WARS: US
MILITARIST FACTIONS IN COMMAND
THE JAMES
PETRAS WEBSITE
11/19/2015
Introduction: Over the
past 15 years the US has been engaged in a series of wars, which has led many
writers to refer to the ‘rise of militarism’ – the growth of an empire, built
primarily by and for the projection of military power – and only secondarily to
advance economic imperialism.
The rise of
a military-based empire, however, does not preclude the emergence of competing,
conflicting and convergent power configurations within the imperial state.
These factions of the Washington elite define the objectives and targets of
imperial warfare, often on their own terms.
Having
stated the obvious general fact of the power of militarism within the imperial
state, it is necessary to recognize that the key policy-makers, who direct the
wars and military policy, will vary according to the country targeted, type of
warfare engaged in and their conception of the war. In other words, while US
policy is imperialist and highly militaristic, the key policymakers, their
approach and the outcomes of their policies will differ. There is no fixed
strategy devised by a cohesive Washington policy elite guided by a unified
strategic vision of the US Empire.
In order to
understand the current, seemingly endless wars, we have to examine the shifting
coalitions of elites, who make decisions in Washington but not always primarily
for Washington. Some factions of the policy elite have clear conceptions of the
American empire, but others improvise and rely on superior ‘political’ or
‘lobbying’ power to successfully push their agenda in the face of repeated
failures and suffer no consequences or costs.
We will
start by listing US imperial wars during the last decade and a half. We will
then identify the main policy-making faction which has been the driving force
in each war. We will discuss their successes and failures as imperial policy
makers and conclude with an evaluation of “the state of the empire” and its
future.
Imperial
Wars: From 2001 – 2015
The current
war cycle started in late 2001 with the US invasion and occupation of
Afghanistan. This was followed by the invasion and occupation of Iraq in March
2003, the US arms support for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the proxy
invasion of Somalia in 2006/7; the massive re-escalation of war in Iraq and
Afghanistan in 2007 – 2009; the bombing, invasion ‘regime change’ in Libya in
2011; the ongoing proxy-mercenary war against Syria (since 2012), and the
ongoing 2015 Saudi-US invasion and destruction of Yemen. In Europe, the US was
behind the 2014 proxy putsch and violent ‘regime change’ in Ukraine which has
led to an ongoing war against ethnic Russian speakers in south-east Ukraine,
especially the populous industrial heartland of the Donbas region.
Over the
past 15 years, there have been overt and covert military interventions,
accompanied by an intense, provocative military build-up along Russia’s borders
in the Baltic States, Eastern Europe (especially Poland), the Balkans (Bulgaria
and Romania) and the mammoth US base in Kosovo; in Central Europe with nuclear
missiles in Germany and, of course, the annexation of Ukraine and Georgia as
US-NATO clients.
Parallel to
the military provocations encircling Russia, Washington has launched a major
military, political, economic and diplomatic offensive aimed at isolating China
and affirming US supremacy in the Pacific.
In South
American, US military intervention found expression via Washington-orchestrated
business-military coup attempts in Venezuela in 2002 and Bolivia in 2008, and a
successful ‘regime change’ in Honduras in 2009, overthrowing its elected president
and installing a US puppet.
In summary,
the US has been engaged in two, three or more wars since 2001, defining an
almost exclusively militarist empire, run by an imperial state directed by
civilian and military officials seeking unchallenged global dominance through
violence.
Washington:
Military Workshop of the World
War and
violent regime change are the exclusive means through which the US now advances
its foreign policy. However, the various Washington war-makers among the power
elite do not form a unified bloc with common priorities. Washington provides
the weapons, soldiers and financing for whichever power configuration or
faction among the elite is in a position, by design or default, to seize the
initiative and push their own war agenda.
The
invasion of Afghanistan was significant in so far as it was seen by all sectors
of the militarist elite, as the first in a series of wars. Afghanistan was to
set the stage for the launching of higher priority wars elsewhere.
Afghanistan
was followed by the infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ speech, dictated by Tel Aviv,
penned by presidential speech-writer, David Fromm and mouthed by the brainless
President Bush, II. The ‘Global War on Terror’ was the thinly veiled slogan for
serial wars around the world. Washington measured the loyalty of its vassals
among the nations of Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America by their support
for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The Afghan invasion provided
the template for future wars. It led to an unprecedented increase in the
military budget and ushered in ‘Caesar’-like dictatorial presidential powers to
order and execute wars, silencing domestic critics and sending scored of
thousands of US and NATO troops to the ‘Hindu Kush’.
