TBR News April 8, 2018
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. April 8, 2017: “When Napoleon had a potential rival murdered, Talleyrand, his foreign minister said, “It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.”
This same aphorism can be applied to Trump’s attack on a Syrian air base on the totally unproved claim that the Syrian government had launched a poison gas attack on a civilian population.
This act has branded the new American president as a man who shoots first and asks questions later.
Some have hinted that this apparently rash act was designed to terrify the North Koreans who are threatening the United States with long range rockets that keep falling into the ocean after being in flight for ten seconds.
Perhaps this is so but if it is, this is an example of shooting a butterfly with a rifle.
There are serious reports that the Sarin gas used in the civilian attack could easily have been the property of the radical Islam organization IS who has no problem murdering civilians in large numbers.
On the other hand, neither the American military or the IDF also have any problems killing as many unarmed civilians as they can, but preferably before lunch.
And what if some entity set off a bomb in Bangor, Maine on a school buds and the dim-witted media claimed it was a Muslim radical from Canada?
Would Trump order a missile attack on Ottawa in retaliation?
Diplomacy is not a dying art, it is a dead one and he who lives by the sword will surely perish by the sword.”
Table of Contents
- Iran’s Rouhani wants chemical attack in Syria investigated
- Legal Experts Question Whether Trump’s Syria Strike Was Constitutional
- Russia says U.S. strike ‘illegitimate,’ attempt to distract from Iraq
- Despite tough talk, Turkey caught between U.S. and Russia in Syria
- What’s really behind America’s rush to war in Syria?
- Donald Trump has jumped into a quagmire with his eyes shut
- Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment
- US polarizes world with attack on Syrian regime
- Uzbek man arrested over Swedish truck attack that killed four
- Coup D’Etat:The Technique Of Revolution
Iran’s Rouhani wants chemical attack in Syria investigated
April 8, 2017
Reuters
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on Saturday for an impartial probe of this week’s suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria and warned that U.S. missile strikes in response risked escalating extremism in the region.
“We are asking for an impartial international fact-finding body to be set up… to find out where these chemical weapons came from,” Rouhani said during a speech on Saturday.
Tehran is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main regional ally and has provided military and economic support for his fight against rebel groups and Islamic State militants.
While the Syrian opposition applauded the U.S. cruise missile attack on an air base near Homs on Friday, it said it should not be a one-off and was not enough on its own to stop government warplanes from hitting rebel-held areas.
However, in a tweet about the missile strikes, Rouhani said: “I call on the world to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe.”
“U.S. aggression against Shayrat (air base) strengthens regional extremism and terror, and global lawlessness and instability, and must be condemned,” Rouhani said.
Iran says it has military advisers and volunteers in Syria but denies having a conventional force on the ground.
(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; editing by Alexander Smith)
Legal Experts Question Whether Trump’s Syria Strike Was Constitutional
April 7 2017
by Alex Emmons
The Intercept
It has become normal over the past 15 years for the morning news to report that the President has bombed an obscure terror group in a far-flung region of the world. These attacks take place without any public debate or a vote in Congress — despite the fact the constitution gives Congress alone the power “to declare war.”
President Bush and President Obama argued, with little pushback, that they could target a wide array of terror groups, thanks to the resolution Congress passed in the wake of 9/11 that allows the president to use “necessary and appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the al Qaeda terror attacks.
The 2001 resolution has since been used to justify bombing seven countries, deploying troops from Cuba to the Philippines, and conducting wars against groups with loose or non-existent ties to Al Qaeda.
But almost all experts agree that it cannot be utilized as the legal basis for Trump’s Thursday-night cruise missile attack on Syria. While Assad is a butcher and brutal dictator, he has no connection to the 9/11 attacks, and in fact his forces are fighting al Qaeda’s largest affiliate in Syria.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration, sardonically tweeted that whatever the legal basis for the strikes is, it “exceeds all prior precedents under domestic and international law.”
Goldsmith perspective was the same in 2013 when the Obama administration was considering bombing Syria’s government for similar reasons. The available legal justifications, Goldsmith wrote, were so extreme that they would provide “no limit at all on the president’s ability to use significant military force unilaterally.” (Obama eventually sought Congressional approval, while simultaneously insisting that he didn’t really need it.)
Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project, reacted similarly to Trump’s strike, saying that “President Trump has no constitutional authority to unilaterally commit the nation to war against Syria.”
Hina Shamsi, a top national security lawyer for the ACLU, tweeted that Trump’s strike has “no legit[imate] domestic or international law basis.” Fionnuala Ni Aolain, a professor of human rights law at the University of Minnesota Law School, wrote that the attack was “a slide into self-justificatory unilateralism by the United States [that] should not be celebrated nor validated.”
One dissenter among these legal voices is Harold Koh, a Yale Law School professor and former Obama administration lawyer. In 2011, after Congress voted not to authorize Obama’s intervention in Libya, Koh wrote a memo attempting to make the case that the U.S. bombing campaign was nonetheless congruent with the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 congressional attempt “to fulfill the intent of the framers” by keeping the power of introducing the armed forces “in hostilities” in the hands of the legislative branch.
Koh creatively argued that U.S. actions didn’t rise to the level of “hostilities,” largely because Obama was only bombing the country, and the Libyan military was unable to shoot down U.S. planes.
In a later paper for the Houston Law Review, Koh wrote that under his own criteria, he “would guess that few humanitarian crises will rise to the level of sustained ‘hostilities,’” and hence would not need congressional approval.
The White House and the Pentagon have yet even to attempt to make a formal case that the strikes were legal. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that “it is in the vital national security interest of the Untied States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.” A Pentagon press release echoed his comments, saying “the use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated.”
In the past, the U.S. has made self-defense a justification for its strikes. But both statements suggest the aim of the strike was to punish Assad, not to defend the United States.
Moreover, the Trump administration is indicating they may launch further attacks against Assad without waiting for Congressional approval. At a U.N. Security Council meeting Wednesday, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley said the US is “prepared to do more” in Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that “steps are underway” to form a coalition of nations that would look to remove Assad from power.
The administration also appears to be ignoring all issues of international law. Days before the strike, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley touted the fact the U.S. would not seek Security Council approval. “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively,” she told the council on Wednesday, “there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”
Russia says U.S. strike ‘illegitimate,’ attempt to distract from Iraq
April 7, 2017
Reuters
Russia’s deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, condemned on Friday “illegitimate” U.S. strikes in Syria and said the consequences for regional and international stability could be extremely serious.
He described the U.S. strike – over a deadly toxic gas attack – as “attempt to distract attention from the many victims amongst the peaceful population in Iraq and Syria caused by unilateral actions.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols)
Despite tough talk, Turkey caught between U.S. and Russia in Syria
April 7, 2017
by Nick Tattersall, Humeyra Pamuk and Orhan Coskun
Reuters
ISTANBUL-Turkish calls for tough action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after U.S. missile strikes on one of his airbases may overestimate Washington’s appetite for deeper involvement in Syria’s war and threaten Ankara’s fragile rapprochement with Russia.
Within hours of the U.S. cruise missile strikes, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan described the action as a “positive and concrete step against the war crimes of the Assad regime” and said the international community must do more.
The first direct U.S. assault on Syria’s government in six years of war appeared to vindicate Erdogan’s long-standing calls for Assad’s overthrow. It comes at an opportune moment for the Turkish leader, as he campaigns ahead of a closely fought referendum on constitutional changes to increase his powers.
But it highlights the rudderless nature of Turkish policy in Syria, as Ankara tries to forge stronger relations with both Moscow, Assad’s main backer, and Washington, a NATO ally hitherto reluctant to confront the Syrian leader head-on.
“I think Erdogan can spin this into a win, but it really isn’t one. The U.S. strike is one-off and limited,” said Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank.
“Turkey can’t enact regime change with Russia in Syria, and neither can the United States. The (U.S.) strikes are tactics without strategy, leaving Turkey sandwiched between its only powerful ally, the United States, … and Russia.”
Turkish policy in Syria is in disarray. Assad remains in power despite Turkey’s long-standing determination to see him ousted, Kurdish militia fighters it sees as a hostile force are making gains with U.S. support, and Turkey has been increasingly targeted by Islamic State jihadists from across the border.
