Why Trump is right on Syria

The Washington chattering class is once again stunned that President Trump is keeping a campaign promise. Like moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and building the wall, the president is following through, and Washington elites don’t quite know what to make of it. Remember, it was Nancy Pelosi who told Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office that the border wall was just a campaign promise. Unfortunately, this is the attitude of most elected officials. You say what you have to say to get elected, then you do only what’s popular with your Washington colleagues.

Syria is a real head-scratcher. Not that President Trump is pulling troops out, but that so many want to keep the troops there. We are uninvited guests in a hostile country. Not that we didn’t have a right—even an obligation—to rout ISIS. That mission has largely been accomplished. That’s not to say that ISIS won’t rise again. If they do we should reserve the right to rout them again, but a prolonged presence in a sovereign nation that doesn’t want us there should not even be an option.

The usual Russia conspiracy freaks wasted no time in claiming more collusion with Russia since Syria’s strongman is a Russian ally. It’s not as if Trump hasn’t been tough on Bashar al-Assad. The United States has attacked Assad’s military ten different times since Trump took office. Syria is basically in the midst of a civil war. Our only interest is ISIS and its accumulation of land and power stretching across the Iraqi border. Outside of that we have no business in Syria.

It was President Obama who drew a red line in August of 2013 saying if Assad used chemical weapons against his own people we would retaliate with military action. He did and we didn’t. It wasn’t until Donald Trump became president that we actually punished Assad for chemical weapons attacks. But punishing Assad was never the primary mission. The American-led coalition in Syria, which included the UK, France, Jordan, Turkey, Canada, and Australia, was specifically forged to defeat ISIS, or ISIL, as Obama so puzzlingly called them. That mission has been largely accomplished. 

According to The Guardian, ISIS has lost over 95 percent of the territory it held before the coalition was launched against it. The coalition has started to unravel. The Kurds have been the principal fighters on the ground against ISIS. Turkey attacked Kurdish militants in northwestern Syria. We did nothing to intervene. It’s becoming clear that, like most disputes in the Middle East, Syria is far more complicated than simply backing the good guys against the bad guys.

The Kurds have been staunch allies of the United States, but only because they want their own country carved out of sections of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. The U.S. failing to come to their aid against the Turks indicates that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Many of the Democrats who supported military action in Syria only did so because it was a Democrat president who wanted it. Many Republicans were opposed for the same reason. Now it’s as if everyone wanted to fight Assad all along, even though that was never the mission. President Trump seems to be the only one who remembers the mission, and now everyone in Washington is against him because his name is Donald Trump.

Thank God for people like Sen. Rand Paul. He was against military intervention in 2013 and he’s against it now. Not that he’s necessarily right. He’s just consistent, something sorely missing in Washington these days.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Kenyan terrorists look a lot like Syrian rebels

By now you’ve heard about the Kenyan mall massacre where innocent people were asked by the terrorists to tell them the name of Muhammad’s mother.  Those who could not were executed on the spot, including children as young as five years old.  These are the types of animals we’re at war with.  This is the unspeakable horror of daring not to conform to their radical vision of Islam.  The story, of course, gained international attention.

But what about the terrorists in Syria who were going house-to-house in Christian villages and slaughtering anyone who did not profess a belief in Islam?  Where was the outrage from the United States?  Where was the condemnation from our president?  There was none.  Why?  Because this president, through the CIA, is sending guns to these animals.  You see, these terrorists who have been indiscriminately killing innocent people all across Syria are the Syrian rebels.  These are the same Syrian rebels Obama wants to help and is helping.  These are the same barbaric bastards who Sen. John McCain sees as moderates.

I fear for our country.  I fear for our future.  We have so lost our way that we can no longer tell good from evil.  People like McCain and Lindsay Graham and Obama want so much to depose the Assad regime that they’re willing to literally make a pact with the devil.

Did you catch this headline?  “Syrian Rebels Attack Christian Village, Behead Priests.”  Or, how about this one: “Syrian Rebels Slit Throat of Christian Man Who Refused to Convert to Islam.”   Probably not.  These headlines were found throughout the international media and on conservative sites like Breitbart.com and Townhall.com but got very little play in the mainstream media.

Here’s what’s frightening about all of this, aside from the fact that we’re aiding this human debris.  What’s frightening is that the American people are being spoon-fed what the administration wants them to know.  The news media are no longer the watchdogs of the government.  They’re the lapdog of the government.  I’ve often said that media bias isn’t so much in what they tell you, it’s in what they don’t tell you.  We’re not being told nearly enough about who the Syrian rebels really are because if the American people knew the truth they would be outraged.

