Print this post.JOHN RACHEL
If he chose them, he’s a cold-blooded criminal. If he was told whom to choose, he’s a puppet. Take your pick, America.
I constantly get criticized for maintaining that Obama is a warmonger. The president’s actions are proof positive: His escalating of the war in Afghanistan, his engineering the destruction of Libya, his manufacturing the crisis in Ukraine, his demonizing Putin and resurrecting the Cold War with Russia, his infamous kill lists and callous use of drones in countries like Pakistan and Yemen.
Most recently, there was his request for unlimited war powers, a new AUMF, a shrewdly and deceptively worded legislative authorization which allows him to attack any country, anywhere on the earth, targeting individuals, groups and nations which he alone decides are deserving of some tough love __ aka annihilation by military force.
If this weren’t incriminating enough, just look at the people he is surrounded by.
First, the hard-core psychopaths . . .
Ashton Carter is Obama’s new Secretary of Defense. He wants confrontation with Russia; advocates a “preventive war” on North Korea, i.e. blow them to kingdom come now rather than later; and thinks we need to mount an aggressive campaign to fight ISIS. I guess he finds it easy to overlook the fact that our other aggressive campaigns created ISIS, that they are using the armaments we introduced into the region for their aggressive campaign, that every aggressive campaign we have mounted in the Middle East has recruited more fanatics and terrorists, a fact which has been verified by our own security agencies. Carter is an unapologetic proponent of projecting America’s military across the globe, without respect for the national interests of any other sovereign powers and without patience for the niceties of diplomacy.
James Clapper is Director of National Intelligence, and is by any measure Spy-Master-In-Chief. He recently distinguished himself by lying under oath to the U.S. Congress, evidence that he believes that as head of a major law enforcement agency, he himself is above the law. Like other neocon exceptionalists, he believes the U.S. itself is above the law, thus entitled to ignore treaties, international legal precedents, and anything America finds bothersome. He recently threw his flaming hat into the ring of international politics by advocating sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, violating the terms of the Minsk II agreement which is offering some hope for the end of the bloody conflict, and more destructively, antagonizing Russia, which has over the past year worked relentlessly to broker peace there. But why would Clapper want peace? That might end up reducing his bloated share of the federal budget.
Victoria Nuland is Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and married to Robert Kagan, one of the founders of the neocon Project for the New American Century (PNAC). She was instrumental in turning the Maidan demonstrations into a full-blown coup, an illegal, violent overthrow of the admittedly corrupt but still democratically elected government. She continues to sabotage any hope for a negotiated solution to the crisis she helped to orchestrate and create. She is virulently anti-Russian and militantly in favor of dismembering the country to expedite the control and plundering of Russia’s abundant natural resources, as well as those of the Ukraine, for the benefit of American-backed banks and corporations.
General Philip M. Breedlove, is the current Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) of NATO Allied Command Operations. He has had a remarkable career indeed, but his recent detachment from reality and delusions of grandeur have made him the major proponent for war on Russia in the E.U. theater of command. His constant spewing of venomous anti-Russian rhetoric and wild claims have made him both a laughingstock and a thorn in the side of the saner members of the European community, who for some reason don’t want Europe to become an incinerated pile of rubble in service to the American dream of world hegemony. If Russian troops and equipment had invaded Ukraine as many times as General Breedlove has claimed—against all evidence to the contrary —half of the Russian military would be set up in vast emplacements visible from the moon with a cheap pair of binoculars. But you know those cagey Russians! They made everything invisible! They’re there! Really. Just ask Breedlove.
They are mad alright, but they simply follow the commands of a capitalist system that has entered its terminal and most dangerous phase. —Editors
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt is a California guy with a very shallow, checkered career in the diplomatic services, which makes him the perfect tool to go about the business of spreading propaganda, sidling up to chocolate king Petro Poroshenko __ current President of Ukraine __ for photo ops and general glad-handing, and promoting the depraved neocon agenda, unburdened by a comprehension of the complexities of international relations, indifferent to the human suffering being inflicted on citizens in the East of the country, and cavalier about the potential for nuclear war the machinations of the U.S. is creating. Snatching war and death from the jaws of peace and harmony? All in a days work!
