The U.S. military industrial complex has been spending our money faster than it can be printed while Congress saves money by paring Social Security and lowering minimum wages of those who can still find jobs. Now here is irrefutable proof that the defense contractors who gladly accept trillions of tax-payers dollars produce the most expensive fighter planes in the world ...that will be sitting ducks if ever in combat with modern Russian fighters. As Pogo once said: "We have met the enemy and they are us."

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The Latest Russian Fighter Jet Blows America's Away

Outgunned by the Su-30 family of aircraft and suffering critical design flaws, the American F-35 is staring down the barrel of obsolescence – and punching a gaping hole in western air defenses.

Federico Pieraccini                                                                                           Original Here

Russian Sukhoi Su-30 Fighter Jet

This article is an excellent read to understand how Russia's technological level is best in its class in many military sectors, especially with regard to fighter jets.  It originally appeared in Russia & India Report. The SU-30 continues to be the number one choice among global buyers.

Built to be the deadliest hunter killer aircraft of all time, the F-35 has quite literally become the hunted. In every scenario that the F-35 has been wargamed against Su-30 Flankers, the Russian aircraft have emerged winners. America’s newest stealth aircraft – costing $191 million per unit – is riddled with such critical design flaws that it’s likely to get blown away in a shootout with the super-maneuverable Sukhois.

Stubby wings (that reduce lift and maneuverability), a bulbous fuselage (that makes it less aerodynamic) low speed and a super hot engine (which a half decent radar can identify) are just a few of the major flaws that will expose its vulnerability during air combat.

With more than 600 Flankers (Sukhoi-27s and its later iterations such as the Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 Super Flanker) flying with air forces around the world, the fate of the fifth generation F-35 seems decidedly uncertain. Aerospace experts across the world are veering around to the view that America’s most expensive fighter development program (pegged at $1.5 trillion) will be a sitting duck for the flankers.

“It’s a turkey,” declares aerospace engineer Pierre Sprey in an interview to Dutch television. Few people are as qualified to speak about fighter aircraft as Sprey. He is the co-designer of the F-16 Falcon jet and the A-10 Warthog tank buster, two of the most successful aircraft in the US Air Force (USAF).

Winslow T. Wheeler, Director of the US’ Straus Military Reform Project, Centre for Defense information, agrees. “The F-35 is too heavy and sluggish to be successful as a fighter,” he says. “If we ever face an enemy with a serious air force we will be in deep trouble.”

So far the US has been lucky it has never really encountered a “serious” military. Over the skies of war-weary Iraq, tiny Libya and utterly defenseless Afghanistan, the American aircraft operated with impunity. But luck can run out – if they ever come up against the air forces of Russia, China or India the outcome won’t be so one-sided. In particular, the Indian Air Force has beaten the USAF’s fourth generation fighters using both third and fourth generation jets.

The biggest problem with the F-35 is that its US designers are betting on stealth and long range radar to compensate for its lack of speed and maneuverability. But stealth is not really all that it is cracked up to be; it is not the cloak of invisibility.

Plus, Russia’s already excellent radars are getting better. Says Defense Industry Daily (DID): “Meanwhile, key radar advances are already deployed in the most advanced Russian surface-to-air missile systems, and existing IRST (infra-red scan and track) systems deployed on advanced Russian and European fighters are extending enemy detection ranges against radar-stealthy aircraft. Fighter radar pick-up capability of up to (46km) by 2020 is proposed against even ultra-stealthy aircraft like the F-22, coupled with IRST ability to identify Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile firings and less infrared-stealthy aircraft at (92km) or more.”

At the same time, there is no such thing as one radar in a war. “There are lots of radars,” Sprey explains. “And you can’t be nose-on or dead-level to every radar in the theater. There are always going to be radars that are going to be shining up (from below) or looking from above – they can all see you.”

Short on firepower

Another issue is with the American aircraft’s overall shape. “Most great airplanes are beautiful because you are trying to reduce drag,” Sprey says. “But here because of stealth they had to make it very bulbous, very big as they had to carry the weapons inside because as soon as you carry the weapons outside they reflect radar. So this is a huge penalty to the performance of the aircraft which is now big and lumbering like a bomber.”

Lower internal payload means the designers at Lockheed-Martin have signed the F-35’s death warrant. The aircraft carries just two large bombs and four small ones, and a maximum of four beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missiles (AAMs).

The USAF claims the F-35’s advanced radar will see the enemy aircraft first and be able to take it out with one of its four long-range AAMs. But BVR kills are still the stuff of dreams for fighter pilots and are quite rare.

In fact, the reliance on the radar acquisition and AAMS can prove suicidal – as indeed it was once upon a time. During the Vietnam War the USAF was so smitten with the concept of BVR combat that the first F-4 fighters were armed only with missiles. But after the Vietnamese Air Force pilots shot them down by the bucket load, the Americans reintroduced cannons in the F-4.

In fact, Russia, which has the most advanced and varied range of BVR missiles in the world, arms its Flankers with at least eight missiles for the simple reason that it takes several shots at a fast moving target to score a kill.

That the Americans ignored this basic lesson of air combat is mind boggling. The biggest problem with the F-35 is that its US designers are betting on stealth and long range radar to compensate for its lack of speed and maneuverability. But stealth is not really all that it is cracked up to be; it is not the cloak of invisibility.The biggest problem with the F-35 is that its US designers are betting on stealth and long range radar to compensate for its lack of speed and maneuverability. But stealth is not really all that it is cracked up to be; it is not the cloak of invisibility.

