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Mark Vorpahl

For Anarchists, classes exist because of the state. Without the state, society would by definition be classless. Therefore, Anarchists main aim is to liquidate the state. Only after this will it be possible to build a classless society based on mutual cooperation. For Marxists, in contrast, the state arose as a result of class conflict […]

In discussing Anarchism and Marxism with U.S. activists, there is an immediate challenge. Even on the issues that have traditionally separated these ideologies, there are many variations among those who belong to either camp that can create confusion, especially for those new to the discussion. This situation can largely be explained by the current failure of either Anarchist or Marxist political traditions to take deep roots on a mass level in the U.S. working class. Without such roots, adherents to these two political trends are more prone to develop isolated variations in belief and practice that are at odds with their historical tenet because these variations do not have the opportunity to be tested in mass organizations. Consequently, for U.S. radicals, the distinguishing features of Anarchism and Marxism become muddled and appear remote from their day-to-day activity.
In spite of this, there are important similarities and differences between Anarchism and Marxism when it comes to revolutionary perspectives and social movement building. In this article, I will try to begin to describe these issues, recognizing that not all of the statements that are ascribed to those who call themselves Anarchists or Marxists will be recognized as statements that describe each individual’s beliefs.

Common Ground

Both Anarchism and Marxism were developed during the industrial revolution. They share a significant amount of common ground.
Both Anarchism and Marxism are anti-capitalist. Their aim is not to reform capitalism into something kinder and gentler, but to eliminate it as a system because it is inherently based on worker exploitation and oppression.
Both Anarchists and Marxists believe it is the task of the oppressed to liberate themselves rather than trying to pressure the capitalist class to reform capitalism.
Both Anarchists and Marxists see the state as an instrument of class oppression. Therefore, both aim to completely dismantle the capitalist state.
Finally, both Anarchists and Marxists aim to create a classless and stateless society based on mutual cooperation.

Differing Revolutionary Perspectives

Some of the more fundamental differences between Anarchism and Marxism revolve around how to achieve a classless, stateless society. Before examining these differences, let’s explain what the state is so that everyone is on the same page.
Fundamentally, the state is special armed bodies and, behind them, the bureaucratic agencies, administrative and legislative bodies, laws, and jails, that act as coercive forces to defend and promote the interests of the ruling class against all others. During the times of Ancient Greek and Roman slaveocracy, the state would defend and promote the interests of the slave-holders against the slaves. In modern times, the state defends and promotes the interests of the capitalists against workers or wage slaves.
For Anarchists, classes exist because of the state. Without the state, society would by definition be classless. Therefore, Anarchists main aim is to liquidate the state. Only after this will it be possible to build a classless society based on mutual cooperation.
For Marxists, in contrast, the state arose as a result of class conflict to assure the victory of a powerful minority class against the majority. It was the development of different classes, arising out of societies evolving productive means and relationships, which necessitated the creation of the state.

Like Anarchists, Marxists aim to dismantle the capitalist state. In fact, for Marxists, this is what distinguishes working class revolution from the capitalist revolutions against feudalism. After the working class establishment of the Paris Commune in 1871, Marx observed that while with the capitalist revolutions the capitalists took control over the state armies and bureaucracies, workers do not have that option when combating the capitalists. In Marx’s words, the state must be smashed.

What After Capitalism’s Defeat?

Marxists and Anarchists start to diverge in their perspectives when it comes to what must be done after the capitalist state is defeated. Since this is the end game for Anarchists, they have no perspectives towards what is necessary after this victory. Marxists, on the other hand, do not believe it will be possible to immediately create a classless, stateless society after the defeat of capitalism. There will be, for a time, counterrevolutionaries that must not be allowed to succeed. Therefore, a state will be needed to repress them.
Furthermore, for Marx, Socialism would have to be based on more developed productive forces than what can be achieved under capitalism. Some kind of state will still be needed for a time to coordinate this develop ment until there is plenty for all and the struggle to fulfill individual material needs is a thing of the past.

The kind of state that Marx envisioned was a workers’ state, where the state would be democratically controlled by the working class as a whole. Marx often described this type of state as “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” For modern readers, after the experience of totalitarian regimes such as fascism and Stalinism, the term “dictatorship” seems to be just the opposite of democracy. However, in Marx’s day, this term had a different meaning. Marx would describe even the most democratic capitalist regimes as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capitalist class). When Marx used the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” he meant that the working class would be firmly in control of the state. This working class control could not be effectively executed without workers’ democracy.
The working class would develop popular assemblies made up of elected delegates from work places, unions, and workers’ districts. These assemblies would be built up from the local to the national level. With the development of such a workers’ state, Marx recognized that there would be a possibility that those democratically charged with the functions of the state, such as the elected delegates or administrators, could develop interests that were not aligned with the interests of the entire working class. To combat the growth of such a bureaucracy Marx advocated that:

1. All elected delegates to the assemblies be subject to immediate recall by a simple majority vote when their base feels it is necessary.
2. That the delegates should make the same amount of income as the average skilled worker and no more than this.
3. Marx also advocated that these assemblies be actual working bodies, executive and legislative at the same time so that they would have the power to implement their policies.

In regards to this last point, Marx was contrasting the functioning of assemblies in a workers’ state to that of parliamentary bodies in capitalist democracies. Under capitalist democracy, representatives are elected to fool working people and create abstract laws, while the real functions of the state are executed behind the scenes in special departments, think tanks, and boards composed of capitalists. In contrast, the workers’ democracy Marx advocated, consisted of elected delegates charged with not only creating laws but executing them as well in a way that was completely transparent and accountable to those who had elected the commune delegates.

We see an example of this kind of workers’ democracy in Venezuela’s community councils and communas. (Communas are composed of elected delegates from the neighborhood organized community councils to deal with issues on a regionwide basis.) In these bodies, not only are decisions made regarding projects and political matters, the delegates are expected to get feedback from and organize their own base to accomplish the decisions. Through this practice of what has been called “Participatory Democracy” the artificial division of executive and legislative functions are dissolved, opening up the decision-making process to grass roots participation and control.

Marx also advocated that the standing army be replaced with an armed populace for their self-defense. In addition, he also advocated that the tasks of the state be simplified until they were no more than simple administrative tasks, determined by a democratically arrived at plan. In doing this, anyone would be capable of executing these tasks and the responsibility for doing this type of work, which had formerly been the responsibility of a handful of state bureaucrats, could be rotated through the populace.

A Temporary Measure

Anarchists oppose the formation of any kind of state because a state is by definition repressive. This is true. However, it must be pointed out that a healthy workers’ state would differ fundamentally from all others that have existed in history in that it would promote and defend the interests of the majority against the minority that had previously exploited and oppressed them. In this sense, it is a semi-state. Consequently, it is a temporary measure. Once the threat of counterrevolution is eliminated and material needs are guaranteed for everyone, and the tasks of the state are reduced to administrative measures, there is no more need for a state. It will wither away and be replaced by the free association of humanity where the freedom of each is dependent on the freedom of all.

In his book State and Revolution, Lenin stated: “The proletariat needs the state only temporarily. We do not at all disagree with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, we must temporarily make use of the instruments resources and methods of state power against the exploiters.”

Similarly, Trotsky wrote in an essay Stalinism and Bolshevisms: “Marxists are wholly in agreement with the anarchists in regard to the final goal: the liquidation of the state. Marxists are statist only to the extent that one cannot achieve the liquidation of the state simply by ignoring it.”

Experience Teaches

It must be pointed out that there has never been an advanced revolutionary movement of working people that has not promoted an alternative form of state within the battle against a capitalist state.

