Why Can’t We Understand There Will Be No Military Victory in the Middle East?

The war drums grow louder. If the Paris attacks show us anything, they reveal that the West has learned nothing about the Middle East over the past thirty years. The calls from Western leaders for more bombs, more troops and more civil liberty restrictions play directly into the hands of the terrorists, and will solve nothing.

We helped create Al Qaeda and ISIS by financially and militarily supporting those groups fighting the Russians in the 1990s, fearing the expansion of the Russian empire more than the threat of terrorism, and now it has come back to bite us in the ass. Worst of all, we’ve continued supporting ISIS in the hopes they will overthrow Assad in Syria. We never seem to learn that attempting regime change through proxy fighters always has unintended consequences that are bad for the U.S.

We will never bomb away terrorism, and in our futile attempts to destroy ISIS we actually create more terrorists, yet our leaders call for more blood. The terrorists who carried out the Paris attacks were Europeans, so should we drop bombs on Brussels or London?

Our foreign policies regarding the Middle East need to change. Bush and Cheney poured the gas and lit the match by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and, after 12 years, it should be obvious to anyone that continued military action in the region only perpetuates more terrorism in the West, and will not stop it. It’s time for all of the factions to talk to each other, and for the West to stop the military madness before we ignite WWIII.

It’s Hard to Believe, But America is Using Drones to Perpetuate the War on Terror

In the concluding paragraph of an excellent piece in Counterpunch titled, “Reaper Madness: Obama’s Whack-A-Mole Killing Machine,” Doug Noble writes,

“What I’ve tried to show here is something more:  that these military miscreants have also known all along that their drone technology and targeting strategy are militarily bankrupt. They could not but be aware from military history and doctrine that these approaches have absolutely no possibility of defeating terrorist groups or keeping America safe. They must know that in fact the opposite is true, that their nefarious enterprise only further endangers us all. And yet they will continue ever more brazenly their Reaper madness, the scholars here all agree, until we find some way to stop them.”

This begs the question: Why, if the military knows drone strikes are counterproductive, de we keep using drones? I believe there’s only one plausible answer. America must have an enemy. In order to sustain our bloated, massively expensive military/industrial/media complex, we must have an evil “other” to do battle with, to justify the obscene amounts of taxpayer dollars being sucked into the black hole of “national security.”

The end of the Cold War and the communist empire ushered in a vacuum that was quickly filled with a new enemy, international terrorism. The 1990s saw the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, organizations the U.S. helped create and arm, but it wasn’t until the new Pearl Harbor of 9/11 that the war on terror shifted into high gear.

From the American perspective, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just what the military ordered, but after well over a decade of fighting, it became obvious to even the most hawkish cheerleaders (except Dick Cheney) that the wars were a debacle that did far more harm than good. But we couldn’t just pick up our marbles and go home without somehow continuing the war on terrorists and unfriendly regimes in the region, so we sent in the drones.

Although many experts outside of Washington D.C. agree that the use of drones is ineffective and even counterproductive, Obama is enlarging the program, which for me, means that by the government’s reasoning, that’s exactly the point. Killing civilians means keeping the populace stirred up and angry at America which means more terrorists that we need to fight and the cycle continues ad nauseam. As horrible as it sounds, what other explanation can there be? 

The war on terror is a self-perpetuating farce designed to focus Americans away from the issues we face at home and keep the military/industrial/media complex fat and well-funded.

More Iraq Lies Unearthed

A newly released memo shows that in 2002 then British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged his support to the Bush Administration for an invasion of Iraq a full year before the attack took place. During that year, he lied continuously to the British people claiming that he was seeking peaceful means for dealing with Iraq, while he had actually committed himself to be part of an armed invasion of that country.

That’s bad enough, but it also strengthens the argument made by some that the Bush administration had been planning an attack on Iraq from day one. Depending on where you stand, 9/11 was the fortunate Pearl Harbor moment that allowed the administration an opening to invade Iraq, or was a government orchestrated event intended for just that purpose.

It has to make one wonder. We know Cheney and Bush wanted very badly to bring down Saddam Hussein, that they were loathe to leave the vast oil reserves in Iraq to an avowed enemy and (from the PNAC documents) wanted a strong military presence in the Middle East. So along comes 9/11, and in our moment of panic, the media and the American people gave the neocons in the administration a blank check to take away our Constitutional rights at home and kill hundreds of thousands of people in the Mideast. Doesn’t that strike you as an amazing coincidence?  On a September morning early in Bush’s first term, the physical manifestations of our economic and military might are attacked and thousands of Americans die, and this event allows him to do exactly what he and Cheney and the other administration necons want to do. 

For me, it is too much of a coincidence. From my reading and research, I am convinced 9/11 was an inside job, a false flag event, intended to gain support for an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Black (fools) gold

Oil.

It’s pretty much the answer to any question you have about what’s going on in the Middle East. We remain mired in that desolate, sandy patch of planet not because we care about the freedom or welfare of the Iraqis or Pakistanis or Iranians, but because we are still highly dependent on oil and the products that require oil. Unfortunately for us, the oil is in the ground under countries that either a) hate us, or b) are ruled by weak American tools or puppets.

Think about it. If the U.S. had put the billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars we’ve spent waging an unwinnable war against terrorism over the past half-century (as a cover for our ultimate goal of controlling oil fields) into creating sustainable forms of energy, we would be energy independent right now. Short-sighted, industry owned Republicans and Democrats are to blame, but you have to give a special shout-out to Dick Cheney and the neocons for at least being honest and clearly stating their intent to grab Middle East oil fields in their 2000 report Project for a New America.

By increasing our military involvement in the ISIS situation, we are once again falling into a trap that will cost more billions of dollars and probably American lives. We are like Charlie Brown who always falls for Lucy’s football trick. Our greed and unwillingness to change course has us behaving like idiots doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It also puts us right where the terrorists want us.

Our country’s priorities have become seriously skewed over the years by wealthy elites who put profits over people and wealth over the welfare of America.

Fed up with liberal America? Your new Eden awaits you.

A lot of conservatives are really, really upset that Obama won reelection, and there have been more than a few overwrought conservative bloggers and pundits threatening to leave the United States. My first reaction is, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” but then I wondered where on this planet would they go? Who would welcome our Calvinist Wingnuts into their communities?

Canada? Although our giant neighbor to the north has listed to the political right in recent years, it still has a long history of experimenting with socialism and openness that I think would make many of our gun-toting evangelical Tea Baggers uncomfortable. Latin or South America? Lazy brown people with tainted drinking water. Africa? Hahahahahahah. Australia? There’s a possibility. Oh wait. They have compulsory voting, universal healthcare, no death penalty, evolution is taught in schools and the PM is a female, unmarried atheist. Not working for us. Europe? Ground zero of the secular, socialist, one world government experiment? Don’t think so. Russia? Nyet. Let’s just check Asia off of our list right now.

Okay, what does that leave? Ah, right. There is one part of the world that might work. Women are second-class citizens. Check. Religion dominates all aspects of society. Check. Guns and other weapons are prevalent and easy to obtain. Check. Men dominate government and dictate laws. Check.

Welcome, evangelical Americans. Welcome to the one part of the world where you will feel completely comfortable and at home: The Middle East.