Wednesday, October 10, 2012

From Eisenhower to Obama: War is Money

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid Galilee of its Arab population."

The above statement is attributed to David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the State of Israel and First Israeli Prime Minister taken from Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar (May 1948). I am not a historian, but such transgressions aside, it is not too farfetched to suggest that history often repeats itself. Especially when it pertains to presidential politics and nations like Israel, the United States, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Even considering smaller yet significant events ranging from the slaying of Crispus Attucks during the Boston Massacre in 1770 to the signing of the “Southern Manifesto” by Strom Thurman and a hundred plus democratic members of the house, to the operations run by Kermit Roosevelt that caused a coup in Iran in 1959; to even Eisenhower himself and his conundrum regarding Nasser of Egypt inclusive of France, Israel and the Aswan Damn.

This is a week or more after the first Presidential debate and I am willing to bet most black folk are still talking about it. Subsequently, given that most are caught up with that circus called the Presidential debate, truth be told it is immaterial and all that I mention prior are (albeit) past history more important than the debate when we look at the global predicament and war and our relationship with Israel. You see, although the US has laws that require foreign interests to register as foreign agents, these laws are not equally or always applied to all Israeli lobby groups, such as AIPAC.

Unless you have been behind a rock, you would know that besides the criminal industrial complex, the big industry money maker in America is war. Yes, war drives the economy and amounts to more than all of our allocated GDP spent when compared to all other programs in the United States that is if you don’t include international aid in the form of grants to nations like Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Even as one reads this, Syria is being attacked inside by NATO funded Al Qaeda “Rebels,” China and japan are at each other throats, Shells fly each and every day in the Sudan and Mali is in the middle of a serious conflict.

For a while now, much has been made in political forums of addressing Iran and their quest to become nuclear sufficient (strangely enough by nations who have nuclear weapons - US and Israel). Meaning that regardless of what is being spoken in public, behind closed doors activities show how involved this issue is in both political and economic capital. The US, via NATO and the Saudi’s are funding dozens of training camps that have been set up to prepare for the fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s military. Both US and Saudi millions and Special Forces expertise are engaged covertly in training Al Qaeda terrorist (FSA Syria's rebels) into a disciplined military force. The FSA or “The Free Syrian Army” didn’t exist until Israel, NATO and the US decided that the powers that be needed a war, a major war, to make money and to topple the Syrian leader as well as the state bank of Syria. In fact the same ploy that is being used to break Iran and their independent state bank via the Libyan blue print for the same is being replicated in Syria.

Seems as if those of us in the West, limited by our ignorance and overshadowed by our obsessive ranting on freedom and democracy, cannot comprehend what democracy would mean to a non-Western world dominated by a belief in Islam. We look at what has happened in Libya and what is currently happening in Syria as being singularly about democracy and the development of a secular ideology that includes a pluralistic society run according to democratic principles while those on the ground see it about something completely different - espousing fundamentalism directed exclusive against western aggression and hegemony.

Another issue of concern is confounded when Middle Eastern Nations question the nationalistic approach of the West to their region. For example, the overt hypocrisy of US leadership under President Obama concerned about repression I Syria and Libya but not Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. They wonder how the US continue to evaluate all issues from state perspectives and a monolithic Islam versus Alawite, Sunni and Shī'ah sects of Islam. On the one hand he supposedly is operating a multi-front war, in secrecy against Al Qaeda {Islamic fundamentalism}, particularly in Africa and the Middle East – as evident by the increase in size of the U.S. military's Special Forces Operation Command and the CIA's strike expansion capabilities in the region in places including Kenya, Uganda, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean off East Africa – while at the same time asserting that they do not desire a conflict with Islam. This albeit our policy pursues wars presently on three fronts: Syria, Lebanon and Iran, and Afghanistan.

We have seen this all before when President Gamal Abdel Nasser's, who had come to power in the 1953 nationalistic revolution in Egypt. Nasser's wanted to construction dam at Aswan, to form a massive lake that would aid to control the annual flooding of the Nile, crucial to Egypt's agriculture, as well as generating vast amounts of electricity. First he was offered economic support by Britain and US to finance the Aswan dam. But then the West backed out.

