America’s “Humanitarian War” against the World

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America’s “Humanitarian War” against the World

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, September 28, 2016

The following  text is a point by point thematic summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky‘s presentation at the Science for Peace Conference, Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, 15-16 August 2016

Introduction

Historically, science has supported the development of the weapons industry and the war economy. “Science for Peace” indelibly requires reversing the logic whereby commissioned  scientific endeavors are directed towards supporting what President Eisenhower called “The Military Industrial Complex”.

What is consequently required is a massive redirection of science and technology towards the pursuit of broad societal objectives. In turn, this requires a major shift in what is euphemistically called “US Foreign Policy”, namely America’s global military agenda.

Military Affairs: The Current Global Context 

The world is at a dangerous crossroads.  The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Asia Pacific region.

The current situation is all the more critical inasmuch as a US-NATO war on Russia, China and Iran is part of the US presidential election debate. It is presented as a political and military option to Western public opinion.

The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states. America’s hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, support of terrorist organizations, regime change and economic warfare.

U.S. and NATO forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe including Poland and Ukraine. In turn, military maneuvers are being conducted at Russia’s doorstep which could potentially lead to confrontation with the Russian Federation.

The U.S. and its allies are also threatening China under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”.

The U.S. led airstrikes initiated in August 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.

*         *        *
THE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR WAR AND “COLLATERAL DAMAGE”  

“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark…. This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. …  The target will be a purely military one… It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” (President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945)

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..” (President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman's radio speech to the Nation]
Is Truman’s notion of “collateral damage” in the case of nuclear war still relevant? Publicly available military documents confirm that nuclear war is still on the drawing board  of the Pentagon.
Compared to the 1950s, however, today’s nuclear weapons are far more advanced. The delivery system is more precise. In addition to China and Russia, Iran and North Korea are targets for a first strike pre-emptive nuclear attack.
US military documents claim that the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons are harmless to civilians.
Let us be under no illusions, the Pentagon’s plan to blow up the planet using advanced nuclear weapons is still on the books.
War is Good for Business:
Spearheaded by the “defense contractors” (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, British Aerospace  et al), the Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar plan over a 30 year period to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) largely directed at Russia and China.
War with Russia: From the Cold War to the New Cold War
Blowing up Russia, targeting Russian cities is still on the Pentagon’s drawing board.  In the words of Hillary Clinton, the nuclear option is on the table.  Preemptive nuclear war is part of her election campaign.

Source: National Security Archive

According to 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe.
Major Cities in Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings.  (William Burr, U.S. Cold War Nuclear Attack Target List of 1200 Soviet Bloc Cities “From East Germany to China”, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538, December 2015

Excerpt of list of 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive

GLOBAL WARFARE
The US has formulated a global war scenario, which is defined in military documents.
There are three major regional deployments of US-NATO which threaten Global Security:

1. Eastern Europe on Russia’s Western Frontier, with the deployment of US-NATO military hardware on Russia’s doorstep
2. “The Pivot to Asia” largely directed against China
3. The Middle East and North Africa, extending to Central Asia

In the above regions, the use of nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis is contemplated against both nuclear and non-nuclear states.
In other regions of the World including Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, non-conventional forms of warfare are envisaged including destabilization,  ”regime change”,  covert support to terrorist organizations, economic warfare.

1.  THREATENING RUSSIA ON ITS WESTERN FRONTIER
Russia is threatened on its Western frontier with the US-NATO deployment of the so called missile defense system.
A pro-US regime has been installed in Kiev which integrates two prominent Neo-Nazi Parties.
Neo-Nazis are heavily integrated in Ukraine’s National Guard and military. The US government is channeling financial support, weapons and training to a Neo-Nazi entity –which is part of The Ukraine National Guard– The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов) is  under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the equivalent of America’s Homeland Security.

Kill the Russians: The New Cold War is no longer Cold

A former CIA Official is calling for the “Killing of Russians”.  The US media and the the State Department applaud:

CBS News, Charlie Rose

2. “PIVOT TO ASIA”:  SOUTH CHINA SEA

China is threatened by the US military in the South China Sea

WAR WITH CHINA IS CURRENTLY ON THE DRAWING BOARD OF THE PENTAGON AS OUTLINED IN A RAND REPORT COMMISSIONED BY THE US ARMY

Washington is actively involved in creating divisions between China and its neighbours.
The objective is to draw South East Asia and the Far East into a protracted military conflict by creating divisions between China and ASEAN countries, most of which are the victims of Western colonialism and military aggression: Extensive crimes against humanity have been committed against Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia. In a bitter irony, these countries are now military allies of the United States.
Bilateral economic relations with China are destabilized. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a US hegemonic project which seeks to control trade, investment, intellectual property, etc in the Asia Pacific region.
THAAD MISSILE DEPLOYMENT IN SOUTH KOREA DIRECTED AGAINST CHINA
THAAD missiles are deployed in South Korea, against China, Russia and North Korea.  Washington states that THAAD is solely intended as a Missile Shield against North Korea.

The Jeju island military base is also directed against China. Less than 500km from Shanghai

US-NATO WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (MENA)
Meanwhile, under the pretext of  waging a “war on terrorism”, US-NATO are intervening militarily in the broader Middle East Central Asian region extending from the Mediterranean to Central Asia: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, resulting in several million civilian deaths.
THe objective is to destabilize and destroy sovereign countries and to displace secular governments under regime change.
The next stage of the Middle East war is Iran.

