George Friedman: A Neocon’s Blatant Speech on U.S.–Exceptionalism and U.S. Single-Handed International Warmongering Rights

Stratfor, a U.S. neocon geopolitical think-tank, should be considered as an extended arm of the United States’ Criminal Information Agency also known as the CIA.  George Friedman, a Jewish Hungarian naturalized U.S. citizen, is the CEO and co-founder of Stratfor: an organization that has often been described as the “Shadow CIA.” Geopolitical News considers Stratfor’s writings and geopolitical views as an unashamed ambassador for the Anglo-American neocon doctrine of worldwide hegemonic dominance or as coined by F. William Engdhal: Full Spectrum Dominance Totalitarian Democracy.

In order to remain a monocentric Empire, Friedman says, the United States of America must make sure, as it has been doing since World War One and for the last hundred years, that a rapprochement between Germany and Russia never takes place. A pluricentric world could threaten the U.S. Empire particularly a Russo-German alliance that would combine Germany’s state of the art technology and Russia’s vast amount of natural resources.

Another U.S. center of neo conservative Anglo American factories is the CCGA: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The CCGA is a non-elected, de facto U.S. government agency where renowned world leaders such as John Kerry, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Dr. Angela Merkel have all held speeches.  

In George Friedman’s CCGA speech, “Europe — Destined for Conflict?” (February 3^rd of 2015), Friedman cynically touches on very sensitive nerves when straightforwardly admitting that the U.S. coup d’état in Ukraine was the “most blatant coup in history.” Two main points emerge from Friedman’s speech: 1. Creation of a European cordon sanitaire between Western Europe and Russia. 2. Prevention of a rapprochement thus détente and cooperation between Russia and Germany.

1. Creation of a European cordon sanitaire

U.S. policy of containment encircling Russia

Cordon sanitaire according Wikipedia “is a French phrase that, literally translated, means ‘sanitary cordon’. It originally denoted a barrier implemented to stop the spread of infectious diseases. It may be used interchangeably with the term ‘quarantine’, and although the terms are related, cordon sanitaire refers to the restriction of movement of people within a defined geographic area, such as a community. The term is also often used metaphorically, in English, to refer to attempts to prevent the spread of an ideology deemed unwanted or dangerous.” 

French Prime Minister George Clémenceau (1917—1920) is credited with the first use of the phrase as a metaphor for ideological containment. In March 1919, he urged the newly independent border states that had seceded from Russian Empire and Soviet Russia to form a defensive union and thus quarantine the spread of communism to Western Europe: he called such an alliance a cordon sanitaire. As a native speaker of French, I can only underline the arrogance and rudeness of such geopolitical choice of words. 

George Friedman speaking at the CCGA

Getting back to George Friedman’s CCGA speech and the Q&A session that followed, let’s review Friedman’s answer to an attendee’s first question:

(44:50) “Mr. Friedman, thank you for your analysis very much appreciated. If you are in Ukraine right now, and you are the Ukrainian government . . . or the people . . . what do you do? . . . What is next for Ukraine?”

(46:44 —48:10) George Friedman’s answer: “. . . He [ Lt.Gen. Ben Hodges, Commander U.S. Army Europe ] then left and announced . . . that the U.S. will be pre-positioning armor, artillery and other equipment in the Baltic [Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania], Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, which is a very interesting point . . . In all of this, the United States acted outside the context of NATO . . . So the point is, the United States is prepared to create a cordon sanitaire around Russia. Russia knows it, Russia believes the United States intends to break the Russian Federation; I think that, as Peter Lorry put it, ‘We do not want to kill you, we just want to hurt you a little bit.’ Either way, we are back in the [Cold War] old game (emphasis Geopolitical News) . . .”

2. Prevention of a rapprochement between Russia and Germany

The second question asked is of quintessential importance because it nails the U.S. perspectives vis à vis its European geopolitical ambitions:

(53:17 — 53:34) Attendee question: “is Islamist extremism really the major threat to the USA and will it die on its own or will it keep growing?”

