Chris Hedges's Blog, page 364

Democrats Roll Out Big Health Care Proposals in the States

SEATTLE — Riding the momentum from November’s elections, Democratic leaders in the states are wasting no time delivering on their biggest campaign promise — to expand access to health care and make it more affordable.

The first full week of state legislative sessions and swearings-in for governors saw a flurry of proposals.

In his initial actions, newly elected California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to expand Medicaid to those in the country illegally up to age 26, implement a mandate that everyone buy insurance or face a fine, and consolidate the state’s prescription drug purchases in the hope that it will dramatically lower costs.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee proposed a public health insurance option for people who are not covered by Medicaid or private employers and have trouble affording policies on the private market.

Democrats in several states where they now control the legislature and governor’s office, including New Mexico, are considering ways that people who are uninsured but make too much to qualify for Medicaid or other subsidized coverage can buy Medicaid policies.

And in the nation’s most populous city, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a publicly run plan to link the uninsured, who already receive treatment in city hospitals, with primary care.

It’s all in keeping with the main theme Democratic candidates promoted on the campaign trail in 2018.

They touted the benefits of former President Barack Obama’s health overhaul — such as protections for people with pre-existing conditions, allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies and expanded coverage options for lower-income Americans. At the same time, they painted Republicans as seeking to eliminate or greatly reduce health care options and protections.

“Once you give something to somebody, it’s pretty hard to take it away, and I think we see that with how the support for the (Affordable Care Act) has grown over the last two years,” said Washington House Rep. Eileen Cody, who is leading the state’s public option proposal.

The actions also represent a pushback to steps taken by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to undermine the Affordable Care Act.

The GOP tax law stripped away the individual mandate, which was intended to stabilize insurance markets by encouraging younger and healthier people to buy policies. And last summer, the Trump administration said it would freeze payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses. That move is expected to contribute to higher premiums.

The Democratic proposals fall short of providing universal health care, a goal of many Democrats but also an elusive one because of its cost. In recent years, California, Colorado and Vermont have all considered and then abandoned attempts to create state-run health care systems.

Still, many Democrats are eager to take steps that get them closer to that.

“This is not just a moral right,” Inslee said in announcing his public option proposal this past week. “It is an economic wisdom, and this is very possible.”

Some lawmakers in Colorado, where Democrats now control the legislature and the governor’s office, are proposing a state-run health insurance plan similar to that announced by Inlsee. It would reach those who don’t qualify for federal assistance or who live in rural areas with few health care choices.

Both states plan to rely on their agencies that administer Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health coverage for roughly one-in-five Americans. Republicans are skeptical about whether the states can afford it, since they already pick up a portion of Medicaid costs.

“This is about having the government competing in the private market. Medicare-for-all will be priced out,” Washington state Rep. Joe Schmick said.

Taking incremental steps to increase coverage options and make health care more affordable may be a smarter strategy than pursuing a costly and complicated all-or-nothing proposal for universal coverage, said Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Everybody wants to pay less for health care,” she said.

Democrats now have more leverage to experiment. Campaign messaging around health care helped them flip seven governor’s seats to bolster their numbers to 23 across the country and win back several state legislative chambers. They gained full control of state government in several states, including New York and Nevada.

That power will allow them to consider health care expansions that Republicans have resisted.

In Nevada, for example, the state’s Democratically controlled legislature passed a bill in 2017 that would have let anyone in the state buy into a Medicaid insurance plan, similar to the option being pushed in New Mexico. But former Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, vetoed it.

The new governor, Democrat Steve Sisolak, is forming a committee to look at health care options, including the possibility of requiring everyone to have insurance. In addition to the California proposal, that mandate already is in place in Massachusetts and New Jersey, with Vermont following in 2020.

It’s a similar dynamic in New Mexico, where Democratic lawmakers have talked for years about allowing people, including non-citizens, to buy into Medicaid if they cannot afford insurance any other way.

Colin Baillio, policy director for the advocacy group Health Action New Mexico, said a bill is being drafted with the goal of getting it adopted this year and implemented for 2020. The optimism comes because the new governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, is a Democrat.

“Folks are going to need to have health care one way or another,” he said. “We think health coverage is a good investment for our state.”

Former Obama Housing Chief Julian Castro Joins 2020 Campaign

SAN ANTONIO — Assailing President Donald Trump for “a crisis of leadership,” former Obama Cabinet member Julian Castro joined the 2020 presidential race Saturday as the rush of Democrats making early moves to challenge the incumbent accelerates.

Castro, who could end up being the only Latino in what is shaping up to be a crowded Democratic field, made immigration a centerpiece of his announcement in his hometown of San Antonio, less than 200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Two days after the president visited the border to promote his promised wall, Castro mocked Trump for claiming that the U.S. faces an “invasion” from its ally to the south. “He called it a national security crisis,” Castro said. “Well, there is a crisis today. It’s a crisis of leadership. Donald Trump has failed to uphold the values of our great nation.”

Castro, the 44-year-old grandson of a Mexican immigrant, said he was running for president “because it’s time for new leadership, because it’s time for new energy and it’s time for a new commitment to make sure that the opportunities that I’ve had are available to every American.”

He made the announcement as a government shutdown drags into the longest in U.S. history, and as the field of 2020 contenders widens and anticipation grows around bigger names still considering runs.

Castro was San Antonio’s mayor for five years and U.S. housing secretary in President Barack Obama’s second term. He became the second Democrat to formally enter race, after former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has also started an exploratory committee for president, and four other Democratic senators are taking steady steps toward running. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu elected to Congress, said this week she is planning a bid, too.

Castro is getting an early start in trying to stand out. His first trip as a candidate comes Monday, to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, where an outcry has begun as the White House considers diverting disaster funding to pay for the wall.

The impasse over paying for a border wall that Trump made a central part of his 2016 campaign has led to the partial federal closure. That stalemate, along with Trump’s hard-line immigration stands, drew sharp rebukes from Castro.

“There are serious issues that need to be addressed in our broken immigration system, but seeking asylum is a legal right. And the cruel policies of this administration are doing real and lasting harm,” he said.

He argued for securing the border in a “smart and humane way.”

“There is no way in hell that caging babies is a smart or a right or good way to do it. We say no to building a wall and say yes to building community. We say no to scapegoating immigrants,” he said.

