The [George W. Bush] aide, [Narcissus], … said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
For the last few years I have been trying unsuccessfully to discern some consistent, organizing theme to American foreign policy in the supposedly post Cold War Era. A few facts that appear to be true relating to the MENA have really bothered me because of their contradictory nature. Recently, one of the members of this Committee posted a serious question for the Committee he had picked up somewhere else on the Internet.
The question is as follows:
Just trying to keep my scorecard straight. Let’s see. The Americans are using a Turkish airbase to bomb ISIS and protect our allies the Kurds.
The Turks are bombing our allies the Kurds while we are using their airbase. The Americans are supplying human shields for terrorist in Syria who are being bombed by the Russians.
On the Iraqi side, American air power is being used to protect and support the new Iranian puppet regime in Iraq installed by the Americans after the gulf war. The Mahdi army that we fought in Sadr City are now advanced element of the Iraqi army we are protecting.
Officers of “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” the Iranians are standing next to Iraqi officers who are standing next to American officers all cooperating to kill ISIS soldiers who have been receiving weapons from Americans through American proxies we consider”moderate rebels”.
Meanwhile, our “enemies” the Iranians are supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen while our “allies” the people who destroyed the trade centers have involved the U.S. in yet another unauthorized war by aggressively attacking the houthis who were helping the U. S. fight Al Queda in Yemen before .
In the meanwhile “moderate rebels” are undoubtedly being furnished weapons capable of bringing down Russian war planes. So while Russia is bombing ISIS, we are encouraging our proxies to shoot down their planes.
Will someone tell me whose side we are on today?
Then, one of the commenters here pointed me to a whole new viewpoint towards American foreign policy by giving me a link to the works of Andrew Horybko. That lead introduced me to a whole group of thinkers and theses I was unaware existed and viewpoints that previously had never entered my mind.
What formerly seemed nonsensical, suddenly seems consistent and intentional‑The established strategy of the foreign policy of the United States is to create chaos to destabilize the world.
I have long been aware of the neocon program, the Project for a New American Century. first publically espoused about 1997 and signed onto by Elliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney and others signed onto the (PNAC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Statement_of_Principles I have read many of their publications and most just seemed to be Israel-Firster tripe promoting a huge increase in the size of the U.S. Military coupled with some conservative dribble about American Dominance in the Twenty-First Century. I did not discern the project’s Statement of Principals to be a real manifesto directed at seeking total world domination by the cabal of its authors. When I refer to the project as a cabal, I do not mean that these men and women covertly met in the think tank offices and wrote out some conspiratorial tome. Instead, the growth of the Cabal most likely arose informally in the incestuous milieu of the elite policy mavens of Washington where the meme grew and developed at parties, receptions, and gatherings among those hungry for power and without ethics. Some gave the project’s goal the name “New World Order.” For lack of a better acronym for those who ascribe to the concepts of neocon colonialism, I will just lump the group who signed, ascribed to, and followed the fundamental ideas set forth in the PNAC as the “PNAC” or the “Cabal”. Membership is confirmed by adoption of the meme, not by formal initiation. For many in the Cabal, they may not even comprehend the reality of their joining or membership, but nevertheless, actually are members. From my view, this group includes almost all of the establishment members of the group Colonel Lang has named the Borg, including most from the Bush-Cheney group, through Hillary, to Obama as one of its most sophisticated players.
My new view of the PNAC as a cabal for world domination first focused when a SST commenter linked me to an article by Andrew Horybko (http://stanjestvari.com/2014/12/05/andrew-korybko-the-color-revolution-model-an-expose-of-the-core-mechanics/ and ultimately to Andrew Horybko’s book, Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach to Regime Change. (eBook available on Amazon Kindle for cheap.) From there, I followed-up with some works by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, The Kagans, and some discussions of the perversion Gene Sharp’s theories of “non-violent” struggle to accomplish violent subversion and some articles and lectures on www.csis.org. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp http://www.aeinstein.org/
The intellectual heart of the project to the establish The New World Order and the strategy of achieving it is Brzezinski’s key idea, of a Balkanized Crescent. This concept is built on Halford John Mackinder’s concept of the Asian Heartland as the Pivot of History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History. The fundamental principle of Balkanizing-the-Crescent is that in a nuclear world where it is too dangerous to take direct action against Russia, Russia can be weakened by the creation of chaos in its near neighbors. By creating chaos in its neighborhood (Russia’s “Rimland” using Mackinder’s name) in a Balkanized Crescent, Russia is forced to act to protect its interests in its Rimland and is weakened thereby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimland The necessity of Russia (né the Soviets) tamping out the nearby fires thereby weakens Russia’s power and freedom of action to the benefit of the U.S. and the global power of its Cabal leaders. Moreover, given the centrality in the Crescent of competing proto-regional hegemons centered around Arabia and Iran, in Kissinger’s words, a pair of Sunni and Shiite Crescents, chaos in those sub-Crescents can prevent the development of either Arabia or Iran from obtaining hegemony in the region. As an added benefit, Israel is contained by being caught in the middle.
