Will U.S. finally pay reparations for its act of terrorism? by Wayne Madsen

Will U.S. finally pay reparations for its act of terrorism?

by Wayne Madsen
For the people of Cuba, Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, October 6, 1976 will always be remembered as the day international terrorism paid a deadly call on the Caribbean region. It was on that day that a Cubana airlines DC-8 aircraft was blown out of the sky by a bomb placed on the aircraft by right-wing Cuban exiles. The bombing of the plane, Cubana flight 455, which had just departed from Seawell Airport in Barbados and was en route to Jamaica, killed 73 people, including children. The chief terrorist technician was Luis Posada Carriles, however, the mastermind was the then-director of the Central Intelligence Agency, one George H. W. Bush. Carriles lives today a free man in Miami where he supports a number of right-wing Cubano groups, all of which are closely linked to GOP 2016 presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

Carriles and three other Cuban exiles, Freddy Lugo, Hernán Ricardo Lozan, and Orlando Bosch, were arrested in Venezuela for bombing the plane. Bosch was acquitted and he moved to Miami where he lived until his death in 2011. Lugo and Lozan received 20 year sentences in Venezuela and Posada Carriles was jailed for eight years prior to his escaping to Florida before his final sentencing hearing. Carriles carried out his acts of terrorism in the Caribbean region from his base in Caracas, where he operated a security company called Investigaciones Comerciales y Industriales C.A. (ICICA). In addition to the CIA, Carriles worked closely with Miami- and Las Vegas-based Jewish mobster Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal.

1976 saw the CIA under then-director George H. W. Bush carry out a number of terrorist acts against Cuba and companies and countries that did business with Havana. Bush's Cuban associates also bombed the offices of British West Indies Airlines in Bridgetown, Barbados, the Guyanese embassy in Port of Spain, Trinidad; the Air Panama office in Colombia, the Iberia office in Costa Rica, and the Venezuelan mission to the UN in New York. They also committed an arson attack on Cuban-supplied fishing equipment in Guyana and assassinated Cuban officials in Mexico and Argentina. Carriles, Bosch, and their associates also planned to bomb Cuban ships in Mexican ports. They actually helped to carry out bombings of a number of hotels in Cuba in 1997, one of which killed an Italian tourist, and were behind the September 21, 1976, car bombing in Washington, DC that killed former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt.

The role of the CIA in the Cubana 455 bombing is detailed in both the confession of Lugo to Dennis Randwar, the Trinidad and Tobago deputy police commissioner, and declassified U.S. Justice Department documents. For years, as governor of Florida and as a "private businessman" linked to CIA drug smuggling and money laundering, Jeb Bush, who arrived in Caracas in a year after the Cubana bombing for a two-year stint as a vice president for the CIA-linked Texas Commerce Bank, protected Posada Carriles and Bosch from answering for their acts of terrorism. During the Iran-contra scandal, Posada Carriles and Bosch assisted Vice President Bush's illegal contra supply operation in Central America.


Just as with the 9/11 attacks, for which there were prior warnings, the U.S. took no action to prevent a terrorist attack on a civilian airliner in 1976. And just as with 9/11, the Bush family was up to their eyeballs in both acts of aviation terrorism.


The above FBI memo indicates that the "IC" (U.S. Intelligence Community") was well aware that Posada Carriles and Bosch, both friends of Jeb Bush, "engineered the bombing of the airplane." Jeb Bush later defended both terrorists after they took up permanent residence in Miami.



FBI admits that it maintained contact with Posada Carriles as late as June 1976, well after he had been involved in carrying out terrorist bombings and began planning the bombing of Cubana 455.


Confession to the Trinidad and Tobago police by Ricardo Lozan, Posada Carriles's associate, that he was a member of the CIA. At the time, George H. W. Bush was CIA director and he would have undoubtedly authorized the bombing of Cubana 455.

