donderdag 20 maart 2014

De Mainstream Pers 171



Omdat Henk Hoflands doctrinaire opvattingen zo illustrerend zijn voor het westerse kapitalistische denken kom ik terug op zijn stelling in De Groene Amsterdammer van 12 maart 2014 dat 'In Europa en Amerika eerzucht en strijdlust verloren [zijn] gegaan,' nu

ten aanzien van dit conflict onze politieke en strategische verbeeldingskracht niet toereikend is. De gang van zaken in Oekraïne en op de Krim doet meer en meer denken aan de manier waarop in 2008 Georgië als onafhankelijke staat ten onder is gegaan… 

Zowel in West-Europa als in Amerika zijn bij een zeer groot deel van het publiek de vaderlandslievende eerzucht en de strijdlust verloren gegaan. Een belangrijke oorzaak daarvan wordt gevormd door de twee vruchteloze oorlogen, in Afghanistan en Irak. Daarbij komt de permanente crisis in Noord-Afrika. En deze reeks van echecs moet worden verdragen door volken waarvan het grootste deel zich de afgelopen tien jaar in een proces van toenemende verarming bevindt…

Allereerst dit: wanneer de nestor van de polderjournalistiek verwijst naar 'onze… verbeeldingskracht' dan bedoelt Hofland daarmee de hegemonistische leer van de economische macht en de 'politiek-literaire elite' waar een 'natie niet zonder [kan],' omdat  nu eenmaal die macht elke dag weer bij het publiek gelegitimeerd dient te worden. Uit Hoflands woorden dat 'bij een zeer groot deel van het publiek de vaderlandslievende eerzucht en de strijdlust verloren gegaan,' spreekt zijn weemoed en zelfs ergernis over deze gang van zaken. De huidige situatie is voor een opiniemaker, gepokt en gemazeld in het simplistische Koude Oorlog-denken, te verwarrend, zoals hijzelf toegeeft wanneer hij stelt dat het 'Misschien tijd [is] om eens te proberen ons voor te stellen hoe een nieuw soort mondiale krachtmeting eruit zou zien.' Maar hoe? H.J.A. Hofland bekent dat zijn 'politieke en strategische verbeeldingskracht' ontoereikend is. De 'verbeeldingskracht' van de westerse elite is de afgelopen vijf eeuwen gebaseerd geweest op wat de journalist Hofland als 'de vaderlandslievende eerzucht en de strijdlust,' kwalificeert, maar die door een politieke wetenschapper van wereldnaam als Samuel Huntington als volgt werd samengevat:

the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

Dat feit evenwel kan de zelfbenoemde Nederlandse 'politiek-literaire elite,' geschoold in het poldermodel-denken, nooit hardop zeggen; het keiharde streven naar hegemonie moet hier altijd worden verhuld in eufemistische, moreel verantwoord klinkende bewoordingen als 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust,' die natuurlijk, zo suggereert de hoogbejaarde polder-intellectueel de gehele mensheid ten goede komen. Klopt die suggestie ook? Nee, geenszins, tenminste niet als we afgaan op de opmerkingen van mensen met ervaring, als 'Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940)' een 'Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I.' 

Kortom, een betere bron om Hoflands 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' op hun waarde te schatten is ondenkbaar. Na 34 jaar aan het front te hebben geopereerd concludeerde generaal majoor Smedley Butler in 1933, het jaar dat Hitler democratisch aan de macht kwam:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Amerikaanse nucleaire raket met meerdere kernkoppen om een maximaal aantal dode burgers te veroorzaken. 

Voor degene die meent dat Butler's ervaringen gedateerd zijn, is er het werk van de gezaghebbende Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Jeremy Scahill om hem uit de droom te helpen. In zijn filmdocumentaire Dirty Wars. The World Is A Battlefield (2013) spreekt Scahill van 'a  self-fulfilling prophecy. The U.S. had helped create the very man it was now trying to kill,' daarbij doelend op het korte leven van de Amerikaanse imam Anwar al-Awlaki, die als gevolg van het Amerikaanse grootschalige geweld in het Midden-Oosten na 11 september 2001 radicaliseerde, en als eerste Amerikaan zonder juridische aanklacht en zonder proces in opdracht van de Amerikaanse president in Yemen werd geliquideerd bij een drone-aanslag. Scahill: 'I had seen the same pattern repeatedly: America was trying to kill it's way to victory. But the war on terror was producing new enemies wherever it spread.'  In zijn gelijknamige boek toont hij 642 pagina's lang aan hoe Amerikaanse 'elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries,' onder de naam van Joint Special Operation Forces (JSOC). 

