Is the U.S.A. Off Its Rocker? Most Other Nations Believe So

Scene at an astronomy workshop for secondary school teachers in Georgetown, Guyana in August, 1978. After each session I was peppered with questions about the U.S. its foreign policies and educational system.

To anyone born after 1996 or so, it is unlikely the nation would appear to have "lost its marbles" (although older citizens should have seen warning signs from the Reepos' impeachment of Clinton for a sex act, and Bush's sleeping  (errrr, sitting, reading a child's book) on the job when the 9/11 terror attacks struck  - then using it as an excuse to pump up the defense -security enclave to monstrous proportions while also repealing habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act of 2006).

But though the evidence may be marginal in terms of a recent time perspective it is in so-called "neon lights" for those of us who've been paying attention to the national scene since the early 1960s.

We've watched the United States  slowly deteriorate in terms of its quality of life (from the time only a single parent had to work to support a family) to now when even two wage earners can't earn enough for decent housing, food and utilities.  We've seen the decaying infrastructure all around us as once grand bridges - as well as water and sewer systems built in the 1950s-60s - are now coming apart literally,  with no effort to replace or maintain them. In the intervening years we've also seen the nation- spellbound by rhetoric-  unravel its already flimsy safety net, fail to replace it even as organized labor has been diminished. This coinciding with the erosion education in most of our schools. Let' not even get into how our national legislature  has been brought to a standstill, and create the greatest degree of economic and social inequality in almost a century.

As I also learned when I worked for 20 years in Barbados, Americans who live abroad — more than six million  worldwide currently-  also face hard questions about our country. We're peppered  by people we live among, whether Europeans, Asians,  West Indians or Africans, who ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States.  Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.

Questions I've had to confront over two decades have included:

* Why do so few average Americans understand science?

* How can your people speak of the rule of law when your presidents break international laws to make war whenever they want?

* How can American voters cede the power to blow up the planet to one lone, ordinary man with a 'football'?

* How can Americans throw away the Geneva Conventions whenever it suits your fancy?

* Why do you Americans like guns so much?  Why do you kill each other at such a rate?

* How can so many average Americans still be so blind to the reality of climate change?

Often my attempts to address such questions, whether in college classes, cocktail parties (at the British High Commissioner's) or even following astronomy workshops at the Harry Bayley Observatory, were met with stark skepticism. For example, I'd say: 'Well - it just happens that America possesses the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and when a person becomes President he "inherits" the responsibility for when to key in the 'football' should the Russians, or whomever launch a first strike.'

At other times - such as the first question and last - I'd simply admit the  inferiority of the American educational system in most cases, to the British,  which system is still used in the West Indies. I'd also refer to the power of local school boards which were directly responsible for doing their own thing and omitting critical areas (say like evolution in biology, or large civil protests in American History) if they didn't like them.

But to many foreign citizens,  since the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, the most baffling and important question of all is: Why do you send your military all over the world to stir up more and more trouble for all of us?

Most West Indians, including Bajans, saw no point or purpose to our involvement in Vietnam, for example, and didn't see it as our business to intervene in an Asian civil land war. (They also thought the 'Domino theory' to be an excuse to butt in, like the "Bush doctrine") Others are still seething over the involvement of the U.S. in blowing up a Cuban airline (CU-455) r off Barbados' southwest coast on October 6, 1976. The bombing cost 73 lives and was the bloodiest terror episode in the Western Hemisphere before 2001.

The other event which riles people no end is the assassination of a "good and decent American president", John F. Kennedy, and most foreigners are well aware of the background of the CIA's involvement and don't buy that "one lone gunman" did it. They concur it was a conspiracy and plausibly forged by our security state in league with the military.  They also are convinced it paved the way for our future psychosis - since the truth has been kept concealed by our officialdom - who refused to even release key files 50 years after. See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/germans-tom-hanks-wasting-his-time-with.html

Did I resent the barrage of questions? Only some of them, and some of the time. But mainly it indicated the extent of curiosity about the U.S. but also that most Americans have no idea just how strange we seem to much of the world. As noted in the link above while we were in Germany two years ago, those German observers were far better informed about us than the average American is about them.

We already know this is partly because the “news” in the American corporate media is so parochial and so limited in its views both of how we act and how other countries think.  And while our people can afford to keep their noses in smartphones, Ipads and remain deaf, dumb and blind to external reality, foreign citizens can't be so cavalier. After all, who knows when we will threaten  to be at war with the next enemy of the moment? America’s belligerence alone, not to mention its financial acrobatics, compels the rest of the world to keep close track of us. 

Most unnerving to me, in Barbados visits-  especially last year and in 2010, and in two European visits (in Austria and Germany in 2013 and Switzerland last year) was the subtext of American "insanity" that lingers on the tongues of many. Our actions then, speak louder than our principles and words and often contradict them - indicating at least a cognitive dissonance, but to many being out of touch with reality.

For example, as my German friends Reinhardt and Elli put it:  How is it ordinary Americans in startling numbers have been persuaded to dislike “big government” and yet support (by their votes) representatives, bought and paid for by the rich?  How to explain that?