For instance, Venezuela remains a capitalist state in the grips of a revolutionary process. We have seen how its Community Councils, Communas, and popular militias have been developing. These are embryonic forms of a new state — a workers’ state. While the revolution in Venezuela started relatively spontaneously, as it has matured the grass roots have developed more organized forms that have the potential to replace the parliamentary bodies created to serve the oligarchy.

In Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006, the capitalist state was chased out of the area by a spontaneous uprising. From there the people formed APPO (the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) to help to coordinate the struggle and tend to people’s needs. Again, this was the beginning of another state fundamentally different than the capitalist one they were combating.

If the Oaxaca revolution had succeeded and if the Venezuelan one does, it is impossible to believe that those involved in these mass struggles would favor the immediate disbandment of the state bodies that had enabled them to take power. Any serious revolutionary, including many Anarchists in spite of their theoretically categorical rejection of all states, would oppose such a measure since it would result in the abandonment of their efforts to defeat any counterrevolutionary attempts to bring back the rule of a handful of capitalists.

Movement Building

There are other differences between Anarchists and Marxists in relation to movement building as well. Most Anarchist groupings have been traditionally opposed to fighting for political reforms. They tend to believe that political reforms are a distraction from working people’s task of creating a new society and that the struggle for such reforms is corrupting. While they would, for instance, participate in individual strikes that called for a shortening of the workweek, Anarchists such as Bakunin would not participate in mobilizations that called for legislation to shorten the workweek on a national level.

In contrast, as long as the taking of power is not on the immediate agenda, Marxists support organizing for every reform that benefits workers. The organizing of workers independently of the capitalists on a national level in support of such reforms as full employment, a single payer health care plan, or the Employee Free Choice Act can heighten their class-consciousness and aid in the strengthening of their capacity to organize to struggle for more revolutionary demands.

Anarchists traditionally do not support the building of any party. Anarchists such as Bakunin advocated the building of secret revolutionary societies of a few hundred that would live among the masses and, once the masses went into action, the revolutionary societies would support and inflame their revolutionary instincts and act as a midwife to the smashing of the state.

Marxists, on the other hand, struggle for the building of workers’ or labor parties to oppose the capitalist parties. Even if such parties have a reformist leadership (as most do), the Marxists would struggle in these parties to promote putting up a fight against the capitalists, as opposed to merely seeking accommodation with them. It is this policy that differentiates revolutionaries from reformists and helps point working people in a revolutionary direction. The aim of this approach is to organize the entire working class against the capitalists, rather than a few hundred members of secret societies taking matters into their own hands. Furthermore, they would aim to transform such a workers’ party into a revolutionary party and prepare for workers to take state power and run society with democratic institutions of their own creation. For Marxists a socialist revolution is impossible unless it involves the unity of the great majority of the working class bonded together by a militant class-conscious democratic organization.

Immediate Struggles and Program

Finally, there is the issue of how revolutionaries approach immediate struggles. Today, this is where the line between Anarchists and Marxists gets very blurry in practice. Not infrequently, when faced with a living breathing struggle, conducted by real people, there are many Anarchists who act like exemplary Marxists in their approach, while, in contrast, there are many self- identified Marxists who are incapable of making a healthy contribution.

Genuine Marxists develop a program of demands that reflect the pressing needs of working people, like jobs for all unemployed and for the most basic democratic reforms, like taxing the rich to fully fund education and social services which can be a transition towards progressively more revolutionary demands, as working people’s fighting capacity and organizational strength grows in relation to the capitalists. They do this not to create an abstract literary recipe to be applied to all circumstances. Rather, they do this in anticipation of how social movements will mature in hopes of using a Marxist program of demands as a guide towards successfully promoting revolutionary action.

This approach was developed through historical experience. For instance, the desire to keep the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in office gave rise to the mobilization of millions who demanded an end to the 2002 coup. Since then, as a result of the oligarchy’s and U.S. imperialism’s intransigent opposition to Chavez’s presidency, this demand, while still crucial, has been superseded by more revolutionary demands such as the development of Community Councils, workers’ control over workplaces, and to a growing degree, the nationalization of industry and finance under workers’ control. The experience of the people in fighting for the more minimal democratic demand empowered them to struggle for more revolutionary ones. This is because through their unity and mass struggle, the people were able to grow more confident and more aware of their potential power, what they wanted, and how to fight what they are against.

Therefore, even in the smallest union or working class community struggles, Marxists agitate around demands that the participants are willing to mobilize around and build wider unity that challenges the capitalist order. They do not aim to agitate around demands that workers do not yet understand or develop slogans to shock them in an attempt to be the left of the left. This latter ultra-left practice is too often the method of both self-described Marxists and Anarchists. Rather, Marxists focus on being the most committed organizers for what people want and what they are capable of taking action on now, realizing that it is through these experiences that workers develop class consciousness and the ability to fight for more revolutionary demands. Marxist do this with the aim of creating greater unity among workers against the capitalists as well as opening up workers minds to more revolutionary ideas.

In this approach, there is frequently a good amount of agreement between serious Anarchists and Marxists who want to do something. It is in the context of this kind of agreement in mass working class struggles that our other, less immediate differences can be discussed and tested in a comradely way.

Politics,

Wage Slavery in the American Auto Industry: Obama’s Shame

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

Brad Forrest

In an ideal world,
we’d like all our plants to run around the clock, 365 days a year
Ford’s VP of North American manufacturing

The American auto industry is back in business in a big way. The carmakers are making enormous profits, direct from the blood, sweat and tears of autoworkers.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted with glee, “Ford’s North American auto operations racked up $4.77 billion in pretax profit during the first half of this year, while GM North America reported $3.4 billion in earnings before interest and taxes.”

What’s the secret of these enormous profits? The WSJ explains:

…A newly hired Big Three [GM, Ford, Chrysler] factory worker now earns about $15 an hour versus $28 dollars an hour for veteran workers.

But lower wages are just one example of the “new” tactics that the automakers are using to make huge profits, sucked directly from the lifeblood of autoworkers.

Profit making comes as a direct result of pumping unpaid labor from the work force, what Marx referred to as “surplus value.” For example, the employer pays the worker a daily wage, the full value of which is created in only a small part of the workday, while the rest of the day is spent working for free — and creating profit — for the capitalist. Most workers instinctively know that they make more in profits for the boss than they themselves are paid; the theory of surplus value simply explains this obvious fact.

There are three ways that manufacturers can pump unpaid labor out of their workers:

production of Absolute Surplus Value
production of Relative Surplus Value
lower wages.

Absolute Surplus Value production happens when the working day is lengthened. When working more hours, the worker simply has more time to create profits for the boss beyond the value reflected in wages. The WSJ explains:

More flexible union agreements now allow the [auto] companies to build cars for 120 hours a week or more while paying less in overtime pay.

These “flexible union agreements” represent a major loss of power for the autoworkers that were once protected from the super-exploitation that has re-asserted itself in the auto industry.

The second kind of surplus value, “relative surplus value,” is produced through speed-ups, often referred to as “productivity gains” or “efficiencies.” The faster the commodity — cars in this case — are produced, the faster the value of the worker’s wage is created, thus allowing more time for the worker to work exclusively for the profits of the capitalist: the unpaid labor is increased in the same amount of hours worked; the workers simply has worked harder.

In all these methods the muscle and nerves of the overworked employees become frayed while taking a huge toll on the body. Speed-ups and longer hours have turned the American car industry around, says the WSJ article:

“We’ve been able to raise the output of the plant without buying a lot of hardware,” said Scott Garberding, Chrysler’s manufacturing chief.

