Guess the Crisis Criminal
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Guess the Crisis Criminal

Michael Kaarhus
16:39 Monday, Mar. 21, AD 2022 GMT
Corrections were made on Aug 2, 2023. A striked out word or number is an error in the original text, and is immediately followed by the correction.
Shangri-La

I want to introduce a new classification of criminal: crisis criminal. It includes both war criminals, since war is a crisis, and people that deliberately destabilize a nation, causing a humanitarian crisis. I made this new classification because, in their effects on people, deliberately caused humanitarian crises are not far removed from wars, but we didn’t have a term for people that deliberately cause humanitarian crises.

Humanitarian crises force people flee their homes, livelihoods and everything that they worked for all their lives. In many cases, they can never return to try to rebuild what they lost, because the government turned misanthropic, and no longer values human beings. Or maybe they are too broke to travel anywhere. We don’t call that war. But what is so different? Both the lifespan and quality of life of the average displaced person is decreased significantly, in some cases drastically. They are severely economically wounded. They may never recover.

Here we were going to play a game, Guess the crisis criminal.

It’s simple. I describe the incident and some of its effects. You guess the biggest crisis criminal. There may be more than one crisis criminal involved. I am looking for the biggest one only.

Here we go:

In 2011, the Obama Administration organized an Arab Spring protest against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It lasted at least eighteen days, during which some 300 pro-democracy protesters were killed, most by government forces. The organizers claimed that Mubarak was criminally brutal toward the protesters. Mubarak was an autocrat, and was indeed brutal in some instances. He also kept order in Egypt, had good relations with Israel, and was tolerant of religions besides Islam, even of Christian ones. Eventually, he resigned, the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt, and Mubarak was charged with corruption and abuse of power.

Under the Muslim Brotherhood, Christian Copts suffered. At least 300,000 of them were forced to flee Egypt, becoming refugees. Many of their buildings and Shrines were torched. The people of Egypt suffered, because of the fanaticism of the Brotherhood.

Who’s the biggest crisis criminal?

“Obviously Mike, Mubarak was. He was an autocrat, and killed pro-democracy protesters.”

Wrong. Let’s try again.

Remember Iraq? Christians there suffered, because, in 2012, President Obama withdrew our troops carelessly, allowing ISIS to take over many cities there that U.S. servicemen had fought to secure. ISIS massacred Iraqi Yezidis and Christians, crucifying many. They raped Christian women.

Who’s the biggest crisis criminal?

“Obviously, Mike, it was ISIS. What a bunch of Neanderthals.”

Wrong. Think: How was ISIS enabled to take Iraqi cities and commit war crimes? Let’s try again. And please, no more insults to Neanderthals:

On March 19, 2011, the Obama Administration approved airstrikes against Libya. According to Politico, “Obama said the military action sought to save the lives of peaceful, pro-democracy protesters who found themselves the target of a crackdown by Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.”

Gaddafi’s actual title was, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council.

Politico quoted Alan J. Kuperman, a University of Texas Associate Professor of Foreign Affairs. He wrote four years later in Foreign Affairs:

Not only did Gaddafi endanger the momentum of the nascent Arab Spring, which had recently swept away authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, but he also was poised to commit a bloodbath in the Libyan city where the uprising had started.

And Politico quoted President Obama:

We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi—a city nearly the size of Charlotte—could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world. ...

Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives. ...

The United States and the world faced a choice. Gadhafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. He compared them to rats and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.

It was not in our national interest to let that [massacre] happen. I refused to let that happen.

At the same time, there are numerous pages, such as this one, praising Gaddafi for all the good that he did for Libyans, and how great a place Libya was under his government.

Chairman Gaddafi became a fugitive. After months on the run, he was found and gunned-down. After his murder, crimes of all kinds skyrocketed. Politico again quoted Kuperman:

In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold.

Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Gadhafi did during his last decade in power, Libya [began to serve] as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the U.N., and fueling Syria’s civil war.

Libya eventually descended into civil war and anarchy, with various Islamist groups vying for power. No one wanted to live there. Many fled to Europe, risking their lives in open boats to cross the Med. Here are some stats on Libya from the Council of Foreign Relations’ global conflict tracker, updated March 17, 2022:

As a result of the continued fighting, the UN Refugee Agency estimates that more than 217,000 people have been internally displaced and approximately 1.3 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Libya.

The CFR says that the “conflict status” is “unchanging”. In other words, Libya is unstable to this day.

Who’s the biggest crisis criminal?

“Well Mike, it looks like Muammar Gaddafi was the biggest criminal. He killed peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. And seeing that the Obama Administration intervened, surely Gaddafi was the biggest bad guy.”

Wrong again! Let’s try another:

Here are excerpts from the britannica.com article on the Syrian civil war:

In March 2011 Syria’s government, led by Pres. Bashar al-Assad, faced an unprecedented challenge to its authority when pro-democracy protests erupted throughout the country. Protesters demanded an end to the authoritarian practices of the Assad regime, in place since Assad’s father, Ḥafiz al-Assad, became president in 1971. The Syrian government used violence to suppress demonstrations, making extensive use of police, military, and paramilitary forces. Opposition militias began to form in 2011, and by 2012 the conflict had expanded into a full-fledged civil war. ...

