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By John Chuckman

In each case, there appears to be only one explanation consistent with known facts

I wrote previously of a second great mystery surrounding the disappearance over the Indian Ocean of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and that second great mystery is the United States’ utter silence surrounding its disappearance, despite its being the very nation able to offer the best information from the world’s most sophisticated radars and spy satellites. There can be no question that the United States gathered data on that catastrophe because its military and intelligence surveillance is unblinking. The fact that we did not hear a word from America, and still do not, can only mean its government wants the event, like the airplane itself, to sink, in this case into public forgetfulness.
Now we have a second Malaysian Airliner destroyed (its national origin is presumably sheer coincidence), Flight MH17, this time at a location from which the wreckage was recoverable. The American press immediately jumped to the conclusion that a Russian high-altitude anti-aircraft missile called BUK was responsible, which surely reflected nothing more than suggestive whispers from American intelligence since no evidence was offered. The altitude of the plane before it was destroyed excluded other ground-based missiles.

But Russia had no possible motive for attacking the airliner, and, indeed, the unfortunate event has only served as fodder for a Western press eager to declare Russia a new threat to the world. The Russian-speakers of eastern Ukraine who broke away from that country’s new American-installed government simply do not have this missile in their arsenal, but Ukraine’s government definitely does. These basic facts demonstrate the inappropriateness of the American press’s early suggestions, but we know that in the disinformation business the first one out with even a remotely plausible story repeated loudly enough leaves a lasting impression, as witness the sad fact that polls show a sizeable proportion of Americans yet believe Saddam Hussein hid terrible weapons.

Despite the wreck’s physical accessibility, there were substantial delays getting investigators to it as Ukraine’s new government pressed attacks against its own eastern, Russian-speaking population. We cannot know, but the long delay may well have permitted sanitizing of the crash site. When able to access the site, experts found the flight recorders intact, but, to this writing, nothing from those recorders has been made public. I don’t recall another case of a major crash when at least some information from an intact flight recorder was not made public quickly. After all, the principle behind such data is to discover problems for civilian aviation, enabling others to avoid them. The data, under international civil aviation agreements, is not anyone’s private property, it is to be shared with all in a timely fashion.

But we have heard nothing except a promise that the investigation’s findings will eventually be made public. With such a suspicious delay, the possibility of tampering or destruction of data cannot be ruled out. And here, too, we have silence from the United States which would have the best supplementary data in the form of radar tracks and satellite images on a European event not far from Russia’s border, an area of intense interest to America. Why don’t they produce them? Moreover, despite repeated requests from Russia and others, Ukraine’s new government has released no data of its own, things we know it must have, such as tower-to-pilot recordings. Clearly, information is being deliberately suppressed, and when we hear in our press and from American-influenced governments about Russia’s underhandedness, it is only a loud diversion from that disturbing fundamental fact.

Do you see the television networks and newspapers in the United States calling for the immediate release of information? No, instead you see the suggestion, sometimes far more than a suggestion, that Russia is responsible for destroying the airliner, and this accusation is made with no evidence and without shame.
You might say we have a conspiracy of silence around an event of international importance. But why should that be so? Why is a country whose politicians regularly make speeches praising themselves about openness, democratic values, and fairness, found withholding critical information in two catastrophes of international importance?
In the first case over the Indian Ocean, it is almost certainly because the United States itself shot down the airliner, either mistakenly or deliberately as it may have been regarded as a potential threat to the secret base at Diego Garcia. Neither of these possibilities would be new experiences for America’s military which, over the years, has been involved in destroying at least half a dozen civilian airliners (see my essay with its footnotes, “The Second Mystery Around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370” found at Chuckman’s Words on WordPress).

In the case of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, destroyed over Ukraine, I believe the United States is hiding the fact that the Ukrainian armed forces shot it down. Why would the United States do this? We know, there being a great deal of good information in the public record, that the United States has made a huge investment in Ukraine over the past few years trying to destabilize an elected government, one friendly to Russia, and it succeeded when that government fled from a coup. Imagine America’s embarrassment at the world’s seeing its new proxy government, its supposed champion of eastern democracy, first misdirecting a civilian airliner, Flight MH17 having inexplicably been sent off course over a war zone, and then shooting it down with a fighter. Russian data, released to the public, shows a Ukrainian fighter was near the airliner, and an early photo of the wreckage leaked to the world clearly shows a large fuselage panel from the pilot’s cabin riddled with holes as by heavy caliber ammunition from a fighter’s canon.

That embarrassment would come on top of a series of embarrassments America’s meddling in Ukraine’s affairs has produced: over the general revolt of Russian-speaking Ukrainians against a new government openly unfriendly to their interests; over revelations that Nazi-like groups – and Ukraine has a number of them, notably the Right Sector – committed the sniping murders of hundreds of civilians from rooftops in Kiev in support of the original coup; over Ukraine’s pathetic military failures on the ground with its soldiers displaying poor morale and worse leadership; over the world’s seeing Ukraine bombing and rocketing its own citizens; over the failure of various cheap ruses such as using repainted surplus Hungarian T-72 tanks, fit only for scrap, to pass as invading Russian armor (while this ruse failed, it did for a while take in a lot of Western journalists, surely a reflection on the depth of their investigations); and, perhaps, most grating of all for the engineers of the whole murderous and destructive scheme, some deft statesmanship by Vladimir Putin snatched from their grasp important expected fruits of the enterprise.

In a number of instances the Ukrainian armed forces have demonstrated embarrassing incompetence, and reading between the lines of screaming propaganda and demands for this or that, appear actually to be losing the highly unequal fight. They do not fight with motivation for their new American-installed government, with its neo-Nazi auxiliaries, and against fellow citizens. I believe the shooting down of the airliner was one of many blunders, and the recordings from the black boxes, if revealed without doctoring, would unambiguously prove this to be the case. As would Ukraine’s flight controller recordings, still held secret.

The United States, despite embarrassments and setbacks, has worked to make other gains out of its dirty work in Ukraine. It has been able to use almost comical assertions of a new Russian threat to strengthen its hold on NATO, an organization which has been obsolete for years and which serves only to thinly disguise American hegemony in Europe. Even now it pushes members for increased military spending to a minimum of two percent of GDP as the admission price for playing with the big boys in NATO. For America, the great appeal of increased expenditures would be a further subsidizing of its costly presence in Europe. NATO is held together by America’s financial, economic, and diplomatic power, still great despite that country’s having entered its relative decline in world influence. It can still grant rich favors and contracts or it can work away quietly against the interests of a dissenting state. A Europe with the many economic problems we see today is naturally fearful of summoning America’s wrath
Altogether, it’s a vast and shameful enterprise the United States has launched, and while most of its unpleasant consequences have yet to be seen, it has certainly brought war and grief to a previously peaceful region. But the stark truth is that, in recent years, bringing war and grief seems to be a core mission of American foreign affairs.

John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. John regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder of something like 3 million Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to embrace the wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of calling “the peaceable kingdom.” He has been translated into at least ten languages and is regularly translated into Italian and Spanish. Several of his essays have been published in book collections, including two college texts. His first book was published, The Decline of the American Empire and the Rise of China as a Global Power, by Constable and Robinson, Lo

05 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ghali Hassan

It is skinning to watch U.S. President Barack Obama calling on Iraq to form an “inclusive” government. Iraq communities lived side by side for centuries and in some cases for millennia. The U.S. planted the seed of division and violence in Iraq. During the Occupation, the U.S. has carried out ethnic and religious cleansing in major Iraqi cities, particularly around the capital Baghdad, to encourage division and animosity among the Iraqi population. It is the U.S. that continues to fuel the violence to this day, financing, training, and arming terrorists and extremist groups. The aim is to use proxy forces to create chaos, control the region, and, at the same time, demonise Muslims and Islam.

Prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion and murderous occupation of Iraq, terrorism and extremism had zero presence in Iraq. The rise of terrorism in the region is the direct result of the U.S. war of aggression and military presence in Iraq. We all know the U.S. criminal legacy in Iraq. The genocidal invasion and preceding sanctions – without any justification – killed three million innocent Iraqis, including more than half a million children, and totally destroyed a relatively advanced developing country whose people were largely prosperous. Close to five million Iraqis were displaced by the invasion out of a population of 31 million, and five million Iraqi children became orphans. Women suffered the greatest losses in education, professions, child care, nutrition, and safety. More than one-fourth of Iraq’s population died, became disabled, or fled the country as refugees. As a result of U.S. terror on Iraq since the early 1990s, Iraqi culture and a generation of Iraqis have been destroyed in a premeditated barbaric violence. In addition, the U.S. brought into Iraq a culture of corruption and decadence unheard of in the long history of Iraq. Despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sadly, not a single individual responsible for the lies and war that destroyed Iraq and killed millions of Iraqis has been held accountable or indicted for mass murder and societal destruction. As someone who has followed events in Iraq very closely for years, I do not buy into Western “moral responsibility” and “humanitarian aid”. It is outright criminal and barbaric what Western governments, led by the U.S., have inflicted on the people of Iraq. It is morally abhorrent to support any Western leader who uses the word “humanitarian” to serve Western imperialist interests.

Iraqi property, including billions of dollars in gold reserves and priceless treasures of Iraq antiquity, were looted and taken out of the country. On Israel’s behalf, the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army and police, rending Iraq defenceless and ruled by U.S.-created militias. Iraq’s military hardware, including Iraq’s war planes, were shipped to Israel and Jordan during the U.S. occupation. The real aim of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the destruction of Iraq on behalf of the fascist state of Israel. After withdrawing its troops from Iraq, the U.S. left the Iraqi army without a single fixed-wing war plane and most of Iraq’s weapons are AK47 rifles and light arms bought from the Ukraine. To counter the invasion and terror attacks by ISIS (“Islamic State” [IS] in Iraq and Syria, ISIS) mercenary forces, Iraq has made an urgent request of Russia for the supply of defensive weapons.

