Four More Years of War

Stephen Lendman, Contributor
Activist Post

Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America’s imperium. He did aggressively in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won’t end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America’s global military footprint.

Fiscal cliff hype is about greater force-fed austerity to free up more funds for America’s war machine. Waging them isn’t cheap. Profiteers depend on wasteful spending to boost bottom line performance.

It pays to have friends in high places. They assure all the billions wanted. Social America is being sacrificed to provide them.

Over the next decade, trillions of dollars will shift from peoples needs to war making, generous corporate handouts, tax breaks for the rich, and hardened homeland repression against nonbelievers.

At the same time, deficits will keep rising exponentially. Hype about urgently cutting them is fake. Post-9/11 has been the worst of times. Expect more of the same on steroids ahead.

Conditions today are the most perilous in world history. Global war is possible. The threat is real and ominous. Open discussion is suppressed. Media scoundrels won’t touch it.

Nor do they explain Project Censored’s top Censored 2013 story: “Signs of an Emerging Police State.” It began pre-9/11, accelerated under Bush, then Obama exceeded his extremism.

Tyranny in America is a hair’s breadth from full-blown. For those affected, it arrived long ago.

Project Censored‘s number 4 story is: “FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States.” Innocent people are wrongly imprisoned. Media scoundrels convict them in the court of public opinion.

Other top censored stories include criminalizing nonviolent protests, corporate predators running the global economy, Federal Reserve money printing madness enriching Wall Street, Washington joining forces with Al Qaeda, prison slavery, wrecking public education by privatizing it, and NATO war crimes in Libya, but it’s much the same wherever this killing machine shows up.

Media scoundrel managed news suppresses these and other vital truths people most need to know. Instead, they get The New York Times running cover for Obama’s foreign policy by praising what it should condemn.

On November 11, its editorial headlined “The Foreign Policy Agenda.” It reads like it’s about someone else, not Obama. It wrongly claims he envisions a world without nuclear weapons.

Under Bush and Obama, Washington asserts the right to use them preemptively. Both administrations violated NPT, the ABM and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaties, and Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Others relating to national security also.

In 2010, Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was old wine in new bottles. Rhetoric changed. Policy stayed the same.

Obama won’t achieve his goal, said The Times, but his position “offers a framework for reducing America’s stockpile and for (encouraging) other countries to follow suit.”

Stockpile levels matter less than new, more destructive, weapons replacing older ones.

The Times also wants tough policies on Iran. It stops short of urging war, but wants sanctions “rigorously enforced and strengthened.” Those in place are illegal. Times articles and commentaries don’t explain. Nor are readers told that Iran’s program is peaceful. Tehran threatens no one.

What’s ahead in Afghanistan remains to be seen. Drawdown won’t end war and occupation. America doesn’t come to war theaters to leave. Permanent occupation is planned.

The Times hope for withdrawal by end of 2013, of course, won’t happen. Nor are Times’ claims about “severely weaken(ing) Al Qaeda.”

Washington enlists its support in all regional wars. It admits doing so. The so-called Arab Spring is fake. America’s war on Syria is suppressed. So is claiming a possible two-state Israeli/Palestinian solution followed by peace.

America’s foreign policy plate is full, said The Times. What’s ongoing and at stake was suppressed or distorted. Military Keynesianism on steroids is official US policy.

America always glorified wars in the name of peace. They’ve been waged every year in US history at home and/or abroad against one more adversaries. Peace, stability, personal safety, and common dignity are crowded out by imperial wars and a longstanding culture of violence.

Generations of violence ingrained it in US culture. Media violence feeds it. America’s addiction to war reflects it. Permanent ones rage. New ones replace others when their energy wanes. Congress provides open-ended funding. The Federal Reserve prints up all the ready cash needed.

Imagine living under a permanent state of readiness. Enemies don’t exist so Washington invents them. At the same time, homeland needs go begging.

Eisenhower‘s military-industrial complex warning went unheeded. Disastrous “misplaced power” could rise and persist.

“Every gun that is made,” he added, “every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed.”

Today’s legacy is force-fed austerity. Health and public welfare are sacrificed on the alter of America’s addiction. Obama has plenty more in mind. Wars of choice are planned.

Since WW II, none of necessity existed. America is masterful at inventing enemies when none exist. No matter how many times people are fooled, they’re easy prey to convince alleged threats must be challenged.

Washington Post writer David Ignatius has close ties to US intelligence. Be “bold” he urges Obama in term two. “Think big.”

“Well, Mr. President, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Be “strategic” on foreign policy. Deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program. Find solutions for Afghanistan.

Remove Assad by “managed transition.” In other words, oust him by any way that works.

Cut a deal on Palestine that benefits Israel. Choose a new Secretary of State when Clinton leaves to assure whatever America says goes.

“A successful second term is less about ideology than about results. Think big. Take risks. Get it done.”

In other words, Ignatius favors policies that assure US hegemony. Without saying it, he includes war.

Former Bush administration UN ambassador/American Enterprise Institute senior fellow/uberhawk John Bolton wants Obama to prioritize national security threats.

America has none excepts ones it invents. Bolton left that unexplained. The war on terror isn’t over, he stresses. Al Qaeda hasn’t been defeated. It’s “stronger than before and America’s strategic position in the region has steadily deteriorated.”

Al Qaeda is used strategically as ally and adversary. It was part of Washington’s Libya strategy. It now serves US interests in Syria.

Prioritize “international terrorism,” says Bolton. Prevent Iran’s “long-sought objective of deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Challenge Russia and China assertively. Flex America’s muscles aggressively. Republicans should hold his feet to the fire.

Foreign policy advisors like Bolton risk WW III. Washington has lots more like him.

AP‘s Brian Murphy discussed Obama’s second term “evolving foreign policy.”

His mandate involves asserting “superpower confiden(ce and) military strength” combined with “soft power” coalition building.

Murphy ticked off the usual challenges – Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Israel/Palestine, China, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. Solutions weren’t proposed.

Micah Zenko is a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Center for Preventive Action Douglas Dillon fellow. America “will never have another peacetime president,” he says.

It follows as one never before existed. America has always been at war at home and/or abroad throughout its history.

WW II aside, it’s truer today than ever. Multiple direct and proxy wars rage. More are planned. Political claims about wanting peace are false. America prioritizes war.

Zenko expects a “period of persistent conflict” to continue. Obama is America’s most belligerent leader. He exceeded the worst of Bush. Expect term one policies to continue and be intensified in term two.

Congressional oversight of presidential war-making powers is moribund. Obama is virtually restraint free. Previous warnings went unheeded.

Former Senator Robert Byrd reminded fellow legislators that “Congress is not a rubber stamp or a presidential lapdog – obedient and unquestioning. Oversight, oversight, oversight is among our most important responsibilities.”

Senator James Webb didn’t seek reelection. In May, he co-sponsored a bill that failed. Passage would have required presidents to formally request congressional approval before authorizing military action.

“Year by year,” he said, “skirmish by skirmish, the role of the Congress in determining where the US military would operate, and when the awesome power of our weapon systems would he unleashed, has diminished.”

Obama is free to continue term one wars and wage new ones. Expect him to take full advantage.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. His new book is titled How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/