliatory strike by an adversary of Israel, so it might mitigate an Iranian response (to an attack on its nuclear facilities).”

JINSA director of foreign policy Jonathan Ruhe added that “An Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program would not activate this pact, but a major Iranian retaliation might. – An Israeli unilateral attack is not what the treaty covers, but rather massive Iranian retaliation is what we are addressing.”

Israel has long been reluctant to enter into any actual treaty arrangement with the United States because it might limit its options and restrain its aggressive pattern of military incursions. In that regard, the Graham-JINSA proposal is particularly dangerous as it effectively permits Israel to be interventionist with a guarantee that Washington will not seek to limit Netanyahu’s “options.” And, even though the treaty is reciprocal, there is no chance that Israel will ever be called upon to do anything to defend the United States, so it is as one-sided as most arrangements with the Jewish state tend to be.

As the agreement between the two countries would be a treaty ratified by the Senate, it would be much more difficult to scrap by subsequent administrations than was the Iran nuclear deal, which was an executive action by President Obama. And clearly the statements by Graham, Makovsky and Ruhe reveal this treaty would serve as a green light for an Israeli attack on Iran, should they opt to do so, while also serving as a red light to Tehran vis-à-vis an ironclad US commitment to “defend” Israel that would serve to discourage any serious Iranian retaliation. Given that dynamic, the treaty would be little more than a one-way security guarantee from Washington to Jerusalem.

Furthermore, in outlining what circumstances would trigger US intervention on Israel’s behalf, the JINSA/Graham document cites, inter alia, “the threat or use of weapons of mass destruction.” It also allows Netanyahu to call for assistance after defining as threatening any incident or development “that gives rise to an urgent request from the Government of Israel.” It appears then that Netanyahu could demand that the US attack Iran should he only perceive a threat, however vague that threat might in reality be.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been claiming Iran is “three to five years” and “possibly weeks” away from a nuclear weapons capability since 1992 and pushing Washington to attack Iran so he obviously would welcome such a treaty for strategic reasons as well as to shore up his upcoming re-election bid. President Trump, with whom Graham has discussed how the agreement would work, has a similar interest in appearing strong for Israel to help his own campaign in 2020.

It is worth noting that in 2010 Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to prepare to strike Iran but ‘Israel’s security chiefs refused: Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the IDF, and Meir Dagan, the head of the Mossad at the time, believed that Netanyahu and the Defense Minister Ehud Barak were trying to “steal a war” and the order was not carried out. The attacks were also rejected by two ministers, Moshe Yaalon and Yuval Steinitz, which left Netanyahu without the necessary majority to proceed.

Ashkenazi claimed in a 2012 interview about the episode that he was convinced that an attack would be have been a major strategic mistake. Meir Dagan said in 2012, after leaving his role as Mossad chief, that a strike would be “a stupid thing” as the entire region would undoubtedly be destabilized, requiring repeated Israeli and American interventions.

And there are other issues arising from a “defense treaty.” Defense means just that and treaties are generally designed to protect a country within its own borders. Israel has no defined borders as it is both expansionistic and illegally occupying Palestinian land, so the United States would in effect be obligated to defend space that Israel defines as its own. That could mean almost anything. Israel is currently bombing Syria almost daily even though it is not at war with Damascus. If Syria were to strike back and Graham’s treaty were in place, Washington would technically be obligated to come to Israel’s assistance. A similar situation prevails with Lebanon and there are also reports that Israel is bombing alleged Iranian supply lines in Iraq, where the US has 5,000 troops stationed.

The real problem is that the Trump administration is obsessed with regime change in Iran, but it has so far been unable to provoke Iran into starting a conflict. Graham’s proposed treaty just might be part of a White House plan to end-run Congress and public opinion by enabling Israel to start the desired war, whereupon the US would quickly follow in to “defend Israel,” obliged by treaty to do so. What could possibly go wrong? The correct answer is “everything.”

Most media commentary on the speech was either shocked or pleasantly surprised by Pence’s prediction that the graduating officers would soon be at war. He said “It is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen. Some of you will join the fight against radical Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific, where North Korea continues to threaten the peace, and an increasingly militarized China challenges our presence in the region. Some of you will join the fight in Europe, where an aggressive Russia seeks to redraw international boundaries by force. And some of you may even be called upon to serve in this hemisphere. And when that day comes, I know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight, and you will win. The American people expect nothing less. So, wherever you’re called, I urge you to take what you learned here and put it into practice. Put your armor on, so that when — not if — that day comes, you’ll be able to stand your ground.”

