Enemies of the Good: Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela

They all have one thing in common: an independent spirit.

Fifteenth century German philosopher Nicholas of Cusa is credited with writing or paraphrasing the idea that God is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. One could say the same for American foreign policy, which perceives itself as a kind of omnipotent power, and is coming dangerously near omniscience through its surveillance apparatus, and which cannot seem to settle on a singular demonic enemy as it chases an omnipresent and shapeshifting phantom menace that incarnates in myriad sovereign disguises.

Many Americans have been indoctrinated to take this claim at face value. Exceptionalism was born with the new nation.

Each new administration must attempt, like seemingly all people assigned to high-visibility positions in the corporate or federal world, to put its stamp on the organization. Add its unique signature to the history of the executive. In Washington, that idiosyncratic flourish usually comes in the naming and targeting of new enemies of what Puritan preacher John Winthrop called a “city upon a hill.” These enemies, embittered by our freedoms, are innumerable. After the never-ending fiasco of Vietnam, Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and his Svengali Zbigniew Brzezinski decided Afghanistan was the right war to wage in Asia, but rather by hurling well-armed mujahideen proxies into the breach instead of American youth. Hollywood actor and rabid anti-communist Ronald Reagan then decided Iran was a more urgent challenge to address, as well as the fearful sight of the communist virus brewing in Nicaragua, a mere five days drive from America’s southern border. Wait, said George H.W. Bush. We need to chastise Saddam Hussein for forgetting his role as a vassal of the American empire and breaching the borders of the Disneyfied plutocracy of Kuwait. Bill Clinton thought, no, no, no, we must bring the war back to Europe, where it was incumbent upon us to teach Yugoslavia and then Serbia grave lessons about overstepping their mandate.

[dropcap]G[/dropcap]eorge W. Bush, thanks to 9/11, presided over a cabal of seething neoconservatives who thought, carpe diem, we must vanquish five Middle Eastern countries in seven years, including Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, and Iran. Those in addition to Afghanistan. Alas, Bush only managed to spread his ruinous vision from Baghdad to Kabul. Barack Obama had greater ambitions. America’s first African-American president bamboozled a war-weary electorate by posing as a peacemaker, claiming Iraq was a “mistake” and that Afghanistan was the right war, and later added Libya and Russia to his imperial hit list, like Carter preferring proxies and a raft of sanctions, threats, and insults to tighten the imperial vice. Obama left us with seven active wars. Real estate mogul and Gotham palm-greaser Donald Trump, among a blizzard of manic boasts, allegations, and ultimatums, told us that Russia and Syria were not the problem, but rather Iran and Venezuela must be dealt with, posthaste.

Nor can we forget that all of these presidents, whatever their particular affinities, have to a man lavishly backed Israel’s brutal state of siege on the Palestinian people, with periodic attacks that leave the Geneva Conventions in shreds beneath the rubble of a collapsed hospital, school, or home. The Palestians crime is that of all the aforementioned nations: a dream of independence. The truth is, every independent nation, people, or movement gets its turn in the crosshairs of empire. Four  recent targets illustrate the time-tested techniques by which Washington practices its counterrevolutionary imperialism abroad and scripted misdirection at home.

It’s Venezuela’s Turn

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Washington Post tells us about Venezuelan “opposition” going to Europe to complain about human rights violations under President Nicolás Maduro “...as his government continues a crackdown on dissent.” False. It then suggests that the Venezuelan National Assembly was “...body dispossessed of its power by Maduro loyalists.” The New York Times chimes in and tells us about the horrible conditions produced by the Venezuelan government as it wantonly persecutes its people. We learn of one forlorn soul: “for several nights this summer, Ms. Soler prepared dinner above a makeshift fire of broken wooden crates set ablaze with kerosene to feed her extended family of 12.” With this as our context, we are told,