As the U.S. continues to normalize its relations with Cuba, Posada Carriles, Jeb Bush, George H. W. Bush, and their murderous associates should be required to make an final accounting for their crimes, especially those of 1976, the year the CIA proved that it was never brought under control after the Watergate scandal. Rubio, the son of right-wing Cuban immigrants, has proven by his close and unapologetic association with the terrorist elements that largely make up Florida's Cuban exile community that he requisite "good citizen" credentials -- respect for the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, and a traditional appreciation for the popular "commonwealth" -- to serve as President of the United States, let alone a U.S. senator.

Cuba, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Venezuela should also require the U.S. to pay full reparations for its repeated acts of terrorism and the costs involved in conducting official investigations of those heinous acts.

America: The Real Evil Empire by Stephen Lendman

America: The Real Evil Empire

by Stephen Lendman

On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan coined the term. He did so addressing the National Association of Evangelicals.

He called communism "the focus of evil in the modern world." Don't "ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire…and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil," he said.

Cold War politics returned. More venomously than earlier. Putin is targeted. He's public enemy No. 1.

Doing so turns truth on his head. Paul Craig Roberts justifiably calls him the world's moral leader. 

A previous article said he shames his Western counterparts. He makes Obama look buffoon-like. 

He does it with straight talk. Telling it like it is. Explaining what people most need to know. Unambiguously. Truthfully. 

Polar opposite US politicians. Featuring Big Lies. Scorning vital truths. Supporting wrong over right. Making the world safe for monied interests.

Permanent war is official US policy. So is mass extermination. Begun centuries earlier. 

Doing so reduced America's indigenous population to a tiny fraction of its original numbers. Millions were slaughtered in cold blood.

Centuries of slavery were horrific. Black Africans were captured, branded, chained, force-marched, beaten, encaged, and stripped of their humanity.

Around 100 million were sold like cattle. Millions perished during  deplorable Middle Passage conditions.

Genocidal US policy continues in new forms. Technological advances facilitate it. America's killing machine knows no limits. 

One genocide follows others. Countries are ravaged and destroyed. Tens of millions perished. 

Winning hearts and minds don't matter. Stomping on people remains ongoing. 

Death squad diplomacy eliminates nonbelievers. Madness defines US policy. Police state harshness criminalizes right over wrong defenders.

Making the world safe for democracy is pure fantasy. America tolerates it nowhere. For sure not domestically.

High crimes are rewarded. Upside down reality endangers everyone. Popular needs go begging. 

Conquest, occupation, colonization, and exploitation are prioritized. Ordinary people are on their own sink or swim. 

Wars are considered peace. They rage without end. Things go from bad to worse. 

Propaganda works as intended. Minds are manipulated to support war. Truth is suppressed. Fear is stoked. 

Patriotism, national security, and democratic values are highlighted.

Longstanding US policy prioritizes militarism, wars, homeland security, and related operations.

Doing so has nothing to do with external or internal threats. Nor humanitarian intervention. Nor responsibility to protect.

Nor spreading democratic values. It's about advancing America's imperium.

What Michael Parenti calls "the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries."

"(T)he dominant politico-economic interests of one nation" over others. "(F)or their own enrichment…"

"(S)tealing land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people." Dominating other economies and political systems.

Accumulating enormous amounts of wealth in the process. Using money to make more of it. Increase power. Gain market control. Exploit resources and labor.

Societies are destroyed and remade. Nations are pillaged for profit. Populations become disenfranchised. Workers become serfs. Local cultures become mass-market consumer ones.

Agribusiness replaces local farming. Competitive industries are eliminated.  Foreign investment crowds out local capital. 

Dominance legitimizes capital's divine right. Plunder assures obscene profits. Capital accumulation demands more. Profiteering becomes a be-all-and-end-all.

Democracy is pure fantasy. US elections are pre-scripted. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process.

Candidates are pre-selected. Big Money owns them. Key outcomes are pre-determined. Voters have no say.

Both major parties share blame. They're two sides of the same coin. 

Not a dime's worth of difference on issues mattering most separates them. Americans get the best democracy money can buy.

