De vorige aflevering eindigde ik met de ontboezeming van Henry Kissinger, de Amerikaanse voormalige Nationale Veiligheid Adviseur en minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, dat:
I have always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western. […] This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.
De cowboy is hier het geromantiseerde archetype van één van de meest meedogenloze en moordzuchtige westerse politici van na de Tweede Wereldoorlog, die zelf als joods kind samen met zijn ouders de nazi’s moest ontvluchten. Toen ik een paar jaar geleden over Henry Kissinger sprak met een joods-Amerikaanse vriendin, Sheila Geist, oud-lerares geschiedenis in New York, reageerde zij als volgt:
Met wie anders had Kissinger zich kunnen identificeren? Verplaats je in zijn positie: een klein, lelijk, joods mannetje, met een chip on his shoulder, wiens familie moest vluchten voor het Herrenvolk, en in een land terecht kwam met een cultuur waar winners de dienst uitmaken en losers geminacht worden. Natuurlijk identificeerde hij zich met het archetype van de cowboy. De Indianen waren de losers, die net als de joden massaal werden vermoord of in een kamp werden opgesloten. Dus koos hij voor de winners. Zo werkt nu eenmaal de menselijke psyche. En dit gaat op voor bijna alle mensen, zeker voor degenen die niet van nature behoren tot de winners, de meerderheid dus. Dat verander je niet van de ene op de andere dag. Je zult eerst de oorzaken moeten wegnemen. We hebben hier te maken met een diep cultureel probleem.
Voor een goed begrip van de pathologie die hier speelt, moet men de geschiedenis intensief te bestuderen. Alleen op die manier weet de lezer dat:
Columbus arrived at San Salvador among the Arawak in 1492 obsessed with the futile pursuit of gold. He was blind to the uniqueness and beauty of the land and the people he had stumbled upon. The ensuing enslavement & slaughter of the native Taino he called 'Indios' established a pattern of ruthless expansion and dispossession that would define European treatment of the New World for centuries to come.
By the time the last groups of Sioux had moved onto reservation following Wounded Knee in 1890, this juggernaut had consumed an entire continent, digesting everything in its path. Systematically stripped of their territories & with casualties from warfare & disease in the millions, over 20,000 years of indigenous civilization was swept away in the virtual blink of an eye.
Those who managed to survive America’s solution to what was called the 'Indian problem' were now essentially exiles in their own lands and wards (onder curatele gestelden. svh) of a state which had little but contempt for them. Many were forced to assimilate and jettison their time-honored traditions and languages in order to survive within the dominant white culture. Those who did try to hold on to the old ways paid a high price. Most sank into crushing poverty, forgotten and invisible.
History was not kind to them either. Much exploitation was carried on in the name of ‘civilizing’ Indians, but for a long time this story was never told. Instead textbooks, popular novels, and plays conspired to create caricatures that either trivialized their civilizations, demonized or degraded them as exotic or primitive savages, or else swathed their image in nostalgic fable. Once Hollywood westerns came along these distorted & superficial stereotypes became imprinted upon the national subconscious. America learned not about the rich legacy of societies that had come before, or the brutality and misery that marked their demise, but rather about myths of the heroic frontier invented to justify a manifest destiny.
