U.S. Foreign Policy: A Civil War Here, a Civil War There

I am so glad cats like John McCain and John Kerry didn’t win the Presidency. Likewise I am just as sad that George W. Bush and Barack Obama won the presidency and if there is a God, I am certain he would let Sponge Bob Square Pants ascend to the Presidency before Hillary Clinton. And all of this is stated in objective terms, the most prominent being that the Bush and Obama Administration’s foreign policy when implemented only results in civil war, no matter where it is practiced, but especially in the Middle East and North Africa.

Case in point, this past Sunday, during a joint press conference with Egypt’s newly elected President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, US Secretary of State John Kerry said, "The United States of America is not responsible for what happened in Libya, nor is it responsible for what is happening in Iraq today."  In the same briefing, he later stated, "US is not engaged in picking or choosing any one individual... it's up to the people of Iraq to choose their own leadership."

Both of these statements are a complete and utter ignorance of the facts from a historical and temporal context or either blatant lies. Although vilified for stating such, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei correctly accused Washington of just exploiting the violence in Iraq and Syria to regain control of Iraq by placing it once again “under its [U.S.] hegemony” and rule of “its stooges.” This has always been the premise of plutocratic desires under the storm cloud of nation building and implementing democracy, as amorphous a concept as it is. In 2003, I read that “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history” – Ari Shavit, April 5, 2003 Haaretz News Service-Israel. I find this statement, with the Semitic tone aside both accurate and consistent with history insofar as we can evaluate the aforementioned from the perspective of the foreign policy statements and practices of the last two U.S. executive administrations.

The general problem is that regardless of political affiliation, the neo’s (neoconservatives and neoliberals) have a greater concern in their corporate financiers interest than the citizenry of America, and this my friend is regardless of political party and or the race of the President. Their preference is to place an inordinate amount of focus and attention on places like Syria, Libya, Iraq, Ukraine and other foreign nations, than the needs of U.S. citizenry. Instead, they apply the same standard to us as a foreign nation: drones, massive intrusive spying, domestic economic destabilization and labeling the average man a terrorist simply for exercising liberties guaranteed via the Bill of Rights.

This is clear to see for the thinking person.  Let us examine the first example of President George W. Bush and de-Baathification. Shortly after the fall of the Saddam regime, via L. Paul Bremer, as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), in one of his first things President Bush introduced was the de-Baathification program to remove members of the Ba’ath Party from their positions of authority and to ban them from future employment in government. They [the Bush Administration] selected Ahmed Chalabi to head of the De-Baathification Committee, which had the goals of preventing the Baath from regaining power, avoiding and retribution against Baathists and isolating the majority of Baathists from their party leaders.

This process of de-Baathification was supported via the forfeiture and seizure of all party assets and property, which was to be held in trust by the CPA for the use and benefit of the Iraqi people, albeit there were no real Iraqi citizens involved, just an Iraqi de-Baathification Council (IDC), composed entirely of Iraqi nationals formerly living in the U.S. and Europe mainly.

From the beginning de-Baathification was a very incongruent and f##ked up process for lack of a better phrase. Not only did it not achieve it aims, it also polarized Iraqi politics and worse, made the Iraqi military and government even more unstable after U.S. military intervention and occupation. Then it brought in al-Qaeda, to a region where it had never existed before as well as driving a wedge between Sunni, Shia and even Kurds in Iraq. And after all of this, Barack Obama came in, and when you thought his promise to end the war would make things much better, they actually followed the GWB foreign policy playbook and made things even worse.

 

Taking U.S. policy a step farther, the Obama Administration took up the doings of the fat cats of Saudi Arabia and Qatar along with big banks of the West and have in effect declared war on Shiites the world over. Now to be clear, I would like to see Obama, Bush, Cheney, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Rice, Kerry, Rice, and tried, as War Criminals and should be.

Kerry comments only reinforce the failures of America’s Manifest Destiny foreign policy. As such, no past Administration or current one will ever take responsibility for a foreign policy of endless wars of aggression and regime change. It may even be more appropriate to call U.S. foreign policy as the policy of civil war.  Where ever we insert our political nose abroad, the result is the destruction of a stable nation and civil war.  We see it now in the Ukraine where Obama supports the fascist Poroshenko’s new government, as well in the outcome via our interference in Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, and Pakistan or wherever the U.S./NATO decided to involve themselves without request. Again, categorically, I repeat, the US is responsible for Libya, Tunis, Egypt and Syria.