The money saved on ‘hardware’ [machines] is instead pumped out of the muscle of the autoworkers.

The third way that the autoworkers have increased profits is the most directly exploitative: lower wages. Now that wages have been cut in half, the automakers are cranking up production. Ford’s VP of North American manufacturing enthused:

We didn’t think we could run plants 120 hours [a week] and now we’re doing it pretty routinely.

Now that the auto bosses have thoroughly demoralized the workers into working longer, faster and for less pay, they are bent on producing without any limits. One doesn’t have to be an economist to predict the glut of cars that will take place in the very near future, which will serve to further ruin the position of the auto workers via plant closures, layoffs, and consequently more demands for even lower wages.

President Obama has played an especially nefarious role in this process, through his “auto bailout” plan, which unloaded the whole crisis of the auto industry onto the backs of the workers. In exchange for using federal money to bail out the automakers, Obama demanded that the UAW water down its labor contract, and accept the above exploitative measures, in order to make the car companies “viable” against competing carmakers.

Obama’s quest to increase U.S. exports on the global market means that relatively high wage workers in the U.S. are pitted against workers in other countries in a speedy race to the bottom. Slave wages are the new norm in the American economy.

Instead of fighting against Obama’s auto bailout plan, the UAW leadership surrendered. The pro-corporate leadership of the UAW has even gone so far as to take on investments in the companies they are supposed to be confronting in the interests of the workers. With this poor logic, the union leadership can tell the workers that by working harder, faster, and for lower wages, the workers are really helping themselves, since the UAW has investments in the company.

For example, the UAW health care fund, known as VEBA, which provides health care for retirees, is also a mega-investment fund that relieves the car companies of having to pay health insurance. In 2010 the WSJ reported:

The VEBA relieves the car companies of responsibility of lifelong health-care benefits for 800,000 retired auto workers and their spouses…the fund trust [VEBA] still owns 68 percent of Chrysler common stock and 17.5 percent of GM common stock plus warrants for an additional 2.5 percent. Because of its holdings, the VEBA has a seat on each company’s board, giving the union a voice in running of the companies through the trust.

The United Auto Workers leadership has completely caved in to the logic of the capitalist system. They should be looking out for their members’ interests, not the stock prices of the automakers. The UAW leadership has gotten into a flagrant conflict of interest by owning stock in the companies they are supposed to be battling. The UAW leadership now has an economic incentive to insure that its members are exploited to the limit to raise the profitability of “their’ companies.

The United Auto Workers’ members have to set their house in order. No to the union investing in the companies they should be fighting. No to flexible contracts. No to giveaways on members’ hard won health care. Yes to the struggle for a living wage and humane operations. And in the final analysis, they are going to have to start championing the needs of people in the surrounding community in order to fight for their right to a decent standard of living. In this way the UAW can start to build a powerbase that can benefit not only autoworkers but all working people.

Politics,

Obama’s Far Right Foreign Policy

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

“Show me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.”
— ancient proverb

The conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Syria have one thing in common: the U.S. government is in favor of the groups who aspire to topple — or who have toppled — the government in power. Thus, U.S. politicians are giving either political, financial, or military support to these “opposition” movements.

But in all three cases there are leading groups steering the “opposition” that want absolutely nothing to do with democracy — these groups are as far-right as politics gets: European-style fascism in Ukraine, Islamic extremism in Syria, and in Venezuela the elite-favored tradition of military dictatorships.

But there has been a virtual U.S. media blackout as to the leadership of the movements in Ukraine, Syria, and Venezuela, and for good reason; if these groups come to power, the country will be far worse off than it is now. The American public would give zero support to these groups if they knew the truth, which is why the level of U.S. media misinformation about these groups is as Orwellian as the workings of Obama’s NSA.

Take Ukraine for example. The day after democratically elected government forces fled from the capital Kiev, the successful opposition political leaders sucked the enthusiasm out of the “revolution” when they informed the public that they would be presiding over a “doomed” transitional government, because they “have to make some unpopular decisions.” The new nominee for Prime Minister called his new cabinet a “Kamikaze government.”

The government is suicidal because they are seeking loans from western financial institutions — like the IMF and European Commission — that come at a heavy price; in exchange for money Ukraine will have to implement a massive austerity program where the living standards of Ukrainians will be destroyed in Greek-like fashion.

This was the original reason why the now-ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych began to lean towards Russia, since Putin agreed to give Ukraine the money with no strings attached. Of course, this background information — which is crucial to understanding the events in Ukraine — was simply ignored in the western media, which misleadingly referred to the protests as “pro-EU protests.” It’s true that the suppression of a small pro-EU protest helped ignite wider sections of the population against the Ukrainian government, but the average Ukrainian would of course, not risk life and limb only to be torn asunder by a pro-EU austerity program.

The U.S. media also ignored the motor force of the Ukrainian protesters: the Ukrainian fascist party Svoboda, whose already-large presence in the Ukrainian parliament has been empowered because of the protests. There was yet another U.S. media blackout about the role of Svoboda in the protests, whose members or sympathizers acted as the shock troops against the democratically elected government. As writer Mike Whitney recently noted:

“The United States helped defeat Nazism in World War 2. Obama helped bring it back.”

It’s possible that once the current transitional government completes its austerity-suicide mission, the Svoboda party could then take total power and seek to funnel the immense anger of the austerity programs into anti-Russia and anti-Jewish sentiment. Svoboda was already rewarded for its role in the protests and given six ministerial posts in the transitional government, including the deputy prime minister and the powerful Secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee. But once the transitional government discredits itself with austerity, Svoboda will blame the senior member of the coalition, the “Fatherland” party, and seek to boost itself into total power.

This nightmarish scenario seems entirely possible now, and if it happens, Svoboda will undoubtedly be indebted to President Obama and the U.S. media for their role in giving the protests political cover, not to mention the critical role played by the U.S. in helping strategize the overthrow of Yanukovych — the audio recording of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland goes into Machiavellian detail about how the U.S. was working to bring about the coup; and the significance of this incredible recording was ignored by the U.S. media, which reduced the story to how “rude” Nuland had acted by uttering an expletive about the European Union.

In Syria, Obama has consistently relied on the right-wing extremists as the leaders of the opposition against the Assad government. The role of these al-Qaeda style Islamic extremists has been ignored by the media, even as their atrocities pile up on Youtube.

Syria was one of the most modern, cosmopolitan countries in the Middle East and is now being dragged back to the Dark Ages by Obama’s “allies” on the ground, who would like Syria to look like Saudi Arabia, another “close ally” of the U.S., where there is no such thing as political, religious, or labor-related freedoms.

The Islam of Saudi Arabia is the far-right type favored by the dictatorial monarchy that rule the country. Like its fascist friends of Ukraine, the U.S. is relying on another ultra-right ideology in Syria in order to bring a pro-U.S. government to power.

The newest coalition of Syrian opposition ground forces calls itself the Islamic Front. The U.S. media portrays this group as the “good rebels,” versus the al-Qaeda rebels who are also fighting the Syrian Government. But of course, the U.S. media kept quiet when the most powerful militia inside the Islamic Front, Ahrar al Sham, declared itself to be the “real” representative of al-Qaeda in Syria (U.S. politicians had long known that Ahrar al Sham was ideologically linked to al-Qaeda).

If Obama gets his way and the Islamic Front comes to power, Syria will experience a cultural devolution along similar lines of the Taliban-era Afghanistan. In the meantime, Obama and the U.S. media will continue to give crucial political support to an opposition that deserves none.