Het begrip ‘manifest destiny’ is één van de meest invloedrijke ideologische noties die ten grondslag liggen aan de Amerikaanse politiek. Het vond haar oorsprong in de Democratische Partij maar werd naderhand geadopteerd door de Republikeinse Partij. Dit geloof gaat er vanuit dat het lot de Verenigde Staten heeft voorbeschikt om de wereld te leiden, en is gebaseerd op de veronderstelling dat het Angelsaksische ras superieur is en daarom als het ware gedwongen is een overzees beschavingsoffensief uit te voeren. Dit superioriteitsgeloof sluit naadloos aan bij de noodzaak van het Amerikaans imperialisme om wereldwijd met geweld grondstoffen en markten te veroveren en in handen te houden. Vandaar dat de VS sinds de Onafhankelijkheidsverklaring in 1776 tenminste 93 procent van zijn bestaan in oorlog is geweest, en het militair-industrieel complex er nu meer dan de helft opslokt van de federale begroting die het Congres kan toewijzen. De cowboy die altijd op zoek bleef naar Lebensraum en daarvoor de inheemse bevolking opofferde, is dan ook de perfecte metafoor voor het Amerikaans imperialisme. Hoe juist dit zelfbeeld is, bewees Kissinger nadat Oriana Fallaci haar interview met hem in 1972 had gepubliceerd en hij verklaarde dat dit vraaggesprek ‘without doubt the single most disastrous conversation’ was geweest ‘I ever had with any member of the press,’ om vervolgens te beweren dat hij waarschijnlijk verkeerd geciteerd was of dat zijn uitspraken uit zijn verband waren getrokken, een leugen die Fallaci snel kon weerleggen door de geluidsbanden te laten horen. De Italiaanse journaliste zelf reageerde aldus:
Henry Kissinger may have wished I had presented him as a combination of Charles de Gaulle and Disraeli, but I didn’t… out of respect for De Gaulle and Disraeli. I described him as a cowboy because that’s how he described himself.
Gezien de rampzalige gevolgen van de Amerikaanse agressie en het risico van een alles vernietigende wereldoorlog als gevolg van NAVO dreigementen, is het van levensbelang de lessen van de Vietnam-oorlog ter harte te nemen, zoals die beschreven worden door de Amerikaanse historica Barbara Tuchman in haar boek The March of Folly. From Troy to Vietnam (1984). Zo wijst zij met klem op de ‘Wooden-headedness,’ het ‘don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts’ mentaliteit, die volgens haar ‘a universal folly’ is:
never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam's commitment to its goal. Enemy motivation was a missing element in American calculations, and Washington could therefore ignore all the evidence of nationalist fervor and of the passion for independence which as early as 1945 Hanoi had declared 'no human force can any longer restrain.’ Washington could ignore General Leclerc’s (Franse commandant die na de Tweede Wereldoorlog Vietnam moest heroveren. svh) prediction that conquest would take half a million men and ‘Even then it could not be done.’ It could ignore the demonstration of élan and capacity that won victory over a French army with modern weapons at Dien Bien Phu, and all the continuing evidence thereafter.
American refusal to take the enemy’s grim will and capacity into account has been explained by those responsible on the ground of ignorance of Vietnam’s history, traditions and national character: there were 'no experts available,' in the words of one high-ranking official. But the longevity (langdurigheid. svh) of Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule could have been learned from any history book on Indochina. Attentive consultation with French administrators whose official lives had been spent in Vietnam would have made up for the lack of American expertise. Even superficial American acquaintance with the area, when it began to supply reports, provided creditable information. Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a ‘fourth-rate' Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable (onverbiddelijk. svh).
Underestimation was matched by overestimation of South Vietnam because it was the beneficiary of American assistance, and because Washington verbiage (tirade. svh) equated any non-Communist group with the 'free' nations, fostering the delusion that its people were prepared to fight for their 'freedom' with the will and energy that freedom is supposed to inspire. Such was the stated anchor of our policy; dissonant evidence had to be rejected or it would have made it obvious that this policy was built on sand. When dissonance disturbed attitudes toward either enemy or client, the attitudes, following the rules of wooden-headedness, rigidified.
A last folly was the absence of reflective thought about the nature of what we were doing, about effectiveness in relation to the object sought, about balance of possible gain as against loss and against harm both to the ally and to the United States. Absence of intelligent thinking in rulership is another of the universals, and raises the question whether in modern states there is something about political and bureaucratic life that subdues the functioning of intellect in favor of 'working the levers' without regard to rational expectations. This would seem to be an ongoing prospect.