In 2011, the U.S. failed to establish a foothold in Iraq after the Iraqi Parliament rejected the U.S. demand to enter into the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq that will turn Iraq into a permanent colonial dictatorship. The U.S. reluctantly withdrew from Iraq, accusing the government of Nuri al-Maliki of being not sufficiently pro-American because of al-Maliki’s policy of rapprochement between Iraq and Iran. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the U.S. resorted to fomenting violence and division among Iraqis. In addition to the political chaos that was created by the U.S. and its allies, the Iraqi army remains weak and unable to defend Iraq. A failed state, engulfed in violence, is the condition that the U.S. has created in order to control Iraq and to serve U.S.-Israel interests. The U.S. capitalised on the chaos it has created by backing and arming terrorist groups, including ISIS terrorists, in order to replace al-Maliki with a more pro-American stooge.

ISIS is not an “Islamic ‘Sunni’” force, as Western politicians and the corporate media falsely portray it. ISIS is not just a by-product of U.S.-Israel terror and Zionist policies in the region; ISIS is a U.S.-Israel product, a proxy terrorist force of foreign mercenaries. In fact, the name “Islamic State” (IS) is the brainchild of the U.S. CIA to blacken and denigrate the name of Islam. Since 2011, the U.S., Israel, France, UK, and Turkey have openly financed, trained, and armed ISIS terrorists against the Syrian people and the Syrian Government. Indeed, the U.S. has been open and has acknowledged its complicity in the ongoing terror in the Middle East. In June 2014, the Obama administration asked Congress to authorize $500 million to provide U.S. military training and arms to “moderate Syrian rebels”, including ISIS, or IS. Across the Atlantic, the British Government of David Cameron drew up plans (drawn by the then most senior UK military officer, General Sir David Richards) to train and equip a 100,000-strong ISIS army in an effort to topple the legitimate Syrian government. It is evident that the U.S. and Britain are directly involved in the terrorist attacks not only on Syria but also on Iraq. In addition, Western governments, led by the U.S., Britain, and France have provided ISIS with unhindered access to social media to spread its violent propaganda.

Furthermore, according to the German weekly Der Spiegel , ISIS “rebels” are trained in secret bases in Jordan and Turkey by U.S. and Israeli Special Forces. They are financed by the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. Moreover, in May 2013 the European Union (EU) decided to lift previously imposed sanctions on the import of Syrian oil, not because the EU was concerned about the plight of the Syrian people, but because the EU intended to allow the flow of oil from areas (North-East Syria) controlled by ISIS terrorists and other anti-government “rebels” (“EU decision to lift Syrian oil sanctions to boost Jihadist groups”, The Guardian , 19/05/2013).

Furthermore, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky told NBC News’s ‘Meet the Press ‘ that the U.S. government has been funding ISIS allies and supporting the terrorist group in Syria. “They’re emboldened because we’ve been supporting them … It could be Assad [who could have] wiped these people out months ago … I personally believe that this group would not be in Iraq and would not be as powerful had we not been supplying their allies in the war”, he said. President Vladimir Putin of Russia was a rare exception when he categorically opposed any Western military attack on Syria to topple the Syrian Government.

A document released by Edward Snowden, the former NSA whistle-blower, revealed that ISIS was formed by the U.S., UK, and Israeli intelligence apparatus as part of a strategy known as the “hornet’s nest”, in order to attract fundamentalists from around the world to Syria. By turning against ISIS, the U.S. and its allies aimed at invading Syria, as recently announced by General Martin E. Dempsey, U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Dempsey said: “This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated.” He made it clear that defeating ISIS terrorist can only be possible by invading Syria. “Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no,” Dempsey said. In other words, to defeat ISIS, the U.S. has to invade Syria, repeating the same U.S. aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The ongoing Western arms deliveries to the Kurds in northern Iraq – with the deliberate intention to bypass the central government in Baghdad and without explicit UN resolution – is designed to encourage division and ultimately secession. The Kurds, the faction led by U.S. stooge , Ma’asoud al-Barzani, are not fighting ISIS; they are in cohort with ISIS, the U.S., and Israel. In fact, ISIS terror allows al-Barzani to enlarge the area he controls, including the northern oil fields.

If President Obama is serious about defeating ISIS, he had an opportunity before they crossed from Syria into Iraq. To the contrary, the U.S. and its allies provided heavy weapons and facilitated the ISIS march into Iraq. The U.S. warned Syria against attacking the terrorists. It was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq by U.S. proxy terrorists.

It is laughable that ISIS alone, which is waging war on two states (Syria and Iraq), has the military capability to march into Iraq in broad daylight without the training and heavy weapons provided by the U.S. and U.S. allies. The U.S.-Israel strategy is to foment fratricidal violence among Muslims, and at the same time demonise Islam and Muslims in the West by blaming the violence on Muslims themselves. Hence, the violence in Syria and Iraq is U.S.-Israel fomented political violence and is not “sectarian” violence. Sectarianism is a myth created and nurtured by Zionists and U.S. imperialists.

It is the same U.S. strategy that was used in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the former Soviet Union troops there. Of course, terrorist forces transform and change their names. For example, al-Qaeda has been transformed into ISIL, ISIS and now IS. Hence, IS or ISIS is the new al-Qaeda, the pretext to justify aggression abroad and repressive measures at home. In a word, ISIS is the creation of the U.S. and it allies, Israel and Turkey in particular. ISIS main functions are: firstly, to be used as a tool to blackmail and intimidate the Iraqi and Syrian governments – indeed, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was forced to resign; secondly, ISIS criminal nature is used to demonise Islam and dehumanise Muslims in the West and around the world. ISIS is serving U.S.-Israel Zionist interests.

The U.S. and its allies had the opportunity to stop ISIS before they moved from Syria to Iraq. In fact, the U.S. facilitated ISIS invasion of Iraq. President Obama has warned and threatened the Syrian government if Syrian forces attacked ISIS. It is not a coincidence that ISIS declared the end of the Sykes-Picot agreement , which divided the region between British and French interests at the end of World War I at the same time Israeli fascist PM Benjamin Netanyahu annexed Palestinian land in the Jordan valley. Furthermore, ISIS mercenary forces march into Iraq was timed with Israel’s terror attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza and aimed at diverting public attention away from Israel’s war crimes.

Despite concerted efforts by Western politicians and the media to dissociate these terrorist forces from the West, overwhelming evidence shows these terrorist forces that are terrorising the people of Syria and the people of Iraq are Western-sponsored terrorist forces. They are disguised as “Islamic militants”, but have nothing to do with Islam and their criminal actions are anti-Islamic. They are violating all Islamic principles and Islamic laws. It is misleading – as some despicable journalists have alleged – to even hint that Muslims have failed to speak out against ISIS. Muslims around the world have condemned ISIS terrorists in the strongest terms.

ISIS violent acts have been exploited by Western media to spread anti-Muslim propaganda and justify the next all-out war on Muslim nations, like Syria and Iraq. As Tony Cartalucci writes in New Eastern Outlook : “The alleged killing of the journalist James W. Foley has created outrage amongst public opinion. It generated an illusion of confrontation between ISIS and the U.S., and further vilifies ISIS. The media’s narrative is that ISIS stands apart from other terrorist groups in Syria, and with that narrative, the West is simultaneously bolstering ISIS in Syria under the guise of arming and aiding ‘moderates’, while it conducts token airstrikes on ISIS in Iraq”. The U.S. had several opportunities to save the lives of Foley and Steve Sotloff, but it refused because it doesn’t serve U.S. interests. Hence, the U.S. is culpable in their deaths. Foley and Sotloff’s killings (although videos of their executions show they were staged) showed us the criminal nature of Western-sponsored terrorists.

Here in Australia, the hypocrisy of the neo-fascist Liberal government has reached a new level of moral bankruptcy. Prime Minister Tony Abbot is forming a nuclear alliance with Asia’s two most openly fascist leaders, India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Shinzo Abe. A militarily stronger and offensive Australia is good for the U.S. The Australian political and military establishments are bragging about joining President Obama’s “humanitarian war” on Iraq and possibly Syria. On 28 August 2014, Tony Abbotts unashamedly told Parliament, “that no one in this Parliament I am sure, no human being anywhere, would wish to stand by and watch the preventable slaughter of innocent people.” We do know that Mr Abbott and his neo-fascist Liberals gang had just stood by and watched the slaughter (genocide) of innocent Palestinian women and children by the Israeli fascist regime. Keeping with Australian Anglo-Saxon traditions, Australia remains the unconditional supporter of the Israeli fascist regime, even when it massacred innocent Palestinian women and children in broad daylight.

Furthermore, since 2011, Australia has been at the forefront, supporting the anti-Syrian government “rebels”, including ISIS, in their terror against the Syrian people. Syrian diplomats in Canberra were expelled and the government of Syria has been accused of committing war crimes despite overwhelming evidence that ISIS continue to commit heinous war crimes.

Just as ISIS forces began attacking Iraq, the Australian neo-fascist Liberal government of Tony Abbott began a campaign of vilifying and demonising Muslim Australians. The racist campaign is designed as a “desperate diversion” to divert the Australian public from serious economic issues and from rampant government corruption and incompetency to govern the country. The government fabricated a “threat to Australia’s security”, allegedly posed by Muslim Australians who travel to the Middle East, to justify new draconian laws targeting the Australian Muslim Community and, in the process, turning Australia into a fascist police state. Muslim and Arab Australians who travel to the Middle East to visit their relatives and friends will be labelled “terrorists” and accused of endangering “Australian security”. They risk prosecution and even jail if they return to Australia.

Indeed, several innocent Muslim Australians have been detained at Australian airports in the past few months and prevented from leaving the country because of their Middle Eastern backgrounds.

Yet the Abbott government and ASIO have nothing to say about hundreds of Australian Jews (“dual citizens”) who join the Israeli army and participate in Israel’s massacres of innocent Palestinian women and children. They return to Australia as heroes, wandering the streets of Melbourne and Sydney with Palestinian blood on their hands. They do not risk arrest for war crimes or being called terrorists. The Australian media and Australia’s despicable journalists and commentators treat these war criminals with deafening silence.