Pence may or may not have known that military academy graduates have only a five-year active duty commitment after graduation. Many do not stay in the service after that point, instead using their security clearances and resumes to obtain well paying positions with defense and national security contractors. If Pence was aware of that five-year window, he was implying that he expects multiple wars will involve the United States during his own remaining time in office, assuming that he and President Donald Trump are reelected in 2020. He might even be assuming that war is inevitable no matter who is in the driver’s seat in the White House because America’s numerous enemies, which he identified, cannot otherwise be dissuaded from their “nefarious behavior.”

Pence’s choice of words is revealing. There is a “virtual certainty” of “fight[ing] on a battlefield for America” and that battlefield is global, including both transnational Islamic terrorism and the western hemisphere. The language implies that American security requires “full spectrum dominance” everywhere. It encompasses traditional national enemies, with a Pyongyang that “threatens peace,” a China that is “militarized,” and a Russia that is both “aggressive” and expansionistic. The soldiers must be prepared to fight “when – not if – that day comes.”

First of all, it is discouraging to note that Pence believes that a war or wars must take place, and further, one must have to wonder exactly what scenarios are envisioned by Pence, and also presumably by his boss and colleagues, regarding precisely how war against other nuclear powers will play out. Nor does he entertain what would happen when the rest of the world begins to perceive the United States at its enemy due to its willingness to interfere in everyone’s politics. And the American soldiers would die not knowing what they were fighting for, since they would understand from the onset that it had nothing to do with the defense of the United States.

The speech is, in short, a recognition that the Trump Administration sees perpetual war on the horizon, a viewpoint that is particularly alarming as one can quite easily make the case that the United States is not seriously threatened at all by anyone on Pence’s enemies list and is therefore the aggressor. China is a regional power, Russia does not have the resources or will to reestablish the Soviet Union, and North Korea has only limited capability to attack anyone, even if it should choose to do so. Islamic terrorism is largely a creation of the United States in the first place and maintains its potency by the adverse impact of the continued US presence in Muslim lands. And the suggestion that Venezuela and/or Cuba might be a threat to America is, quite frankly, laughable.

If Mike Pence is seriously interested in looking around to see who has been most interested in starting new wars, he should look to gentlemen named Bush and Obama, not to mention his own colleagues John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. And then there are Washington’s feckless allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are keen to advance their own interests by means of piles of dead American soldiers.

Is there no one around to question why exactly American soldiers are sent to die in so many places that can hardly be found on a map? Or to ask what the compelling national interests might be to require sending soldiers to such God-forsaken death pits? One can be sure that the newly minted Army officers that Pence addressed have no desire to be killed in Mali, but it would take a brave young man or woman to speak the truth if asked by a senior officer.

And Pence unfortunately has many friends who believe in force majeure as he does on Capitol Hill. Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News Sunday the day after the Vice President spoke and said “I would give Cuba an ultimatum to get out of Venezuela. If they don’t, I would let the Venezuelan military know, you got to choose between democracy and Maduro, and if you choose Maduro and Cuba, we are coming after you. This is in our backyard.”

It should be clearly understood Pence, Graham and Pompeo are all calling for wars of choice, where the military is being used as an option rather than diplomacy in a situation where there is no imminent threat. Iraq, Syria and Libya are examples of such wars and all three have turned out very badly. And then there is the moral dimension. By the standard set by the Nuremberg Trials after World War 2, initiating an armed conflict in that fashion is a war crime. Indeed, it is the ultimate war crime as it brings so many evils with it. Mike Pence’s vision of America the perpetual war criminal is not something to be proud of.

Graham, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw some 2,000 US troops from Syria, drew parallels between this move and America’s disastrous military campaign in Iraq, which culminated in the most unacceptable scenario for any neoconservative ‘hawk on steroids’ and that is a tail-between-the-legs withdrawal.

"So I told President Trump – if you withdraw and do not think this through, you're creating a nightmare for Turkey," Graham said from Ankara, the Turkish capital. “This is going to be Iraq on steroids.”