And as one Bajan friend who'd recently visited the U.S. put it: How can we allow our roads and bridges to collapse while we hail each new high in the DOW? Is that not insanity? Are not the roads, bridges needed for transport and the water mains needed for water conveyance more important than an artificial number that can change any given day? I have  had no answers for such questions. So I have had to admit (from their perceptions)  the country is indeed off its rocker.

Others have pointed out that we spend more on our health system than any other nation yet are ranked below Slovenia in assorted charts? Is that not insane? Well, uh yes, I guess so. I do point out that the ACA (Obamacare) has made a dent but not nearly enough and many states (like Texas) won't even accept a key part of it, Medicaid.

Some other writers along these same issues have opined that  "crazy may be too strong a word, too broad and vague to pin down the problem" but I am not so sure.  Yes, it is possible Americans are merely “ill-informed,” “misguided,” “misled,” or “asleep,” and could still recover sanity.  But I still keep returning to Einstein's fundamental definition of insanity: doing he same thing over and over, while expecting a different result.

And that description fits the U.S. to a tee: starting new wars and military adventures but expecting a different outcome each time - but it never comes; playing loose with the financial markets and almost bringing them down with swap derivatives- then five years later passing a law to make it possible again. Allowing infrastructure to crumble year after year while we chase the magic numbers in the DOW - and are no better off with our basic property. And opining how we have 'advanced on race' but always seem to revert to what we were, as in the 1950s, 1960s.

The country as a whole needs a head check and needs one soon. I am sure few Rwandans in 1990 saw the signs their nation would unravel and suffer a massive breakdown and genocide in 1994, just as I am sure few Germans saw it in 1933, just after Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor simply on the basis of getting a plurality of votes. 'Why worry about that guy?' they joked. 'What can he do?  (Big business, meanwhile, like Krupp - believed they could manipulate him to their own ends). They soon found out otherwise and that der Fuhrer had his way with them.

Hopefully, our people come to their collective senses - meaning sanity - before they make similar mistakes. Say like electing Ted Cruz and Chris Christie next year as Vice-President and President, respectively.

Of 'White Flags' and the Subjugation of Government to a Corporate Order

Question: When is a white flag (actually a whitened American flag) hung atop a bridge (Brooklyn Bridge) a message by fed up citizens against the corporate -military spy state, and not the act of "terrorists", terrorist wannabes, or artists trying to generate an "art form"- as some in the dopey media insist?  

Well, when the medium used actually can constitute the basis of the message, as Marshall McLuhan first pointed out in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.  In this case, the message of the bleached out American flag to the point of whiteness, or "surrender" - might well suggest to many of us that the flag raisers wanted us to think of the surrender and subjugation of our actual government to the corporate state and the marginalization of citizens (mostly to consumers) that has transpired since.

Chris Hedges again (Empire of Illusion, p. 166):

"Our government is being wrecked by corporations, which now get 40 percent of federal discretionary spending. More than 800,000 jobs once handled by federal employees have been outsourced to corporations, a move that has not only empowered our shadow corporate government but also helped destroy federal workforce unions."

Hmmmm.....shadow corporate government. But ....what if the 'shadow' becomes so powerful, say in controlling our representatives - either by lobby-campaign money or other  blandishments - that the citizen becomes "Weimar-ized" to use Hedges' term?  That is, useful only very briefly to put the bought out reps into office, after which the infusion of money trumps the votes and the corporate order reigns supreme. In this case the shadow government has de facto taken over the representative one, you know based on "consent of the governed" and it mutates into a nightmare or farce based on "consent of the corporate order".

Maybe, just maybe, that was the message the Brooklyn Bridge flag raisers were trying to send but most Americans, including officialdom,  are too dumb to get it. (Another aspect: the location - as one newser explained last night - is right amidst a bevy of local and federal gov't buildings.)

But we haven't gotten to the most toxic component of the corporate-security shadow matrix, which has extended its tentacles all over the planet.  True, it had existed prior to September 11th, 2001, but following that event it went far beyond any "war on terror". No, it merely exploited the 9/11 event and the pseudo-lingo "war on terror"  to give comprehensive doctrinal expression to an overbearing imperial policy. This came in an official document, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” issued in September 2002. In the world, it stated, only one economic and political system remained “viable”: the American one of liberal democracy and free enterprise.


But as I already noted (previous post) free enterprise has nothing to do with democracy.

As I quoted Chris Hedges (op. cit., p. 185):

Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy...is based not on personal gain, but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must often defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens, but this is not happening.

But see, because the corrupt corporate shadow government, i.e. the "SYSTEM"  e.g.
 http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/america-haters-uhhno-system-haters.html

sold us this bill of goods, we've been looking the other way while it's metastasized. Grown to the extent of a malignant cancer. Indeed, in its formalized "doctrine" it makes no bones about asserting that it reserves the right to "henceforth promote and defend this system by the unilateral use of force — preemptively, if necessary." 

REALLY? Neoliberal, corporate governance is that crucial?  Imposing slave labor and indentured servitude to the corporations is THAT important to the nation's security? Evidently it is!

The United States  by its "Bush Doctrine" reserved the entire field of military force to itself, restricting other nations to humbler pursuits- like keeping their cell phones and computers open to NSA snoops.. In the imperious  words of the  National Security Strategy:  “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. If the United States is displeased with a regime, it reserved the right to overthrow it — to carry out “regime change.”

