From: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/09/america-as-dangerous-flailing-beast/

America
as Dangerous Flailing Beast

May 9, 2015

Despite pretty talk about
“democracy” and “human rights,” U.S. leaders have become the world’s chief
purveyors of chaos and death – from Vietnam through Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine
and many other unfortunate nations, a dangerous dilemma addressed by John Chuckman.

By John Chuckman

When I think of America’s place in
the world today, the image that comes to mind is of a very large animal,
perhaps a huge bull elephant or even prehistoric mammoth, which long roamed as
the unchallenged king of its domain but has become trapped by its own missteps,
as caught in a tar pit or some quicksand, and it is violently flailing about,
making a terrifying noises in its effort to free itself and re-establish its
authority.

Any observer immediately knows the
animal ultimately cannot succeed but certainly is frightened by the noise and
crashing that it can sustain for a considerable time.

President George W. Bush announcing
the start of his invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

I think that is the pretty accurate
metaphor for the situation of the United States today, still a terribly large
and powerful society but one finding itself trapped after a long series of its
own blunders and errors, a society certain ultimately to become diminished in
its prestige and relative power with all the difficulties which that will
entail for an arrogant people having a blind faith in their own rightness.

America simply cannot accept its
mistakes or that it was ever wrong, for Americanism much resembles a
fundamentalist religion whose members are incapable of recognizing or admitting
they ever followed anything but the divine plan.

America has made a costly series of
errors over the last half century, demonstrating to others that the America
they may have been in awe of in, say, 1950, and may have considered almost
godlike and incapable of mistakes, has now proved itself indisputably, in field
after field, as often not even capable of governing itself. The irony of a people
who are seen as often unable to govern themselves advising others how to govern
themselves brings a distinct note of absurdity to American foreign policy.

America’s establishment, feeling its
old easy superiority in the world beginning to slip away in a hundred different
ways, seems determined to show everyone it still has what it takes, determined
to make others feel its strength, determined to weaken others abroad who do not
accept its natural superiority, determined to seize by brute force and dirty tricks
advantages which no longer come to it by simply superior performance.

Rather than learn from its errors
and adjust its delusional assumptions, America is determined to push and bend
people all over the world to its will and acceptance of its leadership. But you
cannot reclaim genuine leadership once you have been exposed enough times in
your bad judgment, and it is clear you are on the decline, just as you cannot
once others realize that they can do many things as well or better than you.

In the end, policies which do not
recognize scientific facts are doomed. Policies based on wishes and ideology do
not succeed over the long run, unless, of course, you are willing to suppress
everyone who disagrees with you and demand their compliance under threat. The requirement
for an imperial state in such a situation is international behavior which
resembles the internal behavior of an autocratic leader such as Stalin, and
right now that is precisely where the United States is headed.

Stalin’s personality had a fair
degree of paranoia and no patience for the views of others. He felt constantly
threatened by potential competitors and he used systematic terror to keep
everyone intimidated and unified under him.

Stalin’s sincere belief in a faulty
economic system that was doomed from its birth put him in a position similar to
that of America’s oligarchs today. They have a world imperial system that is
coming under increasing strain and challenge because others are growing and
have their own needs and America simply does not have the flexibility to
accommodate them.

America’s oligarchs are not used to
listening to the views of others. Stalin’s belief in a system that was more an
ideology than a coherent economic model is paralleled by the quasi-religious
tenets of Americanism, a set of beliefs which holds that America is especially
blessed by the Creator and all things good and great are simply its due.

Dominion over the Earth?

Americanism blurrily assumes that
God’s promise in the Old Testament that man should have dominion over the
earth’s creatures applies now uniquely to Americans. Such thinking arose during
many years of easy superiority, a superiority that was less owing to intrinsic
merits of American society than to a set of fortuitous circumstances, many of
which are now gone.

In Vietnam, America squandered
countless resources chasing after a chimera its ideologues insisted was deadly
important, never once
acknowledging the fatal weaknesses built right into communism from its birth.
Communism was certain eventually to fail because of economic falsehoods which
were part of its conception, much as a child born with certain genetic flaws is
destined for eventual death.

America’s mad rush to fight
communism on all fronts was in keeping with the zealotry of America’s Civic
Religion, but it was a huge and foolish practical judgment which wasted
colossal resources.

In Vietnam, America ended in
something close to total shame – literally defeated on the battlefield by what
seemed an inconsequential opponent, having also cast aside traditional ethical
values in murdering great masses of people who never threatened the United
States, murder on a scale (3 million) comparable to the Holocaust.