The Global War on Terrorism is a Big Lie. Al Qaeda is a Creation of US Intelligence

From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 to the present, various Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary organizations became de facto instruments of US intelligence and more generally of the US-NATO-Israel military alliance.
The US has actively supported Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations since the onslaught of the Soviet Afghan War.  Washington has engineered the installation of Islamist regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has destroyed the fabric of secular societies.
Confirmed by Israeli intelligence media,  the Al Qaeda opposition fighters in Syria are recruited by US-NATO and the Turkish high command.
They are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, with special forces in their midst. The Al Qaeda affiliated “moderate” terrorist organizations in Syria are supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The counter-terrorism agenda is bogus. It’s a criminal undertaking. What is being bombed is the civilian infrastructure of a sovereign country.

The Historical Origins of al Qaeda

In this video-footage President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (1979) arrives in a helicopter and speaks to a translator in front of a seated crowd of Mujahedeen:

‘We know of their deep belief in god – that they’re confident that their struggle will succeed. – That land over-there is yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because your cause is right, and god is on your side.’

The video-footage can be found in the documentary series “Cold War” (Episode #24, Soldiers of God, 1975-1988), Turner Original Productions (Time Warner), 1998. Speaker Kenneth Branagh.

Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a Mujahideen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)

The Central Intelligence Agency using Pakistan’s ISI as a go-between played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasahs were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia:

“[I]t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools, from which the germs of the Taliban emerged.”(Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), “RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks in the U.S.”, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html , 16 September 2001)

Destroying National Sovereignty and Secular Societies, Installing an Islamic State (Made in America)

What has been the fate of Afghanistan.

A progressive secular state in the 1970s and early 1980s has become a US failed State integrated by US supported Al Qaeda terrorists. This is the model that US-NATO want to impose on Syria, Iraq, Libya: Destroy national sovereignty and replace it with an Islamic State which conforms to Washington’s demands.

Unknown to the American public, the US spread the teachings of the Islamic jihad in textbooks “Made in America”, developed at the University of Nebraska:

… the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..

The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

… AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.

“It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”

… Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

War is not an inevitable process. War can be prevented through mass action.

War criminals occupy positions of authority. The citizenry is galvanized into supporting the rulers, who are “committed to their safety and well-being”. Through media disinformation, war is given a humanitarian mandate.

The legitimacy of the war must be addressed. Antiwar sentiment alone does not disarm a military agenda.

The corporate backers and sponsors of war and war crimes must also be targeted including the oil companies, the defense contractors, the financial institutions and the corporate media, which has become an integral part of the war propaganda machine.

There is a sense of urgency. Today, the antiwar movement is virtually defunct.

What is the Truth

The real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance, yet realities in an inquisitorial environment are turned upside down: the warmongers are committed to peace, the victims of war are presented as the protagonists of war.

The homeland is threatened.

The media, intellectuals and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the unspoken truth, namely that the US-NATO led war destroys humanity.

When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.

When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor, Justice and the entire international legal system are turned upside down: pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. Opposing the war becomes a criminal act. Meanwhile, the war criminals in high office have ordered a witch hunt against those who challenge their authority.

The Big Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.

It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.

It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.

It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.

It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.

Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

ACTIONS

1. The role of media disinformation in sustaining the military agenda is crucial.

We will not succeed in our endeavours unless the propaganda apparatus is weakened and eventually dismantled. It is essential  to inform our fellow citizens on the causes and consequences of the US-led war, not to mention the extensive war crimes and atrocities which are routinely obfuscated by the media. This is no easy task.  It requires an  effective counter-propaganda program which refutes mainstream media assertions.

It is essential that the relevant information and analysis reaches the broader public.   The Western media is controlled by a handful of powerful business syndicates. The media conglomerates which control network TV and the printed press must be challenged through cohesive actions which reveal the lies and falsehoods.

2. There is opposition within the political establishment in the US as well as within the ranks of the Armed Forces.

While this opposition does not necessarily question the overall direction of US foreign policy, it is firmly opposed to military adventurism, including the use of nuclear weapons. These voices within the institutions of the State, the Military and the business establishment are important because they can be usefully channeled to discredit and ultimately dismantle the “war on terrorism” consensus.  The broadest possible alliance of political and social forces is, therefore, required to prevent a military adventure which in a very real sense threatens the future of humanity.

3. The structure of military alliances must be addressed. A timely shift in military alliances could potentially reverse the course of history.

Whereas France and Germany are broadly supportive of the US led war, there are strong voices in both countries as well as within the European Union, which firmly oppose the US led military agenda, both at the grassroots level as well within the political system itself.

The weakening of the system of alliances which commits Western Europe to supporting the Anglo-American military axis, could indeed contribute to reversing  the tide. Washington would hesitate to wage a war on Iran without the support of France and Germany.

4. The holding of large antiwar rallies is important and essential. But in will not in itself reverse the tide of war unless it is accompanied by the development of a cohesive antiwar network. What is required is a grass roots antiwar network, a mass movement at national and international levels, which challenges the legitimacy of the main military and political actors, as well as their corporate sponsors, and which would ultimately be instrumental in unseating those who rule in our name. The construction of this type of network will take time to develop.

Initially, it should focus on developing an antiwar stance within existing citizens’ organizations (e.g. trade unions, community organizations, professional regroupings, student federations, municipal councils, etc.).

Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.

Bring home the troops.

Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.

The above text is a summary of Michel Chossudovsky‘s presentation at the Science for Peace Conference, Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, 15-16 August 2016

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.  He has taught as visiting professor in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America's Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO's war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2016

An Interview With Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) Commander

Nah, this is not a rebel commander rather a hardcore wahhabi terrorist...

