American
history after WW2 is a sorry tale of intellectual midget presidents
beholden to special interests who have led the country to the path of
ruin. Even before 1939 Woodrow Wilson, a racial bigot who fired all
blacks from senior federal positions after ascending to the presidency,
surreptitiously led America into WW1 (after promising to keep it out in
his election speeches) at the behest of Wall Street financiers who had
financed both UK and Germany in the early part of WW1. They had lent the
UK billions of dollars in present day money to just a few hundred
million dollars to Germany. When it looked like the UK would lose and
their loans would become uncollectible, they pressured the US to enter
the war on the side of UK under absurd pretenses, to recover their
money. Wilson caused a hundred thousand American casualties to please
his supporters.
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was unable to alleviate the depression in America
despite some Keynesian deficit spending. He covertly supported UK
against despicable Hitler’s Germany and banned the export of oil and
scrap metal to Japan during the early part of WW2 and essentially forced
cruel, racist and empire dreaming Japan to attack Pearl Harbor to
facilitate control over Burmese oil and Malaysian tin and rubber. The
massive deficit spending of WW2 brought America out from depression to
boom. FDR for political reasons kept changing his running mate
vice-presidents during his four terms and picked a non-entity Truman in
the final term. Truman had a dismally failed business career and became
a political stooge of rich vested interests from Missouri, which led him
to the US Senate and the vice-presidency. He had compromised his
integrity and independence to win elections and was generally considered
an unintelligent, dull and obedient stooge. The sick Roosevelt died and
Truman inherited the presidency, a post completely beyond his
capabilities. (Read James Carroll’s “House Of War”, Bruce
Cumming’s writings on Korea or Gore Vidal’s writings on America)
America in that period had a paranoid state of mind as the McCarthy era
and the insanity and suicides of the CIA chief Frank Wisner and defense
secretary James Forrestal attest to. Truman’s and the the population’s
racist hatred of all Japanese led earlier to the internment of US
citizens of Japanese origin and the terror bombing of Germany and Japan,
the latter with unjustifiable nuclear weapons. Truman and his secretary
of state had been interfering covertly in communist North Korea from
their South Korean occupation below the 38th parallel. They then made
the stupid announcement that Korea was of no vital interest to the US
and precipitated the North Korean invasion for unification. The
communists were not good guys, but had fought the Japanese occupation
while the US propped up military dictators of South Korea who were
anti-national collaborators of the Japanese occupation. The same history
would be repeated in Vietnam and slightly differently in Afghanistan and
Iraq where corrupt governments collaborating with violent occupiers
fueled insurgencies.
Truman wanted to eliminate communists from Greece and Turkey and
formulated his doctrine of supporting anti-communists the world over
without realizing that in many western colonies nationalist opposition
had communist leanings. The paranoia of monolithic communism world
domination obscured the truth of colonies’ citizens yearning to be free
of imperial oppression and occupation. A current paranoid delusion leads
to the failure of understanding that in many Muslim nations with corrupt
kleptocratic tyrants, the only opposition able to survive after the US
contrived elimination of all democratic and leftist political parties
are the mosque based Islamists. The rise of Hamas and Hizbollah are the
direct results of shortsighted and foolish US and Israeli policies. It
was the CIA that was responsible for overthrowing the elected government
of Iran in 1953 and the leftist government in Iraq a decade or so later,
replacing it with the then known thug, terrorist and murderer Saddam.
When Truman informed powerful Senator Vandenberg about his doctrine and
plans of huge military spending, the latter told him that the only way
to achieve his objective was to scare the hell out of the American
public, so that they wouldn’t be able to think rationally. That is what
he did by the fear of Soviet nuclear terror. The US strategic air
command kept nuclear bombers in the air 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. Schoolchildren were subjected to frequent regular drills to hide
under their desks in case of a nuclear attack showing how gullible and
fearful the American public is. Bush has used the policy of raising
terror alerts and painting opposition to his illegal and aggressive
military and surveillance policies to stifle dissenters and brand them
as traitors or unpatriotic.
Truman’s real fear was the economy slipping into a recession after the
profligate military spending of WW2 had ended. He went on a massive
military buildup and a state of recurring war which continues even
today. Eisenhower warned about the military industrial complex’s
unstoppable growth but did nothing to stop it, just as Carter now wrote
a book, “Peace not Apartheid” while he did nothing to stop the Israeli
oppression and occupation of Palestine during his presidential tenure.
