Majorityrights News > Category: World Affairs

Donald Trump is President of The United States because he vowed to overturn the Iran Deal for Israel. Overturning the deal was not in the interest of most of the world, except for Israel, Saudi Arabia and The Russian Federation. By contrast, the rest of the world was served by the deal in its business resource interests and more - while the focus on commerce and modernization served not only practical and humanitarian ends but also contributed to a gradual process of liberalizing Iran away from Islam.

Britain, France and Germany are taking steps in their rational interests to skirt the sanctions:

Skirting U.S. sanctions, Europeans launch trade mechanism for Iran

PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters), 31 Jan 2019: France, Germany and Britain have set up a mechanism for non-dollar trade with Iran to avert U.S. sanctions, although diplomats acknowledge it is unlikely to free up the big transactions that Tehran says it needs to keep a nuclear deal afloat.

Related at Majorityrights: Iran protest, organic grievances real, but tactless Trump endorsement abets reactionary entrenchment

In Brussels, students skip school for mass global warming protest

EURACTIV.com with Reuters Jan 25, 2019:

Belgian students gather to call for urgent measures to combat climate change during a demonstration in Brussels, Belgium, 24 January 2019. According the police more than 35,000 students are taking part in the demonstration.
   
Thousands of Belgian school children skipped classes on Thursday (24 January) to flood Brussels in an unprecedented protest against global warming and pollution, vowing to miss school once a week until the government takes action.

Students banging drums and carrying signs decrying man-made climate change gathered around the European Parliament.

Police said the 35,000-strong gathering was the biggest turnout of recent times for a student protest in the Belgian capital, which is also home to European Union institutions.

“If we skip every Thursday, if we don’t go to school, the big people in our country and in the world will see that this is a problem,” said high school student Joppe Mathys.

Another student held a sign saying: “Be part of the solution, not the pollution.”

A nine-year-old girl, who gave her name only as Lalla and was with her teacher, said it was time people stopped driving cars and walked and cycled instead.

“Dinosaurs thought they had time too,” read one banner.

The Brief – The future is theirs… unless we destroy it first

Belgian school students feel abandoned by their politicians so they have started a weekly strike for the climate. Their protests pose a major question about how young people are represented in politics ahead of the EU elections in May.

Brussels police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere said the student demonstration was the biggest in recent memory.

Broad protests started across Belgium on 2 December with a “Claim the Climate” march, when over 65,000 demonstrators called for Belgian and European leaders to adopt ambitious climate policies in line with goals set by the Paris agreement in 2015. That demonstration came before the COP24 UN climate summit in Poland, where a report was released ranking Belgium 31 out of 60 on the 2019 Climate Change Performance Index, or a “medium” performance in implementing the Paris agreements. Brussels has been regularly ranked as one of the most congested cities in western Europe in recent years due to Belgium’s high population density and large number of commuters.

That is also a mark of shame for a capital where the EU sets European climate policies.

Across the EU, road congestion costs the bloc one percent of its annual economic output, or €100 billion per year, according to the European Commission.

German anti-coal demonstrations: ‘We’re running out of time’

In the run-up to the UN climate conference, which began in Katowice in Poland on 2 December, many thousands of people demonstrated to support accelerating the phasing out of the coal industry. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Jerusalem Post, “U.S. SIGNS ELIE WIESEL GENOCIDE PREVENTION ACT INTO LAW”, 16 Jan 2019:

The law is intended to prevent genocide and other atrocities that threaten national and international security.

Elie Wiesel speaks at a World War II tribute. (photo credit: REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump signed a law on Monday declaring that the prevention of genocide and other atrocities is “a core national security interest” of the United States, adding that it is also “a core moral responsibility.”

The Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, named for the world-renown Holocaust survivor and famed author, was signed into law by Trump after it passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in December.

The law is intended to prevent genocide and other atrocities “which threaten national and international security, by enhancing United States government capacities to prevent, mitigate, and respond to such crises.”