In haar epiloog concludeert Barbara Tuchman dat ‘If pursuing disadvantage after disadvantage has become obvious is irrational, then rejection of reason is the prime characteristic.’ In al haar vanzelfsprekendheid getuigt deze conclusie toch van een diepe wijsheid, en wel omdat de macht niet in staat is van deze voor de hand liggende les te leren. Na Vietnam volgde de hybris van de mislukte oorlog tegen Afghanistan, de desastreuze inval in Irak, de bloedige interventies in Libië en Syrië, die alle op een totale chaos zijn uitgelopen. En desondanks gaat de VS door met het meeslepen van zijn NAVO-bondgenoten in telkens weer nieuwe agressie tegen landen die weigeren zich klakkeloos neer te leggen bij de Amerikaanse oorlogszuchtigheid. Iran, de Russische Federatie en China zijn vandaag de dag aan de beurt. Tuchman had gelijk: het verwerpen van de ratio is het voornaamste kenmerk van de waanzin die dan onvermijdelijk volgt. Zij waarschuwt voor de onoverzienbare consequenties van dwaasheid:
In the operations of government, the impotence of reason is serious because it affects everything within reach — citizens, society, civilization. It was a problem of deep concern to the Greek founders of Western thought. Euripides, in his last plays conceded that the mystery of moral evil and of folly could no longer be explained by external cause, by the bite of Atè, as if by a spider, or by other intervention of the gods. Men and women had to confront it as part of their being. His Medea knows herself to be controlled by passion 'stronger than my purposes.' Plato, some fifty years later, desperately wanted man to grasp and never let go of the 'sacred golden cord of reason,' but lately he too had to acknowledge that his fellow-beings were anchored in the life of feelings, jerked like puppets by the strings of desires and fears that made them dance. When desire disagrees with the judgment of reason, he said, there is a disease of the soul. 'And when the soul is opposed to knowledge, or opinion or reason which are her natural laws, that I call folly.’
Dat de ‘vrije pers’ tegenwoordig geenszins in staat blijkt de politiek van de ‘waanzin’ te doorgronden, maakt de situatie nog uitzichtlozer, zeker nu zij de pleitbezorger is geworden van de grootste dwazen. Wanneer burgers kunnen beseffen dat zij niet meer zijn dan wat Jean Cocteau ‘spectateurs sans le savoir,’ noemde, dus net zo onmondig blijven als de eerste de beste slaaf in de geschiedenis, maar desondanks niet in beweging komen, dan is het alleen nog een kwestie van tijd voordat armageddon toeslaat. Als historica wees de inmiddels overleden Tuchman in haar werk op het feit dat ‘Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others — only to lose it over themselves.’ De belangrijkste kracht die de politieke waanzin bepaalt werd al door de Romeinse historicus Tacitus in de eerste eeuw van onze jaartelling omschreven als de ‘lust naar macht,’ de ‘meest schaamteloze van alle driften.’ Tuchman voegt hieraan toe dat:
A greater inducement to folly is excess of power. After he had conceived his wonderful vision of philosopher-kings in the Republic, Plato began to have doubts and reached the conclusion that laws were the only safeguard. Too much power given to anything, like too large a sail on a vessel, he believed, is dangerous; moderation is overthrown. Excess leads on the one hand to disorder and on the other to injustice. No soul of man is able to resist the temptation of arbitrary power, and there is 'No one who will not under such circumstances become filled with folly, the worst of diseases.' His kingdom will be undermined and 'all his power will vanish from him.' Such indeed was the fate that overtook the Renaissance Papacy to the point of half, if not all, of its power; and Louis XIV, although not until after his death; and — if we consider the American Presidency to confer excess of power — Lyndon Johnson, who was given to speaking of 'my air force' and thought his position entitled him to lie and deceive; and, most obviously, Richard Nixon.
Mental standstill or stagnation — the maintenance intact by rulers and policy-makers of the ideas they started with — is fertile ground for folly. Montezuma is a fatal and tragic example. Leaders in government, on the authority of Henry Kissinger, do not learn beyond the convictions they bring with them; these are ‘the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they are in office.’ Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced. Why did American experience of supporting the unpopular party in China (de tegenstanders van Mao. svh) supply no analogy to Vietnam? And the experience of Vietnam none for Iran (waar de VS de terreur van de Sjah steunde. svh)? And why has none of the above conveyed any inference (gevolgtrekking. svh) to preserve the present government of the United States from imbecility in El Salvador (waar de VS rechtse terroristen militair steunde. svh)? ‘If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!’ lamented Samuel Coleridge. 'But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us.' The image is beautiful but the message misleading, for the light on the waves we have passed through should enable us to infer the nature of the waves ahead.