Considering that Washington has behaved as a lawless belligerent in Iraq, exactly as it has been in Syria and Libya, talk of a withdrawal that is “too early” is the height of arrogance and hubris. The fact is US forces had no right to be in any of those places, where their status is that of brute occupiers.

Meanwhile, Graham, who should be required to mention every time he opens his mouth that his two largest campaign donors are Lockheed Martin and General Electric, failed to mention who has been injecting those “steroids” into the Syria theater. Top honors in that category would have to go to the US military and Israel Defense Forces. At the time of this writing (Monday morning, Moscow time), the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that four Syrian servicemen were killed in yet another Israeli aerial strike. There was also damage sustained near Damascus International Airport.  

Israel says it carried out the attack in response to Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards launching a missile over the Golan Heights, an area seized from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. The Israeli government said its Iron Dome aerial defense system repelled the alleged strike.

To add insult to injury, the IDF warned Syria not to respond to attacks on its own territory.

"During our strike, dozens of Syrian surface-to-air missiles were launched, despite clear warnings to avoid such fire. In response, we also targeted several of the Syrian Armed Forces' aerial defense batteries," the IDF wrote.

Accusing Iran of an attempted attack against Israel from Syria is an explosive development, not least of all because Syrian President Bashar Assad has already stated that Iran has no troop presence in his country, only advisors. Moreover, Israel’s uncorroborated accusation fails to take into account Russia’s influential role in Syria ever since it was invited into the country by Assad in order to help flush out Islamic State terrorists.

It is altogether inconceivable that Russia would allow Iran – in the highly unlikely event Tehran would be so rash as to carry out such an attack – to take any offensive measures against Israel from Syrian territory. Vladimir Putin has already pledged his commitment to help bolster security along the Israeli and Syrian border, so the last thing Tehran would want to do is violate this agreement.

Meanwhile, it should not be forgotten that Iran, to the extent that it is in Syria, is only there by invitation from President Assad. And since an attack on Israel from Syrian territory is the very last thing Damascus needs or wants, it is another reason Iran would never have committed itself to such a foolish move.

America’s self-fulfilling prophecy

The irony of Lindsey Graham warning that a US withdrawal from Syria could turn the country into “Iraq on steroids” is that US warmongering is what turned both Iraq and Syria into damaged goods. Graham apparently fails to appreciate the fact, or is not paid enough to admit it, that had Washington never launched an unprovoked attack against Saddam Hussein in 2003 there would never be an Islamic State in Syria today.

Like a stupid redneck who smashes up the Ford pickup during yet another late-night drinking binge, the United States will never admit it made a disastrous mistake by invading Iraq. It won’t enter a 12-step rehabilitation program for wayward superpowers. It won’t go to church and seek forgiveness on bloody knees. No, it will just keep digging deeper and deeper into the quagmire until something unholy emerges from the ooze and slime, something like Islamic State, the ultimate bogeyman.

Yet instead of the $700 billion US military knocking out this motley crew of malcontents in an afternoon with its omnipotent drone capabilities as ISIS was crossing wide open desert between Iraq and Syria in its menacing Toyota trucks, it allowed this group to metastasize to the ridiculous point that it was able to open a lucrative oil export business.

“The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory,” wrote Michel Chossudovsky in Global Research. “With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, F16) it would have been – from a military standpoint – a piece of cake, a rapid and expedient surgical operation, which would have decimated the Islamic State convoys in a matter of hours.”

I’m guessing Russia, certainly no slouch on military matters, understood this as well, and it was just around this time when it could watch the painful spectacle no more and entered the fray, largely annihilating the overrated band of common killers and street thugs in less than a week.

But now that Trump is threatening to hightail it out of Dodge, we are being treated to another bit of Islamic State Theater. Just weeks after Trump started the Deep State with his withdrawal threat, the Atlantic magazine introduced us to Zulfi Hoxha, the son of an Albanian-American pizza-shop owner from New Jersey, who worked his way up the terror ladder and is now “one of the very few Americans in the Islamic State’s upper ranks.”

Readers are even reminded of those gruesome beheadings that softened up Westerners for America’s illegal entry into Syria in the first place.

“If they are right about his identity, Hoxha is the first American Islamic State member known to be beheading individuals,” the magazine noted. “Hoxha is now known to have become a senior commander of Islamic State…”

Back to Lindsey Graham. His warning is reminiscent of Obama’s infamous “red line” comment where he said the thing that would “change my calculus” is for the “Assad regime” to carry out a chemical attack. That was no different from telling Assad’s enemies that if they dare ring this bell American forces will come storming to their defense. Never mind that Assad has no reason to resort to primitive weapons, but the ‘moderate’ rebels certainly do.