Independents are shut out. Media scoundrels ignore them. Voter disenfranchisement is rife.

Millions can't vote because of past criminal records. Mostly what civilized societies call misdemeanors. Excluding prison. Assessing small fines or warnings.

Half of eligible voters opt out because their interests aren't addressed. Losers are declare winners. And not just for president.

Electoral democracy is pure fantasy. America is constitutionally flawed by design. 

We the people aren't served. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. Tom Paine called voting "the primary right by which all other(s) are protected."

America's corrupted process makes it impossible. Democracy is a figure of speech. A four-letter word. A sham no just society would tolerate.

No country in world history did more harm to more people over a longer duration than America. None match its ruthlessness.

Its shameless human and civil rights records. Its pariah state status. Its genocidal high crimes against peace.

Its global gulag. The world's largest by far. Filled with thousands of political prisoners. 

Supplemented by global torture prisons. In dozens of countries. Operating out of sight and mind.

Crime bosses make policy. Monied interests control them. New World Order ruthlessness is official policy. 

International, constitutional and US statute laws don't matter. Washington rules alone apply.

The Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) is one of nine likeminded UN bodies. Each responsible for overseeing a particular treaty's implementation. 

UNHCR documented US human rights abuses. Assessing its noncompliance with International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provisions. 

Fundament human and civil rights. Signatories are required to respect free speech, assembly and religion.

Electoral rights, due process and judicial fairness. Self-determination and other universally accepted rule of law principles. 

UNHCR condemned grave US human rights breaches. Citing institutionalized torture, drone killings, and failure to close Guantanamo.

Mandatory immigrant detentions and mass deportations, as well as lawless NSA spying, among other issues.

It criticized Washington's failure to uphold human rights standards worldwide. It cited whitewashed CIA renditions, forced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. 

Excessive secrecy was raised. Torture victims denied redress. Permitting torture-coerced confessions as evidence. Despite America's Supreme Court banning it.

Enforcing guilt by accusation. Denying habeas rights and judicial fairness. Substituting kangaroo court justice for the real thing. 

Police states operate this way. America is by far the worst. At home and abroad.

Disturbing death penalty imposition disparities adversely affect America's most disadvantaged. African-Americans, Latinos and other people of color.

Justice is a four-letter word. Excessive force is used with impunity. Including beatings and gun-related deaths.

Dissent is criminalized. So is homelessness. Juveniles sentenced to life without parole. For homicides based on flimsy evidence or none at all.

Adults can face life imprisonment for alleged "non-homicide related" crimes. Abusive prolonged solitary confinement persists. Doing so constitutes torture.

Mandatory immigration detentions are reprehensible. Mass deportations deeply troubling. 

Obama disgracefully expelled more immigrants and others than all his predecessors combined.

Murder, Inc. is official US policy. Death squads operate in 130 or more countries. So do CIA agents licensed to kill. 

US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe. Summary judgment means no arrests. No Miranda rights. 

No due process. No trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat. It's official Obama policy. Diktat authority denies justice to anyone ordered killed.

Obama self-appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. He decides who lives or dies. Who's lawlessly indefinitely detained.

Equity and justice don't matter. Fundamental freedoms are disappearing in plain sight. Tyranny replaced them. It's almost full-blown.

Anyone anywhere may be thrown in military dungeons. Indefinitely held without charges or trial. Based solely on suspicions, baseless allegations or none at all.

Due process, civil protections, and judicial fairness are null and void. Presidents may order anyone arrested and imprisoned for life without charge or trial. 

Abuse of power replaced rule of law protections. It's happening in real time. Obama abuses diktat power. Unitary executive authority.

The late Chalmers Johnson called it "a ball-faced assertion of presidential supremacy...dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo."

Obama exceeds the worst of his predecessors. He usurped the power of life and death. Including against US citizens.

Prioritizing killing drones, death squads, or other means. Eliminating America's enemies alone matters. Real or invented makes no difference. 