Interview With Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) Commander in Syria: “The Americans Stand on our Side”. Our Objective is the Islamic State…

Interview conducted by Jürgen Todenhöfer

By Jürgen Todenhöfer

Global Research, September 27, 2016

Kölner Stadtanzeiger and Moon of Alabama

 

This interview by Jürgen Todenhöfer was first published in German on September 26 2016 by the Kölner Stadtanzeiger, the major newspaper in the Cologne region. (The interview was copied and translated to English by Bernhard for educational and academic purposes, thanks to Moon of Alabama.)
It was the seventh trip by my son Frederic and me to the civil war country Syria. We were there for 13 days. Words can only barely describe the extend of damage and suffering on both sides.
We conducted the interview ten days ago with a commander of the al-Qaida branch “Jabhat al-Nusra”. Abu al-Ezz reported quite openly about his financiers Saudi-Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. We were able to exactly research the identity of the man and know practically everything about him.

Interview in the stone quarry in Aleppo
The interview was arranged by a rebel from Aleppo. I have had contacts to Syrian rebels for years. It was conducted outside of Aleppo in a quarry in direct sight- and shooting-distance of Jabhat al-Nusra and could only be reached safely by a member of al-Nusra.
His fighters were partially not masked, i.e. easily identifiable. Part of his statements were nearly verbally confirmed shortly thereafter by a mufti in Aleppo. Other assertions about the lack of interest of rebels towards a ceasefire and an international aid-convoy also bore out. Just like his predictions about planned military activities in several cities of Syria.

interview bunker

Abu al-Ezz, commander, says about Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda): “We are one part of al-Qaeda. Our principles are: Fighting vice, pureness and security. Our affairs and our way have changed. Israel, for example, is now supporting us, because Israel is at war with Syria and with Hizbullah.
America also changed its opinion about us. Originally “IS” and us were one group. But “IS” was used in the interests of big states like America, for political reasons, and was steered away from our principles. It became clear to us that most of their leaders work with secret security services. We, Jabhat al-Nusra, have our own way. In the past they with us, they were our supporters.
Our aim is the downfall of the dictatorial regime, the tyrannical regime, the regime of the apostate. Our aim is the conduct of conquests, like [the great Arab general] Khaled ibn al-Walid made them. First in the Arab world and then in Europe.”

Part 2 – The Interview by Jürgen Todenhöfer with the rebel commander Abu al-Ezz
Jürgen Todenhöfer: How is the relation between you and the United States? Does the U.S. support the rebels?
Abu al-Ezz: Yes, the U.S. support the opposition, but not directly. They support the countries which support us. But we are not yet satisfied with this support. They should support us with highly developed weapons. We have won battles thanks to the “TOW” missiles. We reached a balance with the regime through these missiles. We received the tanks from Libya through Turkey. Also the “BMs” – multiple rocket launchers. The regime excels us only with their fighter jets, missiles and missile launchers. We captured a share of its missile launchers and a large share came from abroad. But it is through the American “TOW” that we have the situation in some regions under control.
To whom did the U.S. hand those missiles before they were brought to you? Were those missiles first given to the Free Syrian Army by the U.S. and from there to you?
No, the missiles were give directly to us. They were delivered to a certain group. When the “road” was closed and we were besieged we had officers here from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States.
What did those officers do?
Experts! Experts for the use of satellites, missiles, reconnaissance work, thermal surveillance cameras …
Were there also American experts?
Yes, experts from several countries.
Including Americans?
Yes. The Americans are on our side, but not as it should be. For example we were told: We must capture and conquer “Battalion 47″. Saudi Arabia gave us 500 million Syrian pounds. For taking the “al-Muslimiya” infantry school years ago we received from Kuwait 1.5 million Kuwaiti dinar and from Saudi Arabia 5 million U.S. dollars.
From the governments or from private persons?
From the governments.
The fight is difficult, the regime is strong and it has support from Russia …?
We will fight until the downfall of the regime. We will fight Russia and the West because the West does not stand on our side. The West only sends us mujahedin, it facilitates the way of those fighters. Why doesn’t the West support us properly? We have many fighters from Germany, France, Great Britain, America, from all western countries.
You have many fighters from Europe in Aleppo with the “al-Nusra front”?
Many, many, many!
How many?
Many.
What do you think about the ceasefire?
We do not recognize the ceasefire. We will reposition our groups. We will undertake in the next, in a few days an overwhelming attack against the regime. We have rearranged all our armed forces in all provinces, in Homs, Aleppo, Idlib and Hama.
You do not want those 40 trucks with aid supplies to bring those into the eastern part of Aleppo?
We have demands. As longs as the regime is positioned along Castello road, in al-Malah and in the northern areas we will not let those trucks pass. The regime must retreat from all areas in order for us to let the trucks pass. If a truck comes in despite that, we will arrest the driver.
Why did a few of your groups pull back a kilometer or 500 meters from the Castello road?
The regime used highly developed weapons against us. We received a backlash. That is why we silently retreated, to recover and to attack the regime anew. But this attack must lead to the downfall of the regime.
So that was a trick, a military tactic?
Yes, it was a military tactic.
Was the aim of this tactic to receive food or the reallocation of fighters?
We did not agree to the ceasefire.
Does that hold only for the al-Nusra Front or for all other groups, the rest of your allies?
The applies to all our integrated groups, who are our allies.
Islamic Front, Islamic Army?
They are all with us. We are all the al-Nusra Front. A groups is created and calls itself “Islamic Army”, or “Fateh al-Sham”. Each group has its own name but their believe is homogeneous. The general name is al-Nusra Front. One person has, for example, 2,000 fighters. Then he creates from these a new group and calls it “Ahrar al-Sham”. Brothers, who’s believe, thoughts and aims are identical to those of al-Nusra Front.
Is that your own opinion or also the opinion of higher management levels?
That is the general opinion. But if someone comes to you and makes you a ‘moderate fighter’ and offers you to eat and to drink, will you accept that or not?
450,000 people were killed in this war. I have been to Aleppo and Homs. Many parts are destroyed. If the war continues the whole country will be destroyed. Millions will die. … In Germany we once had the ‘Thirty Years’ War’ …
We are now only 5 years at war, that is comparatively short!
Would you accept someone from the Assad-regime within a transitional government?
We accept no one from the Assad-regime or from the Free Syrian Army, which is called moderate. Our aim is the downfall of the regime and the founding of an Islamic state according to the Islamic sharia.
The people of Aloush, who traveled to Geneva for negotiations, accepted a transitional government.
There are Syrian mercenaries. Aloush fights with the al-Nusra Front. The groups Turkey houses and from which the Free Syrian Army was created have earlier been with al-Nusra Front. These people are weak people, they received a lot of money, they sold themselves. They must follow the orders of their sponsors.
The “Islamic Army and the “ISlamic Front” negotiate in Geneva
Because their leaders were produced in the West. They are counseled and paid by western secret services and the secret services of the Gulf states to fulfill the aims of those countries.
We are here at the most forward observation point of the Sheik Said area. This are is under our control. Behind those houses and al-Majbal are regime soldiers. Our armed forces are 200 meters from here.