George Friedman’s answer: “It is a problem to the United States but it is not an existential threat; it has to be dealt with but it has to be dealt with proportionately; we have other foreign policy interests. So … the primordial interest of the United States of America, over which for centuries we fought wars, First and Second and Cold War, has been the relationship between Germany and Russia because united they are the only force that could threaten us, and to make sure that does not happen (emphasis Geopolitical News), I say this as a possible victim of Islamic terrorism, it will happen … Even if we develop all of our efforts to preventing it, we will fail therefore if we do what we did in a decade after 9/11, which is utterly concentrate on that issue to the exclusion of all else, so that our army cannot fight unless it has sand under its feet, just not used to it, there are much larger dangers to the United States out there. It is very difficult to say to a country that has been hit by 9/11: take it in stride and no government can. But, the discipline of governance is that, while at the same time reassuring people that you are doing everything you can, you make sure you are not. . You are making as much as you reasonably should and our government… We have to remember the United States is like a fifteen year old, it’s manic depressive, in the morning it is love peace, love and happiness, at night it is suicidal because their best friend does not like them anymore: We are a very young empire we don’t even want to think about being an empire. We want to go home and have libertarian dreams: it won’t happen but it takes us a very long time to become mature. Georges Bush had not idea that his presidency was going to be about 9/11 and had no idea how to respond and neither did his critics. Barack Obama decided he could wish it all away. If he was nice, they won’t try to blow him up. We have to find a pattern of governance that combines an American Republic with what it never wanted to be, but we are almost one quarter of the world’s economy; we are going to piss people off a lot.”

In other words, the goal of the United States of America with its annual military budget exceeding 600 billion USD (more than all other nations’ military budgets combined) is to achieve the Pentagon’s Joint Vision 2020 of a unipolar world of full spectrum dominance: divide and conquer, Divide Et Impera.

George Friedman’s neocon views are sharp and high-pitched, cynical and arrogant, particularly when criticizing the U.S. wasting time and resources on a “Muslim threat” that does not qualify as an existential one! So one could and should ask: why on earth is the U.S. “allegedly fighting terrorism” in so many countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen via its proxy Saudi Arabia?

( to be continued…)

for Geopolitical News: Bruno P. Gebarski

Syria’s Pipelineistan: the Liquid Natural Gas War Between the United States of America and Russia (Part One)

“. . . There are a lot of every day human beings being marginalized by our very corrupt political system . . . [with] two political parties who are funded by predatory banks, fossil fuel giants and war profiteers…” —Dr. Jill Stein | US 2016 Presidential Candidate

Looking at all the illegal wars the United States of America, the rogue Empire of Chaos, has in progress, the most complex one is probably the Syrian war. So what could drive the U.S. to undertake such a crusade in this already battered part of the world? Why is the Rogue Empire of Chaos waging yet another war? Let’s follow the money trail and look at a few facts about Syria.

Since the 1980s, Syria has been depleting its resources of own crude oil. After peaking at 650,000 bpd (barrel per day) in 1995, crude oil production has plummeted to about 380,000 bpd in 2007. With declining output and rising consumer demand for petroleum products, Syria’s overall oil balance has turned negative in 2007, thus the need for Syria to orientate itself towards new sources of revenue.

Image 1. Bashar Al-Assad Four Seas Strategy Project | Google Maps

In 2009, recognizing that the heady days of Syrian oil production of the 1980s were long gone and that the sector’s future lay in transit, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad announced a “Four Seas Strategy” (Image 1.) aimed at transforming the country into a regional hub for oil transportation between the Persian Gulf and the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean seas. Bashar Al-Assad started at taking steps to realize the country’s transit-center potential and bring the four seas strategy closer to reality.

In late 2010, Bashar Al-Assad’s government signed a memorandum of understanding with Iraq for the construction of two oil and one gas pipeline to carry gas and oil from Iraq’s Akkas and Kirkuk fields, respectively, to the Syrian port of Banias on the Mediterranean Sea. In July 2011 Iranian officials announced a $10 billion gas pipeline deal between Syria, Iraq and Iran that would transport gas from Iran’s South Pars gas field, the world’s biggest, through Iraq to Syria.