By Graham making such an announcement, he has awakened once again the anti-Assad forces, encouraging them to start rattling the cage to prevent Trump’s withdrawal from happening. We can already see how much the peacenik faction in Trump’s administration, made up of nice guys like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, are anxious to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Unfortunately, and potentially catastrophically, it appears that the United States and Israel will continue to find excuses for remaining in Syria, even if that means sparking a global conflagration of epic proportions. All that would take is a single spark.

he support of white evangelicals for Donald Trump continues to exasperate and perplex. About 80 percent of them voted for him in 2016—the most recorded for a Republican candidate since 2000—and his approval rating among them remains high. In June, some 1,000 evangelical pastors plan to meet the president, both to “celebrate” his accomplishments (as one leading pastor put it) and to rally Christians for the midterm elections. Neither Trump’s relations with Stormy Daniels, nor his endorsement of alleged sexual abuser Roy Moore, nor his reference to “shithole” countries, nor his toxic tweets, recurrent racism, or general crudity, have proved a deterrent to most conservative Christians—to the dismay of many commentators.

“I’m stunned at the evangelical support for this president,” Mika Brzezinski remarked recently on the MSNBC show Morning Joe. “I don’t understand it. It’s almost like they’re excited to be in the White House and get access to him.” Those in the evangelical community who are writing books about the president, she added, “are overlooking the most humongous moral failings.”

Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, took to the op-ed pages of The New York Times in December to explain “Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican.” Throughout his life, Wehner wrote, he had identified with evangelicalism and the Republican Party, but Trump and Moore were causing him to reconsider his affiliations: “Not because my attachment to conservatism and Christianity has weakened, but rather the opposite. I consider Mr. Trump’s Republican Party to be a threat to conservatism, and I have concluded that the term evangelical—despite its rich history of proclaiming the ‘good news’ of Christ to a broken world—has been so distorted that it is now undermining the Christian witness.”

The death of the Rev. Billy Graham in February set off a new round of chiding. In Politico, Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, wrote that “to chart the troubled recent course of American evangelicalism—its powerful rise after World War II and its surprisingly quick demise in recent years”—one need look no further than the differences between Graham and his eldest son, Franklin, who took over his empire. Where the father “was a powerful evangelist who turned evangelicalism into the dominant spiritual impulse in modern America,” Prothero wrote, his son is “a political hack” who “is rapidly rebranding evangelicalism as a belief system marked not by faith, hope, and love but by fear of Muslims and homophobia.”

The alarm over the evangelical embrace of Trump reached a crescendo with Michael Gerson’s cover story in the April issue of The Atlantic, “How Evangelicals Lost Their Way (and Got Hooked by Donald Trump).” Gerson—perhaps the most prominent evangelical writing in the mainstream media—stated that “Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership.” The president’s “unapologetic materialism” is “a negation of Christian teaching”; his tribalism and hatred for “the other” “stand in direct opposition to Jesus’s radical ethic of neighbor love”; his worship of strength and contempt for “losers” “smack more of Nietzsche than of Christ.” Christianity, Gerson declared, “is love of neighbor, or it has lost its way. And this sets an urgent task for evangelicals: to rescue their faith from its worst leaders.”

The verdict is clear: In supporting this thrice-married, coarse, boastful, divisive, and xenophobic president, evangelicals are betraying the true nature of Christianity. In making such charges, however, these commentators are championing their own particular definition of Christianity. It is the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus blesses the meek, disdains the rich, welcomes the stranger, counsels humility, and encourages charity. “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” he declares—a most un-Trumpian sentiment.

Yet this irenic message is just one strain in the New Testament. There’s another, more bellicose one. In Matthew, for instance, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword”—to “set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” In John, he declares, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” and “no one comes to the Father except through me”—a statement long used to declare Christianity the one true path to salvation. The Book of Revelation describes with apocalyptic fury the locusts, scorpions, hail, fire, and other plagues that God will visit upon the earth to wipe out the unbelievers and prepare the way for the Messiah.