Joining Castro at the campaign kickoff was his twin brother, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, chairman of the Hispanic congressional caucus and a frequent Trump critic. The Spanish-style plaza in the Castro twins’ boyhood neighborhood was packed with supporters who streamed through the gates between a mariachi band. Castro had said leading up to his announcement that a Latino candidate was a must in the 2020 field.

That group of hopefuls is starting to take shape even though the first primary elections are more than a year away.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California this past week published a memoir, a staple of presidential candidates. Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke is doing little to dim speculation that he might jump into a field that has no clear front-runner.

Castro is aware he lacks the name recognition of potential 2020 rivals or the buzz surrounding O’Rourke, whose flirtations with 2020 have tantalized donors and activists after a close race last year against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Even some supporters at Castro’s announcement could be torn if O’Rourke gets in the race. Diana Delrosario, a social worker in San Antonio, warned she might cry while she recounted how Castro once went out of his way as mayor to help wheel her mother out of a restaurant.

“I have this heart for Julian. But it’s going to be a big discussion if Beto decides to run,” said Delrosario, 45.

Castro, who has repeatedly dismissed talk that an O’Rourke candidacy would complicate his own chances, has framed the neighborhood and his upbringing as the story of an underdog.

He was raised by a local Latina activist, and after a brief career in law, was elected mayor of the nation’s seventh-largest city at 34. It wasn’t long before Democrats nationally embraced him as a star in the making, particularly one from Texas, where a booming Hispanic population is rapidly changing the state’s demographics and improving the party’s fortunes.

Castro delivered the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Two years later, President Barack Obama picked him to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

He was on the short list of Hillary Clinton’s potential running mates in 2016. During Castro’s trip this past week to Nevada, one state Latino business leader told Castro that he should again be a top contender for vice president if his campaign falls short.

Like other Democrats running, Castro has said he will not accept money from political action committees tied to corporations and unions, and he has sought to introduce himself to voters as a champion for universal health care and affordable housing.

Report Finds Little Media Interest in ‘Green New Deal’

A new analysis by one of the nation’s top public interest advocacy groups shows that even as the planet and humanity face an existential threat due to the climate crisis, most corporate media outlets in the U.S. have largely ignored the urgent need  for a Green New Deal and the growing political movement demanding it.

Following the midterm elections in November, the youth-led Sunrise Movement flooded congressional offices and demanded that representatives back a Green New Deal and the creation of a House select committee that would be tasked with drafting legislation to create one, successfully convincing 45 members of Congress to support the proposal.

But despite the energy behind the plan, 82 percent of Americans in a Yale/George Mason poll  said they had never heard of the Green New Deal, and researchers behind the new Public Citizen study are blaming corporate news networks for failing to educate the public about the proposal.

Between Nov. 1 to Dec. 28 of last year, according to the group’s new study, major news networks barely covered the Green New Deal—and the majority of TV coverage was from Fox News. The network covered the plan in a negative light in eight segments, warning viewers that the Green New Deal could lead to the kinds of violent protests that France has seen in recent months from the Yellow Vest movement and that the plan would lead to higher taxes for middle- and lower-class Americans.

ABC News ran just one segment on the plan, while MSNBC ran three. CNN never mentioned the Green New Deal in its November and December coverage, according to Public Citizen.

“The surge of interest in a Green New Deal was one of the most significant climate change stories of 2018, and many media outlets gave it little or no attention,” said David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program.

In the digital news world, Politico published 33 stories about the Green New Deal, but the conservative Daily Caller was right behind them with 32, with headlines calling the plan “indirect taxation” and warning that the name is “another way of saying new taxes.” 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of the plan’s biggest supporters, has suggested that the Green New Deal should be funded with far higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans—not for middle-class families.

Americans who have managed to get information about the proposal have overwhelmingly expressed approval, with 81 percent of registered voters reporting in the Yale/George Mason poll that they support the plan.

Americans also strongly support the principles within the Green New Deal, with 70 percent of respondents telling a market research firm before the Sunrise Movement began lobbying representatives that they supported moving to a 100 percent renewable energy economy.

“Climate change is one of the most urgent and terrible threats that humanity faces, and polls show that most Americans are concerned about it and a strong bipartisan majority supports solutions,” Arkush said. “It would be much easier to win those solutions if media outlets would give it the coverage that it merits.”

Public Citizen argued that the corporate media’s silence on the Green New Deal Public Citizen argued that the corporate media’s silence on the Green New Deal had a serious and negative impact on ability of the plan’s backers to keep the pressure on lawmakers.

“Advocates were fighting on a tilted playing field,” the report found. “If media coverage had been better, the effort to create the Select Committee may have been more successful.”

However, “proponents of a Green New Deal, or solving the climate crisis by other means, certainly are not giving up,” added the group. “Media outlets will have plenty of chances to do better going forward, and they should resolve to do so. The climate crisis is far too urgent and severe to ignore.”

Presidential Hopeful Tulsi Gabbard Faces Scrutiny Over Foreign Policy

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), in a video circulated by CNN on Friday night, announced her plans to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2020—a revelation that was met with mixed responses from progressives.

“I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week,” the congresswoman told CNN‘s Van Jones in a preview of an interview set to air at 7 pm ET on Saturday.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard says she will run for president in 2020. "I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week," the Hawaii Democrat and Iraq War veteran told CNN's @VanJones68 https://t.co/5BzVi2JMFq pic.twitter.com/nNNmGCED5C

— CNN (@CNN) January 11, 2019

The 37-year-old Iraq War veteran was born in American Samoa and is the first Hindu to serve in Congress. Prior to being elected to the U.S. House in 2012, Gabbard served as a Honolulu City Council member and member of the Hawaii House of Representatives.

As many political observers speculated, it seems Gabbard intends to make American wars a primary focus of her bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination in what is expected to be a crowded field.

In a statement published by the Honolulu Civil Beat late Friday, she said:

There are many reasons I’m offering to serve you as president—to ensure every American gets the healthcare they need, to bring about comprehensive immigration reform, to make sure we have clean water and clean air for generations to come, to fix our broken criminal justice system, to end the corrupt influence of special interests in Washington, and so much more.

But the main reason I’m running has to do with an issue that is central to the rest—war and peace. I look forward to talking with you more about this in the coming days.