Funded through 'black budgets,' JSOC conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy. 

As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk — we are changing as a nation. 

De 40-jarige Scahill, National Security Correspondent van The Nation, volgt al jarenlang van nabij het geweld dat de VS ontketent en ontmaskert daarmee

the shadow warriors who prosecute these wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile strikes, and whole classes of people branded as 'suspected militants.' Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.

Terwijl Hofland zich stoort aan het in zijn ogen 'machteloze westen' dat door 'populistisch alarmisme' dat 'angst [zaait]' waardoor 'het vredestichtende Westen' zijn zegeningen niet meer over de hele mensheid kan uitstorten, laat Scahill in  Dirty Wars. The World Is A Battlefield onder andere een Amerikaanse insider aan het woord over JSOC, The Joint Special Operations Command, die het volgende vertelt:

We are now seeing the effects of covert intervention in countries on multiple continents without any thought to future repercussions. And it has radically expanded. At one point it was 40 countries. It has now expanded to over 75. And there are dozens, if not hundreds of concurrent operations. 

Scahill: But in theory Congress is supposed to have oversight of these operations. 

—  They don't want to step into the dark and see what goes on behind the curtain. Joint Special Operations Command became a paramilitary arm of the administration. Billions upon billions of dollars were poured into JSOC. What we have essentially done is created one hell of a hammer. And for the rest of our generation, for the rest of my lifetime this force will be continually searching for a nail.

Scahill ontdekte dat

Bin Laden's death had given the war on terror a new life. After 9/11 there were 7 people on the kill-list. In Iraq 55 on the deck of cards. By Afghanistan there were thousands. But now the list itself was changing: signature strikes, crowd killing, a target-list was no longer needed to justify a strike… All boys over the age of fifteen, all men under the age of 70 were now fair game in targeted areas. Like a flywheel the global war on terror was spinning out of control.

I realize now that the story has no end. Somehow, in front of our eyes, undeclared wars have been launched across the globe, foreigners and citizens alike assassinated by presidential decree. The war on terror transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy. How does a war like this ever end? And what happens to us when we finally see what is hidden in plain sight? 


Maar aan deze ervaringen van een Amerikaanse getuige van 'the dirty wars' die elke dag worden uitgevochten, heeft een ideologische opiniemaker als Hofland niets. Hij wil het systeem rechtvaardigen en niet fundamenteel bekritiseren, en dus probeert moet hij  een verkeerde voorstelling van zaken geven met zijn bewering dat primitieve reflexen als 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' het moeten afleggen tegenover het 'populistisch alarmisme'  in 'West-Europa' waar het consumerende volk almaar 'platter & dikker' wordt. Dit beeld  is in wezen gestoeld op de ideologie van de Amerikaanse neoconservatieven, die na de val van de Berlijnse Muur meenden dat met de 'overwinning' van de 'kapitalistische democratie,' er een einde aan de geschiedenis was gekomen. Eén van hen is de Amerikaanse historicus Robert Kagan, één van de oprichters van de beruchte neoconservatieve denktank Project for the New American Century, die de buitenlandse politiek van de regering van Bush junior sterk bepaalde. Kagan was een 'foreign policy advisor to John McCain, the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election,' en is de ideoloog die in februari 2012 een invloedrijk artikel schreef over 'the myth of American decline,' dat 'drew the praise of President Obama.' Het invloedrijke Amerikaanse tijdschrift Foreign Policy schreef over Kagan:

President Barack Obama is personally enamored with a recent essay written by neoconservative writer Bob Kagan, an advisor to Mitt Romney, in which Kagan argues that the idea the United States is in decline is false.

"The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe," Obama said in his State of the Union address Tuesday evening. 'From the coalitions we've built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we've led against hunger and disease; from the blows we've dealt to our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back.'

'Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about,' Obama said.

Just hours earlier on Tuesday, in an off-the-record meeting with leading news anchors, including ABC's George Stephanopoulos and NBC's Brian Williams, Obama drove home that argument using an article written in the New Republic by Kagan titled 'The Myth of American Decline.'