From the earliest days of the faith, this militant strand has coexisted with the more pacific one. And it was the former that stirred the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther. In his fierce ideas, vehement language, and combative intellectual style, Luther prefigured modern-day evangelicalism, and a look back at his life can help explain why so many evangelicals support Trump today.

In defending the cause of Christ, Luther was uncompromising. No one, he wrote, should think that the Gospel “can be advanced without tumult, offense and sedition.” The “Word of God is a sword, it is war and ruin and offense and perdition and poison.” In Luther’s famous dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam over free will and predestination, the renowned Dutch humanist suggested that the two of them debate the matter civilly, given that both were God-fearing Christians and that the Bible was far from clear on the subject. Exploding in fury, Luther insisted that predestination was a core Christian doctrine on which he could not yield and that Erasmus’s idea that they agree to disagree showed he was not a true Christian.

Luther took as his watchword Romans 13: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities.”

In his later years, Luther produced venomous attacks on groups he considered enemies of Christ. In his notorious On the Jews and Their Lies, he denounced the Jews as “boastful, arrogant rascals,” “real liars and bloodhounds,” and “the vilest whores and rogues under the sun.” In Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil, he called the pope “a true werewolf,” a “farting ass,” and a “brothel-keeper over all brothel-keepers.” When in 1542 a Basel printer was preparing to bring out the first printed Latin version of the Quran, Luther contributed a preface explaining why he supported publication. It was not to promote interfaith understanding. By reading the Quran, he wrote, Christians could become familiar with “the pernicious beliefs of Muhammad” and more readily grasp “the insanity and wiles” of the Muslims. The learned must “read the writings of the enemy in order to refute them more keenly, to cut them to pieces and to overturn them.”

Luther arrived at his own interpretation of the Gospel after experiencing years of debilitating doubt as an Augustinian friar. The prescribed rituals and sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church—designed to offer a clear path to salvation—provided little relief. No matter how often he went to confession, no matter how fervently he prayed the Psalter, Luther felt undeserving of God’s grace. Sometime around 1515, while lecturing on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Luther had his great intellectual breakthrough: Salvation comes not from doing good works but through faith in Christ. Upon discovering this truth, Luther later wrote, “I was altogether born again” and “entered paradise itself through open gates.” In thus describing his sudden spiritual transformation, Luther provided a model for millions of later Protestants seeking similar renewal. Being born again is one of the defining characteristics of evangelicalism, and it was Luther who (along with Paul and Augustine) created the template.

Another key feature of evangelicalism is the central place of the Bible, and here, too, Luther provided the foundation. In his view, neither popes nor councils nor theologians have the authority to define the faith—the Bible alone is supreme. In his famous To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate of 1520, Luther described his world-altering concept of the priesthood of all believers: Every lay Christian, no matter how humble, has as much right to interpret the Bible as any pope or priest. Luther was thus shifting the locus of authority from credentialed elites to ordinary believers, empowering them to define their own faith.

In Europe, however, these populist ideas were quickly snuffed out. Kings and princes together with bishops and abbots cracked down on all who sought to apply them. The most dramatic case came during the German Peasants’ War of 1524–25, when farmers and laborers—inspired, in part, by Luther’s tracts—rose up against their secular and spiritual overlords. They were put down in a savage bloodletting that left more than 100,000 dead. Luther himself—fearing anarchy and furious at those who invoked his writings to better their lot—endorsed the slaughter in a lurid pamphlet titled Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants. “Let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab” the peasants, he wrote. “It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.”

Although the killings had started before Luther’s pamphlet appeared, he was strongly urged to retract his screed. He reluctantly prepared An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants, but, rather than disavow his position, he restated it in even starker terms. To those who said he was being unmerciful, he wrote, “this is not a question of mercy; we are talking of God’s word.” Luther was incapable of apologizing.

Luther’s peasant tracts badly damaged his reputation not only among the peasants but also among many of his fellow reformers. The experience hastened his own retreat from his early radicalism into a reactionary intransigence in which he opposed all forms of resistance to injustice and maintained that the only proper course for a Christian was to accept and acquiesce. He took as his watchword Romans 13: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities.” It was the individual who had to be reformed, not society. Luther also believed in the concept of the “two kingdoms,” the secular and the spiritual, which had to be kept rigorously apart. Christ’s Gospel was to apply only in the spiritual realm; in the secular, the government’s role was to maintain order and punish evildoers, not to show compassion and mercy. The Lutheran churches in Germany and Scandinavia (like most established churches in Europe as a whole) became arms of the state, developing a top-heavy bureaucracy that bred complacency, discouraged innovation, and caused widespread disaffection.