Venezuela, too, has recently been in the news, with far-right led opposition protests that the Obama administration is backing 100 percent. An excellent article in The Guardian by Mark Weisbrot outlined the subtle and more direct ways that the Obama administration was giving political and financial support to the Venezuela opposition protests.

In dutiful fashion the U.S. media stayed on message. In a recent pro-opposition op-ed in The New York Times, it was nonchalantly declared, “Clearly, Venezuela is sliding toward dictatorship,” even though there were municipal elections that were just completed across the country, and in the previous year presidential elections occurred, which by all standards were “free and fair.”

If the Venezuelan opposition comes to power, we know exactly what they will do. When they took power briefly in a U.S.-backed military coup in 2002 they immediately disbanded all the democratic institutions that governed the country, since they prefer the type of political system that served them well during their hundreds of years of pre-Chavez dictatorships.

Of course, anybody who sympathizes with the above “opposition” movements are not automatically members of the far-right. One of the successes in this political strategy is the far-right movement’s attempt to tap into existing frustrations, and when the political flames are stoked, the energy is quickly exploited by those leading the movement in an attempt to violently overthrow the government.

Why does the Obama administration choose this type of foreign policy? The main reason is that the above-targeted countries had slid out of the U.S. orbit of control, and only these far-right groups are interested in getting their country back into the U.S. orbit. Ultimately, U.S. capitalists gain mountains of profit when a country is dependent on U.S. loans, U.S.-made weapons, manufactured goods, foodstuffs, etc.

This is why the U.S. establishment — now represented by the Obama administration — will not simply leave Latin America, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe to be independent or fall into the orbit of a competing regional power like Russia. There is simply too much profit at stake. Peace is not an option.

In order to stop the never-ending warmongering of U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. government itself must be fundamentally transformed. The U.S. establishment that favors the capitalist economic system will endlessly provoke wars for profit, while an economic system without a profit-motive will have no need for foreign wars.

Politics,

New Lows for Obama’s Failed Middle East Policy

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

Obama seemed so traumatized by his Middle East blunders he decided to take a break, giving Ukraine a try instead. The distraction was just what the president needed. And the U.S. media followed obediently, while barely glancing at the flames in the rear-view mirror — until another explosion piqued their interest. The predictable break down of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians occurred when the Palestinian Authority backed out of a “peace process” they had zero to gain from.

Yet another failure after a string of Middle East fiascoes: Obama’s failed “surge” in Afghanistan, his disastrous bombing campaign and regime change in Libya (an international crime initially cheered as a “success” in the U.S. media), and his catastrophic proxy war in Syria, which grinds on with no end in sight and which helped re-ignite the Iraq conflict — another “success” turned disaster for U.S. foreign policy.

Obama has turned away in denial from the chaos he helped create, but the Middle East is still there, still in crisis, and balancing on a razor’s edge: Israel has bombed Syria and the Palestinian territories several times in recent months; while al-Qaeda style extremists still dominate giant swaths of Iraq and Syria (thanks to Obama’s Syrian proxy war). Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt are especially combustible, though one could make such an argument for every single country in the region. Obama’s proxy war in Syria is acting as the fuel.

Having turned away from the Middle East, Obama has been throwing fresh flames at Russia; perhaps Obama’s policy in Ukraine — backing a fascist-filled provisional government — will be more successful than his policy in Syria — supporting a Jihadi-packed political opposition.

Like President Bush, Obama prefers the role of arsonist to firefighter.

Obama’s current silence on Middle East issues should be unsettling; he is, of course, not going to simply pack his bags and forget about the region. His so-called “pivot” to Asia — to set China ablaze — has been delayed, there is simply too much at stake in the Middle East, and the U.S. military is stretched too thin.

But what about the peace process Obama started with Syria and Iran? Obama saved face by backing off of his bombing threat in Syria by agreeing to Russia’s removal of chemical weapons and later beginning peace talks with the regional power Iran. This process has stalled, no doubt due to the right-wing pressure in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and in the U.S. corporate elite.

The recent lack of action in the Middle East reflects the crisis of U.S. foreign policy — Obama simply has no idea what to do next; he’s continued the Bush-era policy of tearing the region asunder and, like Bush, he doesn’t have the political-military power to put the smoldering jigsaw back together again — at least not in a way favorable to “U.S. interests.”

The president is under immense pressure from his base: the U.S. corporate elite — especially the military-industrial complex — is demanding that he act tough, especially after he’s been humiliated by his lack of power in Syria and with Russia. The sanctions against Russia are his first timid steps back in the ring after getting his nose bloodied in Syria.

The globe’s only super power will not react to these affronts by adopting a foreign policy of peace. And peace could be easily achieved. The U.S. still has immense diplomatic power in the region, which Obama has used thus far to pressure his Middle East allies — the Gulf monarchy dictatorships — to pursue the Syrian proxy war, as Obama directs the politics and military arms running behind the scenes.

A fair and equitable peace could easily be achieved, and as author Franklin Lamb recently pointed out, Syria and Iran are fulfilling their end of their diplomatic agreements with the U.S. Will Obama respond in kind? Or will he escalate tensions for the sake of re-enforcing “U.S. regional power?”

Unfortunately, peace is never as profitable as war. If Obama leaves the Middle East, Russia and China will fill in the gaps, slurping up the profits that would have otherwise gone to U.S. corporations. And if U.S. corporations felt that they were making enough profit at home, they’d politely bow out of the contest, especially since U.S. foreign policy has been one Godzilla-like disaster after another.

But U.S. corporations remain starving for overseas profits; the U.S. economy is still struggling towards the endlessly promised land of “recovery,” and the really big profits of U.S. corporations have been from foreign investments, using the cheap Fed-printed dollars to speculate in foreign currency and foreign raw materials — an obviously unsustainable strategy. At home U.S. corporations are largely continuing their investment strike, waiting for cheaper labor, additional tax breaks, fewer regulations, and larger guaranteed opportunities for profit than currently exist, which is why corporations are refusing to invest over $7 trillion of hoarded dollars.

A just and fair peace with Iran and Syria would thus be especially infuriating for the corporate U.S. war hawks, since treating Iran and Syria in a fair way would imply that they deserve to be “equal partners” in the foreign policy world, again making the U.S. seem weak, unable to push around “inferior” nations into unequal political and economic arrangements favorable to U.S. corporations — violating the spirit of imperialism.

Another equally vexing problem with creating a fair peace with Iran and Syria is getting “buy in” from their regional rivals, Israel and Saudi Arabia — the two most important regional allies of Obama’s, regardless of their rampant violations of human rights and violent foreign policy.

Egypt, too, has slid out of the grasp of the U.S., which Saudi Arabia is no doubt using as an important regional bargaining chip to lure the U.S. back in the fight against Syria and to crush the Iran peace process. Nothing Obama can do will solve the current dilemma he’s put himself into.

Ultimately, it’s safe to say that Obama is incapable of accomplishing the peace process he started with Iran, Syria and Israel-Palestine. The domestic profit rate of U.S. corporations is too thin, while Saudi Arabia and Israel are determined to go down swinging. All working and poor people have a direct interest in achieving peace in the Middle East, for their own future and the future of the millions suffering from decades of the U.S. foreign policy nightmare of unending war.