Gabbard backs domestic policy items such as Medicare for All and a “Green New Deal,” and she garnered praise and notoriety for resigning from her post as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in his 2016 presidential run.

However, while Gabbard’s opposition to U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition’s assault on Yemen—which has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis—has often been welcomed by critics of American militarism, some progressives and journalists on Friday were quick to point to other elements of her foreign policy that have provoked intense debates and critical media coverage.

Tulsi Gabbard is often hailed as a progressive champion. But her views on Islam and support for far-right leaders suggest otherwise. https://t.co/yWW2bD29eL

— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) January 11, 2019

Journalist Aída Chávez, in a pair of tweets, shared a couple recent reports from The Intercept. In an article from August of 2018, Chávez detailed Gabbard’s refusal to debate her Democratic primary challengers, who said they wished to challenge her foreign policy and hold her to account for “sketchy alliances” with foreign dictators.

Outlining some controversial highlights from Gabbard’s foreign policy record as of last August, Chávez wrote:

Outside of cultivating her image as an anti-interventionist, however, Gabbard has urged a continuation of the so-called war on terror. She’s also won the approval of some conservatives and members of the far right. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly arranged her November 2016 meeting with President Donald Trump, and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke has praised some of her foreign policy positions…

Her willingness to challenge American interventions in countries like Iraq and Libya has cultivated her anti-war image. But she simultaneously holds foreign policy positions close to Trump’s. Gabbard has praised Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who Trump called a “fantastic guy.” She was a skeptic of the Iran nuclear deal (though she eventually supported it), and she has been a vocal supporter of India’s far-right leader Narendra Modi. Her decision to meet with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad last year in a undisclosed trip to Syria rattled both sides of the political aisle and drew accusations that she was giving legitimacy to a war criminal. She defended her meeting at the time, saying it was a mission of peace.

The other article that Chávez—and many other critics—pointed to on Friday was written by Soumya Shankar and published last week with the headline “Tulsi Gabbard Is a Rising Progressive Star, Despite Her Support For Hindu Nationalists.”

While The Intercept’s analysis of Gabbard’s financial records showed several donors tied to “Sangh Parivar—a network of religious, political, paramilitary, and student groups that subscribe to the Hindu supremacist, exclusionary ideology known as Hindutva,” Shankar reports that “Gabbard has begun to distance herself from the Sangh affiliates—at least publicly,” noting speculation that the congresswoman, a member of the House committees on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services and co-chair of the India Caucus, intended to run for president.

That report followed a late December piece by Eoin Higgins for Sludge, which also examined Gabbard’s “connections to India, the world’s most populous Hindu nation, including to the country’s Hindu nationalist movement.” Both Sludge and The Intercept said Gabbard’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Recent SLUDGE on Tulsi Gabbard, who just announced she's running for president. https://t.co/wnJSVJelem

— Donald Warner Shaw III (@donnydonny) January 12, 2019

“It’s hard to know where to begin with her,” The New Yorker’s Osita Nwanevu tweeted in response to Gabbard’s announcement, suggesting a lengthy profile by the magazine that traces her entrance into politics at age 21—when “she was a social conservative, pro-life, and active in the fight against same-sex marriage”—to the “progressive, pro-choice, and pro-same-sex-marriage” platform from her 2012 run for Congress, and her foreign policy record that will undoubtedly be a major focus of this next campaign.

What Democratic voters are going to want in 2020 is a candidate who used to attack "homosexual extremists," regularly went on Fox to criticize Obama for not taking "radical Islam" seriously, defended Assad, was considered for a job working for Trump, and is also in a cult maybe.

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 12, 2019

Corporate Media Condemns Potential Syria Withdrawal

In December, President Donald Trump said that he planned to withdraw the US troops from Syria, which number between 2,000 and 4,000. Trump’s claim was widely condemned in corporate media, demonstrating the commentariat’s shared belief in American benevolence toward other peoples, in Washington’s alleged right and duty to decide other countries’ fates, and in the forever war the US supposedly has to wage in the Middle East.

ISIS, Iran and Russia

One consistent theme in the coverage was the view that US troops need to stay in Syria because ISIS still exists. Another is that US forces must remain there because the governments of Russia, Syria and Iran want the US to leave.

A New York Times editorial (12/19/18) said it would be “dangerous” for the US to withdraw from Syria. “No one wants American troops deployed in a war zone longer than necessary,” the editors claimed. The paper endorsed the perspective that “the job” of fighting ISIS “is not yet done,” going on to write that:

[A]n American withdrawal would also be a gift to Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader…. Another beneficiary is Iran, which has also expanded its regional footprint.

According to this view, the US should get out of Syria once a US presence there is no longer “necessary,” but it’s “necessary” until some unspecified benchmark for annihilating ISIS has been reached, and never mind the costs to Syria: A US-led bombing ostensibly aimed at ISIS leveled Raqqa, a major Syrian city,  killing and injuring civilians en masse in what former Defense Secretary James Mattis called a “war of annihilation.”

It’s also apparently “necessary” to stay until Syria has a government that is not allied with Russia or Iran, even though in practice this pursuit has contradicted the goal the editors just outlined, eliminating ISIS: US efforts to help bring down the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the US invasion of Iraq, helped create the conditions for the emergence of ISIS in Syria.

What the authors are suggesting is that the US should maintain an illegal presence in Syria until the Syrian government has been overthrown and replaced with one that has partnerships to which the US assents. Because all evidence suggests that Russia will fight to keep its Syrian partner in power, in practical terms the authors are arguing that it’s “necessary” for the US to occupy Syria forever, or until the US fights World War III with Russia.

In an article headlined “Retreat Rhymes With Defeat,” the Times’ David Leonhardt (12/20/18) argued that the US needs to stay in Syria because Islamic State fighters are reportedly still in the country, and echoed the view that a US pullout of Syria would be “‘the greatest gift’ that Trump has so far given to Russia”—a reference to the conspiracy theory that Trump is a Russian tool—because a US drawdown would benefit the Russian-allied Syrian government. Like Times editors, Leonhardt argued the US should stay in Syria not only until there are no ISIS fighters left in the country, but also until the Syrian government is replaced with one that is not partnered with Russia.

