A Provocative Question

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Thank you for your thoughts and for the references to books and articles 
on the matters of poverty and class, identity politics etc.

All of this is well worth thinking about, particularly with regard to 
the resurgence of right-wing nationalism in the US and Europe and the 
accompanying garbage of racism, sexism and homophobia.

What has not been addressed in this discussion, and what has hardly been 
addressed during the campaign season, is the US/the West's foreign policy.

It appears to me that, although probably everybody around these parts is 
familiar with the sorry history of US regime changes, miraculuosly 
regime change became alright for the majority of Democrats once Obama 
was elected.

And it is true that Obama, to his credit, refrained from invading Syria 
after Assad allegedly crossed his "red line" by using poison gas against 
his own people.

Which was -- not by the way, but importantly -- rather obviously a false 
flag attack (but a real mass murder):

See Seymour Hersh's articles for the London Review of Books, see MIT 
professor Theodore Postol.

I quote from Postol's summary:

"Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the 
Source of These Errors Needs to Be Explained.
If the Source of These Errors Is Not Identified, the Procedures that Led 
to this Intelligence Failure Will Go Uncorrected, and the Chances of a 
Future Policy Disaster Will Grow With Certainty."

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6-GpDfsYECES3lOTUlneldpZ1Boenl1bGV5YkVnY29WdGNF/edit

(This is quite apart from the never discussed, but obvious fact that 
Assad would have to be a very stupid man to wilfully cross a "red line" 
set by the President of the US after having watched from the best seat 
in the house what happened to Hussein and Ghaddafi. Which, whatever else 
you may think about him, he is not.)

--

"Faulty intelligence", now where have we heard this before? Iraq, 
certainly, but also Libya. Recently, the foreign affairs select 
committee of the House of Commons officially determined that the war on 
Libya was based upon lies, sorry, faulty intelligence:

„In March 2011, the United Kingdom and France, with the support of the 
United States, led the international community to support an 
intervention in Libya to protect civilians from attacks by forces loyal 
to Muammar Gaddafi. This policy was not informed by accurate 
intelligence. In particular, the Government failed to identify that the 
threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a 
significant Islamist element. By the summer of 2011, the limited 
intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy 
of regime change. That policy was not underpinned by a strategy to 
support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya. The result was political and 
economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian 
and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of 
Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North 
Africa. Through his decision making in the National Security Council, 
former Prime Minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the 
failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.“

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/11903.htm#_idTextAnchor004

(The whole report is well worth reading.)

This bears repeating:

"In particular, the Government failed to identify that the threat to 
civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant 
Islamist element."

Demonise the geopolitical enemy, minimize the radicalism of the proxy 
armies you use to attack him. It works every time -- if you have a 
compliant media, that is.

Please excuse the sarcasm: This strategy worked out very well for Libya, 
it worked out very well for Ukraine if you replace "Islamists" with 
"Banderites" (the German head of state recently remembered the victims 
of Babi Jar literally shoulder to shoulder with the well-known Ukrainian 
neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy, speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, which is a 
complete and utter disgrace but went down largely unnoticed because 
nobody wants to talk about Parubiy, and for good reason), it worked out 
very well for Syria even though regime change does not seem to be in the 
cards any longer unless the West really wants to provoke WW III.

The not so sarcastic result: Hundreds of thousands of deaths, failed 
states, freedom and democracy nowhere to be seen.

If one ignores the crap we are being served about human rights, freedom, 
democracy etc.: This is what the US has done, alone or with partners, 
for geopolitical reasons at least since 1953, and what it continues to 
do, with currently once again ever more escalating risks.

I should think all this is completely obvious. Obviously it either isn't 
or people agree with the policy but do not want to say so.

Obama has at least called Libya his worst mistake. Clinton, on the other 
hand, counts the destruction of the country amongst her greatest 
accomplishments as Secretary of State. "We came, we saw, he died." Cue 
homicidal cackle.

'As secretary of state, Clinton was one of the strongest proponents of 
the U.S. intervention in the Libyan civil war against Gadhafi; according 
to the New York Times, the decision to commit military assets to ending 
the dictator’s 42-year-old regime was “arguably her moment of greatest 
influence as secretary of state.” While Obama has now pointed to that 
decision multiple times as one of his biggest regrets, he has also used 
the same logic to defend his reticence to intervene in Syria, where 
Clinton has urged a more militaristic approach, including a no-fly zone.'

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/obama-clinton-libya-mistake

A unilateral no-fly zone in Syria would be against international law and 
probably evoke WW III. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said so 
(of course, he didn't refer to international law).

This short Jeremiad is not, as you might think, directed only against US 
foreign policy under Obama, and certainly not only against Clinton. It 
is about a continuity in US foreign policy since the end of WW II that 
nobody seems to want to talk about as long as there is a Democratic 
President. And various other states, and their media, went along. In 
Libya: France and England. In Ukraine: Germany and the EU until Victoria 
Nuland made clear that it is the US that decides about the future Prime 
Minister of Ukraine -- "Fuck the EU. Yats is the guy." (paraphrase). In 
Syria: the Europeans as well as those well-known staunch defenders of 
democracy, freedom and human rights who rule the KSA and Qatar.

Two articles from Counterpunch that I find thought-provoking because 
they link recent domestic developments in the US with its foreign 
policy, although I certainly do not endorse each and every point made:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/24/f-you-white-liberal-a-middle-eastern-american-glad-trump-won/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/regime-change-abroad-fascism-at-home-how-us-interventions-paved-the-way-for-trump/







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