You can read the original German version of the interview at the Kölner Stadtanzeiger

The original source of this article is Kölner Stadtanzeiger and Moon of Alabama

Copyright © Jürgen Todenhöfer, Kölner Stadtanzeiger and Moon of Alabama, 2016

Building a Terror State in Syria by America & Co.

Creating a parallel govt by funding thru institutions like NED, USAID, White Helmets & various NGOs and financing, indoctrinating jihadist ideologies, arming, training hardcore Wahhabi-leaning muslims & opposition entities, overt & covert military operations, and of course, disseminating propaganda thru' MSM...

America in Syria: How to Build a Terror-State

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, September 28, 2016

New Eastern Outlook 28 September 2016

A nation is its institutions, and should those institutions weaken, the nation itself will be weakened. And should those institutions be destroyed, the nation, for all intents and purposes, will also be destroyed.

A dramatic example of how to destroy a nation unfolded in 2003 in Iraq as a US led axis invaded and occupied it, intentionally targeting and destroying Iraqi institutions and essential infrastructure, including the police, military, and the government as well as bridges, electricity, and communications.

In the ruins left in the wake of the US-led invasion, through the “Coalition Provisional Authority,” US and European corporations were invited in to not only rebuild these institutions and infrastructure, but to do so in a manner making them dependent on and profitable to US-European corporate-financier interests well into the foreseeable future.

The West’s vast influence in Iraq today is owed to this process. While it is likely the West envisioned a client state far more obedient and subservient to Western interests than Iraq is today, the complicity it does receive across Iraq and even across the wider region, is vastly greater than before the 2003 invasion.

The US State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continue to undermine local, independent institutions and infrastructure in favor of US-funded and directed institutions as well as US-controlled infrastructure. It is the mechanics of modern day empire.

While Iraq is an extreme example of just how far and overt this process can be, the United States is repeating this same process the world over through direct and indirect military operations or more subtly through the use of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

 

America’s Burgeoning Terror-State in the Levant 

In Syria, the United States has engineered and perpetuated a proxy war against the government in Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies beginning in 2011. Before even the armed conflict began in 2011, the United States admittedly poured resources into opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood to prepare the ground for violent subversion.In 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh would write in his 9-page report, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” that:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh’s now prophetic report would also reveal US support for the Muslim Brotherhood:

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.”

The US, through backing a large, alternative political front, was already well on its way in 2007 toward creating a parallel state within Syria to eventually undermine and overthrow before eventually absorbing the Syrian nation.

As hostilities began, the US augmented its proxy political party with both opposition media fronts and armed militant groups – essentially the creation of mass media and an army for its growing parallel terror state.

The New York Times in 2013 would admit in an article titled, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

As the war has continued on, the United States and its Arab and European allies have steadily built other institutions to augment the political, military, and media capabilities of this burgeoning terror-state, including hospitals operated in Al Qaeda-held territory by Western NGOs, and of course the so-called “White Helmets,” described on their own website as:

The volunteers save people on all sides of the conflict – pledging commitment to the principles of “Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality” as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation. This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved – so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline.

In reality, the “White Helmets” operate solely in terrorist-held territory, as the nation of Syria already has an effective, professional, and well organized civil defense organization. The “White Helmets” appear to be “targeted intentionally” because they are operating side-by-side designated terrorist organizations including Al Nusra, quite literally Al Qaeda in Syria.

In one graphic instance (GRAPHIC VIDEO), these “White Helmet” Al Qaeda auxiliaries can be seen literally standing by as Al Nusra terrorists execute a prisoner, before rushing in to remove the body. Had Syrian or Russian warplanes struck these terrorists in the midst of carrying out war crimes, these “White Helmets” would have rightfully been liquidated side-by-side the terrorists they were aiding and abetting.

Despite the “White Helmets” severing quite literally as Al Qaeda auxiliaries, the US through USAID and more recently, the German government, have provided the faux-NGO millions in funding.