Obama liked Kagan's article so much that he spent more than 10 minutes talking about it in the meeting, going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed to The Cable.

National Security Advisor Tom Donilon will also discuss Kagan's essay and Obama's love of it Thursday night with Charlie Rose on PBS.

Kagan's article examines and then sets out to debunk each of the arguments that America is in decline, which include commonly held assumptions that America's power and influence are waning due to its economic troubles, the rise of other world powers, the failure of U.S. efforts to solve big problems like the Middle East conflict, and the seeming inability of the U.S. government to tackle problems.


Kagan's ideologische invloed op de buitenlandse politiek van president Obama en zijn regering is mede door zijn echtgenote, de Amerikaanse staatssecretaris van Buitenlandse Zaken, Victoria Nuland, niet gering. Nuland verwierf internationale bekendheid vanwege haar uitspraak 'Fuck the EU' nadat Washington met tenminste 5 miljard dollar onder andere de neonazi-oppositie in Oekraïne had gemobiliseerd tegen de democratisch gekozen regering.  Net als onder Bush junior streeft de VS op een gewelddadige wijze naar de uitbreiding van zijn hegemonie, over de gehele aarde. Dat is bedreigend voor allereerst het Europa van 'Geen Jorwerd zonder Brussel,' om Geert Mak's leuze te gebruiken. We hebben hier namelijk te maken met een rücksichtslose real-politici  Robert Kagan begint zijn in 2003 verschenen boek Of Paradise And Power. America And Europe In The New World Order met de volgende woorden:

It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power, the desirability of power — American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant's 'perpetual peace.' Meanwhile, the United States mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable, and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory — the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons  for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.


Victoria 'Fuck the EU' Nuland, met de voormalige Amerikaanse president en met de beoogde nieuwe president Hillary Clinton, die nu al wordt gesteund door de neoliberale elite.



Met andere woorden: 'Fuck the European Union,' zoals zijn echtgenote, de Amerikaanse staatssecretaris van Buitenlandse Zaken voor Europa en Eurazië, Victoria Nuland, zo kernachtig verwoordde. Henk Hoflands ergernis over het gebrek aan 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' sluit naadloos aan bij deze neoconservatieve en neoliberale ideologie. De oude man is al langer op oorlogspad. In plaats van zich voor te bereiden op zijn eigen dood, bereidt hij de dood van andere voor. Zo schreef hij op woensdag 8 april 2009 in de NRC over het nieuwe potentiële slachtoffer van grootscheeps westers geweld:

Hoog op de lijst blijft Iran. Werkt het aan een kernwapen of niet? Israël blijft ervan overtuigd dat dat zo is. Daarom moet in toenemende mate rekening worden gehouden met een preventief ingrijpen, dat wil zeggen een bombardement zoals dat van 1981 op de kerninstallaties van Saddam Hoessein.

De vanzelfsprekendheid waarmee Hofland ervan uitgaat dat Israel, zelf beschikkend over naar schatting ruim 200 kernwapens, het internationaal recht mag schenden door een zogeheten 'preventief ingrijpen' is ronduit weerzinwekkend. Al heel lang steunt Hofland het Westerse geweld dat in de praktijk neerkomt op terreur tegen de burgerbevolking van zwakkere staten. En degene die via internet zich tegen dit westers terrorisme keert, wordt door hem, als woordvoerder van de gevestigde orde, gestigmatiseerd als een gefrustreerde dwaas die via 

internet het machtsgevoel van de ontevredenen [heeft] vergroot. Nu kunnen ze de wereld in hun wrok laten delen. Deze bloggers zijn de permanent wrokkenden in digitale gedaante.

Maar ondanks al zijn woede en haat begint zelfs H.J.A. Hofland te beseffen dat zijn ‘politiek-literaire elite,het monopolie op de berichtgeving en daarmee waarheidsbepaling heeft verloren en dat de 'gedigitaliseerde stem des volks,’ een toenemende groep burgers immuun heeft gemaakt voor de al dan niet 'gedigitaliseerde' propaganda van de economische elite en hun spreekbuizen in de politiek en de mainstream media. Daardoor zijn, zo beseft ook hij, de 

‘nieuwe media’ met de mening van de bloggers voor een groot deel van de publieke opinie toonaangevend geworden.