“In the world we have entered,” Bush Junior said, “the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.”


Indeed it will if the nation is entrapped in a ruthless corporate order- and is particularly hostage to the military -industrial complex which needs ever more money from the taxpayers to feed its insatiable maw. From this distorted frame of reference,  Bush's insane doctrine makes sense. Plus the fact that the Neoliberal-Neocon security state is dedicated to removing citizen security - and what better way than to bleed the coffers of government dry, via tax cuts and military spending?

Nothing fixes concepts and arguments better than a graphic, shown above. This ought to make mince meat out of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' claim this morning that:  "disengaging from two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - is tricky - and may lead the world to perceive we are disengaging from the world".

Oh, I think not, sir!  I believe the world would instead exhale in a collective sigh of relief that a newly minted Empire (since 9./11) has finally removed its meddling paws from two places it had no business invading in the first place. But only used the pretext of "pre-emptive" war to try to establish Neoliberal democracies - which tactics we were already warned about in Amy Chua's 'World on Fire'.  As Chua observed,you have to be prepared to live with whatever the result of the democratic outcome - irrespective of how much you may despise it. And if a country's infrastructure won't support Neoliberal markets, well you better suck that up too!

I mean, seriously, does the U.S. REALLY need 702 military 'installations' in 63 foreign countries (it has 4,471 bases altogether), according to the Defense Department's  2012 budget statement? ( Figures that don't include bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.) We're talking about our military presence in nations like Germany, South Korea, and Japan. ALL of these represent redundant costs since the wars that incepted the bases are now more than a half century over! While the total cost of these bases is kept secret, the best analysis I've seen estimates their ten-year cost at approximately $1 trillion. (Some like hedges and Seymour Mehlman - quoted in his book -  put that cost closer to $3 trillion)

Chris Hedges again (p. 165):

"The defense industry is a virus. It destroys healthy economies. We produce sophisticated fighter jets while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule and our automotive industry goes bankrupt. We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and starve renewable energy technologies to fight global warming....

The massive military spending, aided by a $3 trillion war, has a social cost. Our bridges and levees collapse. Our schools decay, our real manufacturing is done overseas, and our social safety net is taken away. And we are bombarded by the militarized language of power and strength.."

As for Mehlman, as Hedges notes (ibid.) he actually coined the term 'permanent war economy' to describe the American economy.  As he notes, "since the Second World War the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, present and current military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government".

The problem is that it's undermining and destroying the nation, leading us to a dangerous precipice. A large part of this is the funneling of desperately needed funds to military programs, and the other part is the mammoth corporate welfare defense contracts afford. As Hedges observes:

"Defense systems are usually sold before they are produced and military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Huge profits are guaranteed."

The Pentagon, Mehlman notes, isn't restricted by the economic rules of producing goods, selling them for a profit, then using the profit for further investment and production. No, it can actually make profits off WASTE.  This may also be why, as former defense spending analyst Chuck Spinney noted in 2002, nearly $1.1 TRILLION still cannot be accounted for by the Pentagon. Consider just the bogus F-35 fighter which has had numerous cost overruns and still exhibits defects and problems that may never be solved. Yet, 2,335 of these white elephants have been ordered at a cost of a third of a billion each (cost still going up). WHY?

Because we think we have a blank check - mainly from the likes of China and other creditor nations - and that gives us license to go on doing this forever. But the jig will soon be up and most of the sad and sorry lot who pass for "citizens" today won't even see it coming.

Hedges again (pp. 187-88):

"The bullet to our head, inevitable if we do not radically alter course, will be sudden. We have been borrowing at the rate of $2 billion a day over the last ten years and at some point it has to stop. The moment China, the oil-rich states and other international investors stop buying U.S> Treasury bonds, the dollar will become junk. We will become Weimar Germany.

A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans."

The proverbial "pitchforks" will then come home to roost.

At that stage, a single raised,  bleached-out American flag over the Brooklyn Bridge will be the least of our security worries.  For make no mistake that an insane policy of unchallengeable military domination over the earth,  wrought at enormous expense to a nation's citizens, and accompanied by a unilateral right to overthrow other governments by military force, is an imperial, Augustan policy destined to end badly. A policy redolent of ancient Rome - and we know what happened to Rome by way of its military overstretch.

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, according to George Santayana. But is anyone paying attention?

Obama: "Russia is a Regional Power" - And Other Moronic Remarks

No, I am emphatically not an "Obamabot" as would be obvious if thinking people read my posts critical of him.  I voted for him twice given the horrific alternatives, but was never on his "band wagon" in the sense of turning a blind eye to his flaws and misguided policies, i.e. drone killings, "debt commission", Chained CPI, supporting NSA mass spying, anti-whistleblower stance etc. Now, in hindsight, I still congratulate him when I believe he's made a policy choice, speech or decision that's wise and justified, and I criticize him when I believe he's veering off course, doing something ill-advised or stupid (perhaps because of bad advice).

In the latter category, Obama delivered a talk at a Nuclear Security summit in the Netherlands yesterday that was remarkable for its abysmal failure to grasp basic geopolitics, his dismissal of Russia as any kind of power on the global stage, and his failure (or unwillingness) to grasp the Ukraine crisis at any more than a Neoliberal media level.