Waging war on whistleblowers. Nonbelievers. Muslims. Latino immigrants. Environmental and animal rights activists unjustifiably called terrorists.

Anti-war activists. Global justice supporters. People associated with so-called "undesirable groups."

Presidents have public emergency powers. Enabling them to declare martial law. Suspend constitutional protections.

For so-called national security reasons or none at all. Deploying US troops on US streets. Militarizing state and local police forces.

Doing it to suppress whatever is called disorder. Including free expression, the right of assembly. petitioning government for redress of grievances publicly.

Opposing imperial lawlessness. America more than ever is unfit to live in. Unsafe by any standard.

Ruthless. Repressive. Cruel. Malicious. Vicious. Violent. Lawless. Criminally culpable of high crimes against peace.

Legal protections don't help. No one is safe anywhere. Advancing America's imperium matters most. 

So does serving wealth, power and privilege. America the beautiful benefits them alone. Others take the hindmost.

Humanity is ruthlessly targeted. Battlefields shift from one theater to others. Gangsterism is official US policy. It's the American way.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Continuity and Change ... For the Worse - The Obama Paradox

Continuity and Change ... For the Worse

The Obama Paradox

by ANDREW LEVINE

Barack Obama ran for office promising change; he delivered continuity.  But then, continuity brought change – for the worse.

In 2008, “change” meant whatever voters wanted it to mean.  Like the candidate, the word was a Rorschach inkblot.

Many, probably most, Obama voters had no clear idea what kind of change they expected.  All they knew was that, under George W. Bush, the country had veered dramatically off course.  They thought Obama would fix that.

Some voters did have more specific expectations.  Some thought that Obama would wean the country off neoliberalism.  With a financial and economic meltdown raging, the time was ripe.

Some expected him to restore the rule of law at least to pre-9/11 levels; many hoped and expected that Bush era war criminals would be brought to justice.

Others thought that the Democratic Party would become more like what it had been before the Clintons had had their way with it.

The list goes on.

Of course, nobody knew what “change” meant to Obama.  Perhaps Obama didn’t know either.  He could hardly have been more vague.

On one point, though, everybody, except perhaps the candidate himself and his close advisors, agreed: Obama would transform the post-9/11 Bush-Cheney regime beyond recognition.

They could not have been more wrong.

Perhaps he had other ideas; perhaps he was overcome by what the ancient Greeks called akrasia, weakness of will.  Perhaps there was never any there there.

Obama’s most ardent supporters, the ones who stuck by him as it became clear that change wasn’t happening, blamed the Republicans; many still do.  Corporate America gives them a nightly forum; they call it MSNBC.

But they are fooling themselves.  Even in the face of Republican obstinacy and determination, the Obama administration didn’t have to be as Bush-Cheney-like as it turned out to be.

Still, the apologists have a point; Republicans really are pieces of work, and they really have dedicated themselves to making sure that the Obama presidency would fail.

Therefore Obama’s apologists are not exactly deluded.  They just give their man – and his opponents — too much credit.

Who knows what Obama really thinks about the issues of the day or how he understands the relation between his words and his intentions.  All we can say for sure is that his words are noncommittal and vague; and that, for all practical purposes, he and his fellow Democrats are on the same page as the Republicans.

This is hardly surprising; they feed from the same trough.   Their antagonism is tactical, not strategic or ideological.

To be sure, racism shapes Republican attitudes, along with other status anxieties and base ideological convictions.  Democrats, on the whole, are nicer people.   But ultimately what both parties want is to win the next election.  For them, it is all about who gets to serve the one percent.

This is bad news for the ninety-nine percent of us about whose interests and wellbeing they could care less.  But that is the least of it.  When our leaders, regardless of party, fix their gaze beyond our (increasingly policed and militarized) borders, the whole world suffers.

Even so, one would expect that there would be a level of competence in the White House and throughout the foreign policy establishment commensurate with the tasks at hand.  Remarkably, this expectation has been confounded by Democratic and Republican administrations for the past quarter century.