In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify (verstarren. svh). This is the period when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and rethinking and a change of course are possible, but they are rare as rubies in a backyard. Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos; policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater the vestment and the more involved in it the sponsor’s ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement. In the third stage, pursuit of failure enlarges the damages until it causes the fall of Troy, the defection from the Papacy, the loss of a trans-Atlantic empire, the classic humiliation in Vietnam.
Ondanks de ‘klassieke vernedering’ van één van de machtigste strijdkrachten in de geschiedenis door het leger van een primitief geachte boerenbevolking in Vietnam, laten de NAVO-bondgenoten zich in de 21ste eeuw toch gewillig meeslepen door de geopolitieke belangen van een kleine elite in Washington en op Wall Street. Hoewel het nog steeds mogelijk is van koers te veranderen door middel van het ‘opnieuw onderzoeken en heroverwegen’ van de ‘principes en grenzen’ van de politiek, zien ook wij nu hoe het beleid in toenemende mate verstard, en hoe het Westen zijn eigen ondergang bewerkstelligt door de permanente staat van oorlog met de mens en de natuur. In het tijdperk van massavernietigingswapens is de waanzin aan de macht, en wordt wereldwijd meer gespendeerd aan het militair-industrieel complex dan ooit tevoren. Ondertussen slaagt de westerse elite er niet in groeiende macht van Rusland en China te stoppen. En juist daarom neemt ook de westerse krankzinnigheid toe. Men hoeft geen profeet te zijn om te beseffen dat deze ontwikkeling dreigt uit te lopen op genocidale conflicten. Ondanks het feit dat zowel de NAVO als de ‘corporate press’ zich dit niet lijken te realiseren, beseffen de Russische en Chinese leiders en de pers van die grootmachten maar al te goed wat de gevaren zijn. Maandag 10 juni 2019 berichtte Pepe Escobar, ‘a veteran Brazilian journalist,’ en ‘the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times’ het volgende:
Chinese President Xi Jinping was the guest of honor of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was Xi’s eighth trip to Russia since 2013, when he announced the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
First they met in Moscow, signing multiple deals. The most important is a bombshell: a commitment to develop bilateral trade and cross-border payments using the ruble and the yuan, bypassing the U.S. dollar.
Then Xi visited the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia’s premier business gathering, absolutely essential for anyone to understand the hyper-complex mechanisms inherent in the construction of Eurasian integration. I addressed some of SPIEF’s foremost discussions and round tables here.
In Moscow, Putin and Xi signed two joint statements — whose key concepts, crucially, are ‘comprehensive partnership,’ ‘strategic interaction’ and ‘global strategic stability.’
In his St. Petersburg speech, Xi outlined the ‘comprehensive strategic partnership.’ He stressed that China and Russia were both committed to green, low carbon sustainable development. He linked the expansion of BRI as ‘consistent with the UN agenda of sustainable development’ and praised the interconnection of BRI projects with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He emphasized how all that was consistent with Putin’s idea of a Great Eurasian Partnership. He praised the ‘synergetic effect’ of BRI linked to South-South cooperation.
And crucially, Xi stressed that China ‘won’t seek development to the expense of environment’; China ‘will implement the Paris climate agreement’; and China is ‘ready to share 5G technology with all partners’ on the way towards a pivotal change in the model of economic growth.
Als één van de best ingevoerde geopolitieke waarnemers in Azië schrijft Escobar dat de Amerikaanse:
Deep State will not flinch to unleash concentric havoc on the periphery of both Russia and China and then try to advance to destabilize the heartland from the inside. The Russia-China strategic partnership has generated a sore wound: it hurts — so bad — to be a Eurasia outsider.