Of course, the superficial content of his spiel could well also reflect  Obama’s “chameleon-like nature” in taking on the hues of the venue he addresses, first pointed out by Salon.com writer David Bromwich in his recent piece, ‘Obama’s Disappearing Act – What Happened to the President He Wanted To Be?’   As Bromwich observed:

 

"More than most people, Obama has been a creature of his successive environments. He talked like Hyde Park when in Hyde Park. He talks like Citigroup when at the table with Citigroup. And in either milieu, he likes the company well enough and enjoys blending in. "

 

So, it may well be that Obama’s ridiculous rhetoric could be attributed to this trait, we don’t know. I merely highlight here some of the examples of all the wrong things he said yesterday. Things which others might seriously misinterpret or read more into than warranted.

Among the absurd rhetoric we heard was that “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.”

 

In fact, given how Putin has immensely assisted Obama in both Iran and Syria,  this is a putdown that boggles the mind. Putin and Russia’s influence, in finding alternative approaches to both the Iranian nuclear program, and the events in Syria – in July- enabled Obama to ease out of what would surely have been two disastrous new conflicts he (and the country) didn’t need.  If Russia is  merely a “regional power” this would never have been feasible nor would Obama have been so dependent on Putin for this assistance - which he has yet to acknowledge in any public speech (one reason why Robert Parry has shown he's been at the mercy of the neocons - see e.g.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54745/how-looking-forward-tripped-up-Obama

The U.S. political elites,  as ensconced in the Neoliberal political class and media,  DO like to believe this stupid meme,because it resonates with their long time (20 year) narrative of a “defeated” superpower which now can barely take care of itself. The Neolibs and their neocon allies  and media fifth columnists may like to believe this horse shit, but no critically thinking citizen should.

They ought to understand instead that any Russian "weakness" was incurred by its willingness to partake of the Neolib New World Order itself – which at the time  (1991) was proffered to Mikhail Gorbachev in return for the U.S. not expanding NATO.  That  acceptance caused much pain, as described in Naomi Klein’s book, ‘The Shock Doctrine:  The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007), since it reduced or obliterated  Russian citizens’ long time support systems while allowing entry of a parasitical form of capitalism.

 

Despite that, Russia has found a way, predicated on its vast resources and emerging energy sector to become the 2^nd largest producer of gas and oil next to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, much of Europe depends upon it – so the EU nations dare not become too enamored of their sanctions, lest the energy plug be pulled.  In addition, lest Obama forget, Russia still retains more than 3,000 nuclear warheads on as many ICBMs which surely merits equal superpower status – given it’s the only nation with the ability to reduce the U.S. to ashes, as one of its ministers recently put it.  This capability alone demands no one in a leadership role in the U.S. dismiss Russia, or cast it as only a "regional power". Any nation that has the nuclear capacity to incinerate the globe is no "regional power".


This is not something to take lightly or write off to appease an audience which stock and trade is terrorism. Nor is it an excuse to make a glib comment such as Obama also rendered yesterday: i.e.  that “Russia is not the number one US national security threat”  and he is "more concerned about the possibility of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan" (by terrorists).  If he really believes that is his number one concern, right now, he ought to consider resigning from the Presidency.  Because in his position, I’d damned well be more worried about the Ukraine situation overheating to the point nukes are used in a limited conflict and then escalates to all out nuclear war.

 

In respect of this overheating Obama didn’t help matters with two other stupid remarks he made:

 

“We (the US) have considerable influence on our neighbors. We generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them,"

 

Hmmmmm….. “we generally don’t need to invade them” but we WILL if we find a national security smokescreen to invoke! (As opposed to Russia's legitimate right to occupy the Crimea according to an existing treaty- see below-  and, in its own sphere of influence,).  In other words, Obama is saying the U.S. can invade if and when it chooses to, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has in more than 20 nations since the end of World War II – based on the ‘Monroe doctrine” or whatever specious basis it can find (NSC-68), but no other nation has a right to protect or exercise its self –interest.

Obama then compounded this foolishness by adding that: the United States "would use its military to come to the defense of any NATO country that is threatened " adding "We will act in their defense against any threats. That’s what NATO is all about.”
 

Actually, no – it isn’t what NATO is "all about". NATO is a Cold War relic, now  exploited by the U.S. to expand its sphere of influence, in this case  against Russia’s – since the end of the Soviet Union. (I believe part of it is also to act like a bully and rub Russia's 'nose' in the dirt. "Nya, nya - see what we can do and you can't stop us!") Indeed one can argue that NATO is a war mongering entity as noted herein:

NATO's Warmongers:  http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/brian-cloughley/54851/the-belligerent-alliance-natos-warmongers
 

I hate to be the one to have to remind Obama that this is a promise he’s not likely to keep, say if Russia feels threatened by a belligerent NATO puppet, e.g. Lithuania or Poland,  and strikes against it. The reason is that the Russians have retained a “limited use" nuclear doctrine by which they reserve the right to employ nukes if they feel overwhelmed by conventional outside forces, say NATO’s, see e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-wellen/54873/russia-still-addresses-conventional-weapons-gap-with-u-s-via-nukes

As noted therein:

"On March 13, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ran a piece by Nikolai Sokov with the paradoxical title Why Russia calls a limited nuclear strike “de-escalation.” He writes, “In 1999, at a time when renewed war in Chechnya seemed imminent, Moscow watched with great concern as NATO waged a high-precision military campaign in Yugoslavia.” It became concerned both that “the United States would interfere within its borders” and that the “conventional capabilities that the United States and its allies demonstrated seemed far beyond Russia’s own capacities.”