Gene Sharp, who, after studying Gandhi, developed a series of processes and formulas for using small, well-funded groups to destabilize countries from within. The logic of the PNAC Cabal expands this idea all across the coastlines from the Indian Ocean, across the Mediterranean and up around to the Baltic Sea; this is the Crescent to be balkanized under the Colour Revolution meme and the dream of the PNAC.
An amalgam of the ideas presented by these thinkers seems to gel into a theory of using various types of provocateurs, special forces, spies, NGOs, community organizers, paid peasant soldiers, and a comparatively small amount of money to work towards destabilizing the Balkanized Crescent. Andrew Horybko has given the strategy a usable meme name, Colour Revolution. Horybko makes an interesting argument that the Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy is being actively and currently pursued by the US in the present to further the goals set forth last century by the PNAC clique who still dominate the execution of American foreign policy. See, http://csis.org/publication/russia-and-color-revolution ; https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/lost-on-the-dark-side-in-syria/
As I reviewed these disparate works they have raised a question in my mind as to whether the real actions of the United States are, in fact, a consistent application of Korybko’s explication of the Colour Revolution meme and strategy? Is current American foreign policy stuck in the, now mythical, bi-polar Cold War Era meme of Russia [the Soviets] against the West and is America’s goal not peace, but to surround Russia [subconsciously, the old Soviet Union boogeyman] with Brzezinski’s Balkanized crescent of chaos, focused upon weakening our now dissolved adversary, the USSR and even Europe, to promote total American world domination?
Listen to any lecture or read the papers by the Kagans, Brzezinski or Kissinger and the old Cold War meme still resonates loudly. Many of these incriminating materials are available on the CSIS.org web site. If we are still captured by the Soviets v. US meme, or if the cabalists do indeed seek to obtain total world domination, then the Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy becomes clear: The apparent contradictions of supporting ISIS and Sunni militias at the same time makes sense. Neither will be crushed, both will simultaneously be supported and subverted. All protestations to the contrary are merely psyops.
Using a perversion of Sharp’s insights and formulas as the tactical tool for expression of the strategic goal of total domination, destabilize everything around Russia so Russia will act to expend resources to stabilize its immediate neighborhood and thereby become weakened by attrition. And, just for good measure, include Europe in the destabilization plan to keep the Europeans subservient and in tow by flooding it with refugees and provoking the skinheads with targets for their xenophobic rage.
If this Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy is the real strategy, it has been profoundly successful. The Crescent around Asia’s Rimland has been destabilized through a masterful series of Colour Revolutions and supported insurgencies going back to the Carter Administration’s first support to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan when Brzezinski enticed the Soviet Union into a fatal quagmire. The strategy has continued up until the present as we send arms to the “moderate” jihadists in Syria, all the while supporting the Iraqi Army and the Shia militias trying to fight the brothers of the “moderate’ jihadists in Syria and helping KSA to bomb Shia Houthis in Yemen.
Application of this principal means that we truly have no allies and no friends because we subvert them all.
The whole process in the MENA can be visualized as a stoking and damping of three fires, Jewish, Sunni, and Shia; making sure all burn hot, but none burns brighter than the others, while making sure that the three consume all of the fuel, so none becomes overly fierce so as to escape confinement. Russia is intended to suffer burns from all three.