Het enige dat de stem van de Nederlandse bourgeoisie nog kan doen is te waarschuwen dat  de bestuurlijk elite 'zich in het nauw,' voelt 'gedreven,' vooral ook omdat hopeloos inadequaat functionerende en zelfs corrupte hoge ambtenaren en volksvertegenwoordigers 

daarmee worden uitgeleverd aan het onmiddellijke oordeel van de dan plotseling goedgelovige massa. De verborgen zwakte van internet is dat het oorzaak kan zijn van een laaiende volkswoede.

Let op, de 'massa' is dus 'plotseling goedgelovig' geworden, nu ze niet langer meer volledig afhankelijk is van de zichzelf prijzende 'vrije pers' die, zoals onder andere de Amerikaanse geleerden Chomsky en Herman aantoonden, een 'propaganda model' hanteren waarbij

the 'societal purpose' of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises…

Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to succes. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requisite values and perspectives will be regarded as 'irresponsible,' 'ideological,' or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. 

Het is tekenend dat een opiniemaker als Hofland met zo'n benard mens- en wereldbeeld door de polder-intelligentsia gezien wordt als de grootste journalist van de hele twintigste eeuw en zich al meer dan een halve eeuw heeft weten te handhaven, en kennelijk in het nucleaire tijdperk toch geloofwaardig blijft met zijn middeleeuwse begrippen als 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust.' Dat zegt veel over Nederland en wat hier doorgaat voor intellectuele kwaliteit. De vraag is dan ook: wie is Hendrik Johannes Adrianus (Henk) Hofland precies dat hij machismo-waarden zo verheerlijkt en tegelijkertijd zoveel dédain toont voor doorsnee mens? Hij is geboren in 1927, nog geen decennium na het einde van de 16 miljoen levens kostende slachting, die in Nederland de geschiedenis inging als de Eerste Wereldoorlog, en in het Verenigd Koninkrijk als The Great War 'to end all wars,' maar waarvan de Amerikaanse hoogleraar Geschiedenis aan de prestigieuze Yale University zich een eeuw later nog steeds afvraagt 

1918 is a long way from now, but it's still a puzzle. What was it for? Why? Why all this bloodshed? Why the carnage? The question seems to me to be the iconic characteristic of what the 20th Century is all about. Why the violence? Why the bloodshed? Why the cruelty?

The 11th of November, Armistice Day, the end of the war symbolizes the fact that it didn't end. We have to go back every 11th of November and tell the story. But what story is it? Is it the story of idealism betrayed? (The viewpoint that I think I share.) The vast gap between the generosity of spirit of the millions who fought, the meanness of spirit of the few who led them. Is that what it's about? I can't pretend to have an answer, but I know it's a question of the 20th Century. It's a question that we still have to resolve.


 Inderdaad, 'It's a question that we still have to resolve.' En dat wetende is de vraag waarom een opiniemaker uit een klein land zoveel waarde hecht aan 'vaderlandslievende eerzucht' en agressieve 'strijdlust.' Zeker wanneer nog geen 13 jaar na Hofland's geboorte er in het christelijke blanke Westen opnieuw het massale bloedvergieten uitbrak, dat ditmaal 50 miljoen mensenlevens kostte, de overgrote meerderheid burgers. Wanneer leert een dwaas dat in een nucleair tijdperk 'eerzucht' en 'strijdlust' ziekelijke motieven zijn, die in een nucleaire holocaust kunnen eindigen? Ik vermoed nooit. Deze pathologie is, vrees ik, chronisch. Meer daarover later. 



Oekraïense politieman in brand gestoken door de neo-nazi-oppositie die dankzij westerse steun de macht heeft gegrepen in Oekraïne.

“Journalists” Follow Obama on Ukraine

The corporate media are a key component of the U.S. imperial machine. Although styling themselves as watchdogs, they are in fact the dogs of war, whose mission is to hide Washington’s aggressions behind a fog of lies.