In addition to the 43 laws that are already in place, the new repressive anti-Muslim laws have absolutely nothing to do with national security. Rather, the new laws (like the old ones) are aimed at criminalising Muslim and Arab Australians, restricting the right of all Australians to live in a free country and intensifying police state measures. As George Williams, a professor of law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney observed, that the new anti–terrorism laws “would extend the powers of government at the expense of [Australian] citizens is unexpected and quite shocking.” Professor George added that, “allowing innocent Australians to be detained in secret and subjected to coercive questioning by ASIO [the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] is more suited to dictatorship regimes” ( SMH , 11 August 2014). Moreover, the Abbott government is introducing legislation to stop welfare payments for Muslim Australians who the government and its security agencies deemed pose a ”serious threat to Australia’s national security”. It is important to remember that, these draconian laws apply to Muslim Australians only – the label of “terrorist” is only applied to Muslim and Arab Australians. White Australians (Christians or Jews) who commit acts of terrorism are labelled as “psychopaths” or “loners”, not terrorists. In other words, only Muslim Australians are singled out.

Echoing the war criminal George W. Bush’s racist and divisive call of “you are either with us or against us”, Tony Abbott is calling on Muslim Australians to join his fascist-Liberal “team Australia” or else. He is telling Muslim Australians, “You are all guilty until proven innocent”. On 21 August 2014, Mr Abbott, echoing another war criminal, Tony Blair, told an audience in Adelaide, “Extremism is the enemy, not Islam”. We all know that “extremism” is a catch-all word for all Muslims. According to Abbott’s sick mind, Muslim Australians who refuse to join Abbott’s “team” will be considered “extremists”. Taking his cue from war criminals like Tony Blair and Dick Cheney, one of Abbott’s advisors, former Australian army chief Peter Leahy – retired warmongers have become a fixture on Australian TV screens – was more frank when he said: “We will fight Islam for 100 years”. It is difficult to discern the reasons behind Australian fascist-Liberal hatred for Muslims and Islam. The Muslim Community is singled out by the neo-fascist Liberals and their supporters because it is a small and divided Community that lacks a power base in Australia or outside Australia. It is also easy to single out the Muslim Community because of years of demonization and vilification by politicians and the Australian racist media. The fears that Muslim Australians of Middle Eastern backgrounds could pose a threat in Australia are absurd and racist. It is a hysteria created by politicians and the media to justify repressive measures.

There has been no act of terrorism committed in Australia by Muslim Australians. People are targeted because of their Islamic/Arabic names and their religious beliefs. Innocent Muslim Australians are framed by ASIO and the police in so-called “Sting Operations”, prosecuted and imprisoned on fabricated charges for their opinions. The Australian Government has co-opted obscure academics, the so-called “counter-terrorism experts” (aka anti-Muslim bigots), to support its racist laws and anti-Muslim propaganda. Furthermore, to get some legitimacy to enact these laws, the Abbott Government undermined Muslim unity by bribing and coercing some of the despicable self-appointed “community leaders” to back the new laws. The laws and the language used by Tony Abbott and his neo-fascist Liberals aimed at spreading the plague of Islamophobia across the country.

ISIS is not an indigenous Islamic resistant movement; it is a U.S.-sponsored proxy terrorist force of foreign mercenaries. By creating and demonising ISIS, the West is demonising Muslims and Islam to justify a war of terror and to advance its imperialist-Zionist agenda, regardless of the loss of innocent human lives and the criminal tragedies it creates.

Only when the U.S. and its allies understand the principles of sovereignty and stop interfering violently in the affairs of other nations will they be able to claim to defend world peace. Only when the U.S. and its allies stop financing, training, and arming terrorists will they be able to claim to have defeated terrorism.

Ghali Hassan is an independent researcher and writer living in Australia.

08 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ramzy Baroud

In the rush to analyze the outcome of Israel’s 51-day war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, some may have neglected an important factor: this was not a war by traditional definitions of warfare, thus the conventional analyses of victory and defeat is simply not applicable.

That being the case, how can we explain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s triumphant statement on 28 August, and the massive celebrations on the streets of Gaza regarding the resistance ‘victory’ over Israel? To be truly fathomed, they must be understood in context.

Soon after the ceasefire declaration on 26 August, ending Israel’s most destructive war on Gaza yet, Netanyahu seemed to have disappeared from the scene. Some Israeli media began predicting the end of his political reign. Although this notion was a bit hasty, one can understand why. Much of the man’s political career was predicated on his ‘anti-terror’ stance and Israeli security agenda.

He served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, with the decided aim of defeating the Oslo ‘peace process.’ He argued it compromised Israel’s security. Then as a finance minister in Sharon’s government (2003-05), he was troubled by Ariel Sharon’s intentions regarding re-deploying out of Gaza. In fact, it was the Gaza ‘disengagement plan’ that ended the Netanyahu-Sharon alliance.

It took Netanyahu a few years to fight his way back from the seeming oblivion in Israel’s complicated political landscape. He fought a grueling political battle, but managed to redeem only some of the rightwing Likud party’s past glory through fractious alliances. He served as prime minister from 2009-2013, and for a third term (a rarity in Israeli history) from 2013 to the present.

Not only was Netanyahu the king of Israel, but its kingmaker as well. He did keep his friends close and enemies closer, and cleverly balanced out seemingly impossible coalition odds. He succeeded, not simply because he is a shrewd politician, but also because he managed to unite Israel around one goal: security. This he did by fighting “Palestinian terror,” a reference to various Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, and building Israeli defenses. He had such command over that political discourse that no one came even close , surly not the newcomer centralist politician Yair Lapid, or even rightwing and far-right hawks Avigdor Liberman and Neftali Bennet.

But then, Gaza happened, a war that could possibly become Netanyahu’s biggest miscalculation , and perhaps the reason for his downfall. Aside from the collapse in his approval ratings , down from 82% on 23 July, to less than 38% shortly after the ceasefire announcement, the man’s own language in his post-ceasefire press conference is telling enough.

He seemed desperate and defensive, arguing that Hamas failed to achieve its war objective, although it was Israel, not Hamas, that instigated the war with a list of objectives – none of which were achieved anyway. Hamas responded by mocking his statement as the group didn’t start the war, nor had any demands then, a group official told Al Jazeera. The demands were made in the subsequent ceasefire talks in Egypt, and some of them were in fact achieved.

Netanyahu is twisting language and stretching the truth in a despondent attempt to score a political victory, or to simply save face. But few are convinced.

Writing in Foreign Policy on 20 July 20 , Ariel Ilan Roth came to an early conclusion about the Gaza war, which has proven to be only partly true. “No matter how and when the conflict between Hamas and Israel ends, two things are certain. The first is that Israel will be able to claim a tactical victory. The second is that it will have suffered a strategic defeat.”

Wrong. Even the tactical victory was denied this time around, unlike previous wars, most notably the so-called Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). The Gaza resistance must have learned from its past mistakes, managing to withstand a 51-day war with a destructive outcome unprecedented in all past Gaza conflicts. When the Egypt-mediated ceasefire was announced, every Israeli soldier was pushed behind Gaza’s borders.

Almost immediately after the agreement, a Hamas official from Gaza read a statement in which he called on Israelis living in the many evacuated border towns to return to their homes, in a statement of defiance also unprecedented. Shortly after, hundreds of fighters representing all factions, Fatah included, stood at the ruins of the Shejaiya, neighbourhood in Gaza city. “There is no room amongst us for that defeated, weak Arab,” the military leader of the Gaza resistance Abu Ubaydah declared, as throngs of people showered the fighters with kisses.

He too declared some kind of victory. But is his “victory” statement any different from that of Netanyahu’s?

“Israel has a history of claiming victory when in fact it has suffered defeat; the October 1973 war is the best example,” wrote Roth in Foreign Policy. The difference back then is that many in Israel accepted false victories. This time around they refuse to do so, as various opinion polls by Haaretz, Channel 2 and others are showing. Furthermore, the chasm in Israel’s political class is wider than it has been in many years.

Irrespective of this, ‘victory’ of the resistance cannot be understood within the same context of Israel’s own definition of victory, or false victory. Surely the resistance “was able to establish deterrence, displaying an incredible level of resilience and strength, even when equipped with primitive weapons,” as argued by Samah Sabawi . The very idea that powerful Israel, and the likes of Netanyahu, can use Palestinians as a testing ground for weapons or to enhance approval ratings seems to be over. The Sharon old wisdom that the Arabs and Palestinians “must be hit hard” and “must be beaten,” as a precondition for calm, or peace, was challenged like never before in the history of Arab-Israeli wars.

Gaza’s ceasefire “celebrations” were not the kind of celebrations that would follow a football match win. To comprehend it as an expression of mere joy is a mistake, and reflects a lack of understanding of Gaza society. It was more of a collective statement by people who lost 2,143 people, mostly civilians, and have over 11,000 wounded and maimed to care for. Let alone the total or partial destruction of 18,000 homes, 75 schools, many hospitals, mosques, and hundreds of factories and shops.

No, it was not a statement of defiance in the symbolic sense either. It was a message to Israel that the resistance has matured and that Israel’s complete dominance over when wars start and how they end is over.

Only the future could prove how accurate such an assessment is and how consequential it will be for the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are under military occupation. Interestingly, “liberating Jerusalem,” was in fact a dominant theme among jubilant Palestinians in Gaza. Another theme was the insistence of national unity among all Palestinians. After all, this was the real reason why Netanyahu had launched his war on Gaza in the first place.

Resistance discourse, al-Muqawama , is now the most dominant in Palestine, and it goes beyond factional divides, or the tired discussion about useless ‘peace talks’ that garnered nothing for Palestinians but territorial loss, political division and much humiliation. That sentiment is already reverberating in the West Bank. But how it will be translated in the future is yet to be seen, considering the fact that the Palestinian Authority (PA) there is weak in its dealings with Israel, and very intolerant of any political dissent.

Israeli pressure on PA President Mahmoud Abbas will continue. In his first press conference after the ceasefire Netanyahu repeated the same ultimatum. Abbas “needs to choose what side he is on,” he said.