Like plying an alcoholic with booze, we have paid billions into Israel to enable the Zionists to torture and oppress the Palestinians and punish Lebanon in order to guarantee an abiding cancer of Muslim anger against the Jews that spreads it festering seed throughout all of MENA. We have destabilized Israel’s enemy Iraq and have armed its Shia masses who have ethnically cleansed much of Iraq, concentrating the Sunni in fanatical hell holes. We have covertly encouraged ISIS while arming JAL so together, they can destabilize Syria and Iraq. We have armed Turkey and KSA to entice each of them to founder into the Cauldrons of Syria and Yemen and to breed the seeds of their own civil wars. At the same time, we have created an epidemic of opium and a tsunami of migrants and refugees from Syria and Afghanistan into Europe that will most certainly destabilize that entire continent for decades. Iran is countered by a Sunni stronghold that will not go away and that will challenge it for decades even if it is forced into an underground guerilla movement. We have promoted the KSA while all the time knowing it was funding and growing the Wahhabi faith and poisoning a generation all over Asia and Africa with the virus of Salafist Jihadism and now funding the extension of settlements in the West Bank. We have supported fascists in Ukraine to defeat a democratically elected government friendly to Russia and left Ukraine in turmoil and dissent. Russia has willingly allowed itself to be sucked into lengthening wars of attrition in Syria and Ukraine that will be followed by a longer, tumultuous, costly attempt at a post-war stabilization process that can never occur because all of those who could create a follow-up civil society are either dead or gone. Our successfully “Balkanized Crescent” now extends from Sweden to Yemen and everything in between from the Sub Saharan Africa up through Italy, Greece, Hungary, Romania, and the steppes of Ukraine to the Arctic Ocean.
In all, the condition on the ground today supports a Grade of A-Plus for the strategists and tacticians of the Cabal executing the Colour Revolution process. The future for years is simply chaos within the West Asian Rimland far into the future. All of this gained for a mere $75.00 dollar a week paycheck for a few thousand peasant fighters with no employee benefits and a hugely profitable boondoggle for the domestic defense industry supplying the replacement troops, hardware, and materiel. What a deal!
If the quest of the Cabal is continuation of the Cold War for world domination by proxy and not peace, then the facts listed in the scorecard question above all make sense. The U.S. supports all sides in the MENA conflict including even our Al Qaeda frenemies wherever they may be used be to maximize the operation of chaos. The strategy is arms for all as long as “they” are over-there and have sufficient willingness and talent to contribute to chaos sufficient to support the investment.
Even a few hits “over here” or in Paris are good because they reinforce the deception of the American People and increase support for the Cabal’s quest for world domination and increasing authoritarian control at home. Fear at home is good for the Cabal’s business of chaos for profit. An examination of the countries destabilized this century confirms the majesty, effectiveness, and extent of the operation.
We should have considered ourselves duly warned of the dreams dreamt by Jeb and Dick. They were proclaimed widely and openly as the destiny of American exceptionalism. Who could have imagined that in just eighteen years from the 1997 proclamation of the Project for a New American Century its program would have been so effective that all of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa would be so completely destabilized and vulnerable to the expanding chaos in a vast and growing Balkanized Crescent now sucking in Russia with a Siren’s song of reviving dreams of empire.
The problem is we have forgotten the progression of the classic Greek myth moves from destiny, through hubris, and, finally, to Nemesis and destruction. As President Bush’s aid, Narcissus, bragged, “[W]e'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." We are studying, but we will all pay the price as trillions of dollars’ worth of wealth is destroyed, millions are displaced, and more millions die—all to assuage some ancient fear of the mythical big-bad wolf prowling in the forests north of the Caucuses and the desire for world domination of a few evil people. We may slay the wolf, but most likely, we will be ruined first and the whole world may burn because of our quest.
One of the most helpful aspects of participating in this Committee of Correspondence is that it operates as a peer review of its participant’s positions and wacky ideas. This screed is written by a dilatant and as an armchair-general. I am sure I have missed a lot and failed to take many important facts and theories into consideration. As an American I surely hope I am in error here and that my observations are incorrect in some way. Else, I and the rest of the United States citizenry must take responsibility for being the blind authors of a vast continent of human suffering. If the deed has been done, PNAC Cabal intentionally created chaos in our name and on our dime and, perhaps with our consent.
Most here understand much more than I. Please convince me I am in error.
Whatever the truth or reality of the extracted statement in your comment "the goal of U.S. foreign policy is simply to destabilize the world, . . . "
it is far easier to argue for that conclusion as opposed to a US FP that seeks stability IMO
Are we up to a dozen nation-state leaders, some elected, that the US has deposed or helped depose since August 1945? Or is it more?
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 20 November 2015 at 06:19 AM
Certainly agree that the GREAT GAME now a GLOBAL GAME!