De komende twee decennia zal de westerse neoliberale elite alles op alles zetten, inclusief oorlog, om haar hegemonie in stand te houden. Overigens, vergeefs. Geleidelijk maar onvermijdelijk loopt de al ruim vijf eeuwen durende hegemonie van de witte man ten einde. Het is zeer de vraag of de westerse elite de ineenstorting van de westerse superioriteit mentaal kan verwerken. De psychische schok veroorzaakt door de ineenstorting van alleen de Twin Towers en een klein deel van het Pentagon heeft al tot achttien jaar oorlog geleid, en het einde is nog lang niet in zicht. Maar wat betekent de val van wat mainstream-opiniemakers als de Pax Americana zien? Wat was er gebeurt als de nazi-top begin 1945 over nucleaire raketten had beschikt? Zal een agressieve kapitalistische cultuur die sinds 1776 maar liefst 226 van haar 243-jarig bestaan in oorlog is geweest, zich ineens vreedzaam neerleggen bij het feit dat zij haar macht aan het verliezen is? Alles is natuurlijk mogelijk, maar het is niet waarschijnlijk. Willen de andere 28 NAVO-leden het risico lopen te ontdekken dat de VS met maximaal geweld ten onder gaat en zij in deze maalstroom worden meegezogen? Zo ja, dan is de vraag waarom onder andere de EU-elite dit wil? Vanwaar deze doodsdrift? Is het feit dat ‘a total of about 123 million people died in all wars of the 20th Century’ onvoldoende om af te zien van de huidige oorlogsvoorbereidingen van de NAVO, die -- gezien de wapens en de slagkracht -- zullen eindigen in genocide? Of verkeert de lezer nog steeds in de veronderstelling dat in een ‘democratie’ de autoriteiten het goed voor hebben met degenen over wie zij de scepter zwaaien? Laat ik hem of haar uit de droom helpen. In zijn boek A History Of Bombing (2001) wijst de auteur en voormalig Zweeds cultureel attaché in China, Sven Lindqvist, op het feit dat zodra het erop- aankomt de machtigen niet voor het belang van de eigen bevolking kiezen. Lindqvist onthulde het volgende:
1918. Several months later when the war was over, a demand was made that the German pilots who had bombed London be brought to trial as war criminals. The British Air Ministry protested. Trials of that sort 'would be placing a noose round the necks of our airmen in future wars.' Since the aim of the British air attacks against German cities had been 'to weaken the morale of civilian inhabitants (and thereby their 'will to win') by persistent bomb attacks which would both destroy life (civilian and otherwise) and if possible originate a conflagration which should reduce to ashes the whole town,' the application of the Hague Convention in these cases would defeat the very purpose of bombardment.
This was top secret. Publicly the air force continued to say something quite different, just as the navy had done throughout the 19th century. This was the best tack to take, wrote the air staff in 1921: 'It may be thought better, in view of the allegations of the of the 'barbarity' of air attacks, to preserve appearances by formulating milder rules and by still nominally confining bombardment to targets which are strictly military in character... to avoid emphasizing the truth that air warfare has made such restrictions obsolete and impossible.'