Truman scraped through a re-election win by stoking fear just as George
W. Bush did in 2004 after stealing the election in 2000 by blocking
black votes in Florida and with the US Supreme Court as his accomplice
stopping an honest recount in Florida. Truman left it to his successor
Eisenhower to extricate the US from a stalemate in Korea, just as
Johnson left it to Nixon and Bush will to the next president.
The Bush Cheney cabal with no knowledge of history and delusions of
grandeur, decided to pick the low hanging ripe fruit of the despicable
tyrant Saddam to capture the huge Iraqi oil reserves, establish a puppet
government under Chalabi and permanent US bases in Iraq to intimidate
Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and have a stranglehold on
the oil needs of Europe, Japan, China and India. They did not realize
that the death of half a million Iraqi children by sanctions and the
betrayal of the US instigated Shia and Kurd rebellion against Saddam by
Bush Sr. had left bitter memories for the Iraqi population. Their plan
was never to withdraw from Iraq (just like Germany, Japan and South
Korea) and it is still the case.
They did not want free elections and were pushing for controlled
caucuses but were thwarted by Ayatollah Sistani. Their stupidity was so
great that they really believed that their puppets Alawi, Chalabi and
Pachachi would win the elections like their counterpart CIA asset Karzai
did in Afghanistan. The former group failed to win any significant seats
and the latter in Afghanistan has no following presently. The boycott of
the elections in Iraq by the disenchanted Sunnis led to the Shiite
majority winning control of the parliament and the bungling in the
formulation of the Constitution led to a near veto power by the Kurds
collaborating with the US occupation, thus setting the seeds of the
current lack of political and revenue sharing compromises destined to
lead to a trifurcation and breakup of Iraq.
The winning Shiites were opponents of Saddam who had spent years in
exile in Iran and had received political, economic and military support
from Iran. They were perceived by the dethroned and boycotting Sunnis as
US and Persian stooges and usurpers. The stupid and foolish Bremer
policy of firing the army and all Baath party members led to an economic
meltdown and fueled further resentment. In the totalitarian Saddam
regime practically every government employee or anyone eligible to
receive food subsidies during the sanctions era, found it advantageous
to enlist in the party to facilitate life. The racist and culturally
demeaning behavior of the occupation US troops and their fears of
insurgents led them to shoot first, break down doors and torture and
humiliate their captives and people in their homes. All these fed the
insurgency. The hypocrisy of shutting down Shiite Sadrist newspapers and
television stations and shooting at unfriendly reporters while preaching
democracy and freedom of speech alienated some factions of the Shia
community as well.
In the meantime stupid Bush, crooked Cheyney, clueless Rumsfeld and
their puppet generals lied through their teeth for years, while honest,
intelligent and dissenting voices were fired, demoted or retired. The
bumbling Pentagon bureaucracy being generally a milieu for the
advancement of political hacks, willing sycophants, the retarded or
ineducable, had learnt nothing from the debacle of Vietnam about how to
fight an insurgency or forgotten its lessons. They continued to alienate
the population, concentrated on body counts, high value targets and
their deck of cards, oblivious to the fact that their methods were
fostering far more insurgents than they were killing or capturing. Their
policy of throwing money at all problems had led to offering a bounty
for terrorist and insurgent capture. Our drug running and warlord allies
sold many of their opponents or with those whom they had property or
personal disputes for bounty in Afghanistan and to a lesser extent in
Iraq. The rising US casualties led to abandoning Geneva Conventions by
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the Generals and the Congress, with tortures at
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram and rendition and torture by the CIA,
sullying America’s soiled reputation in the world even further.
It is only natural that Iran, a neighboring state with a shared religion
and Shia sect would provide material support to its partisan government
in Iraq. In Afghanistan it helped the US overthrow the Taliban and
stabilize the country and being fearful of being squeezed by the US
presence in Afghanistan from the east, Iraq from the west and Pakistan
from the south, offered to negotiate a comprehensive security treaty,
but was rebuffed by Bush inflated by his own petard and dressed up in a
fighter pilot’s uniform to celebrate a premature Halloween. The irony is
that in other circumstances when he was supposed to dress up as a pilot
during the Vietnam War, he had gone AWOL.
