Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATE II: ‘Absolute Invulnerability for America Means Absolute Vulnerability For Others’

Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Middle East, Propaganda, Republicans, Russia, Terrorism

Truth is truth no matter who propounds it (and why, pray tell, am I forced to repeat this no-brainer year-in and year-out?). The next statement is immutably true—even profound—although Americans will first look at the man who uttered it, and will denounce his wise words, given that he is not a member of the DC duopoly and the comitatus that props these Demopublicans up (i.e., the “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”).

Via Eurasia Review:

“’The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ensuring their absolute invulnerability – a thing, I would point out, that is utopian and achievable neither from a technological nor a geopolitical standpoint.
And herein lies the problem. Absolute invulnerability for one means absolute vulnerability for all the others. It is impossible to agree with this perspective.’
Addressing the unrest in the Arab world, Putin said Russia would not permit a ‘Libyan scenario’ to take place in Syria, where he said Moscow wanted to see an immediate halt in violence and a national dialogue to resolve the crisis.
He defended the decision by Russia and China to veto a resolution earlier this month pushed by Washington and its European and Arab allies that Moscow said would have opened the door to foreign military intervention in Syria.
Russia in particular faced blistering criticism that ‘bordered on hysterical’ from Western countries for its decision, Putin said, adding that Moscow strongly hoped the United States and others would not resort to force in Syria without UN approval.
Referring more widely to the Arab Spring, Putin said that efforts backed by the United States and the West to bring about ‘democracy with the help of violent methods’ were unpredictable and often led to precisely the opposite result.

UPDATE I (Feb. 28): Finally, China stands up to the ludicrous Hildebeest:

“The United States’ motive in parading as a ‘protector’ of the Arab peoples is not difficult to imagine,” it said in a commentary. “The problem is, what moral basis does it have for this patronising and egotistical super-arrogance and self-confidence?”
“Even now, violence continues unabated in Iraq and ordinary people enjoy no security. This alone is enough for us to draw a huge question mark over the sincerity and efficacy of US policy,” it added.

UPDATE II (March 4): “Putin [has] said the main problem is that the United States wants ‘to acquire complete invulnerability’ through missile defense. He also mentioned Washington’s refusal to provide written guarantees that the system will never be aimed at Russian territory.” [RT]

The Terrible Troika’s Advisers

Bush, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, War

The empire is bankrupt and in the throes of death. Its operatives are writhing with it, hanging onto the last shreds of the gory glory that came with directing American Manifest Destiny abroad. Unstable systems and people are most dangerous before dissolution and collapse.

This is why the advisers behind at least one of the presidential wannabees should be of interest.

But first, if you missed the primitive, atavistic utterances made by the terrible troika in Arizona with respect to Syria and Iran, here they are, excerpted in this Guardian post titled, “prolific proliferators of confusion.”

Except that there is nothing confused about the blood that’ll flow if one of these losers ascends to the executive throne. The Romney-Santorum-Gingrich bellicosity rivals Bush’s. The absence of any learning curve extends, seemingly, to their receptive audience, which applauded their every promise of action abroad.

Any criticism The Terrible Troika levies at Obama is for “showing weakness by not leading the allied air campaign in Libya, where the U.K and France played prominent roles, and not being tough enough on Iran to stop its nuclear-weapons efforts.”

More wars is what we’ll net with the three crappy candidates.

Romney’s Team sports these neoconservative heavy hitters:

Cofer Black, a former head of Central Intelligence Agency’s counterterrorism center and executive of the security firm Blackwater, now Xe Services; Meghan O’Sullivan, a Bloomberg View columnist and former White House official who oversaw Iraq and Afghanistan policy; Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a former counselor at Rice’s State Department; Dov Zakheim, the former Pentagon comptroller; and John Lehman, Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary.

And “Robert Joseph, a White House National Security Council aide during Bush’s first term and later a State Department official.”

UPDATE II: The ‘Regime Change’ Alliance (Al-Qaida’s On-Board!)

Democracy, Islam, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Russia, War

“It’s clear enough that the Sunni alliance led by Saudia Arabia and Qatar has ensured that the insurgency inside Syria will countenance no ceasefire offers; and that the propaganda machine … will continue a non-stop flow of mendacious bulletins eagerly seized upon by the western press,” writes ALEXANDER COCKBURN, at Counterpunch.

In “Murder on her Mind,” I described our foreign policy as an “‘angels and demons’ Disney production, starring the prototypical evil dictator who was killing his noble people,” until, in the case of Libya, “three amazon warriors—high on estrogen-driven paternalism—rode to the rescue.” The three Gorgon sisters (Medusa’s posse) included Samantha Power (special assistant to the president and member of his National Security Council), UN Ambassador Susan Rice, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

AISLING BYRNE, also of Couterpunch, sees a similar pattern play out in Syria. “Arguably, the most important component in this struggle for the ‘strategic prize’, he writes, “has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a ‘killing machine’ led by the ‘monster’ Assad,” except that where BYRNE sees a plan, I see only hubris and the heights of stupidity.

Iraq, Libya and, now Syria, all were relatively secular and stable compared to where they are headed with the aid of NATO, the US and the Arab League (and their propaganda arm, Al Jazeera). Just imagine, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are now on the same side–and whooping it up–for the Arab League and Al Jazeera!