In response, Russia

… issued a new military doctrine whose main innovation was the concept of “de-escalation”—the idea that, if Russia were faced with a large-scale conventional attack that exceeded its capacity for defense, it might respond with a limited nuclear strike.

In the unnerving 1983 film ‘Threads’ such a scenario played out in a future Iran, after the U.S. and NATO allies bombed a nuclear plant at Isfahan. The Russians used tactical nukes to even the score and halt advancing NATO forces, the U.S. did likewise, and within days the exchange could no longer be controlled and had escalated into a full scale nuclear war. Is this what Obama really wants? Then he better be careful what promises he makes and how he wields his rhetoric.

The most utterly arrogant comment made, however, was that:  “Russia of course has the legal right to have troops in its own country” – as if this is a big deal or carries some profound, hitherto unknown concept.

Of course they can have troops in their own country!  So can the U.S.!  SO what? The issue isn’t having troops in one’s own country, but the willingness to deploy them where and when a nation feels its sphere of influence threatened. This is why Russia has deployed troops (more than 20,000 in Crimea, which are LEGAL btw, according to a treaty – see:

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-

 

And the U.S. has no business challenging that or referring to it as "invasion" or "aggression" etc.. True, CIA director Brennan (the same guy who spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee - that had Dianne Feinstein in an uproar),  "didn't believe this justified Russia's moves", but I revert back to what Col. Wilkerson (Ret.) noted 3 weeks ago on MSNBC - that given the U.S. neocons conducted a putsch, a coup - Russia  WAS justified and Wilkerson would have done it too if in Putin's place as he himself noted. 

The U.S. meanwhile, has deployed tens of thousands of troops wherever it damned well pleases and in flagrant disregard of any international norms or laws. It instead creates its own "laws" or "doctrines" (i.e. "Bush doctrine") to justify incursion and interference  wherever it sees some vague “threat” that has no direct bearing whatever on national security – such as the illegal Iraq invasion

Don’t bother to tell the Russians where and how their troop deployments are “legal” or allowed if you don’t adhere to the same standards or to international courts of law or previously established international legal norms and principles such as Nuremberg Principle VI. (Condemning "crimes against Peace", i.e. "Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" as in the case of the Iraq War.)

I do believe, assuming Obama wasn’t putting on his “chameleon act” for the nuclear security audience in The Hague, that he needs to study my post on a game theory perspective to the Ukraine crisis. He will get more out of it than listening to Victoria Nuland or Robert Kagan!

-----

On that note, let me applaud Obama for his forceful words yesterday on the need to pull back NSA bulk phone data collection. But I would like to see scaling back the NSA's dragnet of the internet via its PRISM and MUSCULAR programs too. And until something is actually done, and there is pull back, it remains only  interesting rhetoric.

See also:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/55005/media-whoop-up-stampede-to-cold-war-hot-war-whatever

Geopolitical Chess - And What Obama and the Neocons Still Don't Get

As the Ukraine crisis continues to escalate, see e.g.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/07/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA1Q1E820140307

There is little indication that either the U.S. neocons who want to  'checkmate Russia( via NATO expansion to its doorstep)', or Obama - one of their seeming 'Bishops' -  gets it. As the preceding Reuters news link shows, Vladimir Putin rebuffed Obama's stern warnings,  and again called to attention what he sees as Russia's interests- specifically in the Crimea. Also, as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson already noted ('All In' four nights ago) this is an expected response and only a fool or liar wouldn't grasp it.  The fact is the Russians have a strategic interest in the Crimea - given their long term Black Sea naval base- and they're not about to put it at risk because of the West's hectoring.

I am not going to belabor again why Obama, the U.S. and the Neoliberal West are all wrong on this. People can read or re-read the previous blog posts examining the deep politics of the issue - including over a dozen links explaining why Russia is correct in defending her interests - just like the U.S. would be if there was an incursion of Russian interests at her doorstep - say constructing a massive Russian  naval base near Havana. The U.S. has always invoked the specious "Monroe Doctrine"  to defend interests in the hemisphere (even going beyond sometimes, as in overthrowing elected democratic governments, i.e. of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1972), hence it's passing foolish to insist Russia has no similar mandates in its hemisphere- or at least at its borders!

You cannot have a unipolar, single empire world - I don't care how much the neocons  and their Neoliberal allies want it!

This lack of insight is partly why the U.S. and Neoliberal West (the 'New World Order') are losing at this game of geopolitical chess. They have been so spoiled and rendered soft by 13 years of fighting bogus 'wars' against a basically  phony enemy in al Qaeda and the "terrorists" (which they've stupidly elevated to another superpower)  and a series of occupations, that they've lived in a fool's paradise. Now, when confronted by a serious, formidable, real superpower - that doesn't use IEDs, but nuclear missiles, they don't know whether to shit or go blind. (Some neocons would argue Russia "isn't a real superpower" - brandishing their Amerikkan exceptionalist memes, but I say any nation that claims 3,000 ICBMs with nuclear warheads certainly is.)