Politics,

Obama’s Syrian Policy Vetoed by Assad Election Victory

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

“Assad’s days are numbered” – President Obama, February 2012

Living in denial is the easiest way to avoid hard truths, but it’s a horrible way for a government to conduct foreign policy. Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry recently scoffed at the elections in Syria, calling them “meaningless.” The U.S. media obediently agreed, while the rest of the world drew a much more realistic opinion. It’s true that an election during an ongoing conflict isn’t ideal for democracy, but the deeper truths exposed by the election were completely ignored by the U.S. government and media.

Interestingly, few governments or media outlets doubted that the election in Syria was fair for those who were able to vote. There were no large-scale allegations of fraud, and the numbers announced by the government weren’t seriously contested.

The results of the election weren’t a surprise to anyone familiar with Syrian domestic politics. RT points out the two most obvious reasons Assad’s victory was assured:

1) The president never lost the support of his core constituencies — the Syrian armed forces, the government and business elite, the major cities, the minorities (Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shia, etc.) and secular Sunni (most of the 3 million members of the Baath Party are Sunni).

2) The opposition was fundamentally unable to present a cohesive front and a common political platform — this includes both domestic and external opponents — let alone rally behind a single candidate.

While ignoring these clear truths, John Kerry attempted to justify his characterization of the election as “meaningless,” by adding “…you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote.”

Kerry’s point, although true, would hold greater weight if not for the fact that the Syrian Government controls all but one major city in Syria. Most of the Syrian rebel strength is in the less populated rural areas.

Therefore, it’s quite meaningful that 73 percent of eligible voters went to the polls and that 88 percent of them voted for Assad. Eleven out of 15 million apparently voted. And although one could likely poke further holes in the electoral process, the general sentiment in Syria found expression, the meaning of which was accepted by most of the world.

Equally meaningful was the huge voter turnout in neighboring countries, though especially Lebanon and Jordan, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees voted at the Syrian embassy overwhelmingly in favor of Assad. Of course this fact directly contradicts the longstanding lie that these refugees were all “victims of Assad.”

In fact, Syrian citizens around the world voted at their embassies, overwhelmingly for Assad. This didn’t make the U.S. media think twice about their strict anti-Assad narrative. Ignorance is bliss. The media had a similarly muted attitude when thousands of pro-Assad Syrian protestors across the U.S. attended anti-war protests in response to Obama’s plan to bomb Syria.

Perhaps the deepest truth the Syrian elections exposed is that, were it not for the U.S. and its allies, the war in Syria would have long ago ended, and tens of thousands of lives spared. Millions of refugees would not be homeless.

It’s now very clear that the motor force of war in Syria has long been orchestrated from the outside. The people on the inside want peace. The media has long acknowledged that Obama’s CIA has led regional allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, etc., against the Syrian government, by funneling guns and training foreign fighters. Without this the rebels would have been crushed long ago.

Ultimately the elections proved that the catastrophic war in Syria is not the will of the Syrian people. Many likely voted in favor of Assad simply to show the world that they don’t support the rebels — that they want an immediate end to the insane war that has nearly destroyed an entire nation.

Will Obama listen? Not likely. John Kerry’s blathering about the election was out of sync with most of the world, but in line with the Obama administration’s consistently out of touch perspective about the situation in Syria.

Stunningly, when the official spokeswoman for Obama’s State Department, Jen Pskai was recently asked if the administration still believes that Assad’s “days are numbered,” she responded by saying “yes we do.” Being in denial too long can resemble psychosis.

Obama also recently re-enforced his failed Syria policy in his big speech at the West Point military academy, where he said he would “…ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and brutal dictators.”

To “ramp up” support for the Syrian rebels at this point merely means only one thing; that much more blood is about to be spilled. And for what?

Obama’s West Point plan to “arm the Syrian moderates” is the same worn-out “strategy” that Obama has used since 2011 to justify his support of cash, arms, and training to the Syrian rebels, which has artificially lengthened the Syrian catastrophe while directly resulting in a the revival of Islamic extremism and terrorism in the region.

Ironically, Obama’s West Point speech also mentioned a plan to create a $5 billion dollar regional anti-terrorism fund, no doubt a way to “legally” funnel more money to further target the Assad government while creating yet more terrorists in the process.

It was also revealed recently that Obama is now supplying rebel groups with sophisticated anti-tank missile launchers, ensuring that blood will flow more freely. By continuing down this policy that the Syrian people have clearly rejected, Obama is proving that he cares nothing for democracy nor for the lives of the people in Syria. Nor does he care about the will of the American people: In a 2013 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center “70% of Americans oppose arming the Syrian rebels.”

The number is likely much higher now.

At home and abroad Obama’s Syrian policy has been condemned as a failure, yet he shows no signs of stopping, even after most Syrians voted for peace. This is the same peace that Americans and the rest of the world demand.

Politics,

How Obama Lost Iraq and the War on Terror

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

The fall of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, to an al-Qaeda linked militia elicited a curiously muted response from the Obama administration. Yes, Obama “denounced” the terrorist invasion, but when the Iraqi government asked for U.S. airstrikes to repel perhaps the most powerful terrorist group in the world, Obama thus far refused, only hinting at some form of aid in the yet-to-be-determined future.

This is perhaps the first time Obama has initially refused such an offer from an allied government. Indeed, he’s suspected to have approved airstrikes in eight other countries under the guise of fighting terrorism. So why the hesitation?

One might also ask why the Obama administration didn’t act earlier to prevent this invasion, since the Iraqi government has been asking for U.S. aid for over a year to combat the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has been building its strength on the borderlands between Iraq and Syria.

One likely reason that Obama refused aid to his Iraqi ally is that he has other, much closer allies, who are funding the terrorist group invading Iraq. For example, since the war in Syria started, it’s been an open secret that Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia have been giving at least hundreds of millions of dollars to the Islamic extremist groups attacking the Syrian government.

This fact is occasionally mentioned in the mainstream media, but the full implications are never fleshed out, and now that the Syrian war is gushing over its borders the media would rather pretend that ISIS sprang from a desert oasis, rather than the pocket books of the U.S. allied Gulf States.

The Obama administration has consistently looked the other way during this buildup of Islamic extremism, since its foreign policy priority — toppling the secular Syrian government — perfectly aligned with the goals of the terrorists. Thus the terror groups were allowed to grow exponentially, as their ranks were filled with Gulf State cash, foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia and illegal guns trafficked with the help of the CIA.

The Obama administration hid the reality of this dynamic from view, calling the Syrian rebels “moderates” — yet what moderates existed were always a tiny, ineffectual minority. The big dogs in this fight are the Sunni Islamic jihadi groups who view Shia Muslims as heretics worthy of death and other religious and ethnic minorities as second-class citizens polluting their Islamic caliphate.

Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn recently noted:

“ISIS now controls or can operate with impunity in a great stretch of territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, making it militarily the most successful jihadi movement ever.”

Now that ISIS has invaded Iraq, a U.S. ally, you’d think a different approach would be used. But Obama’s hesitation to support the Iraqi government against ISIS may be a reflection of the U.S. having yet more shared goals with the terrorist organization.

For example, the U.S. has never trusted the Iraqi government. Ever since the Iraqi elections brought a Shia-dominated government to power, the Bush and Obama administrations have looked at Iraq as an untrustworthy pawn of Iran. And there is some truth to this: the Shia dominated Iraqi government has many close religious and political ties with Iran.

Further upsetting Obama is that Iraq hasn’t prevented Shia fighters to travel to Syria to fight on the side of Assad. Many in Shia-majority Iraq were stunned by the Sunni extremist massacres against the Syrian Shia population, which consequently drew Iraqi and Hezbollah Shia fighters into the Syrian war. Thus, Iraq was on the “wrong side” of the U.S. sponsored proxy war in Syria. In fact, Iraq went so far as to refuse

Obama’s “request” that Iraq deny Iran use of Iraqi airspace to fly military weapons to Assad. Iraq’s continual refusal to bend to key U.S. demands has strained relations with the U.S. government, which demands obedience from its “allies.”