Turkey has more recently appeared to accept a transitional role for Assad as it adjusts to the realities on the ground and tries to rebuild ties with Moscow, shattered after it shot down a Russian warplane in 2015, sparking a diplomatic row which cost it billions of dollars in lost trade and tourism.
“There is a struggle for power between Russia and the United States over the future of Syria and Turkey is stumbling back and forth between the two,” said Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and an analyst at the Istanbul Policy Center.
“Sometimes we are extremely pro-Washington and sometimes pro-Moscow. That could lead to Turkey being perceived as an inconsistent, unpredictable and therefore unreliable actor.”
“DISCONNECT MORE OBVIOUS”
The U.S. missile strikes targeted an airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack on Idlib province, near the Turkish border, had been launched.
At a rally in the southern province of Hatay, which borders Idlib, Erdogan urged the international community to go further.
“Is it enough? I don’t find it enough. It is time to take serious steps for the protection of innocent Syrian people,” he said of the U.S. action.
His foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, was more explicit, saying Assad’s administration should immediately be removed.
“If he doesn’t want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken,” Cavusoglu told reporters.
That stance sets Turkey at direct odds with Russia less than four months after the two powers brokered a ceasefire in Syria and peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana. Moscow, which has military advisers on the ground supporting Assad’s forces, denounced the U.S. action as illegal.
“Despite differing statements from Turkey and Russia on the U.S. strike, there’s still a communication channel between us and efforts to solve the Syria problem will continue,” said one senior Turkish official, vowing the Astana process would go on.
A second official said Turkey’s disconnect with Russia had “become much more obvious” after the missile strikes, but also said it did not want its partnership with Moscow to be damaged.
“NO GOOD OPTIONS”
Can Acun, a researcher at the SETA think-tank in Ankara, said Russia and Turkey had been moving apart over Syria for some time, pointing to Moscow’s readiness to work with Kurdish militia fighters in Syria and its failure to prevent ceasefire violations by Assad’s forces.
“The chemical attack in Idlib, and Russia’s silence and attempts to defend the Syrian regime, was the drop that filled the glass,” he said. “This will strain Turkey’s ties with Russia and Iran, but in the end, the determining factor will be how decisively the United States acts.”
Despite its quick endorsement of the U.S. action, Ankara has been deeply at odds with Washington in other areas of Syria policy. It has been incensed in particular by U.S. support for the Kurdish YPG militia, which it views as a terrorist group and an extension of Kurdish militants fighting on its own soil.
Just a month ago, Ankara was ruling out compromise with Washington over the involvement of YPG fighters in a planned assault on Raqqa, one of Islamic State’s two de facto capitals along with Mosul in Iraq.
The YPG is a key part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance which is receiving U.S. military support.
Erdogan has said Turkey, which hosts warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition in its southern Incirlik airbase, would be ready to support further U.S. action in Syria. But it remains to be seen what that role would be.
“I don’t expect there to be a role for Turkey, other than to continue to host coalition strike assets at Incirlik,” said Stein from the Atlantic Council, pointing out that those assets were primarily used to support the SDF not fight Assad.
“Turkey is where it was on April 6, 2017. A major player in northern Syria, albeit with no good options to escalate.”
(Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Giles Elgood)
What’s really behind America’s rush to war in Syria?
April 7, 2017
by John Wright
RT
Without any recourse to international law or the United Nations, the Trump administration has embarked on an act of international aggression against yet another sovereign state in the Middle East, confirming that neocons have reasserted their dominance over US foreign policy in Washington.
It is an act of aggression that ends any prospect of détente between Washington and Moscow in the foreseeable future, considerably increasing tensions between Russia and the US not only in the Middle East but also in Eastern Europe, where NATO troops have been conducting military exercises for some time in striking distance of Russian territory.
In the wake of the horrific images that emerged from Idlib after the alleged sarin gas attack, the clamor for regime change in Damascus has reached a crescendo in the West, with politicians and media outlets rushing to judgement in ascribing responsibility for the attack to the Syrian government. No one knows with any certainty what happened in Idlib, which is why an independent investigation should have been agreed and undertaken in pursuit of the truth and, with it, justice.
However only the most naïve among us could believe that this US airstrike against Syria was unleashed with justice in mind. How could it be when US bombs have been killing civilians, including children, in Mosul recently? And how could it be given the ineffable suffering of Yemeni children as a result of Saudi Arabia’s brutal military campaign there?
No, this US attack, reportedly involving 59 Tomahawk missiles being launched from ships in the eastern Mediterranean, was carried out with regime change in mind, setting a precedent that can only have serious ramifications for the entire region.
Regarding the attack in Idlib, what we can say with certainty is that a time when pro-government forces in Syria were in the ascendancy on the ground, and when the Syrian government was making significant progress on the diplomatic front, it would have constituted an act of monumental self-harm to launch a chemical weapons attack of any kind, much less one of this magnitude. In fact it would have conformed to the actions of a government that was intent on bringing about its own demise. What also must be taken into consideration is the fact that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an organization supported by the US, confirmed back in June 2014 that the process to destroy Syria’s entire stock of chemical weapons had been completed.
Moreover, the horrific images and eyewitness testimony that have emanated from Idlib in the wake of the attack have come from pro-opposition sources. No Western journalist or news crew would dare set foot in Idlib, or indeed any other part of opposition-held territory in Syria, knowing that as soon as they did they would be abducted and slaughtered.
Trump has proved with this unilateral military intervention that he can easily be dragged into conflict. Just a few days after his administration confirmed that regime change in Syria was off the table, that its focus was on defeating terrorism, he unleashes an airstrike that will only have emboldened the very forces of terrorism whose defeat he had stressed was the focus of his foreign policy previously.
So what now? Clearly, this military action places Russia in a very difficult position. Since joining the conflict in Syria at the end of September 2015, at the behest of the country’s government, Moscow had been working tirelessly to bring about a negotiated settlement, one involving opposition forces and parties deemed moderate relative to the Salafi-jihadi fanatics of ISIS and Nusra, etc. It is a diplomatic process that has just been dealt a shattering blow, with the opposition now undoubtedly convinced that regime change is in the offing via Washington and therefore encouraged to work towards this end.
Meanwhile, as for Washington’s regional allies – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey (with Erdogan guaranteed to hitch his wagon to whoever appears to be in the driving seat) – they will most likely begin calling for more military action against Damascus now, viewing the US airstrike as the catalyst for open season on the country’s sovereignty.
As for Trump himself, having been under inordinate pressure since assuming office in January from the Washington media, political, and intelligence establishment, this action will earn him some much needed approval and, with it, respite. The signs with regard to his administration had been ominous for some time, starting with the forced resignation of Mike Flynn as his National Security Adviser in February, and continuing recent departure of Steve Bannon from the President’s National Security Council. It comes as further evidence that neocons have reasserted their dominance over the White House after a short and intense power struggle.
On a wider note, the lack of short-term memory in Washington is staggering to behold. Fourteen years after the disastrous US invasion of Iraq, which only succeeded in opening the gates of hell out of which ISIS and other Salfi-jihadi groups emerged, and six years after turning Libya into a failed state, in the process sparking a refugees crisis of biblical proportions, here we have yet another act of aggression against a sovereign state in the Middle East by the US.
Destroying countries in order to save them is the story of every empire there has been. But as history reveals, every empire carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Donald Trump is now on course to end up going down in history as a leader who rather than save the US from itself, may only have helped speed it down the path to its ultimate demise.
“Rome has grown since its humble beginning that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.”
Donald Trump has jumped into a quagmire with his eyes shut
The president has just swaggered his way into the single most complex civil war in living memory – and he does so with little credibility or legitimacy
April 7, 2017
by Richard Wolffe
The Guardian
It may be hard to believe, but Donald Trump is even more simplistic than George W Bush in matters of war. George W Bush enjoyed all the certainty of a very simple man: you were either with us or against us, good or evil, marching for democracy or plotting terrorist attacks.
Yet Donald Trump manages to make Bush look like Baron von Metternich. He just launched military strikes against a brutal Syrian regime he used to describe as “NOT our problem”. That’s the same Syrian regime propped up by his own Russian friends.
There’s a lot to be said for moral clarity after the Assad regime’s disgusting chemical attacks that murdered so many civilians in northern Syria this week. But that’s not what Trump represents. His moral certainty was nowhere to be found in 2013, after the first large-scale chemical attacks that crossed Obama’s infamous red line. “President Obama, do not attack Syria,” tweeted Trump. “There is no upside and tremendous downside.”