But, again, US efforts to broker regime change in Syria were a cause of ISIS becoming a powerful force in the country: The UK-based Conflict Armament Research found that the US had been supplying arms to insurgents opposed to the Assad government since at least 2012, and when ISIS began rapidly seizing territory in 2013 and 2014, many US-armed rebel groups were either defeated by the incoming militants or joined them. As ISIS took nearly half of Syria, the US continued to train and equip Syrian rebels, using allies like Jordan and Turkey as intermediaries.

Similarly, a Washington Post editorial (12/19/18) headlined “This Is Not the Way to Leave Syria” complained that “the Syria withdrawal hands Tehran and its ally Russia a windfall.” This suggests that the editors believe “the way to leave Syria” is with a new government approved by the US in place, or at least with the current one ousted—a gambit that the US last pulled off in Libya, a country that now has slavery, with some slaves reportedly having their organs harvested and sold.

The Post’s Max Boot (12/19/18) claimed that Trump’s supposed plan to get US troops out of Syria amounted to “handing a Christmas present to the mullahs”—“the mullahs” being a lazy, orientalist shorthand for the Iranian government used by people who know little about the country. The author has so internalized imperialist ideology that he thinks the US has a right to indefinitely control one-third of Syria, including half of its energy resources and much of its best agricultural land, because it could benefit Iran if the US did not do that.

Israel & the Kurds

Much of the coverage complained that the US pulling out of Syria would be bad for Israel, in that Iran will likely retain influence in Syria. “The American withdrawal worries Israel,” said the Times’ editorial. Trump “promised to protect Israel, but that nation will now be left to face alone the buildup by Iran and its proxies along its northern border,” the Post’s howled. “So much for Trump’s conceit that he is the most pro-Israel president ever,” Boot moaned, going on to write that

A US withdrawal from Syria will entrench the Islamic Republic of Iran on Israel’s doorstep. That damage vastly outweighs the empty symbolism of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Whatever these pundits’ delusions, the Israeli state is not some kind of vulnerable minority that needs to be protected from violence; it is a nuclear-armed perpetrator of extraordinary violence—against the Palestinians, of course, and also against states in the region, including Syria.

US media say they are concerned that Turkey will attack the Syrian Kurds, and that the US should stay in Syria to protect them. The Times wrote:

Among the biggest losers [of an American pullout] are likely to be the Kurdish troops that the United States has equipped and relied on to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, considers many of the Kurds to be terrorists bent on destroying his country.

For the Post, “The Syrian Kurdish forces . . . will be perhaps the foremost victims of Mr. Trump’s decision. Betrayed by Washington, they will now be subject to a military offensive by Turkey.” Boot said that “America’s Kurdish and Arab allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces will be hard-put to resist [ISIS] on their own, much less deal with the Turkish threat against the Kurds.”

It is true that Turkey poses a threat to Kurdish people, and the risks facing Kurds merit concern, but the analysts mislead readers by suggesting a US occupation of Syria is the answer. The US military’s function is not to protect civilians—just the opposite, in fact. And a US presence in Syria has not kept the Kurds safe from Turkey: Turkey, along with armed groups opposed to the Syrian government that the US supported, ransacked Afrin, a Kurdish-majority territory in northern Syria, plundering the area and driving out 220,000 civilians. Moreover, throughout the 1990s, the US directly participated in Turkey’s mass killing and oppression of Kurds in Turkey.

The prospect of the Syrian Kurds making alliances with local forces that could result in protecting them from Turkey, as the Kurds appear to have done with the Syrian government, is a part of the story these pundits don’t think their readers need to hear about. None of these commentators who are professing concern for the welfare of Kurdish people consider the possibility that the only long-term way to ensure the safety and prosperity of the Kurds, and every other ethnic and confessional group in West Asia, might be a comprehensive, region-wide solution that necessarily entails upending the US-dominated order, replacing it with local self-rule. At no point do any of these articles consider the radical notion that the US has no right to determine Syria’s affairs, or those of any other country.

Fear Not, Pundit Class

There is ample reason to doubt that Trump will actually withdraw from Syria entirely. Trump said he would remove the troops in March 2018 (CNN, 3/29/18) and didn’t follow through, and the administration is again sending mixed signals. National Security Advisor John Bolton said that American forces will “eliminate what remains of ISIS before leaving,” “there is no fixed timetable for completing the drawdown,” and “some 200 US troops will remain in the vicinity of al-Tanf, in southern Syria, to counter growing Iranian activity in the region.” More recently, the military said that it moving ahead with plans to withdraw all troops, with one Pentagon official saying, “We don’t take orders from Bolton.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the “US will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria.” Trump himself won’t commit to a date for removing the troops, saying only that this will supposedly happen “over a period of time.” Subsequently, a spokesperson for the US-led coalition against ISIS said it has begun leaving, though it “will not discuss specific timelines,” and Reuters (1/11/19) noted that “residents near border crossings that are typically used by US forces going in and out of Syria from Iraq said they had seen no obvious or large-scale movement of US ground forces on Friday.”

Even if the US were to pull its troops out of Syria, it’s far from certain that this will mean the US will stop meddling. If the US holds on to its bases in Syria, continues to use Syrian air space, or fails to withdraw the more than 5,500 private contractors it has in the country, then that’s not a withdrawal from Syria.

Nor is there reason to believe that US allies will take their hands off Syria: For example, the day after Trump’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would increase its efforts against Iran in Syria “in a very decisive way and with support and backup from the US”; on Christmas Day, Israel bombed Damascus.

Thus, all of the media’s fretting about a possible scaling back of America’s empire may well have been over nothing.

Why Are the Media So Eager to Declare Trump’s Syria Withdrawal Dead?

Corporate media have converged around a narrative that the president has been forced to walk back his decision. But while a withdrawal will undoubtedly prove more challenging than the president originally anticipated, this verdict simply does not reflect the facts on the ground.

When John Bolton spoke in Jerusalem earlier this month, leading news outlets reported that Trump’s national security adviser had declared that withdrawal would not be completed unless and until specific conditions had been met or objectives achieved. The New York Times announced that “Bolton Puts Conditions on Syria Withdrawal, Suggesting a Delay of Months or Years,” claiming that he “told reporters that American forces would remain in Syria until the last remnants of the Islamic State were defeated and Turkey provided guarantees that it would not strike Kurdish forces allied with the United States.”

