Trump's Terrorist Friendly Regime

Toward the end of Judge Nap’s conversation today with Scott Ritter there was a fascinating exchange concerning Trump’s upcoming meeting with a genuine al Qaeda terrorist who had a $10 million US bounty on his head. I’m talking, of course, about Ahmed al-Sharaa aka Julani/Jolani, who is now the self appointed “president” of Syria. The former terrorist is now being feted throughout the West. Well, if Trump and any number of other US politicians are willing to meet with Israeli politicians and military types—representatives of a genuine terrorist and genocide regime—why shouldn’t Trump meet with this guy? Shake his hand, smile into his face, whatever. The world is used to American duplicity and hypocrisy by now, so no biggie.

I’ve done a transcript and included the leadin, which contains some great speculation on what Trump hopes to set up on his Middle East trip:

Scott Ritter : Can Trump Resist the Neocons?

Judge: Wow! Trump has now said that he may very well fly to Turkey to try and initiate talks between Putin and Zelensky. Putin's not going to be in Turkey, is he?

Scott: No but but this is where it gets really interesting, Judge. Putin's flying to Teheran and you know Trump--this is where his real estate mind comes into play, where there's so many factors going on in the deal. Russia is the secret sauce, the secret ingredient, to our negotiations with Iran. Russia's behind the scenes doing things, helping us make sense to the Iranians, getting the Iranians to the table. Russia's there to backstop us. And Putin's going to Iran right now and he's going to be having conversations with the Supreme Leader and the Iranian president, but that also positions him to do a couple of things where Trump's going to owe him, because he's going to say, 'Look, I'm helping you win this Iran thing. Now I'm in Teheran. If you can get Zelensky to cave on Russian territorial demands, and you get Zelensky there, ready to sign a document, and you're there, Mr President, and you're going to be there as the guarantor of this,' maybe Putin will come in. I would not want to be a Russian diplomat or an American diplomat right now, because you know they are going absolutely bananas trying to backstop this stuff, because you don't bring your principals together unless you have everything in order. So they are working overtime, right now, to try and get all of this done, because I think Trump has said, 'I want something to happen in Istanbul,' and Putin wouldn't be going to Teheran unless he was like, 'I'm willing to let something happen in Istanbul, but you have to meet our concerns,' and Steve Witkoff knows every single one of those concerns inside and out. Marco Rubio is going to try and sabotage every single one of those concerns and Keith Kellogg should be sent as far away from this discussion as possible. JD Vance should be hanging around whispering sweet nothings in the president's ear to keep him on focus.

Judge: Here's what Trump just said about Turkey:

Trump: "And I think you may have a good result out of the Thursday meeting in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine, and I believe the two leaders were going to be there. I was thinking about flying over! I don't know where I'm going to be on Thursday--I've got so many meetings--but I was thinking about actually flying over there. There's a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen."

Wow! Again, Netanyahu is going to have a heart attack if Trump cuts a deal with Putin and with the president of Iran.

Note that in this next key passage, Ritter is saying what I’ve been saying recently—all of these developments are the result of Hamas’ victory over both Israel and America.

Scott: Yeah, no, this is a divorce from Netanyahu. And it's interesting because Netanyahu has spoken about detoxing Israel from American security assistance. What the hell? Of course, now they're meeting with the Germans and you might see the Germans say, 'Well, we will back you up. We will give you the weaponry and all that stuff.' Great! So Germany is once again on the side of genocide--that's nice! But I think this is Israel floundering right now. This is, again, the success of Hamas--for all the people that didn't, you know, when I said, 'Look, Hamas beat the Israelis for 15 months.' In the end [Israel] had to take a compromise, bring in this deal, but Hamas has a lot to play, you know, there's a lot of Hamas left. And for Trump--who said, 'Hamas is a terrorist organization, we'll never deal with them, we'll never function with them'--now directly negotiating with them to get an American hostage released and talking about recognizing a Palestine with the very Hamas people that he talked to. [Trump is] meeting with Jolani, an al-Qaeda terrorist who just a few months ago had a $10 million reward on his head! So please, people, you know, let's just keep the right people whispering in Donald Trump's ear.

Judge: A $10 million dollar reward on his head posted by his own State Department, yeah, can't make this up, Scotty!

Scott: Don't forget about this, Judge. There's a reason why there was 10 million--he killed Americans. Jolani was AQI before he became ISIS before he became al-Nusra. This is a man who, in Iraq, was responsible for the deaths of Americans, and now we're going to have the president of United States meet this guy. I'm not saying that you know there's no, under no circumstance should this ever happen, but let's understand what's happening here. This isn't just a casual meeting. This is the president of the United States meeting with an al-Qaeda terrorist leader who killed Americans and has a $10 million dollar bounty on his head, and we're going to normalize relations with this guy. Hey, why couldn't we just normalize relations with Bashar al-Assad? It would've been a hell of a lot easier and we wouldn't have to put up with any of this nonsense.

If you follow the first link, above, you’ll learn that Jolani was Zarqawi’s deputy.

The necessary context for placing this in perspective is Israel’s oft stated foreign policy strategy, which is to maintain a state of relative chaos in the Middle East so that no challenger to Israeli hegemony will be able to arise. The US is Israel’s enforcer. That’s why Saddam had to go, and that’s why Assad had to go—because he was seen as an extension of Iranian power. There has never—not since the beginning of the Zionist movement—been a question of Israel making any accommodations to its neighbors, much less to the Palestinians.

This divorce of Trump from Netanyahu emphatically does not mean that Trump is less beholden to the Israel Lobby. Netanyahu’s genocidal policies retain the support of the great majority of Israelis—it’s just that Israelis don’t like the eminently unlikeable Netanyahu. Similarly, Jewish Nationalists in America simply believe that Netanyahu is no longer an effective front man for representing Jewish Nationalism to the American public—as Thomas Friedman argued in the NYT over the weekend. Trump basically has permission to push back against Netanyahu because of Netanyahu’s failings, but Trump remains beholden to the Israel Lobby when push comes to shove.