Dateline: 9.27.17/ Trump and Mariano Rajoy, PM of Spain, at the White House, self-righteously attacking Venezuela, North Korea and the rest of Washington's bete noires. Trump kept referring to Rajoy as "Mr President," but Spain, a constitutional monarchy, has no president, only a prime minister. The PM is technically called "Presidente de Gobierno". Apparently no one saw any percentage in explaining such minor details to Trump, who remains haughtily indifferent to such minutiae. Rajoy, incidentally, is a rightwing politician embroiled in a series of sordid corruption scandals. The Americans want to use the Spaniards as a battering ram against Venezuela within the EU, and Madrid is clearly obliging. The press, as usual, hurled only inconsequential softballs.

An all-powerful assembly of loyalists of President Nicolás Maduro rules the country with few limits on its authority, vowing to pursue political opponents as traitors while it rewrites the Constitution in the government’s favor.

The truly deplorable conditions experienced by Ms. Soler, the terms “all-powerful” and “loyalists” and “few limits” produce the cliched and racially dependent image of the South American strongman, the kind of mustacheod autocrat once limned by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his masterful portraits of the corruptions of power. A deranged mind, an insatiable lust for power, and an inexplicable sadistic need to afflict his own constituents.

"The failure of Paul’s bill acknowledges what we already knew: the political class are venal corporate serfs who have sold their collective conscience to sociopathic multinationals that make decisions based on shareholder value. The entire state is on retainer with the corporate elite, notably its military and financial arms..."

No mention need be made of the legal basis for the constituent assembly, its populist character, the desire of the people to concretize the gains of the Bolivarian revolution in the constitution itself, the widening knowledge among Bolivarians that the western-backed neoliberal opposition has neither an interest in or mandate to negotiate. No mention of the fact that this opposition boycotted the assembly vote. No exploration of the context of the vote fixing for which several of their parliamentarians were ruled inadmissible as representatives of the people, or the manner in which the opposition-led parliament defied the judiciary, which then stripped it of its power. No examination of the opposition-led violence in Caracas or the false equivalence the western media drew between opposition brutality and government response (even though it became hysterically strident in its denunciations of President Trump when he drew the same false balance between antifa and white supremacists after Charlottesville).

No one bothered to explore the clinical assassination of Chavistas in the countryside. Nor did the western mainstream bother to note the tremendous incentives for Washington to depose Maduro. Namely, because he continues to abide by the nationalization of the country’s petro assets, specifically Venezuela’s massive hydrocarbon reserves, some 297 billion barrels of oil, the taking of which was stymied by Hugo Chavez 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that raised the control over extraction and the royalties paid to the government, an event which the New York Times found troubling as a barrier to “growth”. The assumption being ‘growth’ for U.S. multinationals, not growth in human development index of the people that rightly owned the hydrocarbon reserves, the Venezuelan people. None of this was brought into focus, merely the cartoonish sketch of Maduro and his rank minions as another regrettable phenomenon whereby the Americans must intervene in the name of all that is well and good in the world.

It’s Syria’s Turn

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n case you thought Venezuela was an isolated incident, just look around. Syria has just had its turn. The Syrian Arab Army, backed by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, have essentially defeated ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Al Nusra Front, and other western-backed terrorists attempting to overthrow an elected leader. Total unnecessary deaths as a result of this Washington-designed regime change strategy number around 400,000. Refugees, whether internally exiled or driven abroad, number more than 11 million.  The Washington Post tells us that the UN has now accused the Syrian government of an April “sarin attack” and some 20 other chemical attacks, almost all on civilians that had nothing to do with the “conflict.” No evidence is provided. We are simply asked to believe that Bashar al-Assad is an Arab Maduro, an Alawite fascist who gets a frisson of omnipotence when he exterminates his own.