The United States and the European Union were increasingly critical of Assad as his crackdown continued, and U.S. Pres. Barack Obama and several European heads of state called for him to step down in August 2011. An anti-Assad bloc consisting of Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia formed in the last half of 2011. The United States, the EU, and the Arab League soon introduced sanctions targeting senior members of the Assad regime.

What began as protests against President Assad’s regime in 2011 quickly escalated into a full-scale war between the Syrian government—backed by Russia and Iran—and anti-government rebel groups—backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others in the region.

Syria has been a mess ever since. ISIS invaded Syria from its new strongholds in Iraq. After that, some nations intervened directly. The CFR’s Global Conflict Tracker of the Syrian civil war gives these stats, as of March 17, 2022:

According to estimates by the United Nations, more than 400,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of the war. The UN reports that, as of January 2019, more than 5.6 million have fled the country, and over 6 million have been internally displaced. Many refugees have fled to Jordan and Lebanon, straining already weak infrastructure and limited resources. More than 3.4 million Syrians have fled to Turkey, and many have attempted to seek refuge in Europe.

According to the CFR, the status of the civil war there is “unchanging”.

Before the civil war that resulted from pro-democracy demonstrations, Syria under Assad was stable and relatively peaceful. Assad was tolerant of religions besides Islam. Some of the oldest Churches in East were in Syria, before ISIS destroyed them. Assad was brutal at times, because guess what? You cannot have the tolerance for Christianity that Bashar Assad and other autocrats managed, without countering at least some of its brutal enemies.

Bashar Assad remains the Syrian President today, despite efforts by both Western nations and terrorist organizations to depose or kill him. They still want to kill him.

Who’s the crisis criminal, the biggest one?

“Well Mike, Assad is an autocrat, and was brutal toward pro-democracy demonstrators. Looks to me like he started the whole thing, and is the biggest crisis criminal.”

Try again.

“Uuum, ISIS! The dirty [a-z]{7}s. Destroying historic Churches.

Wrong. But that’s okay. I have more incidents:

Under President Obama, the U.S. secretly ran weapons to ISIS and other militants, who were bent on taking down President Assad, and taking Syria for themselves. In ISIS’ view, Assad was too tolerant of Christianity. Assad was not radical enough for them, not fanatical enough. You can read about it at townhall.com.

The U.S. supplied some of those arms to ISIS through our Libyan embassy. Maybe our Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, knew too much. Maybe he didn’t like what was going on. Maybe he objected. Maybe someone wanted keep a secret, and wanted the Ambassador killed. Someone ordered a strike on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, where Stevens had secretly gone to inaugurate a cultural exchange center. His trip did not stay secret, suggesting that someone in the State Department leaked it. The Townhall article continues:

9:40 p.m. (Libya time) [Sept. 11, 2012]: Libyan rebels launched and organized an armed attack against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

10:04 p.m. CIA base chief at the nearby CIA annex calls for help including 50-caliber machine guns and vehicles from the Libyan intelligence, the 17 February Brigade and other Libyan militias. After 24 minutes of calls and no response, the CIA base chief takes a small team of seven people to the consulate. They were too late to save Stevens, but were able to save some State Department personnel.

11:56 p.m. CIA officers and the State Department members are seeking safety back at the CIA annex. There, rebels attack them with rocket-propelled grenades. Fighting continues on until 5:26 a.m.

6:00 a.m. Libyan forces suddenly arrive to “aid” the American team with 50 vehicles.

It is odd that the annex was attacked with same sort of weapons on the Libyan ship and that Stevens was reportedly in Benghazi to manage some sort of arms transfer.

While the eight-hour assault on the U.S. Consulate was transpiring, President Obama failed to do anything about it. During it, Ambassador Stevens was killed, or almost killed, by smoke inhalation. Photos of militants holding his unresponsive body were apparently to prove that the hit squad had accomplished its mission, and wanted its pay.

Who’s the biggest crisis criminal?

“This is a difficult one, Mike. There were all kinds of crisis criminals operating in and out of Libya at the time. I have to go with the Libyan rebels that actually attacked the compound.”

Wrong. Here’s another:

In August of 2020 2021, as President-behind-the-scenes, Mr. Obama essentially accomplished an Afghanistan Spring, without calling it that, without demonizing the leadership there as autocratic or brutal. No need to; no pro-democracy rebellion was necessary, because Mr. Obama was in charge of Afghanistan, through Mr. Biden, one of the occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. Obama gave all of our military hardware and Bagram Air Force Base to the Taliban. No strings attached. It’s kind of like loading a cargo plane with $400,000,000 in cash, and ordering it flown to Iran, as part of a $1,700,000,000 gift of our money to that State sponsor of terror, with no strings attached. “Oh wait!”, as Mark Dice says, President Obama did that, too!

Moreover, President Obama governed as an Islamist autocrat whenever he could get away with it. He governed by Executive order, and by going around Congress whenever he could.