Not so in America: With no established churches to confront and freedom of worship guaranteed by the Constitution, American Christians have been free to create their own spiritual pathways. Over time, Luther’s core principles of faith in Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the priesthood of all believers became pillars of American Protestantism—especially of the evangelical variety.

Consider, for example, the Southern Baptists. With more than 15 million members and 47,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States; through its seminaries, publications, public-policy office, and network of missionaries, it has profoundly affected American social, cultural, and political life. The Southern Baptists’ various statements of belief bear Luther’s stamp throughout. The “starting point” of everything related to their churches, they declare, is each individual’s “personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of their lives.” Under the related doctrine of “soul competency,” the Southern Baptists affirm “the accountability of each person before God.” This is a plainspoken version of Luther’s doctrine of sola fide(“by faith alone”). The Bible, they further maintain, is the “supreme standard” by which all human conduct and religious opinion must be measured—a restatement of Luther’s principle of sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”). Finally, the Southern Baptists explicitly embrace the idea of the priesthood of all believers, asserting that “laypersons have the same right as ordained ministers to communicate with God, interpret Scripture, and minister in Christ’s name.”

Needless to say, there are some significant differences between the beliefs of the Southern Baptists and those of Luther. The Southern Baptists, for instance, practice adult baptism, which Luther vigorously opposed. On many key points, however, their beliefs parallel those of Luther, even though his influence is rarely acknowledged.

Many evangelicals see the proper role of the government to be imposing order, not showing mercy.

Billy Graham himself was deeply affected by Luther. From the fall of 1949, when he led his first major crusade, until the 1980s, Graham was the face of evangelical Christianity in America. Invoking the Bible as his sole authority, he offered a simple message centered on Christ’s atoning death on the cross for humankind’s sins and his resurrection from the dead for its salvation. “No matter who we are or what we have done,” Graham observed in Just as I Am, his autobiography, “we are saved only because of what Christ has done for us. I will not go to Heaven because I have preached to great crowds. I will go to Heaven for one reason: Jesus Christ died for me, and I am trusting Him alone for my salvation.” This intense focus on the Bible and on salvation through faith in Christ came directly from Luther.

In the recent eulogizing of Graham, there has been a tendency to gloss over his aggressive early evangelism. He was a strident anticommunist, a tireless critic of pornography, and a fawning supporter of presidents. While he insisted on integrating his crusades, he shunned the broader campaign for civil rights. Graham refused to participate in the 1963 March on Washington and dismissed Martin Luther King Jr.’s conviction that political protests could create a “beloved community” in which, even in Alabama, “little black boys and little black girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls.” Graham declared that “only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” In both his obsequiousness toward the powerful and his opposition to social change, Graham was very much Luther’s heir.

Luther’s impact on American life is most apparent when looking at the place of the Bible in it. According to surveys, nearly nine in 10 American households own a Bible, and nearly half of all adult Americans say that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Bible-study groups have proliferated in schools, workplaces, locker rooms, and government offices, including the White House under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. The massive new Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, with its multitude of biblical artifacts, is the creation of Steve Green, the president of the Hobby Lobby craft-store chain and a member of a prominent evangelical family. All of this can be traced back to Luther’s belief in Scripture as the sole authority.

Many evangelicals are animated by the same type of faith- and Bible-based individualism that Luther espoused. This outlook can be seen in the motivational sermons of Joel Osteen, the purpose-driven appeals of Rick Warren, and the defiant statements of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who in 2015 refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and went to jail for it. She said:

I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision…. I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s Word.

These remarks recall Luther’s concluding statement at the Diet of Worms of 1521. Ordered by a representative of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to recant his writings, Luther resisted: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason…I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.” Luther’s bold defense of his religious conscience has become a hallmark of the Protestant tradition, and Davis, consciously or not, stands squarely within that tradition.