In itself,
Afghanistan was never any threat and certainly no economic prize for plunder
and profit. The Taliban had not attacked the US. Osama Bin Laden could have
been turned over to a judicial tribunal – as the governing Taliban had
insisted.
The US
military (with its ‘Coalition of the Willing’ or COW) successfully invaded and
occupied Afghanistan and set up a vassal regime in Kabul. It built scores of
military bases and attempted to form an obedient colonial army. In the
meantime, the Washington militarist elite had moved on to bigger and, for the
Israel-centric Zionist elite, higher priority wars, namely Iraq.
The
decision to invade Afghanistan was not opposed by any of Washington’s
militarist elite factions. They all shared the idea of using a successful
military blitz or ‘cake-walk’ against the abysmally impoverished Afghanistan as
a way to rabble rouse the American masses into accepting a long period of
intense and costly global warfare throughout the world.
Washington’s
militarist elites fabricated the link between the attacks on 9/11/2001 and
Afghanistan’s governing Taliban and the presence of the Saudi warlord Osama Bin
Laden. Despite the ‘fact’ that most of the ‘hijackers’ were from the kingdom of
Saudi Arabia and none were Afghans, invading and destroying Afghanistan was to
be the initial test to gauge the highly manipulated and frightened American
public’s willingness to shoulder the burden of a huge new cycle of imperial
wars. This has been the only aspect of the invasion of Afghanistan that could
be viewed as a policy success – it made the costs of endless wars ‘acceptable’
to a relentlessly propagandized public.
Flush with
their military victories in the Hindu Kush, the Washington militarists turned
to Iraq and fabricated a series of increasingly preposterous pretexts for war:
Linking the 9/11 ‘jihadi’ hijackers with the secular regime of Saddam Hussein,
whose intolerance for violent Islamists (especially the Saudi variety) was well
documented, and concocting a whole fabric of lies about Iraqi ‘weapons of mass
destruction’ which provided the propaganda basis for invading an already
disarmed, blockaded and starved Iraq in March 2003.
Leading the
Washington militarists in designing the war to destroy Iraq were the Zionists,
including Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, and a few Israel-centric
Gentile militarists, such as Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin
Powell and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The Zionists had a powerful entourage in
key positions in the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon.
There were
‘outsiders’ – non-Zionists and militarists within these institutions,
especially the Pentagon, who voiced reservations - but they were brushed aside,
not consulted and ‘encouraged’ to retire.
None of the
‘old hands’ in the State Department or Pentagon bought into the hysteria about
Sadaam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but to voice reservations was to
risk one’s career. The manufacture and dissemination of the pretext for
invading Iraq was orchestrated by a small team of operatives linking Tel Aviv
and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz’s “Office of Special Plans”, a
tight group of Zionists and some Israelis headed by Abram Shulsky (Sept. 2002 –
June 2003).
The US war
on Iraq was an important part of Israel’s agenda to ‘re-make the Middle East’
to establish its unchallenged regional hegemony and execute a ‘final solution’
for its own vexing ‘Arab (native Palestinian) problem’: It was made operational
by the powerful Zionist faction within the Executive (White House), which had
assumed almost dictatorial powers after the attack on 9/11/2001. Zionists
planned the war, designed the ‘occupation policy’ and ‘succeeded wildly’ with
the eventual dismemberment of a once modern secular nationalist Arab state.
In order to
smash the Iraqi state – the US occupation policy was to eliminate (through mass
firings, jailing and assassination) all high level, experienced Iraqi civil,
military and scientific personnel – down to high school principals. They
dismantled any vital infrastructure (which had not been already destroyed by
the decades of US sanctions and bombing under President Clinton) and reduced an
agriculturally advanced Iraq to a barren wasteland which would take centuries
to recover and could never challenge Israel’s colonization of Palestine, let
alone its military supremacy in the Middle East. Naturally, the large
Palestinian Diaspora refugee population in Iraq was targeted for ‘special
treatment’.