After failing to end the Gaza resistance, Netanyahu is left with nothing other than pressuring Abbas, 79, whose choice, after Gaza’s war, means so little to begin with.

Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter.

04 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

By Peter Haisenko

Peter Haisenko was a pilot for Lufthansa for 30 years. In the article below he explains his conclusion that the Malaysian airliner downed in Ukraine was hit first by an air-to-air missile from a Ukrainian fighter jet and then by machine gun fire. As Ukrainian air control has refused to release its communications with the airliner and Washington refuses to release its satellite photos, we have to form a judgment based on experience and available evidence. This judgment is superior to unsupported propagandistic claims. The withholding of pertinent information suggests that Washington and/or Kiev are responsible for the downed airliner.

Seven weeks have passed since the downing of MH 017 and we have still not been provided with official investigation results. This is an extraordinary circumstance, but ultimately not surprising. Just a few days after the crash of the airliner a short message was published that in this case the debris of the wreck will not be collected to be put together like a puzzle. However, this would have been the normal procedure if there were serious interest to determine the cause of the accident objectively.

When an airplane crashes, within 24 hours there are usually legions of experts at the scene who register everything in detail and start collecting the debris. First of all experts of the plane manufacturer are sent to the scene — in this case Boeing – followed by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), and by specialists and experts from the countries concerned. In addition to the flight recorder, these specialists are responsible for an examination of the debris. Normally, the airplane is reconstructed from the pieces in order to determine the cause of the crash.

Yet in the case of MH 017 normal procedures were not followed. No representatives from Boeing appeared on the site. The airliner was not pieced together in order to determine the cause of its destruction. The information in the black boxes has not been revealed. Therefore, we have to arrive at a conclusion based on experience and the information available.

Investigation is further impeded by the establishment in the media of the Western propaganda line that Russia and the separatists are responsible. This “guilt” has been established by insinuation and repetition of charges unsupported by any evidence. Those who challenge the “official” story that the airliner was destroyed by a missile fired from the ground by separatists are said to be “conspiracy theorists.” In other words, those with experience are discredited before they speak.

The West has control of the investigation and apparently has decided not to investigate. However, we do have two critical pieces of information. One is the report of the Canadian representative of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that reports bullet holes in the cockpit section of the airliner. Photos are available that clearly show bullet holes in the pattern of machine gun fire on both sides of the airliner’s cockpit. The other piece of information comes from a report in the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times that intelligence analysts have concluded that one of the airliner’s engines was hit by a heat-seeking air-to-air missile. We know that there were Ukrainian jets armed with such weapons close to the airliner at the time that it crashed. http://www.nst.com.my/node/20925&nbsp

These two pieces of information support my conclusion of what happened based on my experience and my research:

A warplane fired an air-to-air missile which hit the right engine of MH 017. In the cockpit of the MH 017 only a violent shock could be perceived, along with the fire alarm and the failure notice of engine number two. Pilots would be aware of engine failure, not of a missile strike. The missile hit might have caused a strong yawning moment and an immediate drop in speed. The pilots instantly had to initiate emergency procedures for this emergency, and were concentrated on it with full attention.

According to procedural rule, the pilots had to turn the engine off, isolate it, reduce speed and altitude. Afterwards they had to select and head for an emergency landing place and inform the ground control about their emergency situation as soon as possible. A captain in an emergency situation may do everything to save his plane, his own life and the lives of his passengers.

He has the so-called “emergency authority” that allows actions outside of any provision. The nearest major airport for the pilots of MH 017 for an emergency landing was probably Kiev. Rostov in Russia was closer, but in order to go to Rostov the pilots would have had to cope with a change of the control center and a border crossing, which would have meant extra stress.

MH 017 had therefore initiated a curve back towards Kiev in connection with a descent. Now just imagine, that MH 017 would have landed in Kiev. In Kiev it could not have been disguised that the airliner had been hit by an air-to-air missile. The emergency landing procedure had to be prevented – no matter on what airport. This was achieved by machine gun fire.

The fact that an investigation apparently has been stymied is strong circumstantial evidence for the account of the airliner’s demise offered in this article.
© 2014 Peter Haisenko / anderweltonline.com

04 September, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

By Chris Marsden

Wednesday began with an announcement of at least the outline of a “permanent ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia, but ended in rhetoric just as warlike as any sounded in the days leading up to today’s NATO summit in Wales.

In the morning, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Twitter that a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin had ended in an agreement on a permanent ceasefire in the Donbass and a mutual understanding on steps to promote peace.

Within an hour, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said there was no agreement on a ceasefire because Russia was not a participant in the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the Kiev regime and pro-Russian separatists. Meanwhile, the wording of Poroshenko’s statement was changed from “permanent ceasefire” to “ceasefire regime.”

Putin later said a ceasefire was possible between Kiev and the opposition groups in the east by Friday, referencing negotiations that began in Belarus Monday. Peace would be achieved by urging insurgents to “stop advancing” in Donetsk and Luhansk and urging Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the east to a “distance that will make artillery and other strikes on populated areas impossible.”

Fighting continued, with at least 87 Ukrainian soldiers killed after being surrounded in the town of Ilovaysk, confirming a recent pattern of rebel advances that have seen Ukraine lose control of Luhansk airport and Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov coast.

US President Barack Obama could scarcely conceal his hostility to anything that cut across preparations for the NATO summit to adopt a series of anti-Russian measures. “No realistic political settlement can be achieved if effectively Russia says we are going to continue to send tanks and troops and arms and advisors under the guise of separatists, who are not home grown, and the only possible settlement is if Ukraine cedes its territory or its sovereignty,” he said.

Obama was speaking at a press conference during his visit to the Estonian capital, Tallinn. His stated mission was to reassure NATO members Estonia and Latvia and non-NATO states such as Ukraine of the alliance’s support against Russia. Turning reality on its head in order to legitimise NATO aggression against Russia, Obama declared that the vision of a Europe dedicated to peace and freedom was being “threatened by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”

“We will defend our NATO allies, and that means every ally,” he said—a formula that could be interpreted as sanctioning military action not restricted to NATO countries, as mandated by Article Five of NATO’s charter pledging mutual defence only to member states.

The same day, it was announced that four NATO warships would be entering the Black Sea before September 7: USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer; French Commandant Birot; Canadian HMCS Toronto, a Halifax-class frigate; and Spanish frigate Almirante Juan de Borbon.

The US will also go ahead with the Rapid Trident military exercise set for September 16-26 near Ukraine’s border with Poland. Initially scheduled for July, Rapid Trident is the first significant deployment of US and other personnel to Ukraine since the eruption of civil war in the country’s east. The US is moving tanks and 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for manoeuvres in October.

Bowing to intense pressure from Washington, the government of French President François Hollande announced Wednesday it was suspending delivery of a French Mistral-class warship to Russia in October as previously agreed, and would review the planned sale in November. US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki praised the decision, saying Paris had listened “to pressure from the international community.”

The Wales summit will discuss two related military forces. NATO host Britain has said it expects to sign a letter of intent with six partner nations to form a joint expeditionary force of 10,000 working with the Baltic nations and the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark. It would operate in parallel with a German initiative, with Berlin working with ten East European partner nations to boost their capabilities.

The force would be separate but complementary to an estimated 4,000-strong NATO high readiness force detailed Monday by Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Allies will provide several thousand troops by Christmas, with air, sea and special forces support deployed on a rotating basis and able to move on 48 hours’ notice to any NATO member state. It will not formally be stationed in Eastern Europe, but will have equipment and logistics facilities pre-positioned there.

The force was described as a “spearhead” to the existing NATO rapid force that became operational in 2004. Making clear the target, Rasmussen said, “We must face the reality that Russia does not consider NATO a partner… We will adapt to that situation.”

The caveats placed on the force’s nominal location are designed, at least formally, to avoid breaking the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Drafted as NATO was planning to expand its membership eastwards, the agreement reassured Russia that “in the current and foreseeable security environment, the alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.”

NATO troop deployment in the east is being referred to as “persistent” rather than “permanent.”

European political figures have been queuing up to declare that action must be taken targeting Russia. The US, in alliance with Britain, mainly in response to widely perceived reluctance on the part of the German government, is demanding military and not simply economic moves.

On Saturday, in a closed session European Union summit debate in Brussels, British Prime Minister David Cameron was reported by Italy’s La Repubblica as citing the danger of repeating the appeasement by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Hitler in Munich in 1938. “This time we cannot meet Putin’s demands,” he declared. “It is very important when Russians look at countries like Estonia or Latvia or Poland that they don’t just see Estonian, Latvian and Polish soldiers–they see French, German, British soldiers too.”

In Estonia Obama again insisted that NATO states increase their military spending to 2 percent of their gross domestic product–a figure presently met by only two significant military powers, the US and Britain, the others being Greece and Estonia.

The danger of full-scale war in Europe grows by the day. In telling remarks to Spiegel Online, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave a fairly accurate depiction of the course of recent events. While blaming, as could be expected, “Ukraine and especially Russia” for the rising threat, he warned: “What we have seen in recent days in eastern Ukraine is not yet an open, not a declared war. But it is extremely dangerous when, as is the case now, the dynamics of military escalation increasingly determine political action and not vice versa.

“What threatens is slipping into a direct confrontation between Ukrainian and Russian military forces. It’s about people living in eastern Ukraine, it is about the unity of Ukraine, it’s about the peace in Europe, in short, it’s about preventing a new Iron Curtain in Europe.”

Russia’s response to NATO aggression has been to repeatedly seek a negotiated settlement. But yesterday, it announced major exercises this month involving more than 4,000 soldiers in Altai in south-central Russia, involving MiG-31 fighter-interceptors and Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft on an unprecedented scale.

Mikhail Popov, deputy head of Putin’s Security Council, said that Russia’s own military doctrine would be revised once again, having been first updated in 2010, to identify NATO enlargement as a national threat and reaffirm Russia’s right to use nuclear weapons if its existence is endangered.

The “defining factor in relations with NATO remains the unacceptability for Russia of plans to move the military infrastructure of the alliance towards our borders, including via enlargement of the bloc,” he said.

