Most of the things worth remembering during the 2008
presidential debates were uttered by Ron Paul. But Mike Gravel, the
former U.S. senator from Alaska had a moment. Years earlier in the
Senate, Gravel had distinguished himself for his opposition to the Vietnam War
and the draft.
Then, in the first Democrat debate of the 2008 cycle, Gravel
looked at the candidates posturing their bellicosity on the stage around him,
including the now notorious warmongers Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and
said, “I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people
frighten me — they frighten me.”
Gravel was right to be fearful. And yet the
interventionists are always somehow able to pass themselves off as wise and
judicious.
They are anything but.
When
Barack Obama announced in 2012 that Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria
would be a red line for (more overt) U.S. military intervention, the truly wise
and sophisticated – basically anyone with a passing familiarity with the
history of forged documents, secret provocations, false flag events, and other
phony war pretexts – knew for a certainty that a
chemical weapons event would soon follow.
There are just too many players in the field that want the U.S.
– then and now — to do their fighting for them. And so, it wasn’t long
before a sarin gas attack occurred, one that was purportedly launched by Assad
on Syrian rebels.
Fortunately, there is still the occasional serious journalist,
standing out like a grown up among the State’s scribbling children. Among
the adults is investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. By 2014 Hersh had
discovered that the Syrian sarin incident the year before was the work of
Turkey (with the help of the Saudis), manipulating events in Syria to draw the
U.S. into fighting its regional opponents for it. For those who hadn’t
swallowed the Iraq war kool-aid, it called to mind the hidden motives in which
documents were forged to create a pretext for that debacle.
Hersh found that the U.S. intelligence community began having
doubts about Syria’s role in the sarin attack almost immediately. One
source explained that “Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do
something that would precipitate a US military response.”
Now it’s
Trumps turn and, rather than worldly and wise, it seems he can be played as
easily as Bush and Obama. Within days of the U.S. having abandoned its
goal of driving Assad out and with victory finally within his grasp, Assad is
suddenly this week supposed to have squandered it all and invited U.S. regime
change anew by unleashing a chemical weapons attack on civilians near
Idlib.
It doesn’t sound realistic, but even before the evidence was in
Trump took the bait.
“These
heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated,” said the
President. Trump said that Obama had missed the opportunity to deal with
Assad after the 2013 event and that “I now have responsibility, and I will have
that responsibility and carry it very proudly.”
Is this the same Donald Trump who repeatedly urged Obama to stay
out of Syria? In 2013 he tweeted, ” We should stay the hell out of Syria,
the “rebels” are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR
LIVES AND $ BILLIONS? ZERO.”
Unfortunately, Syria is only the half of it. While
taking personal responsibility for Syria, Trump took the opportunity to
proclaim his responsibility for North Korea. Trump and his team are
cooking up something there, too.
If you want to see something really scary, keep your eyes on
President Trump barrelling to catastrophe. It’s like watching an
approaching train wreck. You want to avert your eyes from the spectacle,
but the horror of it cries to be witnessed.
It is astonishing that people like Bush, Obama and Trump can be
played so easily.
These geniuses really frighten me.
This poor country.
Charles
Goyette [send
him mail] is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Dollar Meltdown and Red and Blue and Broke All Over: Restoring America's Free
Economy. He is finishing work on a new book about the media’s
complicity in the war lies of the American Empire.
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