Now Trump himself is upside down on Syria. He initially blamed Obama and his red line for the chemical attacks this week, insisting that the overblown rhetoric had hurt the United States. This from a man who told this gem to reporters aboard Air Force One yesterday: “I think we’ve had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency.”
Yes, Donald Trump is a great big bag of contradictions and he just swaggered his way into the single most complex civil war in living memory – a war that is even more complicated than raising a high-rise hotel in a foreign capital.
At least Bush took more than a year after 9/11 before he invaded Iraq. Trump hasn’t reached the 100-day mark and he’s already walking into his own quagmire.
Because he can’t stop with one volley of Tomahawk missiles. There will be more human rights abuses and more massacres. And Trump will be forced to decide between bombing regime targets or bombing targets belonging to its biggest rebels: the Isis forces Trump has already condemned as the most evil group on the face of the planet.
This was the kind of quandary Obama couldn’t resolve. Could the US launch effective strikes without triggering a full war with the Assad regime and its Russian supporters? What would all those strikes do to the very civilians the US was supposedly concerned about?
Trump now cares deeply about the suffering of Syria’s civilians and refugees. Under any circumstances, this is a development we should all welcome. The most vulnerable people on the planet need all the help they can get from anyone with any power to make a difference.
“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically,” Trump told the cameras on Thursday night. “As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.”
It is very hard to square this Donald Trump with the Donald Trump who described Angela Merkel’s refugee policy as “an utterly catastrophic mistake” and called the Iraq invasion “possibly the worst decision that has ever been made in the history of our country”. That other Donald Trump only made those pronouncements two months ago.
Let’s just pretend that Donald Trump has undergone a conversion of biblical proportions on the road to Damascus. Let’s assume his old slogan of “America first” is non-operational, and his support for his own travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries has just been eviscerated by several dozen Tomahawks.
For this conversion to stick, for this moment of moral clarity to be credible, we should now see a few immediate reversals on the rest of the Trump agenda.
He might start with his revised Muslim travel ban (currently blocked by the courts) which halts all refugee entry for 120 days while his officials develop new ideological tests known as “extreme vetting”. He might welcome the refugees coming from Australia, in what he used to call a “dumb deal”.
He might reverse his proposed budget that guts funding for the United Nations, overseas aid and the state department in general. This is, after all, a newly woke president who understands the importance of multilateral treaties monitored by the UN system.
“There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council,” Trump said on Thursday night.
The challenge for this all-new season of Trump is that his first and biggest test is credibility. The world needs to trust the United States: that these bombing targets are legitimate, that the Syrian regime is indeed responsible, and that the president has the legal authority and political support of the international community and Congress.
Credibility and legitimacy, it’s fair to say, have not been Trump’s strong points to date. He has rejected the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies on Russia’s interference in his own election. He believes climate change is a Chinese hoax. He insists on lying to world leaders about the size of his inauguration crowds and the non-existent margin of his election victory.
Let’s hope, for the sake of Syria’s civilians – whose suffering has been shamefully ignored for far too long – that the new Donald Trump can straighten himself out in time for the next round of Tomahawks.
Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment
President Trump earned neocon applause for his hasty decision to attack Syria and kill about a dozen Syrians, but his rash act has all the earmarks of a “wag the dog” moment
April 7, 2017
by Robert Parry
Consortium News
Just two days after news broke of an alleged poison-gas attack in northern Syria, President Trump brushed aside advice from some U.S. intelligence analysts doubting the Syrian regime’s guilt and launched a lethal retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian airfield.
Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.
There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.
But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.
One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.
The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus.
White House Infighting
In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed.
Though Bannon and Kushner are often presented as rivals, the source said, they shared the belief that Trump should tell the truth about Syria, revealing the Obama administration’s CIA analysis that a fatal sarin gas attack in 2013 was a “false-flag” operation intended to sucker President Obama into fully joining the Syrian war on the side of the rebels — and the intelligence analysts’ similar beliefs about Tuesday’s incident.
Instead, Trump went along with the idea of embracing the initial rush to judgment blaming Assad for the Idlib poison-gas event. The source added that Trump saw Thursday night’s missile assault as a way to change the conversation in Washington, where his administration has been under fierce attack from Democrats claiming that his election resulted from a Russian covert operation.
If changing the narrative was Trump’s goal, it achieved some initial success with several of Trump’s fiercest neocon critics, such as neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, praising the missile strike, as did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The neocons and Israel have long sought “regime change” in Damascus even if the ouster of Assad might lead to a victory by Islamic extremists associated with Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State.
Wagging the Dog
Trump employing a “wag the dog” strategy, in which he highlights his leadership on an international crisis to divert attention from domestic political problems, is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s decision to attack Serbia in 1999 as impeachment clouds were building around his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Trump’s advisers, in briefing the press on Thursday night, went to great lengths to highlight Trump’s compassion toward the victims of the poison gas and his decisiveness in bombing Assad’s military in contrast to Obama’s willingness to allow the intelligence community to conduct a serious review of the evidence surrounding the 2013 sarin-gas case.
Ultimately, Obama listened to his intelligence advisers who told him there was no “slam-dunk” evidence implicating Assad’s regime and he pulled back from a military strike at the last minute – while publicly maintaining the fiction that the U.S. government was certain of Assad’s guilt.
In both cases – 2013 and 2017 – there were strong reasons to doubt Assad’s responsibility. In 2013, he had just invited United Nations inspectors into Syria to investigate cases of alleged rebel use of chemical weapons and thus it made no sense that he would launch a sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, guaranteeing that the U.N. inspectors would be diverted to that case.
Similarly, now, Assad’s military has gained a decisive advantage over the rebels and he had just scored a major diplomatic victory with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. was no longer seeking “regime change” in Syria. The savvy Assad would know that a chemical weapon attack now would likely result in U.S. retaliation and jeopardize the gains that his military has achieved with Russian and Iranian help.
The counter-argument to this logic – made by The New York Times and other neocon-oriented news outlets – essentially maintains that Assad is a crazed barbarian who was testing out his newfound position of strength by baiting President Trump. Of course, if that were the case, it would have made sense that Assad would have boasted of his act, rather than deny it.
But logic and respect for facts no longer prevail inside Official Washington, nor inside the mainstream U.S. news media.
Intelligence Uprising
Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.
Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.”
Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.
“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”
Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public.
“People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”
One-Sided Coverage
The mainstream U.S. media has presented the current crisis with the same profound neocon bias that has infected the coverage of Syria and the larger Middle East for decades. For instance, The New York Times on Friday published a lead story by Michael R. Gordon and Michael D. Shear that treated the Syrian government’s responsibility for the poison-gas incident as flat-fact. The lengthy story did not even deign to include the denials from Syria and Russia that they were responsible for any intentional deployment of poison gas.
The article also fit with Trump’s desire that he be portrayed as a decisive and forceful leader. He is depicted as presiding over intense deliberations of war or peace and displaying a deep humanitarianism regarding the poison-gas victims, one of the rare moments when the Times, which has become a reliable neocon propaganda sheet, has written anything favorable about Trump at all.
According to Syrian reports on Friday, the U.S. attack killed 13 people, including five soldiers at the airbase.
Gordon, whose service to the neocon cause is notorious, was the lead author with Judith Miller of the Times’ bogus “aluminum tube” story in 2002 which falsely claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear-weapons program, an article that was then cited by President George W. Bush’s aides as a key argument for invading Iraq in 2003.
Regarding this week’s events, Trump’s desperation to reverse his negative media coverage and the dubious evidence blaming Assad for the Idlib incident could fit with the “Wag the Dog” movie from 1997 in which an embattled president creates a phony foreign crisis in Albania.
In the movie, the White House operation is a cynical psychological operation to convince the American people that innocent Albanian children, including an attractive girl carrying a cat, are in danger when, In reality, the girl was an actor posing before a green screen that allowed scenes of fiery ruins to be inserted as background.
Today, because Trump and his administration are now committed to convincing Americans that Assad really was responsible for Tuesday’s poison-gas tragedy, the prospects for a full and open investigation are effectively ended. We may never know if there is truth to those allegations or whether we are being manipulated by another “wag the dog” psyop.
