How foolish do the Pentagon warmakers, Beltway mediates, and politicos think we are?
It has been less than a decade since they pounded the war drums against Iraq, bombarding a gullible American public — still fresh off the horror of the 9/11 attacks — with screeches over Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction,” “chemical weapons,” and that he “kills his own people.”
All of that racket was war propaganda, and though repeated ad nauseum at the time by 98% of the media, was based on lies, deceit, and the cherry-picking of evidence in order to justify a war.
There is no need to calculate the costs of that war — that could take an entire volume. The millions slaughtered, displaced, maimed; the trillions spent and stolen from Americans; the balance-of-power shifts that benefited Iran; the depleted-uranium ammunition that litters the Iraqi desert; and the chaos that plagues that region to this day is just a short list.
Americans have a very short memory, and all of that is ancient history.
This time, this war, they really, really mean it.
Which is why one finds Rachel Maddow flailing her arms in a frenzy on MSNBC spewing war propaganda that would make Douglas Feith or Bill Kristol blush. Bashar Al-Assad is just about “to kill his own people” with “chemical weapons” says Maddow, and it will happen any day now unless Saintly Obama sends in the Marines. Then, and only then, will order be restored.
Ah, the irony. Maddow and the Left hated Bush, and now that their guy is in charge, their marching orders have been received and their feet and arms are in unison. Left-Right-Left-Right-Left…
Are the Americans buying it this time? It’s hard to tell. The problem is, in this age of Obama, no one (other than us libertarians) seems to really care that the US is waging war and running an empire unseen in American, or world, history. Which raises the question: why do they even bother with running a desperate propaganda machine anyway? Just send in the F-22s, bomb the hell out of Damascus, build a base, and station 5,000 Marines there forever.
The job of debunking war propaganda and White House lies has fallen on the laps of the alternative media — and thankfully, they have stepped up to the plate. With how decentralized and lightning-quick the blogosphere is at reporting and debunking, Americans and the rest of the world now have absolutely no excuse for believing the War Party lies.
All it takes is twenty minutes of research at the right places for one to instantly become skeptical of the propaganda. While MSNBC would have us believe that Assad is just minutes away from raining chemical death on “his own people,” Antiwar.com’s John Glaser reports that the US and politically-connected merchants of death are training Syrian rebels to handle and use chemical weapons.
Seriously. You can’t make this stuff. It’s tragedy in the ultimate Shakespearean sense, except with far bloodier consequences.
And what if Assad did go ahead and make the worst mistake of his life and use chemical weapons on the Syrian “rebels?” Well, even then the War Party would still be lying since the “rebels” are foreign mercenaries and Islamic jihadists from Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries funded largely by the Saudis, the Qataris, and the US, not “his own people.” You know, the same kind of medieval crazies the US claims to be waging a permanent “war on terror” against.
Not content with just arming, funding and supporting murderous, bloodthirsty jihadists in one of the last secular regimes in the region, the US has stationed the disgusting, tax-guzzling U.S.S. Eisenhower off of Syria’s coast, a nuclear-equipped carrier armed with 8,000 troops and 70 fighter jets.
The US and its NATO allies are setting up multiple trip wires that could trigger a full-scale war, and the warmakers in the Pentagon have to know this. Why the aggression, belligerence, and provocations?
Because this is what Empires do. Hell, it’s what states do. They grow and grow because they can, and like cancer, it is the only thing they know how to do. It does not matter that the US is tens of trillions of dollars in debt, or that it could trigger a wider regional conflict, or make the price of oil skyrocket, or costs thousands of lives or turn that country over to Islamic fundamentalists.
Nope, none of this matters. What matters to the US, and to Obama, is the projection of power for its own sake, to sell some weapons, and intervene because to a desperate, rabid dog, everything looks like prey.
But all we can do here in The Homeland is keep fighting against their lies, keep informed, keep debunking, keep spreading the truth, and opposing their Empire with every marrow in our bones. Thankfully, we have the means and the tools to keep the torch of peace and liberty lit against the dark forces of empire, taxes, and death.
I’ll say it now, knowing full well I’ll have to say it again soon: US OUT OF SYRIA!
This article originally appeared at A Little Rebellion.