It actually shouldn’t be that much of a shock. For the last twelve years at least, Americans have watched their country drift into the shadows of international law abroad and onto the shoals of fascism at home. Inexorably, the weight of imperial overstretch has crippled an economy already on a constant war footing and led to the steady erosion of civil liberties once taken for granted.
At one point, Democrats cried out in (what turns out to be mock) horror when one of the Bushmen smirked at the Geneva Convention as “quaint.” Outrageous! squeaked the remnants of an American “Left.” No more. As drones are poised to darken the skies like a plague of locusts, intelligence agencies can read all of our communications even as we write them, and the general criminalization of dissent has accelerated without objection because, after all, the guy doing it has a D after his name.
And now, nary a peep from so-called “progressives” in Congress as a Democrat and his lurking, smooth-talking consigliore use the same lies and fabrications to shove yet another war down our throats, all neatly packaged in Red, White and Blue, the specter of National Security—in short, the same old bullshit we’ve heard before.
But it’s not the same—that’s the point. And it’s a shame the fools in Congress are too stupid (most of them, apparently) to see it. Showing the delusional thinking that is now seemingly required to hold and keep public office, one particularly deranged congresswoman actually told Wolf Blitzer that “dozens” of countries stood ready to support the US’ aggressive war against Syria, though she couldn’t name them offhand. Debbie Wasserman Schultz actually said, “I mean we have, from the briefings that I’ve received, there are dozens of countries who are going to stand with the United States, who will engage with us on military action and also that back us up.”
Oh, okay then. Micronesia will send staples, and Samoa is serving drinks. The problem is that, inside the bubble of American “thought,” these people really think that mobilizing the “international community” is the same as papering an audience for a bad musical on a weeknight. It is all just a cynical farce to them. They don’t know, or don’t care, that the whole world sees this for the fraud that it is. The Obama regime is about to make the biggest mistake in history.
This is not hyperbole. Bush had far more support going into Iraq, and Saddam had far less. His case for war, filled with lies and fabricated “evidence” and ginned up “intelligence” findings, is far better than the US’ current position—a complete crock of shit to the whole world, but that somehow smells like roses to the US Congress. The government has ceased to function as a representative body, and is completely divorced from the interests of the American people. Don’t want to trust such a judgment to an old commie like me? Take it from a former president—Jimmy Carter. Mr. Peanut himself admitted there is “no functioning democracy” currently in the US. The arrogance of Obama’s War Council is stunning. Russia, China, and Iran have given repeated warnings—stern, clear, and unequivocal, against such an illegal and foolhardy course of action. The world has had it with American intransigence. It makes no difference whether an illegal war of aggression is “authorized” by a compliant US Congress. Zero.
No matter what happens from here on out, the balance of power is already shifting, away from the US and its vassal states toward BRICS and the nations of the global South. Even if the US regime does not attack (in itself a poor choice of words since it has been arming and funding foreign mercenaries in Syria for over two years), a too patient world is ready to muzzle the rabid dog that is the US. China, while keeping mostly cool, has let it be known that if a strike does go ahead, that others should offer assistance to resist. This is as clear a shot across the bow as there is, and should give US war makers pause.
What it means is that Syria, as a sovereign state, is justified in calling on its allies for help, by which it means Iran and its store of Russian Sunburn missiles, or Hezbollah and its own Chinese C-802 missiles, or Russia itself with its S300, S400 & S500 missiles. This is the real red line, and the US already crossed it in Libya. Putin has said that the Americans are acting like a monkey with a grenade in the Middle East. To put a finer zoological point on it, the Panda and the Bear are not fucking around. They have decided, and rightly so, that the US is too dangerous and must be stopped. If Obama goes ahead with this maniacal and murderous plan, China, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah will help Syria sink a few US destroyers, sending hundreds and perhaps thousands of kids to the bottom of the Mediterranean—they have as much as said so. They—not the US—will be within their rights and within international law to do so.
Mourn now, not later. And mourn at least equally for the kids your kids kill and for your kids who are killed in return. Don’t go running for the flag or screaming for revenge. Don’t accuse those of us who shouted from the rooftops of being un-American, or try to bully us into abandoning our principles and join the call for blood. This is wrong. It is illegal. It is as predictable as it is preventable. Even some tepid “antiwar” types have it wrong when they say the US can’t be the world’s policeman. This misses the mark: the real point is that we have no moral authority to do so , and the whole world knows it. The criminal cabal in Washington is so obsessed with its own greatness that is has stood history on its head. In his long, insidious career of lies and obfuscation, Merchant of Death John Kerry finally got something inadvertently right: this *is* a Munich moment. But of course, true to form, he has it backwards. And Chamberlain’s first name is not Neville, it’s Vlad. And he may give Obama and his henchmen a Nuremberg Moment.
Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia. Together they run The Greenhouse School.
