There is something very wrong with
what is going on currently in the United States.
There is a vast industry in
the United States that wants a hot war with Syria and Iran as well as increased
confrontation with Russia and China. It is appropriate to refer to it as an
industry because it has many components and is largely driven by money, much of
which itself comes from Wall Street and major corporations that profit from war
related business. Some prefer to refer to this monster as the Military
Industrial Complex, but since that phrase was coined by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower in 1961, it has grown enormously, developing a political dimension
that includes a majority of congressmen who are addicted to receiving a tithe
from the profits from the war economy to finance their own campaigns,
permitting them to stay in office indefinitely and retire comfortably to a
lobbying position or corporate directorship.
The defense
industry also has spawned hundreds of so-called think-tanks whose sole business
is promoting war. Some, like the neoconservative Institute for the Study of
War, have a clear agenda, but the most powerful rely on euphemisms to conceal
what they are doing. They include the American Enterprise Institute and the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, both of which promote a hard-line
foreign policy directed against Iran and Russia, to include intensified
confrontation with both in Syria.
The national
media, which also benefits from the same food chain, is also complicit in the
process, knowing that the public can easily be deceived by pronouncements
coming from alleged experts in Washington. Leading politicians like Senators Lindsay
Graham and John McCain lead the pack but there is no shortage of lesser known
congressmen to also raise the cry about foreign threats to national security.
Regarding developments in Syria, Graham advised last weekend that Trump must
attack and destroy the Syrian Air Force or “look weak” while McCain said White
House talk of pulling troops out of the country had “emboldened” al-Assad.
Unenlightened
self-interest prevails in the White House over the formulation of policy, with
the public interest completely lost from sight as high officials jockey in
support of the agendas being promoted by those with money and access to those
in power. There is no other explanation for the astonishing performance last
weekend, which pushed the United States closer to a new war in spite of Trump’s
earlier expressed claims that he wants to exit from Syria, a comment that he
quickly backed away from under pressure from the Israelis and Congress.
But now we
have a dubious narrative of a horrible new chemical weapon attack in Syria and
the Israelis, who have spent the past two weeks shooting two thousand unarmed
demonstrators, have attacked a Syrian airbase, killing 14, pretending that they
care about civilian casualties when all they really want to do is jumpstart a
seven-year war which has been winding down.
Anyone could
see there was something not quite right about this latest “chemical attack,”
supposedly implemented by Bashar al-Assad just as his troops are about to
finish off the last rebels near Damascus. But Donald Trump apparently could not
appreciate that the Syrian government had no motive to use chemical weapons,
while the rebels, who control the space where the attack supposedly took place,
have every reason to motivate an international coalition to attack the Syrian
Army.
At 8 a.m. on
Sunday morning the President of the United States sent out this tweet:
Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL
attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army,
making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and
Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay…
Donald Trump
could not have possibly known who staged the gas attack so soon after it
occurred, but he felt compelled to tweet something anyway. And it was not as if
other observers hadn’t suspected that a big lie was coming. Days before the
staged attack, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that a false flag incident was
being prepared.
One hour later, the Sunday morning talk shows in
the US were full of reports about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons.
No one contradicted that narrative and the news was soon headlined in the late
editions of the Sunday newspapers. “Fake news” had won out again, in spite of a
complete lack or evidence or credibility. This is completely crazy. There is
something very wrong with what is going on currently in the United States.