The message from evangelical pulpits is overwhelmingly one of self-reliance, personal responsibility, individual renewal, scriptural authority, and forging a personal relationship with God and Christ. American evangelicalism has further assumed the populist stance of the young Luther. His rebellion was directed at the dominant institution of his day—the Roman Catholic Church. He denounced the ordained clergy, anointed theologians, and university scholars who, appealing to custom and tradition, sought to silence and discredit him. Protestantism, in short, arose as a revolt against the elites, and Luther’s early appeals to the common man and his disdain for the entitled lent the movement a spirit of grassroots empowerment that remains alive to this day. His insurgent nature further implanted in the faith a reflexive adversarialism—a sense of being forever under siege.

Luther’s rebelliousness was, however, paradoxically joined to an opposition to real-world change. While rousing the masses, he refused to endorse measures that would concretely address their needs. This combination of incitement and passivity is apparent in contemporary American evangelicalism, with both its ceaseless agitation against the centers of power and its shunning of any real program to address the underlying sources of resentment and dissatisfaction. In accord with Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms, many evangelicals see the proper role of the government to be imposing order, not showing mercy.

Donald Trump has followed this approach. On the one hand, he has played on the conviction of evangelicals that they are an oppressed minority who have been prevented from practicing their religion as they see fit. He has vigorously defended the right of the faithful to say “Merry Christmas,” of pastors to speak freely in their pulpits, of church-run hospitals and health-care organizations to refuse to offer contraceptives. He has also appointed judges committed to those principles (and adamantly opposed to abortion, a key issue for this group). At the same time, Trump has carefully avoided taking on the powerful financiers and magnates who have helped to create the economic system that has inflicted such hardship on his base. Trump’s insults, invective, and mocking tweets against enemies real and perceived seem a long way from the Sermon on the Mount, but they very much mirror the pugnacity, asperity, and inflammatory language of the first Protestant.

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Billy Graham’s attitude toward Russia was very special. Rev. Graham was an anticommunist supporter of tough stance on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Despite that, he visited the USSR in the 1980s where he was allowed to freely preach. Graham did not waste opportunities to attend a wreath-laying ceremonies to honor those who lost their lives in WWII.

Rev. Graham also frequented other socialist states of East Europe. He never forgot to call for peace and warn about the danger of nuclear arms race. He opened a 1983 convention of evangelists from 140 nations – the opportunity he did not miss to urge the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

The Russian Orthodox Church welcomed him. Those days he said "There are many people who have said 'this is not the time to hold a mission in Moscow." But he did it against all the odds to contribute into the improvement of the relations. Billy Graham was perfectly suited to fulfill the role of mediator between his homeland and the countries it had complicated relationship with.

In 1992, Billy Graham received warm welcome in Russia coming on a year-long mission. Once he gathered 100, 000 people to preach at Moscow's Olympic Stadium. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association have joined efforts to attract world public attention to the problem of Christians persecuted in the Middle East and Africa. President Putin and other Russian officials have many times emphasized the need to handle this burning problem so rarely mentioned by Western politicians but a matter of concern for Billy Graham and his followers.

Billy Graham often said he liked Russia. As a clergyman, he has made a personal contribution into the development of relations. He is known in Russia and so is his son – Rev. Franklin Graham. “Our country needs Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Join me in praying for President Trump and President Vladimir Putin as they have this very strategic meeting,” he calls upon his fellow Americans in a Facebook post. Franklin Graham supports President Putin’s policy of protecting Russian children from propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations. He also believes that Russia does the right thing protecting Christians in Syria. The evangelist does not believe Russia really intervened in the US 2016 presidential election. Franklin Graham believes that religion is in decline in America while the Russian president supports the Christian values. And he sees positive changes in Russia.

Like his father he is close to those who hold power. President Donald Trump has his backing. Rev. Graham Jr. strongly supports Donald Trump as defender of Christianity. It was him who offered the president a bible at the inaugural address a year ago. He’ll meet all five surviving US presidents attending the funeral of his famous father in Charlotte on March 2.

Unofficial contacts play a very important role in shaping bilateral relations, be it economy, international problems, arms control, cultural or religious ties. Russians and Americans may agree or disagree but they should talk. Preachers have influence. They are kept outside of political decision-making process but they offer impartial assessments based on cherished values. People holding government positions express only official views but contacts between people are free to say whatever they want is quite different and very important. Billy Graham went to Russia for the first time in 1982 – in the heat of the Cold War. Franklin Graham can contribute into improvement of the relationship, which is at the lowest ebb now. After all, Christians value peace on earth more than anything else, don’t they?