Dit uitgangspunt geldt nog steeds. De officiële houding van de macht in zelfs een — formeel gesproken — 'democratie' is daarom zonder overdrijven extremistisch, te noemen, totalitair en zelfs terroristisch, tenminste als men de definitie hanteert van het Amerikaanse Leger Handboek, waarin terrorisme omschreven wordt als 'het bewust geplande gebruik van geweld of dreiging van geweld om doelen te bereiken die politiek, religieus, of ideologisch van aard zijn.' Aangezien het bombarderen van de burgerbevolking tot doel heeft, ik citeer de Britse autoriteiten:
to weaken the morale of civilian inhabitants (and thereby their 'will to win') by persistent bomb attacks which would both destroy life (civilian and otherwise) and if possible originate a conflagration which should reduce to ashes the whole town,
kunt u er blind van uitgaan dat de NAVO-strategie van 'Shock and Awe' bewust erop gericht is zo grootschalig mogelijk terrorisme toe te passen 'to weaken the morale of civilian inhabitants.' En wat de ene macht kan, kan de andere ook, met andere woorden: zowel de machtigen in een ‘democratie’ als die in een dictatuur offeren de eigen bevolking op zodra het gaat om een Pyrrhus-overwinning te boeken. Dit veelzeggende feit vormt de achtergrond van de steun van mijn mainstream-collega’s een geweld om politieke doelen te bereiken. Voor alle duidelijkheid stel ik hier dat elke oorlog bestaat uit een lange serie oorlogsmisdaden. Wie zou dit beter kunnen weten dat de voormalige generaal Smedley Darlington Butler, van:
1898 to 1931, a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the Corps’s highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine. During his years in the Corps he was sent to the Philippines (at the time of the uprising against the American occupation), China, France (during World War I), Mexico, Central America, and Haiti.
In light of this record Butler presumably shocked a good many people when in 1935 — as a second world war was looming — he wrote in the magazine Common Sense:
‘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 [corporatism]. 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.’
That same year he published a short book with the now-famous title War Is a Racket, for which he is best-known today. Butler opened the book with these words:
‘War is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.’
He followed this by noting, ‘For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.’
Maar zelfs deze waarheden uit de praktijk blijken onvoldoende te zijn om verblinding van de machthebbers en hun commerciële pers te genezen. Wie betaalt de prijs voor al dit geweld? In elk geval niet de politici die jongeren de dood insturen, evenmin de ‘vrije pers’ die doorgaans op opgewonden toon de militaire waanzin rechtvaardigt, en ook niet de financiële macht die de oorlogsleningen verstrekt, en hier een vermogen aan verdient. Maar wie dan wel?
Butler went on to describe who bears the costs of war — the men who die or return home with wrecked lives, and the taxpayers — and who profits — the companies that sell goods and services to the military. (The term ‘military-industrial complex’ would not gain prominence until 1961, when Dwight Eisenhower used it in his presidential farewell address. See Nick Turse’s book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.)
Writing in the mid-1930s, Butler foresaw a U.S. war with Japan to protect trade with China and investments in the Philippines, and declared that it would make no sense to the average American:
‘We would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war — a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit — fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?’
Noting that ‘until 1898 [and the Spanish-American War] we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America,’ he observed that after becoming an expansionist world power, the U.S. government’s debt swelled 25 times and ‘we forgot George Washington’s warning about “entangling alliances.” We went to war. We acquired outside territory.’
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people — who do not profit.
Butler detailed the huge profits of companies that sold goods to the government during past wars and interventions and the banks that made money handling the government’s bonds.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred percent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and ‘we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,’ but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed.
Ik citeer dit omdat het publiek weer rijp wordt gemaakt voor weer een nieuwe oorlog, ditmaal met Iran. Als het lukt zal de aanleiding van deze NAVO-agressie, net als in het geval tegen Syrië een false flag operation zijn. Donderdag 13 juni 2019 berichtte de NOS:
De Amerikaanse marine zegt twee olietankers in de Golf van Oman te assisteren die naar verluidt zijn aangevallen. Een woordvoerder van de Amerikaanse Vijfde Vloot, die in die regio actief is, zegt tegen persbureau Bloomberg dat de schepen beschadigd zijn. Eerder meldde een aan de Britse marine gelieerde organisatie al dat er een incident was, zonder daarbij een toelichting te geven.
The Huffington Post meldde op dezelfde dag:
The Secretary of State said the attacks are part of a 'campaign' of 'escalating tension' by Iran.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/iran-oil-tankers-gulf-of-oman-pompeo_n_5d029992e4b0304a120bffec
Al vóór het aantreden van president Obama trachtte de VS, mede onder druk van de invloedrijke Joods-Amerikaanse lobby, een gewapend conflict met Iran uit te lokken. Maar aangezien sinds de Neurenberger Processen het ontketenen van een oorlog verboden is, en de VS geen mandaat heeft van de Verenigde Naties om Iran aan te vallen, ziet de Amerikaanse elite zich genoodzaakt via een false flag operation de indruk te wekken dat het aangevallen wordt, hetgeen Washington in dat geval machtigt om zelf geweld te gebruiken.