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 20 November 2015 at 06:21 AM
Walrus! Hoping you read THE PENTAGON'S BRAIN by Annie Jacobsen just published!
An open source history of DARPA.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 20 November 2015 at 06:24 AM
Origin,
Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
You write:
'It seems to me that Israel is just another tool to be used to further the ultimate world order of total domination.'
I do not want to overstate the role of the Israeli lobby, but I really do think that this greatly understates it.
The key catastrophic action in Iraq – for which we in Europe are now paying a very high price – was the disbandment of the Army. As I noted on an earlier thread, the recent piece by John Hay in the 'American Conservative' reminds us that this was not some kind of consensus decision by the U.S. Government – or even by 'the Borg'.
It was the very specific responsibility of Bremer, who appears to have been selected by Libby and Wolfowitz. Moreover, as Hay also makes very clear, the reason this was done was that those involved were not dealing with Iraq realities at all – they thought they were re-enacting the destruction of Nazi Germany. What we are dealing with are trauma victims incapable of escaping from their trauma – a kind of person who should not on any account be allowed any role whatsoever in making a country's foreign policy.
(http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-deciders/ .)
As it happens, many of the most incisive critics of the 'Borg' – and also of the conduct of the Israeli state and the 'Israeli Lobby' – are of Jewish origin. So far at least, however, such people have had very little political influence.
A critical political issue now is whether more diaspora Jews will break with uncritical support for Zionist agendas. If they did, it might perhaps to do more than more or less anything else could to undermine the position of the 'Borg'.
In an article just published on Robert Parry's invaluable 'Consortium News' site, Lawrence Davidson – himself of secular Jewish background – reports remarks by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism: apparently the largest Jewish denomination in the United States.
In the speech, Rabbi Jacobs said that: 'Asking Jews around the world only to wave the flag of Israel and to support even the most misguided policies of its leaders drives a wedge between the Jewish soul and the Jewish state. It is beyond counterproductive'.
(https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/18/reform-judaisms-israeli-critique/ .)
However, reading a fascinating article he wrote back in 2004 entitled 'Zionism and the Attack on Jewish Values', to which Davidson links, I find it difficult to see that people like him have made any great progress in the intervening years.
Having discussed a range of Jewish organisations which have been opposed to Israeli policies, he goes on to write:
'Mainstream Judaism, however, is ever more closely identified with Zionism and the state of Israel. There are some 13 million Jews throughout the world (approximately 5.8 million of them live in the United States as compared to 4.6 million in Israel). According to the Jewish Agency, ''70% of Jews around the world see Israel as vital to their Jewish identity.'' Zionist education is aimed at the remaining 30%, who are categorized as victims of ''assimilation and Jewish illiteracy.'''
Actually, most of the – immense – Jewish contribution to British life in the past century comes from victims of 'assimilation', and their descendants: some of them had already succumbed to this dreadful fate even before they came here, others gave in after their arrival: or their children did.
But ironically, the fact that so many Jews have merged into the surrounding population creates a bizarre problem. One is then left with a Jewish 'community', which is frankly tribalist, which is committed to unquestioning support for Israel – and which has laid a claim to be the sole representative of Jewish identity in Britain, with a great deal of success.
So, in effect, Jews who want to escape from the world of trauma tend, over time, simply to cease to be Jews. Those who are both powerful and define themselves as Jews are, very commonly, unprepared even to try to escape from trauma. If you think I am exaggerating, read Ari Shavit talking to Jeffrey Goldberg and David Remnick about about how Jews are 'endangered' – both in Israel and the United States.
(For Philip Weiss's discussion of this, and the relevant link, see http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/american-endangered-shavit .)
However, if Jews want to define themselves as a 'tribe', it follows as a simple point of logic that the 'goyim' have every reason to ask whose interests members of that 'tribe' in positions of political and social power are serving. And if in addition Jews outside Israel want to follow Shavit, and assume that the 'goyim' are always liable to rediscover their inner German Nazi or Russian pogromist, their gentile neighbours would be very foolish indeed to trust them. ('Mug punters', as we say in England.)
There is no problem with 'dual loyalty', so long as it can be taken for granted that there is no conflict between the two loyalties. But the possibility of conflict emerges – and the policies adopted by Zionists have caused this to happen, in relation to Israel – then those championing the interests of another country are acutely liable to be seen as outsiders, if not indeed subversives.