Plus, Russia’s already excellent radars are getting better. Says Defense Industry Daily (DID): “Meanwhile, key radar advances are already deployed in the most advanced Russian surface-to-air missile systems, and existing IRST (infra-red scan and track) systems deployed on advanced Russian and European fighters are extending enemy detection ranges against radar-stealthy aircraft. Fighter radar pick-up capability of up to (46km) by 2020 is proposed against even ultra-stealthy aircraft like the F-22, coupled with IRST ability to identify Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile firings and less infrared-stealthy aircraft at (92km) or more.”

At the same time, there is no such thing as one radar in a war. “There are lots of radars,” Sprey explains. “And you can’t be nose-on or dead-level to every radar in the theater. There are always going to be radars that are going to be shining up (from below) or looking from above – they can all see you.”

Most Americans believe that Russia has attacked Ukraine. This is because the despicable “mainstream” media have reported solely the lies coming out of the White House, totally disregarding what may be the actual truth. At the insistence of President Vladimir Putin, Russia has NOT attacked Ukraine. (If Russia had attacked, its large well equipped and trained army would have won the war in three days.) The truth of the matter is that the U.S. has been financing the corrupt Ukrainian government to attack its Russian-speaking eastern provinces with troops including neo-Nazis bent on exterminating all Russian speakers and Jews. These killers have been shelling Donetsk and Lugansk with heavy artillery and ballistic missiles, killing civilians and destroying vital infrastructure. Still, the militias of these provinces had won the war, leading to a mutually agreed 3-month ceasefire …which has been promptly broken by U.S. puppet Poroshenko. Win or lose, Russian intervention or not, the result will lead to more funding for Washington’s “military-industrial complex.” I urge the reader to click on some of the links in Michael Collins’ important post below.

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OpEdNews Op Eds 10/25/2014 at 04:38:24   
Ukraine Restarts War on Eastern Regions Sources Say
By Michael Collins (about the author)     Permalink


opednews.com                                                                                Headlined to H2 10/25/14

Novorussia Military Rapid Response Force
(image by Colonel Cassad - English)

The Kiev government of U.S. puppet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is about to restart the failed attempt to subdue the southeastern region of the country known as Novorussia according to highly credible sources. (Image)

Colonel Igor Strelkov, a native Russian, helped create and led the Novorussian forces during the critical phases of resistance to the Kiev regime. At the height of his success, he left active command and was replaced by local leaders. As Strelkov sees it:

[An] "Endless flow of [Ukraine government] military columns moves towards Donetsk and Makeevka areas and towards Gorlovka area. Troops are being moved at ever increasing pace.

"At the same time they engage in massive use of heavy MLRS fire, heavy artillery and tactical missiles "Tochka-U" (SS-21 Scarab B) [a tactical ballistic missile - see Ukraine Firing Ballistic Missiles - Obama-Kerry Say Nothing].

"The number of victims among the population during this so-called truce is higher than it was in the period of active hostilities one month ago. Igor Strelkov, Important Statement, 20.10.2014 or here (click "Show More" for full text)

Strelkov believes that heavily populated areas of Donetsk and Makeyevka are the targets. The Kiev government will create a false-flag, according to this scenario, with the aim of a "swift and decisive" victory. If things go according to plan, the largest population area of Novorussia will be under putative Ukrainian government control.

The Saker, whose blog Vineyard of the Saker is a leading source of news and analysis on Novorussia, endorsed Strelkov's analysis. Over the past weeks, Saker and other sources outlined the ever-weakening position of the Ukraine central government based on a collapsing economy and a very bleak outlook on the future by citizens. He suggests, "Starting a major war might well be the only way to save the Poroshenko regime which currently is in free-fall." Russia Insider, Oct 23

The Saker notes that a defeat may be as good as a victory for Ukraine if it draws Russia into military assistance for the major population areas under attack. Contrary to the claims of Operation Mockingbird style propaganda machine in the mainstream media, Putin is not an absolute dictator. He faces pro US and EU oligarchs who want give the West whatever it wants in return for their own gains and right-wing nationalists who see Putin's failure to intervene to assist Novorussia as bordering on treason.

Should Ukraine gain a military advantage by devastating civilian areas, the pressure on Putin to intervene will be overwhelming. A Russian intervention would achieve the overall goal of restarting the Cold War and filling the coffers of the U.S. military industrial complex.

Shortly after his election in late May, President Poroshenko beefed up the "anti terrorist operation" (ATO) against the eastern Ukraine, particularly the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Under his predecessor, interim acting President Olexander Turchynov, ATO troops were greeted on occasion by derisive citizens who stood their ground and cajoled them into abandoning their equipment. When U.S. favorite Poroshenko took over, the ATO, more accurately anti-citizen operation, ramped up with heavy artillery attacks on towns and cities killing and maiming civilians and destroying homes and critical infrastructure.

The rapidly formed Novorussian militias quickly became a highly motivated and effective fighting force aided by supplies spirited across the Russian border. The headlong attacks by Ukraine regular troops and fascist irregulars (punitive battalions) were encircled by Novorussian forces creating cauldrons where Ukraine soldiers had two choices - death or surrender. This successfully repeated tactic resulted in a shift of momentum plus a string of impressive victories for the resistance resulting in a desperately sought ceasefire by Poroshenko in September.

Provoking Russian Military Intervention and the Grand Prize

The U.S. led the effort to create a virulently anti Russian government in Ukraine through years of fieldwork and funding. The Euromaidan protests and extremist government installed after those protests were the culmination of decades of U.S. foreign policy. Finally, the Cold War - military industrial complex patrons and front men achieved their goal. Ukraine was soon to join the European Union, then NATO, and Russia would be contained as a regional, not global power.