But Zionist
policymakers had a much larger agenda than erasing Iraq as a viable country:
They had a longer list of targets: Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Libya, whose
destructions were to be carried out with US and NATO blood and treasure (and
not a single Israeli soldier).
Despite the
fact that Iraq did not even possess a functioning air force or navy in March
2003 and Afghanistan in late 2001 was rather primitive, the invasions of both
countries turned out to be very costly to the US. The US completely failed to
benefit from its ‘victory and occupation’, despite Paul Wolfowitz’ boasts that
the pillage of Iraq’s oil fields would pay for the entire project in a ‘few
months’. This was because the real Zionist plan was to destroy these nations –
beyond any possibility for a quick or cheap imperialist economic gain.
Scorching the earth and salting the fields is not a very profitable policy for
empire builders.
Israel has
been the biggest winner with no cost for the ‘Jewish State’. The American
Zionist policy elite literally handed them the services of the largest and
richest armed forces in history: the US. ‘Israel-Firsters’ played a decisive
role among Washington policy-makers and Tel Aviv celebrated in the streets!
They came, they dominated policy and they accomplished their mission: Iraq (and
millions of its people)was destroyed.
The US
gained an unreliable, broken colony, with a devastated economy and systematically
destroyed infrastructure and without the functioning civil service needed for a
modern state. To pay for the mess, the American people faced a spiraling budget
deficit, tens of thousands of American war casualties and massive cuts in their
own social programs. Crowning the Washington war-makers’ victory was the
disarticulation of American civil and constitutional rights and liberties and
the construction of a enormous domestic police state.
After the
Iraq disaster, the same influential Zionist faction in Washington lost no time
in demanding a new war against Israel’s bigger enemy – namely Iran. In the
ensuing years, they failed to push the US to attack Teheran but they succeeded
in imposing crippling sanctions on Iran. The Zionist faction secured massive US
military support for Israel’s abortive invasion of Lebanon and its devastating
series of blitzkriegs against the impoverished and trapped people of Gaza.
The Zionist
faction successfully shaped US military interventions to meet Israel’s regional
ambitions against three Arab countries: Yemen, Syria and Libya.. The Zionists
were not able to manipulate the US into attacking Iran because the traditional
militarist faction in Washington balked: With instability in Afghanistan and
Iraq, the US was not well positioned to face a major conflagration throughout
the Middle East, South Asia and beyond – which a ground and air war with Iran
would involve. However, the Zionist factions did secure brutal economic
sanctions and the appointment of key Israel-Centric officials within the US
Treasury. Secretary Stuart Levey, at the start of the Obama regime, and David
Cohen afterwards, were positioned to enforce the sanctions.
Even before
the ascendency of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Tel Aviv’s
military objectives after Iraq, including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen
had to be spaced over time, because the non-Zionist factions among Washington’s
elite had been unable to integrate occupied Afghanistan and Iraq into the
empire.
Resistance,
armed conflict and military advances in both Afghanistan and Iraq never ceased
and are continuing into their 2nd decade. As soon as the US would withdraw from
a region, declaring it ‘pacified’, the armed resistance would move back in and
the local sepoys would defect to the rebels or take off for London or
Washington with millions in pillaged loot.
‘Unfinished
wars’, mounting casualties and spiraling costs, with no end in sight,
undermined the agreement between the militarist and the Zionist factions in the
Executive branch. However, the massively powerful Zionist presence in the US
Congress provided a platform to bray for new and even bigger wars.
Israel’s
vicious invasion of Lebanon in 2006 was defeated despite receiving massive US
arms supplies, a US funded ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense system and intelligence
assistance. Tel Aviv could not defeat the highly disciplined and motivated
Hezbollah fighters in South Lebanon despite resorting to carpet bombing of
civilian neighborhoods with millions of banned cluster munitions and picking
off ambulances and churches sheltering refugees. Israelis have been much more
triumphal murdering lightly armed Palestinian resistance fighters and
stone-throwing children.
Libya: A
Multi-faction War for the Militarists (without Big Oil)
The war
against Libya was a result of multiple factions among the Washington militarist
elite, including the Zionists, coming together with French, English and German
militarists to smash the most modern, secular, independent state in Africa
under President Muammar Gaddafi.
The aerial
campaign against the Gaddafi regime had virtually no organized support within
Libya with which to reconstruct a viable neo-colonial state ripe for pillage.