It is now almost a century since Edwin Montagu, then the sole Jewish member of the British Cabinet, and having recently been appointed as Secretary of State for India, a critically important position, in the context of the World War and Muslim unrest in the subcontinent, made his unsuccessful last-ditch stand against the Balfour Declaration.
In his memorandum entitled 'on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government', Montagu wrote:
'Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. If a Jewish Englishman sets his eyes on the Mount of Olives and longs for the day when he will shake British soil from his shoes and go back to agricultural pursuits in Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman.'
(See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Montagumemo.html .)
Everything was of course changed by the Holocaust. However, the effects of the courses of action which were recommended in the 1996 'Clean Break' paper may very well, over time, bring the question of whether Zionists are really fit for a 'share in public life in Great Britain' back. It will come back, initially at least, among minorities – but the attempt to silence with these with talk of 'anti-semitism' will not work: it will simply provoke derisive laughter.
Reading Philip Weiss's blog over the years, I have often been struck by how much in common he has with Montagu. In both, I think, genuine concerns about justice and humanity are intermingled with an awareness of the question of the conditions under which members of a minority group can expect to exercise power in a society, without risking a backlash.
But then Weiss has often looked to me, over the years, like a First World War officer who has gone 'over the top', and looks back, and finds that only a handful of his troops are following him.
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 20 November 2015 at 07:08 AM
The key catastrophe, in my view, was the Iran-Iraq War were Arab states (excepting Syria), US, Western European states, and USSR squarely aided and abetted Iraq and her leader, Saddam Hussein; rather than doing their utmost to bring the war to an speedy end.
For example, in a manner similar to the aftermath of World War I in Europe, the Iran-Iraq War has been the seminal psychic scar on Iranians; having alienated them - perhaps forever - from the Sunni Arab world, discrediting international institutions & treaties in their eyes etc. - making them into what they are today.
In regards to Judaism and Zionism, I am pleased to see that you have come closer to my point of view; that effectively and for all practical purposes Zionism and indeed the State of Israel are part and parcel of a religious enterprise clothed in the garb of European Nationalistic Ideas.
And to the extend that NATO states aide and abet that religious enterprise, they are taking side in a religious war between Judaism and Islam. The other religious war that NATO states are taking part in is on the side of Sunni Arabs against all things Shia.
It is important for me to point out that if one negotiates a cease-fire over Palestine, then NATO states could also assume a position of cease fire then with respect to Islam, if not with respect to the Shia Crescent.
Furthermore, if NATO states accept the public Iranian offer of "Spheres of Influence" then they could likewise end their participation in the current Sunni against Shia War. Perhaps a cease-fire deal can be negotiated there as well.
I understand that to the Europeans, Islamic Republic of Iran, due to her Islamic character, is as retrograde as ISIS is and as worthy of opposition and ultimate destruction.
But that is also something that they cannot achieve just as they cannot force Muslims to accept Israel as a legitimate state.
In my opinion, Sunni Arabs will not succeed in defeating or destroying Shia.
Since neither side can prevail at acceptable costs, cease fire seems to be in order; even if Peace is not.
And since NATO states have a lot of leverage over Arabs, Israel, and Turkey, they can end the hostilities and initiate an across the board cease-fire.
That is the way forward, in my opinion.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 20 November 2015 at 10:18 AM
You attribute the present to "What is happening in the "Balkanized Crescent" is not due to this "strategy" of the borg but is an extension of one of the many possible post Iraq War outcomes due to the continued enactment of neocon policies by these incompetents in office."
This phenomenon long predates the Iraq War or any of the failures such as Bremmer's decision to liquidate the military and the Bathe party. Also, I see a difference between the Borg and the Cabal. The Cabal is comprised of the few who have the power to make the decisions to conduct operations and to prefer groups over others, such as preferring Iraq over Iran during the Iraq-Iran war. The Borg as I see it is the collective conscience of the resulting polity that is formed by the results of the Cabal's actions as the followers-on study the "reality" created by Narcissus who acts for the Cabal.
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 11:25 AM
Yes, I agree.
Any way, there does seem to be more handsome Euro-American males in Wall Street than handsome Oriental-American males.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 20 November 2015 at 11:34 AM
You seem to be living a very isolated life - like LeaNder; Man, you got to get out more often and see the world....
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 20 November 2015 at 11:35 AM
I used to think stability and peace was the goal of American policy. Now I do not.