To understand how a great power reacts to a hostile power's incursion in its territory, recall the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis after it was discovered that the government of the USSR had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. We nearly had a nuclear war. What twisted logic occupied the Obama administration and his two war loving secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry? Certainly, they didn't want nuclear war. Obama even said that no U.S. ground troops would not assist the Ukraine government. What Obama did say was Russian action risked a new Cold War. This was echoed throughout the country by a congressional chorus of the usual male hysterics.

And, what does a new Cold War mean? A payday beyond dreams for defense firms and their major investors. As Gore Vidal pointed out, there is just one party, the property (money) party. It has Republican and Democratic wings. However, on the big issues, everyone agrees -- the threat of war, even a cold one, is good for the war business and its major investors. Think of the new Cold War as socialism for the very rich while successive administrations offer the vast majority of citizens a healthy dose of survival of the fittest.

Creative Commons 3.0

http://www.opednews.com/author/author3863.html  
Researcher, writer DC Area Attack on Syria - Struggle for Turkey - Attack on Libya - The Money Party = Survival - End Times - Obama Administration - Politics and Policy - Election fraud - Pennsylvania Sexual Abuse Scandal - (more...)

Nomi Prins: "The real battle between the US and Russia is over the gateway countries in political flux. The real winners will be the private banks and oil companies that will reap the strategic benefits from gateway control over related markets and resources, supported by military and political might, and augmented with speculative capital for years to come. American and global citizens, oblivious to all this, will be the losers in this global shell game."

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Gateway Policies: ISIS, Obama and US Financial Boots-on-the-Ground

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Sunday, September 21, 2014 at 9:28PM                                                                                                    Original here

President Obama’s neo-Cold War is not about ideology or respect for borders. It is about money and global power. The current battle over control of gateway nations - strategic locations in which private firms can establish the equivalent of financial boots-on-the-ground - is being waged in the Middle East and Ukraine under the auspices of freedom and western capitalism (er, “democracy”). In these global gateways, private banks can infiltrate resource-rich locales fortified by political will, public aid and military support to garner lucrative market advantages. ISIS poses a threat to global gateway control that transcends any human casualties. That’s why Congress decided to authorize funds to fight ISIS despite the risk.

The common thread of today’s global gateway nations appears to be oil. But even more valuable are the multitude of financing deals that would accompany building new pipelines, arming allies, and reconstructing civil-war-torn countries. Indeed, hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake in America’s wars of  “principle.”

Middle-East Gateways: ISIS and Money

Obama’s recent public address on fighting ISIS  had a dash of economy sprinkled in. For him, US economic policy is foreign policy. It is also a product of an American political-financial expansionary land-and-resource grab that has been going on for decades. Obama’s execution may be far less authoritative than President Eisenhower’s. But his neo-financial Cold War has similar elements to those initiated by Eisenhower and the American banking elite in the 1950s when they collaborated to project American power into more countries, using the military and a combination of public and private capital, as tools.

The second World Bank President and 1950s Chairman of Chase Bank, John McCloy, and ascending and later Chase Chairman David Rockefeller both had aspirations to financially penetrate the Middle East. So did other major bankers. The US government and its banks first focused on Beirut as a gateway to the Middle East. Eisenhower dispatched military personnel to Beirut in 1958 not because he cared about the Lebanese, but because of the attractiveness of the country’s potential as a gateway to the region. By the 1970s, oil and money relationships between Chase and Saudi Arabia and Egypt grew, as they did with Iran and the Shah. Rockefeller's relationship with the Shah, who kept his family money with Chase, ignited the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. Before that, the US government and its military contractors made billions of dollars from arms deals with Iran.

Citigroup opened its first Iraq branch in September 2013, ten years after George W. Bush began his Iraq War while facing a recessed American economy. A decade ago, the Bush administration selected JPM Chase to manage billions of dollars of financing for Iraq imports and exports. JPM Chase also opened a branch in Iraq last year to compete with Citigroup for current gains. Billions of dollars in new pipeline funding and other projects are now up for grabs in Iraq. If the US supports the Iraqi government (against ISIS), these banks, as well as oil and infrastructure-building companies are poised to get more of a chunk of that money. Citigroup is already a forerunner for arranging a $2 billion loan for Boeing Jets to Iraq. As Iraq's Deputy Transport Minister Bangen Rekani said in April, “We need a lot of funds...we’re in a race to complete the maximum number of projects in a short time.”

Regarding Syria, Obama’s plea for showing strength worked. Congress voted in rare bipartisan fashion to fund the moderate Syrian rebels or “free Syrian army rebels.” According to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, initial assistance would be “small arms, vehicles and basic equipment like communications, as well as tactical and strategic training.” That could just be the beginning. He also said, “as these forces prove their effectiveness on the battlefield, we would be prepared to provide increasingly sophisticated types of assistance."  We’ve been down this road before, positioning the military to gain financial access to an area relative to our competition. It’s lasted for years and killed thousands of people, while not accomplishing the stated goal of curtailing terrorist threats or activities.

It gets complicated from there. Moderate Syrian rebels have been fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom the US would support against ISIS. The US thinks these forces would cease fighting against al-Assad to fight ISIS instead, though the US claims it is not directly cooperating with  al-Assad.

Despite this, the US financial hope is that once the dust clears from all these regime changes we support militarily, there will be demand for massive reconstruction and resource extraction projects that our private banks can take care of alongside the IMF and World Bank. At a press conference in Beirut in June, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told the international community that the World Bank would help to rebuild Syria (at a cost of $150 billion after an “internationally recognized government” was put in place) as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq during their 'recovery' from years of war. Mega reconstruction profits are at stake for private firms in symbiotic partnerships  with these international entities. So too, are the requirements for austerity and loosely regulated financial markets as the Western “reform” bargains that accompany them.