The United States used weapons and
techniques of a savage character: napalm, cluster bombs, and secret mass terror
programs. The savagery ripped into the fabric of America’s own society,
dividing the nation almost as badly as its Civil War once had. America ended
reduced and depleted in many respects and paid its huge bills with devalued
currency.

Following Vietnam, it has just been
one calamity after another revealing the same destructive inability to govern,
the same thought governed by zealotry, right down to the 2008 financial
collapse which was caused by ignoring
sound financial management and basically instituting a system of
unlimited greed. The entire world was jolted and hurt by this stupidity whose
full consequences are not nearly played out.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
were completely unnecessary, cost vast sums, caused immense misery, and
achieved nothing worth achieving. We now know what was kept hidden, that more
than one million Iraqis died in an invasion based entirely on lies. These wars
also set in motion changes whose long-term effects have yet to be felt. Iraq,
for example, has just about had its Kurdish, oil-producing region hived off as
a separate state.

Mishandling Russia

America’s primitive approach to the
Soviet Union’s collapse, its sheer triumphalism and failure to regard Russia as
important enough to help or with which to cooperate, ignored America’s own
long-term interests. After all, the Russians are a great people with many
gifts, and it was inevitable that they would come back from a post-collapse
depression to claim their place in the world.

So how do the people running the
United States now deal with a prosperous and growing Russia, a Russia which
reaches out in the soundest traditional economic fashion for cooperation and
partnership in trade and projects? Russia has embraced free trade, a concept
Americans trumpeted for years whenever it was to their advantage, but now for
Russia is treated as dark and sinister.

Here America fights the inevitable
power of economic forces, something akin to fighting the tide or the wind, and
only for the sake of its continued dominance of another continent. Americans
desperately try to stop what can only be called natural economic arrangements
between Russia and Europe, natural because both sides have many services,
goods, and commodities to trade for the benefit of all. America’s establishment
wants to cut off healthy new growth and permanently to establish its primacy in
Europe even though it has nothing new to offer.

America’s deliberately dishonest
interpretation of Russia’s measured response to an induced coup in Ukraine is
used to generate an artificial sense of crisis, but despite the pressures that
America is capable of exerting on Europe, we sense Europe only goes along to
avoid a public squabble and only for so long as the costs are not too high.

The most intelligent leaders in
Europe recognize what the United States is doing but do not want to clash
openly, although the creation of the Minsk Agreement came pretty close to a
polite rejection of America’s demand for hardline tactics.

The coup in Ukraine was intended to
put a hostile government in control of a long stretch of Russian border, a government
which might cooperate in American military matters and which would serve as an
irritant to Russia. But you don’t get good results with malicious policy.

So far the coup has served only to
hurt Ukraine’s economy, security and long-term interests. It has a government
which is seen widely as incompetent, a government which fomented unnecessary
civil war, a government which may have shot down a civilian airliner, and a
government in which no one, including in the West, has much faith.

Its finances are in turmoil, many
important former economic connections are severed, and there is no great
willingness by Europe, especially an economically-troubled Europe, to assist
it. It is not an advanced or stable enough place to join the EU because that
would just mean gigantic subsidies being directed to it from an already
troubled Europe.

And the idea of its joining NATO is absolutely a
non-starter both because it can’t carry its own weight in such an organization
and because that act would cross a dangerous red line for Russia.

Kiev is having immense problems even
holding the country together as it fights autonomous right-wing outfits like
the Azov Battalion in the southeast who threaten the Minsk Agreement, as the
regime tries to implement military recruiting in western Ukraine with more
people running away than joining up, as it finds it must protect its own
President with a Praetorian Guard of Americans from some serious threats by
right-wing militias unhappy with Kiev’s failures, as it must reckon with the de
facto secession of Donetsk and the permanent loss of Crimea – all this as it
struggles with huge debts and an economy in a nosedive.

America is in no position to give
serious assistance to Ukraine, just plenty of shop-worn slogans about freedom
and democracy. These events provide a perfect example of the damage America
inflicts on a people with malicious policy intended only to use them to hurt
others.

There is such a record of this kind
of thing by America that I am always surprised when there are any takers out
there for the newest scheme. One remembers Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
in 1975 encouraging the Iraqi Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein and then
leaving them in the lurch when the dictator launched a merciless suppression.