 

And now the fine mess of Obama policy has by intent, morphed into a sectarian Sunni versus Shia conflict. Strangely, all in nations for the most part which were secular governments. The Obama administration has consistently taken a foreign policy approach in the Middle East and Africa of over-throwing secular governments, this time it is Syria. This was done by intentionally arming and letting groups like ISIL grow stronger and stronger. He openly complains against Assad in Syria, and Iran, but ignores how Sunni leaders in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia violate the human rights of their majority Shia populations. Think about it, several months ago when the Iraqi government asked for U.S. airstrikes to repel ISIS, Obama refused, which was probably the first time he refused such an offer from an allied government. I mean, he didn’t even ask for approval to conduct illegal airstrikes in 8 other countries under the guise of fighting terrorism.  Even stranger was observing President Obama refusing to acknowledge that our closer allies in the region (Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia) have been giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Islamic extremist terrorist group invading Iraq and attacking the Syrian government.

 

Lastly, the assertion that the U.S. believes that people have a right to decide if they wish to govern themselves is only true when the U.S. say’s so, for we have seen them place many in power whom the nations had no interest in being brought to power as we recently saw with Poroshenko in the Ukraine, Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and to a certain extent, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt. S###, the U.S. even installed Saddam Hussein.

 

American policy will never be in a position to address the multitude of issues in the Middle East whether it pertains to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Indo-Pakistani conflict, or the rise of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somali. I don’t know what world Kerry and the present administration, nor the prior administration live. I guess it is like Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for Hitler’s Third Reich said: “Tell a good lie enough times and people will think it is the truth.”

Dissent in A Fear Society

In his book THE CASE FOR DEMOCRACY, Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet political prisoner released from prison by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 wrote “A society is free if people have a right to express their views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm.”  He also added, “A society that does not protect dissent will inevitably be based on fear.” Although it is clear his perspective is based on his personal experience growing up as a Jew in the former Soviet Union, it strikes me as if he is writing about America today.

Since the start of this century, the focus of the US federal government, in all aspects has been directed toward encouraging uniformity and conformity, in view, belief and idea of all its citizens, specifically by playing on the emotional projection of being either “with or against us.”  This mentality gained its maximum utility of expected outcomes when the U.S. began its famed “war against terror.” Terror being singularly contrived from emotion representing in its basic understand an extreme fear. I say this because no two individuals, let alone all humans for that matter are the same.  Some may have an extreme fear or water, others may not; some may have an extreme fear of snakes and insects, others may not. However, this is the desire of the powers that function in the highest capacity of both political and corporate leadership in America. 

Now there are many that would argue against my thesis, however, they would most be those individuals that consider themselves progressive and would in the same sentence disavow the historical truth that their views are rooted in socialism, specifically cultural Marxism. They will also in the same sentence admit that no one has the same identical experiences, backgrounds, views, preferences and/or intelligence, yet cannot accept that others may not agree with them based on the aforementioned. The point being, the notion of a complete and uniform homogenous society defined by a severe ideological commitment to uniform collectivist values, ideas, views and beliefs is as realistic as the Easter bunny.

The reality of individual differences I speak of is a social pariah in today’s America. Dissent, even based on fact or personal view is currently equated to being the enemy. And there are many examples to this. Let’s us take global warming for example, which has been conveniently changed to climate change. Now from my experiences and readings, I understand that even before the Wurm glaciations (before man existed), there has always been climate change on the Earth – this is a scientific fact. However, with this said, if I don’t accept it is due to man, or that no single factor has ever been the sole cause of any phenomena, I am ridiculed by the majority; and instead of being disproven by discourse and data, called names and ridiculed.

For me, not relying on the words of a politician, specifically that carbon is a pollutant and man is the SINGLE cause of these changes, is my death nail. Why because in my argument I include the sun and its recent periods of strong coronal mass ejections and solar radiation storms, stronger solar flares and increased UV radiation of the past few decades, in formulating my perspective. I also include the observation that these events we experience Terrestrially cannot be caused by man or “carbon pollutants” alone if it is well documented they are occurring on Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto (Pluto is undergoing global warming, as evidenced by a three-fold increase in the planet’s atmospheric pressure during the past decade plus), Mars, Triton (Neptune’s largest moon), and other celestial bodies which don’t have SUVs or humans driving them. 

And don’t ask them to compare the Carbon dioxide rates of Venus to Earth in terms of Carbon dioxide density, then they only curse more for you having dissenting and differing ideas of your own. Especially if you ask, if Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Triton all "appear" to be warming, how can we be sure that Global Warming is man-made let alone a function of carbon dioxide emissions? The only response one in my experience would get are vehement attacks on charcter but not facts, simply because I trust physicist and MIT over Al Gore and Barack Obama.

Like the war on terror, this entire man-made carbon is a pollutant (when carbon is organic and not inorganic) is fatuous and typical of a fear based society just like the war on terror. This is also observed even with regards to basic beliefs. If you do not agree with gay marriage or homosexuality one is called a homophobe simply for not believing in the practice.  Personally it is like saying because I hate the Dallas Cowboys (which I do); I am a footballphobe – complete and utter idiotic nonsense. The way I see, one can believe what they want, and I can listen or accept or disagree, but just because we have different views don’t make me think you are stupid or less than those who agree with me.