Now there’s a brewing conflict in northeast Syria, where Washington, its American special forces, and proxy Kurdish and militant forces in the SDF and YPG are attempting to carve out a Kurdish state by appropriating sovereign Syrian land. The SAA is attempting to ford the Euphrates and secure its territory. This is creating a showdown with the western mercs, and evincing collusion between the Kurds and ISIS and Americans. It could put Russian and American forces into play against each other, not just their proxies and allies. The conflict will likely result in Moscow leaning on Damascus to surrender the territory as a Kurdish autonomous state (composed of much Syrian Arab land). In any event, the efforts by Barack Obama and his security complex between 2011 and 2016 will have proven at least partially successful if they grab this foothold in the region.

Of course, you won’t read this in the national media as they are preoccupied with fretting over the imperial failure to remove Assad and replace him with a vetted puppet prepared to do DC’s corporate bidding. Few will draw the obvious connections between American money, arms, and strategy and the rise and successes of ISIS, al Qaeda, and Al Nusra Front (now re-branded into obscurity). You won’t be told that moderate rebels in Syria were or are as ‘moderate’ as Hillary Clinton is ‘centrist’. Both constructs are leveraged to lend a patina of temperance to extremist policy.

It’s North Korea’s Turn

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ow that Syria is simmering down, Pyongyang has been recycled once again as a supposed threat to global security, a geo-distant bookend to the Caracas menace. This happens every handful of years. North Korea and its glorious leader Kim Jong-un (or his father) must be recast as a monomaniacal monster lurking on the Pacific rim for the benefit of each new generation, in the same way superhero movies must be remade for each new generation. What you won’t read in the corporate press is the more truthful reality of the relationship. North Korea, cynical and exhausted by failed western promises, is pursuing WMDs as a defensive measure. Since the bungled 1994 deal, Pyongyang has repeatedly offered to shut down its tests in a quid pro quo with Washington, but both Obama (twice) and Trump (once already) have flatly rejected the offers and negotiations. Nor has the cultural memory of having the west slaughter twenty percent of its population in the Korean War helped the nation place its trust in a violent, Janus-faced hegemon.

After North Korea stupidly fired a missile over Japan last week, driving frightened Japanese citizens into bomb shelters, U.S. B-1B bombers have been flying around the Korean peninsula with Japanese and South Korean jets in tow. This is the coup de grace of U.S.-Korean annual war games that the North Koreans perceive as a test run for an invasion. Given the above history, it’s no surprise. President Trump’s crepuscular tweets, including one warning that “talking is not the answer,” his riotous threat-mongering in the pulpit of the United Nations, and still-searing memory of the Korean War have have kept Jong-un and his advisors on tenterhooks. Sadly but predictably, whatever anti-interventionist sentiments President Trump harbored in the past, he seems to have no compunction about intimidating smaller nations with threats of massive violence. That is, after all, a bully’s calling card.

It’s Iran’s Turn

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley gave a recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute (AE) in which she expanded the scope of the government’s assessment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement between the P5+1 and Iran in 2015. Since Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA itself, Haley brandished other weapons she could use to undermine the agreement. First, the ban on the testing of ballistic missiles that Washington smuggled into the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2231, which affirmed the JCPOA in 2015. Second, the Congressional Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, known as the Corker-Cardin law, which requires the secretary of state to recertify the deal every 120 days, based in part on whether or not the president or secretary thinks the deal is still in America’s best interest, a criteria as vague as the president’s understanding of geopolitics.

Haley did her best to make clear nobody right of Barack Obama thinks this deal is in America’s national interest. President Trump has already said he thought Iran would be noncompliant, even as the IAEA and EU state that Iran is compliant. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson used an unforgivably disingenuous construct when he said that Iran, “...is clearly in default of expectations.” In a pique of moral blindness, Haley asked, “Judging any international agreement begins and ends with the nature of the government that signed it.” Haley then added her assessment of the nature of the signatory, “The Islamic Republic of Iran was born in an act of international lawbreaking.” This is a comical criticism considering the American Revolution itself broke a few British laws and the Islamic Revolution was overthrowing a brutal American autocrat in the Shah. She went on to list a litany of terrorist actions that she laid at Tehran’s doorstep, as well as noting two short-lived violations of the JCPOA limits on heavy water, which Iran quickly rectified. The ambassador concluded that the Iranians were acting in bad faith, hoping to cheat without being caught.