MORE from AISLING BYRNE:

“Whereas in Libya, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) claimed it had “no confirmed reports of civilian casualties” because, as the New York Times wrote recently, “the alliance had created its own definition for ‘confirmed’: only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed”. “But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations,” the Times wrote, “its casualty tally by definition could not budge – from zero”.In Syria, we see the exact opposite: the majority of Western mainstream media outlets, along with the media of the US’s allies in the region, particularly al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV channels, are effectively collaborating with the “regime change” narrative and agenda with a near-complete lack of questioning or investigation of statistics and information put out by organizations and media outlets that are either funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance – the very same countries instigating the regime change project in the first place.
Claims of “massacres”, “campaigns of rape targeting women and girls in predominantly Sunni towns” ”torture” and even “child-rape” are reported by the international press based largely on two sources – the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCCs) – with minimal additional checking or verification.
Hiding behind the rubric – “we are not able to verify these statistics” – the lack of integrity in reporting by the Western mainstream media has been starkly apparent since the onset of events in Syria. A decade after the Iraq war, it would seem that no lessons from 2003 – from the demonization of Saddam Hussein and his purported weapons of mass destruction – have been learnt.

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.
The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – “Which Path to Persia?” – continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.
A rereading of it, together with the more recent “Towards a Post-Assad Syria” (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the “Paths to Persia” report with the same key objective: regime change.
The authors of these reports include, among others, John Hannah and Martin Indyk, both former senior neo-conservative officials from the George W Bush/Dick Cheney administration, and both advocates for regime change in Syria. Not for the first time are we seeing a close alliance between US/British neo-cons with Islamists (including, reports show, some with links to al-Qaeda) working together to bring about regime change in an “enemy” state.

UPDATE I (Feb. 16): MBS (below): Start using your head, or critical faculties. Had you been reading this site with any consistency over the last decade, you’d know that both members of “The Big Government Party” adhere to the neo-liberal or neoconservative ideology. The Counterpunch folks have always been onto—and upfront about—that aspect of the American foreign policy, as have I. Start reading and researching, sir. Times are too dire for you to continue to maintain the delusions of the two-party bifurcation. Certainly on matters of foreign policy, the two parties practically merge.

UPDATE II (Feb. 17): “The US spy chief has told the Congress President Bashar Al-Assad is fighting against Al-Qaeda of Iraq. James Clapper is the first top US official to acknowledge US might indirectly support insurgents. … He added that Syrian opposition groups, fighting against the existing regime of President al-Assad may have been infiltrated by Al-Qaida. ‘However likely without their knowledge,’ he said.” (RT)

Didn’t this happen in Libya, just the other day? Of course not. America would never be so stupid as to repeat mistakes.

In the face of such unadulterated idiocy, conspiracy becomes a viable explanation.

The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt

Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism

The following is excerpted from my latest column, “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt.”:

“The Egyptian Justice Ministry, under the authority of the military council, has detained and indicted 19 American democracy activists. To listen to the malfunctioning media stateside, however, the Egyptians are being petty, picking a fight with their American benefactors for “operating in Egypt without a license.”

Or, if you want ‘expert’ opinion, courtesy of Politico.com, the Egyptian plan to prosecute these ‘Americans and two dozen others’ ‘is more over the future of U.S. aid to Egypt and who controls it.’

Among the Americans detained in Egypt is Sam LaHood—son of Ray LaHood, the Obama administration’s secretary of transportation and a former Republican congressman from Illinois.

Try as it did to obfuscate Egypt’s allegations against LaHood, the New York Times was forced to mention the military-led government’s suspicion that LaHood’s organization had been funneling funds through Washington ‘to stir unrest in the streets’ of Cairo. The Gray Lady nevertheless attributed this preposterous figment of the Arab imagination to an ‘escalating drumbeat of anti-American statements’ in Egypt.

LaHood fell under suspicion in his capacity as head of the International Republican Institute (IRI). And, wouldn’t you know it, he was working alongside the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Freedom House—described by the Times as ‘a Washington-based group that promotes democracy and open elections.’ Also arraigned were the director of the NDI and one ‘Patrick Butler, vice president of programs at the DC-based International Center for Journalists.’

The IRI and the NDI are excrescences of the Republican and Democratic parties respectively.

Yes, on the foreign-policy front, not much distinguishes America’s duopoly. Republicans and Democrats work in tandem, Saul-Alinsky style, to bring about volcanic transformation in societies that desperately need stability. …

Dr. Ron Paul excepted, conjuring up new missions abroad is a project shared by the incumbent president and his Republican rivals.

To cap it all, the troublesome meddling is paid for by the unsuspecting, overburdened American taxpayer. …

The hypocrisy in all this is that we Americans do not live under the Athenian democracy seemingly promoted abroad. On the contrary, we the people labor under a highly evolved technocratic, militarized Managerial State, which is far more efficient in encroaching on its citizens than are the tin-pot dictators, who’ve been built-up into mega-monsters in infantile, Disneyfied minds.

… Were Americans to run riot, as the spirited Egyptians have done pursuant to the Port Said stampede, they’d probably come face-to-face with the Military. In contravention of The Posse Comitatus Act—and in furtherance of freedom, of course—the 2006 version of The National Defense Authorization Act allowed the Armed Forces to ‘restore public order’ during “major public emergencies.”

Read the complete column, “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt.”

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