WASHINGTON IS A GREAT DANGER TO THE WORLD
May 2, 2015 | Original Here Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter
WASHINGTON IS A GREAT DANGER TO THE WORLD
Guest column by Dana Visalli
“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil
obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the
dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and
millions have been killed because of this obedience.” Howard Zinn
“If one absorbs the fact that we committed genocide against the 3.5
million of the Vietnamese people that we slaughtered in the American War
(this number being one of the most recent estimates), and ecocide upon
the natural environment of Vietnam, and takes into account that there
was no reason whatsoever for the war, one comes to fully appreciate just
how dysfunctional and destructive the human mind and so-called
‘leadership’ can be. It is important to recall that the Vietnam War is
not an isolated event. As I wrote about in my previous essay in this
series (which can be read online by googling ‘War is God’s Way of
Teaching Geography’), just before the destruction of Vietnam we
obliterated North Korea; 15 years after Vietnam we were bombing Iraq.
Today we are bombing five countries at the same time.
“The greatest danger in the world today to the ecological integrity
of the biosphere and the sanctity of life is the United States
government and the masses of mindless young men who do its bidding,
being incapable of thinking for themselves and starving for the identity
of the uniform. If that seems like a radical statement, re-read the
previous paragraph. At a deeper level the problem is the superstitious,
almost religious response of the human mind to external authority. We
know power corrupts, but we persist in putting mere mortals in positions
of extreme power. The global situation will improve only when we take
responsibility for our own financial, ethical and ecological lives, and
cease to allow ourselves to be led around by the nose by so-called
leaders who are inevitably corrupted by the positions of power into
which we ourselves put them.” Dana Visalli
Why War Is Inevitable — Paul Craig Roberts
May 25, 2014 | Original Here Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter
Why War Is Inevitable
Paul Craig Roberts
Memorial Day is when we commemorate our war dead. Like the Fourth of
July, Memorial Day is being turned into a celebration of war.
Those who lose family members and dear friends to war don’t want the
deaths to have been in vain. Consequently, wars become glorious deeds
performed by noble soldiers fighting for truth, justice, and the
American way. Patriotic speeches tell us how much we owe to those who
gave their lives so that America could remain free.
The speeches are well-intentioned, but the speeches create a false
reality that supports ever more wars. None of America’s wars had
anything to do with keeping America free. To the contrary, the wars
swept away our civil liberties, making us unfree.
President Lincoln issued an executive order for the arrest and
imprisonment of northern newspaper reporters and editors. He shut down
300 northern newspapers and held 14,000 political prisoners. Lincoln
arrested war critic US Representative Clement Vallandigham from Ohio and
exiled him to the Confederacy. President Woodrow Wilson used WWI to
suppress free speech, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt used WWII to
intern 120,000 US citizens of Japanese descent on the grounds that race
made them suspect. Professor Samuel Walker concluded that President
George W. Bush used the “war on terror” for an across the board assault
on US civil liberty, making the Bush regime the greatest danger American
liberty has ever faced.
Lincoln forever destroyed states’ rights, but the suspension of
habeas corpus and free speech that went hand in hand with America’s
three largest wars was lifted at war’s end. However, President George W.
Bush’s repeal of the Constitution has been expanded by President Obama
and codified by Congress and executive orders into law. Far from
defending our liberties, our soldiers who died in “the war on terror”
died so that the president can indefinitely detain US citizens without
due process of law and murder US citizens on suspicion alone without any
accountability to law or the Constitution.
The conclusion is unavoidable that America’s wars have not protected
our liberty but, instead, destroyed liberty. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn
said, “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
Southern secession did pose a threat to Washington’s empire, but not to the American people.
Neither the Germans of WWI vintage nor the Germans and Japanese of
WWII vintage posed any threat to the US. As historians have made
completely clear, Germany did not start WWI and did not go to war for
the purpose of territorial expansion. Japan’s ambitions were in Asia.
Hitler did not want war with England and France. Hitler’s territorial
ambitions were mainly to restore German provinces stripped from Germany
as WWI booty in violation of President Wilson’s guarantees. Any other
German ambitions were to the East. Neither country had any plans to
invade the US. Japan attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor hoping to
remove an obstacle to its activities in Asia, not as a precursor to an
invasion of America.