This was another ‘planned dismemberment’ of a complex, modern republic which
had been independent of the US Empire.
The war
succeeded wildly in shredding Libya’s economy, state and society. It unleashed
scores of armed terrorist groups,( who appropriated the modern weapons of
Gaddafi’s army and police) and uprooted two million black contract workers and
Libyan citizens of South Saharan origin forcing them to flee the rampaging
racist militias to the refugee camps of Europe. Untold thousands died in
rickety boats in the Mediterranean Sea.
The entire
war was carried out to the publicly giddy delight of Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and her ‘humanitarian interventionist’ lieutenants (Susan Rice and
Samantha Power), who were utterly ignorant as to who and what the Libyan
“opposition” represented. Eventually, even Hillary’s own Ambassador to Libya
would be slaughtered by . . . the same victorious US-backed ‘rebels’ (sic) in
the newly liberated Bengasi!
The Zionist
faction destroyed Gaddafi (whose capture, grotesque torture and murder was
filmed and widely disseminated), eliminating another real adversary of Israel
and supporter of Palestinian rights. The US militarist faction, which led the
war, got nothing positive – not even a secure naval, air or training base –
only a dead Ambassador, millions of desperate refugees flooding Europe and
thousands of trained and armed jihadists for the next target: Syria.
For a while
Libya became the main supply-line for Islamist mercenaries and arms to invade
Syria and fight the secular nationalist government in Damascus.
Once again
the least influential faction in Washington turned out to be the oil and gas
industry, which lost lucrative contracts it had already signed with the Gaddafi
regime. Thousands of highly trained foreign oil workers were withdrawn. After
Iraq, it should have been obvious that these wars were not ‘for oil’!
Ukraine:
Coups, Wars and Russia’s ‘Underbelly’
With the
US-orchestrated coup and intervention in Ukraine, the militarist factions once
again seized the initiative, establishing a puppet regime in Kiev and targeting
Russia’s strategic ‘soft underbelly’. The plan had been to take over Russia’s
strategic military bases in Crimea and cut Russia from the vital
military-industrial complexes in the Donbas region with its vast iron and coal
reserves.
The
mechanics of the power grab were relatively well planned, the political clients
were put in power, but the US militarists had made no contingencies for
propping up the Ukrainian economy, cut loose from its main trading partner and
oil and gas supplier, Russia.
The coup
led to a ‘proxy war’ in the ethnic-Russian majority regions in the south east
(the Donbas) with four ‘unanticipated consequences’. 1) a country divided east
and west along ethno-linguistic lines, (2) a bankrupt economy made even worse
by the imposition of an IMF austerity program, (3) a corrupt crony capitalist
elite, which was ‘pro-West by bank account’, (4) and, after two years, mass
disaffection among voters toward the US puppet regime.
The
militarists in Washington and Brussels succeeded in engineering the coup in Ukraine
but lacked the domestic allies, plans and preparations to run the country and
successfully annex it to the EU and NATO as a viable country.
Apparently
the militarist factions in the State Department and Pentagon are much more
proficient in stage managing coups and invasions than in establishing a stable
regime as part of a New World Order. They succeed in the former and fail
repeatedly in the latter.
The Pivot
to Asia and the Pirouette to Syria
During most
of the previous decade, traditional global strategists in Washington
increasingly objected to the Zionist faction’s domination and direction of US
war policies focused on the Middle East for the benefit of Israel, instead of
meeting the growing challenge of the new world economic superpower in Asia,
China.
US economic
supremacy in Asia had been deeply eroded as China’s economy grew at double
digits. Beijing was displacing the US as the major trade partner in the Latin
American and African markets. Meanwhile, the top 500 US MNC’s were heavily
invested in China. Three years into President Obama’s first term the ‘China
militarist faction’ announced a shift from the Middle East and the
Israel-centric agenda to a ‘pivot to Asia’, the source of 40% of the world’s
industrial output.
But it was
not profits and markets that motivated Washington’s Asia faction among the
militarist elites – it was military power .Even trade agreements, like the
TransPacific Partnership (TPP), were viewed as tools to encircle and weaken
China militarily and undermine its regional influence.
Led by the
hysterical Pentagon boss Ashton Carter, Washington prepared a series of major
military confrontations with Beijing off the coast of China.