When James Baker and Brent Scowcroft left office, who would have guessed that they would outshine all who would follow in their wake?  And, earlier still, who would have imagined that the days of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger would seem like a Golden Age when giants walked upon the face of the earth!

Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before him, put a bunch of clueless stumblebums in charge of throwing America’s weight around in the world.  Predictably, they keep getting in over their heads.

In Bush’s case, the mess was so bad that not even his Poppy could straighten it out.  Then the “change” President came along to continue his work.

The empire’s victims have suffered enormously as a result, but so far the empire itself has survived unscathed.  It is too big to fail.  But, even so, there are limits.

The Obama administration almost exceeded those limits twice.  Vladimir Putin saved Obama both times.

He saved him from being dragged into a potentially catastrophic war against Iran and he saved him from getting America bogged down in the on-going civil war in Syria.

But America’s arch-enemy du jour is not likely to be similarly helpful when the geniuses at Foggy Bottom and in the National Security Council focus their machinations on Russia itself.

Putin’s foreign policy establishment outclasses Obama’s by every measure.   Should it be in their interest to stop helping Washington out, Obama’s luck will run out faster than in a New York (or Moscow) minute.

Was it better under Bush and Cheney?  No.  But the world has changed – partly in consequence of the policies Obama has continued.  This is why, for the most part, those policies are even more toxic now than they were in the Bush-Cheney days.

In this sense, we did get change after all.  But when the reckoning is made, we will likely find that we would have been better off with less than we got.

Bush and Cheney trampled due process and privacy rights in the name of security.  When they were in charge, Constitutional constraints were only a minor inconvenience that they felt free to ignore.

This is how it has been for Obama too.  But, in carrying on their work, Obama made the situation qualitatively worse.  Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now have some idea how bad it was, and how much worse it became.

We do not know how much, if any, terrorism Bush and Cheney – or Obama — actually stopped.  What we do know is that they increased the supply of potential terrorists many-fold.  Invading foreign lands will do that; so will terrorizing civilian populations by unleashing murder and mayhem upon them.

Obama notched the terror level up, even as he diminished the overall level of violence.

His predecessors used assassins and drones too.  But bombers and soldiers were more to their liking.  For the most part, they did their foul deeds the old fashioned way.

Obama, the peace candidate, kept their wars going; he even escalated them for a while – the better to repackage the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But his preference has always been to kill covertly – by making the most of assassins and drones.  And so, he did change America’s military posture.  From a moral point of view, he made it worse.

Now terror is no longer only the last recourse of the powerless; it is also the first choice of a super-power equipped with a military juggernaut as large as the rest of the world’s combined.

In taking up where Bush and Cheney left off, the Nobel laureate let loose the functional equivalent of an army of suicide bombers, casting large swathes of the Muslim world into a perpetual reign of terror.

His drones are especially onerous.

For one thing, they are even worse than suicide bombers because they terrorize civilian populations more efficiently.  Ordinary people can avoid places suicide bombers are likely to target; no one can steer clear of those drones.

And, from a moral point of view, killing with drones is plainly more reprehensible.  Suicide bombers sacrifice their lives for their cause.  When their workday is over, drone operators spend evenings at home with their families.

Their superiors, the ones who order the killings, are even less involved.  Obama decides whom to kill, his underlings decide where and when, and then their underlings push the buttons.  The higher up the chain of command, the more pleased with themselves they seem to be.

On environmental issues, Obama has made things worse just by continuing the do-nothing policies of his predecessors.  Meanwhile, ecological changes already underway are rapidly ratcheting up the peril.

His administration has made a few changes for the better: for example, on fuel emissions standards.  But on the main causes of global warming, Obama has done nothing significant.  Meanwhile, with each year that passes, points of no return approach and are exceeded.

Then there is Obama’s penchant for enhancing the harm done by his predecessors’ policies through more effective implementation.