RSS
Bye, Bye, American Pie
US intransigence in the face of a war-weary world will mean the end of the country as we know it
Posted on September 10, 2013 by Daniel Patrick Welch
It actually shouldn’t be that much of a shock. For the last twelve years at least, Americans have watched their country drift into the shadows of international law abroad and onto the shoals of fascism at home. Inexorably, the weight of imperial overstretch has crippled an economy already on a constant war footing and led to the steady erosion of civil liberties once taken for granted.
At one point, Democrats cried out in (what turns out to be mock) horror when one of the Bushmen smirked at the Geneva Convention as “quaint.” Outrageous! squeaked the remnants of an American “Left.” No more. As drones are poised to darken the skies like a plague of locusts, intelligence agencies can read all of our communications even as we write them, and the general criminalization of dissent has accelerated without objection because, after all, the guy doing it has a D after his name.
And now, nary a peep from so-called “progressives” in Congress as a Democrat and his lurking, smooth-talking consigliore use the same lies and fabrications to shove yet another war down our throats, all neatly packaged in Red, White and Blue, the specter of National Security—in short, the same old bullshit we’ve heard before.
But it’s not the same—that’s the point. And it’s a shame the fools in Congress are too stupid (most of them, apparently) to see it. Showing the delusional thinking that is now seemingly required to hold and keep public office, one particularly deranged congresswoman actually told Wolf Blitzer that “dozens” of countries stood ready to support the US’ aggressive war against Syria, though she couldn’t name them offhand. Debbie Wasserman Schultz actually said, “I mean we have, from the briefings that I’ve received, there are dozens of countries who are going to stand with the United States, who will engage with us on military action and also that back us up.”
Oh, okay then. Micronesia will send staples, and Samoa is serving drinks. The problem is that, inside the bubble of American “thought,” these people really think that mobilizing the “international community” is the same as papering an audience for a bad musical on a weeknight. It is all just a cynical farce to them. They don’t know, or don’t care, that the whole world sees this for the fraud that it is. The Obama regime is about to make the biggest mistake in history.
This is not hyperbole. Bush had far more support going into Iraq, and Saddam had far less. His case for war, filled with lies and fabricated “evidence” and ginned up “intelligence” findings, is far better than the US’ current position—a complete crock of shit to the whole world, but that somehow smells like roses to the US Congress. The government has ceased to function as a representative body, and is completely divorced from the interests of the American people. Don’t want to trust such a judgment to an old commie like me? Take it from a former president—Jimmy Carter. Mr. Peanut himself admitted there is “no functioning democracy” currently in the US. The arrogance of Obama’s War Council is stunning. Russia, China, and Iran have given repeated warnings—stern, clear, and unequivocal, against such an illegal and foolhardy course of action. The world has had it with American intransigence. It makes no difference whether an illegal war of aggression is “authorized” by a compliant US Congress. Zero.
No matter what happens from here on out, the balance of power is already shifting, away from the US and its vassal states toward BRICS and the nations of the global South. Even if the US regime does not attack (in itself a poor choice of words since it has been arming and funding foreign mercenaries in Syria for over two years), a too patient world is ready to muzzle the rabid dog that is the US. China, while keeping mostly cool, has let it be known that if a strike does go ahead, that others should offer assistance to resist. This is as clear a shot across the bow as there is, and should give US war makers pause.
What it means is that Syria, as a sovereign state, is justified in calling on its allies for help, by which it means Iran and its store of Russian Sunburn missiles, or Hezbollah and its own Chinese C-802 missiles, or Russia itself with its S300, S400 & S500 missiles. This is the real red line, and the US already crossed it in Libya. Putin has said that the Americans are acting like a monkey with a grenade in the Middle East. To put a finer zoological point on it, the Panda and the Bear are not fucking around. They have decided, and rightly so, that the US is too dangerous and must be stopped. If Obama goes ahead with this maniacal and murderous plan, China, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah will help Syria sink a few US destroyers, sending hundreds and perhaps thousands of kids to the bottom of the Mediterranean—they have as much as said so. They—not the US—will be within their rights and within international law to do so.
Mourn now, not later. And mourn at least equally for the kids your kids kill and for your kids who are killed in return. Don’t go running for the flag or screaming for revenge. Don’t accuse those of us who shouted from the rooftops of being un-American, or try to bully us into abandoning our principles and join the call for blood. This is wrong. It is illegal. It is as predictable as it is preventable. Even some tepid “antiwar” types have it wrong when they say the US can’t be the world’s policeman. This misses the mark: the real point is that we have no moral authority to do so , and the whole world knows it. The criminal cabal in Washington is so obsessed with its own greatness that is has stood history on its head. In his long, insidious career of lies and obfuscation, Merchant of Death John Kerry finally got something inadvertently right: this *is* a Munich moment. But of course, true to form, he has it backwards. And Chamberlain’s first name is not Neville, it’s Vlad. And he may give Obama and his henchmen a Nuremberg Moment.
© 2013 Daniel Patrick Welch
Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia. Together they run The Greenhouse School.