The US
signed expanded military base agreements with the Philippines, Japan and
Australia; it participated in military exercises with Vietnam, South Korea and
Malaysia; it dispatched battleships and aircraft carriers into Chinese
territorial waters.
The US
confrontational trade policy was formulated by the Zionist trio: Secretary of
Commerce, Penny Pritzer, Trade Negotiator Michael Froman (who works for both
the Asia militarist and Zionist factions) and Treasury Secretary Jake Lew. The
result was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), involving 12 Pacific countries
while deliberating excluding China. Washington’s Asian militarist faction
planned to militarize the entire Pacific Basin, in order to dominate the
maritime trade routes and, at a moment’s notice, choke off all of China’s
overseas markets and suppliers – shades of the series of US provocations
against Japan leading up to the US entering WW2.
The
‘Asia-militarist faction’ successfully demanded a bigger military budget to
accommodate its vastly more aggressive posture toward China.
Predictably,
China has insisted on defending its maritime routes and has increased its naval
and air base building and sea and air patrols. Also, predictably, China has
countered the US-dominated TPP by setting-up a one hundred billion dollar Asia
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), while contributing to the multi-billion
dollar BRICS Bank. Meanwhile, China even signed a separate $30 billion dollar
trade agreement with Washington’s strategic ‘partner’, Britain. In fact,
Britain followed the rest of the EU and joined the Asia Infrastructure
Investment Bank – despite objections from Washington’s “Asia faction”.
While the
US depends heavily on its military pacts with South Korea and Japan, the latter
nations have been meeting with China – their most significant trading partner –
to work on expanding and deepening economic ties.
Up until
2014, the “business-with-China faction” of the Washington elite played a key
role in the making of US-Asia policy. However, they have been eclipsed by the
Asia militarist-faction, which is taking US policy in a totally different
direction: Pushing China out as Asia’s economic superpower and escalating
military confrontation with Beijing now heads Washington’s agenda.
Ashton
Carter, the US Defense Secretary, has China, the second most important economy
in the world in the Pentagon’s ‘cross-hairs’. When the TPP failed to curtail
China’s expansion, the militarist faction shifted Washington toward a high risk
military course, which could destabilize the region and risk a nuclear
confrontation.
The
Pirouette: China and Syria
Meanwhile
in the Levant, Washington’s Zionist faction has been busy running a proxy war
in Syria. The pivot to Asia has had to compete with the pirouette to Syria and
Yemen.
The US
joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Gulf Emirates and the EU in sponsoring a
replay of the Libyan ‘regime change’– sponsoring proxy terrorists from around
the globe into invading and devastating Syria. Damascus has been attacked from
all sides for the ‘crime’ of being secular and multi-ethnic; for being
pro-Palestinian; for being allied with Iran and Lebanon; for having an
independent foreign policy; and for maintaining a limited representative (but
not necessarily democratic) government. For these crimes, the West, Israel and
the Saudis would have Syria fractured into ethnically cleansed ‘tribal state’ –
something they had accomplished in Iraq and Libya.
The US
militarist faction (personified by Secretary of Defense Carter and Senators
McCain and Graham) have funded, trained and equipped the terrorists, whom they
call ‘moderates’ and had clearly expected their progeny to follow Washington’s
directions. The emergence of Isis showed just how close these ‘moderates’ stuck
to Washington’s script.
Initially,
the traditional militarist wing of Washington’s elite resisted the Zionist
faction’s demand for direct US military intervention (American ‘boots on the
ground’). That is changing with recent (very convenient) events in Paris.
Warfare:
From Piecemeal Interventions to Nuclear Confrontation
The
Washington militarists have again committed more US soldiers to Iraq and
Afghanistan; American fighter planes and Special Forces are in Syria and Yemen.
Meanwhile, US naval armadas aggressively patrol the coasts of China and Iran.
The militarist – Zionist ‘compromise’ over Syria was comprised of an initial
contingent of 50 US Special Forces to join in ‘limited’ combat roles with
(“loyal” sic) Islamist mercenaries – the so-called ‘moderates’. There are
commitments for greater and heavier weaponry to come, including ground to air
missiles capable of shooting down Russian and Syrian military jets.
Elite
Factional Politics: An Overview
How does
the record of these competing factions, formulating US imperial war policies in
the Middle East over the past 15 years stack up? Clearly there has been no
coherent imperial economic strategy.