Most importantly, a strong independent Iraq is seen as a threat to U.S. “regional interests,” since Iraq is a potential ally to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, the regional powers that the U.S. does not have influence over and consequently desires either their “regime change” or annihilation.

Thus, when the Iraqi president came to the U.S. to plead for aid in October to fight ISIS, he was largely given the runaround, as U.S. politicians shifted the focus away from ISIS toward the Iraqi president’s “authoritarian” government. Of course, this criticism was pure hypocrisy; the U.S. never questions its Gulf State allies about their “authoritarianism,” even as these countries continue to be ruled by the most brutal dictatorships on earth.

Some analysts have speculated that Obama will allow the Sunni terror groups to carve out a section of Iraq to help partition the country into smaller nations based on ethnic-religious regions, each represented by a Shia, Sunni, or Kurdish government. This would be the easiest way to ensure that Iraq remains weak and is not a threat to “U.S. interests.” Mike Whitney describes the Iraqi partition idea:

“The plan was first proposed by Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and then-senator Joe Biden. According to The New York Times the ‘so-called soft-partition plan ….calls for dividing Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions…There would be a loose Kurdistan, a loose Shiastan and a loose Sunnistan, all under a big, if weak, Iraq umbrella.’”

The events in Iraq and Syria further prove that the Bush-Obama “war on terror” is not only a complete failure, but a fraud. Bush and Obama have not waged a war against terrorists, but wars against independent nation-states.

The secular nations of Iraq, Libya, and Syria were virtually free of terrorism before U.S. military intervention, and now they’re infested. The war on terror has done nothing but destabilize the Middle East, create more terrorists, and drain the U.S. economy of billions of dollars it could have otherwise used towards jobs and social programs.

history, Politics,

Who Will Save Iraq?

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

“We gave Iraq a chance” – President Obama

Recent events in Iraq are a tiny foreshadowing of horrors to come. A glance at smoldering Syria reveals Iraq’s fate if current events continue. And while such a crisis demands that something be done, the solutions offered will only expedite Iraq’s descent into a prolonged nightmare.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) should strike terror in the hearts of all Iraqis. Unfortunately, however, there are anti-government groups in Iraq making the same foolish mistakes made by the Syrian opposition: both naively treat ISIS — and other al-Qaeda-type groups — as an ally towards bringing down the government. But ISIS remains the leader of this movement, and an ISIS-led government would be an unnecessary tragedy for all Iraqis.

The marriage between ISIS and the Iraqi opposition will be short, and the divorce brutal. Ultimately the broader Sunni-led opposition desperately needs a progressive vision for the country. Simply being anti-government is a shallow goal if the outcome is ISIS coming to power.

The other main force in Sunni-dominated politics are former Baathists who simply want a return to an Iraq where they received special perks while dominating the Shia population. The legitimate grievances of the broader Iraqi Sunni population have no representation in this fight.

Some argue that because ISIS is so horrific that U.S. military intervention is justified, since it would be an actual case of “humanitarian intervention.”

However, ISIS is a Frankensteinan monster raised by the Gulf state monarchies and aided and abetted by the Obama administration. The exceptional Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn recently wrote:

“Since the U.S. supports the Syrian opposition and the Syrian opposition is dominated by ISIS and al-Qa’ida groups, the Iranians wonder if the U.S. might not be complicit in the ISIS blitzkrieg that destabilised [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki and his Shia-dominated pro-Iranian government.”

Yes, Obama’s bloody fingerprints are all over this unfolding crime, which is why the U.S. cannot be relied on to have any positive impact. The U.S. government is incapable of using foreign policy in a “helpful” way. Indeed, the U.S. government prioritizes “U.S. interests,” which have continually led to the train wreck that is currently the Middle East. Obama’s “humanitarian” help in Syria is what led to the disaster now infecting Iraq.

Any U.S. intervention will also empower ISIS, since the majority of Iraqis want U.S. soldiers out of their country, and more U.S. soldiers will simply push the broader Sunni population into the arms of ISIS.

The Shia religious community of Iraq cannot save Iraq for similar reasons. The greater that the Shia community comes together to face ISIS, the more sectarian ammunition ISIS will have to agitate the broader Sunni community, who would otherwise be repulsed by ISIS’ ideology. The lunatic sectarianism of ISIS cannot be countered by a sectarian response without further dragging the country into chaos.

For similar reasons the Iranians can be no help to the situation. Iran is in many ways the leader of the world’s Shia community, and thus despised by the Sunni extremists leading the revolt in Iraq. Any Iranian intervention only helps ISIS attract more recruits. Iran also has its own geo-political interests, which often prioritize brokering a peace/nuclear deal with the U.S., as Iraq and Syria are used as bargaining chips.

An increasingly popular idea to “save Iraq” among U.S. politicians has the greatest potential to destroy it. The solution of partition seems to be gaining ground, where Iraq will be splintered either into independent nations or autonomous zones, dominated by a Sunni, Shia, and a Kurdish region. The U.S. loves partition because it creates weak, easily exploitable countries, which gives greater power to U.S. allies in the region.

History has shown time and again that re-drawing borders on ethnic-religious grounds creates large scale ethnic-religious cleansing, as the new nation seeks to give its majority population a stronger political mandate by getting rid of minorities.

Those minorities who remain become official second class citizens, since they are not believers in the official faith or lack the state blood of the nation (the official blood of the nation state). The splintering of Yugoslavia and India are especially good examples of how partition kills, while Israel and Saudi Arabia are good models that show the psychopathic discrimination embedded in a nation founded on religion.

Many politicians argue that Iraq’s partition is already complete, and refer to it as “de-facto partition.” So, they argue, why not make the reality official by drawing new boarders and creating new states? But such a move would just be the beginning of even greater conflicts, which will exacerbate ethnic-religious cleansing, intensify the war in Syria and give greater license for similar types of proxy wars toward an even greater disintegration of the Middle East.

All of the above solutions to Iraq’s problems are no solutions at all, and must be met with a truly progressive counter-force. The religious extremists who are working collaboratively with corporate politicians to tear apart the Middle East can’t be defeated by competing religious and business interests.

To fight the ideology of religious-ethnic division that is destroying the Middle East, a countervailing force is required which unites, that has the potential to unify the vast majority of people against the minority of economic-religious elites who pursue this destructive divide and rule strategy.

Sunnis, Shias and Kurds have more in common than differences, but their differences are being preyed upon and exacerbated by religious-corporate elites who profit by maintaining their terrible leadership over these communities.

Unity is possible when common interests are focused on, such as the dignity that all people desire that requires a decent, job, education, housing, health care, etc. A political vision that prioritizes these needs can create a new progressive movement, much like the pan-Arab socialist revolutionary movements that transformed the Middle East in the 1950’s and 60’s. But this means that the U.S. government, with its imperialist interests, must not be allowed to intervene.