Image 2. Tweet from Dr. Jill Stein | October 22. 2016 | 8:30 PM

Looking back at the 2016 U.S. Presidential election Geopolitical News recalls Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein as the only candidate who had the honesty to inform her voters about the real reason for the US-Syrian war (Image 2.). It’s about the United States of America and Russia controlling the Persian Gulf’s largest liquid natural gas field in the world. This gas field is shared between Qatar and its North Dome and Iran and its South Pars. Here are a few facts about the North Dome/South Pars gas field from Wikipedia:

Image 3. Qatari North Dome and Iranian South Pars | Wikipedia

 

The South Pars/North Dome field is a natural-gas condensate field located in the Persian Gulf. It is by far the world’s largest natural gas field. Iran and Qatar share ownership of the field. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the field holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet (51 trillion cubic meters) of in-situ natural gas and some 50 billion barrels (7.9 billion cubic meters) of natural gas condensates. On the list of natural gas fields it has more recoverable reserves than all other fields combined. It has significant geostrategic influence. This gas field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometres (3,700 sq mi), of which 3,700 square kilometres ,400 sq mi) (South Pars) is in Iranian territorial waters and 6,000 square kilometres (2,300 sq mi) (North Dome) is in Qatari territorial waters.

A “minute detail” that bothers the U.S. neocons is the fact that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has refused to support the Qatari pipeline in favor of the Iranian one sponsored and supported by Russia: one of the main reasons why the US and Europe are involved in a conflict of geopolitical and geo-strategic importance: the Syrian conflict is about who will control the export of Middle Eastern gas: the United States of America or Russia?

Brazilian reporter Pepe Escobar qualifies this war as “Syria’s Pipelineistan being a war of deals, not bullets.” Please notice that the LNG reserves of Qatari-Iranian North Dome South Pars gas fields have more recoverable reserves than all other fields combined.

It’s about the geopolitics of who is going to control the supply of LNG towards Europe and the world: Qatar and its US allies defending the Petrodollar or Iran and its Russian allies defending the Petroyuan? (Image 4.)

Image 4. Persian Gulf: Qatar and Iran | Qatar: North Dome & South Pars: Iran | Google Maps

Pipeline One:  Petroyuan Russian side: Persian Gulf South Pars from Iran via Iraq, Syria, Lebanon; a project backed up by Russia (Gazprom), Iran and China.

Pipeline Two: Petrodollar U.S. side: Persian Gulf North Dome from Qatar, via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria; a project supported by the United States of America and its allies: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. 

Image 5. Financial War Petrodollar vs Petroyuan

Who will win this financial war? (Image 5.) The United States and its European Allies with the Petrodollar or China and Russia with the Petroyuan?

This is the real dichotomy of the Syrian conflict.

Bruno P. Gebarski for Geopolitical News

The Four Horsemen of the 21st Century Geopolitical Apocalypse: USA, Britain, France and Israel

French President Emmanuel Macron is a fascist neoliberal (neocon) globalist towing the line of Chief European Executive Globalist German Kanzlerin Angela Merkel, who could very well be the daughter of Adolf Hitler. 

Chancellor Merkel paused at the Hamburg-G20 with her usual Illuminati posture.  Chancellor Merkel is en-route to destroying Germany with an U.S.A., Britain, and France man-made migrant crisis.  French President Emmanuel Macron can’t even sneeze without asking first Chancellor Merkel for permission.  

France, Britain (who both triggered WWI (this will scratch British pride: but it’s time for Brits to update their own history records and swallow their Island pride, just like I had, as a Frenchman, to swallow my pride as well) and the U.S.A. are behind the self-created migrant crisis happening right now in Germany and Austria: I did coin it, not too long ago, Versailles IV in my blog article series.  

So, could this be our new European game of thrones?

—France and England are destroying Germany with the migrant crisis under the U.S. fascist Washington neocon regime leadership baton: large kudos for the international NGO destructive work of Jewish Nazi criminal George Soros supplying both financial and hardware aid.

—France, jealous of London, still aims and wants to create the Grand Paris (Greater Paris Project) to compete with London: Reuben aimlessly fighting for the birthright while Ephraim is self-destroying it.

—Meanwhile, the British island cul-de-sac is being sacked by the City of London banksters with the full support of the British government and its Tory while the island is burning under the attack of political correctness.