One would think that when those policies target key Democratic constituencies, he would at least think twice.  But all he does is talk an earful.  For example, Obama has spoken out frequently in favor of immigration reform; yet his record on deportations is far worse than Bush’s.  Organized labor has fared no better.

In a similar vein, Obama has had nary a bad word to say about government transparency or the importance of a vigorous and adversarial press.  To hear him speak, one would think that he is the whistleblower’s best friend.   Yet, on this too, he has been worse than Bush and Cheney or indeed any other president before him except perhaps Richard Nixon.

The man plods on.  No doubt, on domestic issues, he has his reasons, good or ill.  But on the diplomatic front, there seems to be no coherent thought behind what he does; he and his minions have no clue.

This is why the world now seems even more perilous than it did when Obama took office.

The problem is not just that the War on Terror, and its continuation under Obama, has been stupendously counter-productive; that it has conjured up terrorists faster than assassins and drones and “boots on the ground” can kill them.

It is becoming just as clear that the Bush-Obama wars have destabilized the entire region – from Libya to Pakistan, and lately, under Obama’s aegis, from the banks of the Tigris to the Mediterranean Sea.

East Africa and Muslim areas as far away as the Pacific Ocean have also felt the brunt, and are worse off for it.

The Bush-Obama wars have also strengthened Iran’s role as a regional power.  Whether or not this is a good thing, it is hardly what the United States and Israel had in mind.

Of course, cluelessness is a two-edged sword.   Latin America has benefited enormously from the fact that the United States is mired down in several Middle Eastern quagmires.

While Bush and Obama were otherwise distracted, popular democratic movements in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and Uruguay were able to flourish and even come to power.  The governments of Brazil and Argentina veered leftward as well.

And, despite several attempts since 9/11 – the latest still underway – the United States has been unable to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela.  America’s never-ending war against Cuba has gotten nowhere either.

South of the border, the 9/11 attacks – or rather the American reaction to them — were, so to speak, a godsend.

It is now becoming clear that, in at least one respect, it has been the same for the rest of the world too.  America’s counter-productive maneuverings throughout the Muslim world brought American and European plans to bring the EU right up to Russia’s borders, and to encircle it with NATO bases, to a temporary halt.

That plan was proceeding apace in the Clinton days.  Russia then was hardly in a position to resist – not with kleptocrats running the country, and with the vast majority of Russians undergoing the hardships and social dislocations brought on by the restoration of a retrograde economic system.

America’s and Europe’s (mainly Germany’s) success in dismembering Yugoslavia provided valuable lessons and also encouragement.  With a new millennium dawning, it looked like full speed ahead.

But then came 9/11 and priorities changed.  Now, it seems they are changing back.

Evidently, our foreign policy wallahs have come to believe that in addition to carrying on in the Middle East, central Asia and the Indian sub-content, it is time to put Russia back in the crosshairs as well.

This too may be about oil, at least to some extent; but that is not the main thing.  And it goes far beyond the exigencies of running a global empire or making the world safe – or safer – for Western capitalists.

Western capitalists don’t need a revival of eastern European fascism and anti-Semitism any more than the rest of us do.  Neither do they – or we — need Al Qaeda-like movements to flourish throughout the Middle East or central and southern Asia.

But that is where our leaders’ policies lead.  Needless to say, it is not what they have in mind.  But then what do they have in mind?  Nothing remotely coherent, most likely; they know not what they do.

Yet onward they go.  With the old Soviet “satellites” currently ensconced in America’s and Europe’s ambit, all that is left is to bring the EU and NATO into the old Soviet Union itself.

The idea is ludicrous, and not just because Russia now is far stronger than it was in the nineties.  If the American empire were in competent hands, it wouldn’t be happening.

Overthrowing recalcitrant governments is old hat for the empire’s stewards.  Their timeworn method was perfected first in Latin America.  After World War II, it was deployed around the world.

The formula is simple: spend serious money stirring up chaos.  Then, when the time is right, discreetly support coups d’état perpetrated by clients or friends.