US polarizes world with attack on Syrian regime
From Russia to Israel, the US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase have divided the international community. But the fallout is likely to spill over Syria’s borders as alliances supporting and opposing Assad consolidate.
April 7, 2017
by Lewis Sanders IV
DW
Reactions poured in from across the globe both defending and defying the US’ unilateral missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, effectively solidifying those supporting and opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Washington’s allies came out behind the attack on the airbase, which was allegedly used by Syrian regime warplanes to launch a suspected chemical attack earlier in the week. But the action has further entrenched opposing positions in the conflict.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande issued a joint statement effectively throwing their weight behind the strikes, saying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carries “sole responsibility for this development.” European Council President Donald Tusk said the strikes showed the “needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks.”
Other NATO allies, including the UK, Turkey and Italy, said they viewed the development positively. Throughout Syria’s civil war, the West has consistently called for a political solution to the conflict that would require Assad to relinquish power. The US missile strikes on a Syrian military facility effectively corner the White House into supporting that position, one that Trump has attempted to sideline since assuming office.
On the other side, Russia and Iran have insisted that Assad’s position in government is not negotiable. Moscow, which has politically and militarily supported Assad’s regime, said the missile strikes further strain relations between Russia and the US, and effectively hamper the international fight against terrorism.
“President Putin considers the US strikes against Syrian an aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law, and under trumped-up pretext at that,” said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov in comments circulated by state-owned TASS news agency.
Despite Trump’s ambitions to reset US-Russia relations, his order to launch missiles against a Syrian military target creates more obstacles to any kind of rapprochement. But beyond attempts to thaw relations, the unilateral action consolidated support across opposing alliances.
Gains for regional allies
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he “fully supports” Trump’s decision, adding that it sent a “strong and clear message” that “the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.” But Israel, the US’ premier ally in the region, has much to gain if Washington increases its military role in Syria and continues to target government forces.
The Israeli government has warned that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia operating out of Lebanon, could acquire weapons from Syria and use them to attack the country. The militant group has fought alongside regime troops and Iranian paramilitary groups.
Israel, along with other members of the international community, have labeled Hezbollah a terrorist group backed by Iran, which the Israeli government claims is the biggest threat to its existence.
But Israel isn’t the only one that stands to profit. The US’ strategic ally Saudi Arabia described Trump’s order to launch the missile strikes against the airbase as a “courageous action.”
Riyadh, which supports the Syrian opposition and opposes Iran’s influence in the region, also profits from Washington’s military action by consolidating support for its interests in the conflict-torn country and opposition to Assad’s regime.
Beyond Syria’s borders
In February, the US president vowed to create “safe zones” in Syria which would offer areas of protection for Syrians fleeing war. While some NATO nations, such as Turkey, have backed the idea, others have voiced skepticism, including Chancellor Merkel.
Trump’s order for military action against a Syrian government facility paves the way for an increased role for US military assets operating in and around Syria. Whether that translates into more strikes against Syrian regime forces and military facilities or a push towards a political solution remains to be seen.
“I don’t think there’s a risk now that this will lead to further war but the big question is how will it affect the all-important way of solving or settling by a ceasefire, the negotiations in Geneva,” Hans Blix, who lead a UN mission to monitor WMDs in Iraq and famously rebutted former US President George W. Bush, told DW.
What can be gathered from Washington’s latest military action is that various factions of the international community have consolidated their support and opposition to Assad’s regime.
But the dangers of exacerbating tensions in the Middle East with unilateral military action, and the potential spillover effect, whether irregular migration or violent escalation, will likely extend beyond Syria’s borders.
Uzbek man arrested over Swedish truck attack that killed four
April 8, 2017
by Johan Sennero, Anna Ringstrom and Bjorn Rundstrom
Reuters
STOCKHOLM-Swedish police arrested a 39-year-old Uzbek man on suspicion of ramming a hijacked beer delivery truck into crowds in central Stockholm, killing four people and wounding 15 in what they called a terror crime.
Police were increasingly confident they had detained the driver of the truck that ploughed down a busy shopping street and smashed through a store front in the heart of the capital on Friday, but did not name him.
“Nothing points to that we have the wrong person, on the contrary, suspicions have strengthened as the investigation has progressed,” Dan Eliasson, head of Sweden’s national police, told a news conference.
“We still cannot rule out that more people are involved.”
The man had previously figured marginally in intelligence material, but had not been linked to extremists.
“We received intelligence last year, but we did not see any links to extremist circles,” Sapo security police chief Anders Thornberg said.
Eliasson said there were “clear similarities” to an attack last month in London in which six people died, including the assailant who drove a hired car into pedestrians on a bridge.
Vehicles have also been used as weapons in Nice and Berlin in the past year in attacks claimed by Islamic State.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Sweden, which has so far been largely immune from any major incidents of this kind, and police said they tightened security around the nation.
“I think it was just a matter of time, but still one doesn’t think it will happen,” Cecilia Hansson, a 25 year-old nurse, said. “It’s still unreal when it happens this close.”
Police said they had found a suspicious device in the vehicle but said they did not yet know if it was a homemade bomb, as reported by public broadcaster SVT.
SVT said the bomb may have partly exploded, burning the driver, who escaped in the ensuing chaos after mowing through crowds and ramming into the Ahlens department store.
Local authorities in the capital, where flags flew at half mast on buildings including the parliament and royal palace, said that 10 people including a child were still being treated in hospital, with two adults in intensive care.
A gaping hole in the wall of the store showed the force of the impact from the truck, which was removed overnight for examination by forensics experts, and dozens of people gathered to pay their respects and leave flowers, stunned by the attack.
Crown Princess Victoria was among them, laying a bouquet of red roses. “I feel an enormous sadness, I feel empty,” she told Aftonbladet TV, urging Swedes to unite in their grief.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven also visited the site and struck a defiant tone. “All of us feel anger over what has happened, I also feel the same anger, but we also need to use that anger for something constructive and go forward,” he said.
“We want – and I am convinced the Swedish people also want – to live a normal life. We are an open, democratic society and that is what we will remain.”
OPEN SOCIETY
The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after shootings in the Danish capital Copenhagen killed three people in 2015 and put the country on high alert and the bombing and shooting in 2011 by far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway.
Although Sweden has not seen a large-scale attack, a failed suicide bombing in December 2010 killed an attacker only a few hundred yards from the site of Friday’s incident.
Swedish police said it was especially difficult to identify “lone wolf” attackers in an open, Nordic society.
“It is very hard if it is a single individual who is not part of a wider conspiracy or a more organized planning,” Thornberg, head of the Sapo security police, told Swedish radio.
“But we have to find these individuals as well.”
Police in Norway’s largest cities and at Oslo airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack.
Al Qaeda urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon in 2010 and Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, in July 2016, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.
In last month’s attack in London, a man drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge near Britain’s parliament and then stabbed a policeman to death before being killed himself. Six people died in total.
In February U.S. President Donald Trump falsely suggested there had been an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, to the bafflement of Swedes.
Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in U.N. peacekeeping missions in several conflict zones, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan.
(Reporting by Stockholm newsroom; writing by Simon Johnson and Alister Doyle; editing by Alexander Smith)
Coup D’Etat:The Technique Of Revolution
by Curzio Malaparte
A COUP D’ETAT THAT FAILED: TROTSKY vs. STALIN
Stalin was the only European statesman who knew how to benefit by the lesson of October 1917. If all European Communists must turn to Trotsky for their knowledge of the art of capturing the State, then liberal and democratic governments should look to Stalin if they want to learn the art of successfully defending it against the communist tactics of insurrection, i.e., against Trotsky’s tactics.
The struggle between Stalin and Trotsky is by far the most edifying incident in the political history of Europe, these last ten years. Officially, the struggle originated many years before the October Revolution of 1917. It was after the Congress of London in 1903 when the split occurred between Lenin and Martoff, between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, that Trotsky openly disagreed with Lenin’s ideas. Though he did not then join Martoff’s party, he found the Menshevik program much more attractive than that of the Bolsheviks. But in reality, all these personal and doctrinal origins, and the fact that the danger of Trotskyism (i.e., of deviations, deformations, and heresy) in the interpretation of Lenin’s thought had to be suppressed, were only official pretexts and justifications for a hostility whose origin lay deep in the Bolshevik mentality itself, in the feelings and aims of the peasant and working-class masses and in the political, economic and social situation in Soviet Russia after Lenin’s death.