Then, there are those without official neocon credentials but who embrace undisguised bullying and unrestrained militarism.
Vogue’s vision of the UN American voice.
Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, seemed over the course of much of her career to have her heart in the right place. She cared so much about victims of genocide, she even wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about it, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She has stood strong for religious freedom, human rights, women’s and LGBT rights, and campaigned against human trafficking and for protection of refugees and religious minorities.
Unfortunately, lately she’s become very confused. She wants to accomplish these noble things by bombing everyone into submission. She was instrumental in the destruction of Libya, and now her weepy voice can be heard spreading propaganda and subjecting the world to her acrimonious diatribes promoting chaos and violence at the United Nations. Power issues shrill catcalls demonizing Putin, rails against Russia, then without blinking prevaricates about the actual role the U.S. has played in the Ukraine. What happens to these people? Is there some mutant strain of warmongering meningitis going around?
Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry put a unique spin on an old tactic. Instead of doing the familiar GOOD COP/BAD COP routine, these veteran clowns do BAD COP/WORSE COP—each of them vying to be more obnoxious, deceptive, and counter-productive than the other.
Joe Biden has always been a straight-talker, unafraid to lay it on the line, paint stark images in bold strokes. He shoots from the hip and often ends up with his foot in his mouth. The problem now is not his candor. It’s his rancor. That and his willingness to ignore facts and be a complete stooge for policies which at best are misguided, or at worst will plunge America and Europe into another major war. He and Kerry have already alienated Russia, undone years of diplomacy, unraveled the trust that had slowly built over decades, and launched Cold War 2.0, a frightening confrontation which has the potential to bankrupt the country, if not trigger the nuclear holocaust of World War III. Joe just can’t shut the fuck up. Maybe the gaffs were funny before, but it’s hard to get a giggle going when we’re facing human extinction.
Unlike Biden who is a full-out puncher, the more guileful John Kerry is a master of the feint and duck. He’ll often use the Rope-A-Dope to keep everyone off-balance, as if this vindicates the havoc he will in the end remorselessly inflict. His pronouncements combined with Obama’shas turned a peaceful and generally promising detente with Russia into a hostile and dangerous game of chicken. Along the way, Kerry has managed to alienate many of America’s most trusted allies, and create panic and hysteria among many former nations of the Soviet bloc. When not hiding behind his adorable impersonation of Pepe Le Pew, he’s threatening, intimidating, bullying, and overall a bombastic buffoon.
If these lunatics are allowed to continue, they will not rest until they destroy the world.
These folks are so blind, so arrogant, so incapable of perspective and moral sensibility, so drunk on power and possessed by delusions of imperial grandeur and world conquest, so out of touch and incapable of common sense and common decency, so lacking empathy and basic kindness, they are happy risking nuclear annihilation to see their misguided priorities and psychopathic visions prevail.
Obama’s foreign policy is a box of chocolates. Except you always know what you’re going to get—more war, more bombing, more drone assassinations, more innocent civilian deaths, more illegal regime change, more chaos and destruction.
Then again, what else can we expect? It’s the company he keeps. Obama is surrounded by bloodthirsty, arguably mad, imperialist warmongers, megalomaniacs who see themselves as saviors of the Universe, chosen by destiny and blessed with infallibility. Were any of them to undergo sound and objective psychological testing, they would immediately be committed to maximum-security institutions for the criminally insane.
However, America treats them differently.
It elevates them to the highest positions of power.
John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter, music producer, novelist, a left-of-left liberal, and has spent his entire life trying to resolve the intrinsic clash between the metaphysical purity of Buddhism and the overwhelming appeal of narcissism.