national security

Defying the international call for an arms embargo over war crimes concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced Tuesday it has approved an $11.25 billion deal to sell combat ships to Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a military assault against Yemen for more than six months. “The selling of arms in the middle of a war will obviously send the message that the Saudis can do whatever they want and get away with it,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, Beirut-based Yemeni writer and visiting scholar with Carnegie Middle East Center.

"Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is. If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it."

Other than glad-handing and managing whatever undeclared wars he's been let in on, President Sanders won't change anything important because he can't change anything important. Neither can any other president. Political theater is just that--theater. Fans of Obama learned the hard way that hope and change are quietly dumped the moment you enter the Imperial Presidency.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

"We wish that Iran would change its policies and stop meddling in the affairs of other countries in the region, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. We will make sure that we confront Iran's actions and shall use all our political, economic and military powers to defend our territory and people."

Many of the systems we take for granted are historical accidents. Either based on legacy systems hundreds of years old (higher education) or assembled in a short-term, ad hoc fashion (post-1940 national defense/ national security), these systems have expanded into vast patronage systems that are completely out of touch with 21st century needs, costs or realities. The U.S. healthcare system was not planned; it is largely accidental.

"It was like ‘Hey,…. its Crackas With Attitude.’ He was like ‘What do you want?’ We said ‘2 trillion dollars hahhaa, just joking. 'How much do you really want?' 'We just want Palestine to be free and for you to stop killing innocent people.'"

The American people accept the persecution of truth-tellers, because they have been brainwashed into believing that patriotism means defense of the government no matter what. As truth is so unfavorable to Washington, Americans believe that it must not be revealed, and if revealed, covered up, and those who reveal truth must be punished. A country with such a population as this is a police state, not a free country.

“President Obama’s decision to prolong the U.S. led war in Afghanistan only ensures U.S. responsibility for more death and destruction. Veterans For Peace condemns the decision and calls on the U.S. public to say no to more war..."

"Injecting politics into what is supposed to be a fact-finding inquiry leaves a foul taste in the F.B.I.’s mouth and makes them fear that no matter what they find, the Justice Department will take the president’s signal and not bring a case."

Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. The evidence, after all, is largely in.  In these years, for what now must be approaching three-quarters of a trillion dollars, the national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system.  Welcome to the fog of everything.

The reason these articles are so important, is not because they are based on intel leaked by an additional whistleblower (i.e., not Snowden), but because you can’t read the information without concluding quite simply that the U.S. empire is completely and totally out of control. That the plethora of American military adventures overseas are not only not making us safer, but are in fact making us far more vulnerable.

Allen Dulles, the CIA director under presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and younger brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was the architect of a secretive national security apparatus that functioned as essentially an autonomous branch of government. In a Cold War-era world full of spy games and nuclear brinkmanship, in which everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy, Dulles - who deceived American elected leaders and overthrew foreign ones, who backed ex-Nazis and thwarted left-leaning democrats - falls firmly in the latter camp.

"The big battle preparations in that area are clear. There is a large mobilization of the Syrian army ... elite Hezbollah fighters, and thousands of Iranians who arrived in stages in recent days."

It is America the Herd that is keeping America the Civilization from feeling and being prosperous and safe. For too long, we have let our rulers ride us roughshod, using us to trample the economy and global tranquility with its economic and military interventions. Make America good again, and the kinds of greatness actually worth having will naturally follow.