The Associated Press story, which was picked up by The Washington Post, proved similarly categorical. “U.S. troops will not leave northeastern Syria until Islamic State militants are defeated and American-allied Kurdish fighters are protected,” a top White House aide is quoted as saying. The article also notes that Bolton was “signaling a pause to a withdrawal abruptly announced last month and initially expected to be completed within weeks.”

Those stories were written on the assumption that Bolton was enunciating yet another policy on Syria withdrawal. There is now good reason to believe that no such new policy decision has been made. The Wall Street Journal has quoted a defense official as saying, “Nothing has changed. We don’t take orders from Bolton.”

The Times and AP failed to provide the actual text of Bolton’s statement, much less any analysis of it in context of his statements.

Bolton’s statement was extraordinarily indirect and didn’t necessarily mean what it appeared to mean at first glance. As quoted in The Wall Street Journal, one of the few places where the text could be found, Bolton said, “Timetables or the timing of the withdrawal occurs as a result of the fulfillment of the conditions and the establishment of the circumstances that we want to see. It’s not the establishment of an arbitrary point for the withdrawal to take place as President Obama did in the Afghan situation … the timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”

On closer examination, it seems more likely that Bolton was attempting to differentiate Trump’s withdrawal policy from that of President Obama in Iraq. Such an interpretation is reinforced by a statement from an unidentified “senior official” traveling with Bolton, who has indicated that the administration believes that the remaining pockets of ISIS control can be neutralized within a matter of weeks.

This, in turn, suggests that the Trump administration is planning to define the defeat of ISIS in conventional military terms—not as the elimination either of its presence in Syria or the possibility of its future revival in the region, both of which Secretary of Defense James Mattis had sought unsuccessfully.

The Pompeo Interview the Media Ignored

That leaves the question of how Trump’s plan will deal with other policy objectives, including the protection of our Kurdish allies and the United States’ demands for the withdrawal of Iranian and Iran-backed forces from Syria. But there is evidence the administration plans to pursue these objectives both during and after the withdrawal.

“Our troops are coming out,” Secretary of State Pompeo told Newsmax more than a week ago. “The President also made it clear that we need to continue the counter-ISIS campaign, and we needed to continue to create stability throughout the Middle East. The counter-Iran campaign continues. We’ll do all these things.”

Pompeo also indicated the president’s recommendation on Syria includes “not only the withdrawal but all the other elements that the President laid out: the importance of ensuring the Turks don’t slaughter the Kurds; the protection of religious minorities in Syria. All those things are still part of the American mission set.”

Pompeo thus gave away the premise that Bolton managed to obscure: “We will simply do it at a time when the American forces have departed Syria.” Had the secretary of state intended to describe a “conditions-based withdrawal” policy—a term used consistently by the U.S. military and employed by Obama in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he could very easily have made that clear. Instead, he said the actions required to advance the administration’s policy objectives would be taken “when the American forces have departed Syria.” In other words, they have would to continue well beyond the withdrawal.

The Danger of a Bolton-Israeli Scheme

Even though there is reason to believe that Trump still plans to remove all troops from Syria in a matter of months rather than years, there are certainly potential pitfalls ahead. One of them is Bolton’s greater involvement in the withdrawal process. After all, it was Bolton who declared last September that the Trump administration policy was to keep troops in Syria until all Iranian troops had gone home.

What authority Bolton had obtained to make such a pronouncement remains unclear, but Trump rejected that position decisively in December.

Because the president has a well-known aversion to detailed policy papers, and because Bolton has successfully limited Trump’s exposure to them, the national security adviser has gained unusual latitude in representing administration policy. And Bolton is well known to be a master at bureaucratic maneuvering to advance an agenda that doesn’t necessarily reflect that of the president he’s serving. To date, however, there is no indication that Bolton aims to undercut Trump’s plan to withdraw the 2,000 or more U.S. troops working in conjunction with Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

But the base at Al-Tanf in the south near the Syrian border with both Jordan and Iraq is another story.. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like the U.S. to keep its few hundred Special Forces at Al-Tanf, and Bolton may be hoping to exempt it from the withdrawal. That base, which sits astride the main highway between Baghdad and Damascus, has long been touted by  those seeking to justify U.S. and Israeli military intervention in the region as a key to blocking successful transport from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon.

Israel has argued that it needs to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining modern, highly accurate weaponry via that route, but Hezbollah had already secured such weapons long before the U.S. established its base in 2016. The Israelis ultimately recognize that those several hundred U.S. troops serve no real tactical purpose. Instead, they believe their presence could be used to justify further intervention in the future.

So during Bolton’s visit to Jerusalem, “a senior administration official” in his party told reporters that Bolton planned to discuss with Israeli officials possible continued stationing of some U.S. forces at Al-Tanf for an indeterminate period. The same official said the U.S. would decide how important the base is and whether it would have to stay in its current location after talks with the Israelis and Jordanians.

The official in question, who was almost certainly Bolton himself, may have been merely stating a theoretical possibility for the sake of completing the necessary consultations with Israel and Turkey in connection with the withdrawal. But Bolton is also capable of scheming with the Israelis to create a new excuse for keeping U.S. troops at that location.

The Trump administration is still committed to the aim of getting all Iranian personnel out of Syria, and it should not be forgotten that during the George W. Bush administration Bolton worked closely with the Israelis on creating the political preconditions for the U.S. use of force against Iran. By comparison, a scheme hatched jointly with the Israelis for reducing Trump’s freedom of action on that issue would be relatively easy for Bolton.

FBI Investigated Whether Trump Secretly Worked for Russia: Report

WASHINGTON—Law enforcement officials became so concerned by President Donald Trump’s behavior in the days after he fired FBI Director James Comey that they began investigating whether he had been working for Russia against U.S. interests, The New York Times reported Friday.

The report cites unnamed former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry forced counterintelligence investigators to evaluate whether Trump was a potential threat to national security, and they also sought to determine whether Trump was deliberately working for Russia or had unintentionally been influenced by Moscow.

The Times reports that FBI agents and some top officials became suspicious of Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign but didn’t launch an investigation at that time because they weren’t sure how to approach such a sensitive and important probe, according to the sources. But Trump’s behavior in the days around Comey’s May 2017 firing, specifically two instances in which he seemed to tie Comey’s ousting to the Russia investigation, helped trigger the counterintelligence part of the investigation, according to the Times’ sources.

