NORTH CAROLINA - So, Donald Trump is abandoning the Kurds in northeastern Syria and allegedly pulling out U.S. troops, giving Turkey a green light to try to ensure that a Kurdish state will not threaten Turkey’s eastern Anatolia. But the fear is that ISIS will be resurrected somehow, and on it goes in a kaleidoscope of sectarian and political confrontations in the Middle East where the sands beneath one’s feet seem to shift on a weekly basis.

But in the U.S., Trump’s move this week, which some Democrat and Republican “hegemonic” devotees are already squealing about, seems to underscore what he originally promised on the campaign trail in 2016 – to get the U.S. out of fruitless, unwinnable and costly wars, even if this is just the first instance of his doing what he promised and the move comes well into his first and maybe last term as President.

 Trump indeed has made many errors, with the canning of the JCPOA being error number one, but he has not started a fresh big war in the Mideast and for that he must get some credit. He has, for one thing, stuffed John Bolton, and now Bolton in a revenge move may be attempting to get Trump in deeper straits over the matter of trying to deck Joe Biden with regard to his nepotistic games in Ukraine.

First, it’s fair to say that no public has been so propagandized as Americans. Especially with regard to the Middle East and particularly with respect to Iran and Syria. The mainstream media in the U.S. has been derelict, and there is some truth to Trump’s assertion that a lot of the news is “fake” except that when he declares it as such, he is primarily saying so because he’s being criticized about issues that can affect whether he is going to survive as POTUS. He’s a narcissist who becomes apoplectic over criticism, warranted or not. The U.S. has never had such a loose cannon as President, nor one as impulsive and therefore dangerous.

However, there are a few reporters and commentators, many of whom have often been ignored and denigrated, who DO understand what’s been going on over the last decade and their narrative is quite different from that of the mainstream media whores.

 One of them is Sharmine Narwani, based in Beirut now but a former graduate of Columbia University Journalism School in New York (like myself) and then for several years a scholar at St. Antony’s College at Oxford, has been called rather cynically an “idealist”, and yet she above anyone else seems to have a big grip on the facts and the overall trends.

For examples, she has reported very much about the conflict over Syria. She has reckoned that Syria constitutes the main battlefield to date in what may amount to World War 3, where Western and GCC and Zionist funded and supplied terrorists like al-Qaeda were involved from the beginning of hostilities in 2011. She has reported about the internal, liberal reforms that Assad instituted almost a decade ago which were ignored by the West.

 She has said that the reforms were “unprecedented” but still ignored, and that all the carnage since could have been avoided, and that a majority of Syrians supported, and currently support Assad overwhelmingly. She has remarked that the “axis of resistance” to Western imperialism and Zionist greed and control – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – is a very real construct targeted by Sunni extremism funded by the West and its “allies”, where the main goal has been to cripple Iran. 

None is this is news to Iran, but then Narwani’s idealism comes to the fore because she also asserts, as have some others but not as well, in taking the long view, that what the world is witnessing is a huge, major, global balance of power shift from West to East.
 One could argue that what Napoleon began with his invasion of Egypt over 200 years ago, Western imperialism on the Middle East, is on its last legs, is being eradicated finally, and in part because the West, principally the U.S., is more or less broke financially and has not “won” anything of any value this century or even since Vietnam. This shift favors an outlook that is Eastern, not Western, and one that focuses on regional cooperation and projects like China’s Belt and Road initiative.

It is also worth stating that the Pentagon has reportedly spent many millions waging “war games” against Iran, and in every instance they show the U.S., being roundly defeated in all the important strategic angles. And no doubt, the emergence of China, and the re-emergence of Russia, and Russia’s and Iran’s aide to Syria which effectively turned the tables on the terrorists in Syria, have been important factors in this global shift which has been underway for the past decade. It may be said in time that Iran, Russia and China will be key players in this coming, fresher world order where Western imperialism will be vanquished finally.

The risk of course is that the global hegemon and its allies (who have become flat footed behemoths with ossified thinking) will refuse to fade quietly and create yet more horrendous conflicts, but the TREND of major change is what’s important and what must be grasped by Iran and its allies and give them heart and confidence to hold together patiently while the world becomes better balanced toward mutually beneficial relations and trade

And it’s worth noting that even some Iranians have remarked that sanctions may be helping “save” the country by forcing Iranians to begin to become producers, exporters and manufacturers of goods beyond petroleum. Russia, also under sanctions, seems to be prospering in many respects with the internal shifts it has been forced to make. Something to keep in mind in the Islamic Republic where internal liberalization, however slow, is happening – the latest move allowing females to attend soccer matches at Azadi is smart, for one thing, because it suggests more confidence among Iran’s leaders.