All I can use to decipher what is real is observable evidence, the footprints of the policy so to speak. The footprints are quite clear and deep in the present muck. There seems to be only one tool being used by American Policy, destabilizing, that is disrupting, all groups who seem to be contending for power in any area. U.S. policy actors use progressive stoking and damping of groups to maintain a modicum of common chaos everywhere. If one group falls behind while another seems to be gaining, the prior is encouraged and the latter further destabilized and vice-versa. The prevailing footprint is application of a policy of making sure no group competing with the US ever can get ahead. The only time any group can prosper in this context is when the group is totally under U.S. management and control. The only way anyone can ever find peace is through total submission.
Moreover, the policy is fractal. That is, it is applied from the largest world movement down to the smallest local controversy or event and to the most minute group, all with a consistent vengeance.
The destabilization tool has been successfully applied for over a century now. As a result, the planet has not progressed much and is facing increasing dangers of world wide system collapse.
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 11:39 AM
David,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I accept the power of the Israel lobby, but think it is not as determinative in American policy as one might think. I think many, if not most of the politicians who heavily court it and give it lip service despise it. The same probably goes for the National Rifle Association.
The Israel Lobby is like the mother of an over indulged and coddled alcoholic son who has another malicious relative who hopes the alcoholic son will founder to claim his inheritance. The mother blindly plies her sick son with alcohol to avoid his blameful rage against her using very good booze from the bar the malicious relative keeps fully stocked. By keeping the bar fully stocked, the malicious relative promotes the downfall of both the mother and the son so that the malicious relative can snatch their inheritance.
By feeding Likud so it can commit genocide, the U.S. is simply precipitating the suicide of the State of Israel, all the while maintaining a balance of suffering and power in the MENA.
What a deal for the price of a mere $5B a year which is less than the cost of a good skyscraper or two?
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 11:55 AM
Babak,
Not too long ago, I would have thought your proposition that "since NATO states have a lot of leverage over Arabs, Israel, and Turkey, they can end the hostilities and initiate an across the board cease-fire." should be promoted by American policy makers.
The Cabal will never accept the public Iranian offer of "Spheres of Influence". The current context of chaos is the highly successful, intended result of American strategy as was the Iraq-Iran War to begin with and the 1953 revolution. America will not allow any nation or group it does not control to have a sphere of influence if it can be avoided, even China.
If there is to be some resolution to the current context towards accommodation and peace, it must come from somewhere other than the U.S. because the Cabal has exactly what it wants right now.
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 12:11 PM
Origin
IMO all the chaos is the result of simple incompetence and blindness to reality. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 20 November 2015 at 12:34 PM
Sir
I tend to agree with you as I don't believe the Borg is that organized and sufficiently competent to execute a concerted strategy of chaos.
In the many analyses that I have read it seems the American people get a pass. It's like all that is done in their name and interest is done without their kowledge. If only the American people knew the truth....
What role do you think we the citizens of the United States play in the current outcome of chaos? My Dad believes our changing character is the root cause.
Posted by: Jack | 20 November 2015 at 01:05 PM
Col,
As the penultimate teacher and spook, you let your students contend while you lurk in the shadows only to show us our weaknesses and oversights after we have exposed our shortcomings, literally to the world, by our musing on this site.
I used to be of your opinion. However, awhile ago you set me on a quest of study and observation. What I have found is that US foreign policy does have a simple template for its strategy. The spokesmen, movers, and shakers all expound on the surface facts, but all use a simple phrase, over and over.
It is, "We need to do is...." It is that phrase that convinced me all was not stupidity and incompetence.
The "We need to do is..." is followed by actions and those actions follow a quite predictable template. What the "to do is..." is to do something disruptive, something that is destabilizing to whomever is the current target, so that no one, other than the US, is dominent within any sphere. Everyone else is off-kilter, always. If they do not follow our lead in the dance, we trip them. Hence, most watch and emulate closely trying to follow our pattern of steps. All others are disrupted and the others do not have sufficient resources, though they may try, to disrupt the U.S. This is not to say that in the future someone will not succeed and bring us down. The template has been used again and again and mostly with great success.
You, yourself, have been personally privy to at least one of these operations, the Tonkin Gulf incident. Johnson, the then Cabal leader, cocked up an "incident" so he could start escalate a war directed at weakening the Soviets through attrition. The psyop was as much against the American People as it was against the communist block.