Robert Mueller took over the investigation when he was appointed special counsel soon after Comey’s firing. The overall investigation is looking into Russian election interference and whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with the Russians. The Times says it’s unclear whether Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence angle.

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the Times that he had no knowledge of the inquiry but said that since it was opened a year and a half ago and they hadn’t heard anything, apparently “they found nothing.” Trump has also repeatedly and vociferously denied collusion with the Russians.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, called the Times’ report “absurd” and said Comey was fired for being “a disgraced partisan hack.” She also disputed that Trump had ever been soft on Russia.

“Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia,” Sanders said.

Shutdown Becomes Longest Federal Closure in U.S. History

WASHINGTON—The partial government shutdown became the longest closure in U.S. history when the clock ticked past midnight Friday as President Donald Trump and nervous Republicans scrambled to find a way out of the mess.

A solution couldn’t come soon enough for federal workers who got pay statements Friday but no pay.

The House and Senate voted to give federal workers back pay whenever the federal government reopens and then left town for the weekend, leaving the shutdown on track to become one for the record books once the clock struck midnight and the closure entered its 22nd day. And while Trump privately considered one dramatic escape route — declaring a national emergency to build the wall without a new stream of cash from Congress — members of his own party were fiercely debating that idea, and the president urged Congress to come up with another solution.

“What we’re not looking to do right now is national emergency,” Trump said. He insisted that he had the authority to do that, adding that he’s “not going to do it so fast” because he’d still prefer to work a deal with Congress.

About 800,000 workers missed paychecks Friday, many receiving blank pay statements. Some posted photos of their empty earnings statements on social media as a rallying cry to end the shutdown, a jarring image that many in the White House feared could turn more voters against the president as he holds out for billions in new wall funding.

With polls showing Trump getting most of the blame for the shutdown, the administration accelerated planning for a possible emergency declaration to try to get around Congress and fund the wall from existing sources of federal revenue. The White House explored diverting money for wall construction from a range of other accounts. One idea being considered was diverting some of the $13.9 billion allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers after last year’s deadly hurricanes and floods.

That option triggered an outcry from officials in Puerto Rico and some states recovering from natural disasters and appeared to lose steam Friday.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it an “unconscionable” idea to look at using disaster assistance “to pay for an immoral wall that America doesn’t need or want.”

Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas told reporters after discussions with the White House: “I feel confident disaster relief dollars will not be tapped.” Brady said the administration was looking at the “breadth” of unspent dollars in other government accounts.

Other possibilities included tapping asset forfeiture funds, including money seized by the Department of Justice from drug kingpins, according to a congressional Republican not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The White House also was eyeing military construction funds, another politically difficult choice because the money would be diverted from a backlog of hundreds of projects at bases around the nation.

Despite Trump’s go-slow message, momentum grew in some corners for some sort of emergency declaration. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who met with the president on Friday, took to Twitter afterward to urge: “Mr. President, Declare a national emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW.”

Trump has been counseled by outside advisers to move toward a national emergency declaration, but many in the White House are trying to pump the brakes. Senior aide Jared Kushner, who traveled with the president to the Texas border on Thursday, was among those opposed to the declaration, arguing to the president that pursuing a broader immigration deal was a better option. A person familiar with White House thinking said that in meetings this week, the message was that the administration is in no rush and wants to consider various options. The person was unauthorized to discuss private sessions and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has signaled moral opposition to the wall and vowed to oppose any funding, said the president is seeking to divert attention from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and other White House problems.

“This isn’t a wall between Mexico and the United States. This is a wall between his failures of his administration,” Pelosi told reporters. “This is a big diversion, and he’s a master of diversion.”

Although Trump has been frustrated with aides as he loses the public relations battle over the shutdown, White House attempts to use the trappings of the presidency to buttress his case for the wall have yielded mixed results in the president’s view.

Trump has long avoided using the Oval Office as a backdrop for his speeches, telling aides that previous presidents looked stilted and “flat” in the standard, straight-ahead camera angle. But he was persuaded that the seriousness of the moment warranted the Oval Office for his speech to the nation this week about the fight over the border wall.

But since Tuesday night’s address, Trump has complained that he looked lifeless and boring, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The president also expressed misgivings about his visit to the border, believing it would do little to change anyone’s mind.

In a Friday morning tweet, Trump called illegal immigration on the southern border “an invasion,” even though border crossings have declined in recent years. Later, he tried to blame Democrats for the shutdown, claiming he’s flexible about the needed barrier.

“I don’t care what they name it,” Trump said. “They can name it ‘peaches.'”

Trump has told advisers he believes the fight for the wall — even if it never yields the requested funding — is a political win for him.

But some of his outside advisers have urged him to declare a national emergency, believing it would have two benefits: First, it would allow him to claim that he was the one to act to reopen the government. Second, inevitable legal challenges would send the matter to court, allowing Trump to continue the fight for the wall — and continue to excite his supporters — while not actually closing the government or immediately requiring him to start construction.

Such a move could put Republicans in a bind. While it might end the standoff over funding and allow Congress to move onto other priorities, some Republicans believe such a declaration would usurp congressional power and could lead future Democratic presidents to make similar moves to advance liberal priorities.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who speaks to Trump frequently, said that unless Republicans and Democrats strike an unlikely compromise, “I fully expect him to declare a national emergency.”

“Most conservatives want it to be the last resort he would use,” Meadows said. “But those same conservatives, I’m sure if it’s deployed, would embrace him as having done all he could do to negotiate with Democrats.”

Many Democrats, meanwhile, say they have little reason to give into Trump’s demand for border wall funding since taking control of the House in the midterm elections.

“The American people gave us the majority based on our comprehensive approach to this problem and they rejected President Trump’s,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey, Colleen Long, Alan Fram, Lolita Baldor, Darlene Superville, Zeke Miller and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

Dubious History

“Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”
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“Lies My Teacher Told Me ,” new edition 2018

A book by James W. Loewen

In the introduction to his magnificent critique of American historical education, James Loewen starts provocatively: “High school students hate history. When they list their favorite subjects, history always comes in last. They consider it ‘the most irrelevant’ of twenty-one school subjects commonly taught in high school. Bo-o-o-oring is the adjective most often applied.”

Since the initial publication of “Lies My Teacher Told Me” in 1995, I have regularly read this passage to my UCLA students in my course on the history of social protest. The overwhelming majority of my students have enthusiastically concurred with Loewen.