Here is where the next move in geopolitical chess comes in - IF the U.S. and West are to save face and not made to look like impotent idiots - and it was delivered last night by Nina Khrushcheva on Chris Hayes' All In (much to the host's amazement).

First, some background. Very often in playing chess one finds that a limited option is available. Let's use the classic example of a 'fork' attack. In this case, the opponent's knight is 'forking' your queen and a pawn. The experienced chess player understands the queen is much too valuable to allow to be taken so moves her out of harm's way, allowing the pawn to be taken instead. By using this move, you preserve your main force and can still put up a good fight, but are not decimated.

In the case of the current crisis, and as Nina Khrushcheva pointed out to Hayes, Crimea is the 'pawn' and despite all the hair on fire screeching by Obama and the West about the planned referendum  - they must give it up because Putin won't.  It is the jewel of Russia and everyone who's studied Russian history knows that. (Evidently Obama doesn't, so needs to crack more books on it.)  Prof. Khrushcheva  made it clear President Putin doesn't want a full war, but he won't hesitate and there will be "a full blown conflict" if the West pushes its hand too hard.  Thus, as Prof. Khrushcheva put it, Kerry needs to stop his empty threats, so does Obama (including sending more warships to the region which will only inflame tensions) and give up the Crimea as a pawn.

This will be hard for U.S. and Neoliberal imperialists, given that with their phony "world backing" they believe they have Russia and Putin by the proverbial balls, but it is the only practical move available. Putin doesn't want a war but he will deliver a conflict that will make the recent terror "wars'" look like croquet matches,  if the West pushes him on this ( as the CBS Early show news reported out of Moscow this morning.)

Give up the pawn, then move on. Don't worry about perceptions, or 'backing down' out of stupidly held arrogance or the document NSC -68 which foolishly stated (as the basis for the U.S. to go to war or overthrow governments) as described thusly by Morris Berman[1]:

"the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.

The bottom line is that whether this crisis continues escalating will largely depend on whether the U.S. gets its global supremacy meme under control, and has the humility to walk away - giving up the pawn. Let's also bear in mind that all Obama's recent protestations as to the upcoming scheduled referendum are misplaced,, given he said that needs to be decided by the "legitimate Ukraine government" in Kiev. BUT ....as pointed out by many other commentators (e.g. Robert Parry, Normon Solomon, Eric Margolis) as well as yours truly - this isn't so. That Kiev gov't under neocon puppet Arseniy Yatsenuk is illegitimate and seized power in a coup instigated by the Neocons, e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/54599/ukraine-we-all-get-the-tyranny-we-deserve
Sadly, the signs are that Obama is being manipulated again toward a bad decision. As the Guardian put it yesterday:

"The escalating crisis in Ukraine has set off reckless missile-rattling in this country. As Harvard’s Stephen Walt tweeted on March 2: “Public discourse on #Ukraine situation hitting new heights in hyperbole. (‘New Cold War, WW III,’ etc.) Rhetorical overkill not helpful.” He may have been thinking of neocon Charles Krauthammer, who in his Washington Post column called for the United States to ante up $15 billion for Ukraine and send a naval flotilla to the Black Sea.

The same paper headlined that the crisis “tests Obama’s focus on diplomacy over military force,” quoting Andrew Kuchins of the Center for Strategic and International Studies decrying President Obama’s “taking the stick option off the table.”

Let us hope Obama soon wakes up and removes that "stick" from the table for the good of the world. To do so he will need to find the same courage John Fitzgerald Kennedy did back in October, 1962  - to defy his Joint Chiefs-  who demanded he bomb and invade Cuba. His defiance and choice of a less belligerent option  left us an extant world as opposed to a pile of radioactive ash. A similar outcome to the current crisis may hinge on Obama mustering the same level of pluck and self-confidence.

This time, Obama will have to face down the assorted hives and warrens of neocons (e.g. the National Endowment for Democracy, The Center for Strategic and International Studies etc.)  besieging him to act in a "gutsy" but most unwise manner, to show Putin "who's boss". We hope he can summon the same spine as JFK did to resist the generals in 1962.

See:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/54677/vlad-the-bad-steals-a-march-on-the-west

Excerpt:

Disturbingly, US Republicans and the usual media propagandists are heaping blame on President Barack Obama for “losing Crimea,” as if any of them knows where it was before last week. John McCain and his sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham have been demanding that Obama “get tough.”
Sure. Let’s mine Russia’s ports or blockade its oil and gas exports. Nothing like a nuclear war to show how weak the Democrats are. Thank god McCain did not win the presidency. The dolts at Fox TV can’t tell the difference between caution and cowardice.

Also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/54637/outing-the-deep-state

and:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54643/the-we-hate-putin-groupthink


[1] Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.

Putin Correct to Warn About American Exceptionalism

I know it's "politically incorrect" (at least American-style) to applaud and assert a foreign leader is spot -on in his perceptions, but no matter what the blowhard punditocracy says, Putin nailed it in his NY Times op -ed  ('A Plea for Caution from Russia') today.  Among the things Putin wrote, with which no sane or rational person could disagree (especially after last night's NBC News segment showing radical jihadis staging in Turkey then moving into Syria with IEDs etc.):

"A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism."