—Germany (US occupied territory with 22 US. Military bases on German territory on record) is on the brink of civil war (as expected and planned be the Fascist Neocon in London/Washington and duplicitous France. I just had here a foretaste of German civil war as G20 was progressing only a few blocks away from my residence, Mind you France is always meddling internationally everywhere while achieving aimlessness and international geopolitical redundancy over-qualifying to regroup with the British Island cul-de-sac.

—USA and its Wahhabi and Sunnite proxies are destabilizing the Middle East and Northern Africa: Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen (via Saudis) and of course The Ukraine, with the support and financial strength of Paris/London/Tel Aviv neocons aka the Western swamp’s own creation: ISIS, ISIL, Al Qaeda, Al Nustra, IS: Thanks to the US CIA empire of chaos’ own evil creation supplying military hardware, training and financing: CIA-theft of oil in Iraq; CIA-Drug-Trafficking from Afghanistan reaping a substantial 1.2 trillion USD harvest on a yearly basis: As a footnote, it is well worth mentioning that this drug money also serves to uphold the bankrupt western fiat financial Central Banking System (Babylon) and its worthless four main paper currencies: USD/GBP/EUR/YEN, printed at libitum by our corrupt neo-fascist central banksters: ECB: European Central Bank, FED: Federal Reserve, BoE: Bank of England and last but not least the Bank of Japan: BoJ.

The most pernicious, evil, and nefarious of Israel’s inheritance is the destructive warmongering chaos created by what I’d like to name “The Four Horsemen of the 21st Century Geopolitical Apocalypse”: USA (Manasseh), Britain (Ephraim), France (Reuben) and Israel (Judah.) These Four Geopolitical Apocalyptic Horsemen have created their own brand of terrorism (ISIS, ISIL, Al Qaeda, Al Nustra, IS: all CIA subsidiaries), a fictitious enemy while using Main Stream Media Propaganda (Fakenews) to convince a gullible idiotic jaded smartphone obsessed crowd of international morons that the “war on terror” (9/11 Bataclan, Madrid, London et al), is necessary in order to maintain the US/British/French beacon of “democracy” while we murder and shed MILLIONS of innocent lives (abortion) with renown associations such as “Planned Parenthood.” Planned Parenthood proceeds also permits management personnel to afford the finer luxuries of life such as financing a Lanborghini.

Mind you the Brits are quite practical about it, they even use the “babies’ leftovers” to heat their hospital and save on heating bills! It only takes a Brit to be so permissive and hypocritical while pretending to uphold human rights and democracy (SIC)! One has to admit that Ephraim’s affront to God will and must be “accounted for.” Somehow the red thread of Ephraimite King Jeroboam’s permissiveness and duplicity (who was very instrumental in the coup d’état against King Solomon) goes on unabated: We all remember how Jeroboam introduced the Pagan Version of the Feast of Tabernacles” by moving it from the seventh to the eighth month of the year.

While Rome (Hamburg in my case) was burning (I could literally smell the smoke on my balcony during G20 looting and destructive events) the plutocrats, oligarchs and kleptocrats were assembling themselves in the Elbphilarmonie  enjoying Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ode of Joy. At this very moment, Hamburg citizens’ cars were being torched, properties rampaged, shops looted and infrastructure destroyed. What an irony is not it folks?

Hamburg Elbphilarmonie

Would the four 21^st Century horsemen of the Geopolitical Apocalypse: bête noire U.S.A., hypocritical Britain, duplicitous France and idolatrous Israel, stop their war mongering, it would be fair to suggest that most likely 80% of all worldwide conflicts would stop right away.

NO wonder God will remove the birthright privileges He once had mercifully granted to Abraham and swap it with a time of “Jacob’s trouble and rebuke!” 

“Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are on [Israel | Babylon] the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth” (Amos 9:8).