Many decades ago, I too sat in my high school history class, listening to Mr. Jones drearily reciting an unremittant litany of historical facts, mostly without context, intended to be memorized and regurgitated for future examinations. I also drifted off into my own world, thinking about things that teenage boys think about.

This book is subtitled “Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.” In this third edition published last year, the text retains sociologist Loewen’s sharp critique of the 12 American history textbooks he surveyed in his first edition as well as the six books he examined for the second edition. He found, as he describes, “an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation, weighing in at an average of 888 pages and almost five pounds.” He showed persuasively how American history textbooks—these ponderous tomes—lied to millions of American students by sugarcoating historical events and persons, encouraging mindless patriotism and faith in unending American progress, and negated any serious critical thinking.

Most strikingly in his new preface, Loewen notes that more recent U.S. history texts merely promote the illusion of critical thinking. But they rarely encourage students to assemble real data to back up their opinions about historical controversies. Indeed, they actually promote the false notion that all historical opinions are somehow equal, and fully deserve respect.

Click here to read long excerpts from “Lies My Teacher Told Me” at Google Books.

As Loewen perceptively observes, the absence of useful historical textbooks augments the challenges for young people in the Trump era. He pointedly identifies President Donald Trump and his pernicious White House minions as purveyors of lies and falsehoods: the age of “alternative facts.” The preface shows the photographs of the inaugural crowds of President Barack Obama in 2009 and President Trump in 2017. Former press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that 2017 saw the largest audience to witness an inauguration. Kellyanne Conway defended this absurd assertion. The photographic evidence clearly revealed the falsehood of the claims. The insidious combination of inadequate and deceptive historical education and a national administration that denigrates the free press represents a grave threat to democracy.

Some of the chief things that American history textbooks get wrong are their lies by omission. As Loewen repeatedly shows throughout the book, the focus is on those men (rarely women) in American history who have represented the dominant power centers of social, economic, and political life. Rarely do these textbooks mention the people who have resisted power and spent their lives fighting for structural change. And even when a few are mentioned, it is often in highly sanitized form.

For several years in my social protest class, I have done a brief exercise at the outset by identifying some major American agitators and asking students if they have ever heard of them. I often start with Ida B. Wells because about half or more of the 150-plus students have heard of her. Then, I move to the other figures on my list. Emma Goldman. Joe Hill. Eugene Debs. A. Philip Randolph. Mother Jones. Saul Alinsky. Paul Robeson. Harry Hay. Fred Korematsu. JoAnne Robinson. E.D. Nixon. Dorothy Day. Fannie Lou Hamer. Stokely Carmichael. Reies Tijerina. Dolores Huerta. Several others.

The results are strikingly similar each academic year. Three or four students, or fewer, can identify these figures. The rest have no clue. I note that they are rarely mentioned in historical textbooks and, for the large part, many history teachers are likewise unfamiliar with them and their radical social and political work.

I then provide my class with a dramatic example from the first chapter of Loewen’s book. He writes about the case of Helen Keller, whom every student knows. They all know about the blind and deaf girl who overcame her handicaps. They know the story of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who helped her to read, write and speak. Almost no one, however, knows what Loewen writes in his book: Helen Keller was a radical socialist, a supporter of the IWW, of the ACLU, of Eugene Debs, of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and so forth. Keller’s commitment to socialism emerged from her personal disabilities and from her deep sympathies with all handicapped and oppressed people. This is missing from the textbooks and from historical education. Instead, students get the same warm and fuzzy stories that network news provides for a few minutes each day at the end of their broadcasts.

This lack of knowledge about America’s radical past cripples today’s students by failing to inform them of the long historical tradition and record of resistance to injustice, racism, sexism, homophobia and capitalism itself. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is replete with examples throughout its pages. The book highlights how students learn distortions and inaccuracies in their texts and throughout their “educational” experiences.

Take the case of John Brown. The radical abolitionist who led the raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and was executed for his role is regularly portrayed in history textbooks as a religious fanatic who was likely deranged. Yet among African-Americans of the era, including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, John Brown was hardly thought of as crazy; rather, he was seen as a man of principle willing to go to the gallows for what he believed was morally right: eliminating the unspeakable evil of slavery. Loewen’s corrective about Brown is hugely important. Students should sympathize with Brown’s righteous fervor about racism instead of dismissing it as the ravings of a mad extremist.

Similarly, American history textbooks devote little if any space to the disgraceful persecution of civil rights figures, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” touches on how history texts follow the Hollywood approach to civil rights. Loewen cites the dishonest film “Mississippi Burning” as the exemplar of highlighting white people as the heroes of civil rights advances and progress. This romanticized and misleading information about civil rights in the United States does a profound disservice to students, and retards efforts to redress the virulent racism that continues to pervade the nation’s institutions.

Loewen’s treatment of such events as imperialist adventures and invasions of Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and other Latin America countries, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the Iraq War and other dubious American historical events throws into relief the propensity of traditional textbooks to see no evil. This propensity is disastrous for students. Without a comprehensive understanding of history, they are simply unprepared for a life of active public citizenship. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is powerful; indeed, it is an essential complement to Howard Zinn’s iconic “A People’s History of the United States.” Like that remarkable work, it serves as a crucial counter-textbook to provide a more realistic and critical narrative about the American past.

Textbook publishers are integral parts of the American capitalist industrial apparatus.  They exist to make profits; they are, to be sure, not entirely indifferent to the truth, but that principle always gives way to the bottom line. High school history textbooks in particular are designed for mass sales and must conform to the specific requirements of state textbook selection committees and commissions, many of which are dominated by conservative forces and personnel. Bland, noncontroversial, patriotic language is the safe approach because that leads to the highest probability for adoption and sales.

Loewen reveals another disconcerting truth: Textbooks appear to be authored by major academic authorities with strong, even stellar reputations as historical scholars. But they are not the real authors of the texts. Freelance writers are paid to ghostwrite many or all chapters with the dull, fact-heavy material that students must digest in their perennial quest for high grades. Publishers merely “rent” academic names to go on the cover (some of whom are actually dead or long retired). This essentially fraudulent practice underscores the basic thesis of Loewen’s entire book.