The Middle East elites used ethnic and religious divisions and foreign intervention to defeat the pan-Arab movement, but the outcome for the Middle East has been nonstop catastrophe. The Middle East cannot be saved outside of a new ideology of political and economic unity, similar to the principles that drove the revolutionary pan-Arab socialist movement in the past.

history, Politics,

Regional War Swallowing the Middle East

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

When the Syrian war jumped its borders into Iraq, surrounding nations had a perfect chance to peacefully cooperate. They’ve thus far refused. The war in Syria now seems to be shifting to Iraq, and the big actors in the regional drama are recklessly pushing events toward more conflict that could transform a regional proxy war into a direct multi-nation battle.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now controls giant swaths of two nations, which are surrounded by countries that either fear ISIS or previously supported it. Old alliances are being tested as Syria and Iran come to the defense of the Iraqi government against ISIS, while the opposing alliance of U.S., Israel and the Gulf State monarchies are finding their unofficial union strained under the pressure of swelling paradoxes.

For example, the U.S. is supposedly fighting a war on terrorism, but has been in an unofficial military alliance with ISIS and other al-Qaeda groups in Syria, since all of them were actively waging war on the Syrian government.

When ISIS invaded Iraq the governments of Syria and Iran immediately offered assistance, while Obama stalled. Then, strangely, Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry “warned” Syria against air attacks targeting ISIS in Iraq, a move that was welcomed by the Iraqi government. Kerry’s warning was also meant for Iran, which is finding itself sucked deeper into the two-nation war that now threatens Iran’s border.

As Iraq, Syria and Iran are busy fighting ISIS, what are the U.S. and Israel doing? They are continuing their war against Syria, the war that gave ISIS a new lease on life.

Iraq begged Obama to deliver promised fighter jets to fight ISIS, Obama chose instead to give extra aid to the U.S. backed Syrian rebels, to the tune of $500 million. The Syrian rebels have been completely dominated by Islamic extremists for at least two years.

Israel, for its part, also ignored ISIS and instead bombed nine Syrian military targets. Israel has bombed Syria several times in the last year, rather than bombing ISIS or the other al-Qaeda groups attacking Syria. In reality, an emerging regional war already exists, but is being minimized or ignored by the media.

Because the U.S. would rather fund Islamic extremists in Syria, the Iraqi government requested and received fighter jets from Russia, which will inevitably create more strain between the Iraqi and U.S. governments, since giving and receiving military aid is a crucial way that countries cement alliances and exert influence.

When nations that receive military aid are disobedient, the big war toys are held back as a way to exert leverage. The Iraqi President, Nouri al-Maliki, let his political naivety blind him to this reality, and recently admitted that Iraq was “delusional” to rely completely on U.S. military aid, since Obama is using the ISIS threat and the withholding of aid to pressure Iraqi politicians to ditch al-Maliki, essentially a “legal” form of regime change that will act more in accord with U.S. interests against Iran and Syria. Obama has wanted to replace al-Maliki ever since the Iraqi president refused to join Obama’s war against Syria.

As the Syria-Iraq war expands, the greater the gravitational pull it will exert on surrounding nations, who can’t resist the big profits associated with mass killing. Others will participate indirectly to protect their borders, until they too are drawn in by the centripetal forces of war.

After participating in the Syrian war through proxies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Obama administration finds itself neck deep in the Syrian-Iraqi blood bath, finding it difficult not to join the other sharks in the feeding frenzy.

Obama’s “hands off” approach to Iraq is temporary and strategic, and is in reality “hands on” behind the scenes. As the war spreads across borders Obama will find it less possible to abstain, since Iran, Syria and Russia will gain wider regional influence at his expense, which is happening by the minute.

The Syria-Iraq war is testing the resilience of decades-long alliances, even the future of the modern nation state, which lies at the foundation of post-WWII international law. This legal sanctity of the nation-state was emphasized by the Nuremberg trials after WWII, which established that the Nazis biggest war crime was not genocide or the holocaust, but the military invasion of sovereign nations, which created the conditions for regional and world war. The only legal war under international law is a defensive one.

But now regional wars are becoming commonplace, and borders are ignored as big powers pay and arm proxy militias to attack governments. More importantly, the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have essentially eviscerated global international law, since the UN has been powerless in protecting sovereign nations against the aggression of the world’s only superpower. The U.S. invasions have created a climate where the nation-state has lost its revered status, increasing the likelihood of more war, since the old rules no longer apply.

Obama’s recent actions prove he has no intention of leaving the Middle East. As the Syrian war was spilling into Iraq, Obama requested $5 billion more for Middle East war, as if the gargantuan military budget wasn’t already enough. According to The New York Times:

“The White House is asking for $4 billion to go to the Pentagon and $1 billion to the State Department for other counterterrorism operations, including training and equipping partner countries (Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Some of the money, administration officials said, would cover increased costs of Special Operations Forces that have deployed around the world, while $1.5 billion would go toward counterterrorism efforts in the neighborhood around Syria: Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.”

This $5 billion represents yet more blood money that will inevitably exacerbate the Middle East inferno. Years of ongoing U.S. military intervention — direct or indirect — has led to the unnecessary death or suffering of millions of people across the Middle East and to the large-scale destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and now Iraq again.

It is possible, as some are predicting, that Obama will complete a major diplomatic deal that includes Iran and the Kurdish section of Iraq. This, if successful, may create a temporary reprieve from the violence, while creating new ethnic-religious tensions that will inevitably explode again. Any temporary deal will not eliminate the deeper causes of the war, which lie in the waning influence of the U.S. and its allies, and the rising influence of China and Russia.

All these developments emphasize the need to revive the antiwar movement here in the U.S. Those who oppose U.S. government military adventures around the world should unite and demand that no troops be sent to Iraq, that the U.S. advisors in Iraq should be brought home, and that money should be spent on jobs, education and strengthening the safety net here at home, not on war.

Politics,

How Obama is a Direct Accomplice in Israeli War Crimes

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

To assist in a crime makes one a criminal by any legal standard. And the biggest crimes of all are war crimes, since they kill en masse and showcase the cruelest form of human behavior.

The fact that Israel is actively committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip is not open to debate, since a cursory glance at the conflict obviously exposes them in practice.

The two most glaring war crimes Israel is committing — as defined by the Geneva Convention — are the concepts of “collective punishment” and “necessity and proportionality.”

Under collective punishment, a warring party cannot respond to an attack by waging war on the attacker’s community, as is clearly happening in Gaza. The clearest proof that collective punishment is being used is that a 1,000 Gaza homes have been destroyed and the majority of the casualties are civilians.

Under “necessity and proportionality” a warring party must only use the amount of force necessary to defeat the opponent; disproportional force is a crime. So, for example, if Hamas fires wimpy rockets that kill virtually no Israelis, then it is “disproportionate” for Israel to rain massive bombs, missiles, and artillery to reduce large sections of Gaza to rubble. Even Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called the Israel attack a “deliberately disproportiate form of collective punishment.”

It is also a specific war crime to deliberately attack civilians, and especially to attack facilities treating the wounded. But Israel has attacked al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza four times, according to Reuters. The latest shelling of al-Aqsa killed 4 and wounded 70.

Even the pro-western Human Rights Watch has denounced Israel for committing war crimes:

“Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war.”

Obama’s aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes is also closed to debate, since his administration stands guilty from the very beginning of the conflict by shielding Israel from international political pressure, hiding its war crimes by deliberate misrepresenting what is happening, and giving political space for the war to continue by not intervening directly.

It was a blatantly laughable lie when Obama said that his government was “using all means” to achieve a ceasefire early in the conflict.

The U.S. influence over Israel is tremendous, and Obama could have ended the conflict in the first hour by simply declaring, “If Israel does not stop its attack on Gaza, the U.S. will refuse further military and financial assistance and sever all diplomatic and political ties.” War over.

Instead of taking this action, or any action for that matter, Obama sat on the sidelines. In fact, Obama deliberately waited until the end of the second week of the war to even send his Secretary of State John Kerry to broker a ceasefire deal. Of course, Obama could have come himself.