Certainly the countries ravaged by Bush and Obama in the 21st
century–Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen
posed no military threat to the US. Indeed, these were wars used by a
tyrannical executive branch to establish the basis of the Stasi State
that now exists in the US.
The truth is hard to bear, but the facts are clear. America’s wars
have been fought in order to advance Washington’s power, the profits of
bankers and armaments industries, and the fortunes of US companies.
Marine General Smedley Butler said, “ I served in all commissioned ranks
from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I
spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business,
for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for
capitalism.”
It is more or less impossible to commemorate the war dead without
glorifying them, and it is impossible to glorify them without glorifying
their wars.
For the entirety of the 21st century the US has been at war, not war
against massed armies or threats to American freedom, but wars against
civilians, against women, children, and village elders, and wars against
our own liberty. Elites with a vested interest in these wars tell us
that the wars will have to go on for another 20 to 30 years before we
defeat “the terrorist threat.”
This, of course, is nonsense. There was no terrorist threat until
Washington began trying to create terrorists by military attacks,
justified by lies, on Muslim populations.
Washington succeeded with its war lies to the point that Washington’s audacity and hubris have outgrown Washington’s judgment.
By overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine,
Washington has brought the United States into confrontation with Russia.
This is a confrontation that could end badly, perhaps for Washington
and perhaps for the entire world.
If Gaddafi and Assad would not roll over for Washington, why does
Washington think Russia will? Russia is not Libya or Syria. Washington
is the bully who having beat up the kindergarden kid, now thinks he can
take on the college linebacker.
The Bush and Obama regimes have destroyed America’s reputation with
their incessant lies and violence against other peoples. The world sees
Washington as the prime threat.
Worldwide polls consistently show that people around the world regard
the US and Israel as the two countries that pose the greatest threat to
peace. http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008 and
http://www.jewishfederations.org/european-poll-israel-biggest-threat-to-world-peace.aspx
The countries that Washington’s propaganda declares to be “rogue
states” and the “axis of evil,” such as Iran and North Korea, are far
down the list when the peoples in the world are consulted. It could not
be more clear that the world does not believe Washington’s self-serving
propaganda. The world sees the US and Israel as the rogue states.
The US and Israel are the only two countries in the world that are in
the grip of ideologies. The US is in the grip of the Neoconservative
ideology which has declared the US to be the “exceptional, indispensable
country” chosen by history to exercise hegemony over all others. This
ideology is buttressed by the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines that
are the basis of US foreign policy.
The Israeli government is in the grip of the Zionist ideology that
declares a “greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates. Many
Israelis themselves do not accept this ideology, but it is the ideology
of the “settlers” and those who control the Israeli government.
Ideologies are important causes of war. Just as the Hitlerian
ideology of German superiority is mirrored in the Neoconservative
ideology of US superiority, the Communist ideology that the working
class is superior to the capitalist class is mirrored in the Zionist
ideology that Israelis are superior to Palestinians. Zionists have never
heard of squatters’ rights and claim that recent Jewish immigrants into
Palestine–invaders really–have the right to land occupied by others for
millenniums.
Washington’s and Israel’s doctrines of superiority over others do not
sit very well with the ”others.” When Obama declared in a speech that
Americans are the exceptional people, Russia’s President Putin
responded, “God created us all equal.”
To the detriment of its population, the Israeli government has made
endless enemies. Israel has effectively isolated itself in the world.
Israel’s continued existence depends entirely on the willingness and
ability of Washington to protect Israel. This means that Israel’s power
is derivative of Washington’s power.
Washington’s power is a different story. As the only economy
standing after WWII, the US dollar became the world money. This role
for the dollar has given Washington financial hegemony over the world,
the main source of Washington’s power. As other countries rise,
Washington’s hegemony is imperiled.
To prevent other countries from rising, Washington invokes the
Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines. To be brief, the Brzezinski doctrine
says that in order to remain the only superpower, Washington must
control the Eurasian land mass. Brzezinski is willing for this to occur
peacefully by suborning the Russian government into Washington’s empire.