Moreover, teachers for the most part are perfectly content to continue using these tomes. Burdened with multiple responsibilities, they reflect the same inertia of all institutional settings. They have used these textbooks for years and they are generally familiar and comfortable with them. Changes requiring them to institute and teach true critical thinking skills would take serious effort, time and emotional energy. Regrettably, not enough high school history teachers want to move in that direction.

Inadequate history courses supported by misleading and deceptive textbooks lead to adult citizens unable to make critical judgments and decisions in a complex society beset with multiple social, economic and political problems. This is especially troublesome in the Trump era of alternative facts. George Orwell put it all too well in “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

 

Peace in Afghanistan Will Come at a Price

The U.S. is now trying desperately to pull its forces from Afghanistan. Seventeen years of war is long enough. The human toll has been heavy, with more than 2,200 American lives lost and 20,000 soldiers wounded. This figure doesn’t include the Afghan and Pakistani men, women and children who have suffered. Imperial powers still have to learn that it is easy to jump into another country that is weak and unstable—but to get out is a tougher job. And waging war in Afghanistan has never been a cakewalk for any outsider.

Moves are afoot there to work out a compromise, but the U.S. government has no understanding of how the present moves will change the diplomatic contours of Southwest Asia, the hub of America’s longest war in history. An American negotiator of Afghan origin, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been talking to the Taliban since August 2018.

Although the United States has been a major actor in this arc of instability and conflict, it is now turning to regional powers for help in pulling its chestnuts out of the fire. Donald Trump has done his utmost to revive the stalled peace process first launched in 2011 by the Obama administration. But the current president’s ham-handed approach has burdened him with problems of his own making.

Not realizing the sensitivities of the situation, Trump went on the warpath against Pakistan soon after he entered the White House in 2017. Having decided that Pakistan was the real culprit—“the wrong enemy” (to quote Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan) working against American interests in Afghanistan—Trump proceeded to adopt a mixed policy toward the Afghan conflict that has left him blowing hot and cold.

Initially, Trump’s offensive consisted of a war of words and tweets designed to sideline Pakistan by accusing that nation’s leaders of engaging in “deceit and lies.” Finally, however, he called a halt to the $1.3 billion worth of military aid that the U.S. had been supplying each year to Pakistan, a key actor in the region and a purported ally on which the Pentagon has relied for access to the theater of war in landlocked Afghanistan. Islamabad has been Washington’s key partner in the “war on terror” since the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, after which Pakistan provided its northwestern neighbor with a vital overland transit route through the port city of Karachi.

Having sidelined a major ally, Trump went on to order his top diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban, aiming to jump-start negotiations to end the 17-year war in Afghanistan. It soon became evident that negotiating at the peace table is a different ballgame from fighting a war on the ground. It was then that the American president came to realize the potential role of Pakistan, the progenitor of the Taliban and the protector of the Haqqani network, in facilitating the peace process.

Trump has since had to eat his words and write to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to ask his government for help in advancing peace talks with the insurgents in Afghanistan. Trump even spoke of wanting to “have a great relationship with Pakistan.” While the latest statement from the White House says, “I look forward to meeting the folks from—and the new leadership in Pakis­tan, [and] we will be doing that in not-too-distant future,” Khan has been quick to seize credit for talks that have yet to make headway.

Three rounds of talks have already been held between the Taliban and Khalilzad with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also in attendance. A deadlock looms large before the negotiators. The fourth round, scheduled in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, later this month, seems threatened by foot-dragging. This is not surprising, as some preliminary issues have yet to be resolved. Who is to speak for the Afghans? At what stage should the real negotiations begin—before or after the withdrawal of foreign troops?

The Taliban are adamant that they are the legitimate representatives of the Afghan people, because it was their government that was toppled by the U.S. and its coalition allies in 2001. But would that scenario be acceptable to Washington? It would amount to the U.S. abandoning its own protege in Kabul and restoring the status quo after shedding so much blood.

The “talks before talks,” as the discussions are termed at this stage, are about looking for answers to difficult questions. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani—unlike his predecessor, Hamid Karzai—has acquiesced to the plan to let Khalilzad talk to the Taliban on his behalf. But would he agree to the U.S. negotiating substantial issues?

The Taliban want all foreign forces to be pulled out of Afghanistan before they talk to the present rulers in Kabul. For Ghani, the dilemma will be how to counter his rivals without American support. Moreover, Kabul’s relations with Islamabad have, historically, never been cordial. The baggage of disputes inherited from colonial times is too heavy to allow close ties to develop.

Besides, the situation on the ground in Afghanistan currently is not favorable for the Kabul administration. According to the Office of the Special Director General of Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Afghan government has control over 229 districts, while the Taliban control 59, and 119 are contested. This hardly represents a walkover for the Afghan government, especially without active American military backing.

Pakistan is viewed as a critical player, because it is believed to provide sanctuaries to insurgents in its territory. Moreover, its influence on the Taliban is immense, encouraging intransigence. Members of the Taliban believe that time is on their side and that if they hold on to this situation, victory will be theirs. Yet at times, the Taliban have been conciliatory within the same framework. They released an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, whom they had abducted and gave a political face to their dealings by opening a political office in Doha, Qatar, in 2014. In 2015, they entered briefly into direct talks with Kabul leaders. The insurgents even agreed to a cease-fire on the festival of Eid last year. On the other hand, the Taliban have unleashed terrible violence when they deem it necessary.

Trump will soon learn that negotiating peace with an enemy calls for more diplomacy and finesse than he has displayed.

When peace comes to Afghanistan it will come at a price—one that America and Pakistan will both pay. In the last two years, as Trump moved away from his predecessor’s South Asian policy, Pakistan moved rapidly toward forging new ties—including military relationships—with Russia and consolidating long-standing ties with China and other neighboring states (namely Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey and Malaysia). The bailout packages obtained from some of them, along with China’s “One Belt, One Road” project, will help Pakistan tide over its economic crisis for the time being. But we do not know the secret commitments that have been made in return.

It must be remembered that Pakistan is a security state, and the fulcrum of power rests not in Islamabad but in Rawalpindi, where the military headquarters are located. The nation’s Afghan policy is controlled from there. It is thus not strange that Khalilzad had to call on General Qamar Bajwa, the chief of army staff, during his recent visit to Pakistan.

Because Islamabad has preferred not to reveal much, we will have to wait to learn what the future holds for Pakistan—and also the United States.