John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CRAIG MURRAY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“The USA’s Slavish Saudi Allegiance Against Iran

“The assassination of a top Iranian general reflects a U.S. foreign policy tied to Saudi interests”

 

I like Craig Murray as a writer, but this piece comes as quite a disappointment.

It focuses on Saudi Arabia as being at the center of America’s hostility towards Iran. Israel gets slight mention.

I believe Mr. Murray has put the cart before the horse.

The attention America lavishes on Saudi Arabia has much to do with Saudi Arabia’s special relations with Israel, relations which have no long history. Saudi Arabia, before 9/11 was the source of a lot of hostility towards Israel, in everything from publications and speeches to support for various groups.

You find none of that now. It began to quiet down after 9/11 when the Saudi Royals realized how vulnerable they were to American invasion, a much more attractive invasion prospect than the hardscrabble land of Afghanistan. America could easily have manipulated facts like the (purported) nationalities of many of the plane hijackers (Saudi) into a reason to invade and steal the greatest quantity of oil ever stolen.

The Crown Prince took the new direction in Saudi international affairs even further. He made it his focus, recognizing opportunities for personal aggrandizement. Nothing good happens to anyone in the Middle East who does not happily support American policy, and that includes supporting America’s privileged imperial colony at the east end of the Mediterranean.

As we’ve seen in the Neocon Wars, those deemed not adequately warm towards Israel tend to get bombed and paved over.

As an interesting side note, Trump, the candidate who sensibly spoke against the wars in the Middle East, has now so completely compromised himself serving Israel’s special interests – interests often in conflict both with America’s own long-term interests and with the rule of international law – that it seems just impossible America can be extricated from the mess. Indeed, we now have the real possibility of the biggest war of all breaking out, and what has happened was completely avoidable.

Just look at Israel making no objection to the biggest arms deal in history recently between the Crown Prince and Trump. That could not have happened years ago. Israel’s influence wouldn’t have allowed the deal even to be proposed. Israel dearly loves the Crown Prince, and that has a lot to do with Trump’s smiling, back-slapping support for the tyrant.

The Crown Prince earned his bloody laurels with projects largely related to Israeli interests, projects such as the terror in Syria, with his generous support of mercenary, fake-jihadi outfits like al-Nusra and ISIS, groups whose main purpose has been to attack governments the United States and Israel wanted hurt.

Genuine jihadi types would, of course, instead be attacking Israel and the corrupt feudal princes of Saudi Arabia, but, somehow, magically, they never do.

Projects like bombing Yemen or arresting the visiting Prime Minister of Lebanon and forcing his resignation. Saudi Arabia frequently finances American schemes in the region, and I’m sure that whenever Netanyahu needs a tidy sum under the table for a dirty project, he has only to ask.

The real reason for Israel’s seething, relentless hatred of Iran comes from the fact that that country, with a population the size of Germany’s, is just naturally at the center of the region’s affairs and arrangements, a position Israel arrogantly regards as its rightful place. After all, it does represent the American empire, doesn’t it?

The immense blunder of America’s Iraq invasion, heavily lobbied for by Israel’s Ariel Sharon, ended up making Iran relatively even more important in the region by eliminating a strong adversary. Saddam Hussein was secular in his viewpoint. Now Iraq is dominated by the politics of a population which is about two-thirds Shia Muslim.

There are influential Israelis who would just love to see America go to war with Iran. Trump’s series of hostilities and humiliations towards Iran for more than a year does tend to work in that direction, or, at least, to create situations where a “happy” accident might happen. Wars do often happen by something being tipped over at a risky moment.

Remember, Iran was the last country listed on the secret Pentagon document General Wesley Clark spoke of seeing years ago, countries that were to be toppled in upcoming years.

The assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani is called an Israeli project by several reliable observers. There is a report that the very target coordinates for the drone were given to its operator by an Israeli. Likely Trump had very little time to make this monumentally stupid decision, having been advised that a brief window of opportunity was open.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH

 

“Manchester Bomber Was Product of West’s Libya/Syria Intervention”

 

All of what we call “international terror” or “Muslim extremist terror” is nothing but blowback from America’s Neocon Wars and outrageous actions in the Middle East.

The only exceptions to that statement involve the gangs of mercenary thugs the U.S. and its allies have supported in places like Syria and Libya.

Such gangs – variously named ISIS or Al-Nusra and still others – are no different to the gangs and armies of mercenaries which have been used in countless imperial wars before, except they don’t wear uniforms and they make big noises about matters other than the real purpose of their filthy work.

It is all a big theatrical production, courtesy of support and funding and supplies from the United States, Israel, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and with support from willing helpers like Britain and France.

For example, were ISIS (aka, Daesh) really what it has claimed to be, a fanatical Muslim terror group, clearly it would attack Israel and Israeli interests, but it never does. Never.

Or it would attack the fat princes running Saudi Arabia, princes who in their private lives are well-known for ignoring the strictures of the very conservative Islam they claim to follow. It is only the poor people of Saudi Arabia who are left with those strict rules. And, of course, since now for years since 9/11, the Saudis have worked secretly hand-in-glove with the Israelis, this fact would make them doubly a target.

