Headline News 17/06/2017

Headlines

• US Confusion over Afghanistan Policy

• Qatar Pays $12 billion Tribute to Trump to Escape Gulf Isolation

• Macron Expected to Win Landslide Majority in French Parliament

Details

US Confusion over Afghanistan Policy

US Defence Secretary James Mattis is rejecting news reports that he has made a decision on sending 4000 more American troops to Afghanistan. According to military.com:

“A spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday pushed back against news reports that he's already approved sending 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

"Secretary Mattis has made no decisions on a troop increase for Afghanistan," Dana White, an assistant to Mattis and the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement.

As Senator McCain pointed out this week, the US military is yet to finalise its strategy for Afghanistan after the description by General Nicholson in February of the war in Afghanistan being a ‘stalemate’, according to the same article:

[At] another SASC hearing on Tuesday, McCain prodded Mattis on why it is taking so long to come up with the new strategy for Afghanistan.

"We are now six months into this administration. We still haven't got a strategy for Afghanistan," he said. "It makes it hard for us to support you when we don't have a strategy. We know what the strategy was for the last eight years -- don't lose. That hasn't worked."

In fact, America’s success or failure in Afghanistan is not dependent on how many more troops it sends. America is an alien occupying power in Afghanistan. Its presence can never be accepted without the complicity of the rulers of Muslims, as an opinion piece in the New York Times makes clear, headlined “For Peace in Afghanistan, talk to Pakistan”:

“The United States must also get serious about a political settlement in Afghanistan that involves all elements of Afghan society, including the Taliban. An opportunity to start this process has been created by last week’s agreement between President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan to resurrect the stalled Quadrilateral Coordination Group (the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China). The United States should back this effort as a means of getting the Taliban to the reconciliation table. Other regional consultative forums like the Kabul Process, started by Mr. Ghani recently, will remain useful in keeping a larger set of important countries engaged.”

American will never leave this highly strategic region of its own accord. General Petraeus, the former commander in Afghanistan, said in an interview yesterday:

“But this is a generational struggle. This is not something that is going to be won in a few years. We’re not going to take a hill, plant a flag, go home to a victory parade. And we need to be there for the long haul, but in a way that is, again, sustainable.

We have been in Korea for 65-plus years because there is an important national interest for that. We were in Europe for a very long period of time, still there, of course, and actually with a renewed emphasis now, given Russia’s aggressive actions.”

It falls to Muslims to decide if they want to continue with this class of rulers, whose power and authority comes only from serving the foreign disbelieving imperialist.

Qatar Pays $12 Billion Tribute to Trump to Escape Gulf Isolation

After facing severe boycott and isolation by Saudi Arabia and UAE, including the unprecedented suspension of residency rights for its citizens in neighbouring states, Qatar pledged loyalty to the United States, finalising a multibillion dollar purchase of fighter jets from Boeing.

According to Reuters:

“On Wednesday U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed the previously approved Boeing plane deal with Qatari Minister of State for Defence Affairs Khalid al-Attiyah. Qatar's ambassador to the United States, Meshal Hamad al-Thani, posted a picture of the signing ceremony on Twitter.

"This is of course proof that U.S. institutions are with us but we have never doubted that," a Qatari official in Doha said. "Our militaries are like brothers. America's support for Qatar is deep-rooted and not easily influenced by political changes."”

In fact, it is America that is behind the boycott of Qatar, conducted by its agent rulers in the region, as Trump’s foolish comments have now made clear. But America will end this dispute quickly, after extracting concessions from Qatar, only the first of which is the arms deal. America has too much at stake in Qatar, which is the world’s largest natural gas exporter, and which hosts the Udeid Air Base with more than 10,000 US troops.

Yes, America is the world’s only superpower. But despite Qatar’s tiny size, America chose to avoid confronting it directly and instead employed other agent countries to exert pressure on Qatar. America’s interference in the Muslim world is only because of the weak subservience of our rulers to Western demands. The Muslim Ummah has within it the memory of its former status as the world’s leading power, and it is that to which it must return.

Macron Expected to Win Landslide Majority in French Parliament

With the second round of parliament voting this Sunday, polling indicates that French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to win a great majority of the seats in parliament. According to Reuters:

“President Emmanuel Macron remained on course for a landslide majority in France's parliamentary election on Sunday and turnout will be even lower than in the first round, an Odoxa opinion poll showed on Friday.

The survey projected centrist Macron's Republic on the Move party and its MoDem ally would win between 430 and 460 seats in the 577-seat lower house.”

Macron’s newly-created centrist party, Republic on the Move, has broken the traditional left-right political divide in France in order to counter the National Front of Marine Le Pen. The scale of this change would not be possible without the backing of diverse elements within the political medium. The harsh reality of democracy, as it is practiced, is that policies are designed by the elite, and then political vehicles are sought out to carry those policies. All Western states, under ideological threat from Islam, have encouraged the growth of popular nationalist movements, in order to build public opinion against Islam and Muslims. However, where the policies of nationalist movements are in contradiction to those desired by the elite, the establishment manipulates other political forces to keep the nationalists from power.

It is time for the Muslim Ummah to expose the fallacy of democracy, and demonstrate a system of government that delivers true peace and justice for all mankind, through re-establishing the righteous Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) on the method of the Prophet (saw).