After seeing the pro-Syrian opposition jihadis whipping a couple for marrying non-Muslims on the same NBC segment, I believe it! And the U.S. would be dumb as a sack of hammers to oust Assad by helping these "rebels" - when it will likely be a replay of their dopey ignorant move helping Osama and his rebels in the 1980s, to harass the Soviets who had occupied Afghanistan. Stay with the devil you know, in other words, instead of unleashing tens of thousands of devils you don't. As one of the jihadis interviewed on the NBC spot put it:

"We want the Americans and Assad forces to fight, then when Assad is weak we can move in!"

Really? Hope Obama is paying attention here!

Putin went on:

"It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa."

And:

"No one doubts there was poison gas used in Syria, but there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army but by opposition forces... to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists"

Well, where have we seen this before? In Afghanistan, in the 80s, as I already noted, siding with Osama bin Laden to harass and punish the Russians. And more recently, in Egypt, siding with the Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi.....well, how did that turn out?

Putin then hit the chord with American exceptionalism, a meme American Neoliberal Presidents have fed to their charges since the Reagan era - trying to take the minds of the hoi polloi off the vast and expanding economic inequality that's emerged as a direct result of their allowing and enabling the war state's meddling ....from Reagan in Nicaragua and Honduras, to Bush I in the Gulf (after encouraging Saddam's reckless expansion), to Clinton in Kosovo, to Bush II in Afghanistan and Iraq - when the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. But then Bush's oilmen had special deals with the Saudis, so couldn't go after them- hence allowing the bin Laden family to leave the country in the wake of the attacks.  Oh, and Obama now wanting to meddle in Syria if the Russians "aren't serious".

Putin wrote:

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional , whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy"

According to the corpora-media blow drieds this a.m.  the WH dismissed it as "posturing" but they shouldn't. Whether really posturing or not, the words contain more than the proverbial grain of truth - in fact, they contain a store house of truth.

One can debate about whether Putin was "posturing" or "hypocritical" in lecturing on democracy, but he was dead on in terms of sounding the dangers of American exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism refers to the virulent meme that Americans and the U.S. are somehow "special" in history and hence, are charged with acting "special" on the world stage. That ranges from valuing American lives much more than foreign ones - embodied in the U.S. refusal to sign on to Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions - which explains how military strikes and aggression can be carried out without being mindful of collateral damage, to indiscriminately messing in other nations' because the U.S.  feels it's a sole superpower's "right" to do so.

In regard to the devaluation of foreign lives one can look at travesties from meddling in Honduras and Guatemala - see e.g.  http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/  leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, as well as extended internal instability to the malignant  exceptionalist invasions sponsored by the Bushies in the name of the so-called "Bush doctrine".   These, when the historical savvy person examines them, little different from the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

The point is, the maniacal Bushie Neocons believed their own puffed up bullshit that this nation is "exceptional" and has the right to lord it over all others, by intervening and "policing" any time it chooses. No bigger pile of horse shit has ever been conceived as national policy and Americans would do well to reject it.

Does that mean the rational American rejects ALL wars? Of course not! There ARE just wars, just as there are unjust and ILLEGAL wars!  World War II was a just war because first, Americans were attacked by the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor, and second the Axis Powers and especially Japan and Nazi Germany, were bent on global domination. Not to have responded would have invited a nightmare world we can only imagine today.

Vietnam, by contrast, was an ILLEGAL war! The conflict was started on a pretext, i.e. the Gulf of Tonkin incident,  wherein the Turner Joy and Maddox were allegedly attacked without provocation in the summer of 1964. The claim of baby killer LBJ was that the attack(s) were initiated by the North Vietnamese.  But in 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese Naval vessels present during the incident of August 4.

The report stated regarding August 2:

“At 1505G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, the Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first”

and regarding August 4:

“It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2”


In other words, the U.S. "exceptionalist" aggressors used it as a pretext to demand the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and launch a war that killed nearly 58,000.

Here's advice for every real red -blooded American, as opposed to the paper patriots, including cook and bottle washers who pound their chests for having "served their country" but never saw more than a soup spoon and kettle: Don't trust anything any leader says if he uses the words "exceptional" as applied to you the citizen or the country as a whole, or  employs manipulative bafflegab throwaways like "freedom" and especially "defending our freedoms".

Oh, and if he asserts:  "Y'er either with us or against us!" Tell him to fuck himself!

See also:  http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/51589/the-presidents-speech-reveals-he-has-never-seen-war

Start a War With Iran? Conceivably the Worst Mistake in U.S. Policy History!

According to a recent extended TIME article, 'The Path To War' (March 11, p. 20) it is only a matter of time before the Obama administration launches an all out attack - and presumably - war, against Iran.  According to a senior official quoted (p. 25):

"One way or the other we are entering the final stages of this drama".

All I can say then, is that if wiser heads prevail, there can be NO war! Not unless this nation wishes to single-handedly send the entire global economic system down a real shit pile while adding nearly fifty million terrorists! Mainly currently normal, American-loving Iranians who will as quickly turn against us in the bat of an eye if we are foolish enough to strike their homeland, no matter what the excuse.