The new law obligates the US to mitigate threats to its national “security by addressing the root causes of insecurity and violent conflict to prevent the mass slaughter of civilians; conditions that prompt internal displacement and the flow of refugees across borders; and other violence that wreaks havoc on regional stability and livelihoods.”

The US will enhance its capacity to “identify, prevent, address, and respond to the drivers of atrocities and violent conflict” as part of its “humanitarian, development and strategic interests.” It also entails the establishment a Complex Crisis Fund that will deal with strengthening local civil society, such as human rights groups, and nonprofit organizations that are already on the ground, working to thwart and deal with atrocities as they occur.

According to the new law, “Appropriate officials of the US government” must consult at least twice a year with representatives of nongovernmental organizations and civil society actors in an effort to “enhance the capacity of the US” to identify the conditions that could lead to such atrocities, “including strengthening the role of international organizations and international financial institutions in conflict prevention, mitigation and response.”

It also “encourages” the National Intelligence director to give a detailed review of countries and regions at risk of genocide in annual testimony to Congress, “including most likely pathways to violence, specific risk factors, potential perpetrators, and at-risk target groups.”

The secretary of state is also expected to write an evaluation report every three years.

Speaking in December, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ben Cardin said that “America’s strength around the world is rooted in our values.”

“It is in our national interest to ensure that the United States utilizes the full arsenal of diplomatic, economic and legal tools to take meaningful action before atrocities occur,” said Cardin. “Earlier this month, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum identified Burmese military actions against the Rohingya as genocide. From Burma to Iraq, South Sudan to Syria, atrocity crimes tragically persist all around the globe.” He added that the Prevention Act will help ensure that the United States does a better job of responding earlier and more effectively to these heinous crimes. “I urge our House colleagues to pass this landmark legislation before the 115th Congress adjourns.”

Sen. Todd Young, an original co-sponsor of the law and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained that the US has a moral and strategic imperative to help prevent and respond to acts of genocide and other mass atrocities, and this legislation would ensure that the US government is better prepared to fulfill this serious responsibility.

Prior to the signing, Sara Bloomfield, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum director, said that “senators Young and Cardin’s leadership on the bill honors Elie Wiesel’s vision for the museum as a living memorial that would help save victims of future genocides and in doing so honor the victims of the Holocaust.

“This legislation is an important effort toward developing a bipartisan congressional blueprint for making ‘never again’ real by taking practical steps to mitigate the systematic persecution of vulnerable groups,” she said.

United States Border Patrol at Algodones Sand Dunes, California, USA. The fence on the US-Mexican border is a special construction of narrow, 15 feet tall elements, that are movable vertically. This way they can be lifted on top of the ever shifting sand dunes (image Public Domain, Wikipedia).

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the position here is that the matter of a United States Southern border wall, fence, whatever, as any requirement of border control, is very important.

Border control there is particularly illustrative of a central matter, which is that border control is crucial to the management of populations in human and pervasive ecology; issues which include territorial carrying capacity - hence, at this border, the particular demographic is a secondary matter; salient there is the matter of Mexico’s massive population - Mexico City being among the most overpopulated cities in the world.

Nevertheless, the demographic and rule structure of The United States is already on a disastrous trajectory for Whites, will remain so, even with a wall on the south border.

While border control is essential at any rate, the worst case scenario of its instantiation would be that it will be used to lull complacency of propositional conservatism - “we Americans all being in the same relatively taken-care-of boat” - and further close us in and galvanize us into mulattoization; furthering the trajectory of those who left us susceptible for the Cartesian rule structure of the constitution and to the Jewry which weaponized it against our necessary discrimination both at the border and within the borders.

...galvanizing us with the demographic upshot of this manipulation unfortunately against a population that does have some warrant as native American behind them and which, for their nature, is highly ethnocentric. It is a demographic thus, which has been effective against integration with blacks, against integration with Whites, indifferent to Jewish violin playing; as such, in the most optimistic scenario, could be allied with other Asians and Whites against black power, Jewish supremacism and Islamic imposition over human ecological coordination (agreed, getting Mestizos to cooperate in ecological management is no small trick; perhaps Asians proper could help reason, coordinate and enforce such management).