But again, Saudi Arabia and its horrible elites are never targets for such supposed radical fundamentalist terrorists.

The poor people of Syria, though, people governed by a fairly reasonable government, are targets. With at least a third of a million having been killed and countless injured and made homeless.

And so were the poor people of Libya targets, people previously governed by a man who gave them everything from free education to good water and peace and are now reduced to bloody chaos.

Every once in a while, some of the victims of, or sympathizers against, all of this paid state terror do manage to carry out an attack in revenge for what has been done to them or their families or homes. Such exactly is the nature of the attacks in Paris and this Manchester attack.

They are classic terror operations, but they are not the acts of mindless fanatics. They are works of revenge in response to immense injuries having been inflicted by Western authorities.

Britain and France both have long worked with the United States in actually assisting the paid mercenary “terrorists” working to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria. They supply weapons, they fly missions to destroy Syrian infrastructure, and they give special forces support – all while pretending to fight terror.

And do they really believe, while they fool much of their own populations with dishonesty and propaganda through the ever-accommodating corporate press, that no one else notices what they are doing?

In addition to fifteen years of horror in the Neocon Wars, burning and bombing their way through the Middle East, killing at least two million people, we have the terrible suppurating wound of Palestine and Israel’s terrible treatment of millions, always defended and protected by the United States and by those same governments in Britain and France.

How anyone believes that you can do what Israel and the United States have done without ugly consequences is beyond me. You can only oppress and abuse millions for so long without consequences. That is just human nature.

Of course, the Neocon Wars themselves largely relate to Israel. The United States has been trying to literally re-create the Middle East so that it might come to resemble some American suburban place for Israel’s benefit. Ozzie and Harriet’s charming suburb of the 1950s, or a contemporary American gated community complete with golf courses, so that migrants from America and Europe can pretend they have done nothing wrong to millions they oppress.

It is a horrible set of policies and acts absolutely no different in nature and quality to the works of tyrants of the 1930s or of places like Apartheid South Africa. Only the numbers of lives destroyed are less. Ethnic-cleansing, mass terror, mass killing, treating millions like cattle – that, with no exaggeration, represents the work of the United States and Israel for fifteen years.

I have never understood how rights-loving average Americans can view with indifference a bloody spectacle where even the ownership of a home or farm is not secure and where millions are penned-up as though in prison and, now, where millions are sent running in terror from cities being bombed to become despised refugees.

 

 John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“The British Iraq and Afghanistan war memorial celebrates those who destroyed my country”

It could not be said better than that.

This monument to acts of idiocy is actually a form of fake news, a fake historical memorial, trying to render heroic what was cowardly, trying to make significant what was shameful.

The establishment just never stops trying to tell us what kind of a world it is arranging for us without our consent, a kind of fantasy story to cover the actual nastiness we can all see for ourselves.

I have to add, too, that this particular piece of sculpture almost inadvertently reveals its poor intent.

It is just plain ugly, strongly resembling what we might have expected the Soviets to build in Hungary, 1956.

A Tony Blair vision of something inspiring, an ugly lump cast in bronze and stone and dedicated to mass murder.

Ugh!

The ugly monument may be seen here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-afghanistan-war-memorial-blair-destroyed-my-country-a7626906.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-afghanistan-war-memorial-blair-destroyed-my-country-a7626906.html

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Response to another reader’s comment:

If you had an ounce of knowledge, you’d know Afghanistan really wasn’t even a country in the sense that we understand it, so religion could hardly overwhelm country.

It was a loosely organized area of tribal people living a hardscrabble life. There were even few roads. The border with Pakistan was never even formally settled.

Fighting between tribal groups went on incessantly, as the Northern Alliance versus the Taleban.

Indeed, they were, and are, all Muslims although they adhered to different factions, as Catholics fighting Lutherans in 16th century Europe.

There was no reason on earth to invade the place beyond American fury and demands for vengeance. Simply insane. The Taleban were in no way responsible for 9/11.

The US has never provided a scrap of evidence that even Osama bin Laden, a Saudi in exile in Afghanistan, was responsible either.

The Taleban government would have extradited him after 9/11 and said so, if the US had presented any credible evidence, but they refused to do what is normal procedure for extraditions.

And if you had an ounce of knowledge, you’d know for sure Saddam Hussein allowed no religious extremists or terrorist to flourish in Iraq. None. It was actually in many ways the most advanced country in the Arab world.

He was a tyrant, true, but that’s just the kind of people the US and Britain support anyway so long as they toe the American policy line -eg, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, etc., etc.

Iraq was only invaded to reduce it to a set of rump states for Israel’s benefit. The same effort has been underway in Syria for six years, only using covert operations and proxy armies instead of direct invasion.

It was only after the Bush-Blair illegal invasion of Iraq, we get the likes of ISIS and Al-Nusra.

You are, frankly, just appallingly ignorant.