Analysis, Side Feature

News Headlines 19 August 2017

Headlines
• Trump’s Overt Racism Triggers Bannon’s Removal

• Bannon’s Removal Opens Path for Establishment in Afghanistan Policy

• UN Planning for ‘Peace’ in Syria in October or November

Details

Trump’s Overt Racism Triggers Bannon’s Removal

US President Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon has finally left the White House after coming under heavy criticism for encouraging Trump’s pro-racist remarks earlier this week in response to the violent clashes in Charlottesville. According to the New York Times:

Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled chief strategist who helped President Trump win the 2016 election by embracing their shared nationalist impulses, departed the White House on Friday after a turbulent tenure shaping the fiery populism of the president’s first seven months in office.

Mr. Bannon’s exit, the latest in a string of high-profile West Wing shake-ups, came as Mr. Trump is under fire for saying that “both sides” were to blame for last week’s deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va. Critics accused the president of channeling Mr. Bannon when he equated white supremacists and neo-Nazis with the left-wing protesters who opposed them.

The West has never been able to solve the deep problem of racism present within its people. While friction naturally exists between people originating from different tribes or nations, these frictions are usually reduced or eliminated by living together. However, the West explicitly held racial superiority as a political doctrine for much of its modern history, as anti-religious atheistic thinkers needed some justification for Western superiority to replace Christianity. The West only began publicly denouncing racist doctrine during World War II in order to discredit the Nazi leadership in Germany. Before that time racial thinking was well-established in Western political theory. The result is that even now, even when denying it, Western people carry this thinking deep within themselves and it continues to colour their view towards themselves, their civilisation and the rest of the world, driving the West’s imperialistic world hegemony with such notions as ‘American exceptionalism’.

Bannon’s Removal Opens Path for Establishment in Afghanistan Policy

The real reason for Bannon’s removal at this time is more likely to be the infighting within the White House that has been delaying Trump’s decision of Afghanistan. Bannon had been supporting the idea of privatising the Afghan war effort by involving military contractors, as proposed by Blackwater founder Eric Prince. According to Politico:

Top administration officials in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan teamed up ahead of a high-level meeting on Friday to persuade President Donald Trump to step up American military involvement in the 16-year-old war, two sources told POLITICO.

Vice President Mike Pence and national security adviser H.R. McMaster rehearsed their pitch heading into the Camp David strategy session in an effort to persuade Trump to accept commanders’ proposals to beef up the 8,400 American troops in the country, the sources said.

But as of Friday evening, the president had not announced a decision on his plans for Afghanistan, where the Taliban have grown in strength and Al Qaeda and the Islamic State terrorist groups have a foothold. And no announcement appeared imminent.

The two sources — an administration official and a senior White House aide — also confirmed that Erik Prince, founder of the former Blackwater private security firm, had been scheduled to attend the session but that he was blocked at the last minute. The administration official said McMaster was the one who blocked Prince.

Prince has been urging the administration publicly and privately to outsource much of the war effort — which primarily involves training and advising Afghan security forces. Prince had the backing of Steve Bannon, who was ousted Friday from his role as the chief White House strategist.

The indecisiveness in the White House is simply because America is losing its war in Afghanistan, as the jihad against American occupation has become widespread within the country. Afghanistan remains of vital strategic importance for America because of its high elevation at the conjunction of West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia, populated by hundreds of millions of Muslims. From military bases located here, America can patrol the entire region, supporting its interests and agents while also challenging Russian and Chinese interests in Muslim lands. But the resurgence of Islam has already begun, as the jihad makes evident, and it is only a matter of time before Muslims re-establish their state and eject the disbelieving foreigner from their lands.

UN Planning for ‘Peace’ in Syria in October or November

The UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has been active through numerous stages of the Syrian war but without progress. Now, the envoy has reached the conclusion that progress will soon be possible. According to Reuters:

The United Nations hopes for a “serious negotiation” between the government and a still-to-be-formed unified Syrian opposition in October or November, U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday.

After seven previous rounds that have failed to persuade the adversaries to hold face-to-face talks, let alone make progress, the veteran diplomat outlined a new timetable for talks to end the six-year war in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.

He said he expected a meeting in October, possibly in Riyadh, among the three opposition delegations “to take stock of the realities on the ground”, with a view to consolidation.

In fact, the purpose of the so-called ‘peace’ negotiations is not to prevent aggression but to support it. The West always resorts to ‘peace’ negotiations only after it has concluded its wars, in order to legitimise its illegal victories and dispel memories of its brutal and inhumane acts: the evil aggressor becomes the champion of peace. The UN Syrian envoy is preparing for the same, and expects “serious negotiation” in October or November only because he thinks America is close to winning the war on behalf of its vile agent Bashar al-Assad. They are planning not peace negotiations but the summoning of the defeated by the victors in order to dictate terms of surrender. With Allah’s permission, the world will soon see a new state emerge from Muslim lands, the righteous Islamic Khilafah State (Caliphate) on the method of the Prophet (saw), that liberate our lands from the hegemony of the disbelieving West and return truth and justice to the entire world.