Sometimes it just sort of creeps up on you, gradually, inexorably. The complete and utter insanity that's going on in the Middle East right now. Let's review:
Saddam Hussein murders his former leader and takes over Iraq and the CIA gives him a list of Iraqi communists to kill.
Saddam is happy with the benevolence of the CIA but he's more enamoured with the Stalinist mode of national industrial development, so he opts for the Soviets to be his protector.
In 1979, the Shah of Iran is overthrown in a revolution led by pretty much the entire country (angered at his corruption and violence) but led by the fundamentalist cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeini. The revolutionaries blame the US for having imposed the Shah on them in a coup back in the 1950s. They take the US embassy hostage. US-Iranian relations go straight down the toilet where they stay for the next 35 years.
Seeing the disarray in Iran, Saddam Hussein (who has some border issues with Iran) decides its an opportune time to invade. The USA supports his efforts, though they privately hope that both sides will destroy one another. To this end, the Reagan administration provides covert weapons assistance with Iran at the same time.
The war ends with both Iran and Iraq exhausted. Soon afterwards, the Soviet Empire implodes, leaving the world with one lone super-power. Knowing who is now the master, Saddam makes an enquiry of the US ambassador in Baghdad:
Kuwait is really pissing him off. They're pressing him to repay his war loans to them, but at the same time they're selling too much oil, driving down the price. Worse still, they're getting the oil from slant-drilling into an oil field on his side of the Iraq-Kuwait border. Would the USA mind if he slapped Kuwait around a little to teach them some manners?
The US ambassador says her country doesn't have an opinion about this inter-Arab squabble.
Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.
The USA goes ape-shit. Saddam Hussein is the Hitler threat of the 1990s. (Sane people laugh at the hyperbole.) Kuwaiti preemies are being thrown out of their incubators and onto the cold floor. Iraqi tanks are zooming towards the border of Saudi Arabia. (They weren't.)
The massive threat of Iraq is met by a US-dominated United Nations mandate. Iraq's military is obliterated in a matter of weeks. President George H. W. Bush describes a "New World Order" wherein "What we say goes." He exults: "We've licked that Vietnam Syndrome for good!"
Sanctions are imposed on Iraq that produce the deaths of ONE MILLION IRAQIS.
Air-strikes during the 1990s destroy the countries anti-aircraft defenses piece-by-piece.
On September 11th, 2001, a bunch of Saudi Arabians, ostensibly led by Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, attack the United States. President George W. Bush invades Afghanistan for harboring bin Laden and refusing to hand him over without evidence of his guilt.
(Afghanistan's horrific decades are a story in themselves.)
The bush II regime decides the time is ripe for the total re-ordering of the Middle East. (An angry Saddam Hussein had been considering taking Iraqi oil off the $US pricing system. This would have weakened the currency more than bush II wanted it to be.)
Oil executive Dick Cheney, Military Industrial Complex shill Donald Rumsfeld, and all the rest of bush II's gang of idiots and scum-bags, invent a fabricated story of Iraq possessing banned weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) including chemical weapons, as well as an ongoing nuclear weapons program. This lie was accompanied by blatant fraud, shameless stupidity and was accepted by "serious" people everywhere, from David Frum to David Brooks.
Iraq is invaded. Saddam Hussein is toppled from power and eventually tried and executed for one of the few crimes he committed that had nothing to do with US assistance. The US military murders and tortures prisoners. Plunges the country into chaos. Foments sectarian violence. Commits war-crimes.
As of this writing, over ONE-MILLION Iraqis have died because of the violence. Millions more have been injured. Many millions more fled their homeland as refugees.
The Shiite-majority in Iraq was led by the vindictive al-Maliki, who ruled with an iron fist; using police-state violence, censorship, torture, to suppress opposition (especially Sunni opposition). He really pisses off the Americans by refusing to pass the Washington-crafted oil bill which was to hand the Iraqi oil industry over to US corporations.