This led to Britain and France to build up their forces in the Mediterranean, with the secret understand that Israeli troops would move into the Sinai Peninsula. Trying to present a position of peace the European nations asked that both move away from the region and when Egypt disregarded, against the ruling of the UN Security Council and general assembly, Britain and France begin bombing Egyptian airfields. This was under Eisenhower, who although in the open refused to join Britain, France and Israel in an invasion of Egypt, had approved of and knew about such behind closed doors.

Yes the methods of Eisenhower are similar to the methods of Obama presently and well, the role of Israel as agent provocateur is the same – making up a threat that doesn’t exist because a nation attempts to exist in a self-determined fashion. Only difference is that then it was a damn in Egypt and now it is Nuclear power in Iran.

Another common denominator was economics. Then, it pertained to vital shipping routes today; it deals with the Middle East, West Africa as emerging vital oil-producing, mineral rich zones including arable farmland. Then after the US denied funding Egypt, they went to Russia for military support which was granted. Today, the same is happening in Syria, Iran and also Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan-Russia ties are growing under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s who is expected to make the first visit by a Russian president to Pakistan ever supposedly to sign multiple MOU’s (Memorandums of Understanding) on development and investment in the steel and energy sectors of Pakistan. Syria’s central role in the Arab gas pipeline is also a key to why Israel, NATO and the US wants Assad out, in addition to having a direct path to Iran (just as the Taliban in Afghanistan because they are in the way of the Unocal pipeline).

Guess what I am saying, to repeat myself is that without war, America’s economy would already be in the grave as opposed to on its death bed. War is good economics, no matter if it is in the Middle East, China, the Far East or Africa. The question is will we be able to make money before we realize we may not have the financial ability to carry out such efforts? As we speak, The United States military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 specialists to Jordan be in place in case the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict.

Unfortunately, it is a fallacy to think or believe that America can be taken out of economic crisis via more and more wars given that the most productive part of the US economy has been moved offshore in order to increase corporate profits and capital gains to equity owners. It is not the American people who are at the center of such policy efforts, like I said; historically it is the war machine and the oligarchy of private interests. More wars that we can only afford to pay with debt is trouble. It is just like having a gallon of gasoline, and pouring a half gallon of water into it doesn’t change the fact of how much gasoline remains. Borrowing more debt, quantitative easing, or printing more loot is the same thing as the above example. It is an invisible tax that just steals tax payer’s money through inflation. Simply because basic math wins out in the end and shows that because the act of printing money doesn’t create any more jobs than one already has.

Now, in light of Obama’s “neoliberalism, the federal government is just borrowing more loot from itself, loot it doesn’t have because the Federal Reserve can print as much as it wants and buy government bonds with the new money it has printed. Such practices in concert with America’s "Ad hoc global 'counter-terrorism' efforts that began under President George W. Bush. The way I think it, this means that what can be anticipated in the future is that either the Obama Administration or Romney Administration will in my estimation, by 2013, have the U.S. at war with Iran just because it is the penchant of Israel and its nuclear program will be used as a reason for this attack. Although it is well know that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. We already see posturing visa via Turkey being used as a NATO proxy to get to Syria on a direct path to Iran. As well as evidence that the Egypt-Israel peace treaty is slowly evaporating before our eyes apart. Although we say we desire the impossible dream of secular Islamic or secular Islamic states all across the region that includes a pluralistic society run according to democratic principles, it won’t happen, now given what has manifested in Syria as I stated earlier.

For decades, the Americans indulged and propped up pro-Western dictators in the interests U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Over the last 18 months, four of these dictators have fallen to pro-democracy uprisings, leaving U.S. strategy cold war-esque. And since we broke and can’t make loot via cold war, we will continue to engage in efforts to spark wars around the world, for whatever reason even if they are as petty as what transpired in Egypt and France and Britain – even if we have to adopt the position of David Ben-Gurion, and use terror just to accomplish such.