The policy
toward Afghanistan is remarkable for its failure to end the longest war in US
history – over 14 years of occupation! The recent attempts by US-led client
NATO forces to withdraw have been immediately followed by military advances by
the nationalist-Islamist resistance militia – the Taliban, which controls much
of the countryside. The possibility of a collapse of the current puppet in Kabul
has forced the militarists in Washington to retain US bases – surrounded by
completely hostile rural populations.
The Afghan
war’s initial appearance of success triggered new wars – inter alia Iraq. But
taking the long view, the Afghan war, has been a miserable failure in terms of
the stated strategic goal of establishing a stable client government. The
Afghan economy collapsed: opium production (which had been significantly
suppressed by the Taliban’s poppy eradication campaign in 2000-2001) is the now
predominant crop – with cheap heroin flooding Europe and beyond. Under the
weight of massive and all pervasive corruption by ‘loyal’ client officials –
the Afghan treasury is empty. The puppet rulers are totally disconnected from
the most important regional, ethnic, religious and family clans and
associations.
Washington
could not ‘find’ any viable economic classes in Afghanistan with which to
anchor a development strategy. They did not come to terms with the deep
ethno-religious consciousness rooted in rural communities and fought the most
popular political force among the majority Pashtu, the Taliban, which had no
role in the attack on ‘9/11’.
They
artificially slapped together a massive army of surly illiterates under Western
imperial command and watched it fall apart at the seams, defect to the Taliban
or turn their own guns on the foreign occupation troops. These “mistakes”,
which accounted for the failure of the militarist faction in the Afghanistan
war were due, in no small part, to the pressure and influence of the Zionist
faction who wanted to quickly move on to their highest priority, a US war
against Israel’s first priority enemy – Iraq - without consolidating the US
control in Afghanistan. For the Zionists, Afghanistan (envisioned as a
‘cake-walk’ or quick victory) was just a tool to set the stage for a much
larger sequence of US wars against Israel’s regional Arab and Persian
adversaries.
Before the
militarists could establish any viable order and an enduring governmental
structure in Afghanistan, attention shifted to a Zionist-centered war against
Iraq.
The
build-up for the US war against Iraq has to be understood as a project wholly
engineered by and for the state of Israel, mostly through its agents within the
US government and Washington policy elite. The goal was to establish Israel as
the unchallenged political-military power in the region using American troops
and money and preparing the ground for Tel Aviv’s “final solution” for the
Palestinian ‘problem’; total expulsion…
The US
military and occupation campaign included the wholesale and systematic
destruction of Iraq: Its law and order, culture, economy and society – so there
would be no possibility of recovery. Such a vicious campaign did not resonate
with any productive sector of the US economy (or for that matter with any
Israeli economic interest).
Washington’s
Zionist faction set about in a parody of ‘Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge’ to identify
and destroy any competent, experienced Iraqi professional, civil servant,
scientist, intellectual, or military official capable of re-organizing and
re-building the county and war-battered society. They were assassinated,
arrested, tortured or driven into exile. The occupation deliberately encouraged
religious parties and traditional tribes to engage in inter-communal massacres
and ethnic cleansing. In other words, the Zionist faction did not pursue the
traditionally understood policy of empire building which would incorporate the
second tier functionaries of a conquered state to form a competent client
regime and use Iraq’s great oil and gas wealth to build its economy. Instead
they chose to impose a scorched earth policy; setting loose organized sectarian
armies, imposing the rule of grotesquely corrupt ex-pats and placing the most
venal, sectarian clients in positions of power. The effect has been to
transform the most advanced, secular Arab country into an ‘Afghanistan’ and in
less than 15 years destroying centuries of culture and community.
The goal of
the ‘Zionist strategy’ was to destroy Iraq as Israel’s regional rival. The cost
of over a million Iraqi dead and many million refugees did not prick any
conscience in Washington or Tel Aviv.
After all,
Washington’s traditional ‘militarist faction’ picked up the bill (costing
hundreds of billions) which they passed on to the American taxpayers (well over
one trillion dollars) and used the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of
American troops to provide a pretext for spreading more chaos. The result of
their mayhem includes the specter of ‘Isis’, which they may consider to be a
success – since hysteria over ‘Isis’ pushes the West ‘closer to Israel’.