US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner in April 2016, according to a US State Department official transcript, would admit:

Well, I can tell you that we provide, through USAID, about $23 million in assistance to them [the “White Helmets”].

Toner was responding to queries by journalists regarding why a US-funded organization was receiving millions of dollars in assistance, but whose leader is banned from traveling to the United States. Toner attempted to claim the situation was “complicated,” but in reality, it is a simple matter of the US once again arming and funding terrorists abroad while simultaneously attempting to pose as fighting them back home.

More recently, AP would report in an article titled, “Germany ups financial support for Syria’s White Helmets,” that:

Germany’s Foreign Ministry says it is increasing financial support for the Syria Civil Defense group, also known as the White Helmets. 

The ministry said in a statement Friday that it has raised its funding for the group this year from 5 million euros ($5.61 million) to 7 million euros ($7.85 million).

With a sectarian extremist political party like the Muslim Brotherhood, an armed force comprised of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups, and an array of complicit alleged NGOs including the “White Helmets,” the US and its allies have attempted to create a parallel state within Syria – a parallel state it hopes will eventually inherit the entirety of Syria’s territory, just as violent sectarian terrorist factions have assumed control over Libya – deconstructing it as a functioning nation state and plunging its people into open-ended, perpetual catastrophe that is reverberating across the planet in the form of terrorism and migrant crises.

The US and its partners are posing as fighting against terrorism, while carving out entire nations for Al Qaeda and its affiliates everywhere from the North African nation of Libya, to the  ‎Levantine nation of Syria. It is a foreign policy in reality that cannot be sustained with the unraveling rhetoric used to promote and perpetuate it on the global stage, particularly in front of the UN.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook

Copyright © Tony Cartalucci, New Eastern Outlook, 2016

Curiosity Cures Bias (sort of ?!)

The following reveals why even democracy falters despite an educated populace...they, like ignorants and the uneducated mass, fail to make the right choice to elect the person to govern them...

We all think we form opinions by carefully weighing the evidence. But that's rarely the case, especially when it comes to politically divisive issues such as global warming, GMOs, vaccinations, and fracking. Luckily, there's a cure.

A 2016 study by Yale University researchers set out to determine what impact scientific knowledge and curiosity had on people's opinions of polarizing scientific topics. They began by measuring these two elements in the participants. Scientific knowledge was determined with a set of questions about basic scientific facts and quantitative reasoning, and scientific curiosity was measured with a set of questions and a choice of material to read—those who chose to read science stories over sports or politics got a higher curiosity score.

With these characteristics measured, the participants then judged how concerned they were about politically charged issues. Predictably, liberal Democrats were more likely to judge global warming and fracking as significant risks to the planet, and conservative Republicans were less so. But strangely, the more scientific knowledge a person had, the more likely they were to be polarized—scientifically knowledgeable liberals were most concerned about the risks, and scientifically knowledgeable conservatives were least concerned. Scientific curiosity, though, showed something different. The more curious people's opinions got closer to converging politically, with more concern over fracking and global warming from curious liberals and conservatives alike. This shows that reaching across the aisle for bipartisanship doesn't require more knowledge; it just requires a more curious mind.

A funkini post about the spin-offs from bikini

Darwin's evolution at work: from bikini to burkini to facekini to nunkini to mankini... more to come...

Swimming attire in Europe 300 years ago

The dirty terror plots played by Canadian police apparatus

The same old tactics used by the other four members of the Five Eyes countries (English speaking)...

Canada fosters terror & supply arms to mideast monarchies

The true color of Canada behind humanitarian smokescreen...

Capitalism illustrated !

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the following...

America’s Persian and Arabian Wars

An eye-opener article...

America’s Persian and Arabian Wars
by Chas Freeman

Sometime between 460 and 450 B.C.E., Herodotus wrote The Persian Wars, his account of the Greeks’ two wars with the Persians, which spanned thirteen years. Even in a time when trends and events unfolded more slowly than they seem to now, that was a famously lengthy conflict. But the ancient Greeks and Persians have nothing on us Americans in that regard.

The United States has now been engaged in a cold war with Iran – Persia – for thirty-seven years. It has conducted various levels of hot war in Iraq for twenty-six years.  It has been in combat in Afghanistan for fifteen years. Americans have bombed Somalia for fifteen, Libya for five, and Syria for one and a half years. One war has led to another. None has yielded any positive result and none shows any sign of doing so.

The same might be said for the wars of others we Americans subsidize and supply. Israel’s wars to subdue the Palestinians and deter other Arabs from challenging its ongoing dispossession of them are now sixty-eight-years-old – and counting. U.S. drones have been killing Yemenis for fourteen years, Pakistanis for twelve, and Somalis for nine. Saudi Arabia’s bloody effort to reinstall an ousted government in Yemen is almost a year old. In none of these wars is an end in sight.

It’s hard to put a price tag on these inconclusive misadventures. The unsuccessful Afghan and Iraq pacification campaigns alone have cost the United States an estimated $6 trillion in outlays and obligations. Over 7,000 Americans have died in combat since these wars kicked off in 2001. At least another 50,000 have been maimed. A million have filed claims for war-related disabilities. And well over two million Afghans, Arabs, Persians, and Somalis have perished. This is a great deal of sacrifice and suffering for no apparent gain in the region and continuously escalating risks to our homeland. Perhaps a bit of reflection is in order, followed by a change of course.

It is said in this regard that before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. (That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away, and you have their shoes.) In that spirit, let me offer a few thoughts as well as a question or two about America’s Persian and Arabian wars.