The history of that struggle between Stalin and Trotsky is the story of Trotsky’s attempt to capture the State and of the kind of defense of the State which was used by Stalin and the old Bolshevik Guard. It is the story of an unsuccessful coup d’Etat. Stalin countered Trotsky‘s theory of the “permanent revolution” with Lenin’s ideas on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Both factions fought each other in the name of Lenin.
But events of far graver import than mere essays on the interpretation of Leninism lay concealed beneath these intrigues, discussions and sophisms.
Supreme power was at stake. The question of a successor to Lenin arose long before his death when the first symptoms of his illness appeared, and it was not merely a theoretical question. Personal ambitions lay concealed behind doctrinal problems: we must not be misled by the official pretexts of the discussion. Trotsky’s chief concern in this controversy was to appear as a disinterested defender of Lenin’s moral and intellectual legacy, as the guardian of the principles which guided the October revolution, and as an intransigent Communist struggling against the degeneration of the party into a bureaucracy and against the growth of a bourgeois spirit in the Soviet State. But Stalin , in the controversy, chiefly wanted to keep both the Communists of other countries and the capitalists, liberals, and democrats in Europe, in ignorance of the real reason why the disciples of Lenin, genuine representatives of Soviet Russia, were fighting amongst themselves. In point of fact, Trotsky struggled to capture the State, Stalin to defend it. Stalin has no trace of the Russian’s apathy about him, none of his effortless submission to good and evil alike, his vague rebellions and perverse self-sacrifice or his cruel and childish kindness. Stalin is not Russian but Georgian. His cleverness lies in patience, willpower, and good sense. He is confident and obstinate. His enemies accuse him of lacking knowledge and intelligence; they are mistaken. He is not a cultured man in the European sense of the word, not overfed with sophistry and psychological fanaticism. Stalin is a barbarian, in Lenin’s sense of the word, an enemy of Western culture, psychology and ethics. His intellect is entirely physical and instinctive, in a natural state, and without the prejudices or the moral sense of a cultured man. It has been said that men reveal their character in their bearing. I saw Stalin in May 1929 at the Pan-Russian Soviet Congress, walking up on to the stage in the Grand Theatre of Moscow. I was just below the footlights in the orchestra stalls when he appeared from behind a double row of the People’s Commissaries, the delegates from Tzic and the members of the Party’s Central Committee, lined up on the stage. He was quite simply dressed in a gray jacket of military cut and dark cloth trousers gathered into his high boots. Square-shouldered, short, thick-set, his massive head covered with black curly hair, and narrow eyes accentuated by very black eyebrows; his face was darkened by shaggy black moustaches; he walked slowly and heavily, striking the ground with his heels as he went; his head thrust forward and his arms swinging made him look like a peasant, but a peasant from the highlands-hard, patient, and obstinate. Ignoring the thunder of applause which greeted him, he walked on slowly, took his place behind Rykoff and Kalinin, raised his head, looked at the huge crowd which acclaimed him, and stood motionless and stooping slightly-his eyes fixed straight in front of him. About twenty Tartar deputies, representing the autonomous Soviet Republics of the Bakirs, the Bouriat-Mongols, Iakouts, and Daghestan alone observed a rigid silence in their stage-box. They were dressed in yellow and green silk kaftans, with silver- embroidered tartar caps on their long black shiny hair and they stared at Stalin with little narrow slit eyes: at Stalin the dictator, the iron fist of the Revolution, mortal enemy of the West and of civilized and bourgeois Europe. When the delirious shouts of the crowd began to die down, Stalin slowly turned his head toward the Tartar deputies: the Mongols’ eyes met those of the dictator. A great shout filled the theatre: it was the greeting of Proletarian Russia to Red Asia, to the people of the plains, the deserts, and the great Asiatic rivers. Again Stalin turned coolly to the crowd. He remained bent and motionless, his unseeing eyes fixed straight in front of him.
Stalin’s strength lay in his serenity and patience. He watched Trotsky’s actions, studied his movements and followed in his quick, irresolute, nervous steps at his own pace, which was that of a peasant, heavy and slow. Stalin was reticent, cold, and obstinate; Trotsky proud, violent, egoistic, impatient, governed by his ambition and his imagination. He was passionate, bold, and aggressive by nature. “A wretched Jew,” says Stalin, speaking of him. “A miserable Christian,” says Trotsky of Stalin. Stalin stood aside during the October insurrection when Trotsky, unknown to the Central Committee or the Commission, suddenly set his Red Guards on to the capture of the State. Stalin alone understood the failings and mistakes of Trotsky and foresaw the remote consequences they would have. When Lenin died and Trotsky abruptly brought up the problem of the succession as a political, economic, and doctrinal question, Stalin had already taken over the Party machinery and stood at the helm of the State. Then Trotsky accused Stalin of having tried to solve the problem of the succession to his own a advantage long before Lenin’s death, he made an accusation which no one can refute. And yet, it was Lenin himself who, during his illness, gave Stalin a position of authority within the Party. Stalin, confronted with his adversary’s accusations, played a strong card when he said that he had to take timely precautions against the dangers which Lenin’s death would inevitably produce.
“You took advantage of his illness,” Trotsky accused him. “To prevent you from taking advantage of his death,” answered Stalin.
Trotsky describes his struggle against Stalin with great skill. In his memoirs nothing transpires of the real nature of that controversy. He is chiefly and constantly intent on proving both to the international Proletariat and especially to the Russian Proletariat that he is not the man he is accused of being, the man whom they would like to make him out to be : a Bolshevik Catiline ready for any adventure or intrigue. According to Trotsky, that which people have called his heresy is only the attempt to interpret Lenin’s doctrine according to Lenin’s own dictates. His theory of “permanent revolution” could not be a danger either to the doctrinal unity of the Party or to the security of the State. He was not trying to be either a Luther or a Bonaparte.
As an historian, his interest is entirely of a controversial order. Both Trotsky and Stalin seem to be bound by tacit agreement when they endeavor to represent what is in reality a fight for power as a conflict of ideas. Moreover, Trotsky has never officially been accused of Bonapartism. Such an accusation would have shown the international Proletariat only too clearly that the Russian revolution was heading for that bourgeois degeneration of which Bonapartism one of the most obvious characteristics. In his preface to the pamphlet entitled Towards October, Stalin writes: “The theory of permanent revolution is another version of Menshevism.” Such was the official accusation: Trotsky is held guilty of having fallen into the Menshevik heresy. But if the international Proletariat could be easily misled as to the real nature of the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky, the real situation could not long be concealed from the Russian people. Everyone understood that, in Trotsky, Stalin was not fighting a kind of doctrinary Menshevik who had lost his way in a maze of interpretations of Lenin, but a red Bonaparte, the only man capable of transforming Lenin’s death into a coup d‘Etat and of placing the problem of the succession on an insurrectional basis.
From 1924 to the end of 1926 the struggle continued to be a controversy between the partisans of the “permanent revolution” theory and the official guardians of Leninism, those whom Trotsky called the guardians of Lenin’s embalmed corpse. As War Commissary, Trotsky could count on the army and the trade unions led by Tomski who was hostile to Stalin because the latter sought to subject the trade unions to Party interests. Tomski vindicates the autonomous action of the trade unions in their relations with the State. Ever since 1920, Lenin envisaged the possibility of an alliance between the Red Army and the trade unions with some anxiety. After his death the persona 1 agreement between Trot- sky and Tomski bore its fruit, and soldiers and workers joined in a united front against the decadent influence on the Revolution of the peas- ants and lower middle classes and against the Thermidor of Stalin, as Trotsky called it.
Stalin had the G.P.U. and the officials both of the Party and of the Government on his side and he foresaw the danger of an 18th of Brumaire. The tremendous popularity which surrounded the name of Trotsky; the glory which he brought back from this victorious campaigns against Yudenitch, Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel; and his overweening and cynical pride turned him into a kind of Red Bonaparte backed by the army, the working masses, and the young communists’ spirit of revolt against Lenin’s Old Guard and against the hierarchy of the Party.
