In the wake of last week’s cruise missile attack on Syria, there
was a joke going around the internet saying that it doesn’t matter who
Americans vote for, they always wind up getting John McCain as President of the
United States. The humor derives from the fact that the past three presidents
all ran for office committed to reducing America’s interventionism overseas but
once in office they reversed course and expanded US military commitments
worldwide, turning them into facsimiles of John McCain, who has never seen a
war he didn’t like.
President
Donald Trump’s explicit pledges to avoid expanded engagement in Asia and the
Middle East while also fixing the relationship with Russia are by now lost down
the memory hole as he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan while, by his
own admission, the relationship with Moscow is now even worse than it was
during the Cold War. And regarding Syria, his Ambassador to the United Nations
Nikki Halley has confirmed that the
US military will not be going anywhere because certain goals have to be met
first. One objective, monitoring developments relating to Iran, is open-ended,
implying that it will be impossible to leave for the foreseeable future and
suggesting that another Afghanistan-style quagmire is in the making.
Pundits see
the process whereby all new presidents turn into hawks as evidence of the
pervasiveness of the Deep State in US foreign policy, but as the Deep State
operates largely in the open in the United States, it might also be referred to
as the Establishment consensus. The persistence of the Establishment view in
what has become increasingly a national security state is largely due to the
fact that there is little pushback against it. The media is fully on board and
Congress, which should be serving as a brake on presumed presidential
prerogatives to go to war, benefits substantially from the bloated budgets and
other emoluments that derive from American imperialism. Defense and related
budgets grow in spite of the lack of any real threat and the public is fed a
steady diet of fear by the media and government regarding fabricated threats to
US national security.
The
combination of government and media lies renders most Americans completely
ignorant about what is going in in Syria. First of all, the United States and
its allies, who are occupying nearly one quarter of the country, are in Syria
illegally. Under international law, attacking and occupying a country that is
not directly threatening you without any justifying United Nations Security
Council resolution is illegal. It is also a war crime as defined by the
Nuremberg Trials that followed after the Second World War, which ruled that a
war of aggression is the “ultimate war crime” as it inevitably leads to many
other crimes. So the United States is undeniably an unindicted war
criminal.
That the
United States has not been indicted or brought to justice for its crimes is
largely due to its political and military power, which few nations choose to
challenge, but also because it is a permanent member of the United Nations
Security Council and is able to veto resolutions criticizing it. There have
been numerous motions condemning American behavior, but none of them have made
it out of the Security Council. This is not a confirmation of US innocence but
rather a result of the politics that operate at the United Nations.
The United
States is also in violation of international law because it remains in Syria
without the permission of the recognized and legitimate Syrian government.
Iranian forces and those of Russia are present on the invitation of Damascus.
The United States is not. The US has also been illegally working to overthrow
the legitimate Syrian government, acting in collusion with groups of so-called
rebels, some of whom are actually drawn from internationally recognized
terrorist groups, violating its own laws regarding providing material
assistance to terrorism.
Establishment
politics has meant that the United States is now a rogue nation defined by its
propensity to go to war. America’s bombing of Syria is illegal, immoral,
ineffective and dishonest. It is past time for the United States to pull out
its troops and leave the Syrians alone. Americans killing Syrians while
hypocritically claiming that it is done to stop Syrians from killing each other
is a recipe for disaster.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/19/why-each-us-president-ends-up-as-ruthless-interventionist-these-days.html