“Wars on terror” serve as a distraction in public and media discourse from a bipolar economy. The September releases of the US Census Report and the Federal Reserve Consumer Finance Survey revealed an ongoing trend toward greater income and wealth inequality. We remain 8 million jobs below pre-crisis levels, adjusted for population growth. Real wages have stagnated or declined. Employers have no incentive to provide well-paying jobs amidst ample desperation in the ranks of the unemployed. We are a mess at home.

Rather than deal with this, the US is trying to prevent terrorism from blocking private bank and corporate expansions and profit elsewhere. ISIS has already caused Iraq to delay its first mega project-finance deal. The $18 billion Basra-Aqaba oil pipeline would extend through Jordan to the Red Sea, pumping a million barrels of crude oil per day, as well as 258 million cubic feet of gas.  That’s a hefty financial incentive for which to use public funds.

Truth be told, the game of global gateway finance is a closed one. And there’s still Russia (and China) playing at the same table. In August 2014, Russia’s biggest oil company, Lukoil, estimated construction of the first branch of a pipeline to Iraq’s West Qurna-2 field at a cost of up to $1 billion. Lukoil holds a 75% stake in West Qurna-2 and has invested over $4 billion in the project, which is already producing more than 200,000 barrels of oil per day.

Cold-War Gateways: From Cuba to the Ukraine

The narrative of Russia's aggression vs. America’s fight for freedom dovetails with the turmoil going on in the Middle East. Both situations deflect attention from our country, which has greater inequality today than before Obama took office, despite a soaring stock market buoyed by the Fed's stimulus policy of pumping zero-interest rate money into banks providing them capital for all of these international adventures.

After Ukrainian President Poroshenko, a former banker and chocolate mogul, proclaimed the situation with Russia was much improved following his truce with Vladimir Putin, President Obama ratcheted up sanctions against Russia and corralled the rest of the Euro-squad to join him. This action was not about saving Kiev from pro-Russian rebels, but to reinforce the notion that the US is in financial control of the country. Poroshenko is no financial dummy, which is why he threw Putin and any potential Russian economic support under the bus, and high-tailed it to Washington for photo-ops and handouts.

These will come in the form of US government aid, more loans from the IMF and World Bank, plus complex transactions with US banks seeking more areas in which to funnel foreign capital, finance projects, and down the line, maybe securitize the resources of a new corner of the world and sell them to a fresh bunch of hungry speculators. The US has already provided $60 million in aid including food, body armor and communications equipment to the Ukraine to secure its place at this gateway table later.

Stepping back in time, my book, All the Presidents' Bankers illustrates how President Eisenhower's 1950s doctrine promoted a combination of US military and economic support to its non-communist allies. Aid from the then-new World Bank and IMF was provided in return for their commitment to provide open trade relationships and adapt policies advantageous to private western banks and corporations. The US government could thus achieve a dual military and financial stronghold. One such country was Cuba, which under Fulgencio Batista became a favorite spot from which to access Latin and South America. National City Bank (now Citigroup) established 11 branches in Havana alone, becoming Cuba’s principle US depository for American companies involved in the sugar industry and other businesses there. That changed with the Cuban revolution and Fidel Castro, who, in 1960, nationalized foreign bank assets. Bankers looked elsewhere to expand, as did the US government.

In Obama’s political-financial strategy, similar gateway strategies are in play. Obama, like all US presidents since Castro came into power, did the communist-bravado thing and extended sanctions. US bankers will reenter Cuba when US policy changes after Castro is truly gone, as they have during several periods before, notably when National City Bank sent an entourage of bankers led by Chairman Charles Mitchell in the 1920s to explore sugar, nickel, and other deals that eventually soured in the 1929 Crash.

The Ukraine is a modern Cuba with more lucrative resources. As with other US financial gateways, Obama supported the Ukraine faction amenable to financial relationships with the US and Europe relative to Russia. Ten years ago, the Bush administration supported Ukrainian leaders sympathizing with the US vs. Russia as well.  None of this was because of any purported interest in dispersing democracy, but because the right leadership offers more capital market, foreign investment and resource control opportunities to private US firms.

The Ukraine signed a $10 billion shale gas deal with US oil giant Chevron to explore its Olesky gas deposit around the time it expressed a desire for closer partnerships with the EU. Its ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to subsequently shun an EU trade agreement in favor of  Putin's offer of cheaper gas and a $15 billion aid package provoked internal unrest, as did its weak economy. The US denounced Russian-backed President Yanukovych, until he left his post, for he represented a potential loss of money, power and more financial access. Ukraine stands between Russian oil producers and European and Asian consumers, and is poised to profit from any growing energy demands from Western Europe, as could Western private firms.  It also serves as a potential financial out-post for US banks hunting for the next hot resource-saturated capital market.

Ironically, on September 17, 2014, the National Bank of Ukraine did a 180 spin on its economic forecasts and promised positive growth of 1% next year. The government said this economic expansion would come through more favorable corporate and income tax laws that would attract outside investors along the lines of what the US and IMF and World Bank has wanted. (More private relationships of bankers with these entities are in All the Presidents’ Bankers.) The Ukraine received two parts of a $17 billion IMF bailout this year with the IMF saying it may need $19 billion more. This means a greater call on Ukraine’s future revenues in return for austerity measures and deregulated financial markets to private foreign interests.

The real battle between the US and Russia is over the gateway countries in political flux. The real winners will be the private banks and oil companies that will reap the strategic benefits from gateway control over related markets and resources, supported by military and political might, and augmented with speculative capital for years to come. American and global citizens, oblivious to all this, will be the losers in this global shell game.

Having a difficult time defeating terrorists in foreign countries, the Pentagon is now hiring think tanks to rationalize designating some classes of non-violent American demonstrators as "terrorists." Watch it here or read about it in the re-post below this one.

