The Drooling Beast Of War Is Forever Hungry

July 13, 2010

Courtesy Of "The Power Of Narrative"

Let's consider a typical example of the nonstop propaganda onslaught that passes for "news" in the land of the free, which is also home to a gloriously free press, the noble, peace-loving United States. You can perform a similar exercise with any number of "news" stories on any day of the week. In fact, that was the assignment I gave myself this morning: let's take a quick glance at today's stories and see how the propaganda machine fares. It took me literally two minutes to find the specimen used for this exercise, a story in The Washington Post.

I'll get to that story in just a moment. For what follows, we must always remember the ultimate foundation of U.S. foreign policy:

The Democrats and Republicans, the governing class, and the foreign policy establishment all agree that that our foreign policy should be directed to ensuring global hegemony for the United States. See my series "Dominion Over the World" for the details. They all agree that the United States is "entitled" to direct events around the world, and that we must have the most powerful military the world has ever seen to make certain that our will can never be thwarted. They all agree that we must always have our way. There is no country and no event around the world that is immune to our interference. With only a handful of exceptions, no one in government or in a position of significant influence thinks otherwise. ... If you have any remaining doubts on this score, read Barack Obama's recent foreign policy address. A more complete compendium of the vacuous but deadly phrases expressing belief in "American exceptionalism," our indisputable "right" to rule the world, and the religious belief in U.S. "indispensability" would be close to impossible to find.

That's from an article I wrote more than three years ago, in April 2007: "Theater of Death." Most of the article focuses on the criminal U.S. occupation of Iraq, and my primary theme was that:

WE

ARE

NOT

LEAVING.

I also discussed what was then the most recent Iraq funding bill and noted that "the NYT plasters an entirely false headline on its story: 'War Bill Passes House, Requiring an Iraq Pullout.'" As I pointed out in no doubt tedious detail, the characterization in the headline was an outright lie, part of the standard repertoire of lies peddled by the government-media establishment, lies which much of the public and most commentators happily ingest and then spit up as required.

In the course of dissecting the legislation's lies, I wrote:

What is "good" about the Democrats' spending bill? It is utterly toothless and non-binding. It will fund the murder and devastation for at least another year, in a war that was a monstrous war crime from the moment it began. Even if the "guidelines" were to be followed, a minimum of 50,000 American troops will remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future, probably for decades to come. The enduring bases will remain, as will the Baghdad embassy.

Now consider today's story. A large part of the Washington Post article seeks to reassure the American public that they can continue in their complacency and in their unbreached determination to ignore the ongoing war crime that may not be identified, analyzed or condemned. In its unquestioning role as enthusiastic servant of and adjunct to the criminal ruling class, WaPo informs us that "the top U.S. military commander in Iraq," Gen. Ray "Odierno reaffirmed that the U.S. troop withdrawal remains on track even though Iraq has yet to form a new government, more than four months after the national election." See? The U.S. is leaving. Huzzah! Back to your fave teevee program.

But, uh-oh, what's this? Earlier in the story, we're told: "By September, only 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq." Gotta love that "only." And not only that, the story also tells us that "the U.S. military [is] moving out of smaller bases to larger, more densely populated bases." But the U.S. is leaving! That's not cognitive dissonance you're feeling. You're suffering from a deficit of "confidence" in the nobility of your admirably far-seeing leaders. You are a bad American. Why don't you believe what they're telling you? You want evidence that what they're saying is actually true? Bad, bad American. And what's that? Lots of non-military personnel will remain in Iraq? Aw, you're just making that up. Besides, are you suggesting we should just abandon the Iraqis? After all we've done for them? Genocides don't happen by themselves!

I mention these details from today's story in conjunction with my observations from three years ago to show you that I do indeed have a direct line to God. In fact, I go through this exercise to demonstrate that if you pay attention to the frequently proclaimed, explicit and unambiguous goals of the ruling class, and if you decline to partake of the daily diet of lies, developments of this kind will be entirely unsurprising to you.

