Caitlin posits a Western Empire as being behind — well, nothing at the moment, but which could end up being — another false flag act of obverse provocateur-ism, this time to justify an invasion of Syria. An invasion that, given the level of Iranian and Russian support that would have to be overcome, would end up being larger in scale than the Iraq one, the proxy (with NATO and Israeli aerial assist) one in Libya, the Afghanistan one, and the Serbia one. Caitlin locates Syria next to Iraq, but fails to mention here its location next to Israel. The location next to Israel seems far more crucial than any less proximate attribution to a Western Empire (whose existence is partly speculative).

The point of going into Syria, an ostensibly secular country, with a modern state apparatus capable of posing a threat to Israel; was to divide a post-colonial Arab State up into non-secular statelets. The settler colonial state feeling threatened is an ethnocracy, and having at its re-defined border other settler colonialist countries similarly exclusivist— even if the flavour of their non-secularity differs — suits Tel Aviv’s ambition to be the entrepôt of the region. Sectarian differences can by trumped by economic necessity, they reason, as trade then flourishes through the entrepôt, realizing a Greater Middle East.

Trump is under harsh attack for asking, “Why are we in Syria?” Writing in the New York Times on April 6th, Madeleine Albright, in a piece entitled, Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late? lambasts the current President for a litany of failings, and kvetches:

"Thanks to allies in Moscow and Tehran, the tyrant Bashar al-Assad retains his stranglehold over much of Syria."

The piece was widely shared among those “resisting” Trump. Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, campaigned insidiously for Mrs. Clinton. For Albright, and the Resistance which supports her, stopping Trump means starting a war to depose what proxies, notably the Israeli-sponsored Takfirs, failed to accomplish (or what Russian and Iranian assistance prevented). Whether this favours a Western Empire or not, most clearly it is the desire of Israel to see this deposition. Trump, then, as the titular head of this posited Empire, seems to be in the position of deciding whether America, and probably NATO as well, will assist Israel. The possibility that he may not do so is one of the reasons he has been reviled so intensely since day one of his administration. #Resistance?