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http://youtu.be/0zb1u_ySWQc

How the Pentagon is Bracing for Societal Collapse | Interview with Nafeez Ahmed

breakingtheset





Published on Jul 1, 2014
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Abby Martin interviews Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, journalist for The Guardian, about a recent article he wrote concerning the Pentagon's multimillion dollar project to study peaceful protest movements and prepare for the collapse of industrial society due to factors ranging from income inequality to climate change.

How to explain our National Security State (NSS) to a passing Martian: "At a cost of nearly a trillion dollars a year, its main global enemy consists of thousands of lightly armed jihadis and wannabe jihadis scattered mainly across the backlands of the planet. They are capable of causing genuine damage -- though far less to the United States than numerous other countries -- but not of shaking our way of life. And yet for the leaders, bureaucrats, corporate cronies, rank and file, and acolytes of the NSS, it’s a focus that can never be intense enough on behalf of a system that can never grow large enough or be well funded enough."

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Ripley's Believe It or Not National Security State

Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 4:27pm, January 5, 2014.                                Original Here.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

American Jihad 2014
The New Fundamentalists
By Tom Engelhardt

In a 1950s civics textbook of mine, I can remember a Martian landing on Main Street, U.S.A., to be instructed in the glories of our political system.  You know, our tripartite government, checks and balances, miraculous set of rights, and vibrant democracy.  There was, Americans then thought, much to be proud of, and so for that generation of children, many Martians were instructed in the American way of life.  These days, I suspect, not so many.

Still, I wondered just what lessons might be offered to such a Martian crash-landing in Washington as 2014 begins.  Certainly checks, balances, rights, and democracy wouldn’t top any New Year’s list.  Since my childhood, in fact, that tripartite government has grown a fourth part, a national security state that is remarkably unchecked and unbalanced.  In recent times, that labyrinthine structure of intelligence agencies morphing into war-fighting outfits, the U.S. military (with its own secret military, the special operations forces, gestating inside it), and the Department of Homeland Security, a monster conglomeration of agencies that is an actual “defense department,” as well as a vast contingent of weapons makers, contractors, and profiteers bolstered by an army of lobbyists, has never stopped growing.  It has won the undying fealty of Congress, embraced the power of the presidency, made itself into a jobs program for the American people, and been largely free to do as it pleased with almost unlimited taxpayer dollars.

The expansion of Washington’s national security state -- let’s call it the NSS -- to gargantuan proportions has historically met little opposition.  In the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, however, some resistance has arisen, especially when it comes to the “right” of one part of the NSS to turn the world into a listening post and gather, in particular, American communications of every sort.  The debate about this -- invariably framed within the boundaries of whether or not we should have more security or more privacy and how exactly to balance the two -- has been reasonably vigorous.  The problem is: it doesn’t begin to get at the real nature of the NSS or the problems it poses.

If I were to instruct that stray Martian lost in the nation’s capital, I might choose another framework entirely for my lesson.  After all, the focus of the NSS, which has like an incubus grown to monumental proportions inside the body of the political system, would seem distinctly monomaniacal, if only we could step outside our normal way of thinking for a moment.  At a cost of nearly a trillion dollars a year, its main global enemy consists of thousands of lightly armed jihadis and wannabe jihadis scattered mainly across the backlands of the planet.  They are capable of causing genuine damage -- though far less to the United States than numerous other countries -- but not of shaking our way of life.  And yet for the leaders, bureaucrats, corporate cronies, rank and file, and acolytes of the NSS, it’s a focus that can never be intense enough on behalf of a system that can never grow large enough or be well funded enough.

None of the frameworks we normally call on to understand the national security state capture the irrationality, genuine inanity, and actual madness that lie at its heart.  Perhaps reimagining what has developed in these last decades as a faith-based system -- a new national religion -- would help.  This, at least, is the way I would explain the new Washington to that wayward Martian.

Holy Warriors

Imagine what we call “national security” as, at heart, a proselytizing warrior religion.  It has its holy orders.  It has its sacred texts (classified).  It has its dogma and its warrior priests.  It has its sanctified promised land, known as “the homeland.”  It has its seminaries, which we call think tanks.  It is a monotheistic faith in that it broaches no alternatives to itself.  It is Manichaean in its view of the world.  As with so many religions, its god is an eye in the sky, an all-seeing Being who knows your secrets.

Edward Snowden, the man who in 2013 pulled back the curtain on part of this system, revealing its true nature to anyone who cared to look, is an apostate, never to be forgiven by those in its holy orders.  He is a Judas to be hunted down, returned to the U.S., put on trial as a “traitor,” and then -- so say some retired NSS warriors (who often channel the opinions and feelings of those still in office) -- hung by the neck until dead or swung “from a tall oak tree.”

Al-Qaeda is, of course, the system’s Devil, whose evil seed is known to land and breed anywhere on the planet from Sana'a, Yemen, to Boston, Massachusetts, if we are not eternally and ever more on guard.  In the name of the epic global struggle against it and the need to protect the homeland, nothing is too much, no step taken a point too far.  (As the Devil is traditionally a shape-shifter, able to manifest himself in many forms, it is, however, possible that tomorrow’s version of him may be, say, China.)

The leaders of this faith-based system are, not surprisingly, fundamentalist true believers.  They don’t wear long beards, wave the Koran, shout “Death to the Great Satan,” or live in the backlands of the planet.  Instead, they speak bureaucratically, tend to sport military uniforms and medals, and inhabit high-tech government facilities.  Fundamentalist as they are, they may not, in the normal sense, be religious at all.  They are not obliged to believe in the importance of being “born again” or fear being “left behind” in a future End Times -- though such beliefs don’t disqualify them either.