But in one sense, all of that is background. The other major element in the WaPo story is the continuing demonization of Iran. This particular article doesn't mention the frightening spectacle of Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons -- which I note the NYT, another wonderfully free and independent "news" organ, has insisted Iran has been after as long ago as October 2005: "Iran has a nuclear weapons program." I guess the wonderfully peace-loving editors at WaPo decided that, at least on this occasion, we're all sufficiently convinced and terrified that the evil, crazy Iranians might blow us all to kingdom come by the weekend at the latest. I suspect the powers that be at WaPo also believe that it's more effective to spread unreasoning terror and hatred among the bovine public by focusing on one aspect of the enemy's fathomless malevolence at a time.

And what do you suppose is the single greatest threat to U.S. troops in Iraq? You know, the troops that are "leaving." Ah, you got it. That's right: the single greatest threat to the troops that aren't really there (and even if they are, what do you care?) is ... Iran!

The U.S. military has beefed up security at some of its bases after a threat that an Iranian-backed militant group was planning to attack, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Tuesday.

Men from Kataib Hezbollah, a Shiite group that U.S. officials say is trained and funded by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, crossed into Iran for training and returned to conduct attacks just as U.S. troop levels plummet over the summer, Gen. Ray Odierno said. By September, only 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq.

"In the last couple weeks there's been an increased threat," Odierno said in a briefing to reporters. "We've increased our security on some of our bases. We've also increased activity with the Iraqi Security Forces. This is another attempt by Iran and others to influence the U.S. role here inside Iraq."

So far the threat has not manifested, he said.

...

The Kataib Hezbollah group is plotting to use powerful rocket-propelled bombs called Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs, Odierno said. The short-range projectiles are propane tanks packed with explosives and launched with 107 mm rockets, often off the back of pick-up trucks. With the U.S. military moving out of smaller bases to larger, more densely populated bases the IRAMs could be particularly lethal.

"There is a very consistent threat from Iranian surrogates operating in Iraq," Odierno said. "Whether it's connected directly to the Iranian government? We can argue about that. But it's clearly connected to" the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Odierno said! And "U.S. officials" said! And said and said and said. It's good enough for WaPo. It surely should be enough for all right-thinking Americans.

And about this: "This is another attempt by Iran and others to influence the U.S. role here inside Iraq." I've tried very, very hard, but I simply can't get my brain to absorb how ungraspably evil this is. Imagine that Iran -- a country that is actually there in the Middle East and actually surrounded by U.S. troops and a huge number of weapons of endless variety, and which has to endure regular threats of destruction of all kinds including complete annihilation, if Iran does not do exactly as the U.S. demands, even though the U.S. has no conceivable right to make any such demands whatsoever -- might try to influence events happening right next door. And never you mind that the U.S. has no damnable right to be in Iraq at all and never had such a right, and that the U.S. invasion and unending occupation thus constitute a monstrous series of war crimes.

Our ruling class is absolutely convinced that the U.S. is entitled to world hegemony. Lord knows they've said so often enough. In their neverending determination to have their way, they will utilize covert operations, rebellions which they instigate, deadly economic sanctions, and many other methods. And there is always, always the threat of outright attack and war as the final card to be played. Moreover, all those military contracts are worth countless billions and billions of dollars and require huge numbers of people to fulfill. It's good for the economy! You must realize how crucial that is, especially in these perilous economic times. Think of the drive to achieve and maintain world hegemony as a "Full-Employment, Full-Destruction, Widespread-Death Act." You gotta admit that it's a plan.

And in this unending campaign of devastation, they need a continual supply of enemies. If actual enemies fail to appear, that's never a problem. They can and will supply those as required. The national media will happily repeat and amplify the theme, along with the hatred and the rage.

I suppose that those few people who struggle to tenuously maintain a few slender connections to facts and reality might have thought that events of the last decade in particular would result in a humbling of the ruling class's lethal ambitions. As today's story demonstrates once again -- and there are many such stories every single day -- they would be completely wrong. As I remarked a few years ago:

When we come upon a murderer covered with the blood of victims who never threatened him, we do not defend him by appealing to his "good intentions" or by claiming that "he meant well" -- at least, we do not if we seek to remain civilized.

In terms of its foreign policy of aggressive, ceaseless, violent interventionism, the United States has been a murderer of this kind on the world stage for over a century. And our ruling class continues to state repeatedly, in a manner demanding that we credit the assertions, that their infernal and bloody work is far from done.

posted by Arthur Silber at 8:00 AM