By Rainer Rupp.
The US warmongers and the military industrial security complex can breathe a sigh of relief. Trump is as good as gone, and with Joe Biden and his team, new U.S. wars will soon be possible again. The conspirators who subverted Trump’s orders to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan are glorifying their actions to save the wars that are at the heart of the U.S. global business model. At the same time, U.S. hawks continue to escalate the U.S.-Iran confrontation in the Gulf.
It is normal for U.S. presidents to become political lame ducks toward the end of their terms, and in the transition period to the new administration, major policy decisions – especially in foreign policy – are coordinated with the new president’s team. Donald Trump, however, is not only a lame duck in his last days in office, but his time and attention is fully occupied by the new impeachment process. That’s what the hypocritical Democrat leadership pushed through with its majority in the lower house of the U.S. Congress (House of Representatives) to prevent Trump’s re-election for life. Meanwhile, Trump has been cut off and muzzled from his favored communication channels by the powerful social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and the like, who have sided with the victorious Democratic Party. At the same time, because of the storming of Congress by his supporters, he has become the target of a gigantic media campaign that does not leave a good hair on his head.
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that despite his personal shortcomings and various serious political mistakes during his term in office, his greatest merit in retrospect is that he has withstood tremendous pressure from within and without. The continuous burden of being constantly surrounded by warmongers in the White House, as well as from the Zionist bloc. Added to this were the constant attacks from the US media, which was fully attuned to imperial hubris and for which Trump only acted “presidential” for a very short time, namely when he gave the order for a missile attack against Syria on the basis of deliberate misinformation from his advisers.
We should not forget that unlike his predecessor, the fake Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, Donald Trump did not start a new U.S. war during his term. However, the 45th president of the United States has also shown many weaknesses and made mistakes. Among his biggest foreign policy mistakes are undoubtedly his unconditional, almost submissive support for the racist apartheid regime in Israel, his brutal economic and financial war against Iran and trade war against China, and the militarization of relations with the Middle Kingdom, which Washington now sees as an enemy.
At the same time, Trump’s peace policy initiatives have been thwarted and backstabbed at every turn by his own people. Even his explicit orders to wind down the hot U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Syria and withdraw U.S. troops from those countries were undermined by his White House staff – in collusion with like-minded warmongers in the Department of State and the Pentagon War Department. This was a conspiracy to deny presidential orders to withdraw troops. Consequently, these politically senior conspirators share responsibility for the deaths of the many people, U.S. soldiers included, who have since perished in the war zones.
In recent weeks and months, some of the conspirators who left the Trump administration early have even bragged in U.S. media about how they tricked the president and kept the wars going. From the foreign policy establishment in Washington, focused on war as a U.S. business model, there were only sympathetic and understanding comments for this, rather than charges of political conspiracy involving death. The rest of the war-focused hawks remaining in the Trump administration are led by former CIA chief and current still-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Their actions suggest no other conclusion than that they want to use the favor of the hour, namely President Trump’s political paralysis in the White House, to poison U.S. relations with Iran, China, Syria and Russia in such a lasting way in the final days before the handover to Joe Biden that it will be as difficult as possible for the Biden administration to normalize relations with these countries.
However, given the appointment of proven “liberal hawks,” there are reasonable doubts as to whether normalization of relations with Iran, China, Syria, and Russia is even desired in the incoming Biden administration. Indeed, Biden’s foreign policy team has a wealth of experience in matters of “war and subversion.” Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that Pompeo’s attempts to permanently poison U.S. relations with these countries are being done in secret collusion with the Democratic hawks in the new Biden administration. After all, if enough political glass is smashed before Pompeo takes office, the course would be set, and that would make it easier for the U.S. Senate to establish the continuation of the confrontational foreign policy course against critics from its own ranks, even under President Biden. Party-political concerns play no role here, because when it comes to war as a U.S. business model, hawks have always been quick to agree, whether Republican or Democrat.
Since Donald Trump made his then-CIA Director Pompeo Secretary of State, an old joke about lawyers has been repurposed for Pompeo. Now it’s “How can you tell Mike Pompeo is lying?” The answer: “When he opens his mouth.” And indeed, the man can lie like a trooper, and all in a tone of conviction. And he is particularly proud of this, otherwise he would not have bragged about his special abilities in this regard to the students in College Station in Texas on April 15, 2019 as the guest of honor of the university there. The CIA had already taught him these as a young man, namely “to lie, cheat and steal” (1). Applause from the students.
