Today’s video, in addition to almost being late, and a lot more difficult to put together than most, tries something new. Rather than talk about what is, or what was, I go in depth on what could happen if we continue on our current path. Essentially today’s video is science fiction. I’d like to do more of this. There isn’t enough imagination in foreign policy discussion. There should be more thinking about where we are going. This can be pretty negative, like today’s forecast of how a war between the US and Iran would go. But it can also be positive.
There’s an assumption that politics and geopolitics should be serious, boring stuff. This is a problem, because it fundamentally misunderstands what we’re dealing with here. Everything in government and politics is based on fantasy. Everybody’s trying to figure out what comes next, and also imagine it. Not reckoning with this fact has led to people taking the past 15 years of US foreign policy seriously, which is a terrible mistake. It’s had very serious consequences, but it’s basically one big practical joke that everybody is expected to take seriously for some reason.
I read a lot. It’s roughly 75% history, and 25% science fiction. Some might see that 25% as recreational, but I don’t necessarily see it that way. History is the study of the past, Science Fiction is the study of the future. By looking at both, I think I get better at understanding the present. Which is a long way of saying I might be doing more Sci-Fi themed vids like today’s in the recent future.
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Video Transcript after the jump…
Hey there. So this is how the US’s next multi trillion dollar war was supposed to start, and this is also how the next couple decades were supposed to go. At some point in the 2030s or 2020s, or even 2019 a whole bunch of American soldiers were supposed to die.
That’s what the US presence in Syria is all about, and that’s why US soldiers were permanently stationed there in 2017. To die. Seriously. That’s the policy here. Nobody has come out and said it directly, but folks from John Bolton to Mike Pompeo have made it very clear. Let me connect the dots… As of last week The US troops were intended to be in Syria until Iran and Assad are not. As the past 7 years have made very clear, those guys aren’t going anywhere without a full on invasion. And a whole bunch of dead US soldiers is what Washington DC needs to launch that invasion.
It doesn’t have to be all 2 to 4000 of the Americans , just a couple hundred would do the trick. Could be a spare missile from Iran or Russia, or maybe a concerted attack from Hezbollah or some other militia. Whatever. Dead Americans will give Washington DC’s morons what they need to start the US’s final war in the Middle East.
Now we haven’t even begun paying for their last multi-trillion dollar disasters yet. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan represent a solid quarter to a third of US national debt. So no matter how much MSNBC or FOX News may fantasize about invading Iran, we can’t afford that sort of thing anymore. No the US War with Iran will be fought over the massed corpses of hundreds of thousands more dead Syrians and Iraqis.
The first month or so will go great. US Defense contractors will make hundreds of billions. Chickenhawks from Jake Tapper to Max Boot will get exactly the sorts of images that they think US power is made of. Everyone wearing an Iranian uniform in Iraq or Syria will be slaughtered, and only a few tens of thousands more innocent civilians will die in the crossfire. Assad and his whole family will die horribly in the streets, and whatever sociopath is US President at that point will congratulate everyone for a job well done.
Then the second month will start. Against Washington DC’s predictions, the Iranian people will strangely fail to turn friendly after we kill all their sons in Syria. Iran’s president Rouhani and anybody else who ever tried to negotiate with the US will probably get the Assad treatment. Iran will finally become the massive state sponsor of terrorism the US has always claimed it was. If there is anything left of the Iraqi government it will turn against us as well. The moderate rebels in Syria who failed to get together to fight Assad will definitely unify to fight the US occupiers. Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd and even Turk, everyone will get together to kill US soldiers. Millions of civilians will die to kill tens thousands of those US soldiers.
By the first year we should be at Vietnam levels of casualties. The horror show will almost certainly spread to Lebanon, Jordan and other countries. The EU will finally splinter completely under refugee flows that will dwarf those the US created in 2015. The world will fall to pieces as the US President feebly shouts at everybody that this is all Iran’s fault.
At some point the madness will stop, not because World War 3 will start, but because China, Japan, and what’s left of Europe will finally stop buying US debt. Forced to choose between Medicare and baby boomer power fantasies the US public will go with Medicare. The US empire will evaporate. Our military forces will pull out of the Middle East, and then fiscal realities will require that it move out of Germany, Korea, Japan, and everywhere else as well. The other three branches of the US military will be rolled into the Coast Guard, in fact if not in name. After yet another disastrous war, nobody will miss the US military’s international presence. Not at first anyway.
That’s what’s supposed to happen over the next couple decades. But last week something funny happened. Donald Trump woke up and decided to pull out of Syria. Everybody in Washington DC lost their minds. From CNN to Fox News, from Republican Lindsey Graham to Democrat Nancy Pelosi, all of Washington DC thinks getting out of Syria is a terrible idea.
Donald Trump is a lot of things, but he is not a creature of Washington DC. He sees US troops in Syria for what they actually are, an invitation to a war the U.S. cannot afford, and an end to the US ability to bully anybody. And he’s not interested. Nobody should be.
The future I talked about in this video has not yet been averted. All of Trump’s generals, and all of the “adults in the room” that are left are still working to bring about this catastrophic war with Iran in Syria. It pains me to say this, but Donald Trump is right about Syria, and all those #Resistance Neocons are Very, very wrong. You can debate whether or not it’s a good thing, but Trump may have just saved the US empire. I think this withdrawal from Syria, if it’s allowed to happen, could give us all a little more breathing space to build a better world.
Thanks for watching please subscribe, and if you want a more history based treatment of this subject, you can check out this video from 8 months ago…