A Dying Empire

The first decade of the long war

During the first decade of the Twenty-first Century, the U.S. empire showed its true colors, its true intentions. Its stated purpose was to apply regime change through the arc of the Middle East and bring it under U.S. subservience. It became a decade of war abroad, of increasing state powers internally with the militarization of the police. It became a decade in which Israel could do no wrong, the Palestinians and most other Arab and Muslim people became the ‘other’, the new fear factor, to be hated and despised as irrational violent actors.

In Palestine, the situation became more aggressive and bloodier. Land occupation and confiscation by settlements increased. Expropriation of Palestinian land by the military, increased severity of the occupation, and the building of the Security wall all continued with strong U.S. support. In 2006, the democratic election of Hamas within the Palestinian Authority was annulled as the election of ‘terrorists’ would not be tolerated—even though it worked in Ireland (Sinn Fein), South Africa (ANC), and Lebanon (Hezbollah) with mainly peaceful results.

In 2008 Gaza was attacked in Operation Cast Lead, an act of aggressive war against an impoverished and mostly unarmed civilian population. In 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon under the guise of defending itself against a border incursion, and while not truly defeated, had their nose well bloodied by the stiff resistance of Hezbollah. In both cases, the U.S. and its sycophantic supporters, in particular Canada, now under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, stood aside and judged the Israel “defense” as an “appropriate and proportional response” to what was in reality an offensive illegal act of war.

The war in Iraq turned horribly sour, at least for the U.S. and its allies, for the Iraqis it was the second decade of attacks by the U.S. and its allies after the Gulf War. Afghanistan went through its third decade of occupation and invasion by foreign forces, a war pushed aside by Iraq until it too became a more troubling hotspot with the resurgence of the Pashtun and Taliban and the convoluted relationships with Pakistan.

Iran, always a sore point for the U.S. after they were kicked out in 1979, remained under the spotlight in a war of words and a war of sanctions. It was the latest fear factor, of an Iranian nuclear weapon, even though Israel carried an estimated +/- 200 nuclear weapons with delivery capability and encountered no reproach of any kind.

In 2008, the global economy took a dive. The U.S. economy, bogged down by the expenses and waste of war, by the bursting of the housing bubble, by the over-extensions of the unregulated financial markets, and by continued high unemployment and high debt, began its current series of bailouts for the elites and austerity for the masses.

In 2008, George Bush exited and Barak Obama, riding on a wave of hope and change, became president. Nothing changed except for the worse. In spite of his grand sounding rhetoric and lofty ideals, Obama carried on the illegal wars, the torture, Guantanamo continued to operate, judicial processes were put aside under various new laws, the full on support of Israeli aggressions in Palestine and its support of Israeli intentions elsewhere continued.

While the U.S. faced these challenges, the BRIC nations improved their position and worked more closely together in order to guard against the U.S. military hegemon. Russia reasserted itself economically and as a resource nation by supplying and making arrangements to provide oil and gas to the European and Chinese markets. India’s economy boomed statistically with a large middle class. It still had serious problems with its general high level of poverty and problems associated with agriculture and land use and land resource consumption. Brazil asserted itself as a world player, the largest economy in Latin America with ties and associations reaching beyond the U.S. Monroe Doctrine barriers of previous eras.

All countries were tied more and more into the Chinese behemoth. Its economy has boomed for several decades as its manufacturing industry, cheap labor, and more laissez faire economic policies created the right environment for its huge gains. While this was in process the Chinese were also arranging resource purchases with many other countries, many in Africa, and South America, geopolitical arenas less well tended by the U.S. focus on the Middle East.

At the end of the decade, the global situation was and remains precarious. Problems with the economy, the environment, and the military have all increased substantially.

Arab Spring

There are far too many problems occurring in different regions of the world to even list them all. The festering wound of Palestine remains, obscured by the many other problems in the region, by the creation of a threat from the ‘other’ that occupies media attention well away from Palestine.

