This is a response to AG’s post “Obama’s Real Challenge: America’s Survival” below, where among other things, he claims we are all locksteppers for not praising the Obamagod and agreeing with the Bush ala Bama Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against “terror.”
First of all, lets touch on what is arguably the WORST foreign policy decision EVER in the history of the US: Going into Iraq.
People who live there publicly recall the years under Saddam as “the good old days.” They had jobs, schools, houses, air conditioning, a life. We have destabilized that region in the most insane way ever… the inevitable sectarian violence when/if we leave is going to be unimaginable. The response of American/Western hatred in the WHOLE region is going to be exponentially raised if we stay.
If nothing else, Iraq was a nonsectarian area buffer zone between the wildly Shiite Iran and the wildly Sunni Turks, Syrians, Lebanese and Saudis. When they start going at it, the Iranians will protect Iraq’s majority Shiite, with the largest standing army in the region, and then all the people with their finger on newly freed A.Q. Khan’s weapons will be awfully twitchy about protecting the Sunnis.
Peer closely at the map, its blurry, but legible.
What we should have done, is seal the border and march through Afghanistan shoulder to shoulder until we rooted out Bin Laden and the extremists on 9/12. The people there didn’t much like them anyway, they FEARED them.
Going back further, what we should have done, after arming them to the teeth to kick Russia’s ass out of the region is invest ourselves in rebuilding and stabilizing the region. It is the direst of circumstances that bring people to follow extremists. We pulled out and left Afghanistan in shambles, and the religious whack jobs had all the guns. Brilliant.
But as much as I’d like to, I’m not here to re-write history.
Lets talk about where the ball is now.
Waziristan:
This hostile, mountainous area that lies on the Afghani/Pakistani border is where the problem lies. Officially Pakistan’s, rest assured though while just as “officially condemned,” our strikes there are being orchestrated by Pakistani intelligence and orders.
Like the almost impenetrable Vietnam in daunting geography, they also share a history of being overran and fucked by wave after wave of people trying to determine their lives for them. Truly, the people trotting between the two countries in this region couldn’t give a fuck about borders anyway. They are THEIR mountains.
Its not called “Where Empires go to Die” for nothing.
Go back to the first map. Both countries are predominately Sunni, and are bordered by a very Shiite Iran. Pakistan also shares a border with their mortal enemy to the south, India.
Now think about Israel, Pakistan and India having nukes, with god knows how many other illegally smuggled ones elsewhere.
Hold that thought.
Now lets look at who has the oil.
Top Ten Oil Exporting Countries
* Saudi Arabia (8.73 million barrels per day)
* Russia (6.67)
* Norway (2.91)
* Iran (2.55)
* Venezuela (2.36)
* United Arab Emirates (2.33)
* Kuwait (2.20)
* Nigeria (2.19)
* Mexico (1.80)
* Algeria (1.68)Top OPEC Crude Oil Producers (in million barrels per day)
1. Saudi Arabia … 9.35
2. Iran … 4.09
3. Venezuela … 3.13
4. Kuwait … 2.57
5. United Arab Emirates … 2.38
OK. Now try again to argue the point this is about our oil security? Tell me again why Israel has anything whatsoever to do with it, AG, when we get most of our oil from the Saudis? Why we’re in Wazaristan has NOTHING to do with oil production.
It has do with DELIVERY and who controls it.
(While we’re at it: Tell me why you think it brilliant to not get off the greasy black oil tit instead of spending all our money fucking up an area with a dwindling supply in the first place?)
Its about oil routes that go directly to Russia, and the whole Eastern Bloc without having to use tankers out of the Gulf.
Now think harder, about all the Saudis flying those planes, and the fact we flew the Bin Ladens out in a hurry after 9/11.
OPEC doesn’t want Russian oil to have an easy way out, or their oil an easy way in, not under their control.
Do you honestly think that out of some sense of loyalty to the people in Pakistan (to protect them from the nasty Tally-ban) we are bombing the shit out of birthday parties because “suspected” terrorists lie there?