What it is that we Americans are trying to accomplish?  Is there no better way than warfare to protect and advance our interests? How can we finally end the many wars we have begun? On what terms should they be ended and with whom? At what point is enough enough?

Unraveling the tangle of wars in which the United States is now engaged with or against Arabs, Berbers, Hazaras, Israelis, Kanuris, Kurds, Palestinians, Persians, Pashtuns, Somalis, Syrians, Tajiks, Tuaregs, Turkmen, Turks, and Uzbeks – as well as Alawites, Christians, Druze, Jews, secular Muslims, Salafis, Shiites, Sunnis, and Yazidis – will not be easy. In large measure through our involvement, their conflicts have become interwoven. Ending one or another of them might alter the dynamics of the region but would not by itself produce peace.

That is certainly true of the longest-running of these hostilities – the struggle by Zionist settlers to displace Christian and Muslim Arabs from the Holy Land and to establish a Greater Israel [Eretz Israel] with indefinitely expandable borders.  This is shaping up as a tragedy with no catharsis. Israel’s cruelties to Palestinian Arabs provide daily reminders of two centuries of humiliating Muslim impotence in the face of Euro-American intrusions into the realm of Islam [Dar al Islam].  Israel’s policies have been a major driver of radicalization in Arab politics and in the popularization of terrorism as a tool of resistance to oppression and ethnic cleansing wherever it occurs in the region.

Resentment of Jewish colonialism, and American support for it, is now an elemental feature of Arab and Persian politics, with much resonance among Muslims all over the world. U.S. identification with Israel and its policies has made the United States the target ofIsrael’s burgeoning enemies. Peace in the Holy Land now would not soon erase these resentments, which have become deeply entrenched.

More than most, Israel’s ongoing wars have also become a laboratory in which ways and means of waging war are developed. I’m not just speaking here of Israeli innovations like targeted killings, enhanced interrogation techniques, drones, and pervasive surveillance systems. Suicide bombing is a form of asymmetric warfare now identified with Islam. But it came to the Middle East only when Lebanese were unable to find any other means of raising the cost to Israel of its insolent occupation of their country. The technique had been invented by East Asians – Japan’s kamikaze pilots and the Viet Minh resistance to French rule in Indochina – and perfected by the Tamil Tigers. It remains anathema to most Muslims.

First used in the Middle East by the Shiites of Hezbollah, suicide bombing was then taken up by Sunni Palestinians and applied to both soldiers and civilians in Israel and the occupied territories. First used to strike the United States with airborne improvised explosive devices [IEDs] on September 11, 2001, suicide bombing then became an oft-used weapon in the resistance to U.S. pacification operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It now routinely spearheads assaults by the so-called “Islamic caliphate” (or “Daesh”) in its savage wars on the West, in the Fertile Crescent, and in Arabia and North Africa.

Suicide bombing is the poor man’s precision-guided munition. It blows up targets of politico-military importance by using the human brain as a sophisticated guidance system and the human body as a versatile delivery mechanism for explosives. So far – the splendidly uniformed men and women of TSA notwithstanding – there is no reliable counter to it.

The unending contention between Israelis and Arabs has also become a major factor in both Iran’s regional role and its estrangement from the United States. Iranian support for Hezbollah and its Arab Shiite constituency during and after Israel’s assaults on Lebanon has given Iran significant sway in Lebanese politics. Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric was particularly noteworthy during the populist presidency of Iran’s version of President Donald Trump, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. It frightened Israelis while gaining Iran traction among Sunni Arabs dismayed by their own governments’ unwillingness to take action against Israel or to break with the United States on the issue. Among other things, this enabled Shiite Iran to build a cooperative relationship with Hamas, a broad-based Sunni democratic movement that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Arab autocracies as well as Israel and the United States have sought to isolate.

Iran came to contemporary Baghdad as a hitchhiker on America’s 2003 experiment with hit-and-run democratization, which installed a pro-Iranian Shiite government in Iraq. Our invasion eliminated Iraq as a balancer of Iran and enabled Iraq’s Kurds to achieve their independence in all but name, thus straining our relations with Turkey. The so-called “surge” of U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007 consolidated the Shiite monopoly on political power in the Arab-inhabited regions of Iraq, leaving Arab Sunnis disaffected and rebellious. In 2011, the smoldering sectarian warfare in Iraq spread to Syria, which – with a little help from the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and the United States – it promptly engulfed. Iran now presents itself as the protector of Shiite rule or rights in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon,Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. Such protection is proving dangerous to the health of the protected.

Iran’s inroads in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq greatly increased anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite sentiment in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and theUnited Arab Emirates. The Gulf Arabs see themselves as threatened and encircled by surging Iranian influence. Although they have little faith in America these days, they regard continuing American estrangement from Iran as a vital strategic asset to be preserved at almost any cost. They would not acquiesce in the Iran nuclear deal until they received assurances that it would not open the way to Iranian-American rapprochement.

At the same time, Israeli paranoia about Iran found expression in unprecedentedly brazen manipulation of U.S. politics. A senator wrote to the Iranian leadership urging them to reject the president as the representative of the United States in foreign affairs. Presidential candidates declared that, if elected, they would obey Israeli dictates and repudiate what the Obama administration, Britain,China, France, Germany, and Russia have agreed with Iran. In these circumstances, cooperation between the United States and Iran is essentially impossible.