Failing that is a default “alliance” by contrast in sudden, “conservative” implementation against Meztiso populations that looks suspiciously in line with Jewish interests against an Asian, Mestizo, White alliance as it would resist continued instigation of the Mulattoization of the broad mass of American Whites, while allying Jewry with increasingly rare White sell-out elites; whose precarious situation would be more and more prone to interbreeding with Jewry or the Mulatto mass.

CrimeThInc., “The Threat to Rojava” 28 Dec 2019:

An Anarchist in Syria Speaks on the Real Meaning of Trump’s Withdrawal

Analysis Current Events

Following Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that he is withdrawing US troops from Syria, we’ve received the following message from an anarchist in Rojava, spelling out what this means for the region and what the stakes are on a global scale. For background, consult our earlier articles, “Understanding the Kurdish Resistance” and “The Struggle Is not for Martyrdom but for Life.”

I’m writing from Rojava. Full disclosure: I didn’t grow up here and I don’t have access to all the information I would need to tell you what is going to happen next in this part of the world with any certainty. I’m writing because it is urgent that you hear from people in northern Syria about what Trump’s “troop withdrawal” really means for us—and it’s not clear how much time we have left to discuss it. I approach this task with all the humility at my disposal.

I’m not formally integrated into any of the groups here. That makes it possible for me to speak freely, but I should emphasize that my perspective doesn’t represent any institutional position. If nothing else, this should be useful as a historical document indicating how some people here understand the situation at this point in time, in case it becomes impossible to ask us later.

Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria is not an “anti-war” or “anti-imperialist” measure. It will not bring the conflict in Syria to an end. On the contrary, Trump is effectively giving Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan the go-ahead to invade Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing against the people who have done much of the fighting and dying to halt the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). This is a deal between strongmen to exterminate the social experiment in Rojava and consolidate authoritarian nationalist politics from Washington, DC to Istanbul and Kobane. Trump aims to leave Israel the most ostensibly liberal and democratic project in the entire Middle East, foreclosing the possibilities that the revolution in Rojava opened up for this part of the world.

All this will come at a tremendous cost. As bloody and tragic as the Syrian civil war has already been, this could open up not just a new chapter of it, but a sequel.

This is not about where US troops are stationed. The two thousand US soldiers at issue are a drop in the bucket in terms of the number of armed fighters in Syria today. They have not been on the frontlines of the fighting the way that the US military was in Iraq.

The withdrawal of these soldiers is not the important thing here. What matters is that Trump’s announcement is a message to Erdoğan indicating that there will be no consequences if the Turkish state invades Rojava.

There’s a lot of confusion about this, with supposed anti-war and “anti-imperialist” activists like Medea Benjamin endorsing Donald Trump’s decision, blithely putting the stamp of “peace” on an impending bloodbath and telling the victims that they should have known better. It makes no sense to blame people here in Rojava for depending on the United States when neither Medea Benjamin nor anyone like her has done anything to offer them any sort of alternative.

While authoritarians of various stripes seek to cloud the issue, giving a NATO member a green light to invade Syria is what is “pro-war” and “imperialist.” Speaking as an anarchist, my goal is not to talk about what the US military should do. It is to discuss how US military policy impacts people and how we ought to respond. Anarchists aim to bring about the abolition of every state government and the disbanding of every state military in favor of horizontal forms of voluntary organization; but when we organize in solidarity with targeted populations such as those who are on the receiving end of the violence of ISIS and various state actors in this region, we often run into thorny questions like the ones I’ll discuss below.

The worst case scenario now is that the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), backed by the Turkish military itself, will overrun Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing on a level you likely cannot imagine. They’ve already done this on a small scale in Afrin. In Rojava, this would take place on a historic scale. It could be something like the Palestinian Nakba or the Armenian genocide. I will try to explain why this is happening, why you should care about it, and what we can do about it together.