The mounting casualties and off budget expenditure and rising oil and
gasoline prices without tangible results, soured US public opinion and
finally woke up the subservient rubber stamp congress and supine press
and resulted in the loss of Republican majority in both houses. Powers
that be had already trotted out the usual suspects as the Iraq Study
Group, to put a band aid on the hemorrhaging national wound and offer a
face saving way out. Bush who is not only stupid, but also stubborn and
unwilling to irritate his 25% base of the religious right, neocon
Likudniks and sundry rabid warmongers, opted for one last winning throw
of a surge at his crap(s) table. Now that it has also come out snake
eyes, he is using his dummy generals to mouth his words that success
will occur by 2009 at the cost of another 500 billion dollars and
another 25,000 casualties.
The American public is not accepting the administration lies anymore.
For the last few months it has dawned on the dim witted shrub that Iran
is in a commanding position in Iraq and so he has inflamed the sectarian
strife between Sunnis and Shias. The Shias after restraint due to
Sistani’s advice, finally used their large private armies and the Shias
trained as police and military by the Americans, as death squads to
ethnically cleanse mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, the ultimate prize of
contention. The Sunnis can terrorize by suicide bombers and shoot
mortars in the Green Zone, but lack organized manpower and material to
hold territory outside their zones. This is why the Saudi king finally
chastised the American war as illegal and disastrous. He refuses to
recognize the Iraqi government and calls it an Iranian puppet. The
alienation of Sunni dominated governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf States needs urgent remedies of fire control and this is
why Rice and Gates are in the Middle East and have skipped the important
meetings in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
The US Congress like the Chinese population is addicted to pork. Any
bill with earmarks or giveaways to the drug or arms lobbies or to Israel
is sure to pass with large bipartisan support. It is like the galloping
evolution of sexual selection promulgated by Darwin. The best examples
are the antlers of the Irish elk and the peacock’s tail. Females of
their species make their mating choice on these and until and unless
they become severe handicaps to survival of males, they will grow. The
Irish elk is already extinct and the peacock approaching endangerment.
Similarly the spending on arms is leading to starvation of social
programs like the children’s health insurance protection and aid to
dependent children, while war expenditure and arms gifts to Egypt,
Israel and Pakistan rise ballistically. The projected war cost is
approaching two trillion dollars. Bush’s agenda for his presidency was
tax cuts for the rich, gutting Medicare and Social Security and a
bonanza for the drug, oil and arms industries. He got the tax cuts and
by war and Medicare part D gave a bonanza to the pharmaceutical, oil and
arms industries. He has failed only the Wall Street backers by being
unable to privatize Social Security.
Bush wants to worsen the sectarian Muslim conflict and thus divert the
attention of Sunnis away from terrorism against the West. He also wants
to intimidate Iran by heavily arming the Gulf States and to have their
rulers make peace with Israel by ignoring Palestinian plight and
concentrate their belligerence towards Shiites in Iran, Iraq and
Lebanon. Selling 20 billion dollars of arms to the Gulf States will be a
windfall for the arms manufacturers. If the Congress approves that, it
will acquiesce for the 30 billion dollar arms gift for Israel and 13
billion dollars worth for a partial balance to Egypt. The 43 billion
dollars will come out of the taxpayer’s pocket and be consistent with
the reverse Robin Hood policies of US governments of robbing the poor to
further enrich the fat cats. Children’s and poor persons’ programs will
be cut, because children don’t vote and the poor have no lobbyists. The
Saudi arms sale will also garner a 10% or more commission for Saudi
princes to maintain their yachts, pleasure palaces and allow them to
visit casinos and add to their off the record wives.
Finally the arms package will further destabilize the area and may tempt
Iran to escalate its arming of Iraqi insurgents, thus giving casus belli
to America to bomb Iran. If Iran is restrained, it will give Israel the
wherewithal to bomb it in the future or for the Saudis to shed some
blood for a change in a future war. It is for the same reasons that
Pakistan was given F-16s, to entice India into buying even more
expensive comparable or superior American aircraft. The signing of the
logistics agreement with India was to prepare for future wars and fight
them cheaply, just as outsourcing of information services to India and
manufacturing to China brings cheaper goods for the American public and
bigger profits for American corporations while driving down the
bargaining power of US labor. Who cares if it bankrupts America with its
budget, trade and current account deficits and reduces job opportunities
and pay scales for American workers. If they have no bread, let them eat
cake!
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