Lo and behold! The "Arab Spring" breaks out in Tunisia and Egypt! This has nothing to do with bush II bringing "democracy" to Iraq. Wikileaks (its founder hiding from extradition to the USA in the Ecuadorian Embassy) released information (provided by Chelsea Manning who the Obama regime tortured and then imprisoned for life for this "crime") that showed the corruption of the Tunisian government. This same government enforced crippling austerity policies upon its impoverished people. The blatant hypocrisy drove people into the streets and brought down the government. Inspired by this example of "people power," the citizens of Egypt went into the streets to demand the downfall of their own tyrant of 30 years, and an end to his entire corrupt, brutal dictatorship. This movement was temporarily successful, but patient, behind-the-scenes work has produced a military coup and things are back to normal now.
The "Arab Spring" gave Washington D.C. the idea of toppling non-puppet Arab dictators. If small rallies of pro-democracy movements spring up, infest them with violent sectarian movements, cultivated mercenary puppets, and fundamentalist terrorists.
The nationalist dictator Muammar Gaddafi was brought down under just such a coalition, with the crucial assistance of criminal NATO air-support. The country has since fallen completely to pieces in an orgy of murder, rape, and general chaos. The "world community" having caused total devastation to a nation of 6 million people, has discreetly moved on.
Next targeted, was the Baathist Assad dictatorship in Syria. Assad has been a dictator for decades. He, like his Baathist colleague in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, embraced the Stalinist mode of autonomous national development. The Baathists were secularists. They religion as a regressive force. One that was used by traditional elites to keep the people backward and submissive. The Baathists would develop the country and move it forward, and use torture and murder to keep the people submissive.
Assad's main crime in the 21st Century has been to sign-on to a project to build a pipeline to ship Iranian and Russian natural gas through to the Mediterranean and on to European markets. This has angered the retrograde dictators in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other feudal kingdoms. These dictators practice a the Sunni version of the religious delusion, whereas Syria's dictatorship persecutes it and Iran embraces the Shia delusion. The fundamentalist freaks of Saudi Arabia have vowed holy war on the Shia and it is they and their fellow fundamentalist flakes in Qatar, Bahrain, the U.A.E. and etc., who fund and arm these variants of Al Qaeda throughout the Middle East.
You've heard of Al Qaeda right? The evil terrorists who are so threatening that we have to surrender our rights and our values and our freedom so that our governments can fight them? Yes, well, US allies Saudia Arabia and other Arab petro-states are arming and training them. Hell, sometimes the CIA even helps them out.
Because the War on Terror is the biggest lie going. Because it's bullshit.
Well, anyway, one of these gangs of fundamentalist whack-jobs (who enter Syria via Turkey, which has its own stupid reasons for wanting to topple Assad) have decided to branch out into western Iraq. Western Iraq is dominated by Sunni Iraqis, who have taken years of abuse from Shiites like Maliki. Maliki's army fled in the face of ISIS and former Sunni military leaders flocked to the banner of ISIS.
Basically, Canada is going to war in Iraq (and Syria) in order to fight one of the creatures of US allies Saudia Arabia and Qatar (and Turkey) simply to tame them from their ambitions in Iraq and to get them to refocus on Syria. We've simply sided with the petro-criminals of the West against the petro-criminals allied with Russia. THAT is the policy. THAT is why harper has dragged us off to war again. Obviously, the Sunni monarchs aren't going to help us remove ISIS from Iraq. They want to topple the Shiites in Iraq and then move onto Iran.
This is insanity. This is stupidity. This is shameful.
Saddam Hussein murders his former leader and takes over Iraq and the CIA gives him a list of Iraqi communists to kill.
Saddam is happy with the benevolence of the CIA but he's more enamoured with the Stalinist mode of national industrial development, so he opts for the Soviets to be his protector.