Is Obama really stupid enough to send the world economy back two decades over some tiff with Iran using their nuclear facilities? I cannot believe so! Is he so weak to stand up to the Military-Industrial complex? I hope to hell not! (Though I do hear disturbing news that a bill will soon arrive at his desk to protect the Pentagon from the sequester cuts and add the $46b to the domestic side. And he is unsure whether to veto them or not? Hello, Mr. Prez, you VETO them! This deal was made for both sides, domestic and miltary to feel the pain, and the one saving grace to the domestic cuts was knowing the Pentagon would also have its purse strings cut!)

Anyway, according to the TIME piece, the Federation of American Scientists estimates the cost of open war with Iran to be "$1 trillion to  $1.7 trillion". Pardon me, but with oil prices consequently going through the roof, and all the deaths, injuries from thousands of terror attacks incepted around the globe, plus the destroyed infrastructure, it will be more like double that. If the Russians get involved - since they have interests there- you can perhaps even double that $3.4 trillion.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said in a 2012 appearance:

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/04/robert-gates-war-on-iran-would-be-catastrophic-and-make-a-nuclear-iran-inevitable/

"Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability"


Adding:

"Such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert. Not only would Iran be likely to reconstitute its defunct nuclear weapons program, but Tehran might also respond by disrupting world oil traffic in the Persian Gulf and launching a wave of terrorism across the region." 

And:

" The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.”


So why the fuck do it! Macho-ism? To show who's the 'Boss' of the world? Because the Israeli warmonger Netanyahu insists on it? How about putting a muzzle on him and his war mongering ilk?  Because some dildo-brained  morons in the Pentagon want it? Stand up to them like JFK would! Tell them where to get off! Let them do a serious cost-benefit analysis, that is if anyone in D.C. has the I.Q. to pull it off!

Even leave out for the moment the report in an issue of The Economist ('Smart Concrete', March 3rd,  2012, p. 89) that recently developed U.S. "bunker buster", 30,000 lb. bombs may not be able to penetrate Iranian underground facilities, fortified as they are now with "ultra-high performance concrete" (UHPC) . It's still a terrible idea! 

In other words, attacking Iranian facilities using these Massive Ordinance Penetrators ("MOPS' ), which can break through 60 m of ordinary concrete, will not necessarily be a walk in the park. And if not for the U.S., it won't be for Israel either, unless they do something truly reckless like using tactical nukes - the basis for the horrific nuclear war flick, 'Threads', e.g.


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/03/anxious-to-start-war-with-iran-see-this.html

There is also a major fault in the logic that if Iran goes nuclear it'll set off a nuclear arms race in the region. We have examples that counter such reasoning. When North Korea went nuclear, neither Korea or Japan followed suit. And when Israel went nuclear, neither Egypt or Saudi Arabia followed suit. Iran wants a few nukes for a simple reason: self-protection from an arrant, aggressive invasion such as done under the "Bush doctrine" to Iraq in March, 2003!  We already showed we didn't respect national sovereignty by that "Shock and Awe" Nazi- style, Blitzkrieg invasion - which btw, violated Principle IV against pre-emptive war, under the Nuremberg laws. (First incepted with Nazi Germany's violations of international law) That Principle states:

"The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). "

In other words, one can argue that the Iranians are obtaining  insurance against pre-emptive strikes or war such as the U.S. has already wantonly demonstrated 10 years ago. They reason, I believe correctly, that once they have x nukes, they will be less likely to be bombed or invaded, just as the N. Koreans have reasoned. (Recall both were placed on idiot Bush's "Axis of Evil" list with Iraq back in 2002 - and they saw what transpired with Iraq)

Neither does the argument that any nukes "might fall into the hands" of terrorists make sense. After all Iran has endured, including massive sanctions (the worst being cut off from the international electronic banking SWIFT system) how or why would they be so cavalier in allowing their hard won attainments to be usurped by loonies? It is all scare tactics.


Finally, the (mainly) Israeli argument that Iranians are "prepared to commit mass suicide if it means the extermination of Israel"  is hyperbolic babble. (This was the claim of the Israeli Ambassador on a Bill Maher show back in March, 2012). A truer take was offered by Gen. Martin Dempsey when he referred to Iran as a "rational actor" - which is ultimately invested in survival not self-extermination for a manic, irrational cause. Again, Iran sees the U.S. as the threat, given how it used a reckless 'bomb, burn and slash' invasion back in 2003, which by World Health Organization estimates,  killed over 600,000 Iraqis, perhaps 200 of whom were "al Qaeda" operatives - if that. IN the end it was all a ruse instigated by an Iraqi nut nicknamed "curve ball" who invented the bullshit about WMD.

The only rational response of the U.S.? Tell Israel and Benji Netanyu to shove it, and stop Biden and others from blustering on with war talk! 

The last thing this planet needs right now is another war, especially instigated from a nation that already has 5,000 nuke warheads of its own, and a smaller nation (Israel) that has at least 100. We need now Obama to stand up like a man, face down the warhawks and tell them to fuck themselves like JFK would. We need him to inveigh against the odious myth of "Pax Americana" - of the U.S. being the policeman of the world - and imposing peace by resort to American weapons of war. We need him to stand tall now as never before and aspire to steely spine,  as John Kennedy would have (at the peak of the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962) instead of expediting what will be the worst mistake this nation's ever made!