One can review history since then to see the Destabilizing Hand consistently and effectively at work in almost all of the "crises" all around the world. We all know you cannot answer the question, but how many times were those who you associated with or commanded during your time as a civilian in the DIA being used as Destabilizing Hands? Was that use the result of intent or stupidity?
The theory is also predictive. Search out and find some up and coming movement anywhere in the world, and particularly in the Chinese Rimland and soon, the Destabilizing Hand will be seen, though it may not clearly be exposed for years, if ever. Have American destabilizers been at work in Burma, a country on China's Rimland? What about with the Uighurs in western China? In Indonesia or Thailand? Have they been getting some help from the Destabilizing Hand?
Obama promotes a "Pivot to Asia". Is he speaking about a mere turning of attention to the region or has he dropped the subconscious hint that he is talking about using the Chinese Rimland as a fulcrum point in the sense of the old concept of "Geographic Pivot of History"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History
Is not creating professionals for this process the whole point of establishing SOCOM, now an "independent" branch of our military?
The strategy has been applied too often and with too much success to simply be the result of incompetence or chance.
Also, from my observation, those who inhabit the Cabal are just not stupid people. It is inconceivable to me that what they do, year after year, is thoughtless or based in incompetence, even though those in the surrounding Borg may truly be incompetent and stupid suckers as they do the footwork for the deciders.
One must discern the difference between the competence of the generals (the Cabal) and their troops (the Borg). Either group may make the execution of the enterprise appear stupid even though the other may be brilliantly competent. If the generals are cagey enough, they can mask any of their failures as the apparent stupidity of the troops or, when the enterprise does really bad things or the whole operation goes fubar, they can focus the blame on the sergeants.
You have stated many times that the country you were born in no longer exists. I have the same perception. Something happened sometime during and after Viet Nam. America somehow ceased operation as a beacon for good on the hill and has become something else, mean, scared, xenophobic, poorer, and malignantly different.
Before we who love America can begin to recover some of our nation's former goodness, we must clearly understand what we are now. That is our duty and we must not shirk it.
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 01:57 PM
origin
You believe I betrayed your trust by letting you publish the piece when I did not agree with it. A lot of people publish things here that I do not agree with. They can do that so long as they do not violate my rules, That will continue to be the case. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 20 November 2015 at 02:02 PM
I absolutely do not believe you betrayed my trust.
You completely misinterpreted my compliment to you as a penultimate teacher.
In my view a good teacher should allow his students to explore and not to impose his thoughts. If you had said my writings were misguided at the beginning, this thread could not have taught me so much as I have my theories reviewed by my peers and others would not have been so stimulated to give their expressions.
You provide this wonderful forum where you allow thoughtful post from a wide range of views. I think we all know that many are at odds with your views. You have described your blog as a Committee of Correspondence. It is the wonder of such correspondence that views and counterviews do ultimately get to some truths though none of the authors here have a clear view of it.
Instead of blaming you for breaching your trust, I thank you for truly keeping it. Through correspondence, we are all enlightened, confirmed, and chastised no matter how wacky or right our ideas may be.
In that vein, perhaps you will consider that all is not the result of incompetence and chance.
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 02:16 PM
Thank you for your comments.
One can always hope that things would be otherwise.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 20 November 2015 at 02:17 PM
origin
"I absolutely do not believe you betrayed my trust. You completely misinterpreted my compliment to you as a penultimate teacher." Thanks. That makes me feel better. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 20 November 2015 at 03:34 PM
"The Borg as I see it is the collective conscience of the resulting polity that is formed by the results of the Cabal's actions as the followers-on study the "reality" created by Narcissus who acts for the Cabal."
Since you wish to differentiate between the Borg and the Cabal, could you provide some examples of who you consider in the Cabal?
Because the destabilizing hand you see over time, I view as a return to the Black Ops playbook (passed on by each generation 53 Iran, 73 Chile) in that if it keeps working then keep using it.
Posted by: Thomas | 20 November 2015 at 05:11 PM
So you think that Russia should have nuclear missiles - including tactical ones that NATO doesn't have anymore- but Poland for example should not have even a missile anti-missile.
Your double standards are clear.
About the whole post is the typical of people that want to feel safe to think there are some ruler that can control. Even if evil. People fear chaos more.
Conspiracies are for people of today the Deities of the Past. Most of them made on ignorance, lazyness and Marxist cultural values even if they ae now so cultured that people don't recognize them.
