“It is enough that a lie is believed for three days – it has then served its purpose.”
Marie de Medici, 1573-1642, queen consort and queen regent of France.
You may always learn a lot about militarist perversity when you visit Military Times. I mean, yes, of course, they’re just doing their job. Unfortunately, over time, this becomes bizarre and very revealing.
Look at this headline and read the story – U.S. Airstrike in central Baghdad kills Iran-backed militia leader. Did you notice this Pentagon liar’s words:
“It is important to note that the strike was taken in self defense [and] that no civilians were harmed and that no infrastructure or facilities were struck,” Ryder added.
Self defence ?? !!
The US upholds some 5-10 military bases in Syria. The US instigated the horrific sufferings of the Syrian people and deposed its president by decree in Marrakesh (whatever you think about Baashar al-Assad, that is not what you do). The US has never been invited by anyone in Syria. It’s an occupation (and they steal Syria’s oil on a daily basis).
The US has ravaged Iraq since 2003, and, as is correctly stated, the Iraqi leadership wants them all out after unspeakable atrocities and a complete moral, political, military and legal failure – remember Saddam had nuclear weapons, and George Bush wanted to liberate the Iraqi women and teach Muslims human rights!
That – predictably – led to yet another lost US war on the string of military fiascos since the Vietnam War in 1975 by human history’s most militarised state that has never been able to win a war in any decent sense of that word – the latest failure, of course, being Ukraine.
Over 50 years, the United States of America has not learned even a single lesson about these matters.
Now, Israel does not only perform a genocide on the Palestinians. For years it has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights and regularly bombed targets on Syrian soil – just last week, near Damascus and Aleppo. It killed a number of high-level Hamas leaders in Beirut – but, hey, Beirut is Lebanon.
And in December last year, Israel also killed a high-ranking Iranian who operates with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
And just two days ago, twin blasts killed at least 84 people and injured 284 near the burial site of slain military commander Qassem Soleimani, CNN reported. He was the one eliminated by the US/Trump. It was Iran’s deadliest attack since 1979. Some believe this crime was committed by ISIS; others would see it as a possible chain reaction set in motion by Israel, perhaps via the Mujahedin-e-Khalq.
Of course, there are many hypotheses at this point, and we may never know the truth. Everybody is accusing everybody else. All of it is likely to increase the risk, terrible as it is, that Israel’s genocidal Gaza policy will ignite a larger fire throughout the Middle East. It would also take the attention away, a bit at least, from that genocide itself.
But – and here is my point: The two exceptionalist states, the US and Israel, seem to believe that they can get away with everything – also everything that they would not let anybody else get away with. They kill and wound, they expand, occupy, humiliate, provoke – have done so in the region for decades. They continue to systematically violate – grossly – provisions of international law, and the world’s governments seem to be watching in more or less silence. Except for South Africa, thank you! (According to the 1948 Genocide Convention, it is the duty of all governments to prevent and stop genocide).
And one more thing combines them: They argue that they act in self-defence. They occupy and mass kill people in foreign lands and claim, when someone hits back, that they are just acting to protect themselves. That they have a right to self-defence.
My simple comment – not without similarities with the little boy in the H. C. Andersen story about the Emperor’s New Clothes: What does occupier, apartheid Zionist Israel expect from its occupations and conquered territories? Love, cooperation and admiration?
And what does the US expect from the rest of the world, a large part of which it has implemented nothing but destructive policies in?
Occupiers, aggressors, humiliators and militarists always argue that they act in self-defence and that attacks on them are ‘unprovoked.’
They have lied to the world and – worse – to themselves for decades, and now believe they are telling the truth. So do the mainstream manipulating militarist media they control.
Some of us don’t need a lie detector to know what’s going on. It’s embarrassing to even point out how obvious those lies are and have always been.
But sometimes I wonder how those liars feel when seeing themselves in their Empire’s New Clothes in the proverbial mirror in the morning. Perhaps they dare no more.
Vampyres have no image in the mirror.
… comparable to other parasites…
We all have a knowledge, a completely sure knowledge, about eyeing eyeing ends up making the world blind.
We know from many wise people that the world is too small for the continuation of the tribal war and that in other words we must learn to turn the other cheek.
Tribal wars like in Gaza are hopeless because we are connected by many other empathies than just the tribe’s today and looting trips such as the Ukraine war is deeply outdated.
The only ones who do not see it all know are the “leaders of the West, which makes the citizens of their countries poorer and more vulnerable than necessary.
It tells everything about the excitement of our notion that everyone else must live and believe as we are.
The US and Israel are completely and totally deluded. They actually believe their shit and expect the rest of the world to believe it, as well. The world can see the truth. Telling the world that the sky is made of cheese flies in the face of common sense.
This example applies not only to NATO and its allies and fist-raising henchmen, but also to the situation in the Middle East, and many other places.
*
*
NATO repeats the same strategy, applied since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991. NATO is moving east in the temporarily released eastern peripheral states – but at the same time will NEVER accept if the other side did the same to the west. NATO is always lying, threatening, stealing and being violent against others. NATO unjustifiably accuses others of what NATO itself is guilty of.
*
NATO doesn´t stop… it lobbies/threatens/lures its way into the central organs of power in peripheral countries, both to the east and west, between various powers/empires. NATO then builds conflicts, rearms, militarises, sabotaging, terrorises, carries out false flags and acts aggressively through media warfare. NATO covers up its own actions, or flees its responsibilities by blaming others, preferably the claimed “main adversary” in major conflicts. A $$U.S. congressional investigation lists 251 military U.S. operations outside its own territory since 1991 – i.e. information from the originator itself – it can be found here:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42738
*
When NATO’s counterparts – the imaginary enemies who give the military-industrial complex, from which NATO originates, an alibi to profit together with the arms industry, on the behalf of people’s misery – feel threatened by NATO’s behaviour and defend themselves, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, created by NATO through words and deeds, through the build-up of conflicts. Then comes the most pitiful hypocrisy: NATO is playing “the victim” of the provoked reaction, that NATO itself has created.
*
NATO always contradicts itself, and has done so for over 70 years – both in its own charter, and by calling war peace, attack for defence, by calling itself a sea power, that then tries to climb the Eurasian landmasses – a reality-denying folly that would be equivalent to the counterpart sending caravans of “desert ships” – that is, camels – towards the Pacific Ocean – in the conviction of being able to walk on the water, to attack a fictitious enemy, in the form of friendly flower-wreath-bearing Polynesian archipelagos, who, through hospitality and exposed smiles, are believed to possess “evil eyes”, “predatory canines” and other secret weapons (hopefully there is room for a little smile, in the midst of the glaring seriousness – by looking in the mirror and laughing at what you see. NATO and its supporters should try that sometime).
*
This example applies not only to NATO and its allies and fist-raising henchmen, but also to the situation in the Middle East, and many other places.
*
Witnessing – or living under – these power constellations and geopolitical conditions, is like living together with a dangerous psychopath in your private life.
*
Who does that voluntarily ?
*
The mass media prevent people from having objective and factual knowledge on many important issues, not just about NATO. In addition, the media and politicians constantly create lies, steal tax-collected funds and perpetrate violence/murder against innocent civilian populations in other countries. This is done in our name – without informed consent. In practice, this means that the resources extracted through taxes are used against the intended purpose, against ourselves – AND against innocent populations in other countries, who haven´t done harm to us.
Thank you so much, dear Omar for your thought-provoking words.