I also think of the scenes at the
end of the Vietnam War as American helicopters took off in cowardly fashion
from the roof of the embassy leaving their Vietnamese co-workers, tears
streaming down their faces, vainly grasping for the undercarriages of
helicopters, a fitting and shameful end to a truly brainless crusade.

Messing up Ukraine

I don’t know but I very much doubt
that the present government of Ukraine can endure, and it is always possible
that it will slip into an even more serious civil war with factions fighting on
all sides, something resembling the murderous mess America created in Libya. Of
course, such a war on Russia’s borders would come with tremendous risks.

The American aristocracy doesn’t
become concerned about disasters into which they themselves are not thrust, but
a war in Ukraine could easily do just that. In ironic fashion, heightened
conflict could mark the beginning of the end of the era of European
subservience to America. Chaos in Ukraine could provide exactly the shock
Europe needs to stop supporting American schemes before the entire continent or
even the world is threatened.

I remind readers that while Russia’s
economy is not as large as America’s, it is a country with a strong history in
engineering and science, and no one on the planet shares its terrifying
experiences with foreign invasion. So it has developed and maintains a number
of weapons systems that are second to none. Each one of its new class of
ballistic missile submarines, and Russia is building a number of them, is
capable of hitting 96 separate targets with thermo-nuclear warheads, and that
capability is apart from rail-mounted ICBMs, hard-site ICBMs,
truck-mounted missiles, air-launched cruise missiles, sea-launched cruise
missiles, and a variety of other fearsome weapons.

Modern Russia does not make threats
with this awesome power, and you might say Putin follows the advice of Theodore
Roosevelt as he walks softly but carries a big stick, but I do think it wise
for all of us to keep these things in mind as America taunts Russia and literally play a game of chicken
with Armageddon.

I don’t believe America has a
legitimate mandate from anyone to behave in this dangerous way. Europe’s
smartest leaders, having lived at the very center of the Cold War and survived
two world wars, do understand this and are trying very carefully not to allow
things to go too far, but America has some highly irresponsible and dangerous
people working hard on the Ukraine file, and accidents do happen when you push
things too hard.

The Israel Obsession

In another sphere of now constant
engagement, instead of sponsoring and promoting fair arrangements in the Middle
East, America has carried on a bizarre relationship with Israel, a relationship
which is certainly against the America’s own long term interests, although
individual American politicians benefit with streams of special interests
payments – America’s self-imposed, utterly corrupt campaign financing system
being ultimately responsible – in exchange for blindly insisting Israel is
always right, which it most certainly is not.

An important segment of Israel’s
population is American, and they just carried over to Israel the same
short-sightedness, arrogance and belligerence which characterize America, so
much so, Israel may
legitimately be viewed as an American colony in the Middle East rather
than a genuinely independent state.

Its lack of genuine independence is
reflected also in its constant dependence on huge subsidies, on its need for
heavily-biased American diplomacy to protect it in many forums including the
United Nations, and on its dependence upon American arm-twisting and bribes in
any number of places, Egypt’s generous annual American pension requiring
certain behaviors being one of the largest examples.

Here, too, inevitability has been
foolishly ignored. The Palestinians are not going anywhere, and they have
demonstrated the most remarkable endurance, yet almost every act of Israel
since its inception, each supported by America, has been an effort to make them go away
through extreme hardship and abuse and violence, looking towards the creation
of Greater Israel, a dangerous fantasy idea which cannot succeed but it will
fail only after it has taken an immense toll.

Despite America’s constant
diplomatic and financial pressure on other states to support its one-sided
policy here, there are finally a number of signs that views are turning away
from the preposterous notion that Israel is always right and that it can
continue indefinitely with its savage behavior.

Recently, we have had a great last
effort by America and covert partners to secure Israel’s absolute pre-eminence in the Middle East
through a whole series of destructive intrusions in the region – the
“Arab Spring,” the reverse-revolution in Egypt, the smashing and now
dismemberment of Iraq, the smashing and effective dismemberment of Libya, and
the horrible, artificially-induced civil war in Syria which employs some of the
most violent and lunatic people on earth from outside and gives them weapons,
money and refuge in an effort to destroy a stable and relatively peaceful
state.

I could go on, but I think the
picture is clear: in almost every sphere of American governance, internally and
abroad, America’s poor political institutions have yielded the poorest
decisions. America has over-extended itself on every front, has served myths
rather than facts, has let greed run its governing of almost everything, and
has squandered resources on achieving nothing of worth.

