i have more letter to my local electronic fishwrap than they will print, which is some of the reason i began this blog adventure. here is one i won't be sending there the end of this month because i have another to send them i feel more necessary to feature locally, so here's this one;
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a
profoundly sick society.” Krishnamurti
American foreign policy makers focus on the word primacy. It
was once called “full-spectrum dominance”. It’s the idea that the Empire rules
and all must accept our control. Nothing about the idea is new. The drive for
global primacy is what took us to Vietnam,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and our
other overseas disasters. This evil dogma has ruined America and hurt the world
though it’s widely accepted by America’s powerful rulers and the ‘consumers’
that accept the lies their TV tells them. That guarantees future failures like
those that have already cost us dearly in blood and treasure.
Primacy, we get to do whatever we choose, because America is exceptional,
the only force standing between civilization and barbarism. Wherever there’s
trouble, and even where there’s none, the pursuit of primacy requires that the Empire
intervene. This policy says that no problem can be solved without American supervision.
It ignores overwhelming realities. The solutions we plan are unrealistic
because they’re based on what’s good for the Empire without considering the
realities of the latest ‘problem’.
Affected nations and peoples reject our ‘visionary’ projects.
We’ll liberate millions, show them the benefits of free enterprise, and bring
them under our benevolent wing. This all collapses in the middle of incredible
human suffering, undermines our security, turns entire regions against us, and corrupts
our national lives by robbing resources we need for schools, infrastructure,
and other projects that, unlike wars of choice, truly contribute to our
national strength.
Primacy tells everyone that there’s only one excellent way
to live and Americans have found it. It tells you that countries willing to submit
are friends, and the others are enemies. It means that ‘enemy’ countries can’t
be tolerated or allowed to continue unmolested. They must be crushed, or at
least made to realize that rejecting American control brings trouble.
This would be a dangerous policy in a world the Empire
dominated. It’s even more risky in today’s multipolar world. Promoters of the
primacy idea believe that we know what the world needs better than anyone else.
President McKinley said invading the Philippines was necessary even
though Filipinos opposed it. “Did we need their consent to perform a great act
for humanity” he asked. This same concept guides our foreign actions today. It
tells ‘consumers’ that although ignorant foreigners may believe they don’t want
our intervention, it’s really good for them. We’re puzzled when they don’t
agree and interpret their disagreement as further proof of their backwardness
and need for our control.
America tells
Asian countries that they shouldn’t look for compromise with China. We’re irritated
that Germany, France, Italy, and other countries want peace with Russia; we
want them to adopt our policy of confrontation. Meanwhile, in the Empire, every
day’s news brings the same question: How should America ‘manage’ these ‘crises’?
Secret reports by American, Saudi and Israeli intelligence
agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military
and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a
Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Assad was a practical course
to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. According
to Wikileaks, soon after Assad rejected the Qatar
pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. The conflict in Syria isn’t a
conventional war. It’s a regime change operation, just like Libya, Iraq and
many others were regime change operations.
Washington
is the regime change champion; no one else even comes close. You might assume
that ‘consumers’ would notice the patterns, see through the propaganda and
assign blame accurately. No matter how compelling the evidence may be,
brainwashed ‘consumers’ always believe ‘our’ government is doing the right
thing.
The Empire is trying to overthrow Syria’s elected government that
refuses to bow to the Empire’s demands to provide access to pipeline corridors
that will further strengthen American/Israeli dominance in the region.
That’s what’s really going on behind the ISIS distraction and the ‘Assad is a
brutal dictator’ distraction and the ‘war-weary civilians in Aleppo’ diversion. The Empire doesn’t care
about any of those things. It cares about oil, power and money. How can anyone
be confused about that by now?
People in other countries are different from us. They’re
formed by their own histories and traditions. They solve problems differently.
Most prefer a ‘bad’ solution of their own to a ‘good’ one imposed from outside.
We can offer to help, but when we insist on telling them what to do; we push
them away and create new enemies. You’d feel the same if your neighbor showed
up on your doorstep telling you what you had to do.
Exaggerating threats to America and downplaying the high
cost of reckless intervention have become the paycheck of lobbyists, pundits,
and politicians. Many would be out of work if we accepted the reality that our
country is safe. In the Empire, there’s no penalty for failure. We forget the lies
of those who assured us that bombs would bring stable prosperity to Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Libya.
They remain at the heart of our foreign policy and are still taken seriously
when they insist that the Empire must pursue primacy everywhere in the world.
The pursuit of primacy is the pursuit of our own slow and
increasingly violent decline: America
becomes stronger when we meet our challenges at home and respect the
independence of others, not when we try to rule the world. These days Robin
Hood would be deemed a terrorist and ‘consumers’ would accept that because the
TV news would tell them it was so.
Wars of aggression are called humanitarian interventions
when the Empire does it. Universal healthcare is, regrettably, ‘unrealistic’
but billions of dollars for Israel, so it can operate its Apartheid system, and
weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, so they can bomb farmers in Yemen, and cut off
people’s heads for blasphemy, is somehow in ‘our’ vital interest. Translate
some of these code words, like the ones I put in scare quotes, or other such
code words, like ‘enemy combatant’, ‘free trade agreement’, ‘security barrier’,
‘indefinite detention’, ‘targeted killing’, or ‘troubled asset relief program’
and tell us what you find.
I could go on, and frequently do. Odds are I’m already on
the list of Putin-worshiping, anti-Semitic, racist, misogynist, conspiracy
theorizing America-haters. The last thing I need to do is babble about how America
is an authoritarian, corporatist mess ruled by a global capitalist elite that doesn’t
care about you, or any other actual people living in actual countries, where
the corporate media can whip up mass fanatical support for wars of aggression,
or corporate puppets, by pointing their fingers at yet another bogeyman and
shouting ‘Hitler’. Next thing you know I’d be writing about banks, and global
corporations, and national sovereignty, and you know what that’s about, don’t you?
How are Russian troops deploying inside Russia
“provocative,” while the Empire’s troops on Russia's front porch are not?
If America is the leader of the free world, what do we make
of its abandoning the reasons it was once called that especially after the
imposition of the ‘patriot act’.
