Author: Eric Margolis

President Trump’s ability to trigger a nuclear war is ‘pretty damn scary’ said former US intelligence director James Clapper this week.  Remember when Trump vowed to ‘bomb the shit’ out of his enemies? I don’t have much respect for Clapper, who brazenly lied to Congress and is a ringleader of the deep government’s efforts to overthrow Trump.  But this time, Clapper is 100% right.  He’s scared and I am too. This week, Trump proclaimed he would continue the pointless, stalemated US colonial war in Afghanistan and might ask India to help there – a sure-fire way to bring nuclear-armed India … Continue reading →

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AMMAN JORDAN – I haven’t seen many miracles in my decades of travel around the globe, particularly not in the strife-torn Mideast. But last week I participated in a real miracle in Jordan as the splendid Four Paws International group staged a daring rescue of 13 wild animals trapped in the wartime hellhole of Aleppo, Syria.  It appeared to be a mission impossible. Syria has been torn apart for the past six years by a bloody civil war that has killed over 400,000 people and reduced many parts of this beautiful country to ruins.  Half the population has become refugees.  The … Continue reading →

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Media reports claim President Donald Trump let loose on his generals behind closed doors, blasting them royally for their startling failures in Afghanistan, America’s longest war. The president has many faults and is a lousy judge of character.  But he was absolutely right to read the riot act to the military brass for daring to ask for a very large troop and budget increase for the stalemated Afghan War that has cost $1 trillion to date. Of course, the unfortunate generals are not really to blame.  They have been forced by the last three presidents to fight a pointless war … Continue reading →

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Many Americans voted for Donald Trump because he vowed to end the foreign conflicts in which the US had become entangled. So far, they have been disappointed. But this week a light flashed at the end of the tunnel. President Trump, according to numerous reliable Washington sources, has decided to end US arms supplies and logistics support to Syria’s jihadist rebels that have fuelled the bloody six-year conflict. Washington, and its allies Britain and France, have persistently denied arming Syria’s jihadist rebels fighting to bring down the Russian and Iranian-backed government of President Bashar Assad. Former President George W. Bush … Continue reading →

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As a former soldier and war correspondent, I abhor demonstrations of flag-waving, militarism and nationalism. That great American, Benjamin Franklin, put it perfectly:  ‘no good war, no bad peace.’ But I must admit that my heart does beat faster when I hear the rousing strains of France’s glorious national anthem, ‘La Marseillaise.’  One must be almost dead not to respond to the hymn, first known in 1775 as ‘the war song of the army of the Rhine’ and then the marching song of volunteers from Marseille. Allons! Enfants de la Patrie!      Forward! Sons of France, Le jour de gloire est … Continue reading →

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“I have some pretty severe things we’re thinking about,” Trump said of North Korea at a news conference in Warsaw. “Doesn’t mean we’re going to do them.” What President Trump really meant is that he has painted the US into a corner with all his threats of war and really does not know what to do next.   North Korea called his ‘or else’ bluff.  Good.  No action on North Korea is better than any conceivable military operation. Last week the North Korea test fired a new, longer-ranged strategic missile, Hwasong-14, that US experts claimed was capable of hitting Alaska and … Continue reading →

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Bravo Monsieur le president Macron!  You have gotten off to a most impressive start.  France’s five-year national depression – known as ‘morosité – has lifted and been replaced by a sense that the republic is not doomed after all.  In fact, quite the contrary. France’s new 39-year old president has astounded nearly everyone.  Like the silver-tongued Barack Obama, he appeared out of nowhere and captured the imagination of the nation.  Like Obama, Macron is accused of being a cat’s paw for the deep state and/or powerful financial interests.  Macron used to work for the influential Rothschild bank arranging deals. Yet … Continue reading →