The famous trio, Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev employed the most subtle kinds of simulation, intrigue, and deceit in order to compromise Trotsky in the eyes of the masses, to provoke discord among allies, spread doubt and discontent in the ranks of his partisans, throw discredit and suspicion upon his words, his actions and his intentions.
The Chief of the G. P. U., the fanatical Dzerjinski, surrounded Trotsky with a net of spies and paid agents. The mysterious and terrible machinery of the G. P.U. was set in motion to cut the adversary’s tendons one by one. Dzerjinski worked in the dark, while Trotsky worked in broad daylight. In fact, while the trio impaired his prestige, tarnished his reputation, made a great effort to present him as a disappointed climber, a profiteer of the revolution and a traitor to Lenin’s memory, Trotsky pounced on Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, on the Central Committee, on Lenin’s Old Guard, on the bureaucrats of the Party. He denounced the danger of a “Thermidor” reaction by the shopkeeping and peasant class; and he called Communist youth to his aid against the tyranny of the revolutionary hierarchy. The trio’s answer took the form of a campaign of fierce libel. The whole press had its orders from Stalin. Little by little, Trotsky found himself isolated. Many of those concerned were timid, undecided, or withdrew from the struggle altogether; but the more obstinate, radical, and courageous fought strenuously, though each on his own account and entirely out of touch with one another. They fought blindly against the coalition, getting caught up in a network of intrigues, plot and treachery, and ending by mistrusting each other. Soldiers and workers looked on Trotsky as the man who created the Red Army , as the man who overthrew Kolchak and Wrangel, as the upholder of free trade unions and of the dictatorship of the workers versus the reaction which was threatening from the N. E. P. and the peasants: the workers and soldiers remained loyal to the hero of the October insurrection and to his ideas. Their loyalty however was quite passive: it became inactive through long waiting, and was a dead weight in Trotsky’s violent and aggressive game.
During the first phases of the controversy, Trotsky actually believed that he could cause a Party split, overthrow the “troika” with the help of the army and the trade unions and forestall Stalin’s Thermidor with an eighteenth Brumaire of his own. The Party and the State would be captured and he could then translate his program of integral Communism into actual fact. But speeches, pamphlets, and discussions on the interpretation of Lenin’s thought were not strong enough to cause a split in the Party. Action was necessary. It only remained for Trotsky to choose his time. Circumstances favored his plans. Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev were already beginning to disagree. Why did Trotsky not take some action? While he might have come into action and deserted the field of argument for insurrection, he was losing time in the study of the social and political situation in Great Britain, teaching English communists how they should set about the capture of the State, and trying to draw comparisons between Cromwell’s Ironsides and the Red Army, between Lenin, Cromwell, Robespierre, Napoleon, and Mussolini. “Lenin,” wrote Trotsky, “cannot be compared either to Bonaparte or to Mussolini, but to Cromwell and Robespierre. Lenin is a Proletarian Cromwell of the Twentieth Century. To define him thus is to make the finest possible defense of the little bourgeois of the Seventeenth Century that Cromwell was.”
Meanwhile Trotsky, instead of applying his tactics of October 1917 against Stalin, was busy advising the crews of British ships, the seamen, stokers, engine-room switchboard staffs how they should cooperate with the working classes to bring about the capture of the State. He was analyzing the psychology of British sailors and soldiers so that he might gauge their behavior once they had received orders to shoot on the working man: he was busy dissecting the mechanism of mutiny in order to see, as though in slow motion, each gesture of the soldier who refuses to shoot, the soldier who hesitates, and the soldier who is ready to shoot his comrade if the latter refuses to shoot. These were three essential moves in the whole mechanism: which one was going to decide the outcome of the mutiny? In those days Trotsky was thinking only of England: he was far more concerned about MacDonald than about Stalin. “Cromwell did not form an army but a Party: his army was an armed Party : and therein lay his power.” In battle Cromwell’s soldiers had been nicknamed Ironsides. Trotsky remarks, “Ironsides are always useful to a Revolution. In that respect the British workman has a great deal to learn from Cromwell.” If that was so, why did Trotsky not decide to act ? Why did he not hurl his “Ironsides,” the soldiers of the Red Army, at Stalin’s supporters ?
Trotsky’s adversaries benefited by his delay. They dismissed him from his post of People’s Commissary of War, and deprived him of the control of the Red Army. Soon after, Tomski lost his leading position in the trade unions. The great heretic and formidable Catiline had been disarmed , and the two chief accessories of this Bolshevik Bonaparte’s plan for an eighteenth Brumaire were now hostile to him. The G.P.U. gradually undermined his popularity and the majority of his supporters, disillusioned by his ambiguous behavior and unaccountable weakness, discreetly faded away. Trotsky’s health failed him and he left Moscow. In May 1926 he was to be found in a Berlin nursing home: the news of the General Strike in England and Pilsudski’s coup d‘Etat made his temperature rise. He had to go back to Russia and keep up the struggle. “So long as everything is not lost, nothing is lost.” Dzerjinski, the cruel and fanatical man who created the G.P.U., died in July 1926 while engaged in making a violent speech against Trotsky before the Central Committee. But the alliance of Kamenev and Zinoviev against Stalin suddenly revealed the discord that had long been simmering among the three members of the “troika.” The battle between the three defenders of Lenin’s corpse began. Stalin called Menjinski (Dzerjinski’s successor as Director of the G.P.U.) to his aid: Kamenev and Zinoviev went over to Trotsky. The moment for action had come. The tide of sedition rose around the Kremlin.
Early in the struggle against Stalin, Trotsky noted in connection with England that revolutions are not arbitrary occurrences. “If they could be made to develop logically, they would probably be avoided.” But, in point of fact, it was Trotsky himself who established a logical sequence in the preparation of a revolution, by his principles and rules for the modern tactics of insurrection. It was Stalin who reaped the benefit of this teaching in 1927 and thus showed the Governments of Europe that it was possible to protect the bourgeois State against the danger of a Communist insurrection.
In two of the most fully policed and best organized countries in Europe, i.e., Holland and Switzerland, where law and order are not merely the products of bureaucratic and politica1 machinery but a natural characteristic of the people, the difficulty of applying the Communist tactics of insurrection would be no greater than it was in the Russia of Kerenski. On what grounds can such a paradox be stated? It is because the problem of the modern coup d’ Etat is a technical problem. “Insurrection is an engine,” said Trotsky: “technical experts are needed to start it and they alone can turn it off.’ ’ The starting of the engine is independent of the country’s political, social or economic situation. Not the masses make a revolution, but a mere handful of men, prepared for any emergency , well drilled in the tactics of insurrection, trained to strike hard and quickly at the vital organs , of the State’s technical services. These shock troops should be recruited from among specialized workmen : mechanics, electricians, telegraph and radio operators acting under orders of technica1 engineers who understand the technical working of the State.
At one of the Comintern meetings in 1923, Radek suggested that in every European country a special corps should be trained in the art of capturing the State. He held that a thousand men, well drilled and trained, would be able to seize power in any European country, be it France, England, Germany, Switzerland, or Spain. Radek suspected the revolutionary quality of Communists in other countries. In his criticism of the men and methods of the Third International, he does not even spare the memory of Rosa Luxembourg or of Liebknecht. Radek was the only one who fought the widespread optimism that reigned in 1920, while Trotsky was engaged in his offensive against Poland. The Red Army was getting nearer the Vistula and the news of the fall of Warsaw was expected in the Kremlin at any moment. Trotsky’s success largely depended on the support of Polish Communists. Lenin blindly and confidently expected a proletarian revolution to break out in Warsaw as soon as the Red soldiers had reached the Vistula. Radek said, “The Polish Communists cannot be relied upon. They are Communists but not revolutionaries.” Shortly afterwards Lenin said to Clara Zetkin, “Radek foresaw what would happen. He warned us. I was very angry with him and treated him as a defeatist. But he was right, not I. He knows the situation outside of Russia, and especially in the West, better than we do.”
