Palestine Tet – 23 – Washington prepares for a wider war; Middle East close to regional explosion

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While the Biden Administration has insisted it won’t get into direct Middle East conflict on Israel’s behalf, it is doing just that. Anyone familiar with decades of U.S. foreign policy double talk knows that it is impossible to take that claim seriously.

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Concerning the possibility of achieving a ceasefire, of turning war escalation into peace escalation, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah notes:

“The party that can stop this aggression is the one directing it, and that is the United States… The Americans have sent threats to put pressure on the resistance in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon using every possible channel to convey their messages. If the Americans want to stop such operations against them, then they have to stop the aggression on Gaza””

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John Mearsheimer – undoubtedly the most renowned International Relations scholar in the world today – on Gaza:

Israel is “waging a punishment campaign in Gaza, they are punishing the civilian population… The Israelis are interested in causing a huge amount of destruction in Gaza and in the process they are going to kill huge numbers of civilians… It seems to me that when you do that you’re committing war crimes. If the Israelis were going to great length to target just Hamas and avoid civilian casualties then you could make a coherent argument that this is not a case of them committing war crimes but they’re not doing that, they’re purposely tearing the place apart. This is a massive punishment campaign. Furthermore at the same time they’ve cut off all food, water and gas to Gaza and this means that in effect they’re going to end up starving out, or trying to starve out, the civilian population in Gaza. By my understanding of international law, this too is a war crime.”

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The repercussions of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people of Gaza is everywhere, including in Colorado.

A few days ago a group of 4 A-10 Warthog jets (described at the end of this article) flew low in the skies over my northwest Denver neighborhood heading north, destination unknown. Although I’ve seen jet fighters in the skies above Denver, rarely do U.S. warplanes fly so low over the city.

I called the EPA and complained about visual and noise pollution.

Today on Instagram, a fellow Coloradoan filmed a flatbed trainload of tanks, armed vehicles and the like passing through Denver on U.S. 85, a north-south road. And now peace activists working hard to pressure the Biden Administration to support an immediate cease-fire, are on the alert to see if similar trains are passing through.

The situation continues to deteriorate

Statistics gathered by the United Nations yesterday (November 10) reveal that nearly 11,000 Palestinians have died there, 75% of whom are women and children; 40,000 housing units destroyed and 1.5 million people already displaced. In the past 24 hrs, hospitals have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital has been hit multiple times. Hospitals there have run out of anesthetic, patients operated on without anesthetic.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest protest demonstrations in British history “Ceasefire Now!” in support of Palestinians in Gaza, is taking place in London despite government smears and threats. “Huge crowds” – 500,00 to 1,000,000 – were involved. In Yemen it is impossible to count the numbers demonstrating for Palestine, the same in Cape town, South Africa. In Brussels, 20,000 marched today.

It is elsewhere in the region I want to explore today, the tinderbox close to bursting into flame.

Although all the current attention in the Middle East is focused on the Israeli genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza, which Irish European Parliament member, Clare Daly, refers to as “unrelenting mass murder” there is a second conflict that has simultaneously heated up.

Actually, there are more than two conflicts happening.

• the 12 year conflict in Syria continues
• fighting continues in Yemen
• Twenty years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that country remains greatly destabilized

Although the war against Gaza fighting has attracted more media attention in terms of potential geopolitical importance and overall danger of a regional escalation igniting an all-out Middle East war, the fighting unfolding between the United States and the Shi’a militia groups in Iraq and Syria is “the more worrying story”.

It has drawn less attention although from a geostrategic viewpoint it probably has more serious consequences for both Washington and Tel Aviv, and for the geopolitical realignment that is currently taking place in the region.