Troubled times ahead for the U.S.A. Britain, France and Israel

Bruno P. Gebarski

 

 

 

U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | September 11th 2001 and the Rise of The U.S. Neocons (Part 3)

In Part One and Part Two of this series, we reviewed why the United States of America has become the geopolitical Hegemon of our 21^st Century. Rising powers China and Russia are threatening the geopolitical and geofinancial “command and control” neocon-led Empire of Chaos (as coined by Pepe Escobar) and forcing the U.S. to defend its US-Dollar Reserve Currency status with extraordinary and non-diplomatic means: Quantitative Easing or QE Zimbabwe style fiat paper money printing, color revolutions, coups d’états, war crimes, subversion, coercion and weapons of mass migration: Germany and Austria being the latest victims. However, China and the BRICS offer an array of geopolitical, financial and banking services providing the international community with a worthy alternative to both collapsing Petrodollar and US-Dollar:  

• BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa as an alternative to the Bretton Woods Western nations USD, GBP, EUR and ¥EN
• SCO: Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to NATO
• AIIB: Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank as an alternative to the IMF
• CIPS: Chinese inter-banking payment system as an alternative to SWIFT
• Shanghai Gold Exchange: an alternative to the paper-fraud markets of London and New York
• CFFEX: China’s New, China Financial Future Exchange

It is also well worth noticing the entry of the Chinese Renminbi (CN¥ or Chinese Yuan) into the Special Drawing Right (SDR): the Elite currency club of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As of October 1st of 2016, the Chinese Renminbi will have entered the privileged club of pristine world reserve currencies: US Dollar, Euro, British Pound and Japanese ¥en to become its fifth international reserve currency:

A few days back, we remembered September 11^th 2001 15h anniversary. We are still longing for the full disclosure of what really happened. Similar to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in Dallas, we most likely will never find out. Nonetheless, we now have proof of 9/11’s Mainstream Media cover-up as well as strong evidence for a miniature nuclear implosion/detonation with the use of thermite.

9/11 remains the coup d’état par excellence : A terror attack applied upon the American Sheeple and the creation of a fictitious enemy the Establishment can adapt, relocate and rename at anytime: The perfect enactment of a self-made neocon catastrophe that rallied people internationally, emotionally and passionately behind a newly created brand of terror: Al Qaeda, ISIS, The Levant, IS, ISIL, The Islamist State, Daesh or Al Nusra. All should be considered the neocons’ “War on Terror trademark“; a mainstream propaganda tool easily sold to a Western crowd way too busy with ubiquitous Internet, smartphones or Britain’s Got Talent. After 9/11, Al Qaeda 2.0 or ISIS would follow. Trained mercenaries are backed up financially by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; they often follow the Wahhabi strain of Islam that produces so many ISIS militants: Thanks to Washington’s acquiescence.  An updated version of ISIS, The Islamic State, would follow in Syria after Russia and China refused a similar French-led NATO bombing on Libya.

The iniquitous 1999 US-NATO dismantling of Yugoslavia (that preceded 9/11) was followed by a 78-day NATO “humanitarian bombing” of Kosovo with the help of German co-conspirator. Kosovo did not pose any threat within Yugoslavia or to any members of the NATO alliance whatsoever: Thus a flagrant crime of aggression in violation of Article 2.4 of the UN Charter. As we shall see in the next installment (Part 5) Kosovo’s capture could have been on U.S. Pentagon’s drawing board for three main reasons:

• Control the Balkan pipeline energy-grid between Western Europe, Eurasia, and Russia
• Control the heroin Balkan route from Central Asia’s Golden Crescent (Afghanistan) to Europe and beyond
• Control South Eastern Europe with  1000 acres (3 km²) of U.S. military footprint: Camp Bondsteel

In a Global Research‘s article: Neocon 101: What do Neo-conservatives Believe? Global Research author asks the question: “What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative: Liberals first applied the ‘neo’ prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d’être during the 1970s and 80’s.”

“Mutual Assured Destruction or mutually assured destruction (MAD) [was] a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender … It was based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons was a military strategy” dear to President Regan during the Cold War era. Ronald Reagan mantra was “peace through strength“, “peace was the end; strength was the mean“: it was based on a policy of military détente and as much as possible entente cordiale. 

U.S. neocons have pushed aside the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine to replace it with preemptive strike … Did you catch that? Preemptive strike…? The next installment (Part 4 of this series) will magnify the thought of “Preemptive Strike” and the nefariousness of these U.S. fascist neocons and their warmongering philosophy.

