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.”

Again or Still? Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya

Seems like there is rarely a mention of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya in the mainstream news anymore, and more importantly, from the oral cavities of U.S. politicians. Maybe we might hear about the occasional bombing that happens in Iraq each day nationally since U.S. forces invaded the country and left, in particular in Sunni dominated areas, to live along side al Qaeda just to survive, or a word or two from a lame-brained republican about Benghazi, but really that is about it.

I am even more assured that we will not hear about Afghanistan (with the exception of their lunatic of a President Hamid Karzai) or Libya. In particular from the hawkish John McCain, Lindsey Graham and more exacting, from the lips of President Obama.  Especially now with the feces hitting the proverbial Ukrainian fan.

America is really in a leadership, or even more basically, hand-holding vacuum.  See real leaders, or better yet statesmen can walk the walk while holding the hands of folks who require baby steps to make any progress on anything. In Iraq for example, it is coming to pieces, it may be three or even four states by time all the smoke clears. Last year alone, more than 10,000 people died, and most likely many more. And just in the first month of 2014 alone, more than 1000 Iraqis were killed in car and suicide bombings, most of which were civilians.

If we were hearing about Iraq, we would be reminded of how we meddle into affairs that were not ours, on a completely other side of the globe and which we leave in shabbles. If Obama or the media mentioned Iraq, they would have to show how the al Qaeda group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has taken over the region, a region were al Qaeda never existed be for the U.S. Invasion and occupation of Iraq. Or how refugees from the Western part of Iraq and in the Anbar provinceare making fast motion to become refugees in Jordan. Or even worse, how the man we installed as Prime Minister (Nouri al-Maliki) has provided no service to Sunnis, made them focus of attacks, and used government troops to squash any open and “democratic” protest against his government. Now unbelievably, Sunni side with ISIS against another U.S. backed regime. And Libya is definetly out of the question with the Islamic extremist being in control of ALL the oil and even shipping it to North Korea. And God forbid i mention that the Libyian Parliment ousted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan out of office Tuesday. 

Now back to Ukraine, am I the only one that considers the hypocrisy of U.S. Foreign policy with respect to the rhetoric hurled towards Russia?  If my history is correct, the only nation I recall Russia, since the break-up that is going to war with was Georgia in 2008.  For Obama to say that Russia needs to respect the borders of sovereign nations is kind of lames, and like someone not living in my home telling me what to cook: given the U.S. has had at least four wars (all undeclared) with Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and currently bomb without any respect of “territorial integrity” to use the words of Secretary of State John Kerry of places like, Yemen, Somalia, Kosovo, Serbia Bolivia and you name it.

It is even more ironic when one includes U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert Kagan), be caught and recorded telling the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine which leaders of the Ukrainian coup should be placed in a new government and which ones should not when she quipped, “Fuck the EU.” How is it that a simple statement is considered more news worthy than the content of her telling a “sovereign” nation to put who the U.S. want in office and not the people of said nation?

Even to consider the Ukraine as a ground for the start of a “liberal democracy” is ridiculous, when we all know it will only become a western puppet nation run by feudal oligarchical landlords. Not to mention everybody seems to forget that if the EU and America were not sitting on their hands, they would have been able to have played a role other than watching the game from their living room sofa’s.

U.S. hypocrisy regarding the Ukraine is shameful and beyond ridiculous. We say or Describe Putin as being like Hitler (Hillary Clinton’s historical inaccuracy) yet taking U.S. tax payer money to the tune of $1 billion to send to a government filled with nationalist fascist yet they don’t have any money to spend on behalf of American job seekers. We say it is anti-democratic and wrong for people to desire and practice self-determination in the Crimea but ok for all else in Egypt, Libya and Syria. Which suggest according to this Administration and the many before him, self-determination is only cool when it serves the U.S. and no one else? We all know that it was Obama that described the desire of the Crimean people to vote, and want to vote on their future as “undemocratic” and “illegitimate.”

But none of this won’t be told or mentioned by our government or news media. The reality is if they did bring up Syria, or Libya, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, out hypocrisy would be on the red carpet for all to watch and document and equal to them shooting themselves in the foot..