Haley: Trump's irrepressible attack dog at the UNO. Total indifference to truth and morality. A perfect choice, and the norm in US foreign policy.

This was all reported by the mainstream utterly free of hypocritical ironies or necessary context. What did Haley and her media stenographers leave out? Well, Haley did not mention that Iran has invaded no nation unprovoked in hundreds of years, while the United States has attacked 14 Muslim nations just since 1980. She did not note that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is believed to have ended in 2003. She seems to have forgotten the related intelligence community assessment of Iranian foreign policy as purely defensive. She failed to recognize the legacy of American hostile action and false accusations against Iran, its alliance with rabid anti-Tehranian Benjamin Netanyahu, or revelations of America’s military designs on Iran. She did not discuss the impact of the thoroughly unfair sanctions that have decimated parts of the Iranian economy, sanctions that in themselves constitute acts of aggression. Nor does she summon the immense injustice of tacit Washington acceptance of Israel’s immense nuclear arsenal and its exasperating warmongering over Tehran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, a disparity of tolerance that surely has racism as a cornerstone.

Haley finished off this testament to absurdity by claiming the JCPOA is not intrusive enough:

“We were promised “anytime, anywhere” inspections of sites in Iran. The final agreement delivered much less. The promised 24/7 inspections apply only to Iran’s “declared” nuclear sites. For any undeclared but suspected sites, the regime can deny access for up to 24 days.”

What Haley is asking for here is exactly what Madeline Albright asked of Serbia and the second Bush administration asked of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq: total access, 24-7. Few sovereign nations would agree to this as it would vanquish their sovereignty without a single shot fired. Haley wants an inspection regime to be free to run rampant around the country, invasively inspecting anything it deems of interest. Yet the JCPOA is already one of the most invasive inspection regimes ever passed by the IAEA. But this is typical American ‘diplomacy’: make demands you know your enemy will refuse, then declare that nation a rogue state and assemble a coalition of feckless servant nations to accompany you as you pass a UNSC resolution that legitimates war. And, it should always be added, Washington never even attempts to make the elementary moral argument for why it possesses the ethical standing to take such steps in the first place.

The Flesh Is Weak

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast week, erstwhile Kentucky Senator Rand Paul launched an admirable fight to sunset the Authorization of Military Force (AUMF). He excoriated his fellow Congressmen for abdicating their responsibility to debate and authorize wars, reminding them that the AUMF, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11, has been used for seven wars abroad. The glum sellouts in the Senate voted down the resolution ‘by a comfortable margin’, as expected. Paul’s efforts were largely what one might call the theater of principle, when a moral but losing cause is taken up by a crusading politician to shame his comrades if not convince them.

The failure of Paul’s bill acknowledges what we already knew: the political class are venal corporate serfs who have sold their collective conscience to sociopathic multinationals that make decisions based on shareholder value. The entire state is on retainer with the corporate elite, notably its military and financial arms. It’s nominal status as the people’s representative is ruthlessly plied, its legislative authority exploited, its better impulses vitiated, and its role distilled to menial service to the transnational bottomline. In other words, the wars will continue and the slaughter will not be televised unless committed by the latest axis of evil the profiteers have pinned up in the local PO. All other considerations are moot.

To take Cusa’s idea of God full circle, the center of U.S. foreign policy animus is one day in Caracas, the next in Baghdad, and the next in Damascus. The center will not hold, and each new president has a particular vision of imperial advancement. It is likewise true that there is not circumference or outer limit to American ambition, and until the corridors of elite capital are foreclosed from power, there never will be, ad infinitum.