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United State of Terror: Is Drone War Fair?

Friday, March 27, 2015

Both Sides Now.


Gorillas in the midst ... of War.



Let's do the math, shall we?

Since everything needs to start somewhere, let's start with the beginning of the century, millennium, and decade of the aughts, or in terms of US foreign policy, ought nots:

In the first year of the Bush Presidency, the regime invited the Taliban to the White House where they shook hands with their emissaries and extended to them the funds of the American taxpayers to the tune of 43 Million bucks (and the bucks most assuredly, did not stop there). We're all pretty cognizant of what happened next.

Prior to that, his father had given both intelligence and material support to the Iraqis, before he turned on Saddam and invaded his country. The US is now still embroiled in that mess, on which side? Does it really matter? Tomorrow it's sure to be different.

Let's move on to Syria. That regime, because Iraqi refugees were fleeing across its border in the hundreds of thousand from our little temper tantrum next door, the Assad regime, even before its several-year drought, was hard-put to keep politically stable. One look at the US Congress' reaction to a comparative trickle of refugees from central America showing up at our borders last year, the Syrian acceptance of half a million without a whimper always impressed me (I'm sure there must have been some remonstrances but I can't find them), especially when you consider the difference in the size of the economies of the two nations relative to the size of the incoming population.

We have since turned on that leader and funded several of the rebel armies that revolted against the
Assad regime's rule, leading to the eventual forming of ISIS.

And now we have ISIS in Libya, whose leader we bombed into an early grave.

Al Qaeda is, of course, an offshoot of the US forces sent into Afganistan in the form of the Saudi/Wahhabi indoctrinated mujaheddin, who now are in Yemen, fighting Iran, who we are in alliance with in Iraq against ISIS, but fighting against Iran in Yemen, Iran, who, as noted in my previous post, we sold weapons to during the Reagan administration, although they still had exocet missiles left over from the Shah's arsenal, generously supplied by the US.

Let's tot them up, shall we?

Libya

Iraq

Iran

Syria

Afghanistan

Yemen

Ukraine

All countries to whom we have been on both sides of their conflicts, not just supplying both sides, but materially on one side of their conflicts, and then taking up opposition to that side later. Leaving arms paid for by the American taxpayers and abandoned to the enemy-du-jour by our allies-of-the-moment, to the tune of billions of dollars: the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq, and, most recently, the rebels in Yemen, (there alone more than $500 million worth), and of course now pouring more into a different US-created conflict in war-torn Ukraine (the last bit leaving one wondering, why not just send them directly to Russia?).

Not so obviously, but very close to the same situation happened in Egypt, Saudi Arabia (despite all the denials, both Bin Laden and the pilots that slammed hijacked airplanes into targets on the US mainland are all from Saudi Arabia, but since, in the pre-fracking world, they held our economy in their unctuous grip, we turned on a more convenient target instead), Israel/Palestine.

None of this mentions Central America where the same dynamic, with smaller populations and less geopolitical power, is evident: Panama, Nicaragua, San Salvador, Honduras.

All of this is reflective of two US obsessions: Anti-communism and Oil.

Which then points to Ukraine and Russia, Armenia, Georgia, and all the littoral countries of the oil-rich basin of the Caspian sea, of especial note being Kazakhstan with its enormous reserves in the Kashagan oil field; Georgia, where we first encouraged the right-wing freak Saakashvili in his attack on South Ossetia in 2008,  killing hundreds of Ossetian citizens, leaving Tskhinvali in ruins, hundreds of Georgian soldiers killed, Georgian military destroyed, thousands of displaced Georgians, their world in turmoil, for the sake of the personal ambitions of that tinpot kleptocrat whose motives and US ties seem to be mirrored today by Poroshenko's.

In this New World Disorder, which when it was called Order, we proudly boasted it was of a Triumphalist American origin, we must now accept, by any logical consideration of events, its state of chaos as also being of US origin, as we are the self-proclaimed sole Super Power. It is all too, non-comically, reminiscent of the TV spoof of the Cold War spying operations portrayed in the comedy Get Smart. But instead of Control and Chaos, (the two competing spy organizations in the T.V. series), we seem to have run all out of control and descended into unapologetic chaos, one of our own making, to which there is no accompanying laughtrack, as it is all too sad, and one in which we continually flail around looking for somebody else to blame. And with good reason. Because had Get Smart depicted the actions America took since the end of the Cold War in any of its episodes, it would have been considered too far-fetched to have been conceivable, and for comedy to be good, it needs to maintain a measure of plausibility about it.

The level of violence is set to only increase, as we swirl down into this  maelstrom of our own creation, one furnished with denial, gullibility, and deliberate murderous machinations similar to Saakashvili's, costing untold lives for tawdry, if not purely evil, motives. The irony of this, given my last post, is the Reagan Administration's depiction of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire. Well how accommodating of the US to step up to the plate and fill the void left by its dissolution. Welcome to the new Evil Empyre, the same, and, judging from the maelstrom of madness descended into during Capitalism's rampage in the 20'th century, far bloodier, as the old Evil Empire.


















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