This means that for now nothing can be built on the significant interests that the United States and Iran have in common. This restricts options for dealing with Islamist terrorism in the Fertile Crescent. It helps fuel the destructive region-wide geopolitical and religious rivalry between Iran and the Gulf Arabs. It reduces the prospects for peace in Syria. Even if refugees from the Levant did not threaten the unity of Europe, decency demands that ending the carnage there be an urgent policy objective. In the past five years, half of Syria’s prewar population has been forced to flee their homes. Somewhere between 350,000 and 470,000 Syrians have been killed.

The impasse in U.S. relations with Iran also complicates the prospects for stability in post-NATO Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has punted a lost war to the next administration. It denies the American economy a market that its European and Asian competitors are now vigorously pursuing. It perpetuates the rancor and mutual recriminations that require Americans to garrison the Persian Gulf at the expense of attending to strategic challenges elsewhere in Europe and Asia. And while a freeze in US-Iranian relations may slow the worsening of US-Arab relations, it does not halt or cure it.

A parallel deterioration has taken place in US-Turkish relations. Turkey has joined the Gulf Arabs in seeking regime change in Syriaby supporting Islamist extremists. It is determined to prevent the emergence of yet another Kurdish quasi-state on its southern border.Turkey has always been an essential partner on a uniquely long list of issues. Without Turkish cooperation or acquiescence, one cannot conduct policies toward Iraq, Syria, Iran, Israel, Central Asia, including Afghanistan, the Caucasus, the Black Sea countries,Russia, Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans, North Africa, the EU, the Gulf Arabs, NATO, or the Islamic world and its institutions. Migration from the Levant has just joined that list. But Turkey and the United States are at cross purposes over the Kurdish role in opposing Daesh and not in agreement about what else should happen in Syria.

This is as complex a skein of strife as one can imagine. Like the Gordian knot, the beginnings of the tangle cannot be found to unsnarl it. And the knot is visibly rotting, which risks releasing new horrors.

What is to be done?

We must begin by admitting that various projects to which we have given rhetorical, if not practical, support are now infeasible. The “two-state solution” in the Holy Land is first among these.  Israel continues to insist that it can find no partner for peace. In this argument, Israelis resemble no one so much as the kid who kills his parents and then appeals for sympathy on the grounds that he is an orphan. Under cover of the so-called “peace process,” Israel has assassinated every Palestinian leader of promise – by some counts some 800 individuals over the years – while incarcerating many others and recruiting some to serve as kapos for the occupation. Guns, bombs, booby traps, poison, biological agents, and drones have ensured that there is indeed no one with the vision and political standing to agree to a further subdivision of Palestine.

But, as the South African example shows, democracy in a master race cannot legitimize tyranny over other populations. Young Palestinians no longer have even a Bantustan to look forward to. Their despair has become anomie – a collapse of social norms and constraints. The result is an upsurge in random violence by young Palestinians against their Jewish oppressors.

American leaders spent more than four decades attempting to secure acceptance for a Jewish state in the Middle East. We had some success in this regard, brokering peace with Egypt in 1978 and with Jordan in 1994. In 2002, the Arabs offered Israel a comprehensive peace.  They received no reply at all. The price of domestic tranquility for Israel has always been an end to its land seizures and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israel has been unable to curb its appetite for Arab land. Now the world is no longer prepared to give Israel – or the United States – the benefit of the doubt. There will either be a one-state solution or escalating low-intensity conflict with increasing collateral damage to American global and regional interests.

It’s impolitic to say so, but the United States and Israel are now seriously estranged, with little prospect of reconciliation. Israeli accommodations of its captive Arab population or its Arab neighbors seem less likely than ever, given the Jewish state’s settler-dominated politics. In the absence of efforts by Israel to reconcile others in the Middle East to its existence, its international delegitimization will accelerate. The United States can no longer protect Israel from the consequences of its own behavior.

What’s worse – the interests of Israel and the United States now clash on a growing list of issues. Iran, the security architecture of the Persian Gulf, and the imperative of cooperation with Turkey are at the head of the list. But US-Israeli differences now prominently include relations with Islam, which Israel has sought to demonize, a task in which it has had enormous help from Islamist extremists. Absent American self-identification with Israel, the United States has nothing to gain and much to lose by allowing an establishment of religion to guide its foreign policy.

Contemporary Israeli values are also increasingly at odds with those of both the United States and Jewish tradition. Doctrines of racial supremacy, religious intolerance, and ethnic cleansing were once very American but un-Jewish. They are now anathema to Americans even as they flourish in Israel. American Jews find it hard to overcome the tribal impulses that incline them to rally behind the Jewish state but are more and more offended by the way an aggressively expansionist Israel is redefining Judaism and its image.

The partnerships of the United States with Saudi Arabia and others in the Gulf are also in increasing jeopardy, as the Gulf Arabs double down on foreign policies based on sectarian intolerance of Shi`ism as well as rivalry with Iran, the self-proclaimed protector of Shi`ites everywhere. Like Israeli Jews, Saudi Muslims react badly to even the most well-meant criticism by outsiders. They talk about their problems only to themselves, reinforcing their self-righteous self-perceptions and failing to understand the way others see them. (It couldn’t happen here!)

Islam is inherently among the most tolerant and humane of faiths. But Saudi Islam is intolerant of other traditions within Islam, the other Abrahamic religions, and actively hostile to faiths not rooted in Judaism like Animism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shamanism, Shintoism, Yazidism, or Zoroastrianism. And it is adamantly opposed to secularism and secular doctrines like Confucianism.

