Donald Trumps Contribution to Peace in the Middle East Was Not Very "Noble" by Martin Jay!
(2020-09-21 at 15:56:45 )

Donald Trumps Contribution to Peace in the Middle East Was Not Very "Noble" by Martin Jay!

Terrorism is a very peculiar word indeed. In the Middle East, it is hard to find two people who agree on who they deem terrorist, versus who they consider a venerable freedom fighter or legitimate army. That said, one question which is being applied more to Donald Trump these days, is did he do anything in his term to reduce terrorism? Or in fact did he merely fan the flames? Or perhaps, does he have any clue at all what he is doing in any of these so-called terror campaigns and is merely a four-year-old playing with crayons hoping that something, at some point, will become clearer?

If we are to take the limited definition of terrorist as being a bearded Sunni extremist with an AK47 who is battling to create an Islamic State for himself, from the failed states of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, then we have to assume that Donald Trumps interventions have achieved very little.

Soon after taking office, he quickly took the helm of a military campaign in Iraq and Syria, which was aimed at hitting ISIL head on, which started in Iraq and progressed west until it arrived at the terror groups epicentre of Raqqa in Northeast Syria. But the disinformation and plain outright lies by journalists who refused stoically to report the nuances of both the policy and the reality on the ground is shocking and has paid its toll to the situation today - which might have contributed to Donald Trump being nominated for an award which recognises efforts made to bring about peace.

The United States military campaign in Iraq under Barack Obama, was surreptitiously led by an Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, the same one that the United States assassinated just a few months back in Baghdad, following Donald Trumps orders. There are even photographs of Soleimani and United States top brass in Baghdad talking amicably among themselves during the peak of the Iranian-led battle against ISIL which preceded the United States one.

Makes sense. Both Iran and the United States wanted to destroy ISIL. Much of the work in previous years in Syria, in fact, had been carried out by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah. As a courtesy to Barack Obama, in fact, the Iranians pulled back their own hardcore militias in Iraq to allow the United States campaign to begin, as a gesture of goodwill, such was the relationship at the time between Tehran and the United States in 2015.

But nothing Donald Trump did, once he took over, made any sense. And it still does not. So, after taking heavy defeats in Mosul and other Iraqi strongholds, many ISIL operatives moved to Syria, where, eventually they escaped United States forces by relocating to the south of Syria, with the aid of Iranian soldiers there who assisted them.

There is just too much irony. Donald Trump begins anti-Iran campaign within months of taking office. He takes all the credit for "destroying" ISIL. And yet, as early as 2019, we see that in fact, the reality is that he has merely moved ISIL around and made it more of an underground movement. It is regrouping in Iraq and Syria and also taking its campaign against United States of American soldiers where it can in other places, like Somalia and Afghanistan.

And to top all the irony, you have Donald Trumps anti-Iran policies which not only directly impact the growth of ISIL and other extremist groups, but now we are seeing more and more the emergence of a new campaign against United States of American forces - which did not exist in 2017 when Donald Trump kicked off his Middle East campaign by launching missiles into Syria from a United States battleship.

One of the reasons why Donald Trump always wanted to get out of Syria is that his policies there against ISIL make him look a buffoon, given that Iranian ally Assad benefits from those extremists being wiped out (as they are also fighting Assad, Hezbollah and Iran in Syria). If any United States journalist pointed this out at a press briefing, he would look very, very silly indeed.

United States journalists in DC are not capable of asking the President even how he can claim credit for a so-called "peace deal" with Palestine (brokered between the UAE and Israel) when the Palestinians were not even consulted on it, let alone signed anything.

But the notion that Donald Trump is hitting ISIL is and always was folly.

With United States sanctions in full swing against Iran and a real groundswell of opinion in Tehran aligning itself with the hardliners view ("no choice but to hit back"), many worry about a new war with the United States and its allies which kicks off if Donald Trump wins a second term. A number of analysts have pointed out that Tehran is already preparing for this.

I would argue that this is already happening on a smaller, but effective scale, in Somalia and Afghanistan. The scandal recently that United States forces were allegedly a target of Russian incentives via the Taliban might have hurt Donald Trump. But it dwarfed the real story in Afghanistan which is that United States forces there are more vulnerable than ever as they might well be facing the wrath of both the Taliban and ISIL-affiliated groups supported by Iran.

This is already happening in Somalia where Iran is directly funding, through its operatives on the ground, Al Shabab terrorist group which is able and willing to go for "clean shot" kills of United States soldiers and their Gulf Arab allies.

This is as a direct result of United States sanctions on Iran, which in itself is an act of war we should not forget. Iran is, in fact, sourcing a number of countries in Africa who have such groups even if their ideology is not aligned to their own. The focus is the United States

China, rapidly becoming an enemy of the United States under Donald Trump, is also looking to set up a number of military bases in Africa as it is looking for states now to accept their offers of building them.

For the meantime, Afghanistan and Somalia are the new battlegrounds though which have come about because of the ineptitude of a United States president who does not really understand the region at all, does not read reports and is really only obsessed with Barack Obamas legacy - and of course his own re-election.

And this erroneous policy, which the United States of American people simply cannot understand or care to, is spreading its tentacles into sub-Saharan Africa, with more and more ISIL-affiliated groups now springing up in the Sahel and starting to get the media limelight.

Just recently a number of arrests of terror cells were made in Morocco where attacks were planned against civilians and top government officials. Although the culprits were Moroccans, a police chief in Rabat points the finger at Libya and Mali for the source of brainwashing and supply calling the Sahel a "ticking time bomb of terrorism".

And so to nominate Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize is a febrile triumph of nonsense, which leaves many of United States wondering how satirical magazines like The Onion make a living anymore.

Donald Trump has done more to expand ISILs reach and capability than anyone else as his Iran policy is literally like pouring gasoline on a fire.

His policies, erratic as they may be, have brought together factions which were previously divided by their different interpretations of Islam - Iran and Al Shabab, for example or Hezbollah and Hamas in Palestine - all focused on a common enemy of the United States of America and its allies.

As Donald Trump prepares to pull out a number - but not all - of United States troops in Afghanistan and continue his baptism of lies directed at a very gullible public and a servile press corps along the lines of "see! I told you I would get our boys out of Middle East wars" it is going to be hard to explain the rise in deaths of United States soldiers there.

And new numbers of deaths in places like Somalia which a certain generation of Americans associate with a 1993 TIME magazine cover of a body of a dead United States soldier being dragged by a vehicle through the streets of Mogadishu.

Presumably this will all happen a few weeks after the election. Not very nobel. Or Noble. Whatever.

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