”A loosely confederated Russia . . . a decentralized Russia would be
less susceptible to imperial mobilization.” In other words, break up
Russia into associations of semi-autonomous states whose politicians can
be suborned by Washington’s money.
Brzezinski propounded “a geo-strategy for Eurasia.” In Brzezinski’s
strategy, China and “a confederated Russia” are part of a
“transcontinental security framework,” managed by Washington in order to
perpetuate the role of the US as the world’s only superpower.
I once asked my colleague, Brzezinski, that if everyone was allied
with us, who were we organized against? My question surprised him,
because I think that Brzezinski remains caught up in Cold War strategy
even after the demise of the Soviet Union. In Cold War thinking it was
important to have the upper hand or else be at risk of being eliminated
as a player. The importance of prevailing became all consuming, and this
consuming drive survived the Soviet collapse. Prevailing over others is the only foreign policy that Washington knows.
The mindset that America must prevail set the stage for the
Neoconservatives and their 21st century wars, which, with Washington’s
overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine, has
resulted in a crisis that has brought Washington into direct conflict
with Russia.
I know the strategic institutes that serve Washington. I was the
occupant of the William E.Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, for a dozen years. The idea is
prevalent that Washington must prevail over Russia in Ukraine or
Washington will lose prestige and its superpower status.
The idea of prevailing always leads to war once one power thinks it has prevailed.
The path to war is reinforced by the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Paul
Wolfowitz, the neoconservative intellectual who formulated US military
and foreign policy doctrine, wrote among many similar passages:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,
either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere [China],
that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet
Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional
defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile
power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
In the Wolfowitz Doctrine, any other strong country is defined as a threat and a power hostile to the US regardless of how willing that country is to get along with the US for mutual benefit.
The difference between Brzezinski and the Neoconservatives is that
Brzezinski wants to suborn Russia and China by including them in the
empire as important elements whose voices would be heard, If only for
diplomatic reasons, whereas the Neoconservatives are prepared to rely on
military force combined with internal subversion orchestrated with US
financed NGOs and even terrorist organizations.
Neither the US nor Israel is embarrassed by their worldwide
reputations as the two countries that pose the greatest threat. In
fact, both countries are proud to be recognized as the greatest threats.
The foreign policy of both countries is devoid of any diplomacy. US
and Israeli foreign policy rests on violence alone. Washington tells
countries to do as Washington says or be “bombed into the stone age.”
Israel declares all Palestinians, even women and children, to be
“terrorists,” and proceeds to shoot them down in the streets, claiming
that Israel is merely protecting itself against terrorists. Israel,
which does not recognize the existence of Palestine as a country, covers
up its crimes with the claim that Palestinians do not accept the
existence of Israel.
“We don’t need no stinking diplomacy. We got power.”
This is the attitude that guarantees war, and that is where the US is
taking the world. The prime minister of Britain, the chancellor of
Germany, and the president of France are Washington’s enablers. They
provide the cover for Washington. Instead of war crimes, Washington has
“coalitions of the willing” and military invasions that bring
“democracy and women’s rights” to non-compliant countries.
China gets much the same treatment. A country with four times the US
population but a smaller prison population, China is constantly
criticized by Washington as an “authoritarian state.” China is accused
of human rights abuses while US police brutalize the US population.
The problem for humanity is that Russia and China are not Libya and
Iraq. These two countries possess strategic nuclear weapons. Their land
mass greatly exceeds that of the US. The US, which was unable to
successfully occupy Baghdad or Afghanistan, has no prospect of
prevailing against Russia and China in conventional warfare. Washington
will push the nuclear button. What else can we expect from a government
devoid of morality?
The world has never experienced rogue states comparable to Washington
and Israel. Both governments are prepared to murder anyone and
everyone. Look at the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and
the dangers thereof. On May 23, 2014, Russia’s President Putin spoke to
the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a three-day gathering
of delegations from 62 countries and CEOs from 146 of the largest
Western corporations.
Putin did not speak of the billions of dollars in trade deals that
were being formalized. Instead Putin spoke of the crisis that Washington
had brought to Russia, and he criticized Europe for being Washington’s
vassals for supporting Washington’s propaganda against Russia and
Washington’s interference in vital Russian interests.