They issue the equivalent of fatwas against those they proclaim to be their enemies.  They have a set of Sharia-like laws, both immutable and flexible.  Punishments for breaking them may not run to stoning to death or the cutting off of hands, but they do involve the cutting off of lives.

Theirs is an implacable warrior religion, calling down retribution on people often seen only poorly by video feed, thousands of miles distant from Washington, D.C., Langley, Virginia, or Fort Meade, Maryland.  It’s no mistake that the weapons fired by their fleet of drone aircraft are called Hellfire missiles, since it is indeed hellfire and brimstone that they believe they are delivering to the politically sinful of the world.  Nor is it a happenstance that the planes which fire those missiles have been dubbed Predators and Reapers (as in “Grim”), for they do see themselves as the annointed deliverers of Death to their enemies.

While they have a powerful urge to maintain the faith the American public has in them, they also believe deeply that they know best, that their knowledge is the Washington equivalent of God-given, and that the deepest mysteries and secrets of their faith should be held close indeed.

Until you enter their orders and rise into their secret world, there is such a thing as too-much knowledge.  As a result, they have developed a faith-based system of secrecy in which the deepest mysteries have, until recently, been held by the smallest numbers of believers, in which problems are adjudicated in a “court” system so secret that only favored arguments by the national security state can be presented to its judges, in which just about any document produced, no matter how anodyne, will be classified as too dangerous to be read by “the people.”  This has meant that, until recently, most assessments of the activities of the national security state have to be taken on faith.

In addition, in the service of that faith, NSS officials may -- and their religion permits this -- lie to and manipulate the public, Congress, allies, or anyone else, and do so without compunction.  They may publicly deny realities they know to exist, or offer, as Conor Friedersdorf has written, statements “exquisitely crafted to mislead.” They do this based on the belief that the deepest secrets of their world and how it operates can only truly be understood by those already inducted into their orders.  And yet, they are not simply manipulating us in service to their One True Faith.  Nothing is ever that simple.  Before they manipulate us, they must spend years manipulating themselves.  Only because they have already convinced themselves of the deeper truth of their mission do they accept the necessity of manipulating others in what still passes for a democracy.  To serve the people, in other words, they have no choice but to lie to them.

Like other religious institutions in their heyday, the NSS has also shown a striking ability to generate support for its ever-growing structure by turning itself into a lucrative global operation.  In a world where genuine enemies are in remarkably short supply (though you’d never know it from the gospel according to them), it has exhibited remarkable skill in rallying those who might support it financially, whether they call themselves Democrats or Republicans, and ensuring, even in budgetary tough times, that its coffers will continue to burst at the seams.

It has also worked hard to expand what, since 1961, has been known as the military-industrial complex.  In the twenty-first century, the NSS has put special effort into subsidizing warrior corporations ready to enter the global battlefield with it.  In the process, it has “privatized” -- that is, corporatized -- its global operations.  It has essentially merged with a set of crony outfits that now do a significant part of its work.  It has hired private contractors by the tens of thousands, creating corporate spies, corporate analysts, corporate mercenaries, corporate builders, and corporate providers for a structure that is increasingly becoming the profit-center of a state within a state.  All of this, in turn, helps to support a growing theocratic warrior class in the luxury to which it has become accustomed.

Since 9/11, the result has been a religion of perpetual conflict whose doctrines tend to grow ever more extreme.  In our time, for instance, the NSS has moved from Dick Cheney’s “1% doctrine” (if there’s even a 1% chance that some country might someday attack us, we should strike first) to something like a “0% doctrine.”  Whether in its drone wars with their presidential “kill lists” or the cyber war -- probably the first in history -- that it launched against Iran, it no longer cares to argue most of the time that such strikes need even a 1% justification.  Its ongoing, self-proclaimed global war, whether on the ground or in the air, in person or by drone, in space or cyberspace (where its newest military command is already in action) is justification enough for just about any act, however aggressive.

Put all this together and what you have is a description of a militant organization whose purpose is to carry out a Washington version of global jihad, a perpetual war in the name of the true faith.

A Practical Failure, A Faith-Based Success Story

Looked at another way, the national security state is also a humongous humbug, a gigantic fraud of a belief system that only delivers because its followers never choose to look at the world through Martian eyes.

Let’s start with its gargantuan side.  No matter how you cut it, the NSS is a Ripley’s Believe It or Not of staggering numbers that, once you step outside its thought system, don’t add up.  The U.S. national defense budget is estimated to be larger than those of the next 13 countries combined -- that is, simply off-the-charts more expensive.  The U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carrier strike groups when no other country has more than two.  No other national security outfit can claim to sweep up “nearly five billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world”; nor, like the National Security Agency’s Special Source Operations group in 2006, boast about being capable of ingesting the equivalent of “one Library of Congress every 14.4 seconds”; nor does it have any competitors when it comes to constructing “building complexes for top-secret intelligence work” (33 in the Washington area alone between 2001 and 2010).  And its building programs around the U.S. and globally are never-ending.

It is creating a jet fighter that will be the most expensive weapons system in history.  Its weapons makers controlled 78% of the global arms market in 2012.  When its military departed Iraq after eight years of invasion and occupation, it left with three million objects ranging from armored vehicles to laptop computers and porta-potties (and destroyed or handed over to the Iraqis countless more).  In a world where other countries have, at best, a handful of military bases outside their territory, it has countless hundreds.  In 2011 alone, it managed to classify 92,064,862 of the documents it generated, giving secrecy a new order of magnitude.  And that’s just to dip a toe in the ocean of a national security state that dwarfs the one which fought the Cold War against an actual imperial superpower.