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What a scary week in the Mideast.  The epicenter of the world’s energy resources and the land-bridge between Asia and Africa is spinning out of control as the danger of a shooting war between the US and Russia grows daily. A US F-18 warplane shot down a Syrian Air Force SU-22 ground attack aircraft over eastern Syria.  This was a grave, reckless provocation clearly authorized by Washington.  Russia, Syria’s ally, threatened to begin targeting its supposedly deadly S-300 missiles against US warplanes over Syria. Another US warplane shot down an Iranian drone over southeastern Syria as US forces and US … Continue reading →

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Tiny Qatar, the mouse that roared, has now managed to enrage the larger part of the Arab world and defy the newly-minted Mideast expert, Donald Trump. This month, an angry alliance of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, with some background support from the puppet regimes of war-torn Libya and Yemen, declared an embargo of Qatar for ‘supporting terrorism.’  They immediately cut off food and goods deliveries to the sandy peninsula on which Qatar sits, boycotted its oil and gas exports, and denied their airspace to Qatar’s airline.  There is talk of a US and Arab coup … Continue reading →

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To see America as it once was, go back to the three days from 4 to 7 June, 1942. During the six months after the devastating Japanese attack on the principal US Pacific base at Pearl Harbor,  Hawaii, US and allies forces across the west Pacific were being mauled by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Japan’s leading naval strategist, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, was planning a decisive action near Midway Island to lure America’s three aircraft carriers into battle and sink them. The USS carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown had been sent away from Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack.  Had they … Continue reading →

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PARIS – France is holding its breath as this weekend’s second-round presidential vote approaches.  The first round vote on 23 April left two winners: National Front leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron. Polls show newcomer Macron with an overwhelming 60/40 lead over Marine Le Pen.  But many French are very nervous that a surprise electoral upset may occur if undecided voters and shut-out leftists throw their votes to Le Pen’s National Front Party. Le Pen has vowed to ditch the Euro, pull out of the European Union and make life miserable for France’s five million impoverished, marginalized Muslims.  … Continue reading →

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I watched the final French presidential debate last Thursday night with fascination and even a measure of admiration.   France has some very intelligent, well-educated politicians. They are fine until they get into office but then must begin pleasing France’s fractious voters. And they must deal with the rising tide of jihadist violence in France, as witnessed by the shooting of police officers on the Champs Elysée on Thursday.  This could help far right candidate Marine Le Pen. One is reminded of Charles De Gaulle who asked how anyone could run a nation that had 246 different varieties of cheese.  France’s … Continue reading →

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“If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.” So thundered President Donald Trump last week.   Unfortunately, neither China nor North Korea appeared intimidated by this presidential bombast or Trump’s Tweets. What would ‘we will’ actually entail? This clear threat makes us think seriously about what a second Korean War would be like.  Memory of the bloody, indecisive first Koran War, 1950-53, which killed close to 3 million people, has faded.  Few Americans have any idea how ferocious a conventional second Korean War could be.  They are used to seeing Uncle Sam beat up small, nearly defenseless nations … Continue reading →

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It seems that every new US president has to prove his machismo…or make his bones, as wiseguys say…by bombing the usual Arabs.  By now, it’s almost a rite of passage.  The American public loves it. So we just saw the US launch 59 or 60 $1.5million apiece cruise missiles at a western Syrian airfield to express President Trump’s outrage caused by seeing injured children allegedly caused by a Syrian government toxic gas attack. But what, Mr. President, about all those Iraqi, Syrian and Afghan babies killed by US B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers?  Or the destruction of the defiant Iraqi … Continue reading →

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Ireland was much on my mind these past weeks.  As we watched the first stage of Britain’s divorce from the European Union, the ever-rebellious Scots and Northern Irish were getting ready for a new struggle for independence. St Patrick’s Day arrived last week, commemorating the patron saint of Ireland, a grand and glorious day when Irish and adopted Irish whoop it up, drink too much, sing traditional songs and get into fist fights over nothing. Then, a prominent leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) Martin McGuinness died, aged only 67.  McGuinness had long battled for British-ruled Northern Ireland to … Continue reading →

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