This is what they are doing right now – so far unsuccessfully – in Venezuela.

But, until now, our leaders always had the good sense to confine their machinations to American spheres of influence or to peripheral areas that did not raise serious security concerns for other major powers.

After World War II, no power was more major than the Soviet Union.  Encouraging dissidents there and in Eastern Europe was acceptable.  But no sane leader would actively encourage “regime change”; not with the possibility that a nuclear war would result.  Eisenhower’s role in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was exemplary in this respect.

Post-1991 Russia was still able to reduce the world to rubble.  Therefore, even Bill Clinton showed some restraint.  Circumstances emboldened him – but not to the point of recklessness.  And he got away with it.

It is unlikely that his First Lady had much to do with plans for enlarging the EU or for bringing NATO up to Russia’s borders.  That doesn’t seem to have been on her to-do list when she was Obama’s Secretary of State either.

But Hillary Clinton is quick to jump on whatever bandwagon is passing by, and so she has lately taken up the cause.  In her opening salvo, she famously likened Vladimir Putin to Hitler.

A dumb remark; though, considering the source, that is only to be expected.

Obama went beyond dumb.   Speaking in Belgium after meeting with the leaders of the G7 (plus and now minus 1), he went out of his way to insult his (disinvited) Russian counterpart, calling him a leader of a regional power whose actions betoken weakness.  Obama calling Putin weak!  How did he keep a straight face?

But then how does he keep a straight face when he accuses Putin of violating international law?  The man continues to amaze.

Is reviving Clinton-era policies towards Russia his idea too?   Or should we blame lesser eminences like John Kerry or those dreadful “humanitarian interveners” Obama empowered?  Whoever is at fault, putting Russia’s security interests in jeopardy is the worst idea that has come along since George W. Bush left the White House in ignominy.

It was for not being associated with ideas like that that it used to be possible to argue that Obama really was the lesser evil in 2008, when he ran against John McCain.  Despite McCain’s inclination of late to put his recklessness and bad judgment on display, it now looks like it was more of a tie.

In any case, it is already plain that the Americans and Europeans – and the Ukrainian nationalists whose “revolution” they encouraged – lost in at least one key respect; Russia’s annexation of the Crimea will hold.

For all their faults, Putin and his crew so far outclass Obama and his that when they set their minds to it, they get their way, even when their hand is weaker.

Fortunately, they are not only smarter; they are also wiser.  They know when not to push their luck; and also, let us hope, how to deal with opponents who are as clueless as theirs are.

This is why we will probably dodge the bullet this time too; the perils Obama et. al. let loose upon the world by setting their sights on Ukraine will probably stay contained.

Unlike the United States, Russia does have legitimate security interests in goings-on in the former Soviet republics.  Obama and the others are therefore like little kids playing with matches.  Fortunately, though, it seems that the Russians also know how to resist egregious provocations.

Because provoked they have been, and will continue to be.  Obama could always decide to put a lid on it, but so far he has been doing just the opposite.

In recent days, anti-Russian animosity seems even to have overcome Washington’s gridlock.  And where Democrats and Republicans go, so go the mainstream media.  The usual suspects are busily doing all they can to whip up a ruckus.

Not since the build-up to the Iraq War has so much wrong-headed pro-regime propaganda spilled forth from their quarters.  NPR has become especially unbearable.  I, for one, can no longer keep it tuned in for background noise.

If the Russians were to stoop to Obama’s level by taking his bait, the consequences would be dire.

And the prospects would be no better if they acquiesce.  Team Obama gets its way so seldom than when they do it only encourages them.

Therefore, if they are not stopped in their tracks, their provocations will continue and become increasingly dangerous.  There are other former Soviet republics out there, after all; and we should not forget that Obama is still itching to “pivot towards Asia.”

In other words, he has China in his sights too.  Too bad he doesn’t also have prudence in his head.