Beliefs: Conservatives	Beliefs: Neo Conservatives
MAD as Military deterrence	Preemptive military strike | war
Peace through strength	Use of U.S. unrivaled military power
Peace is the end, strength is the mean	Forcefully promote U.S. values around the world: color revolutions and coups d’états
Reservation about military intervention	Cultivation of a U.S. Empire (NGO propaganda)
Reservation about so called “nation building”	“Democratic” transformation of the Middle East (Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Syria)
Policy of détente and containment with Russia	Policy of aggression against Russia (NATO Anaconda-2016)
Multipolar world is supported	U.S. is the unchallenged superpower and “benevolent” global Hegemon
Potential U.S.-threats are appeased or contained	Potential U.S.-threats are confronted aggressively

In his blog-article “American Exceptionalism and the Election Made in Hell (Or Why I’d Vote for Trump Over Hillary)”, William Blum, author of America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, writes:

“My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment [emphasis Geopoliticalnews]. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is a[n utter] disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs [fascist bankster cabal criminals] – one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world – for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary’s willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money?”

 Bruno Gebarski

Additional Reading:

• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy (Part One)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy (Part Two)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | September 11th 2001 and the Rise of U.S. Neocons (Part Three)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | Preemptive Strike & Neocons Mainstream Media Propaganda (Part Four)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | Oligarchy and Neocons Destructive Agenda (Part Five)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | Oligarchy and Neocons Destructive Agenda (Part Six: coming soon)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | U.S.-NATO Serbian Genocide (Part Seven: planned)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | Iraq the War for Oil and Control of the Middle East (Part Eight: planned)
• U.S. Exceptionalism and U.S. Global Terror Management Strategy | Iraq the War for OIL and Control of the Middle East (Part Nine: planned)

 

 

Guest Article: “Trump’s Anti-Interventionism – Neocons Hate It As Anti-War Left Comes Around”

Original Link: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-22/trumps-anti-interventionism-neocons-hate-it-anti-war-left-comes-around

Submitted by John Walsh via LewRockwell.com,

Until recently the progressive mind has been resolutely closed and stubbornly frozen in place against all things Trump.

But cracks are appearing in the ice.  With increasing frequency over the last few months, some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy.  Let us hear from these heretics, among them William Greider, Glen Ford, John Pilger, Jean Bricmont, Stephen F. Cohen and William Blum.  Their words are not to be construed as “endorsements,” but rather an acknowledgment of Trump’s anti-interventionist views, the impact those views are having and the alternative he poses to Hillary Clinton in the current electoral contest.

First, let’s consider the estimable William Greider, a regular contributor to The Nation and author of Secrets of the Temple.  He titled a recent article for the Nation, “Donald Trump Could be The Military Industrial Complex’s Worst Nightmare: The Republican Front Runner is Against Nation Building.  Imagine That.” 

Greider’s article is brief, and I recommend reading every precious word of it.  Here is but one quote: “Trump has, in his usual unvarnished manner, kicked open the door to an important and fundamental foreign-policy debate.”  And here is a passage from Trump’s interview with the Washington Post that Greider chooses to quote:

“‘I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’d be blown up,’ Trump told the editors.  ‘And we’d build another one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three times. And yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn.… at what point do you say hey, we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner cities.'”

Trump talks about building infrastructure for the inner cities, especially better schools for African American children, rather than bombing people of color halfway around the world!  That is hardly racism.  And it is not how the mainstream media wants us to think of The Donald.

Next, Glen Ford, the eloquent radical Left executive editor of Black Agenda Report, a superb and widely read outlet, penned an article in March 2016, with the following title: “Trump Way to the Left of Clinton on Foreign Policy – In Fact, He’s Damn Near Anti-Empire.” Ford’s piece is well worth reading in its entirety; here are just a few quotes :

“Trump has rejected the whole gamut of U.S. imperial war rationales, from FDR straight through to the present.”

 

“If Trump’s tens of millions of white, so-called ‘Middle American’ followers stick by him, it will utterly shatter the prevailing assumption that the American public favors maintenance of U.S. empire by military means.”

 

“Trump shows no interest in ‘spreading democracy,’ like George W. Bush, or assuming a responsibility to ‘protect’ other peoples from their own governments, like Barack Obama and his political twin, Hillary Clinton.”

 

“It is sad beyond measure that the near-extinction of independent Black politics has placed African Americans in the most untenable position imaginable at this critical moment: in the Hillary Clinton camp.”