See America, we are not as free as we think in this constitutional republic. Whether folk can see it or not, this nation is teetering on the brink of tyranny. Yep, I said it. If one is chastised for not accepting what others say you should accept, or believe what the middle of the normal distribution say you should, and you are punished for such, that my friend is tyranny of the fascist order. Don’t take my word, recently a former vet was arrested and called mentally ill  for voicing his views against the government on Facebook, and now, The Obama Administration via Eric Holder will be implementing a program designed to punish and imprison folk for thought that they see and deemas disagreeable.  And this isn’t from Orwell’s 1984. 

We have these behaviors now because most folk do not think for self and have instead been indoctrinated into what to believe. As such, when they do think, it is merely an amalgamation of generalizations and stereotypes which are not grounded in research or fact, but rather due to their learned irrational natures and simple mindless. Consequently, when their beliefs are questioned and/or challenged, if they cannot ignore you, they take it as a personal attack to defend the status quo, they call you intolerant and prejudice just because they don’t understand specific distinctions or nuance or from a personal point of view, they just hate to be wrong, because that in their minds such makes them feel as if they are not important.

 

This is what happens in a fear society, when you do not agree you are the bad person - the enemy. All that matters, even if they know they are being controlled and their thoughts are not their own, is that those they acknowledge the power that makes them feel important, correct and even worse – knowledgeable.

America from this perspective is moving away from a free society because dissent and differing views and beliefs are no longer tolerated or accepted. And the folk who accept this would never dare to accept or think that their government, like the intellectuals under Stalin, or the scientific class of Iran in the early 1980s, would ever think of doing such. But that is how it is done, it isn’t call TV programming by accident, nor is by chance that major news outlets glorify the masses on behalf of the corporate and political class.

So if you did not know, now you should, but I suspect most will ignore the wisdom in this tractate and cut on their idiot box and talk about shit they don’t know what the fuck they talking about as if they really know. And I have no problem with saying what I believe, for as it was once written, you make enough laws we all can be criminals and this my friend, is a risk I can live with as a free thinker.

What the West Point Address tells us about the Obama Doctrine and Obama’s Man Crush on the MPIC

The record is clear that the impact of Bush foreign policy both politically and economically, resulted in nothing good for America. The only tangible outcomes were destroying the government of Iraq under false pretense, disrupting the standard of living for tens of millions, tens of thousands Americans dead or permanently maimed, hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis, the entry of al Qaeda into Iraq where prior they had never existed, and hundreds of billions in wasted tax dollars.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama, although in the beginning he made a point to continuously reinforce that he had no interest for interfering in the affairs of other nations, his foreign policy actions seem to out Bush, George W. Bush. Just this week he confirmed this for the entire world. In his address at West Point, Obama provided a picture of how after five years, he sees his foreign policy efforts, and in all aspects, it is troubling, neocolonialist, and in tone reminiscent of the Rumsfeld Cheney bravado of the previous administration.

Now I cannot blame Obama singular for this, in fact most of the blame should be placed on those who voted for him, for they never read his policy positions prior to running for President, or read his speeches delivered to groups like AIPAC in 2007.  They never concerned themselves with his limited, if any foreign policy experiences with the exception of a brief stint on the foreign relations committee or him having no military experience at all.  

He embraced the joint special operations view of pre-emptive war and expansionist foreign policy as manager in chief of the U.S. imperial empire. Rather than exploring who he actually was, progressives, whether because he was a democrat, or if he were black, or that he made promises that any pragmatic person would not believe based on his past statements, turned a blind eye towards the reality of his prism of executive action.

Several statements stuck out which may be a looking glass into the remaining years from a foreign policy purview for the standing commander in chief. The first was: “The United States is the one indispensible nation.” I can only say the question would be, in what manner? By definition, the President is stating that either the United States or he is absolutely necessary. I personally disagree, unless necessary is correlated to causing trouble around the world, incessant practices that reflect the violation of international law, human rights and the basic respect for others to do as they please without U.S. interference. This position in word actually brings him closer in line to the prior administration for as it is stated in a basic Theorem of trigonometry: the same named trigometric ratios of conterminal angles are equal (conterminal angles in this case being a democratic or republican commander in chief).

The President also added, that “It is impossible to ignore sectarian conflicts, failing states and popular uprisings.” This also makes one cringe with his understanding and implementation of U.S. foreign policy, national security and U.S. interest in terms of priority. History under the present administration has lucidly indicated that the President has a problem with reading the pulse of both the American people and the world around him.  The way he went about dealing with Egypt is just one example. First he supported the democratic elections which brought Mohamed Morsi to power, albeit a member of the Islamic Brotherhood and hesitantly supported the popular uprising against an autocratic dictator named Mubarak. All because it was evident the present administration did not have a pulse of what was going on in Egypt in real time and had allowed their unconditional support of Mubarak, even amidst his long record of human rights violations to cloud their understanding of what the people of Egypt wanted and had experienced under the man the U.S. supported.