People like Sen. Ted Cruz have tried to tell the people.  John McCain despises Cruz because he dared speak the truth on the proposed Syrian air strikes when he said America should not become “al Qaeda’s air force.”  McCain has actually been meeting with Syrian rebel generals and whined that the terrorist rebels feel abandoned by Obama.  Hard to understand how when Obama is sending them weapons.

McCain was called on the carpet by Fox & Friends when they aired a video of Syrian rebel terrorists shooting at an airplane and yelling “allahu akbar,” the trademark scream of terrorist suicide bombers the world over.  McCain acted as though the host, Brian Kilmeade, was some kind of Islamophobe scolding him that yelling “allahu akbar” was no different than a Christian saying “thank God.”  The difference is Christians saying “thank God” don’t walk around sporting dynamite vests.  Of course, this is the same McCain who traveled all the way to Egypt to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, another terrorist organization that has had meetings with Obama in the White House.  But understand this.  The Syrian rebels we are supporting right now are no different from the mall terrorists in Kenya who killed children with one exception.  McCain and Graham and Obama haven’t met with them yet.  But just give them time.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Putin saves Obama from himself

Vladimir Putin may have saved Barack Obama from himself.  Hell bent on striking Syria over alleged chemical weapons attacks Mr. Obama found himself out in the cold, rejected by his allies and, in all likelihood, left to slowly twist in the wind by Congress.  In fact, the House had indicated it would not vote on the Syrian resolution so as not to embarrass the president on the world stage.

Then in stepped Russian President Vladimir Putin.  He came up with an idea of having Syria turn its chemical weapons over to international control and stepped back and allowed Secretary of State John Kerry to float the idea in a speech.  The idea was well-received and Kerry and Obama quickly took credit as a way out of this crisis.

Of course, this was another homemade crisis at the hands of President Obama, just like Obamacare and the sluggish economy.  Had Obama not offered up an ultimatum none of this would’ve happened.  That’s not to diminish the use of chemical weapons but more and more evidence is emerging that suggests the Assad regime had nothing to do with the chemical weapons attacks.

Can you imagine if Obama had attacked Syria and sparked World War III in the Middle East?  Iran had vowed to attack U.S. interests in Iraq along with attacking Israel.  Israel would have surely retaliated then it’s like breaking up a bar fight between two brothers.  You hit one and the whole family is going to jump you.  Then, to ultimately learn that it was the Saudi-backed, al Qaeda-run Syrian rebels who used the chemical weapons in the first place?  Wow.  What a mess that would’ve been.

Fortunately, Putin stepped in to keep Obama from doing something real stupid.  But look at what has ultimately happened.  Obama said the use of chemical weapons would be met with serious force from the United States.  If we truly believe Assad used chemical weapons there were absolutely no consequences.  All he had to do was agree to give them up after he used them.  It’s like the police allowing a mass killer to simply throw down his weapon and they let him walk free.

If Assad does comply with turning his chemical weapons over to international control it could prove to be akin to one of those lame gun buy-back programs.  You know the ones where Grandma turns in her late husband’s revolver he kept in the sock drawer.  The gun had absolutely no chance of ever being used in a crime yet the police can crow that they got another “dangerous weapon” off the streets.

What if it was the Syrian rebels who used the chemical weapons?  The UN says they’ve used them before and now they’re going through Christian villages killing Christians who don’t convert to Islam on the spot.  What about their chemical weapons?  Aren’t we going to demand they turn theirs in too?

Apparently not because this administration, along with other naïve accomplices like Senator John McCain, somehow has come to the conclusion that the same al Qaeda that hit us on 9/11 and now controls seven of the nine Syrian rebel groups is a moderate faction we can do business with.  So we get Grandma to turn in her weapon but the criminal thugs who are known to have terrorized and brutalized innocent people still have theirs.  At the end of the day I don’t see how this is a victory but for the LCDs (the Lowest Common Denominators) it may be all they need to convince them that Barack Obama is a brilliant strategist and master negotiator.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Climate change is real...but it's also natural

Each summer supply barges arrive in the remote area of the Amundsen Gulf in the Canadian Northwest Territories to bring supplies of fuel and other necessities.  This year the barges are being held up by ice.  Yes, ice in the Arctic in the summer.  Back in 2007 Professor Weislaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that by the summer of 2013 there would be no more sea ice in the Arctic.  He used so-called supercomputers to reach his conclusion.