More to the point, Saudi Salafism – pejoratively labeled “Wahhabism” abroad – is kin to the xenophobic doctrines espoused by Islamist extremists, like Daesh or al Qaeda, even if it clearly lacks the zeal for bloody massacres that is their hallmark. This theological affinity makes Saudi Arabia either a reluctant opponent or even clandestine collaborator with Islamist extremists or the ideal partner to combat the perverted Salafism of Daesh. It has been hard for either Americans or Saudis to sort out which it is. That’s a problem.

Saudi and American values never coincided. The European Enlightenment occurred while Arabia was remote from it and in an Islamic Reformation, inspired by Mohammed ibn `Abd al-Wahhab. The Saudis are Muslim originalists and profoundly anti-secular. They are not impressed by democracy as a political system – especially in its current dysfunctional state in America – and do not aspire to adopt it. These differences never mattered in the past because U.S. and Saudi interests coincided in so many ways. But they matter now.

Until recently, the United States had no political or ideological agenda of its own in the Middle East. It was satisfied to enjoy preferred access to the region’s oil and to provide the Saudis and others protection in return for this. A grateful Saudi Arabia had America’s back on foreign policy issues affecting its region or the realm of Islam. On occasion, it was helpful farther afield.

For decades, the shared American and Saudi obsession with countering Soviet communism sidelined differences over Israel and its policies as well as human and civil rights in the Kingdom. No more. Since 9/11, the entrenchment of U.S. Islamophobia, American unilateralism, and Saudi ambivalence about Salafi jihadism have soured the undemanding friendship of the past.

Contradictions between the American and Arab political cultures were increasingly prominent even before the 21st century began.

With the end of the Cold War, Americans felt free to insist that the price of good relations with us was to accept our deeply held conviction that Western democratic values are self-evidently universal and to demand that foreign partners act accordingly. This inevitably distanced the United States from conservative non-Western societies, of which Saudi Arabia is the epitome. The emergence of feminism and libertarian tolerance of a variety of sexual orientations and behavior in America has added to the mutual distaste. Restoring a sense of common purpose will not be easy, despite the existence of a common enemy in Daesh.

American policies in the Middle East have produced a mess in which we are estranged from all the key actors – Arab, Iranian, Israeli, and Turkish – and on a different page than the Russians. The state of our relations with the region is symbolized by the sight of U.S.diplomats cowering behind barriers surrounding fortress embassies that resemble nothing so much as modern-day Crusader castles. Diplomacy is all but impossible when we must ask host governments to protect our diplomats from their people by placing our embassies under perpetual siege by police. The fact that other countries don’t have to do this is suggestive of something. After so many years, it should be obvious that bombing, drone warfare, and commandos just make things worse. It is time for Americans to end our wars and support for the wars of others in the Middle East and to try something else.

What might that be? Well, we might start by recognizing a few unpalatable realities. In the Levant, the world brought into being by Messrs. Sykes and Picot has ended. All of our bombers and all of our men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. We and our friends in the region are going to have to accept the rise of new states within changed borders. Where we cannot fix things, we must at least do no harm.

The Arabs have made it clear that they recognize the reality of Israel’s presence in their midst and do not expect it to disappear. It’s clear that, if Israel did indeed disappear, this would be because it did itself in, not because it was militarily overwhelmed. Israel has had a free ride on the United States for forty years. It is in denial about the ultimate consequences for it of moral self-destruction, political self-compression, and rising personal insecurity. Israelis will not address these perils without shock treatment. They need to make short-term political sacrifices to secure domestic tranquility and well-being over the long term.

If Americans could muster the political will, we could easily administer the requisite tough love to Israel through selective suspensions of the unconditional UN vetoes, aid, and tax subsidies that make counterproductive behavior by the Jewish state cost-free. If we are politically unable to cease the enablement and creation of moral hazard for Israel, we should consider how best to minimize the damage to ourselves as Israel self-destructs. We should not support or appear to support Israeli policies we consider misguided.

Similarly, America should restructure its relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs to be more two-sidedly collaborative. Like Israel, these countries have effectively declared their independence from us. Their continued dependence on us does not oblige us to support their policies. When these policies do not serve American purposes we should withhold our backing for them.

Americans neither understand nor have any interest in involving ourselves in theological rivalries between Sunnis and Shiites. When it is in our interest to do so, we should feel free to cooperate with Iran, as we do with Israel, rather than automatically deferring to Gulf Arab (or Israeli) objections. Our policies in Syria are the palsied offspring of an unholy marriage of convenience between liberal interventionists and Gulf Arab rulers obsessed with deposing Bashar al-Assad, establishing Sunni dominance in Syria, and breaking Syria’s alliance with Iran.

But, with the exception of the Iranian angle, would these outcomes necessarily serve U.S. interests? Is the unconditional support of the Gulf Arabs for military dictatorship in Egypt likely to end well? Is the perpetuation of the fighting in Yemen something we favor? It is time to restructure U.S. relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Iran to reflect the challenges of the post-Sykes-Picot and Cold War eras, the need for mutual accommodation between Arabs and Persians, and the rise of Daesh.

Greater flexibility in the U.S. relationship with the Gulf Arabs as well as with Iran is essential to end our cold war with Iran and our hot wars elsewhere in the region. It is necessary to restore a basis for a balance of power in the Persian Gulf that can relieve us of the burden of permanently garrisoning it. We should be looking to internationalize the burden of assuring security of access to energy supplies and freedom of navigation in the region. We should be using the United Nations to forge a coalition of great powers and Muslim states to contain and crush Daesh, criminalize terrorism, and build effective international structures to deal with it.

It is time to cut a knot or two in the Middle East. Enough is now enough.

This article was a speech given at the DACOR Bacon House in Washington on March 4, 2016.