How ironic – and pathetic — that our best hope for avoiding the consequences of Bush-Obama policies lies with a conservative Russian strong-man — a leader with autocratic inclinations, but also with political skills, a sense of history, and the wisdom not to act out foolishly.

This is not how it is supposed to be in a democracy; it only shows how distant our democracy is from the ideal.  But with inept and clueless leaders at the helm – and a political system too corrupt and degraded to provide the change voters want – this, for the time being, is where “hope” resides.

ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

US military says Martin Luther King would be proud of its weapons

A repellent piece of propaganda appropriates the words and images of this nonviolence advocate to glorify US militarism

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• • Glenn Greenwald
  • theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 January 2013 21.34 GMT
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A posting from the US Air Force's Global Strike Team claims Martin Luther King would be "proud" of its weapons. Photograph: screen grab of US Air Force release.

(updated below)
Yesterday, I highlighted the extraordinary anti-war speech Martin Luther Kinggave in 1967, in which he said, among other things, that the US government is "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and the leading exponent of "the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long." The speech was devoted to arguing that America's militarism and war-fighting were degrading the soul of the nation and the citizenry and - for financial, political and cultural reasons - were making domestic progress impossible.

The US Air Force's Global Strike Command yesterday posted a truly vile bit of propaganda in which it appropriates King's image, name and words in order to claim that he would "be proud to see our Global Strike team . . .standing side-by-side ensuring the most powerful weapons in the US arsenal remain the credible bedrock of our national defense" (ellipses in original):

"The Department of Defense is a leader in equal opportunity for all patriots seeking to serve this great nation. . . The vigilant warriors in AFGSC understand they are all equal and unified in purpose to provide a safe, secure and effective deterrent force for the United States. . . .

"Dr. King would be proud to see our Global Strike team - comprised of Airmen, civilians and contractors from every race, creed, background and religion - standing side-by-side ensuring the most powerful weapons in the US arsenal remain the credible bedrock of our national defense. . . Our team must overlook our differences to ensure perfection as we maintain and operate our weapon systems. . . Maintaining our commitment to our Global Strike team, our families and our nation is a fitting tribute to Dr. King as we celebrate his legacy."

The US military - which is currently bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen at least, all in secret - just exploited one of the 20th Century's greatest proponents of nonviolence and most vehement opponents of US militarism as a public face for its aggression and violence in the world. While King may have preferred to see an integrated military rather than one divided by racial strife, his condemnations of US militarism were particularly harsh when it came to the way the US military taught American citizens to embrace a culture of violence ("I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government").

The self-described mission of the Global Strike Command is to "develop and provide combat-ready forces for nuclear deterrence and global strike operations". The US military is actually publicly claiming that the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner and steadfast critic of US imperialism would be an admirer of its massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, its global assassination programs, and its covert use of violence in multiple countries around the world, including where no wars are declared (in fairness, though, its Commander in Chief is himself a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize). Merely to describe this agitprop is to illustrate its repulsiveness.

"Dirty Wars"

The great war journalist Jeremy Scahill, and the accomplished filmmaker Rick Rowley, have just premiered their new documentary, "Dirty Wars", at the Sundance Film Festival. I hosted a panel discussion of political documentarians in New York several months ago that included Scahill and "Dirty Wars", and this film - which chronicles the Obama administration's secret wars in Yemen and other places - will make a huge impact. I really encourage you to watch or read the transcript of the interview Scahill and Rowley did today on Democracy Now about their new film and the militaristic policies of the Obama administration. As you do so, I don't think you'll have much doubt about whether "Dr. King would be proud" of these policies.

UPDATE

Having the military exploit Martin Luther King to support the militarism which he despised seems to be a trend. Here's a tweet posted on the official account of the US Marine Corps on Monday:

And an article posted on the official Pentagon website last year during the week of King's birthday celebration expressly argued that King would support current US wars:

This isn't a grotesque one-time aberration but rather a grotesque, institution-wide propaganda theme: to hold up Martin Luther King, of all people, as the justifying symbol of US aggression. That is just unspeakably foul.