Again, if you were to step outside the world of NSS dogma and the arguments that go with it, such numbers -- and they are legion -- would surely represent one of the worst investments in modern memory.  If a system of this sort weren’t faith-based, and if that faith weren’t widespread and deeply accepted (even if now possibly on the wane), people would automatically look at such numbers and the results they deliver and ask why, for all its promises of safety and security, the NSS so regularly fails to deliver.  And why the response to failure can always be encapsulated in one word: more.

After all, if the twenty-first century has taught us anything, it’s that the most expensive and over-equipped military on the planet can’t win a war.  Its two multi-trillion-dollar attempts since 9/11, in Iraq and Afghanistan, both against lightly armed minority insurgencies, proved disasters. (In Iraq, however, despite an ignominious U.S. pullout and the chaos that has followed in the region, the NSS and its supporters have continued to promote the idea that General David Petraeus’s “surge” was indeed some kind of historic last-minute “victory.”)

After 12 long years in Afghanistan and an Obama era surge in that country, the latest grim National Intelligence Estimate from the U.S. intelligence community suggests that no matter what Washington now does, the likelihood is that things there will only go from bad enough to far worse.  Years of a drone campaign against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has strengthened that organization; an air intervention in Libya led to chaos, a dead ambassador, and a growing al-Qaeda movement in northern Africa -- and so it repetitively goes.

Similarly, intelligence officials brag of terrorist plots -- 54 of them! -- that have been broken up thanks in whole or in part to the National Security Agency’s metadata sweeps of U.S. phone calls; it also claims that, given the need of secrecy, only four of them can be made public.  (The claims of success on even those four, when examined by journalists, have proved less than impressive.)  Meanwhile, the presidential task force charged with reviewing the NSA revelations, which had access to a far wider range of insider information, came to an even more startling conclusion: not one instance could be found in which that metadata the NSA was storing in bulk had thwarted a terrorist plot. “Our review,” the panel wrote, “suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks.” (And keep in mind that, based on what we do know about such terror plots, a surprising number of them were planned or sparked or made possible by FBI-inspired plants.)

In fact, claims of success against such plots couldn’t be more faith-based, relying as they generally do on the word of intelligence officials who have proven themselves untrustworthy or on the impossible-to-prove-or-disprove claim that if such a system didn’t exist, far worse would have happened.  That version of a success story is well summarized in the claim that “we didn’t have another 9/11.”

In other words, in bang-for-the-buck practical terms, Washington’s national security state should be viewed as a remarkable failure.  And yet, in faith-based terms, it couldn’t be a greater success.  Its false gods are largely accepted by acclamation and regularly worshiped in Washington and beyond.  As the funding continues to pour in, the NSS has transformed itself into something like a shadow government in that city, while precluding from all serious discussion the possibility of its own future dismantlement or of what could replace it.  It has made other options ephemeral and more immediate dangers than terrorism to the health and wellbeing of Americans seem, at best, secondary.  It has pumped fear into the American soul.  It is a religion of state power.

No Martian could mistake it for anything else.

Tom Engelhardt, a co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars -- The Untold Story.

Copyright 2014 Tom Engelhardt

Pepe Escobar analyzes Obama's motives RE the Syrian situation

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OpEdNews Op Eds 9/5/2013 at 23:49:40
G20 hijacked by scan/drone/bomb Obama Doctrine
By Pepe Escobar (about the author)     Permalink

opednews.com

Source: RT

Children play at a damaged street in Deir al-Zor August 30, 2013. Picture taken August 30, 2013. (Reuters/Khalil Ashawi) 

The G20 summit in St. Petersburg was supposed to be a serious discussion about the extreme turmoil affecting the global economy -- especially in the West. Instead, the only growth and job creation in sight will be for the US military- industrial complex.

Another beneficiary will be assorted mercenaries plying their trade in the Levant. 

The original Russian agenda is a road map towards stimulating "economic growth and job creation."

Confronted with a horrendous economic scenario -- with 90 percent of new jobs in the US qualifying as temporary, low wage and with no benefits -- the "wag the dog" response of the Obama administration is to start a new war in Syria to the benefit of, who else, Israel and the House of Saud (who will be picking up the tab). 

Talk about the Obama Doctrine reaching new heights.

We make our own reality  

For a while, the world was fooled by the notion that the Obama doctrine -- extricating the US from George "Dubya" Bush's disastrous wars -- would direct the superpower towards a modus vivendi with a multipolar world. That was a myth. 

Add to it another myth; the "pivoting to Asia" -- significantly announced by Obama at the Pentagon -- selling the notion that from now on Washington would focus on containing its rival for real, Beijing. 

Yet most of the "pivoting" so far has been pure hype -- as Beijing quickly noticed. And the Middle East never left the equation -- as the Obama administration kept performing cataclysmic geopolitical somersaults to finesse its "doctrine."

And what a mess of a doctrine this is. Obama has given his blessing to every momentary "winner" in Egypt -- from the sinister SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the Sisi military dictatorship.

G8 leaders (L-R) Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, France's President Francois Hollande, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta stand on the podium for the family photograph on the second day of the G8 summit at the Lough Erne resort near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland on June 18, 2013. (AFP Photo/Ben Stansall)

It has "led from behind" in Libya, when in fact the bombing of Libya was initiated by AFRICOM and then transferred to NATO (that is, the African and European arms of the Pentagon). 

It reconfigured the Global War on Terror (GWOT) into a newspeak-laden "Overseas Contingency Operations' (OCO), in fact a "kinetic" shadow war crammed with drones and death squads. 

It weaponized hardcore Islamists and even Al-Qaeda offshoots in one country while supporting military goons in another; it solemnly brushed aside real pro-democracy protests (as in Bahrain); and in Syria, after being defied for over two-and-a-half years on the "Assad must go" red line, it's about to resort to default mode; good ol' democracy bombed from above.