The sheer
scale of death and destruction inflicted on the Iraqi population by the Zionist
faction led to thousands of highly competent Ba’athist officers, who had
survived ‘Shock and Awe’ and the sectarian massacres, to join armed Islamist
Sunnis and eventually form the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This
group of experienced Iraqi military officers formed the strategic technical
core of Isis which launched a devastating offensive in Iraq in 2014 – taking
major cities in the north and completely routing the US-trained puppet armies
of the ‘government’ in Baghdad. From there they moved into Syria and beyond. It
is fundamental to understanding the roots of ISIS: The Zionist faction among US
militarist policymakers imposed a deliberate ‘scorched earth’ occupation
policy, which united highly trained nationalist Ba’athist military officers
with young Sunni fighters ,both locals and increasingly foreign jihadist mercenaries.
These deracinated members of the traditional Iraqi nationalist military elite
had lost their families to the sectarian massacres; they were persecuted,
tortured, driven underground and highly motivated. They literally had nothing
left to lose!
This core
of the Isis leadership stands in stark contrast to the colonial, corrupt and
demoralized army slapped together by the US military with more cash than
morale. ISIS quickly swept through half of Iraq and came within 40 miles of
Baghdad.
The US militarist
faction faced military defeat after eight years of war. They mobilized,
financed and armed their client Kurdish mercenaries in northern Iraq and
recruited the Shia Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to appeal to the Shia militia.
ISIS
exploited the Western-backed Islamist uprising in Syria – and extended their
sweep well across the border. Syria had accepted a million Iraqi refugees from
the US invasion, including many of Iraq’s surviving experienced nationalist
administrative elite. The US militarists are in a dilemma – another full-scale
war would not be politically feasible, and its military outcome
uncertain…Moreover the US was aligned with dubious allies - especially the
Saudis - who had their own regional ambitions
Turkey and Saudi
Arabia, Israel and the Kurds were each eager to expand their power
territorially and politically.
In the
midst of this, the traditional Washington militarists are left with no overall
viable imperialist strategy. Instead they improvise with faux ‘rebels’, who
claim to be moderates and democrats, while taking US guns and dollars and
ultimately joining the most powerful Islamist groups – like Isis.
Throwing a
wrench into the machinery of Israeli-Saudi hegemonic ambitions, Russia, Iran
and Hezbollah have sided with the secular Syrian government. Russia finally
moved to bomb Isis strongholds – after identifying a significant Isis
contingent of militant Chechens whose ultimate aims are to bring war and terror
back to Russia.
The US-EU
war against Libya unleashed all the retrograde mercenary forces from three
continents (Africa, Asia and Europe) and Washington finds itself with no means
to control them. Washington could not even protect its own consulate in their “
liberated” regional capital of Benghazi – the US ambassador and two
intelligence aides were killed by Washington’s own ‘rebels’. The competing and
cooperating factions of the Washington militarist elite placed Libya on a
steaming platter: Serving up invasion, regicide and hundreds of thousands of refugees,
which they did not bother to even ‘season’ with any plan or strategy – just
unadulterated scorched earth against another opponent of Zionism. And a
potentially lucrative strategic neo-colony in North Africa has been lost with
no accountability for the Washington architects of such barbarism.
Latin
America: The Last Outpost of the Multi-Nationals
As we have
seen, the major theaters of imperial policy (the Middle East and Asia) have
been dominated by militarists, not professional diplomats-linked to the MNCs.
Latin America stands as something of an exception. In Latin America, US
policymakers have been guided by big business interests. Their main focus has
been on pushing the neo-liberal agenda. Eventually this has meant promoting the
US-centered ‘free trade’ agreements, joint military exercises, shared military
bases, and political backing for the US global military agenda.
The
‘militarist faction’ in Washington worked with the traditional business faction
in support of the unsuccessful military coups in Venezuela (2002 and 2014), the
attempted coup in Bolivia 2008, and a successful regime change in Honduras
(2010).