Flash forward and here we are.  The global warming alarmists took Maslowski's prediction as gospel and worked the media up into a frenzy yet as summer comes to a close about 40 percent of the Arctic Ocean remains covered in ice.  Of course, Maslowski isn't the first to get it wrong.  There are about 73 climate models out there and all of them have been predicting higher temperatures due to more manmade CO2 in the atmosphere.  Now that we've had time to study these models and compare them to satellite temperature data from as far back as 1979 when we first starting tracking temperature with satellites we find that every single model has been wrong.  Every single one.

But that hasn't stopped the climate change hysterics.  The Center for Climate and Security is now claiming that the Syrian uprising is due, at least in part, to manmade climate change.  They argue that a five-year drought from 2006-2011 caused serious "food insecurity" which led to the uprising.  It couldn't have been the Arab Spring that was sweeping the region or al Qaeda's infiltration of the rebel movement.  It couldn't be that Saudi Arabia is funding the rebel cause in an effort to topple the Assad regime.  It must be due to manmade global warming.  Like droughts are something new to the Middle East or anywhere else.

As the evidence piles up against them the global warming alarmists just up their shrill rhetoric.  The melting ice in the Arctic was their last hope of scaring the producing nations out of their money.  (Of course, they never mention that ice has been growing in Antarctica so whatever's happening couldn't be global)  Now their predictions for the Arctic Ocean are shown to be overblown and made up.  Just like their predictions about polar bears, hurricanes and temperatures linked to CO2.

Facts, like the ice in the Arctic, are stubborn things.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Mr. 'Nobel Peace Prize' not so noble

Something’s not quite right with the Syrian situation.  As we go to war with the Assad regime under the assumption of their use of chemical weapons the facts just don’t add up.  Consider that Assad’s troops had been routing the rebels in the days leading up to the attack.  Also consider that Assad had been warned, in no uncertain terms, that his use of chemical weapons would incur the wrath of the United States and other western powers.  Why would he do it?

It’s my belief that he didn’t.  Who had the most to gain from a chemical weapons attack?  The rebels.  We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Syrian rebels are being led by al Qaeda.  They have committed some unspeakable atrocities in Syria.  If al Qaeda wanted to take control of Syria their best option would be to the have our military bombard Assad’s troops from off-shore.

Which begs the question: What are we doing aiding al Qaeda?  Last time I checked we were at war with them.  The whole ‘Arab Spring’ debacle has resulted in undesirables seizing power in the Middle East.  The Muslim Brotherhood, itself a terrorist organization, took control of Egypt, suspended the constitution, instituted Sharia law and had to be ousted by the military.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham flew to Egypt to meet with senior officials of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Obama has invited them to a meeting at the White House.  FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before a House committee that the Muslim Brotherhood has supported terrorism not only overseas but right here in America.  And our elected officials are meeting with these people?

Don’t believe the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization?  Consider their motto: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."  Sounds like a peaceful bunch, doesn’t it?

We can argue over whether the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist group but there’s no arguing that al Qaeda is and they’re the ones in charge of the Syrian rebels.  The rebels have declared their allegiance to al Qaeda.  And now we’re helping them take over the country.

So, we’re aiding the terrorists in Syria.  We helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt.  We supported the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in Libya which our own State Department and the U.N. Security Council have listed as an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group.  Have we lost our minds!?!

What on earth could be the motivation?  I’ll toss out one theory.  What’s the shortest route to getting Americans on the green energy bandwagon?  High gas prices.  What’s the quickest way to raise global oil prices through the roof?  Putting a bunch of terrorists in charge of oil-producing countries in the Middle East.  If you have a better theory I’d love to hear it.  Frankly, I think that’s the least damning theory for this administration.  All others range from outright incompetence to blatant support for radical Islam’s quest to rule the world.

It’s by no coincidence that we have been systematically toppling regimes that have, for decades, kept the terrorists in check only to replace them with the terrorists themselves.  

Like Mohamed Zrig.  He was denied refugee status in Canada because of terrorism.  He was the leader of the Movement of the Islamic Tendency which later became Ennahda.  Ennahda is the ruling party in Tunisia, where this whole Arab Spring began.

And the Arab Spring could not have sprung without the aid of Barack Obama.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.