General Yury Yakubov, a senior Defense Ministry official, implied that the new doctrine would have to clearly identify the US and NATO powers as Moscow’s chief enemy, and spell out the conditions under which Russia would launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. “First and foremost, the likely enemy of Russia should be clearly identified in this strategic document, something absent from the 2010 military doctrine,” he said.

04 September, 2013
WSWS.org

 

By Nile Bowie

Six months have past since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March, which took off from Kuala Lumpur carrying 239 people en route to Beijing. The aircraft veered wildly off course while flying over the South China Sea before turning back over the Malaysian peninsula toward the Indian Ocean, where it is presumed to have crashed.

Despite the largest multinational search and rescue effort ever conducted, not a trace of debris from the aircraft has been found, nor has the cause of the aircraft’s erratic change of trajectory and disappearance been established. The case of MH370 has proven to be the most baffling incident in commercial aviation history and one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

Malaysia Airlines has suffered the two worst disasters in modern aviation less than five months apart, following the tragic demise of flight MH17 in July, forcing the company to slash its staff numbers by a third as part of a major restructuring effort. The state has announced plans to take full ownership of the national carrier following the collapse of its share price and its subsequent removal from the stock market.

After a fruitless search in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have terminated, investigators established a new search area that has been mapped by Chinese and Australian ships since June. The next stage of the investigation has been given a provisional 12-month duration, and a Dutch contractor, Fugro Survey, will conduct an underwater search beginning this month.

It is hoped that once the wreckage is discovered, the aircraft’s black boxes, cockpit voice recordings and flight data will help investigators explain the incident, as well as giving closure to the families of the victims. There is still little consensus among investigators and experts as to what actually happened onboard the doomed flight.

MH370’s transponders were shut off without a mayday call between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace, followed by significant changes in altitude after ground control lost contact with the cockpit less than an hour into the flight. The aircraft flew erratically before fixing onto a consistent flight path, presumably on autopilot, prior to terminating once the plane ran out of fuel.

The Malaysian government, as well as aviation experts, claim that the aircraft’s movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane. The Australian-led search team believes that depressurisation and hypoxia rendered the crew unconscious because of the orderly path the aircraft took prior to ending its flight.

Investigators have cleared all passengers of any suspicious motives, while the flight’s pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a qualified pilot with over 30 years experience with Malaysia Airlines, has been the main suspect of the investigation by Malaysian authorities. Media reports speculated that Shah was undergoing difficult domestic circumstances, but his family members deny that he exhibited strange behavior.

Malaysia’s chief of police, Khalid Abu Bakar, said he believed that hijackers, saboteurs or someone with a personal vendetta or psychological problem had succeeded in diverting the plane. In the face of this exceedingly bizarre and unexplained incident, the aircraft’s manufacturer, the Boeing Company, has exhibited deafening silence.

What has been established thus far indicates that human intervention contributed to aircraft’s radical change in trajectory. If MH370’s pilots were ultimately not responsible for this, then other possible scenarios need to be explored in explaining the flight’s demise.

Boeing, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft, was awarded a patent in 2006 for an ‘uninterruptible autopilot control system’ that could enable aircrafts to be remotely piloted from the ground using radio waves and global satellite positioning systems to counter hijacking attempts. The technology, developed following the 9/11 attacks, removes all control from pilots and redirects the airliner to a predetermined landing location.

“After it has been activated, the aircraft will be capable of remote digital control from the ground, enabling operators to fly it like a sophisticated model plane, manoeuvring it vertically and laterally… Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system,” claims a report from 2007 published in the London Evening Standard.

The automatic control system technology, filed under patent number US7142971B2, is independently powered by an alternative power source that is inaccessible to anyone on board the aircraft. Boeing officials quoted in the report give the clear impression that this system was developed for the purpose of being installed on Boeing airliners, stating that the uninterruptible autopilot system could be fitted into its planes by 2009.

Honeywell, one of Boeing’s avionics suppliers, filed patent number US7475851B2 in 2003 for a similar uninterrupted autopilot control device.

Boeing and Honeywell have both developed technology for use in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, with civilian and military applications for decades.

In 2012, Boeing declared its intention to install new security mechanisms aboard several of its 777 series aircraft, including the models used by Malaysia Airlines, over concerns the aircrafts’ inflight entertainment system, which includes USB connections, could allow hackers to access a plane’s computer.

A report issued by the US Federal Register in 2013 raised concerns that Model 777-200, among others, was exposed to security vulnerabilities. “This potential exploitation of security vulnerabilities may result in intentional or unintentional destruction, disruption, degradation, or exploitation of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane,” the document stated.

Though the Federal Register’s statement explicitly mentions Model 777-200, it is also valid for Model 777-200ER – the aircraft used for MH370 – because the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) places both models 777-200 and 777-200ER in the same category and does not make a distinction between the two variants.

This information confirms the existence of technology that would allow for an aircraft like MH370 to be externally controlled, and that Boeing and the FAA were aware of a potential vulnerability loophole that could have conceivably been exploited. Boeing declined to comment on this incident and has made no attempt to explain this technology, even after former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad publically raised concerns over the possibility of such a scenario.

Inmarsat, the British satellite telecommunications company responsible for analyzing satellite data showing that MH370 flew south toward the Indian Ocean from its last known position, has also come under scrutiny from independent satellite experts and engineers that found glaring inconsistencies in their analysis. The Atlantic magazine published a report in May based on the analysis of Michael Exner, founder of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation, Duncan Steel, a physicist and visiting scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and satellite technology consultant Tim Farrar.

The team of analysts used flight and navigation software to deconstruct Inmarsat’s analysis, and determined that other known evidence contradicted their mathematical conclusions, such as in the instance where the graph data provided by the British company actually shows the plane and satellite moving away from each other at 50 miles per hour while the plane was stationary and had not even taxied to take off.

The analysts concluded the Inmarsat’s data contained irregular frequency shifts, and even when the values were corrected, Inmarsat’s example flight paths failed to match and proved to be erroneous. In another instance, the graph data marking the position of the satellite receiving the signal is shown to be traveling faster in northbound direction when the satellite itself was moving south. Inmarsat’s graph shows the satellite moving at 33 miles per hour when its overall speed was just 0.07 miles per hour at that time.

The authors of the report have attempted to reach Inmarsat and other relevant bodies, but they claim that the company did not reply to requests for comments on basic technical questions about their analysis, leading them to determine that “Inmarsat officials and search authorities seem to want it both ways: They release charts, graphics, and statements that give the appearance of being backed by math and science, while refusing to fully explain their methodologies.”

The investigation into the disappearance of MH370 has not yet produced any physical evidence of the wreckage. It needs to be determined if this can be attributed to a false mathematical analysis by Inmarsat. Boeing must also address concerns over the uninterruptible autopilot system and produce the relevant technical specifics needed to determine the extent of flight MH370’s vulnerability to being externally overridden and controlled.

Nile Bowie is a columnist with Russia Today, and a research affiliate with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

By Shamus Cooke

President Obama is breathing fresh life into the term “lame duck.” At home and abroad the president seems frozen, powerless to confront the most demanding political issues. From foreign wars to Ferguson the president’s lack of audacity seems destined to be his legacy. And while working class people in Ferguson are demanding justice at home, the U.S. establishment is insisting on war abroad.

Who will Obama listen to? Based on his past actions Obama will continue to act for to the richest 1 percent, who’ve prospered under his presidency by devouring 95 percent of all new U.S. wealth.

The U.S. super rich are outraged by Obama’s hesitancy to wage war overseas. Republicans and Democrats alike are pouncing on Obama to “act boldly.” The Washington Post explains:

“…key lawmakers from both parties criticized [Obama’s] reaction to international turmoil and suggested the administration should be more assertive in addressing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.”

Being “assertive” in this case simply means waging war.

But a different kind of war than the covert type Obama has been waging. Since being elected Obama has fought various covert wars around the world, as documented in Jeremy Scahill’s excellent book and documentary, Dirty Wars.

Covert war was the strategy that Obama campaigned on, which fooled millions of Americans into believing he was the “peace candidate.”

And while he succeeded in getting fewer boots on the ground, the skies overseas are filled with swarms of drones and fighter jets.

As long as Obama could prove to the U.S. establishment that covert warfare would successfully promote their interests abroad — referred to as “U.S. interests” by politicians and the media — he was given hefty corporate campaign donations.

His no-boots-on-the-ground approach had an initial string of “successes” — especially regime change in Libya and successfully hunting the “trophies” of Osama Bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and many others that were assassinated without trial or evidence.

The 2400-plus civilians killed by these drones were dismissed as collateral damage in the U.S., though abroad they bred intense hatred and were successfully used by extremist groups like al-Qaeda to attract recruits.

Obama’s covert strategy then hit a wall. His success in Libya is snowballing into an Iraq-sized disaster, having transformed the African nation with the highest standard of living into a living nightmare and a spawning ground for various regional conflicts.

As Libya was plunging into chaos, Obama and his Gulf state allies sought to replicate this “success” in Syria. And then things got predictably worse. Obama gave the green light for his regional allies — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, Jordan, etc. — to send weapons, fighters, and bombing raids into Syria, which artificially extended a bloody war that otherwise would have ended long ago.

Not only did Obama fail to oust Assad in Syria, his policy of supporting the Syrian rebels helped create giant militias of Islamic extremists whom Obama happily tolerated — since they were attacking Assad — until they invaded the Kurdish region of Iraq, provoking Obama to react.

And when ISIS suddenly appeared on Obama’s public radar, he recently announced, “We don’t have a strategy” — a comment seized on by the right wing to highlight Obama’s foreign policy paralysis.

Ukraine, too, has been an utter failure by any standard, and especially in the eyes of the U.S. establishment. Obama covertly helped usher in the fascist-led government in Ukraine in an attempt to weaken Russian influence.

But In both Ukraine and Syria Obama’s allies are getting their teeth kicked in, and when these allies scream for U.S. direct military intervention — as happened in Syria and is now happening in Ukraine — Obama has been hesitant to pull the trigger, reversing his decision to bomb Syria last year and wavering over what to do in Ukraine.

