Daily Archives: September 11, 2013

I disagree with Senator McCain on US policy on Syria – John Gelmini

September 11, 2013 By in Business Administration, Politics, Syria, US Tags: , , , , , , , 7 Comments
English: John McCain official photo portrait.

English: John McCain official photo portrait. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In his blog entitled “Obama to halt attack if Syria destroys chemical weapons – FT.com“, Dr Alf  indicated that he agreed with Senator McCain who said that “Congress should vote for air strikes in order to “give the president additional leverage to press Russia and Syria to make good on their proposal”.

Here is my own view.

Senator McCain has been in favor of every war that America has been involved in since he was shot down as an air-force pilot over Vietnam and imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton for five years.

Syria will not destroy its chemical weapons and has every incentive to hang onto them if America is going to order cruise missile strikes anyway. Giving these chemical weapons up does not strengthen Assad’s hand; it weakens it because by keeping them, he has a card to play and in the event of a Western attack some of the stockpiles could be hit causing death through chemical weapons unintentionally.

The Pentagon knew years ago that they would need at least 75,000 troops to invade Syria and has already planned for that eventuality as other troops from Turkey and France would make up the balance of the invasion force.

Matters will not end with cruise missile strikes and Assad, brutal dictator that he is, has a right to defend his country from outside attack.

If the West kills him and all his followers it then means it has to find a strong leader to replace him who is our puppet and will crush the Al Qaeda related elements such as Al Nusra who are our sworn enemies and who wish to create a Caliphate across the entire world controlled by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Russia does not want to lose the Port of Tartus and cannot be seen to back down easily.

Air strikes against Syria will not make them more compliant as Senator McCain seems to think, but it will make them angry and give them an incentive to create trouble for us at a later stage. It will lead to a much wider Middle East war, casualties on a much larger scale than the chemical attack at Gouta, higher oil prices, Europe and America tipped back into recession and the advancement of Wahibi style Islamic terrorism to our detriment.

China, similarly will not forget and will in its own time, which could be decades later, make the West pay. One of their Generals put it this way “We nurse our sense of grievance and wait”.

Unlike Dr Alf, with whom I usually agree, I think that we should mind our own business and attend to our own problems. This is because as General Martin Dempsey, America’s top general said before he was leaned on, “Attacking Syria leaves us with no good options and is not in America’s best interests”.

John Gelmini

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Will China’s policy of bearing gifts to Afghanistan be more successful than both Russian and US policy? – John Gelmini

September 11, 2013 By in Afganistan, Business Administration, Business Strategy, China, Politics, Russia, US Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments
National emblem of the People's Republic of China

National emblem of the People’s Republic of China (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The answer to Dr Alf’s question has to be a resounding “yes”. For convenience, I am restating the question:

Will China‘s policy of bearing gifts to Afghanistan be more successful than both Russian and US policy?

China’s assistance to rebuild Afghanistan has given them access to $6 trillion USD in mineral wealth in just copper and lithium alone, and 350,000 Chinese mine-workers who would otherwise have to be found jobs at home or left without work (there have been many riots about huge differences and corruption such as the Wuhan riots in 2012, where the local people forced a change in local Communist Party leadership).

This allows China to expand her economy without creating too many inflationary pressures, whilst building footholds and learning more about countries around the world.

Within each of these communities of Chinese, there is always a Communist Party apparatchiks watching and listening to the expatriates and noting down what he and she sees and hears whilst they live and work in that country.

The excess between the costs of doing the mining, propping up the US dollar and rebuilding Afghanistan’s infrastructure, go back to China and then in turn get invested in Western businesses either by outright acquisition or a slow but steady buildup in shareholdings. The businesses they acquire often have manufacturing or other divisions outsourced or relocated to China, which creates more employment back home, more tax revenues for the Government and thus more money with which to buy land in other countries.

Parcels of land as big as Switzerland are being bought in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Nicaragua is to get a new canal to rival the Panama Canal and it will be 100% owned by the People’s Liberation Army through the Chinese Government.

Last week, the Chinese injected billions into Kenya to help it bring Vision 2030, the Kenyan Governments plan to become a first world country, into reality.This is connected to the discovery of massive coal reserves, rare earth deposits and oil.

THE WEST

The West has gained 15 secret bases in Afghanistan which are not so secret because the Russians know where they are.

They have some access to Afghanistan’s mineral wealth and other resources but through XE are effectively going to have to keep troops there forever as has happened in Iraq already where the Americans and ourselves (UK) have long since withdrawn our troops but left behind “security contractors” who work for private mercenary companies composed of ex special forces people and who are not covered by any military code or the Geneva Convention.

The cost to the West in blood, treasure and money has not been insignificant and as we saw with the House of Commons vote and the difficulty President Obama is having over Syria there is a bigger cost, namely the mistrust and loathing of a majority of the people.

People do not want Wars on Terror that kill their sons, send others home maimed and mentally scarred.They do not want the cost of these operations when they are told that there is no money and worse still for these Western Governments, politicians become despised and disliked which then makes it hard for action to be taken on real issues when, occasionally the politicians are speaking the truth.

The Chinese Government is not immune from this but they are creating 25 million new jobs a year and even though these are not necessarily jobs that we would want, they are nevertheless raising living standards for people who had previously lived in even more grinding rural poverty.

The very long game that the Chinese Government is playing is one that they are winning at the West’s expense and is summed up in one of their statements which said “As people become more prosperous we will become more popular”.

John Gelmini

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