Although well documented at least in the alternative media sphere, a stroll down memory lane here is timely for those not so familiar with both the history and the driving forces behind the current hegemonic pandemic -- less Pax Americana, more 'Pox Amerikana' -- a viral contagion that's been both mutating and metastasising for some time.
In an article in the Washington Post, Andrew Bacevich contended that Syria has become the 14th country in the Islamic world that American forces have invaded, attacked, occupied, bombed and/or meddled in, and in which US military personnel have killed or been killed. And that's just since 1980, the year prior to Ronald Reagan's ascendance. One of the most incisive, informed commentators on the U.S. National Security State and geostrategic affairs, Bacevich's views are a welcome and necessary antidote to the asthmatic rhetoric we keep getting force fed by the Beltway "Bovver Boys" (and girls) and their ilk about America's 'War on Everyone who Doesn't Think we're Exceptional and Indispensable'.
Another Splendid Little War (or Three)
A former senior US army officer and 'Nam veteran, Bacevich's own son was killed in Iraq in 2007 by an IED. Yet he nonetheless opposed the Iraq invasion from the off, along with having written several books critiquing America's 'full spectrum dominance' Doctrine. Indeed, his Post article previews his forthcoming book, a critical history of US meddling in the Greater Middle East.
After first noting that the Pentagon foresees with the current situation in Iraq and Syria a campaign that's likely to "last for years" (by which we must assume for certain there will be boots back on the ground and in considerable quantities), Bacevich also observes, '[E]ven if we win, we lose'. As for defeating the Islamic
State, this would he says only commit America "more deeply" to a
decades-old enterprise that has already proved, over thirty years and then
some, "costly and counterproductive". The following sums up his compelling argument:
"In place of governing arrangements that Washington judged objectionable, the U.S. [is now] coping with the absence of any effective governments [at all]. Instead of curbing bad behavior, spanking induced all sorts of pathologies. By sowing instability, [America] has played directly into the hands of anti-Western radical Islamists intent on supplanting the European-imposed post-Ottoman order with something more to their liking. This is the so-called caliphate that Osama bin Laden yearned to create and that now exists in embryonic form in the portions of Iraq and Syria that Islamic State radicals control." [My Emphasis].
At least outside the mainstream media (MSM), where such observations don't even get much of a look in, (including here in Australia), Bacevich is far from being the only observer to sheet home the blame to America for the present crisis and more broadly, call into question the legitimacy of the West's response to it. In a recent op-ed piece, Michel Chossudovsky pointedly stated that the same people who ordered the bombing campaign in Libya, Syria and Iraq are the same ones behind the ISIS "Caliphate Project".
He went further, stating unambiguously:
"The Islamic State (IS)...currently the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a "counter-terrorism" mandate, was and continues to be supported covertly by the U.S. and its allies...Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency (GIP)....NATO has been involved in the recruitment of jihadist mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian crisis in 2011." [My Emphasis].
And when we have Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama seemingly simpatico with the goals and ambitions as laid out in the manifesto of PNAC's pernicious global worldview, we know that history has not so much ended as been forgotten altogether. PNAC's vision was nothing less than a tabula rasa for a new world order, with or without the normally attendant capitals, and one presumes with its own version of sharia law for all. Much like one supposes the Caliphate redolent of the extreme Islamists' own wet dreams. For their part, the New American Caliphists appear intent on wiping the slate clean, and starting from scratch. And they are willing for the rest of us to pay the price for doing so. In essence, the central ideology of PNAC puts a whole new meaning into the phrase, "if you're not with us, you're against us", as noted, sounding not unlike their notional fundamentalist adversaries and namesakes.
It is here we need to ransack the past one more time.
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