Putin was diplomatic in his language, but the message that powerful
economic interests from the US and Europe received is that it will lead
to trouble if Washington and European governments continue to ignore
Russia’s concerns and continue to act as if they can interfere in
Russia’s vital interests as if Russia did not exist.
The heads of these large corporations will carry this message back to
Washington and European capitals. Putin made it clear that the lack of
dialogue with Russia could lead to the West making the mistake of
putting Ukraine in NATO and establishing missile bases on Russia’s
border with Ukraine. Putin has learned that Russia cannot rely on good
will from the West, and Putin made it clear, short of issuing a threat,
that Western military bases in Ukraine are unacceptable.
Washington will continue to ignore Russia. However, European capitals will
have to decide whether Washington is pushing them into conflict with
Russia that is against European interests. Thus, Putin is testing
European politicians to determine if there is sufficient intelligence
and independence in Europe for a rapprochement.
If Washington in its overbearing arrogance and hubris forces Putin to
write off the West, the Russian/Chinese strategic alliance, which is
forming to counteract Washington’s hostile policy of surrounding both
countries with military bases, will harden into preparation for the
inevitable war.
The survivors, if any, can thank the Neoconservatives, the Wolfowitz
doctrine, and the Brzezinski strategy for the destruction of life on
earth.
The American public contains a large number of misinformed people who
think they know everything. These people have been programmed by US
and Israeli propaganda to equate Islam with political ideology. They
believe that Islam, a religion, is instead a militarist doctrine that
calls for the overthrow of Western civilization, as if anything remains
of Western civilization.
Many believe this propaganda even in the face of complete proof that
the Sunnis and Shi’ites hate one another far more than they hate their
Western oppressors and occupiers. The US has departed Iraq, but the
carnage today is as high or higher than during the US invasion and
occupation. The daily death tolls from the Sunni/Shi’ite conflict are
extraordinary. A religion this disunited poses no threat to anyone
except Islamists themselves. Washington successfully used Islamist
disunity to overthrow Gaddafi, and is currently using Islamist disunity
in an effort to overthrow the government of Syria. Islamists cannot even
unite to defend themselves against Western aggression. There is no
prospect of Islamists uniting in order to overthrow the West.
Even if Islam could do so, it would be pointless for Islam to
overthrow the West. The West has overthrown itself. In the US the
Constitution has been murdered by the Bush and Obama regimes. Nothing
remains. As the US is the Constitution, what was once the United States no longer exists. A different entity has taken its place.
Europe died with the European Union, which requires the termination
of sovereignty of all member countries. A few unaccountable bureaucrats
in Brussels have become superior to the wills of the French, German,
British, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese peoples.
Western civilization is a skeleton. It still stands, barely, but
there is no life in it. The blood of liberty has departed. Western
peoples look at their governments and see nothing but enemies. Why else
has Washington militarized local police forces, equipping them as if
they were occupying armies? Why else has Homeland Security, the
Department of Agriculture, and even the Postal Service and Social
Security Administration ordered billions of rounds of ammunition and
even submachine guns? What is this taxpayer-paid-for arsenal for if not
to suppress US citizens?
As the prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente spells out in the current Trends Journal,
“uprisings span four corners of the globe.” Throughout Europe angry,
desperate and outraged peoples march against EU financial policies that
are driving the peoples into the ground. Despite all of Washington’s
efforts with its well funded fifth columns known as NGOs to destabilize
Russia and China, both the Russian and Chinese governments have far more
support from their people than do the US and Europe.
In the 20th century Russia and China learned what tyranny is, and they have rejected it.
In the US tyranny has entered under the guise of the “war on terror,”
a hoax used to scare the sheeple into abandoning their civil liberties,
thus freeing Washington from accountability to law and permitting
Washington to erect a militarist police state. Ever since WWII
Washington has used its financial hegemony and the “Soviet threat,” now
converted into the “Russian threat,” to absorb Europe into Washington’s
empire.
Putin is hoping that the interests of European countries will prevail
over subservience to Washington. This is Putin’s current bet. This is
the reason Putin remains unprovoked by Washington’s provocations in
Ukraine.
If Europe fails Russia, Putin and China will prepare for the war that Washington’s drive for hegemony makes inevitable.