To understand what Trump and Erdoğan are doing, you have to understand the geography of the situation. This site is useful for keeping up with geographical shifts in the Syrian civil war.

First of All: About the Experiment in Rojava

The system in Rojava is not perfect. This is not the right place to air dirty laundry, but there are lots of problems. I’m not having the kind of experience here that Paul Z. Simons had some years ago, when his visit to Rojava made him feel that everything is possible. Years and years of war and militarization have taken their toll on the most exciting aspects of the revolution here. Still, these people are in incredible danger right now and the society they have built is worth defending.

What is happening in Rojava is not anarchy. All the same, women play a major role in society; there is basic freedom of religion and language; an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse population lives side by side without any major acts of ethnic cleansing or conflict; it’s heavily militarized, but it’s not a police state; the communities are relatively safe and stable; there’s not famine or mass food insecurity; the armed forces are not committing mass atrocities. Every faction in this war has blood on its hands, but the People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) have conducted themselves far more responsibly than any other side. They’ve saved countless lives—not just Kurds—in Sinjar and many other places. Considering the impossible conditions and the tremendous amount of violence that people here have been subjected to from all sides, that is an incredible feat. All this stands in stark contrast to what will happen if the Turkish state invades, considering that Trump has given Erdoğan the go-ahead in return for closing a massive missile sale.

It should go without saying that I don’t want to perpetuate an open-ended Bush-style “war on terror,” much less to participate in the sort of “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West that bigots and fundamentalists of both stripes have been fantasizing about. On the contrary, that is precisely what we’re trying to prevent here. Most of the people Daesh [ISIS] have killed have been Muslim; most of the people who have died fighting Daesh have been Muslim. In Hajin, where I was stationed and where the last ISIS stronghold is, one of the internationals who has been fighting Daesh longest is an observant Muslim—not to speak of all the predominantly Arab fighters from Deir Ezzor there, most of whom are almost certainly Muslim as well.

The Factions

For the sake of brevity, I’ll oversimplify and say that today, there are roughly five sides in the Syrian civil war: loyalist, Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish, and rebel.

At the conclusion of this text, an appendix explores the narratives that characterize each of these sides.

Each of these sides stands in different relation to the others. I’ll list the relations of each group to the others, starting with the other group that they are most closely affiliated with and ending with the groups they are most opposed to:

Loyalist: Kurdish, Turkish, jihadi, rebel

Rebel: Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish, loyalist

Turkish: rebel, jihadi, loyalist, Kurdish

Kurdish: loyalist, rebel, Turkish, jihadi

Jihadi: rebel, Turkish, Kurdish and loyalist

This may be helpful in visualizing which groups could be capable of compromising and which are irreversibly at odds. Again, remember, I am generalizing a lot.

I want to be clear that each of these groups is motivated by a narrative that contains at least some kernel of truth. For example, in regards to the question of who is to blame for the rise of ISIS, it is true that the US “ploughed the field” for ISIS with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and its disastrous fallout (loyalist narrative); but it is also true that the Turkish state has tacitly and sometimes blatantly colluded with ISIS because ISIS was fighting against the primary adversary of the Turkish state (Kurdish narrative) and that Assad’s brutal reaction to the Arab Spring contributed to a spiral of escalating violence that culminated in the rise of Daesh (rebel narrative). And although I’m least sympathetic to the jihadi and Turkish state perspectives, it is certain that unless the well-being of Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria is factored into a political settlement, the jihadis will go on fighting, and that unless there is some kind of political settlement between the Turkish state and the PKK, Turkey will go on seeking to wipe out Kurdish political formations, without hesitating to commit genocide.