I have qualified this mess as the indispensable (bombing) nation syndrome -- the benign hymn of the last resort that every "idealistic" US President is required, sooner or later, to sing. 

In Obama's case, the hymn comes with the requisite Gotterdammerung overtones. We're talking about the fragile ego of a pampered teenager blown to smithereens because, recklessly, he drew a "red line"  without thinking about the serious consequences; and now, afflicted by hubris and terrified of losing face, he's on a path to deliver some heavy metal.

The narrative is not exactly uplifting; our tormented "hero," weasel-style, is trying to extricate himself from the responsibility, stating that "US credibility" is on the line, and not his own. He seems not to have noticed that US "credibility" -- not to mention US Tomahawk diplomacy -- is already shattered all across the developing world (European poodles, though, bravely resist). 

Whatever I say is legal, goes 

Before the "red line" fiasco, our Wagnerian lost soul would have profited from the G20 to once more lobby President Putin to extradite a real hero, Edward Snowden. Now he will be lobbying for his puny Tomahawk diplomacy. French President Francois Hollande, self-styled new American attack poodle, is already yapping. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may join him. Forget about discussing that pesky global economy.

Yet the majority of the G20 member-nations, from spied-upon Brazil and Mexico to Indonesia and Argentina, not to mention China, find this whole business utterly disgusting. They are very much aware that according to the UN Charter, article 2(4) makes it ILLEGAL for any country to use force or threaten to use force against another country; and article 2(7) makes an intervention in an internal or domestic dispute in another country also ILLEGAL.

The G20 might at least be a platform to discuss secret, serious diplomacy involving the US, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia to organize a diplomatic way out, leading to free and fair elections in Syria in 2014. Wait; this process already exists. It's the Geneva II conference, which has been postponed month after month because the Syrian (armed) opposition refuses to discuss anything.

AFP Photo/Kirill Kudryavtsev

The Obama Doctrine has bombed not only the current G20 but in fact any possibility of a diplomatic solution for the Syrian tragedy. For starters, Obama obviously never read Sun Tzu. Naive is an understatement; he telegraphed his move to the "enemy," as in, "Hang in there; my bombs are coming, maybe now, maybe next week." He said the whole thing would be "limited," a "slap on the wrist."

But now the "slap" is morphing into an iron glove, hijacked by the war lobby in Capitol Hill via the Orwellian rhetoric of "change the momentum in the battlefield" -- code for what this has always been about from the beginning: regime change.

Bombing one of the oldest cities in the world during a perverse three-month window will do nothing but perpetuate the war (which is, essentially, the Obama administration agenda). The Pentagon never does "limited"  or "tailored" stuff. This is going to be a much deadlier version of NATO in Kosovo deployed as the Air Force of the Albanian/Kosovars -- then promoted from "terrorists" to "freedom fighters" (just like foreign mercenaries in Syria); NATO wouldn't be foolish to have Western Europeans as "boots on the ground."

The spin in Brussels is that German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- who needs to face an election in two weeks -- supported by Camembert attack dog Hollande, has been posing as the middle-woman between Putin and Obama, trying to delay the Tomahawks. That's the rationale behind the latest BND -- German intelligence -- report, which contains "evidence" of a dodgy phone call involving a Hezbollah higher-up and the Iranian embassy (presumably in Beirut, though it's not specified). As if Hezbollah would discuss sensitive information on non-encrypted systems. Putin obviously won't be convinced by this new "evidence" to drop his support for Assad.

And even while this charade goes on, Moscow has been cleverly spreading its trade and commercial wings over an economically- and politically-ravaged Europe. Russia is no less than filling a US vacuum in Europe -- as much as China filled a US vacuum in Africa before the Pentagon counterpunched with AFRICOM. 

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)

Keep your eye on Pipelineistan 

By now the different, sometimes converging, agendas of all those who want war on Syria are crystal clear. Essentially, it's "the road to Damascus ends up in Tehran."

The War Party in Washington, Israel and the House of Saud all know that new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's success depends on easing the sanctions and revitalizing the Iranian economy. Tomahawks falling over Syria will virtually obliterate his push for a civilized dialogue between Iran and the US; the ultra-conservatives in Tehran will inevitably regain the upper hand.

So the Obama doctrine, on purpose, is also about bombing any possibility of meaningful dialogue with Tehran. The proof is that Obama eagerly listens to rabid Israeli-firsters such as Dennis Ross, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank. Ross argues that bombing will reinforce the US's "credibility" -- as in threatening to go medieval further on down the road to prevent Iran from acquiring those evil, non-existent nuclear weapons.

And then, of course, there's Pipelineistan -- the elephant in the Syria frenzy room. There's a lot of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean near the Syrian and Lebanese shorelines -- arguably 90 percent more than in Israel. So Syria is a great prize in itself -- on the road to become a natural gas competitor to Qatar.

Add to it the possibility of completion -- post-war -- of the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline. Privileged customers: Western Europe. Soon Qatar was being blocked on two fronts; by the House of Saud (who vetoed a pipeline traversing Saudi Arabia) and by the pipeline traversing Syria.

Thus the alliance with the US (and a privileged partnership with Exxon-Mobil), dependent on destroying any moves towards an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, to the benefit of a Qatar-Syria-Turkey pipeline feeding European natural gas customers. For the US, there's the extra incentive that such a pipeline would dent Gazprom's hold over the European gas market.

None of that, of course, will be discussed at the G20; the Obama doctrine won't allow it. Quite predictable, when international relations are prey to a hubristic superpower that still answers geopolitical challenges with gunboat diplomacy.

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Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, "The Roving Eye," is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News, the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.  He argues that the world has become fragmented into "stans" -- we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled "Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War".
 
His latest book is "Obama Does Globalistan."