I view America’s present posture in
the world – supporting dirty wars and coups in many places at the same time and
treating others as game pieces to be moved rather than partners – as a
desperate attempt to shake the world to gain advantages it couldn’t secure
through accepted means of governance and policy.

America is that great beast,
bellowing and shaking the ground, and for that reason, it is extremely
dangerous.

John Chuckman
is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company.

Tags:Afghan
War Iraq War Israel John Chuckman Libya Syria Ukraine Vietnam War

………

26 comments for “America as
Dangerous Flailing Beast”

Tom Welsh

May 9, 2015 at 11:02 am

My analogy has always been with a drunken
deadbeat armed with grenades and a machine gun. What to do about him? We want
him to pay back the money he borrowed from us, but he refuses. If anyone tries
to reason with him, he threatens to shoot. If we send police to arrest him, he
will blow them up along with himself. What to do?

Of course the USA is far, far more dangerous
and destructive than the drunken deadbeat. It is armed with thousands of
thermonuclear warheads – as well as masses of the chemical and biological
weapons that get it so upset when others allegedly possess them.

Maybe this is why scientists have not
discovered any signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Perhaps it
always self-destructs as soon as it acquires enough technology to do so.

o

Jay

May 9, 2015 at 1:55 pm

Careful with the “borrowed money from” analogy.

It only works so far.

§

jifster

May 9, 2015 at 7:15 pm

Sounds profound, Jay. Could you please elaborate, though? I’m a
little slow.

§

Jay

May 10, 2015 at 11:38 am

jifster:

The biggest holders of US Treasuries are the Social Security
Administration and the US Federal Reserves.

The come foreign Tbill holders like
the Chinese and Japaneses,

Threre’s a racial(ist)
undercurrent to claims about what US debt holders will do. And oft it is based
on the idea that China is now by far the biggest holder of US debt–it isn’t.

o

withertwig

May 9, 2015 at 7:02 pm

If it takes poetry for some to begin to comprehend what our
nation has become Tom has blessed us.

o

Steve Naidamast

May 11, 2015 at 3:12 pm

Tom:

Your last paragraph references the “Drake Equation”, in which
the “L” variable states that a planet that could sustain life and doesn’t may
have self-destructed from the misuse of its own technological developments.

As to intelligent life in the universe, I am quite sure it is
out there but mature and intelligent enough to have no desire to make contact
with the idiocy of the Human species on planet Earth…

Loren Bliss

May 9, 2015 at 4:59 pm

The analogy I formerly made is to
pre-revolutionary France, not the least because of the ironic fact the United
States is literally the creation of pre-revolutionary France.

But the analogy I make now is to a Nazi
Germany armed with thermonuclear weapons and, as Hitler proved before his
death, determined to destroy the world rather than surrender.

o

dahoit

May 10, 2015 at 12:45 pm

Hitler never surrendered because he knew his fate would be
execution.

The USA reminds me of Ripleys
baby in Alien Resurrection.

John

May 9, 2015 at 8:51 pm

I in turn like the analogy of an empty suit or
armor, a mad robot run by failed institutions, elections and mass media serving
only gold, at its core the ultimate moral corruption of wealth in a society
without rights or sympathy, the whole blundering around the globe, swinging its
sword madly.

But that is because I have seen the moral
corruption of wealth, the anti-moral lunacy induced by financial fear and
opportunism, the absolute corruption of our judicial and political system, too
long to pretend that there is any sanity or any solution, not even the sanity
of a great beast in a trap.

o

Loren Bliss

May 9, 2015 at 11:00 pm

I think our analogies are essentially equivalent. Though the
external forms are surely different, the moral imbecility of Nazism and
Hitler’s notion of the German “Master Race” is identical in content (and
therefore in results) to the moral imbecility of (Ayn Rand) capitalism and U.S.
“exceptionalism.” There is also the matter of comparable genocides, the Nazi
German and U.S. variants, the latter including not just the obvious targeting
of blacks and Hispanics but also the calculatedly genocidal policies euphemized
as “austerity.”

§

John

May 10, 2015 at 7:23 am

Good points, the genocidal aggrandizing connection especially.
The US has killed roughly as many non-combatants in North Korea, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Iraq, and Latin America as the Nazis killed Jews, with no better
rationale. Both economic and military power soon lead to a self-concept of
perfection and a reality of moral degradation.

§

Stefan

May 10, 2015 at 6:56 pm

Much more (and not even counting the maimed and poisoned ones +
indirectly killed by sponsored contras, jihadis or
other terror networks).