BULLSHIT.
As usual, we are the consummate whores, only in it for the money interests and will prop up whomever gives us the biggest cut. The Saudis are in this ass deep, and as our biggest importer of oil, a stable and profitable Pakistan and Afghanistan would cut directly into their profit margin.
Not rocket science.
Here’s some simpler versions of the proposed pipelines, the first oil, the second, gas.
Its always war for oil, always war for profit.
The job of the right-wing Military Industrial Complex and Big Oil money who run the Shadow, Perma-gov is to tell us WE ARE IN DANGER to justify their kleptocracy.
We are fucking around in quicksand.
We are doing everything counterproductive to making the Middle East a stable region that CAN be done.
1: Instead of denouncing Israel’s abominable treatment of the Palestinian people, we support them. (sub-mistake, not recognizing and dealing with the Palestinian elected leadership)
- We destabilized Iraq, and rather than rebuild it, we are arming both sides to the teeth and paying them not to kill us. We are not negotiating a secular government with protections for the minority there.
- We are saber rattling (at Israel’s bequest, nay demand) at Iran, whose Shiite majority is our best defense against the Sunni Al-Qaeda. (Iran being the most stable and arguable most Westernized Arabic country in the region, with whom we SHOULD ally ourselves) ~they consider themselves Persian, not Arabic, anyway, but that subtlety is lost on the US & Israel.
- We are committing war crimes by bombing an area with which we are NOT at war in Waziristan, Pakistan; thereby CREATING more sympathy for the extremist jihad-types.
- We are not investing in a post-war economy in Pakistan, nor involving ourselves in negotiating a cooperative Indian alliance with them.
The BIGGIE?
6. We have not stabilized Afghanistan by investing in rebuilding and normalizing their infrastructure. The shambles in which they were left after Russia was beaten, created in part by our actions there directly caused the counter reaction of extremism.
I am not stupid, nor lockstepping. There are levels to this you cannot even FATHOM, and not ONE of them has to do with “BROWN SKEERY PEOPLE OUT TO GET US!”
Militarism, especially indiscriminate use of drone bombings has proven totally ineffective every time someone goes into the Paki/Afghani region.
People generally want to be autonomous, and want to be able to make a living.
If we truly wanted to rid ourselves of enemies and create allies, we would not be following the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes and perma-war, civilian casualties be damned.
We would be using Diplomacy.
If we spent one tenth of what our Military presence costs us on rebuilding regions that are unstable, we would have allies and relative peace; not an increasingly negative reaction from the Islamic world.
Military attack there has been a proven failure time and again:
WHERE EMPIRES GO TO DIE.
Our GOAL was never “safety” from them, “protecting ourselves” from them, nor PEACE, dude.
That is not our goal.
That was never Bush’s goal.
It apparently isn’t Obama’s goal either.
The goal IS to keep the profits running for the MIC, the Oil Interests and the Shadow Government.
That goal is attained easily, when people like you, AG, parrot the Limbaugh lines of “Kill them there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
Bush Doctrine = ‘Bama Doctrine
DON’T YOU GET IT?
WE ARE THE TERRORISTS TO THEM.
We may not fly planes into buildings and die, we just drop bombs from drones on Weddings.
Have a nice day in Reality.
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From my various comments at WWL:
I CAN see what are the most productive and LEAST productive modus operandi.
Investment, not drone bombings.
Go ahead, repeat your history.
Failed Histories.
I will always push for a new way
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I am rather big on humanitarianism, but you know you can’t take the hippie chick out of me, either….
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I have to believe that there are choices we can make at this moment in time that could deflect the coming Armageddon, and I have to speak for that. I have to counter the propaganda fairy tales.
Is Obama set against “those who hate humanity” itself real or another myth?
Has he allied himself with those who don’t really ‘hate us,’ as such, but merely see us as penny ante chips in a never ending poker game for all the chips, in a billion dollar bid hand?
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peace out…
