What is Russia’s real position on Libya? Has it shifted sides or playing a double game? And what strategy can Turkey’s Erdogan take now, so that he remains a friend to Putin but also a winner in Tripoli? Martin Jay asks the Tripoli-based analyst Mohamed Eljarh for his take on who are the winners and losers of Russia and Turkey being on opposite sides in Libya.
Fintan O’TOOLE
We are so used to egregious lies we scarcely notice them anymore. But we may be entering a new phase of official mendacity. Governments don’t usually resort to lies that have long been exploded – they think up new ones instead. Yet if the world is to be plunged into another interminable war, it will be at least in part on the basis of a lie whose long-rotted corpse is being dug up and displayed as a living truth.
According to BBC’s top expert on jihadist movements, official publications from ISIS are now calling the killing of the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani an act of God, and are portraying Shiite Iran as Muslims’ greatest enemy, more so even than powers that don’t claim to be Muslim.
Throughout his military command of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force, the late Major General Qassem Soleimani ensured that Iran had as its disposal an intricate network of military proxy forces, sympathetic Shi’a Islamic faithful, and armed wings of foreign political and religious allies prepared to respond to an American and/or Israeli military attack.
Once upon a time there was a Constitution of the United States. In Article II, Section 2 it stipulated that only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war, which means the American president has to go to the legislative body and make a case for going to war against an enemy or enemies. If there is a vote in favor of war, the president is empowered as commander-in-chief to direct the available resources against the enemy.
Joe Biden’s statement that “President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox” by assassinating Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was not inaccurate. But it skirts an all-important question: who created the tinderbox in the first place?
The answer, of course, is the United States.
On Sunday morning 5 January 2020, the author of the Moon of Alabama blog headlined “Iraqi Parliament Expels Foreign Militaries From Iraq” and he reported that not only the parliament but also the nation’s Prime Minister (Abdel Mahdi) are demanding departure from Iraq of all foreign military forces, and that Iraq will now — as UAE’s The National puts it — “lodge an official complaint against the U.S.
Caitlin JOHNSTONE
Following a vote by the Iraqi parliament to remove foreign troops from the nation, the US president threatened to destroy Iraq’s economy in retaliation and to refuse to leave unless an expensive military base worth billions of dollars was paid for.
Even before he was buried, Iranian General Qasem Soleimani had to endure a second assassination at the hands of the Americans; besmirching his character and military history.