By Margaret Kimberley



March 06, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "BAR" -  Prominent journalists in the United States may as well be on the White House payroll. They are consistent cheerleaders for whoever occupies the oval office and the corporate corner office. They make no attempt to hide their allegiance to power and their lack of interest in informing the public.
The rotten state of affairs becomes all too obvious whenever a president threatens action against another country. Reporters act more like press agents and spring into action shielding and protecting the aggressors. They make it clear to those few who gain access that questions, criticisms or anything else that smacks of independent thought will not to be tolerated. The American decision to use Ukraine as a means of attacking Russian influence is the latest effort to prop up the empire, and the corporate media obligingly show their approval.
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was so eager to fly the American foreign policy flag that she pointedly took a colleague to task on air when he was guilty of nothing more than doing his job. Wolf Blitzer is a corporate media stalwart himself so he and everyone watching was surprised when Amanpourjumped down his throat when he quoted a Russian official.
" ‘You heard Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the U.N. Security Council, saying earlier today that at fault for all of this are what he called fascists and anti-Semites in Ukraine right now ...’
‘You know, you've got to be really careful by putting that across as a fact,’ Amanpour said.
‘That's what Vitaly Churkin said,’ Blitzer replied.
‘He may have done," Amanpour said. ‘Are you telling me, are you saying that the entire pro-European ...’
‘Of course not,’ Blitzer defended, explaining that he was presenting what Churkin had said.
‘Right, and we have to be very careful,’ Amanpour cautioned.
Blitzer tried to interject, offering to play Churkin's comments again.
‘I heard it,’ Amanpour said. ‘We just as a network have to be really careful not to lump the entire pro-European Ukrainians into, which some may well be, nationalistic and extremist groups.’
‘We're not, I'm not,’ Blitzer insisted.”
“They make no attempt to hide their allegiance to power.”
Amanpour had lots of company at other networks. Gwen Ifill of PBS Newshour also stuck to the White House script with her guest, professor Stephen F. Cohen. Cohen informed viewers that American presidents going back to Bill Clinton have been playing a very dangerous game in their attempt to pry Ukraine from the Russian orbit.
Ifill was contemptuous of Cohen throughout and stuck to the Putin is evil meme. Her questions lacked even a pretense of a thoughtful search for facts. Nonsense such as “What is Putin’s endgame here?” was all she could muster. When Cohen gave a simple and understandable explanation of why western meddling posed a danger to world peace Ifill decided to ignore him. “Why is any of this important to anyone who is not in Russia or Ukraine?” Cohen, who also suffered through the Amanpour/Blitzer contretemps, gave Ifill as much contempt in return. “I told you at the top. I mean, you and I are old enough to have lived through divided Europe in Berlin.”
The so-called journalists who are held up to us as exemplars of success and profession acumen are by and large hacks who toe the party line. Ifill has a long standing reputation of defending presidential policy in her reporting. She is at least consistent. Just as she followed the Bush doctrine she is now in synch with the Obama team.
Amanpour vilifies her colleague on air for cynical reasons and Ifill plays dumb if a guest dares to speak up with real analysis. All their behaviors are an effort to diminish any debates or arguments against the United States government. The only critics on the air are questioning whether Obama is tough enough and if American “prestige” is on the line if we don’t have as much violence in the world as they would like.
“Ifill, Amanpour and company flourish precisely because they do not tell us the truth.”
Now that the United States government has officially declared war on the rest of the world, Americans are in desperate need of truth telling. But that is not how empires work. Ifill, Amanpour and company flourish precisely because they do not tell us the truth.
It is not too harsh to point out that the propaganda and lies spread by networks and newspapers are part of an enormous crime. America is the evil doer in Iraq and Haiti and Libya and Venezuela and Ukraine. Nations are invaded and economies are ruined because our government is determined to have its way in the world. The crimes are committed with impunity in part because presidents get a helping hand from their corporate media partners.
The only thing making Americans squeamish about military involvement against Russia is war weariness. They don’t oppose it on principle because they don’t know what the principles involved are. Just as we aren’t the richest country in the world, and we don’t have the best health care in the world, we don’t have the best press either. We have a government that is more aggressive by the day and they have a mouth piece which we call the media.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.


Slachtoffer van de Eerste Wereldoorlog, the war to end all wars.


Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit


Exclusive: The Ukraine crisis – in part stirred up by U.S. neocons – has damaged prospects for peace not only on Russia’s borders but in two Middle East hotspots, Syria and Iran, which may have been exactly the point, reports Robert Parry.