To harass
the independent Argentine government which was developing closer diplomatic and
trade ties with Iran, a sector of the US Zionist financial elite (the ‘vulture
fund’ magnate Paul Singer) joined forces with the Zionist militarist faction to
raise hysterical accusations against President Cristina Kirchner over the
‘mysterious’ suicide of a Israel-linked Argentine prosecutor. The prosecutor,
Alberto Nisman, had devoted his career to ‘cooking up a case’ against Iran with
the aid of the Mossad and CIA for the unsolved, bombing the Buenos Aires Jewish
community center in 1994. Various investigations had exonerated Iran and the
“Nisman Affaire” was an intense effort to keep Argentina from trading with
Iran.
The
Washington business faction operated in a mildly hostile Latin America for most
of the past decade. However, it was able to recover influence, via a series of
bilateral free trade agreements and took advantage of the end of the commodity
cycle. The latter weakened the center-left regimes and moved them closer to
Washington.
The
‘excesses’ committed by the US backed military dictatorships during the
nineteen sixties through eighties, and the crisis of the neo-liberal nineties,
set the stage for the rise of a relatively moderate business-diplomatic faction
to come to the fore in Washington. It is also the case that the various
militarist and Zionist factions in Washington were focused elsewhere (Europe,
Middle East and Asia). In any case the US political elite operates in Latin
America mostly via political and business proxies, for the time being.
Conclusion
From our
brief survey, it is clear that wars play a key role in US foreign policy in
most regions of the world. However, war policies in different regions respond
to different factions in the governing elite.
The
traditional militarist faction predominates creating confrontations in Ukraine,
Asia and along the Russian border. Within that framework the US Army, Air Force
and Special Forces play a leading, and fairly conventional, role. In the Far
East, the Navy and Air Force predominate.
In the
Middle East and South Asia, the military (Army and Air Force) factions share
power with the Zionist faction . Fundamentally the Zionist dictate policy on
Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine and the militarists follow.
Both
factions overlapped in creating the debacle in Libya.
The
factions form shifting coalitions, supporting wars of interest to their respective
power centers. The militarists and Zionists worked together in launching the
Afghan war; but once launched, the Zionists abandoned Kabul and concentrated on
preparing for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was of far greater
interest to Israel.
It should
be noted that at no point did the oil and business elite play any significant
role in war policy. The Zionist faction pushed hard to secure direct US ground
intervention in Libya and Syria, but was not able to force the US to send large
contingents of ground troops due to opposition from the Russians as well as a
growing sector of the US electorate. Likewise, the Zionists played a leading
role in successfully imposing sanctions against Iran and a major role in
prosecuting banks around the world accused of violating the sanctions. However,
they were not able to block the military faction from securing a diplomatic
agreement with Iran over its uranium enrichment program - without going to war.
Clearly,
the business faction plays a major role in promoting US trade agreements and
tries to lift or avoid sanctions against important real and potential trade
partners like China, Iran and Cuba.
The
Zionists faction among the Washington elite policymakers take positions which
consistently push for wars and aggressive policies against any regime targeted
by Israel. The differences between the traditional militarist and Zionist
factions are blurred by most writers who scrupulously avoid identifying Zionist
decision-makers, but there is no question of who benefits and who loses.
The kind of
war which the Zionists promote and implement – the utter destruction of enemy
countries - undermines any plans by the traditional militarist faction and the
military to consolidate power in an occupied country and incorporate it into a
stable empire.
It is a
serious error to lump these factions together: the business, Zionist and
various militarist factions of the Washington policy making elite are not one
homogeneous group. They may overlap at times, but they also differ as to
interests, liabilities, ideology and loyalties. They also differ in their
institutional allegiances.
The
overarching militarist ideology, which permeates US imperial foreign policy
obscures a deep and recurrent weakness – US policymakers master the mechanics
of war but have no strategy for ruling after intervening. This has been
glaringly evident in all recent wars: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine etc.
Improvisation has repeatedly led to monumental failures: from financing phantom
armies to bleeding billions to prop-up incompetent, kleptocratic puppet
regimes. Despite the hundreds of billions of public money wasted in these
serial disasters, no policymaker has been held to account.
Long wars
and short memories are the norm for Washington’s militarist rulers who do not
lose sleep over their blunders. The Zionists, for their part, do not even need
a strategy for rule. They push the US into wars for Israel, and once having
destroyed “the enemy country” they leave a vacuum to be filled by chaos. The
American public provides the gold and blood for these misadventures and reaps
nothing but domestic deterioration and greater international strife.