It’s said that “Kurds are second-class citizens in Syria, third-class citizens in Iran, fourth-class citizens in Iraq, and fifth-class citizens in Turkey.” It’s no accident that when Turkish officials like Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu list the “terror groups” they are most concerned about in the region, they name the YPG before ISIS. Perhaps this can help explain the cautious response of many Kurds to the Syrian revolution: from the Kurdish perspective, regime change in Syria carried out by Turkish-backed jihadis coupled with no regime change in Turkey could be worse than no regime change in Syria at all.

I won’t rehash the whole timeline from the ancient Sumerians to the beginning of the PKK war in Turkey to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS. Let’s skip forward to Trump’s announcement on December 19: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.

117K
3:29 PM - Dec 19, 2018
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Has ISIS Been Defeated? And by Whom?

Let me be clear: Daesh has not been defeated in Syria. Just a few days ago, they took a shot at our position with a rocket launcher out of a clear blue sky and missed by only a hundred yards.

It is true that their territory is just a fraction of what it once was. At the same time, by any account, they still have thousands of fighters, a lot of heavy weaponry, and probably quite a bit of what remains of their senior leadership down in the Hajin pocket of the Euphrates river valley and the surrounding deserts, between Hajin and the Iraqi border. In addition, ISIS have a lot of experience and a wide array of sophisticated defense strategies—and they are absolutely willing to die to inflict damage on their enemies.

To the extent that their territory has been drastically reduced, Trump is telling a bald-faced lie in trying to take credit for this. The achievement he is claiming as his own is largely the work of precisely the people he is consigning to death at the hands of Turkey.

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Never a fan of Brexit, Bill Ballie looks upon its failure as an opportunity to reconsider the reality and priority of national interrelations….

Nation Revisited # 147 January 2019:

Books and Authors.

Oswald Mosley’s 1961 book ‘Mosley: Right or Wrong’ covered almost everything but he couldn’t know that the Soviet Union would collapse, or that the Whites would desert Africa so quickly.

All movements have their books. We had Mosley’s many works, the National Front had John Tyndall’s ‘Six Principles of British Nationalism’, and the National Socialist Movement had ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elder of Zion’, which first appeared in Russia in 1903. It’s supposed to be the minutes of a meeting held by the Jews to plan their conquest of the world. Henry Ford was so impressed by it that he had thousands of copies distributed, but most historians dismiss it as a Tsarist forgery.

Many books and authors are misunderstood. Oswald Spengler’s gloomy forecasts are based on culture. This put him at odds with the Nazis who were obsessed with ‘racial purity’. In fact, he was in the same camp as Nietzsche, Evola, Mosley, Yockey and Dugin, who all rejected strictly biological racism.

Those who dream of a Golden Age with knights in shining armour defended fair damsels, often gravitate to Tolkien with his dwarves and Hobbits. Tolkien once subscribed to ‘Candour’ but that doesn’t prove anything. His strange world of fantasy has got nothing to do with the economic forces driving the modern world. Those who are opposed to plutocracy cannot seek refuge in fantasy.

The ‘Wizard of Oz’ was a landmark film released in 1939, based on the book by Lyman Frank Baum published in 1900. It tells the story of Dorothy and her friends, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man. They follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City in search of the Wizard of Oz. On their way, they encounter the terrible Witch of the West. At first sight, this is just a children’s story, but Dorothy and her friends were really pilgrims in search of the truth, the Yellow Brick Road was life itself, the Wizard represented Good and the wicked witch Evil. In the end, they discovered: “There’s No Place Like Home”.

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I am not going to watch the video. I’ve already seen enough Islamic beheading videos to have the idea. But “Western Voices” advice may be what some of you need:

Western Voices World News, Dec 2018:

Why I Watched the Infamous Murder Video and Why You Should Too

       

Two young blonde Scandinavian girls thought it would be a good idea to go hiking in Morocco, North Africa. Question: Who or what compelled them to think this was a good idea? This link will give you directions on how to find this horrible, multicultural event. Be warned.

For the last two days, a terrifying and gruesome video has gone viral on the internet. The short clip was recorded by two of the Islamists guilty of raping and murdering two Scandinavian tourists in their twenties.