Enkele voorbeelden van Amerikaanse false flag operations:
Last week, the United States, along with the United Kingdom and France, bombed Syrian government targets, ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack which was carried out one week before in the city of Douma.
The story we’re told is simple: Syrian President Bashar Assad is an evil maniac who uses poison gas on his citizens for the sheer entertainment value. As neocon think tank the Atlantic Council put it last week, when Assad gasses people, he is simply ‘indulging an addiction’ — an addiction which he seems to have only recently acquired, given the fact that before Syria’s war began, American journalists were busy praising the ‘educated’ and ‘informed’ Assad and marveling at the ‘phenomenal’ levels of peace and religious diversity within Syria.
In 2006 Diane Sawyer praised Assad during a trip to Syria for the ‘phenomenal’ levels of religious tolerance and peace in Syria. Funny how he turned into a monster at the exact moment Washington decided it was time for regime change.
Anyway, so intense is Assad’s newfound desire for watching Syrian babies foaming at the mouth, that he is willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by deciding to use these weapons despite knowing it would provoke worldwide outrage and potentially a major US military effort to oust him. So, that’s the story. Assad is a monster and the world must unite to stop him…
Perhaps the most famous of all examples was the heart-wrenching testimony to Congress of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only as Nayirah, which was used to sell the first Gulf War to the American people in October 1990. An emotional Nayirah told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators and leaving them on the floor to die.
What Americans did not know, was that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and she had been coached by the American PR firm Hill and Knowlton. But before the details of the stunt and false testimony became widely known, it had already been used to sell America’s war against Iraq in 1991.
Peter Hitchens:
Given the folly of the British government over Iraq and Libya, and its undoubted misleading of the public over Iraq, it is perfectly reasonable to suspect it of doing the same thing again. Some of us also do not forget the blatant lying over Suez, and indeed the Gulf of Tonkin.
Operation Northwoods
In the 1960s, American military leaders devised plans to bomb US cities and blame Cuban leader Fidel Castro in order to manufacture public and international support for a war.
The plan was codenamed Operation Northwoods and what it advocated was nothing short of horrendous. The American military suggested sinking boatloads of Cuban refugees, hijacking planes and bombing Miami. The goal was to convince Americans that Castro had unleashed a reign of terror upon them.
The top brass were even willing to cause US military casualties by blowing up an American boat in Guantanamo Bay and blaming Cuba. Why? Because, as they put it, ‘casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation’ and help manufacture support for war. The plans were quashed by President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated one year later, leading some to speculate on a link between those events.
Gulf of Tonkin
Top US officials also distorted the facts in the lead-up to the Vietnam War and the media dutifully reported the official narrative as absolute fact, helping launch perhaps the most disastrous war in America’s history.
On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack the USS ‘Maddox’ while it was on ‘routine patrol’ in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the US Navy reported a second ‘unprovoked’ attack on the ‘Maddox’ and the USS ‘Turner Joy’ — a second destroyer which had been sent in after the first attack. President Lyndon B. Johnson told the American people on TV that ‘repeated acts of violence’ against the US ships must be met with a strong response. Soon after Johnson appeared on TV, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which pre-approved any military action that he would take from that moment on.
The only problem was, there was no second attack on the US ships at all — and the allegation that the first attack had been ‘unprovoked’ was also a lie. In reality, the USS ‘Maddox’ had been gathering intelligence and providing it to South Vietnamese boats which were attacking North Vietnam. As for the second attack, the US boats had misinterpreted radio signals and radar images and spent two hours firing at nothing. Nonetheless, the ‘attack’ was used to convince the American people to support war.