In 1979, the Shah of Iran is overthrown in a revolution led by pretty much the entire country (angered at his corruption and violence) but led by the fundamentalist cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeini. The revolutionaries blame the US for having imposed the Shah on them in a coup back in the 1950s. They take the US embassy hostage. US-Iranian relations go straight down the toilet where they stay for the next 35 years.
Seeing the disarray in Iran, Saddam Hussein (who has some border issues with Iran) decides its an opportune time to invade. The USA supports his efforts, though they privately hope that both sides will destroy one another. To this end, the Reagan administration provides covert weapons assistance with Iran at the same time.
The war ends with both Iran and Iraq exhausted. Soon afterwards, the Soviet Empire implodes, leaving the world with one lone super-power. Knowing who is now the master, Saddam makes an enquiry of the US ambassador in Baghdad:
Kuwait is really pissing him off. They're pressing him to repay his war loans to them, but at the same time they're selling too much oil, driving down the price. Worse still, they're getting the oil from slant-drilling into an oil field on his side of the Iraq-Kuwait border. Would the USA mind if he slapped Kuwait around a little to teach them some manners?
The US ambassador says her country doesn't have an opinion about this inter-Arab squabble.
Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.
The USA goes ape-shit. Saddam Hussein is the Hitler threat of the 1990s. (Sane people laugh at the hyperbole.) Kuwaiti preemies are being thrown out of their incubators and onto the cold floor. Iraqi tanks are zooming towards the border of Saudi Arabia. (They weren't.)
The massive threat of Iraq is met by a US-dominated United Nations mandate. Iraq's military is obliterated in a matter of weeks. President George H. W. Bush describes a "New World Order" wherein "What we say goes." He exults: "We've licked that Vietnam Syndrome for good!"
Sanctions are imposed on Iraq that produce the deaths of ONE MILLION IRAQIS.
Air-strikes during the 1990s destroy the countries anti-aircraft defenses piece-by-piece.
On September 11th, 2001, a bunch of Saudi Arabians, ostensibly led by Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, attack the United States. President George W. Bush invades Afghanistan for harboring bin Laden and refusing to hand him over without evidence of his guilt.
(Afghanistan's horrific decades are a story in themselves.)
The bush II regime decides the time is ripe for the total re-ordering of the Middle East. (An angry Saddam Hussein had been considering taking Iraqi oil off the $US pricing system. This would have weakened the currency more than bush II wanted it to be.)
Oil executive Dick Cheney, Military Industrial Complex shill Donald Rumsfeld, and all the rest of bush II's gang of idiots and scum-bags, invent a fabricated story of Iraq possessing banned weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) including chemical weapons, as well as an ongoing nuclear weapons program. This lie was accompanied by blatant fraud, shameless stupidity and was accepted by "serious" people everywhere, from David Frum to David Brooks.
Iraq is invaded. Saddam Hussein is toppled from power and eventually tried and executed for one of the few crimes he committed that had nothing to do with US assistance. The US military murders and tortures prisoners. Plunges the country into chaos. Foments sectarian violence. Commits war-crimes.
As of this writing, over ONE-MILLION Iraqis have died because of the violence. Millions more have been injured. Many millions more fled their homeland as refugees.
The Shiite-majority in Iraq was led by the vindictive al-Maliki, who ruled with an iron fist; using police-state violence, censorship, torture, to suppress opposition (especially Sunni opposition). He really pisses off the Americans by refusing to pass the Washington-crafted oil bill which was to hand the Iraqi oil industry over to US corporations.
Lo and behold! The "Arab Spring" breaks out in Tunisia and Egypt! This has nothing to do with bush II bringing "democracy" to Iraq. Wikileaks (its founder hiding from extradition to the USA in the Ecuadorian Embassy) released information (provided by Chelsea Manning who the Obama regime tortured and then imprisoned for life for this "crime") that showed the corruption of the Tunisian government. This same government enforced crippling austerity policies upon its impoverished people. The blatant hypocrisy drove people into the streets and brought down the government. Inspired by this example of "people power," the citizens of Egypt went into the streets to demand the downfall of their own tyrant of 30 years, and an end to his entire corrupt, brutal dictatorship. This movement was temporarily successful, but patient, behind-the-scenes work has produced a military coup and things are back to normal now.