I was browsing 4chan when a thread caught my attention, the discussion was about the recent murder of two Scandinavian girls in the Moroccan Atlas mountains. There I found the link containing the infamous video, which I decided to watch from start to finish.

Many people won’t be able to watch it and I do not blame them, it was tough to watch it until the end and it left me trembling with anger, but it’s deeply important to see certain terrible facts with our own eyes.

Here is a description of what happens in the video:

- outside, nighttime, phone/flashlight is on, rocky area

- she is laying down on her stomach, pants pulled down

- two Arabs standing over her speaking Arabic

- one begins sawing the back of her neck with a long knife

- she exclaims “ow! ow!” before yelling “MOOOOR!” (Danish for “mother”, she is calling for her mom)

- she tried to roll over which only results in the guy sawing the front of her throat

- blood everywhere now

- the guy filming puts his foot on her face to hold her there

- she meekly reaches up to try and repel the knife wielder sawing through her throat

- moments later her arms go limp as she loses consciousness

- guy continues cutting until her head is off

- carries it over to the tent and throws it on the ground

- one of them spits on the decapitated head

These girls could have been your daughters, sisters, friends.

Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away, this is what “Diversity” will bring to our homelands, fight back. This video must be watched and shared, the murder recorded shows the brutality and hatred these people feel towards us Europeans, their deaths must not be forgotten and must be avenged.

PC culture and Neoliberalism brainwashed people into believing the world is some kind of rainbow heaven where nothing bad ever happens, these two girls believed that lie and DIED for this.

Related at Majorityrights:

Vigilant not to assimilate Israeli war, nor that of any son of Abraham

Mattis resigns in disagreement with Trump, citing need to maintain unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.

CNBC, “Defense Secretary James Mattis is quitting because he doesn’t agree with Trump”, 20 December 2018:

- Defense Secretary James Mattis will be stepping down at the end of February, telling President Donald Trump in a letter that he has “a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

- Mattis served as Trump’s secretary of defense since the start of the Trump administration.

- “General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations,” Trump says.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary James Mattis will be stepping down at the end of February, telling President Donald Trump in a letter Thursday that he has “a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

In his extraordinary letter to Trump, Mattis said that a long-held “core belief” of his “is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.”

Without maintaining those alliances, he wrote, “we cannot protect our interests or serve” the role of an “indispensable nation in the free world.”

The president has frequently lashed out at America’s allies in France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, while at times appearing to side with U.S. adversaries over his own officials.

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors,” Mattis said, “are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.”

Mattis’ resignation letter, which a Pentagon spokeswoman said was hand-delivered to the president Thursday afternoon, comes on the heels of Trump’s controversial plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

That announcement on Wednesday will reportedly take more than 2,000 U.S. service members out of the country, ending the ground strategy against the Islamic State. Trump said in a tweet Wednesday morning that “we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

The move was met with heated criticism from a number of Trump’s usual allies in Congress. But Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Trump made the “correct” move, because the U.S. troops had no legal right to be in Syria.

On Thursday evening, defense officials told NBC News that the White House has ordered the Pentagon to look into plans for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, as well.

CNBC, “Read James Mattis’ resignation letter to Trump: ‘We must be resolute’ against Russia and China”, 20 Dec 2018:

In a letter addressed to Trump, Mattis said that “because you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours” on a number of subjects, “I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”

In his letter, Mattis cited the importance of US alliances, particularly NATO, and said the US must stand ‘resolute and unambiguous’ in the face of authoritarian countries such as China and Russia.

Mattis’ resignation comes on the heels of Trump’s controversial plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

That announcement on Wednesday will reportedly take more than 2,000 U.S. servicemembers out of the country, ending the ground strategy against the Islamic State. Trump said in a tweet Wednesday morning that “we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

Neither the White House nor The Pentagon immediately responded to CNBC’s requests for comment on the president’s announcement.

Read Mattis’ full letter to the president below:

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