You might think that policymakers with so many bloody fiascos on their résumés as the U.S. neocons, including the catastrophic Iraq War, would admit their incompetence and return home to sell insurance or maybe work in a fast-food restaurant. Anything but directing the geopolitical decisions of the world’s leading superpower.

But Official Washington’s neocons are nothing if not relentless and resilient. They are also well-funded and well-connected. So they won’t do the honorable thing and disappear. They keep hatching new schemes and strategies to keep the world stirred up and to keep their vision of world domination – and particularly “regime change” in the Middle East – alive.

Sen. John McCain appearing with Ukrainian rightists at a rally in Kiev.
Sen. John McCain appearing with Ukrainian rightists at a rally in Kiev.
Now, the neocons have stoked a confrontation over Ukraine, involving two nuclear-armed states, the United States and Russia. But – even if nuclear weapons don’t come into play – the neocons have succeeded in estranging U.S. President Barack Obama from Russian President Vladimir Putin and sabotaging the pair’s crucial cooperation on Iran and Syria, which may have been the point all along.

Though the Ukraine crisis has roots going back decades, the chronology of the recent uprising — and the neocon interest in it – meshes neatly with neocon fury over Obama and Putin working together to avert a U.S. military strike against Syria last summer and then brokering an interim nuclear agreement with Iran last fall that effectively took a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran off the table.
With those two top Israeli priorities – U.S. military attacks on Syria and Iran – sidetracked, the American neocons began activating their influential media and political networks to counteract the Obama-Putin teamwork. The neocon wedge to splinter Obama away from Putin was driven into Ukraine.

Operating out of neocon enclaves in the U.S. State Department and at U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, led by the National Endowment for Democracy, neocon operatives targeted Ukraine even before the recent political unrest began shaking apart the country’s fragile ethnic and ideological cohesion.

Last September, as the prospects for a U.S. military strike against Syria were fading thanks to Putin, NED president Carl Gershman, who is something of a neocon paymaster controlling more than $100 million in congressionally approved funding each year, took to the pages of the neocon-flagship Washington Post and wrote that Ukraine was now “the biggest prize.”

But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself.” In other words, the new hope was for “regime change” in Kiev and Moscow.

Putin had made himself a major annoyance in Neocon World, particularly with his diplomacy on Syria that defused a crisis over a Sarin attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Despite the attack’s mysterious origins – and the absence of any clear evidence proving the Syrian government’s guilt – the U.S. State Department and the U.S. news media rushed to the judgment that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did it.

Politicians and pundits baited Obama with claims that Assad had brazenly crossed Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons and that U.S. “credibility” now demanded military retaliation. A longtime Israeli/neocon goal, “regime change” in Syria, seemed within reach.

But Putin brokered a deal in which Assad agreed to surrender Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal (even as he continued to deny any role in the Sarin attack). The arrangement was a huge letdown for the neocons and Israeli officials who had been drooling over the prospect that a U.S. bombing campaign would bring Assad to his knees and deliver a strategic blow against Iran, Israel’s current chief enemy.

Putin then further offended the neocons and the Israeli government by helping to facilitate an interim nuclear deal with Iran, making another neocon/Israeli priority, a U.S. war against Iran, less likely.

Putting Putin in Play

So, the troublesome Putin had to be put in play. And, NED’s Gershman was quick to note a key Russian vulnerability, neighboring Ukraine, where a democratically elected but corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, was struggling with a terrible economy and weighing whether to accept a European aid offer, which came with many austerity strings attached, or work out a more generous deal with Russia.

There was already a strong U.S.-organized political/media apparatus in place for destabilizing Ukraine’s government. Gershman’s NED had 65 projects operating in the country – training “activists,” supporting “journalists” and organizing business groups, according to its latest report. (NED was created in 1983 to do in relative openness what the CIA had long done in secret, nurture pro-U.S. operatives under the umbrella of “promoting democracy.”)

So, when Yanukovych opted for Russia’s more generous $15 billion aid package, the roof fell in on him. In a speech to Ukrainian business leaders last December, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover and the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, reminded the group that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in Ukraine’s “European aspirations.”

