The US Conflict of Interest (Yankees Go Home!!)

8 Tishrei 5785

🔹US factors: Washington proposed to Israel that the US impose new economic sanctions on Iran instead of attacking and damaging economic targets.  (Israel Realtime)

To the United States, our children are nothing but cannon fodder for advancing American interests in the region.  Make no mistake!  They have their own plans which directly conflict with our own.  Therefore, they are not honest or objective brokers and have no business dictating to our leaders or micro-managing our war.  They cannot be trusted!!!  Just when I think I can't be shocked anymore...

Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy

April 10, 2024

On a late July day in 2023, amid the pine tree hills overlooking the Bay of Beirut, 14 bright yellow tower cranes and thousands of workers toiled over the construction site of the third US embassy in Lebanon.

At over 40 acres, the new Beirut embassy, a 19-structure ziggurat that dwarfs any government facility in Lebanon, is the second largest in the world after Baghdad’s. Its billion-dollar estimated budget rivals the cost of the US embassy in London, and it is about four times its size, despite Britain having ten times Lebanon’s population and 130 times its GDP.

No specific reason has been offered for building such a massive compound in Lebanon. According to the State Department’s website, the “primary purpose” of any US Embassy is to “assist American citizens,” visiting or living in the host country.[1] But such explanations are belied by Lebanon’s relative size and economic status. Rather, the new embassy, like that of Baghdad, speaks to longstanding US military interests and activity in Lebanon and the wider region. 

...Less than 60 miles south of the new embassy, the Lebanon-Israel border region is also home to major European military interests, namely, the sprawling multinational military base at Naquora hosting the over 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), led by France, Italy and Germany. Asian nations, too, have become increasingly large stakeholders in Lebanon. China is building its own sprawling cultural center, comprising an opera house and music conservatory on the new marina harbor front north of Beirut. Turkey and several Arab Gulf states have also been vying for Lebanese hearts and minds with soft power cultural projects, including plans to fund museums and cultural spaces.

The global competition over Lebanon extends to its natural resources, as exploration of gas fields buried under the eastern Mediterranean Sea is rapidly progressing. The United States arbitrated a long-standing dispute over demarcation and ownership of the fields in 2022, resulting in a historic maritime border deal between Israel and Lebanon after years of uncertainty and even threats of war. A consortium involving French, Italian and Qatari oil firms began drilling exploratory wells in 2023, and although no significant reserves have been tapped, the process is set to continue in 2024. Israel on the other hand, has already begun extraction.

(This article is too long to quote in its entirety but it is a crucial "must-read" to have the whole picture of what is going on in our region and how it affects our children's future and the decisions made in the halls of government.  I strongly recommend it.)  

U.S. Troops in the Middle East: Mapping the Military Presence

October 1, 2024

As of October 2024, U.S. defense officials said there were some forty-thousand service members in the Middle East, many on ships at sea in the region. In total, the United States has military facilities across at least nineteen sites—eight of them considered to be permanent by many regional analysts —in countries including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. military also uses large bases in Djibouti and Turkey, which are part of other regional commands but often contribute significantly to U.S. operations in the Middle East.

All host countries have basing agreements with the United States, except Syria, where U.S. forces are opposed by the government. Qatar hosts U.S. Central Command’s regional headquarters. Bahrain hosts the most permanently assigned U.S. personnel and is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. As of early August, the navy had multiple large warship formations conducting operations in the region, including a carrier strike group and an amphibious assault group.