Neocons

Obama KNEW Arming Rebels Was Useless,  But Did It ANYWAY

As most readers are aware, the false left/right paradigm has been the primary control mechanism used against the American people for decades. The idea being that in order for establishment elites to maintain control of a population with a heritage of independence, a facade of choice must be created to placate the dim-witted masses while the system itself is dominated from behind the scenes. The people of a republic must be conned into participating in the process of their own enslavement, at least until the oligarchs are ready to unleash full-blown totalitarianism.

US imperialism was once a fearsome force - mainly for ill. Under the latter heading, Washington’s savage destruction of Vietnam four decades ago comes readily to mind. But now the American Imperium has become just a gong show on the Potomac - even as its weapons have gotten more lethal and its purposes more  spurious and convoluted. There is no more conspicuous proof than Obama’s quixotic “war” on ISIS.

The President pledges "no combat troops" in Iraq. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, says he may recommend combat ground troops in the battle against ISIS. The President, in a speech, reiterates "no ground troops," and "no combat troops." In short, when it comes to the making of American foreign policy what we have in Washington is what appears to be the functional definition of anarchy!

A lack of strategy is a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the president will finally stop listening to the neocons and interventionists whose recommendations have gotten us into this mess in the first place! Here’s a strategy: just come home.

The Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) is being touted as the newest “threat” to the American homeland. We are told by everyone from the President on down that if we don’t attack them – i.e. go back into Iraq (and even venture into Syria) to root them out – they’ll soon show up on American shores. ISIS didn’t blast Sykes-Picot to pieces: we did, and now we must live with the consequences. Nemesis has taken her pound of flesh. The best course now is to learn the lesson every child has to absorb before he can attain adulthood in more than merely a physical sense: actions have consequences. Applied to the Middle East, this lesson can only have one meaning: stay out and keep out.

The 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I is upon us. Well we should mourn this cataclysmic event and continue to draw lessons from it. We see the same dangers today in the petty but growing conflict over Ukraine between the US and its European satraps and Russia. A conflict over a quasi-nation of absolutely no strategic interest to the United States. American neocons and their Congressional mouthpieces are now calling for NATO to take control of Moldova and Georgia. Conrad von Hotzendorf would have approved. No one in the west is ready to die for Luhansk or Donetsk, but few in 1914 Europe were ready to die for Verdun or Ypres – but millions did.

For Americans, it was like the news from nowhere. Years had passed since reporters bothered to head for the country we invaded and blew a hole through back in 2003, the country once known as Iraq that our occupation drove into a never-ending sectarian nightmare. In 2011, the last U.S. combat troops slipped out of the country, their heads “held high,” as President Obama proclaimed at the time, and Iraq ceased to be news for Americans. With Maliki, it has simply been a different dictator, enjoying even more such support (until these last weeks), and using similarly barbaric tactics against Iraqis. Today, Washington’s policies continue in the same mindless way as more fuel is rushed to the bonfire that is incinerating Iraq.

Did the U.S. and Its Allies Use ISIS to Balkanize Syria Into Smaller Regions?

The Real History of the American Strategy for Iraq and the Middle East

President Obama’s recent foreign policy speech, delivered at this year’s West Point graduation ceremony, was a disappointment to anyone who hoped the president might be changing course. The failure of each US intervention thus far in the 21st century might have inspired at least a bit of reflection. However, the president made it clear that interventionism and American exceptionalism would continue to guide his administration in its final two years. The president said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” adding the dubious claim that “because of American diplomacy and foreign assistance, as well as the sacrifices of our military -- more people live under elected governments today than at any time in human history.” There is much to disappoint in Obama’s big foreign policy speech. It represents a continuation of the policy of “do what we say and we will subsidize you, disobey us and we will bomb you.” That approach is a failure, but the neocons who back it show no sign of falling out of favor.

"I am not God, I am not here to judge who is right and who is wrong, but if you look at geopolitics in Asia from a Chinese perspective, its completely unacceptable in the long run to have American military presence in Asia," blasts Marc Faber.

"As a large power like France and Britain and America, you might be able to push around small countries, but you can't push around a country that has twice the population of Europe and the United States, and has become a relatively modern state with military that is very powerful."

If We Don’t Learn Our History … We May Very Well Blow Off Our Own Foot

As tensions between all parties in Eastern Europe boil over, Chris Martenson provides a brief tour through just some of the antics surrounding the US' involvement in bringing about change (you can believe in!) in Ukraine. We raise these items to counter the usual clutter and complete lack of context being provided in the US press and to illustrate that the US is already in pretty deep and therefore unlikely to back down now. Before we move on, do you not find it at all strange that the US media, usually extremely sensitive to anti-semitism, has given the McCain and Nuland support of the Svoboda party a complete pass? I find it to be like the case of "the dog that did not bark", meaning the silence reveals a very fickle moral compass at the heart of the western press. The demonization of Putin as the bad guy here is near complete in western media. But there’s plenty of mischief all around and, as usual, the US finds itself with some pretty strange bedfellows as it seeks an outcome it likes.

The circus never left Neoclown town...