Mr. Obama’s purposes in his Afghanistan withdrawal were apparently the same as those that he pursued in all of his springs: to destabilize stable States, to oust leaders that were not radically Islamic enough, or that were too tolerant, to replace them with radical Islamist regimes, to persecute and murder as many Christians as possible, and as much as possible, to cause the blood, sweat and suffering of American servicemen to be in vain. Do you get it yet?

Who’s the biggest crisis criminal? Hint: President Putin is a piker, compared to this guy.

“Taliban supreme leader Mullah Hebtullah Akhundzada?”

Close, but no $11.75 million waterfront estate on 30 acres of Martha’s Vineyard.

“Oh. Then it must be Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s political chief. He probably sold two or three Abrams M1A2 tanks to al Qaeda, and bought a house there on the island.”

Wrong. Let’s try again.

Ukraine and the Kiev Spring have so far been a little different, because so far, Mr. Obama has not managed to install a radical Islamist regime in Ukraine. But the effect on Ukrainian Christians has been similar.

I ask, if you could trade today’s Ukraine for the pre-Kiev Spring Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych, would you?

“No way, Mike. Yanukovych was a Putin puppet. We don’t want that. Putin is icky.”

But under Viktor Yanukovych there was peace in Ukraine. So you would rather Ukraine get out from under President Putin’s puppet, but see the people there fight a horribly destructive war, Christian v. Christian?

“Yeah, as long as we get Putin. Putin is causing the war there, you dummy. He invaded Ukraine. Don’t you see?”

Yeah maybe I see some things that you don’t. I see that the Ukraine-R.F. strife started in 2014, when President Obama fomented a rebellion against President Yanukovych. The Kiev Spring was, among other things, a strategic move by President Obama against the R.F’s. Baltic Black Sea Fleet. It shelters in the comparatively small Sea of Azov. To get in and out of that Sea, ships must transit the Kerch Straight, which is very narrow, between Crimea on the west and The R.F. on the east. After the Spring, Ukraine essentially became a U.S. client State run by the Democratic Party. With Crimea part of Ukraine, the R.F’s. Baltic Black Sea Fleet was at risk. That is why, immediately after the 2014 Spring, President Putin took Crimea. And that is partly why, in the present war, Pres. Putin is also taking the rest of the Azov Sea coastline, and more of the Baltic Black Sea coastline to the northwest of Crimea. The U.S. has no right to control Crimea, or those strategic coastlands which, until the U.S.-led Kiev Spring, were in R.F.-friendly hands, and were never, at any time in history, in U.S. hands.

“What do you mean, U.S. client State? That’s crazy talk. Why, I bet that’s Russian propaganda.”

It seems that propaganda is in the eye of the beholder; many see the propaganda card as something that, when played, just blows an argument to smithereens. For the sake of argument then, let’s say it’s R.F. propaganda that the Dems made Ukraine into a U.S. client State run by them. That would make John Curtis at Online Reporter a propagandist for the R.F.:

What’s become clear is that the Ukraine War runs out of the White House, with Zelensky not having independent say. For [Ukraine’s Foreign Minister] Kuleba to say accepting Putin’s ceasefire conditions constitutes surrender is outrageous. Nothing would change in Ukraine other than the U.S. told to stop meddling in Ukraine. Biden wants Ukraine as a client state, something Putin says is unacceptable. (J. Curtis, March 14, 2022)

That would make Harrison Smith at banned.video a propagandist for the R.F.

Tucker Carlson said that Ukraine is a U.S. client State:

Tucker Carlson calls Ukraine “a pure client state of the United States State Department” (reddit post plugging Media Matters page).

Marxist sites smear Tucker as a Putin ally for saying that.

Caroline Glick wrote, “For all intents and purposes, Biden’s speech on Tuesday transformed Ukraine from a U.S. client state into a Russian satellite state” (C. Glick at Israel National News). Do you think she is a Russian disinformation specialist?

I can go on and on.

Through their client State, Democratic Party elites are waging a proxy war against the R.F. And the R.F. has said that this war can end “in a moment”. All that has to happen is for Ukraine to, “cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.” That is not yet happening, because President Zelensky has so far refused to agree to those terms. So far, the two sides are trying to work through a fifteen-point peace plan. Fifteen points! They haven’t managed to agree to just one point: a cease-fire. Zelensky refuses to agree, apparently because his U.S. masters tell him to refuse to agree. His proximal U.S. master may be Sect’y. of State Blinken. But his ultimate U.S. master is former President Barack Obama; he runs Blinken and foreign policy from behind the scenes. In other words, it seems that Barack Obama wants the proxy war to continue against the R.F. It seems that Mr. Obama has not let up in the least from his 2011-2014 goals of taking out selected leaders and replacing them with worse, more fanatical ones; he is still bent on ousting Presidents Assad and Putin, regardless of refugees, civil war, border war, humanitarian catastrophes, etc.

Who’s the biggest crisis criminal?

“My goodness, Mike, I have to go with President Putin. He invaded a sovereign State unprovoked.”

You are hopeless.

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