Maybe the best question to ask is why the conspiracy is always centered in a America?
Posted by: LL | 20 November 2015 at 06:28 PM
I already have. See my post 19 November 02:27 PM above. Also Listen to the Kissinger talk and see how many times he alludes to something like "We need to do this or that." What he means is "we, the decider members," need to stoke or damp some fire by action. In using the "we", he is referring to his specific people, not the generic "we" of the Americas in general. If you really want to know who the members of the Cabal are, ask him. Kissinger laments in his talk about how team member substitutions hurt play when new players are brought in during team swaps.
Posted by: Origin | 20 November 2015 at 06:28 PM
VV,
Here's a billionaire connection to the MiddleEast now resident in NYC.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/carlos-slims-late-wife-was-a-member-of-the-leading-lebanese-warlord-clan/
Posted by: Fred | 20 November 2015 at 06:30 PM
Origin,
I'm with the Colonel (and others); "simple incompetence and blindness to reality" provide an adequate explanation.
That's not to deny there are plenty of people and groups desperately fighting over power in the US. The vested interests, of course, including all those who occupy the headquarters and many outposts of "empire", or who profit from its workings. Understandably, they fiercely resist any diminishment, much less dismantling of their hard acquired privileges. As of course do Americans erstwhile "allies".
And then there's the hard-core ideologues America seems uniquely cursed with who see the vast accumulated machinery of state as tools to express their pet schemes. Neoconservatives and liberal interventionists have to a surprising degree seized, and hold onto, the levers of power. As with any Jacobin movement, their intensity of desire and determination act like force multipliers and so their influence is wholly out of proportion to their numbers.
The US is on the road to failure but the cracks are still comparatively subtle and capable of being ignored. Any sense of unease and frustration is more likely to express itself in anger than self examination. No surprise, really. Who isn't reluctant to give up on long cherished notions of oneself, or of one's country? The longer they have been held, and a more complimentary they are, the harder it's going to be. America scores 10/10 on both counts.
So, that's the background as I see it.
You seem to view the "strategy" pursued by your cabal/borg as successful (e.g. "The strategy has been applied too often and with too much success to simply be the result of incompetence or chance").
Your conception of success seems to me a peculiar one. By the time the Soviet Union imploded, the US had swept the table. It was rich, respected, loved even, and not just the sole remaining superpower but a hyperpower. Its wish was in effect much of the world's command. And this despite the monumental cockups of Vietnam and the sequence of policies that eventually led to the Iranian revolution. Am I right, by the way, in concluding you wouldn't claim these as willed successes?.
And as for all the clever flailing about "creating chaos" over the last 25 years, has that helped America one whit? Quite the contrary, it seems to me. The cost, in money, in lives lost and wrecked, in reputation (dear God, in reputation) and the transformation of the land of the free into a sort of garrison state hardly bears thinking about. Then there's all those on the receiving end of its efforts. Has any nation has ever squandered, so quickly and so fruitlessly, such a unique inheritance? And even now, it hasn't pulled out of its dive.
So where's this success? Yes, many who profit by war have done well, at least viewed from a short-term perspective. Some of the strivers, chisellers and true believers who between them seem to largely steer the ship of state nowadays have done well from a personal career perspective. History is unlikely to be kind to them, but then that's probably not a perspective they much care about. Undoubtedly, too, decent chunks of the world are indeed in chaos but I fail to see how this is in the US' best interests, even narrowly defined. Instead, America's wishes today are far more likely to generate suspicion and resistance than they are compliance. Countervailing coalitions are not only being born but growing in strength by the day, all united by a desire to escape from US fiat.
You really think all that was part of the "plan"?
In your reply to the Colonel (1:57 PM on 20 November), you wrote, after noting that the Cabal isn't made up of "stupid people": "It is inconceivable to me that what they do, year after year is thoughtless or based in incompetence . . . ".
I wonder if that conclusion isn't the key premise that ultimately gave rise to your thesis by a process of retrospective rationalisation. In my view, intelligence is not correlated with wisdom; indeed sometimes I wonder if it's the opposite. Intelligence can help an already wise man achieve more, but I suspect that's about it.
Posted by: Ingolf | 20 November 2015 at 10:06 PM
I reiterate: "wenches."
Posted by: YT | 20 November 2015 at 10:07 PM
wrong.
Posted by: rjj | 21 November 2015 at 01:43 AM