{"id":259250,"date":"2016-07-31T18:59:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T18:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=259250"},"modified":"2016-08-01T13:23:16","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T13:23:16","slug":"259250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/259250\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Recent Achievements in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s Recent Achievements in the Middle East<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are before-and-after pictures, at\u00a0https:\/\/twitter.com\/MAL0mt\/status\/701077438525263873\/photo\/1<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0of what the U.S. government has achieved, in the Middle East:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

What\u2019s especially interesting there, is that in all of these missions, except for Iraq, the U.S. was doing it with the key participation of the Saud family<\/span><\/a>, the royals who own Saudi Arabia<\/span><\/a>, and who are the world\u2019s largest buyers of American weaponry. Since Barack Obama came into the White House, the operations \u2014 Libya, Yemen, and Syria \u2014 have been, to a large extent, joint<\/i> operations with the Sauds. \u2018We\u2019 are now working more closely with \u2018our\u2019 \u2018friends\u2019<\/span><\/a>, even than \u2018we\u2019 were under George W. Bush.<\/span><\/p>\n

As President Obama instructed his military, on 28 May 2014<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

When issues of global concern do not pose a direct\u00a0threat to the United States, when such issues are at stake\u00a0\u2014 when\u00a0crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more\u00a0dangerous direction but do not directly threaten us\u00a0\u2014 then the\u00a0threshold for military action must be higher. In such circumstances, we\u00a0should not go it alone. Instead, we must mobilize allies and partners\u00a0to take collective action. We have to broaden our tools to include\u00a0diplomacy and development; sanctions and isolation; appeals\u00a0to\u00a0international law; and, if just, necessary and effective, multilateral\u00a0military action.\u00a0In such circumstances, we have to work with others\u00a0because collective action in these circumstances is more likely to\u00a0succeed.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So: \u2019we\u2019 didn\u2019t achieve these things only on our own, but instead in alliance with the royals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and other friendly countries, which finance jihadists everywhere but in their own country<\/span><\/a>. And, of course, all of \u2018us\u2019 are allied against Russia, so we\u2019re now surrounding that country with \u2018our\u2019 NATO partners before we do to it what we\u2019ve previously done to Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. America is becoming even more ambitious, because of \u2018successes\u2019 like these in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States has been the great champion of \u2018democracy\u2019 throughout the world. And these are are some of the results of that \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>. \u2018We\u2019 are spreading it abroad.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Our\u2019 latest victory has been \u2018our\u2019 spreading it to Ukraine<\/span><\/a>. No country is closer to Russia than that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside America, the term that\u2019s used for referring to anyone who opposes this spreading of \u2018democracy\u2019, is \u2018isolationist\u2019, and this term is imported from the meaning that it had just prior to America\u2019s joining World War II against Hitler and other fascists. Back in that time, an \u201cisolationist\u201d meant someone who didn\u2019t want to defeat the fascists. The implication in the usage of this term now, is that the person who is an \u2018isolationist\u2019 is a \u2018fascist\u2019, just as was the case then<\/i>. It\u2019s someone who doesn\u2019t<\/i> want to spread \u2018democracy\u2019. To oppose American foreign policy is thus said to be not only \u2018right wing\u2019, but the extremist version of that: far<\/i> right-wing \u2014 fascist, perhaps even nazi, or racist-fascist<\/span><\/a>. (Donald Trump is rejected by many Republicans who say that he\u2019s \u2018not conservative enough\u2019<\/span><\/a>. Democrats consider him to be far too<\/i> \u2018conservative\u2019. The neoconservative Democrat Isaac Chotiner, whom the Democratic neoconservative Slate hired away from the Democratic neoconservative The New Republic<\/i>, has headlined at Slate, \u201cIs Donald Trump a Fascist?\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he answered that question in the affirmative.) George Orwell dubbed this type of terminological usage \u201cNewspeak.\u201d It\u2019s very effective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Studies in America show that the people who are the most supportive of spreading \u2018democracy\u2019 are individuals with masters and doctoral degrees<\/span><\/a> (\u201cpostgraduate degrees\u201d). Those are the Americans who vote for these policies, to spread American \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>, to foreign lands. They want more of this \u2014 more of these achievements. (Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders nationwide among the \u201cpostgraduate\u201d group<\/span><\/a>.) Some of these people pride themselves on being \u201ctechnocrats.\u201d They claim that the world needs more of their \u2018expertise\u2019. Lots of them come forth on the \u2018news\u2019 media to validate such invasions as Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria after 2011, etc. Almost all of them possess doctoral degrees. This shows what they have learned. They are the most employable, the highest paid, the most successful, in their respective fields.<\/span><\/p>\n

After all: \u2018democracy\u2019 is not for amateurs. It\u2019s only for people who take instruction, and who do what they are told. But, told by whom? Whom are they obeying? Do they even know? In any organization, when an instruction is issued, is it always easy to know who issued it? And what happens to a person who doesn\u2019t carry it out? There is a winnowing process. The constant survivors are the ones who rise from that process, and who ultimately win the opportunity to issue some of the instructions themselves. These people are the wheat; everybody else is chaff, which gets discarded, in a \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s Recent Achievements in the Middle East Eric Zuesse Here are before-and-after pictures, at\u00a0https:\/\/twitter.com\/MAL0mt\/status\/701077438525263873\/photo\/1,\u00a0of what the U.S. government has achieved, in the Middle East: What\u2019s especially interesting there, is that in all of these missions, except for Iraq, the U.S. was doing it with the key participation of the Saud family, the royals who own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":259252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461,18],"tags":[115,30,27,96,535,38,907,882,59,1143,754,92,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-259250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"category-latest-news","10":"tag-barack-obama","11":"tag-big-brother","12":"tag-bush","13":"tag-cover-up","14":"tag-global-news","15":"tag-iraq","16":"tag-isis","17":"tag-libya","18":"tag-military","19":"tag-saudi-arabia","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-usa-news","23":"tag-warfare","24":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}