This “dithering” is what the U.S. establishment is fed up with. They want military victories abroad, by any means necessary. They’re tired of Obama’s failed covert wars; they’re ready for the real thing. In practice this means the Bush doctrine is coming back into style among U.S. politicians.

The liberal New York Times published an op-ed by John McCain and Lindsey Graham demanding military action in Syria against ISIS:

“…ISIS is a military force, and it must be confronted militarily. Mr. Obama has begun to take military actions against ISIS in Iraq, but they have been tactical and reactive half-measures…One of the hardest things a president must do is change, and history’s judgment is often kind to those who summon the courage to do so…ISIS has already forced [Obama] to begin changing course, albeit grudgingly. He should accept the necessity of further change and adopt a strategy to defeat this threat.”

Even Obama’s own advisers are breathing down his neck to act more “boldly” in Syria and Ukraine, according to a revealing article in The New York Times:

“Despite pressure from within his own government for more assertive action [in Syria and Ukraine], he [Obama] tried to avoid inflaming passions as he sought new approaches.”

This “pressure” from Democrats and Republicans won’t stop, and even if Obama were able to resist it, his successor won’t.

The Democratic front-runner in 2016, Hillary Clinton, has already come out in favor of a “stronger” military strategy. Clinton criticized Obama’s foreign policy weakness in an interview with the Atlantic magazine:

“You know, when you’re down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward.”

If she wins in 2016 Hillary will be a war president, as will any potential Republican president. The establishment is united.

The logic behind this madness of the U.S. elite is based on profit. The establishment knows that if U.S.-backed allies in Syria and Ukraine win their regional conflicts, U.S. banks and other corporations will be invited in to make fat profits. And of course the trillions of dollars in oil wealth will not simply be allowed to fall into the lap of the Russians and Chinese. In a world of global economic stagnation, the U.S. 1 percent view foreign profits as a matter of life and death, and will kill with abandon to make sure corporate balance sheets are flush.

Obama already seems to be bowing to this establishment pressure. Recently, U.S.-dominated NATO announced that a “rapid response force” is in the works for Eastern Europe, as a direct result of the conflict in Ukraine. Such a move would again up the war ante against Russia.

The emerging bi-partisan war strategy hasn’t fully manifested yet, but its emergence is inevitable. The American public isn’t prepared for a return to the Bush Jr. war period, since most Americans want nothing to do with the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts. They are more than “war weary,” they are war sickened, and would rather the U.S. government spend the hundreds of billions of annual war money on job creation, education, health care, and other issues that are rapidly transforming the U.S. into a country of a two-class nation: the rich and everybody else, where everybody else is struggling to survive.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).

03 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Herbert E. Meyer, a nutcase who was a special assistant to the CIA director for a period during the Reagan administration, has penned an article calling for Russian President Putin’s assassination. If we have “ to get him out of the Kremlin feet-first with a bullet hole in the back of his head, that would be okay with us.” http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/how_to_solve_the_putin_problem.html

As the crazed Meyer illiustrates, the insanity that Washington has released upon the world knows no restraint. Jose Manual Barroso, installed as Washington’s puppet as European Commission President, misrepresented his recent confidential telephone conversation with Russia’s President Putin by telling the media that Putin issued a threat: “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks.”

Clearly, Putin did not issue a threat. A threat would be inconsistent with Putin’s entire unprovocative approach to the strategic threat that Washington and its NATO puppets have brought to Russia in Ukraine. Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said that if Barroso’s lie stands, Russia will make public the full recording of the conversation

Anyone familiar with the disparity between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries knows full well that it would take the Russian military 14 hours, not 14 days, to take all of Ukraine. Just remember what happened to the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian Army when Washington set its stupid Georgian puppets on South Ossetia. The American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army collapsed under Russian counterattack in 5 hours.

The lie that Washington’s puppet Barroso told was not worthy of a serious person. But where in Europe is there a serious person in power? Nowhere. The few serious people are all out of power. Consider the NATO Secretary General, Anders Rasmussen. He was a prime minister of Denmark who saw he could rise beyond Denmark by serving as Washington’s puppet. As prime minister he strongly supported Washington’s illegal invasion of Iraq, declaring that “we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.” Of course, the fool didn’t know any such thing, and why would it matter if Iraq did have such weapons. Many countries have weapons of mass destruction.

According to the rule that anyone who serves Washington is elevated, the cipher Rasmussen was elevated.

The problem with elevating unprincipled fools is that they risk the world for their career. Rasmussen has now put the entirety of Eastern and Western Europe at risk of annihilation. Rasmussen has announced the creation of a blitzkrieg spearhead force capable of blitzkrieg attack on Russia. What Washington’s puppet calls “the Readiness Action Plan” is justified as a response to “Russia’s aggressive behavior in Ukraine.”

Rasmussen’s “lightening spearhead force” would be instantly wiped out along with every European capital. What kind of idiot provokes a nuclear superpower in this way?

Rasmussen asserts “Russia’s aggressive behavior” but has no evidence of it. Russia has stood on the sidelines while Washington’s puppet government in Kiev has shelled and bombed civilian housing, hospitals, schools and issued a constant stream of lies against Russia. Russia denied the requests of the now independent eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine, former Russian territories, to be reunited with Russia. As readers know, I regard Putin’s decision as a mistake, but events might prove me wrong and that is OK with me. For now, the fact is that every act of aggressive behavior is the result of the US and EU support of the Kiev nazis. It is the Ukrainian nazi militias that are attacking civilians in the former Russian territories of eastern and southern Ukraine. A number of regular Ukrainian military units have defected to the independent republics.

Yes, nazis. Western Ukraine is the home of the Ukrainian SS divisions that fought for Hitler. Today the militias organized by the Right Sector and other right-wing political organizations wear the nazi insignia of the Ukrainian SS divisions. These are the people that Washington and the EU support. If the Ukrainian nazis could win against Russia, which they cannot, they would turn on the stupid West, just as has the Washington-funded ISIS that the dumbshits in Washington unleashed on Libya and Syria. Now ISIS is remaking the Middle East, and Washington appears helpless.

William Binney, a former high level official in the US National Security Agency, along with colleagues from the CIA and military intelligence services, have written to German chancellor Merkel advising her to beware of Obama’s lies at the upcoming NATO summit in Wales. The US intelligence officials advise Merkel to remember Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” and don’t again be deceived, this time into conflict with Russia. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-01/ex-nsa-director-us-intelligence-veterans-write-open-letter-merkel-avoid-all-out-ukra

The question is: who does Merkel represent? Washington or Germany? So far Merkel has represented Washington, not German business interests, not the German people, and not Germany’s interests as a country. Here is a protest in Dresden where a crowd prevents Merkel’s speech with shouts of “kriegstreiber” (warmonger), “liar, liar,” and “no war with Russia.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wSMhGE_Mpk

My Ph.D. dissertation chairman, who became a high Pentagon official assigned to wind down the Vietnam war, in answer to my question about how Washington gets Europeans to always do what Washington wants replied: “Money, we give them money.” “Foreign aid?” I asked. “No, we give the European political leaders bagfuls of money. They are for sale, We bought them. They report to us.” Perhaps this explains Tony Blair’s $50 million fortune one year out of office.

The Western media, the largest whorehouse on earth, is desperate for war. The editorial board of the Washington Post, now a trophy newspaper in the hands of Amazon.com’s billionaire owner, ran an editorial on August 31 that projected all of Washington’s (and the Post’s) lies upon Putin.

Amazon.com’s owner might know how to market products on the Internet, but he is hopeless when it comes to running a newspaper. His editors at the Washington Post have made his trophy a worldwide laughing stock.

Here are the mindless accusations against Putin from the idiots that the billionaire put in charge of his trophy newspaper:

Putin, bitterly resentful at the loss of power from the Soviet collapse, has “resurrected the tyranny of the Big Lie” in order to reconstitute the Russian Empire.

“Russian sponsored militias in Ukraine” are responsible for the “shoot-down of the Malaysian airliner in July.” The “Russian state-controlled media” lied and misrepresented to the Russian people the party responsible for downing the airliner.

“In the absence of independent and free reporting, few Russians realize that Russian soldiers and armaments are in action in eastern Ukraine, albeit (as in Crimea) in uniforms and vehicles stripped of their identifying insignia and license plates. With no free media, Russians are left to fend for themselves against a firestorm of falsehoods.”

“Mr. Putin’s Big Lie shows why it is important to support a free press where it still exists and outlets like Radio Free Europe that bring the truth to people who need it.”

As a former Wall Street Journal editor, I can say with complete confidence that such extraordinary propaganda posing as an editorial would have resulted in the immediate firing of all concerned. In my days on the Congressional staff, the Washington Post was regarded as a CIA asset. Today the Post has sunk far below this status.

I have seen much media propaganda in my day, but this Washington Post editorial takes the cake. The editorial shows that either the editorial writers are completely ignorant or they are completely corrupt and also assume that their readers are completely ignorant. If Russian military units were in action in eastern Ukraine, the situation would be precisely as Alexander Zakharchenko http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/08/30/west-greatest-cause-war-human-history-stands-stripped-legitimacy-paul-craig-roberts/ and Dmitry Orlov describe. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/09/01/can-tell-whether-russia-invaded-ukraine/ Ukraine would no longer exist. Ukraine would again be part of Russia where it was for centuries prior to Washington taking advantage of the Soviet collapse to tear Ukraine away from Russia.

The question before us is: how long will Russia’s patience last with the West’s enormous lies and provocations? No matter how restrained Russia is, Russia is accused of the worst. Therefore, Russia might as well inflict the worst.

At what point will the Russian government decide that Washington’s mendacity, and that of its European puppets and corrupt Western media, render hopeless Russia’s efforts to resolve the situation with diplomacy and unprovocative behavior? As Russia is constantly accused falsely of invading Ukraine, when will the Russian government decide that as Western propaganda has established that Russia has invaded Ukraine and has imposed sanctions and new military bases on Russia’s borders because of the alleged invasion, Russia might as well go ahead and rid themselves of the problem Washington has brought to Russia and invade Ukraine?