Strangely, after giving support to the democratic desires of the people of Egypt albeit late, an Islamic fundamentalist theocrat was elected whom Obama placed full support and validation behind. Next we saw protest again in Egypt, but this time there was a coup, in which the Obama administration said nothing, did nothing and even gave the new government (coup) billions in military aid justifiably, by not referring to the overthrow as a coup. So although he openly said this in his West Point address, the fact assert otherwise. Now the Egyptian people hate the U.S. more, and channels of cooperation have increased between Egypt and Russia. This is a strange statement seeing that near the end of his address President Obama revealed: “America’s support for democracy and human rights goes beyond idealism – it’s a matter of national security.”

The President also said [It]...is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead, not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also to extend peace and prosperity around the globe.” The how is evident. The Obama motto follows the Bush playbook like an AFC coach discovering the West coast Offense. Leadership via the Obama doctrine is dividing and conquering at home and unilaterally destroying and disrupting sovereign nations, even if against international law. This is no more visibly seen than what occurred in Libya in 2011.

There was no reason or compelling U.S. interest to go into Libya unless it was on the behalf of what I have called the military police industrial complex (MPIC). This is just all of the big banks, big corporations and big lobbyist that make sizable piles of loot on war, incarceration, insider trading and media manipulation. Not only would war make them loot but they would be able to use their neocolonial desires to destroy one of the world’s last state own central banks in Libya. Fact is we followed France and Germany and didn’t lead at all with respect to Obama’s intervening into Libya. But like a good politician, reasons we contrived and lies even told.  The biggest was human rights, protecting civilians, and people believed it although we can’t even help the innocent civilians we promised to aid in Haiti after their earthquake and even supported the U.N. to say that although Cholera never was in Haiti until U.N. troops arrived, they can’t even suit the U.N. to clean up the water and pay for the lives of 40,000 people who died as a result. Meaning, it is visible how we lead.

Libya is the perfect example of the Obama doctrine. If a nation is doing good for its region or country, then it must be destroyed because their success is a threat to U.S. national economy because Bush and Obama has fucked ours up miring our economy in debt for war. At no time was it mentioned by progressives that Gaddafi gave Libya the highest human development index in all of Africa, or that he stood in the forefront of the struggle for Africa against U.S. supported apartheid in Israel and South Africa.  This mean nothing to neo liberals and neoconservatives, because investment under neocolonialism only increases the gap between rich and poor nations, which in simple terms means foreign capital is used not for the people, but rather for the exploitation as opposed to the development of the undeveloped world.

So those who agree with this approach, or worse stay silent, are progressives who are in reality procolonialism. No matter what one says, Gaddafi was pan African and pan Arab and desired such to make all of Africa independent from the West.

Now the President also dropped that he wanted to continue his Libya model in other places. For in the Obama worldview, whether military force will be used anywhere, is for the president alone to decide. In the speech he noted “America’s failure to act in the face of Syrian brutality or Russian provocation not only violates our conscience, but invites escalating aggression in the future.”   First how can a Nobel peace prize winner that has used drones to kills thousands of women and children in Yemen, Afghanistan,Pakistan, and Somalia know anything about conscience, when by practices his foreign policy is to escalate aggression without invite whenever he feels, or needs to buttress his approval rating? As he said in the same speech, we know this is already the case given he said [The] “United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interest demand it.”

Obama’s foreignpolicy beliefs are clear. He said “The issue of transparency is directly relevant to a third aspect of American leadership: our efforts to strengthen and enforce international order.” This is how he perceives his role as commander in chief. Foreign policy is basically using counter-terrorism to stunt the economic growth of other nations and deepen their citizenry into poverty while making U.S. plutocrats even wealthier. He has established a large covert presence in North Africa in total secrecy (transparency), away from democratic debate, and without any Congressional approval or oversight. This is what he means by transparency.

Moreover, Obama has expanded drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. In simple terms has continued the practice and policy of the Bush administration with respect to foreign policy. He has invaded more countries and violated just as many if not more human rights and issues of state sovereignty that George W. Bush ever did. Ironically while asserting and pointing the finger toward Iran, China and Russia which I assume is a replacement for Bush’s “Axis of Evil” he described and referenced so frequently.

In sum, Obama uses military force whenever he wants, wherever he wants, and without anyone's permission. He ignores as Lincoln wrote, "The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.” Obama's ongoing use of military force in multiple countries ensures that the posture of the US for the foreseeable future will continue to be one of endless war. This my friend, is the Obama doctrine in a nutshell.