Next, let’s turn to John Pilger, the Left wing Australian journalist and documentary film maker who has been writing about Western foreign policy with unimpeachable accuracy and wisdom since the Vietnam War era.   Here are some of his comments on Trump:

“..Donald Trump is being presented (by the mass media) as a lunatic, a fascist.  He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure.  That alone should arouse our skepticism.”

 

“Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.”

 

“In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as ‘a world substantially made over in [America’s] own image’.  The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. …”

 

“Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.”

The money quote is: “The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton.”  When Pilger submitted his article to the “progressive” magazine Truthout, this sentence was deleted, censored as he reported, along with a few of the surrounding sentences.  Such censorship had not been imposed on Pilger by Truthout ever before.  Truthout’s commitment to free speech apparently has limits in the case of The Donald versus Hillary, rather severe ones.  So one must read even the progressive press with some skepticism when it comes to Trump.

Trump has also been noticed by the Left in Europe, notably by the sharp minded Jean Bricmont, physicist and author of Humanitarian Imperialism who writes here:

 

(Trump) “is the first major political figure to call for ‘America First’ meaning non-interventionism.  He not only denounces the trillions of dollars spent in wars, deplores the dead and wounded American soldiers, but also speaks of the Iraqi victims of a war launched by a Republican President. He does so to a Republican public and manages to win its support. He denounces the empire of US military bases, claiming to prefer to build schools here in the United States. He wants good relations with Russia. He observes that the militarist policies pursued for decades have caused the United States to be hated throughout the world. He calls Sarkozy a criminal who should be judged for his role in Libya. Another advantage of Trump: he is detested by the neoconservatives, who are the main architects of the present disaster.”

And then there is Stephen F. Cohen, contributing editor for The Nation and Professor Emeritus of Russian History at Princeton and NYU.  Cohen makes the point that Trump, alone among the presidential candidates, has raised five urgent and fundamental questions, which all other candidates in the major parties have either scorned or more frequently ignored. The five questions all call into question the interventionist warlike stance of the US for the past 20 plus years. Cohen enumerates the questions here, thus:

“Should the United States always be the world’s leader and policeman?

 

“What is NATO’s proper mission today, 25 years after the end of the Soviet Union and when international terrorism is the main threat to the West?

 

“Why does Washington repeatedly pursue a policy of regime change, in Iraq, Libya, possibly in Ukraine, and now in Damascus, even though it always ends in “disaster”?

 

“Why is the United States treating Putin’s Russia as an enemy and not as a security partner?

 

“And should US nuclear weapons doctrine include a no-first use pledge, which it does not?”

Cohen comments in detail on these questions here. Whatever one may think of the answers Trump has provided to the five questions, there is no doubt that he alone among the presidential candidates has raised them – and that in itself is an important contribution.

At this point, I mention my own piece, which appeared late last year.  Entitled “Who is the Arch Racist, Hillary or The Donald”?  Like Cohen’s pieces, it finds merit with the Trump foreign policy in the context of posing a question.

Finally, let us turn to Bill Blum, who wrote an article entitled, “American Exceptionalism and the Election Made in Hell (Or Why I’d Vote for Trump Over Hillary).”  Again there is little doubt about the stance of Blum, who is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, a scholarly compendium, which Noam Chomsky calls “Far and away the best book on the topic.”

Blum begins his piece:

“If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.”

 

“My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted.”

And he concludes:

“He (Trump) calls Iraq ‘a complete disaster’, condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. ‘They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.’ He even questions the idea that ‘Bush kept us safe’, and adds that ‘Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists’.”

“Yes, he’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?”

I conclude with Blum’s words because they are most pertinent to our present situation.  The world is living through a perilous time when the likes of the neocons and Hillary Clinton could lead us into a nuclear Armageddon with their belligerence toward Russia and their militaristic confrontation with China.

The reality is that we are faced with a choice between Clinton and Trump, a choice which informs much of the above commentary.  Survival is at stake and we must consider survival first if our judgments are to be sane.

Original Link: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-22/trumps-anti-interventionism-neocons-hate-it-anti-war-left-comes-around

Submitted by John Walsh via LewRockwell.com