Given the paucity of information about the fighting between these militia groups and U.S. forces it is somewhat difficult to evaluate the intensity of the fighting. The U.S. Administration maintains tight control on information, one has to search for it. An article appearing at Sonor 21, former C.I.A. analyst Larry Johnson’s website, suggests the U.S. is taking heavy casualties. He is a member of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

A contact related that U.S. military hospitals are treating increasing numbers of U.S. soldiers wounded in the missile attacks on U.S. bases throughout the region. As Johnson notes:

Since the Hamas attacks on 7 October and the subsequent retaliation by Israel, U.S. military bases and outposts in Syria and Iraq are facing daily attacks with rocket, missiles and mortars. I learned today from someone who regularly visits Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland that the wards are filling up with U.S. military personnel wounded in recent attacks on those bases.

While Johnson’s revelations ring true, anecdotal as they are, Shi’ite (and other) militia targeting of U.S. bases were sporadic in response to the Trump Administration’s targeted assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Suliemani and Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, deputy head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces on January 2, 2020. They intensified after October 7.

The numbers of wounded U.S. military personnel continue to grow. This is information that is being withheld from the public.

U.S. jets bomb Shi’a military positions. Washington claims self-defense but no one believes them anymore

Yesterday (November 9, 2023) the United States launched a missile strike against what it claimed was a Shi’a missile base in Syria. Much of the most recent fighting seems to be taking place in Syria on three fronts: in Idlib Province, stronghold of U.S. and Turkish proxy jihadi fighters; in Eastern Syria in the region where the U.S. is essentially stealing Syrian oil and wheat; and south of Damascus in the region close to both the Jordanian border and that of Occupied Syria, the Golan Heights.

Attacks have been launched on U.S. bases in Syria. In the name of “self defense” – a hard- sell argument as Washington is illegally Syrian territory – the United States is “taking retaliatory action” against what it claims are “Iranian-aligned militia groups”. In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strike was in response to 41 attacks on U.S. military sites across Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17.

Forty-one missile attacks on U.S. military sites in little more than three weeks? Getting serious!

Keep in mind that U.S. troops present in Syria (and elsewhere throughout the region) are not there “by invitation” from the Syrian government. To the contrary, they are there to punish the Syrian government for having defeated the U.S. proxy effort to overthrow Assad. U.S. intervention in Syria did not start on October 7. It has a long sordid history.

The goal of both the Biden and the Trump Administrations remains regime change, to impose continued suffering on the Syrian people and to make the country’s reconstruction difficult to impossible. U.S. airstrikes against Syria are nothing less than an attack on Syria itself, illegal according to international law.

At the same time, the Biden Administration has issued strong warnings against Iran, demanding that Iran “rein in its proxies”. These warnings are implicit threats of further U.S. military action against Iran itself.

The Biden Administration itself has made every effort to keep these conflicts out of public view. There are reports coming out of both Iraq and Iran of mass mobilizations, of literally hundreds of thousands of men volunteering to go to fight Israel in both Syria and Lebanon.

U.S. Military build up in the region intensifies

An enormous assembly of U.S. military force is taking place in the Middle East. Adding to the approximately 45,000 military personnel already stationed in the region is a huge deployment of military forces: two carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean, the Gerald Ford and the Eisenhower.

These carrier strike groups include eleven Aegis destroyers. An Ohio class cruise missile submarine is being deployed in the Red Sea. It can carry up to 154 Tomahawk missiles, Mk48 torpedoes and is capable of deploying special forces as well. The Biden Administration has also deployed anti-aircraft missiles, Patriot missiles and Thaad missiles as well. Also arriving in the region are large numbers of fighter jets, principally F-35s.

It appears that A-10 Warthog are a part of the buildup, among the most powerful, perhaps the world’s most powerful ground attack aircraft in terms of the weight of ordinance they can carry.  The weaponry included with the A-10 Warthogs might be used against Hezbollah in S. Lebanon.

Concerning the possibility of achieving a ceasefire, of turning war escalation into peace escalation, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah notes:

“The party that can stop this aggression is the one directing it, and that is the United States… The Americans have sent threats to put pressure on the resistance in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon using every possible channel to convey their messages. If the Americans want to stop such operations against them, then they have to stop the aggression on Gaza”

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