Jon

May 9, 2015 at 10:57 pm

When a powerful nation is failing
economically, losing it’s
influence over other nations, has a fear of it’s own
people and generally going “down hill” but still has
the most powerful military by far, the things it might do are something to put
fear in the rest of the world.

IMO the biggest concern our owners have at
this time is what will happen internally when the economy collapses. They can’t
accept a repeat of the events of 1934 when the people pushed back and won some
of the horrors of socialism such as Social Security, unemployment insurance and
government sponsored jobs. This time they will be ready with the militarized
police and the real military. Anyone who tries to organize for any change will
be “disappeared”.

RogerT

May 10, 2015 at 2:00 am

Forgive me, Mr Chuckman, but I think you have reversed the
American-Israeli relationship. That vile Zionist regime governs the USA through its mass of Israel-firsters
infiltrated into every governmental organisation,
all subordinste to the Knesset. Senators, Congressmen
and even the President are suborned and selected by Zionist/American plutocrats
to be puppets of Zion and through them, the wealth of the USA is plundered by
its colonial master, Israel. American not Israeli lives are sacrificed in proxy
wars to eradicate the perceived threats to the Zionists’ dream of a Greater Israel. The USA
and Israel, together the true axis of evil has brought nothing but death and
destruction to the World. Which
of them, then, is
the colony and which the master?

o

John

May 10, 2015 at 7:26 am

Agree. The notion of Israel as colony seeks undeserved sympathy.

Peter Loeb [This post has
hallmarks of being authored by a
troll.  –FNC]

May 10, 2015 at 6:26 am

CHUCKMAN’S CONFUSIONS

John Chuckman’s
well-intentioned list of world evils is filled with half-truths.

This “former economist” does not say where he was “former” but perhaps

he would have done well to stay in economics.

Who is Mr. Chuckman
writing for, whom is he seeking to persuade? And

why?

There are so many declarations which presume
on the reader to shout his

allegiance without qualification that it is impossible to cover them all.

What follows, therefore, is only a sample.

1. Was the US so preponderant in its power in
1950? I recommend

that Joyce and Gabriel Kolko’s THE LIMITS OF POWER….
be read in

great depth.How is NSC 68 analyzed in all of this?
What of the goals and failure of the

Marshall Plan?

2.Clearly the writer doesn’t care for our “Uncle Joe” aka Joseph Stalin.

Perhaps he has forgotten that the USSR lost 22 million men and significant

infrastructure in World War Two. Should the other allies have refused

this help pointing to “Uncle Joe”;s
character and record? At any rate

they did not. They accepted his help. Was that cyncial?
Munitions were

even supplied to the USSR whose loss in men surpassede
all other

allies combined. At any rate and for whatever reasons, the efforts of

the Red Army were never refused, never questioned.

3. It’s clever for
this writer to question communism with the fabricated

fury of a US liberal democrat. Perhaps the economics and policies of

communism’s predecessors is considered preferable.

4. It seems that despite criticisms, this
writer let’s Israel and Zionism off

the hook. And thereby also unknowingly gives the US legalistic

ways of avoiding responsibilities for the Israeli massacres, murders,

home demolitions, rapes, and on an on. In fact, the
entire history

of Zionism with its constant attacks on its neighbors deserves our

opposition. Instead the US–and allies it can pressure—support

this Israeli horror for which it bears so much responsibility.

3. As a “former economist” one might expect a
more in-depth critique

of American capitalist society, its history, and where it is (not)

going.and why….

4. The right of the resistance of self-defense
and to respond to constant

and calculated Israeli provication is never
addressed.

These pointa are
just part of a suggestion that Mr.Chuckman, clearly a

writer with perception, revisit his subject in depth.

—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

Manoj Kumar Gupta

May 17, 2015 at 10:29 am

Your queries have intrigued me, more because they make little
sense in context of the article. Let me try to explain in same serial–

1. The author has not said anything about US behavior in 1950s.
Your reference to some text that has greatly impressed you means little to what
is being said here.

2. Again, the reference to Russian casualties in WW2 is makes
little sense in whatever point you are trying to make.

3. The author has clearly said that communism was doomed for
failure. Why are you trying to lay a false allegation?

4. The focus of this article is not on Israel and neither is it
on Kim Kardashian. Both can be subject of different essays.