The fact that the CIA also teaches its recruits to overthrow democratically elected governments or to draw up death lists of trade unionists and anti-imperialists and then to torture and murder them, as required, was not mentioned by the usually amiably smiling top criminal Pompeo during his lecture at the university in Texas. That might have spoiled the fun atmosphere. In his latest speech on Tuesday of this week, however, Pompeo again made use of his rich “lie-and-cheat CIA experience” and again attracted worldwide attention with a very big fake. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, just one day after his meeting with the head of Israeli intelligence, Pompeo claimed that al-Qaeda is now active in Iran, and he therefore called on hawks in Washington to “confront” and “defeat” the terror group in its newly discovered base of operations, Iran.
Translated into plain language, the top U.S. lying diplomat thus calls for war against Iran. This is because the imaginary al-Qaeda terrorists in Iran, who according to Pompeo operate in the country in collusion with the Iranian government, could be hiding from U.S. air power anywhere, most likely of course at Iranian military bases and political installations, where they would then be bombed by U.S. warplanes and missiles. Further, Pompeo warned that the “Islamic Republic of Iran” is a “safe haven” for Osama bin Laden’s ideas and emphasized, “We ignore this Iran-Al Qaeda axis at our peril.”
However, this Pompeo lie of Iran-Al Qaeda cooperation is not even intelligent in its rudiments. It could hardly be more idiotic, since anyone with half a political interest knows by now that there is no coexistence for both the Al Qaeda head cutters and the Iranian government. Even temporary tactical cooperation against the U.S. would be impossible, because al-Qaeda terrorists are close to the Saudi Arabian Sunni sect of Wahhabis. Shiites-and thus Iran-are their mortal enemy, as al Qaeda groups have repeatedly demonstrated through many massacres of Shiites in the Middle East. It is noteworthy, however, that this latest Pompeo lie is modeled after an earlier U.S. lie that brought death and destruction to millions.
The Bush administration legitimized its criminal war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 with two massive lies to which not even trace elements of truth were attached. First, there was the claim of an alleged Iraqi threat of possession and advancement of weapons of mass destruction. The second pillar on which the U.S. war justification rested was the claim that the Iraqi government had actively assisted al Qaeda terrorists in carrying out the attacks of September 11, 2001. To that end, the later chief bomber, Mohamed Atta, had allegedly met with an emissary of President Saddam Hussein in Prague. Both were big, fat lies. But these and other lies taken together ultimately caused the U.S. to launch its war of aggression against Iraq, which was illegal under international law, criminal and provoked by nothing, to loud applause from a large part of the Western “society of no values.” And the Western, self-declared “quality media” have aided and abetted the mass murder in the Middle East with their dissemination of US lies.
It is the same media that for the past four years has non-stop attacked President Trump as a lying baron for every little thing. The real reason for this constant media uproar against Trump has not been the factual mistakes he has actually made more often than not, because these have mostly been about trivial statements, with no consequences for the life and limb of millions of people. The real bone of contention was Trump’s politically “incorrect” statements of opinion, such as that he no longer believed US intelligence agencies. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump and his remaining entourage have lost the “war at home.” The internal battle is all but over, and the winners are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. However, in their final days in office, Trump, Pompeo and Co. always seem to want to prove that they still control the Middle East and that their campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran must continue. This includes further ramping up the U.S. threat level by having Washington send the nuclear submarine USS Georgia, fully equipped with pinpoint Tomahawk cruise missiles, to the edge of the Persian Gulf.
The nuclear submarine is accompanied by two U.S. guided-missile destroyers. The U.S. aircraft carrier Nimitz, which had already been ordered home by the Pentagon two weeks ago for the purpose of lowering tensions, has been ordered back toward the Gulf at Pompeo’s intervention, where it has since arrived. The U.S. threatening gestures are accompanied by demonstrative flights of U.S. large bombers in the region. But Iran is not idle either and is making preparations to strike back decisively and effectively at U.S. bases in the region in the event of a U.S. attack. Recently, Tehran unveiled its new helicopter carrier “Makran,” as well as a brand new floating missile launch pad, Zereh. At the same time, Iran has mobilized its land-sea missile forces along its maritime border in the Persian Gulf, particularly at the Strait of Hormuz choke point.
Published U.S. satellite imagery also shows an increase in activity in the Strait of Hormuz by ships of the elite Revolutionary Guards units. These are small, maneuverable boats armed with anti-ship missiles that resemble pleasure craft and can attack singly, hidden from a bay suddenly, or operate in swarms of hundreds. Iran has also already conducted a large-scale exercise with armed drones in the first days of the new year, followed closely by a naval exercise. For Iraqi television, an elite corps of Iranian Revolutionary Guards unveiled its own underground missile base near the Persian Gulf, promising to turn U.S. aircraft carriers and capital ships into “sinking submarines.”
And so the two sides are rocking up, ready for a military confrontation at any time.
Sources:
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Thanks to the author for the right to publish the article.
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Image source: Matt Smith Photographer/ shutterstock
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