Then, urged on by Nuland and neocon Sen. John McCain, protests in the capital of Kiev turned increasingly violent with neo-Nazi militias moving to the fore. Unidentified snipers opened fire on protesters and police, touching off fiery clashes that killed some 80 people (including about a dozen police officers).
On Feb. 21, in a desperate attempt to tamp down the violence, Yanukovych signed an agreement brokered by European countries. He agreed to surrender many of his powers, to hold early elections (so he could be voted out of office), and pull back the police. That last step, however, opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias to overrun government buildings and force Yanukovych to flee for his life.
With these modern-day storm troopers controlling key buildings – and brutalizing Yanukovych supporters – a  rump Ukrainian parliament voted, in an extra-constitutional fashion, to remove Yanukovych from office. This coup-installed regime, with far-right parties controlling four ministries including defense, received immediate U.S. and European Union recognition as Ukraine’s “legitimate” government.

As remarkable – and newsworthy – as it was that a government on the European continent included Nazis in the executive branch for the first time since World War II, the U.S. news media performed as it did before the Iraq War and during various other international crises. It essentially presented the neocon-preferred narrative and treated the presence of the neo-Nazis as some kind of urban legend.
Virtually across the board, from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Washington Post to the New York Times, the U.S. press corps fell in line, painting Yanukovych and Putin as the “black-hat” villains and the coup regime as the “white-hat” good guys, which required, of course, whiting out the neo-Nazi “brown shirts.”

Neocon Expediency

Some neocon defenders have challenged my reporting that U.S. neocons played a significant role in the Ukrainian putsch. One argument is that the neocons, who regard the U.S.-Israeli bond as inviolable, would not knowingly collaborate with neo-Nazis given the history of the Holocaust (and indeed the role of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in extermination campaigns against Poles and Jews).
But the neocons have frequently struck alliances of convenience with some of the most unsavory – and indeed anti-Semitic – forces on earth, dating back to the Reagan administration and its collaboration with Latin American “death squad” regimes, including work with the World Anti-Communist League that included not only neo-Nazis but aging real Nazis.

More recently in Syria, U.S. neocons (and Israeli leaders) are so focused on ousting Assad, an ally of hated Iran, that they have cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy (known for its gross anti-Semitism). Israeli officials have even expressed a preference for Saudi-backed Sunni extremists winning in Syria if that is the only way to get rid of Assad and hurt his allies in Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Last September, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.
“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren said in the interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

Oren said that was Israel’s view even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Oren, who was Israel’s point man in dealing with Official Washington’s neocons, is considered very close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reflects his views. For decades, U.S. neocons have supported Netanyahu and his hardline Likud Party, including as strategists on his 1996 campaign for prime minister when neocons such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith developed the original “regime change” strategy. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

In other words, Israel and its U.S. neocon supporters have been willing to collaborate with extreme right-wing and even anti-Semitic forces if that advances their key geopolitical goals, such as maneuvering the U.S. government into military confrontations with Syria and Iran.

So, while it may be fair to assume that neocons like Nuland and McCain would have preferred that the Ukraine coup had been spearheaded by militants who weren’t neo-Nazis – or, for that matter, that the Syrian rebels were not so dominated by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists – the neocons (and their Israeli allies) see these tactical collaborations as sometimes necessary to achieve overarching strategic priorities.

And, since their current strategic necessity is to scuttle the fragile negotiations over Syria and Iran, which otherwise might negate the possibility of U.S. military strikes against those two countries, the Putin-Obama collaboration had to go.
By spurring on the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president, the neocons helped touch off a cascade of events – now including Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and its annexation by Russia – that have raised tensions and provoked Western retaliation against Russia. The crisis also has made the continued Obama-Putin teamwork on Syria and Iran extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Like other neocon-engineered schemes, there will surely be much collateral damage in this latest one. For instance, if the tit-for-tat economic retaliations escalate – and Russian gas supplies are disrupted – Europe’s fragile recovery could be tipped back into recession, with harmful consequences for the U.S. economy, too.

There’s also the certainty that congressional war hawks and neocon pundits will press for increased U.S. military spending and aggressive tactics elsewhere in the world to punish Putin, meaning even less money and attention for domestic programs or deficit reduction. Obama’s “nation-building at home” will be forgotten.

But the neocons have long made it clear that their vision for the world – one of America’s “full-spectrum dominance” and “regime change” in Middle Eastern countries opposed to Israel – overrides all other national priorities. And as long as the neocons face no accountability for the havoc that they wreak, they will continue working Washington’s corridors of power, not selling insurance or flipping hamburgers.



Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.


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