There is nothing that NATO could do about it if Russia decides that Ukraine in Washington’s hands is too much of a strategic threat to Russia and reincorporates Ukraine again into Russia where it has resided for centuries. Any NATO force sent would be instantly wiped out. The German population, remembering the consequences of war with Russia, would overthrow Washington’s puppet government. NATO and the EU would collapse as Germany departed the absurd construct that serves Washington’s interest at the expense of Europe.

Once this happens, the world will have peace. But not until.

For those who care to understand how the land of lies works, Washington’s puppet government in Kiev attributes the defeat of its military forces by the Donetsk Republic to the presence in the Donetsk army of Russian military units. This is the propaganda that has gone out to western Ukraine and to the presstitute western media, a collection of whores that echo the propaganda without any investigation whatsoever. However, Kiev has a different story for the IMF. Kiev cannot receive IMF money with which to pay off its Western creditors if Ukraine is at war. Therefore, Ukraine tells the IMF the opposite story: Russia has not attacked Ukraine. http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/08/ukie-doubleplusgooddoublethink.html

The Western media remains uninterested in any facts. Just the lies. Only the lies.

The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, Fox “news,” Die Welt, the French press, the British press all plead: “please Washington give us more sensational lies that we can trumpet. Our circulation needs it. Who cares about war and the human race if only we can regain financial stability.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

03 September, 2014
Paulcraigroberts.org

By Niles Williamson

At their meeting this week in Wales, government heads of NATO member countries are expected to approve the creation of a special rapid response force of as many as 4,000 soldiers that could be deployed to any member state within two days. They are also expected to sanction the establishment of an ongoing troop presence in Poland and the Baltic states, as well as the buildup of equipment and arms stockpiles in Eastern Europe.

The NATO summit, to which Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been invited, will focus on the Western diplomatic, economic and military offensive against Russia that has been continually escalated since the US and Germany triggered the crisis in Ukraine last February by organizing a fascist-led putsch that overthrew the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych.

Russia announced Wednesday that it will alter its military policy in response to the aggressive expansion of NATO forces into Eastern Europe as well moves by the Kiev regime to integrate Ukraine into the US-dominated Western military alliance.

Mikahil Popov, deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said in an interview with RIA Novosti that “the issue of drawing of military infrastructure of NATO member-countries to the borders of our country, including via enlargement, will remain one of the external military threats for the Russian Federation.”

Incoming European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogheirini announced Tuesday that a new round of sanctions against Russia would be decided on by the end of the week.

According to the Wall Street Journal, among the new measures being considered are restrictions on the ability of Russian state-owned companies to raise money on capital markets, the extension of restrictions on Russian state-owned banks and other firms from receiving new syndicated loans, and wider limits on the export of dual-use goods.

US President Barack Obama was in Tallinn, Estonia on the eve of the NATO summit to meet with the leaders of the three Baltic states—Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, and Latvian President Andris Berzins. Grybauskaite recently declared that “practically Russia is in a state of war against Europe.”

The main purpose of Obama’s trip to Estonia is to reaffirm the Baltic states’ status under Article Five of the NATO Charter, which triggers collective defense when a member state is attacked by another country.

The right-wing leaders of the Baltic states have called for an increased US and NATO military presence in their countries, all of which share a border with Russia and have significant Russian minority populations. The Baltic states were incorporated into NATO and the European Union in 2004 and are the only former Soviet territories to have attained membership in both organizations.

The Italian newspaper La Republica leaked details from a closed session of Saturday’s EU summit that have been seized upon by the media to demonize Russian President Vladimir Putin and condition public opinion for war with Russia.

In the session, European Council President Jose Manuel Barroso detailed a telephone conversation he had with Putin on Friday. According to La Republica, Putin responded to Barroso’s accusations of Russia troops in Ukraine by saying, “The problem is not this, but that if I want I’ll take Kiev in two weeks.

Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser, denounced the leak of selected details from Putin and Barroso’s conversation. “Whether these words were said or not, in my viewpoint, the quote given is taken out of context, and it had an absolutely different meaning,” he stated.

In the face of NATO’s aggressive posture, Russian Foreign Minister Segei Lavrov appealed for the US and its European allies to support a compromise in Ukraine between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country. He called on the US to use its influence to rein in Kiev and encourage the regime to resolve the crisis through a political process rather than military operations.

Lavrov suggested that Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s scheduled visit to the White House on September 18 would be “a good opportunity to dot the i’s and cross the t’s concerning US interest or non-interest” regarding political developments in the country.

Talks in Minsk between representatives from Moscow, Kiev and the separatist groups ended without any progress Monday and will resume on Friday. The Obama administration did not send a representative to the talks and is working to prevent any sort of political settlement between Kiev and the pro-Russian separatists.

In the last two weeks, the separatists have made significant gains against Kiev’s armed forces. As many as 680 Ukrainian soldiers have been captured by the separatists in recent fighting, with many being taken around the city of Ilovaisk, where rebels were able to surround hundreds of Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian armed forces withdrew from the Luhansk airport on Tuesday after a night of intense fighting with rebels. Clashes were reported to be taking place around the Donetsk airport as well.

The rebels were also reported to be continuing their advance on the strategic port city of Mariupol. The separatists captured Olenivka, a key city on the road to Mariupol, opening a possible route from the north. They had already opened a route from the east when they captured the coastal city of Novoazovsk last week.

The ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine has claimed thousands of casualties and displaced as many as a million people. Hundreds of civilians have been killed as a result of indiscriminate artillery shelling of residential areas in the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk by Ukrainian armed forces.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, more than 300 civilians have been killed by explosive weapons since May in the city of Luhansk. On August 18, shells struck the city’s central market, killing four civilians and setting off a fire that burnt down several shops. Shells were then fired at fire brigades as they sought to respond, keeping them from putting out the blaze.

The UN estimates that 260,000 people have been displaced inside Ukraine, more than doubling through the month of August. According to Russian authorities, more than 800,000 Ukrainians have entered Russia seeking either refugee/temporary asylum or other residence options.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres expressed his concern over the rapid rise in Ukrainian refugees. “If this crisis is not quickly stopped,” he said, “it will have not only devastating humanitarian consequences, but it also has the potential to destabilize the whole region. After the lessons of the Balkans, it is hard to believe a conflict of these proportions could unfold in the European continent.”

03 September, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Tom Engelhardt
Their Videos and Ours, Their “Caliphate” and Ours

Whatever your politics, you’re not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there’s Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the U.S. Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is “on the wrong track.” We have the look of a superpower down on our luck.

What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are.

In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It’s a group so extreme that even al-Qaeda rejected it, so brutal that it’s brought back crucifixion, beheading, waterboarding, and amputation, so fanatical that it’s ready to persecute any religious group within range of its weapons, so grimly beyond morality that it’s made the beheading of an innocent American a global propaganda phenomenon. If you’ve got a label that’s really, really bad like genocide or ethnic cleansing, you can probably apply it to ISIS’s actions.

It has also proven so effective that its relatively modest band of warrior jihadis has routed the Syrian and Iraqi armies, as well as the Kurdish pesh merga militia, taking control of a territory larger than Great Britain in the heart of the Middle East. Today, it rules over at least four million people, controls its own functioning oil fields and refineries (and so their revenues as well as infusions of money from looted banks, kidnapping ransoms, and Gulf state patrons). Despite opposition, it still seems to be expanding and claims it has established a caliphate.

A Force So Evil You’ve Got to Do Something

Facing such pure evil, you may feel a chill of fear, even if you’re a top military or national security official, but in a way you’ve gotta feel good, too. It’s not everyday that you have an enemy your president can term a “cancer”; that your secretary of state can call the “face” of “ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless evil” which “must be destroyed”; that your secretary of defense can denounce as “barbaric” and lacking a “standard of decency, of responsible human behavior… an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else”; that your chairman of the joint chiefs of staff can describe as “an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated”; and that a retired general and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan can brand a “scourge… beyond the pale of humanity [that]… must be eradicated.”

Talk about a feel-good feel-bad situation for the leadership of a superpower that’s seen better days! Such threatening evil calls for only one thing, of course: for the United States to step in. It calls for the Obama administration to dispatch the bombers and drones in a slowly expanding air war in Iraq and, sooner or later, possibly Syria. It falls on Washington’s shoulders to organize a new “coalition of the willing” from among various backers and opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, from among those who have armed and funded the extremist rebels in that country, from the ethnic/religious factions in the former Iraq, and from various NATO countries. It calls for Washington to transform Iraq’s leadership (a process no longer termed “regime change”) and elevate a new man capable of reuniting the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, now at each other’s throats, into one nation capable of turning back the extremist tide. If not American “boots on the ground,” it calls for proxy ones of various sorts that the U.S. military will naturally have a hand in training, arming, funding, and advising. Facing such evil, what other options could there be?

If all of this sounds strangely familiar, it should. Minus a couple of invasions, the steps being considered or already in effect to deal with “the threat of ISIS” are a reasonable summary of the last 13 years of what was once called the Global War on Terror and now has no name at all. New as ISIS may be, a little history is in order, since that group is, at least in part, America’s legacy in the Middle East.

Give Osama bin Laden some credit. After all, he helped set us on the path to ISIS. He and his ragged band had no way of creating the caliphate they dreamed of or much of anything else. But he did grasp that goading Washington into something that looked like a crusader’s war with the Muslim world might be an effective way of heading in that direction.

In other words, before Washington brings its military power fully to bear on the new “caliphate,” a modest review of the post-9/11 years might be appropriate. Let’s start at the moment when those towers in New York had just come down, thanks to a small group of mostly Saudi hijackers, and almost 3,000 people were dead in the rubble. At that time, it wasn’t hard to convince Americans that there could be nothing worse, in terms of pure evil, than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Establishing an American Caliphate

Facing such unmatchable evil, the United States officially went to war as it might have against an enemy military power. Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration launched the unmatchable power of the U.S. military and its paramilitarized intelligence agencies against… well, what? Despite those dramatic videos of al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, that organization had no military force worth the name, and despite what you’ve seen on “Homeland,” no sleeper cells in the U.S. either; nor did it have the ability to mount follow-up operations any time soon.