Radek‘s proposal roused the opposition of Lenin and all the members of the Comintern. Lenin said: “If we want to help foreign Communists to seize power in their countries, we must try to create a situation in Europe that bears comparison with the condition of Russia in 1917.” Lenin was remaining true to his idea of strategy and forgot the lesson taught by Polish events. Trotsky alone approved of Radek’s proposal. He even went so far as to show the need for a Technical Instruction school in Moscow for Communists who would afterwards form the core of a special corps in each country to seize power. Hitler has recently revived this idea and is at present organizing a similar school in Munich for his shock troops. “ If I can have a troop of men, a thousand strong, recruited among Berlin workmen and fortified by Russian Communists,” said Trotsky, “I will undertake to get control of Berlin within twenty-four hours.” He never relied on the enthusiasm of the people or on the participation of the masses in an insurrection. “The intervention of the masses may be useful,” he said, “but only in the second instance when the counter-offensive of the counter-revolutionaries has to be repulsed.” He also said that Communists in Germany would always be defeated by the Schutzpolizei (State police) and by the Reichwehr (army) if they postponed the application of the tactics of October 1917. Trotsky and Radek had actually decided on a plan for the Berlin coup d’Etat. And, when Trotsky was in the German capital in May 1926 for an operation on his throat, he was accused of coming to Berlin for the purpose of organizing a Communist rebellion. But by 1926 he had already lost interest in European revolutions. The news of the General Strike in England and of Pilsudski’s coup d‘Etat in Poland made him feverish and hastened his return to Moscow. It was the same fever that possessed him in those great October days, when he was turned into a “live wire,” as Lunacharski put it. Meanwhile, Trotsky returned to Moscow, pale and feverish, to organize the shock troops for the overthrow of Stalin and for the capture of the State.
Stalin however knew how to turn the lesson of October 1917 to good account. With the help of Menjinski, the new Chief of the G.P.U., he organized a special corps for the defense of the State. The headquarters of this special corps were in the Lubianka Palace, the home of the G.P.U. Menjinski personally supervised the choice of his Communist recruits from the workers in the State’s Public Services, among railwaymen, mechanics, electricians, and telegraphists. Their only weapons were hand grenades and revolvers so that they might move about quickly. The special Corps consisted of a hundred squads of ten men each, reinforced by twenty armored cars. Each detachment was provided with a half- company of machine-gunners: communications between the various squads and the Lubianka headquarters were kept open by dispatch riders. Menjinski took complete charge of the whole organization and divided Moscow into ten sectors. A network of secret telephone lines connected up the sectors with each other and with the Lubianka. Apart from Menjinski, it was only the men who had laid the secret wires, who knew of their existence. Thus all the vital centers in the technical organization of Moscow were telephonically connected with the Lubianka. At strategic points in each sector some houses were occupied by a number of “cells” or centers of observation, for control and resistance, and these provided links in the chain of the whole system.
The squad was the fighting unit in this special corps: each squad had to keep in training with a view to coming into action independently of its fellow-squads, on the piece of ground allotted to it. Each man had to be thoroughly acquainted with the work of his own squad and with that of the other nine in his sector. The organization, according to Menjinski, was “secret and invisible.” Its members wore no uniform and could not be recognized by any badge. Even their membership of the organization was pledged to secrecy. They underwent both technical, military and politica1 instruction; and they were bred to hatred of their adversaries known and unknown, whether Jews or followers of Trotsky. No Jews could belong to the Organization. The school in which the members of the special corps learned the art of defending the State against Trotsky’s insurrectional tactics was definitely anti-Semitic. The origin of Stalin’s anti- Semitism has been widely discussed in Europe and some have attributed it to a concession to peasant prejudices and a necessity of political opportunism. Others have considered it as a part of Stalin’s struggle against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, all of whom were Jews. Stalin has been accused of violating the law (since anti- Semitism was declared a counter-revolutionary crime severely punishable by law), but such an accusation does not consider Stalin’s anti- Semitism in relation to the urgent need for defending the State, and as a part of his tactics against Trotsky’s attempt at insurrection.
Stalin’s hatred of the three Jews, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, did not of itself justify the reappearance, ten years after the revolution of October 1917, of a national anti-Semitism reminiscent of the days of Stolypine. Nor can the origin of Stalin’s struggle against the Jews be reasonably attributed to religions fanaticism or traditional prejudice, but rather to the struggle which had to be waged against Trotsky’s dangerous confederates. Menjinski had said that nearly all the chief supporters of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev were Israelites; and indeed all the Jews in the Red Army, the trade unions, and factories were on Trotsky’s side. In the Moscow Soviet where Kamenev enjoyed a majority and in the Leningrad Soviet which was heart and soul for Zinoviev, the pith of the opposition to Stalin was Jewish. All that was required in order to draw the army, trade unions and working-class masses in Moscow and Leningrad away from Trotsky, from Kamenev and Zinoviev was to kindle all the old anti-Semitic prejudices and instinctive hatred of the Russian people for the Jews. In his struggle against the permanent revolution,” Stalin relied on the common selfishness of the “kulaks” and on the ignorance of the peasant masses, neither of whom had relinquished any of their age-long hatred of the Jews.
By kindling this anti-Semitism, Stalin was able to form a united front of soldiers, workers, and peasants, against the dangers of Trotskyism. Menjinski was successfully hunting down the members of a secret society organized by Trotsky for the purpose of getting into power. In every Jew, Menjinski suspected and persecuted a Catiline. Thus, the struggle against Trotsky’s party soon came to possess all the characteristics of a policy of anti-Semitism, definitely sponsored by the State. Jews were systematically removed from the Army, from trade unions, Government and Party offices, and from industrial and commercial Trust administrations. Trotsky’s party, which had crept into all the political, economic and administrative bodies of the State, was gradually broken up. Many of the Jews persecuted by the G.P.U., deprived of their living, their work and salaries, imprisoned, exiled, scattered or compelled to live beyond the pale of Soviet society, had nothing to do with Trotsky’s plot: “They must suffer for the others and the others suffer for everyone,” said Menjinski. Trotsky was nonplussed by StaIin’s tactics: he was impotent against the people’s instinctive hatred of him. All the prejudices of old Russia were turning against this Catiline who was “as courageous as a Tartar and as mean as a Jew.” What could Trotsky do in the face of this unexpected renewal of the instinct and prejudices of the Russian people? AII his followers deserted him, from the poorest and most faithful, the workers who had acknowledged him as their leader in October 1917 to the soldiers whom he had led to victory against the Cossacks of Kolchak and Wrangel. In the eyes of the masses, Trotsky had become a mere Jew.
Meanwhile Zinoviev and Kamenev were beginning to lose faith in Trotsky and his violent fearlessness, his will power, his pride, his hatred of anyone who betrayed him, and in his contempt of anyone who opposed him. Kamenev was the weaker of the two, more lacking in decision and more of a coward than Zinoviev, but he did not betray Trotsky: he deserted him. On the eve of the insurrection against Stalin, Kamenev treated Trotsky as he had treated Lenin on the eve of the October insurrection in 1917. Later, to justify himself, he would say, “I did not believe in insurrectional methods.” “He did not even believe in treason,” was Trotsky’s reply, for he never forgave Kamenev the lack of courage in not openly betraying him. Zinoviev, however, did not desert Trotsky. He betrayed him at the last moment when he knew that the sudden at- tack on Stalin had already failed. “Zinoviev is no coward; he only runs away when there is danger.”
Trotsky had told Zinoviev to go to Leningrad and organize the capture of the town by workers’ squads as soon as he should hear that the insurrection in Moscow had met with success. Thus Trotsky had avoided Zinoviev’s proximity at the crucial moment. But Zinoviev was no longer the idol of the masses in Leningrad. When demonstrations were organized in the former capital in honor of the Party’s Central Committee which met there in October 1927, the demonstrators suddenly turned the whole thing into a display of loyalty to Trotsky. Had Zinoviev still enjoyed a measure of influence among the Leningrad workers, that incident alone would have given rise to a revolt. Later on, he claimed to have been responsible for the seditious demonstration, but in point of fact, neither he nor Menjinski had foreseen it. Even Trotsky had been taken by surprise, but he was wise enough not to take advantage of it. The working masses of Leningrad were no longer those of ten years ago. And what had become of the Red Guards of October 1917?