In a memo of undisclosed date, the US National Security Council suggested the government should either buy or covertly produce Soviet aircraft and use them to launch fake attacks, providing pretext for war.
Soviet aircraft false flags
Recently declassified documents show yet more American false flag plotting, this time against the Soviet Union. A three-page memo, written by members of the National Security Council, suggested that the US government should acquire Soviet aircraft which would be used to stage attacks and provide the pretext for war.
Such aircraft, the memo said, ‘could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations to provide an excuse for US intervention.’
The government even considered producing the soviet planes domestically in a massive covert operation. They went so far as to acquire estimates from the Air Force on the cost and length of time such an operation would take.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Is there even any need to rehash the lies which were told in the lead-up to the Iraq war? The media here again swallowed the government’s lies, one by one — and 15 years later, the region is still suffering the consequences and very few lessons appear to have been learned.
These are not conspiracy theories. They are cold, hard evidence that the US has no qualms whatsoever about using false flag events and fake evidence to provide pretext for military action.
Continued lack of critical inquiry from the media, given the severe potential consequences of escalating the conflict in Syria, is tantamount to a crime.
Het is de moeite waard om de komende tijd in de gaten te houden of de westerse mainstream-media zich opnieuw laten gebruiken voor het legitimeren van een agressieoorlog, waarvoor in 1946 bijna de gehele nazi-top in Neurenberg tot de doodstraf werd veroordeeld.
Published on
Thursday, June 13, 2019
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'Deja Vu' of Iraq War Lies as Mike Pompeo Blames Iran for Tanker Attack Without Single Shred of Evidence
'Secretary Pompeo gives zero proof but insists that Iran is responsible for ship attacks in Gulf of Oman. Lies, lies, and more lies to make a case for war.'
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks from the State Department briefing room on June 13, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
In a press conference that immediately evoked memories of the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday claimed Iran was behind alleged attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman without presenting one single shred of evidence.
'This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high-degree of sophistication,' said Pompeo, who did not provide any details on the intelligence he cited.
After asserting Iran was also behind a litany of attacks prior to Thursday's tanker incident — once again without presenting any evidence — Pompeo said that,'Taken as a whole, these unprovoked attacks present a clear threat to international peace and security.'
Pompeo — who has a long history of making false claims about Iran — did not take any questions from reporters following his remarks, which were aired live on America's major television networks.
'Mike Pompeo has zero credibility when it comes to Iran,' Jon Rainwater, executive director of Peace Action, told Common Dreams. 'He's long been actively campaigning for a confrontation with Iran. He has a track record of pushing bogus theories with no evidence such as the idea that Iran collaborates closely with al-Qaeda.'
'Once again Pompeo is not waiting for the evidence to come in,' Rainwater said, 'he is picking facts to suit his campaign for confrontation with Iran.' [...]
In a column following Pompeo's speech, Esquire's Charles Pierce wrote that he is 'not buying this in the least.'
'I remember the Iraq lies,' Pierce wrote. 'I know this administration is truthless from top to bottom and all the way out both sides. I don't trust the Saudi government as far as I can throw a bone saw. And this president feels very much like he's being run to ground at the moment and needs a distraction.'
'And his Secretary of State is a third-rate congresscritter from Kansas who once advised American soldiers to disobey lawful orders, and who's fighting way above his weight class,' added Pierce. 'Also, too, John Bolton is eight kinds of maniac.'
On Twitter, Trita Parsi — founder of the National Iranian American Council — echoed Pierce, writing: 'A serial liar is president. A warmonger and a serial fabricator who helped get us into the disastrous Iraq war and who has sabotaged numerous attempts at diplomacy is the [national security] advisor.'
'But go ahead, media, treat Pompeo's accusations as "evidence"' Parsi added.
As Common Dreams reported earlier, critics warned that the timing and target of the tanker attacks on Thursday suggests they could have been a deliberate effort to 'maneuver the U.S. into a war' with Iran.
Iranian officials denied any responsibility for the attacks.
In a tweet following the explosions in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said, 'Suspicious doesn't begin to describe what likely transpired this morning.'
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