In other words, while the Bush administration talked about “draining the swamp” of terror groups in up to 60 countries, the U.S. military was dispatched against what were essentially will-o’-the-wisps, largely representing Washington’s own conjured fears and fantasies. It was, that is, initially sent against bands of largely inconsequential Islamic extremists, scattered in tiny numbers in the tribal backlands of Afghanistan or Pakistan and, of course, the rudimentary armies of the Taliban.

It was, to use a word that George W. Bush let slip only once, something like a “crusade,” something close to a religious war, if not against Islam itself — American officials piously and repeatedly made that clear — then against the idea of a Muslim enemy, as well as against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and later Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In each case, Washington mustered a coalition of the willing, ranging from Arab and South or Central Asian states to European ones, sent in air power followed twice by full-scale invasions and occupations, mustered local politicians of our choice in major “nation-building” operations amid much self-promotional talk about democracy, and built up vast new military and security apparatuses, supplying them with billions of dollars in training and arms.

Looking back, it’s hard not to think of all of this as a kind of American jihadism, as well as an attempt to establish what might have been considered an American caliphate in the region (though Washington had far kinder descriptive terms for it). In the process, the U.S. effectively dismantled and destroyed state power in each of the three main countries in which it intervened, while ensuring the destabilization of neighboring countries and finally the region itself.

In that largely Muslim part of the world, the U.S. left a grim record that we in this country generally tend to discount or forget when we decry the barbarism of others. We are now focused in horror on ISIS’s video of the murder of journalist James Foley, a propaganda document clearly designed to drive Washington over the edge and into more active opposition to that group.

We, however, ignore the virtual library of videos and other imagery the U.S. generated, images widely viewed (or heard about and discussed) with no less horror in the Muslim world than ISIS’s imagery is in ours. As a start, there were the infamous “screen saver” images straight out of the Marquis de Sade from Abu Ghraib prison. There, Americans tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners, while creating their own iconic version of crucifixion imagery. Then there were the videos that no one (other than insiders) saw, but that everyone heard about. These, the CIA took of the repeated torture and abuse of al-Qaeda suspects in its “black sites.” In 2005, they were destroyed by an official of that agency, lest they be screened in an American court someday. There was also the Apache helicopter video released by WikiLeaks in which American pilots gunned down Iraqi civilians on the streets of Baghdad (including two Reuters correspondents), while on the sound track the crew are heard wisecracking. There was the video of U.S. troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. There were the trophy photos of body parts brought home by U.S. soldiers. There were the snuff films of the victims of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns in the tribal backlands of the planet (or “bug splat,” as the drone pilots came to call the dead from those attacks) and similar footage from helicopter gunships. There was the bin Laden snuff film video from the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, of which President Obama reportedly watched a live feed. And that’s only to begin to account for some of the imagery produced by the U.S. since September 2001 from its various adventures in the Greater Middle East.

All in all, the invasions, the occupations, the drone campaigns in several lands, the deaths that ran into the hundreds of thousands, the uprooting of millions of people sent into external or internal exile, the expending of trillions of dollars added up to a bin Laden dreamscape. They would prove jihadist recruitment tools par excellence.

When the U.S. was done, when it had set off the process that led to insurgencies, civil wars, the growth of extremist militias, and the collapse of state structures, it had also guaranteed the rise of something new on Planet Earth: ISIS — as well as of other extremist outfits ranging from the Pakistani Taliban, now challenging the state in certain areas of that country, to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.

Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so, they are the spawn of Washington. Thirteen years of regional war, occupation, and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them. They may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy — and not just because so many of their leaders came from the Iraqi army we disbanded, had their beliefs and skills honed in the prisons we set up (Camp Bucca seems to have been the West Point of Iraqi extremism), and gained experience facing U.S. counterterror operations in the “surge” years of the occupation. In fact, just about everything done in the war on terror has facilitated their rise. After all, we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt one that would flee at the first signs of ISIS’s fighters, abandoning vast stores of Washington’s weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi state, while fostering a Shia leader who would oppress enough Sunnis in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or tolerated throughout significant areas of the country.

The Escalation Follies

When you think about it, from the moment the first bombs began falling on Afghanistan in October 2001 to the present, not a single U.S. military intervention has had anything like its intended effect. Each one has, in time, proven a disaster in its own special way, providing breeding grounds for extremism and producing yet another set of recruitment posters for yet another set of jihadist movements. Looked at in a clear-eyed way, this is what any American military intervention seems to offer such extremist outfits — and ISIS knows it.

Don’t consider its taunting video of James Foley’s execution the irrational act of madmen blindly calling down the destructive force of the planet’s last superpower on themselves. Quite the opposite. Behind it lay rational calculation. ISIS’s leaders surely understood that American air power would hurt them, but they knew as well that, as in an Asian martial art in which the force of an assailant is used against him, Washington’s full-scale involvement would also infuse their movement with greater power. (This was Osama bin Laden’s most original insight.)

It would give ISIS the ultimate enemy, which means the ultimate street cred in its world. It would bring with it the memories of all those past interventions, all those snuff videos and horrifying images. It would help inflame and so attract more members and fighters. It would give the ultimate raison d’être to a minority religious movement that might otherwise prove less than cohesive and, in the long run, quite vulnerable. It would give that movement global bragging rights into the distant future.

ISIS’s urge was undoubtedly to bait the Obama administration into a significant intervention. And in that, it may prove successful. We are now, after all, watching a familiar version of the escalation follies at work in Washington. Obama and his top officials are clearly on the up escalator. In the Oval Office is a visibly reluctant president, who undoubtedly desires neither to intervene in a major way in Iraq (from which he proudly withdrew American troops in 2011 with their “heads held high”), nor in Syria (a place where he avoided sending in the bombers and missiles back in 2013).

Unlike the previous president and his top officials, who were all confidence and overarching plans for creating a Pax Americana across the Greater Middle East, this one and his foreign policy team came into office intent on managing an inherited global situation. President Obama’s only plan, such as it was, was to get out of the Iraq War (along lines already established by the Bush administration). It was perhaps a telltale sign then that, in order to do so, he felt he had to “surge” American troops into Afghanistan. Five and a half years later, he and his key officials still seem essentially plan-less, a set of now-desperate managers engaged in a seat-of-the-pants struggle over a destabilizing Greater Middle East (and increasingly Africa and the borderlands of Europe as well).

Five and a half years later, the president is once again under pressure and being criticized by assorted neocons, McCainites, and this time, it seems, the military high command evidently eager to be set loose yet one more time to take out barbarism globally — that is, to up the ante on a losing hand. As in 2009, so today, he’s slowly but surely giving ground. By now, the process of “mission creep” — a term strongly rejected by the Obama administration — is well underway.

It started slowly with the collapse of the U.S.-trained and U.S.-supplied Iraqi army in Mosul and other northern Iraqi cities in the face of attacks by ISIS. In mid-June, the aircraft carrier USS H.W. Bush with more than 100 planes was dispatched to the Persian Gulf and the president sent in hundreds of troops, including Special Forces advisers (though officially no “boots” were to be “on the ground”). He also agreed to drone and other air surveillance of the regions ISIS had taken, clearly preparation for future bombing campaigns. All of this was happening before the fate of the Yazidis — a small religious sect whose communities in northern Iraq were brutally destroyed by ISIS fighters — officially triggered the commencement of a limited bombing campaign suitable to a “humanitarian crisis.”

When ISIS, bolstered by U.S. heavy weaponry captured from the Iraqi military, began to crush the Kurdish pesh merga militia, threatening the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq and taking the enormous Mosul Dam, the bombing widened. More troops and advisers were sent in, and weaponry began to flow to the Kurds, with promises of all of the above further south once a new unity government was formed in Baghdad. The president explained this bombing expansion by citing the threat of ISIS blowing up the Mosul Dam and flooding downriver communities, thus supposedly endangering the U.S. Embassy in distant Baghdad. (This was a lame cover story because ISIS would have had to flood parts of its own “caliphate” in the process.)

The beheading video then provided the pretext for the possible bombing of Syria to be put on the agenda. And once again a reluctant president, slowly giving way, has authorized drone surveillance flights over parts of Syria in preparation for possible bombing strikes that may not be long in coming.

The Incrementalism of the Reluctant

Consider this the incrementalism of the reluctant under the usual pressures of a militarized Washington eager to let loose the dogs of war. One place all of this is heading is into a morass of bizarre contradictions involving Syrian politics. Any bombing of that country will necessarily involve implicit, if not explicit, support for the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad, as well as for the barely existing “moderate” rebels who oppose his regime and to whom Washington may now ship more arms. This, in turn, could mean indirectly delivering yet more weaponry to ISIS. Add everything up and at the moment Washington seems to be on the path that ISIS has laid out for it.

Americans prefer to believe that all problems have solutions. There may, however, be no obvious or at least immediate solution when it comes to ISIS, an organization based on exclusivity and divisiveness in a region that couldn’t be more divided. On the other hand, as a minority movement that has already alienated so many in the region, left to itself it might with time simply burn out or implode. We don’t know. We can’t know. But we do have reasonable evidence from the past 13 years of what an escalating American military intervention is likely to do: not whatever it is that Washington wants it to do.

And keep one thing in mind: if the U.S. were truly capable of destroying or crushing ISIS, as our secretary of state and others are urging, that might prove to be anything but a boon. After all, it was easy enough to think, as Americans did after 9/11, that al-Qaeda was the worst the world of Islamic extremism had to offer. Osama bin Laden’s killing was presented to us as an ultimate triumph over Islamic terror. But ISIS lives and breathes and grows, and across the Greater Middle East Islamic extremist organizations are gaining membership and traction in ways that should illuminate just what the war on terror has really delivered. The fact that we can’t now imagine what might be worse than ISIS means nothing, given that no one in our world could imagine ISIS before it sprang into being.

The American record in these last 13 years is a shameful one. Do it again should not be an option.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture.

02 September, 2014
TomDispatch.com