The Israel-U.S. alliance is as strong as ever, and well within Israel’s ongoing intentions of gaining more and more land within Palestine, to create facts on the ground and prevent any resemblance of a contiguous Palestinian state from ever developing. Along with land, water is a major concern, and Israel has done its best to harvest most of these resources through confiscation of land where water resources are best, and direct the flow of available water to Israel and the settlements in Palestine.

The Arab Spring, and U.S. double standards according to requirements and influences, has not been a threat to Israel. Tunisia created the first element of the Arab Spring, a small player in the Arab coterie of nations, with successful elections creating a moderate Islamist government. Egypt followed, but with a large military supplied by the U.S. as part of the peace accord with Israel, the U.S. could sit back and watch how the army reacted. To this day, the army remains powerful, obviously well aligned with its U.S. monetary sources. With all its economic problems and a western oriented military, it probably cannot do much to change relationships with Israel (one can ask, for instance, why is the border to Gaza not wide open? ).

When the Arab Spring hit Bahrain, the U.S. sat back as the government attacked its own citizens, receiving indirect U.S. support when Saudi Arab forces entered the country to quell the protests. Yemen has seen a significant increase in U.S. intervention on the government side, with drone attacks and cruise missile attacks targeting government opponents and killing many civilians. When Libya followed suit, the U.S. and its NATO partners created the conditions that allowed for full scale aerial bombing support for the rebel forces. Gaddafi’s main crime, after being both a darling and a beast at different times in U.S. propaganda, was his attempt to create an African currency union that would not need to rely on the U.S. dollar. As well, very commonly, the U.S. wanted to control Libyan oil resources.

Syria has been the next Arab country to revolt, and the regular news channels present a very confusing picture. A civil war in Syria works to the benefit of both Israel and the U.S. For Israel, it eliminates the power of a potential enemy by destroying its infrastructure and its economy. For the U.S., it helps their ally Israel at the same time eliminating another countries influence within the Middle Eastern arc of interest. At the same time it creates a problem for Russia with its only naval base on the Syrian coast.

Russia, however, is not as accepting as it was when it came to the efforts in Libya, recognizing that giving the U.S. and NATO a green light for any kind of intervention will be the proverbial giving an inch, taking a mile—or allowing the nose of the camel into the tent. China has its own geopolitical strategies, many of which coincide with Russian concerns about the U.S. and its allies.

At the moment Syria remains the focus of imperial efforts. A concerted effort appears to be underway by U.S. allies to arm the rebels and create even more chaos, hoping for more and more atrocities that can be blamed on the Assad regime, regardless of who perpetrated them, or who set them up as false flag operations. This will allow the ultimate goal of using more military force to end the regime, leave the country in ruins, eliminate—maybe—the Russian base, leave Israel to focus other matters, and in extension, to tighten the noose on Iran.

Iran

Once again, U.S. double standards abound. Iran has been a dedicated ‘other’ since the revolution of 1979 removed the Shah from power. Israel’s nuclear arsenal was achieved outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Pakistan and India both developed nuclear arsenals outside the NPT. North Korea has an estimated capacity for 10 weapons, after dropping out of the NPT. Many other countries have the ability to go nuclear if they wish to on relatively short notice. Japan in particular has tons of plutonium in storage. Any nation that has a nuclear energy program could transform it into a weapons producing industry, which is one of the prime purposes for the setup of the U.S. nuclear industry.

However, with the AIPAC lobby , the need for an enemy ‘other,’ Iran has become a tremendously distorted nuclear threat. It is a combination of racial fear, religious prejudice and fear, and fear of nuclear disaster that is used to propagandize against Iran. The leaders of Iran are rational actors and even with a nuclear weapon capability, or further a deliverable nuclear weapon, they are in no position to use it other than as a deterrent. To do so would be suicide and one has to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know and understand that.