Stalin realized the weakness of Trotsky’s secret organization as he watched the procession of workers and soldiers who marched, whistling, past the Tauride Palace under the stand of the Central Committee and flocked over to the stand where Trotsky was, cheering the hero of the October insurrection, founder of the Red Army, and defender of freedom in the trade unions. That day a mere handful of determined men might have captured the city without a shot being fired. But there was no longer an Antonov Ovseienko to take command of the workers squads and of the shock troops of insurrection Zinoviev’s Red Guards were afraid lest their leader should betray them. If Trotsky’s faction should prove no stronger in Moscow than ii Leningrad, Menjinski believed that the fight was already as good as won. The ground was slipping under Trotsky’s feet. For a considerable time he had watched his followers being persecuted, arrested, reduced to inactivity and exiled, and to many of those whose courage and reliability had hitherto been unquestionable were now daily deserting him. He threw himself into the fight with desperate courage, with all the unconquerable pride of the persecuted Jew in his blood, and with that cruel and vindictive will power of his which sometimes gave his voice a kind of Biblical accent of despair and revolt. The speaker who addressed the meetings in those days, in factory and barrack yard, and faced the crowds of mistrustful and recreant soldiers and workers, was pale, shortsighted, his eyes dilated by fever and sleeplessness. It was no longer the Trotsky of 1922, 1923, and 1924 so amusing, clever, and ironical, who stood before them now, but the Trotsky of 1917, 1912 1919, 1920, and 1921, of the October Revolution and the Civil War, the Bolshevik Catiline Trotsky of the Smolny and the battlefields, the Great Mutineer. The working masses of Moscow recognized him by his pallor and violence as the Trotsky of Lenin’s reddest days. The flame of rebellion was already lit in factory and barracks, but Trotsky stood by his tactics. Not the crowds but the secretly organized shock troops were to be sent out to capture the State. He sought the road to power not by means of an insurrection or rebellion of the working masses, but by a scientific organization of the coup d‘Etat.
The tenth anniversary of the Revolution was to be celebrated in a few weeks’ time. Representatives from every country in Europe, the members of different sections of the Third International, were due to arrive in Moscow. But Trotsky was preparing a celebration of the tenth anniversary of his victory over Kerenski by a victory over Stalin. The workers’ delegations should witness a violent revival of the proletarian revolution against the Thermidor of the narrow- minded bourgeois inside the Kremlin. “Trotsky is cheating,” smiled Stalin. He was closely watching each one of his adversary’s moves.
About a thousand workers and soldiers, former partisans of Trotsky, loyal still to the revolutionary idea of Bolshevism, were standing by in readiness for the great day. Squads of technical experts and specialized workmen had long been engaged in “invisible maneuvers.” Menjinski’s men in their special corps heard the throb of Trotsky’s insurrectional machine wherever they listened for it; and a hundred small portents suggested there was danger ahead. Menjinski tried to embarrass his adversaries’ movements by every means in his power, but the sabotage on the railways, in electric power stations and in post and telegraph offices increased from day to day. Trotsky’s agents had gained an entry everywhere; they tested every spoke in the wheel of the State’s public services and from time to time they prevented it from spinning altogether. These were mere skirmishes leading up to the insurrection itself. Meanwhile Menjinski’s technical experts were permanently mobilized and kept watch over the machinery of the State. They too were constantly testing its efficiency, its reactions and its power of resistance. Menjinski would have wished for the immediate arrest of Trotsky and of his most dangerous confederates, but Stalin denied his request. The arrest of Trotsky on the eve of the tenth birthday of the October Revolution would produce an unfavorable impression on the masses and on the workers’ delegations which had arrived in Moscow from every corner of Europe to take part in the official ceremonies. Trotsky could hardly have chosen a more suitable moment for his attempt on the State. His tactical wisdom had shown him how to cover his position. Stalin would never dare to arrest him for fear of tyrannical appearances. If and when he should dare to do so, it would surely be too late, said Trotsky. By then the bonfires of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution would have burnt out and Stalin would no longer stand at the helm of the State.
The insurrection proper was to begin by capturing the head offices of the State’s public services, after which the People’s Commissaries and the members of the Central Committee and of the Commission for Party Control were to be arrested. But Menjinski was well prepared for this: when Trotsky’s Red Guards came, the houses were empty. All the heads of the Stalin party had taken refuge inside the Kremlin where Stalin was patiently and quietly awaiting the result of the struggle between the shock troops of the insurrection and Menjinski’s special corps. The date was November 7,1927. Moscow seemed to be arrayed in scarlet. Processions of delegates from the Federal Republics of the U.S.S.R. from every part of Russia and from remotest districts of Asia were marching past the Savoy and Metropole Hotels where the European delegates were staying. Thousands upon thousands of crimson flags waved over Lenin’s mausoleum under the walls of the Kremlin in the Red Square. At the end of the Square, near the Vassili Blayenni Church, Budyonni’s cavalry was drawn up and beside it Tukachevski’s infantry and the veterans of 1918, 1919, 1920, and 1921, all of them soldiers whom Trotsky had once led to victory on the various fronts of the Civil War. While Voroshilov, the People’s War Commissary, was reviewing the military forces of the U.S.S.R., Trotsky attempted to capture the State with a thousand men.
Menjinski took his precautions. His defensive tactics lay, not in the protection of threatened buildings by a great display of troops but rather in their defense with a mere handful of men stationed inside the walls. He parried Trotsky’s invisible attack by an invisible defense. No attempt was made to scatter his troops around the Kremlin, the People’s Commissariats, the head offices of industrial and commercial trusts, or round the syndicates and government administrations. He concentrated his special corps in the defense of public services, while detachments of the G.P.U. police watched over the political and administrative organization of the State. Trotsky had not foreseen Menjinski’s tactics and it was already too late when he discovered that his adversaries had learnt their lesson in October 1917. When told that his sudden attacks on telegraph, telephone, and railway stations were a failure and that things unexpected and unexplained were happening, he at once realized that his insurrection had met with an organized defense far more complicated than mere police measures. But as yet he was unaware of the real situation. When news of he failure to seize the main electric power station finally reached him, he suddenly changed his mind and decided to seize the political and administrative organization of the State. Seeing that his shock troops had been routed and scattered in every direction by their opponents’ sudden and violent attack, he abandoned his tactics and concentrated all his efforts on a supreme attempt a popular insurrection.
Trotsky’s appeal to the proletarian masses in Moscow that day was on heard by a few thousand students and workers . While a huge crowd filled the Red Square in front of Lenin’s tomb and thronged round Stalin , round the Party and Government chiefs and round the foreign representatives of the Third International, Trotsky’s adherents rushed to the University hall, warded off an attack by the police and set out for the Red Square at the head of a column of students and workers.
Trotsky’s conduct was easily open to criticism. The appeal to the populace, the street corner tactics amounting to a kind of unarmed riot, were tactics amounting to a kind of unarmed riot, were all a mad adventure. But, it so happened that with the failure of the insurrection, Trotsky lost control. In the past, and especially at the turning points in his life, his cool intelligence had tempered his vivid imagination with foresight and his great passions with a certain cynicism; but now he seemed drunk with despair. Having let the situation get out of hand, he gave way to his passionate nature and it spurred him on to that hopeless attempt to overthrow Stalin by means of a riot. Perhaps he knew that the game was up, that the masses had lost faith in him and that only very few friends were still loyal to him. He must have felt that now he could rely only on himself, although the game is not lost while there is yet a card to be played.
Trotsky was even accused of a rash design to seize Lenin’s embalmed body from its glass coffin in the gloomy mausoleum at the foot of the Kremlin. Then he would call the people round the fetish of the Revolution and use it as a battering ram against Stalin’s tyranny. The idea, if gruesome, had elements of grandeur in it. Possibly the idea of seizing Lenin’s body did cross Trotsky’s feverish mind as he heard the yells of the crowd and watched his little army of students and workers singing the International as they marched into the Red Square filled with soldiers and people, bristling with bayonets and flaming with flags.
At the first encounter, the little procession was repulsed and scattered. Trotsky looked round him. Where were his loyal friends, the heads of his faction, the generals of that small army which was supposed to capture the State? Jews are not suited for real battles, for hand-to-hand fights or insurrection. The only Jew who stood his ground in that affray was Trotsky, the Great Mutineer and Catiline of the Bolshevik Revolution. “A soldier fired at my car as though to warn me,” writes Trotsky. “Someone else was aiming his rifle. Those who had eyes to see on that seventh day of November witnessed an attempt at another Thermidor in the streets of Moscow.”
In his weary exile, Trotsky believes that proletarian Europe may learn its lesson from these events. He forgets that middle-class Europe might equally well profit by them.