Analysis, Side Feature

Views on the News – 26 Aug 2017

Headlines:

  • Despite Public Anger, Pakistan continues to Serve America
  • The US Congressional Debt Ceiling reveals the Weakness of Divided Government
  • Turkey preparing to Serve America again


Despite Public Anger, Pakistan continues to Serve America

There have been strong reactions from Pakistan’s political medium following US President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan policy speech accusing Pakistan of supporting the Afghan Taliban. According to the Dawn, reporting on Thursday’s meeting of Pakistan’s National Security Council:

Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership on Thursday strongly rejected US President Donald Trump’s allegations of insincerity and duplicity in the fight against terrorism and set conditions for future counterterrorism cooperation with Washington and Kabul, specifically the removal of hideouts in eastern Afghanistan.

The government’s formal and comprehensive response to the Trump administration’s policy on Afghanistan and South Asia came after a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC), which was chaired by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and attended by ministers for defence, foreign affairs, finance, and interior, the national security adviser, services chiefs and heads of intelligence agencies and military operations.

The strong public reaction reflects the deeply anti-American sentiment within the Pakistani people after 16 years of occupation of Afghanistan. It also reflects the fears of the political and military leadership over Trump’s call for increased Indian involvement in Afghanistan, which has already been supporting Afghanistan-based terrorism against Pakistan:

The bottom line of the response is that Pakistan remains committed to international efforts for peace and stability in Afghanistan, but it also wants its concerns to be addressed, including the main issue of sanctuaries on Afghan soil.

However, it is quite evident in the statements issued that nowhere does Pakistan talk about opposing the American occupation itself, or the US-backed puppet Kabul government. Furthermore, it is in fact Pakistan that made possible this occupation in the first place, and Pakistan that continues to support this occupation, without which America would be unable to survive in Afghanistan. As the website warontherocks.com noted earlier this week:

Pakistan is also critical for the U.S. mission in land-locked Afghanistan, even as its behavior undermines U.S. objectives there. The troubled state of U.S.-Russia relations following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in Russia shutting down the so-called Northern Distribution Network that re-supplied Afghanistan through the Central Asian republics. U.S.-Iran relations have become only more troubled since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, and appear likely to worsen further still. The United States has begun using Turkmenistan for “humanitarian cargo,” a euphemism that in this case likely means “nonlethal” supplies to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Thus, the United States presence in Afghanistan depends — and will depend for the foreseeable future — on Pakistan, which permits U.S. ground and air lines of communication. Absent unexpected, major improvements in U.S.-Russia or U.S.-Iran relations, or a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, this dependence on Pakistan cannot be alleviated. “No matter how great President Donald Trump makes America, he cannot win the war on geography,” observes Afghan expert and former U.S. official Barnett Rubin.

Despite Pakistan’s overwhelming regional strength, it will continue to serve the American agenda as long as it continues to implement the Western ruling system which is designed to craft a ruling class forever dependent on Western direction.

 

The US Congressional Debt Ceiling reveals the Weakness of Divided Government

According to the Washington Post:

President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are courting an economic catastrophe with a standoff over how to raise the debt limit.

Unless Trump and Congress pass a law raising the U.S. debt limit — a legal cap on how much the U.S. government is allowed to borrow — the Treasury Department will soon run out of money to pay its bills, triggering a first-in-modern-U.S.-history default that threatens to turn the world economy on its head. A default would crack the world’s faith in the United States’ ability to pay its bills and repay its loans, and that faith serves as the underpinning of the entire global financial system.

“Failure to raise the debt ceiling would … likely push the economy into a recession if the situation persisted,” Barclays warned in a note to clients on Thursday.

Despite the fact that Trump and McConnell are both Republican Party leaders, and both houses of Congress as well as the White House are Republican, fears are stirring in America again of yet another government spending crisis. According to the democratic system, financial spending is controlled by the legislature, not by the executive government. This is why government revenue and expenditure budget bills have to be legislated in Western governments every year, as well as those governments in the rest of the world that implement the Western democratic system. This divided government approach is based on the ‘Separation of Powers’ theory of the 18th century French thinker Montesquieu.

In fact, Montesquieu was writing in criticism of the Ottoman State, which was at that time the world’s leading state and superpower. A substantial reason for the state’s power was that all authority was concentrated in the hands of the Khalifah, in accordance with the Islamic sharia. Furthermore, the Shariah has already legislated in great detail the limits of revenue and expenditure within which the Khalifah can act.

The Western system, in weakening their rulers, have in fact strengthened the real powers behind this rule, which in America are the corporate vested interests that openly and covertly influence and control the American congress. And whereas Islam succeeded in restraining government revenues and expenditures to that which is necessary, Western governments have greatly expanded taxing and spending which the Capitalist elite have used as a tool for transferring wealth from the general population to their own pockets, by burdening them with taxes, while benefitting themselves from government spending.

Only Islam can truly liberate us from the democratic system, which only results in enslaving men to other men.

 

Turkey preparing to Serve America again

As Pakistan serves America in Afghanistan, Turkey serves America in Syria. Following the visit to Ankara of US Defence Secretary James Mattis, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim further fuelled speculation of a new Turkish intervention in Syria. According to the Daily Sabah:

“There needs to be international consultations, a legal ground and a legitimate reason to carry out a cross-border operation” Yıldırım said, adding that Turkey is currently cooperating with Russia and Iran.

“We would not attack a place for no reason. However, if certain conditions such as the security of life and property are threatened or sovereign rights are infringed upon, then we would be compelled to retaliate in kind,” the prime minister said.

There are speculations of a possible counter-PKK operation targeting the terrorist organization’s Syrian offshoot, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin, as well as an offensive against Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (former Al-Nusra Front) terrorists, as an extension of Operation Euphrates Shield which was launched last year on Aug. 24 and ended on March 29, 2017.

Turkish media outlets have also claimed that Russia was withdrawing its troops from Afrin, paving the way for a possible Turkish operation.

Just as with Afghanistan, similarly with Syria, America is powerless to act without the backing of Muslim regimes. Syria has become a highly complex war theatre in which America is employing numerous allies and agents in order to fulfil its objectives. Every move is being choreographed from Washington. But the time is soon approaching when, by the permission of Allah, these agent regimes will be deposed, as the Muslim Ummah comes to understand its own power, and rises to establish again the righteous Islamic Khilafah State (Caliphate) on the method of the Prophet ﷺ. At that time America and its allies and agents will withdraw from all Muslim lands, and the world will witness the rise of a new and vibrant element in the international political order.