The "Arab Spring" gave Washington D.C. the idea of toppling non-puppet Arab dictators. If small rallies of pro-democracy movements spring up, infest them with violent sectarian movements, cultivated mercenary puppets, and fundamentalist terrorists.
The nationalist dictator Muammar Gaddafi was brought down under just such a coalition, with the crucial assistance of criminal NATO air-support. The country has since fallen completely to pieces in an orgy of murder, rape, and general chaos. The "world community" having caused total devastation to a nation of 6 million people, has discreetly moved on.
Next targeted, was the Baathist Assad dictatorship in Syria. Assad has been a dictator for decades. He, like his Baathist colleague in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, embraced the Stalinist mode of autonomous national development. The Baathists were secularists. They religion as a regressive force. One that was used by traditional elites to keep the people backward and submissive. The Baathists would develop the country and move it forward, and use torture and murder to keep the people submissive.
Assad's main crime in the 21st Century has been to sign-on to a project to build a pipeline to ship Iranian and Russian natural gas through to the Mediterranean and on to European markets. This has angered the retrograde dictators in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other feudal kingdoms. These dictators practice a the Sunni version of the religious delusion, whereas Syria's dictatorship persecutes it and Iran embraces the Shia delusion. The fundamentalist freaks of Saudi Arabia have vowed holy war on the Shia and it is they and their fellow fundamentalist flakes in Qatar, Bahrain, the U.A.E. and etc., who fund and arm these variants of Al Qaeda throughout the Middle East.
You've heard of Al Qaeda right? The evil terrorists who are so threatening that we have to surrender our rights and our values and our freedom so that our governments can fight them? Yes, well, US allies Saudia Arabia and other Arab petro-states are arming and training them. Hell, sometimes the CIA even helps them out.
Because the War on Terror is the biggest lie going. Because it's bullshit.
Well, anyway, one of these gangs of fundamentalist whack-jobs (who enter Syria via Turkey, which has its own stupid reasons for wanting to topple Assad) have decided to branch out into western Iraq. Western Iraq is dominated by Sunni Iraqis, who have taken years of abuse from Shiites like Maliki. Maliki's army fled in the face of ISIS and former Sunni military leaders flocked to the banner of ISIS.
Basically, Canada is going to war in Iraq (and Syria) in order to fight one of the creatures of US allies Saudia Arabia and Qatar (and Turkey) simply to tame them from their ambitions in Iraq and to get them to refocus on Syria. We've simply sided with the petro-criminals of the West against the petro-criminals allied with Russia. THAT is the policy. THAT is why harper has dragged us off to war again. Obviously, the Sunni monarchs aren't going to help us remove ISIS from Iraq. They want to topple the Shiites in Iraq and then move onto Iran.
This is insanity. This is stupidity. This is shameful.
4 comments:
Sounds about right.
And yet, probably half the country has swallowed the narrative that ISIS is an evil, grown from out of nowhere, that we are honour-bound to wipe from the face of the earth.
Because we're super-heroes or something.
Its insane and it gets worse everyday.
First we are kept in the dark. Austrialia, US and England can detail costs and missions but its national security in Canada. Iran the great Satan is now bombing ISIS. But they are not our ally lets be clear. Turkey is tacitly supporting ISIS and the President of that Country seemms to be claiming that North American belongs to a Muslim Caliphate. But lets be clear this is our ally.
What is really happening IMHO is that the Military Industrial Complex has lack of mission heartburn and created ISIS for relief. And so it goes!
Steve,
That's another thing; harper's insistence on having his little wars with zero democratic oversight.
They won't even tell us what shit costs, what we're doing, and we put up with it.
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