5. You may request him for lessons in economics but here the guy
is stressing on mad behavior of the USA.

6. Explained in 4. above.

§

Donald Paulus

May 18, 2015 at 6:49 am

Did Loeb read Chuckman’s article?

elmerfudzie

May 10, 2015 at 2:34 pm

Religious fundamentalism’s have nothing
what-ever to do with the current American Predicament. Unsuccessful and or unpredicted
outcomes as a result of War is a very very old story.
What is relatively new however, in human history and nation-building is the
corporate entity or incorporation. In particular those corporations who make
advanced weaponry for the battlefield. There are no democratic checks and
balances, no authoritative (civilian) watchdogs monitoring their portfolios and
financing efforts to increase demand for their particular blood
letting finished product(s). So, by returning to a national policy that
annually reviews each incorporation charter, perhaps, as this relates to the
general welfare of citizens wherever manufacturing is performed or headquartered
(in that particular State). As it stands now, any annual review of the
incorporation papers, as our forefathers intended it to be, was removed by
senatorial edict in the State of Delaware, instigated
of course by the First Rockefeller (no surprise there!). Business entities not
called to justify profits in ethical or moral terms, have a free hand to go
wherever the maximum profits would tend to take them….Such corporate entities,
without ethical standards also refuse any uniform taxation method, be it for
stock, bond sales or annual profits. If the finished product destroys property
and kills people, then they promote their wares in all the hot spots of this
world-that’s logical isn’t it? and when the hot spots
aren’t hot enough, well what’s wrong with a little bit of deliberate
instigation, tying on hand behind the soldiers back and so on? the share holders would be
delighted to forestall an end to such ongoing profits! The world community has
a new answer to the endless war question, and it’s on the horizon, a paradigm
shift away from self interest (personal or corporate)
to a humanity embracing one, that is; I can’t get what I want until I help you
get what you want and vice versa.

o

Donald Paulus

May 18, 2015 at 7:04 am

This is a brilliant comment. If we don’t learn to control the corporations and their
servant, the USA, we don’t make it on this planet. The addictive power
of profits is a real threat. God, money is worse than drugs.

Hans

May 10, 2015 at 11:04 pm

What is the essential feature of American
society and American institutions that has given rise to the developments
described by John Chuckman?

America’s
fundamental problem is its foreign policy establishment. The foreign policy establishment is
powerful, it is autonomous, and it is invisible to the American public.
Moreover, its goals and methods undermine the well-being of American society.

Domestically, the US has many areas of poor
governance, to be sure, but it also does many, many things right. There is a
lot of innovation, economic growth, affordable cost of living, economic
opportunity, etc., etc.

But domestic policy is undercut by foreign
policy. Huge deficits? We spend a fortune equipping our military and waging
non-stop war. Hollowing out of the industrial base? That was the price paid for
US-led globalization. Europeans shutting out our IT firms? The NSA turned those
firms into spies. Loss of soft power? We embraced torture as a national value.
Loss of civil liberties? Necessary for national security. Failure of the Fourth
Estate? The press has been captured by the foreign policy establishment.

Who is destroying US society? It is the
foreign policy establishment. That would be the military-industrial complex
that Eisenhower warned us about, the policy-making CIA that Truman warned us
about, the Israel Lobby that sways our national, state, and local institutions,
increasingly the Saudi lobby that sways the Bushes (and probably the Clintons,)
and the elite academics who theorize strictly within parameters set by
practicing policy-makers.

Today’s great challenge for the US is to
liberate itself from its excessively powerful foreign policy establishment.
Domestically, maybe the high-tech sector has the power to push for reform.
Internationally, maybe a schism between the US and Europe will tame the power of the US establishment. The US desperately
needs to subordinate its foreign policy to its national interest and thereby
avoid self-destruction.

Today’s situation, as summarized in this
article, is dangerous for the world and tragic for America.

###

o

Steve Naidamast

May 11, 2015 at 3:20 pm

Hans:

I completely agree with you.

However, Truman gave us the CIA, though he only intended it to
be an organization for intelligence gathering. He also gave us NSC 68, which established
the United States for the first time as a national security state.

Eisenhower was not much better. Yes, he warned us about the
“”Military Industrial Complex” but did nothing to thwart it on his own watch
while using the CIA to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran.

Steve Naidamast

May 11, 2015 at 3:24 pm

The ancient Greek saying at the height of the
Athenian Empire, “Might is
right.”,
has always proven to be the
last vestige of any empire’s existence…

Dredd

May 12, 2015 at 7:37 pm

The Stones had the lyric “mad bull lost its
way” (It is just a shot away).

JK

May 15, 2015 at 8:35 pm

I love the Rolling Stones; that song is among
my favorites.

Comments
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