Obama further assisted in Israeli war crimes by repeatedly justifying Israel’s right to commit them, deceitfully placing all Israel’s actions under the big umbrella of “self-defense.” Again, war crimes are war crimes and were purposefully created to trump any excuse of self-defense.

After ten days of a brutal bombing campaign an Israeli ground invasion was announced, which everyone knew would intensify the bloodshed. This would have been a key moment for the U.S. government to finally intervene. But instead, as ABC News reports:

“President Barack Obama said Friday that he encouraged Israel’s leader to minimize civilian deaths in its ground push into Hamas-ruled Gaza, while letting him know that the U.S. supports Israel’s right to self defense.”

A statement like this can be interpreted to mean only one thing: a green light to continue the massacre.

When John Kerry was finally sent to the Middle East to broker a peace deal, he was still making excuses for Israeli’s war crimes. USA Today reports:

“Kerry also blamed the latest wave of violence on what he called Israel’s “legitimate” efforts to pursue and punish those who last month kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers whose bodies were found in the West Bank.”

Again, bombing a whole city because three Israeli teens were killed is disproportional collective punishment — war crimes. There is also no evidence that Hamas is responsible for the death of three Israeli teens, which it has denied since day one.

The colossally disproportionate aspect of the war has been continually smoothed over by the Obama administration, which consistently lumps Palestinian and Israeli civilian deaths evenly together, as if they were happening with equal frequency. But in reality the 550 Palestinians that have been killed and 3,500 wounded are mostly civilians, while the few dozen Israeli’s who’ve died have been mostly soldiers.

How dangerous are the Hamas rockets that the Obama administration endlessly talks about? CBS news recently reported:

“Hamas also fired 50 more rockets at Israel, including two at Tel Aviv, causing no injuries or damage.”

This has been the story of the conflict in which Obama has justified the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip by continually saying “no nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders.”

Obama’s muted language about Israel’s aggression can be compared to the recently shot down Malaysian jet, for which Obama summoned his “outrage” while instantly blaming the pro-Russian Ukrainians, though without a shred of evidence.

But most of the world believes Israel’s actions are outrageous, an opinion not allowed to be expressed at the United Nations, thanks again to the Obama administration, which used its clout to sterilize Israel’s actions by limiting the UN’s statement on the conflict.

Specifically, the Obama administration used its influence over the UN Security Council to limit its statement to “serious concern” about civilian casualties on “both sides” of the conflict, thus white washing the nature of events and providing the aggressor with invaluable political breathing space.

The Obama administration has also assisted Israeli War Crimes by continually blaming Hamas for not agreeing to the Egyptian brokered ceasefire agreement. Hamas is the elected government of the Gaza Strip, and thus has a right to not agree to a ceasefire agreement. But of course Hamas’ not agreeing to the Egyptian agreement does not justify a continual Israeli blitzkrieg of the Gaza Strip, though the Obama administration’s logic implies exactly this.

Lastly, the Obama administration has consistently lied about the origins of this bloodbath. The three dead Israeli teens were not the cause of this conflict, but the pretext, which the Israeli government consciously exploited to promote war among the Israeli population.

The real cause of the war was the recent alliance between the Palestinian Authority — which governs the West Bank — and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip. This alliance gave the Palestinians their strongest hand in bargaining with Israel in perhaps decades, which was enough to spark a new round of massacres from the Israeli government in an effort to re-balance the bargaining table.

This ongoing bloody dynamic continues in large part because the U.S. government allows it. The vast majority of people across the world are denouncing Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians, and so too must U.S. citizens denounce their government’s criminal actions in assisting Israeli war crimes.

Politics,

How U.S. Support of Israel Undermines the U.S.

by Patricia ThomasMay 7, 2021

Blasting Gaza into rubble has affected the average American in ways that U.S. politicians will learn to regret. The result is more than bleeding heart sympathy for dead Palestinian children (430 at last count). There is a deeper political effect happening, as young and old alike realize for the first time the cancerous lies coursing through the veins of the U.S. media and political system.

The U.S. government’s support of Israel — which includes Obama and all 100 senators — further exposes the gigantic clash between the unpopular foreign policy of the U.S. versus the desires of its residents. The government will be further pushed by corporate interests to pursue these profitable overseas policies, which are teaching millions of people about the reality of their government, consequently undermining the “stable foundation” of the U.S. government.

Merely glancing at the casualty statistics was enough for most Americans to know their TV was lying to them: 1900 Palestinians have died, 10,0000 have been injured — 80 percent of them civilians. Meanwhile, three Israeli civilians have died, zero injured. There is more damage after a Super Bowl victory party than Israel has suffered from Hamas’ laughable fireworks.

Americans reacted in horror to Israel’s massively disproportionate violence — an obvious war crime as defined by the Geneva Convention.And even more obvious war crimes were committed: the high profile Israeli missile attacks on Gaza hospitals, schools and UN bomb shelters.

During this carnage American viewers were endlessly told by “experts” that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” a completely meaningless phrase when entire Gaza neighborhoods were obliterated to pebbles, while the U.S. media searched in vain for ANY damage caused by the “terrifying” Hamas’ rockets.

Obama’s horrible acting job showcased another big lie for American viewers; he pretended that the enormous American influence over Israel didn’t exist, as if the $3+ billion in annual U.S. aid wasn’t “leverage” Obama could have used to stop Israel’s blitzkrieg. The U.S. is literally the only strong ally of importance to Israel. And the world’s sole super-power — however fading — pretended to be impotent in order for Israel to continue the killing.

Worse still was when millions of Americans watched Obama blather about a ceasefire while re-supplying Israel with weapons in the middle of the conflict, which Jon Stewart mocked openly to his mostly-young viewing audience of millions.

The obscene U.S. media behavior was possible during past conflicts because there was nowhere else to go, but now the U.S. media monopoly stands busted, with truth leaking out from a thousand pores. Millions of Americans get their news from Facebook or other social media outlets, which allows those passionate about an issue to share their perspective with hundreds or even thousands of their “friends,” who in turn “share” the news with their friends.

Furthermore, cable and internet providers now put Americans in direct contact with the new state-sponsored media outlets of other countries, who’ve copied the U.S. media’s flashy professionalism, and now provide competing English speaking news with wildly clashing perspectives that often expose the U.S. media’s incompetence. Some examples include RT (Russian), Press TV (Iranian), Al Jazeera (Qatari), and Venezuela recently created an English speaking news service from its Telesur service.

The consequence of all the U.S. political and media pro-Israeli propaganda is that millions of Americans are learning quite a lot, simply by comparing what they see on Facebook versus the garbage spewed on CNN or MSNBC.

A Pew Research poll showed that younger Americans, aged 18-29, were more likely to blame Israel for the violence in Gaza than Hamas. This is astonishing given the onslaught of media spin, and proves that younger folks simply don’t believe CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or President Obama anymore. The younger generation prefers truth.

This distrust in media and government is more consequential than first appears. Realizing that your government and media are lying is a huge political step to take, especially when it’s the entire Congress who are voting to support Israel — including so-called “progressive” Democrats Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

This radical skepticism removes a mental dam that allows new ideas to flow in, while spotting the stupid propaganda that previously went unnoticed. This is how political consciousness is born, and thousands of people will remember the invasion of Gaza as “the moment” they became politically aware, and possibly also the first protest they attended. As Obama stands by his “close ally” Israel in the face of Nazi-like atrocities, he is giving birth to thousands of newly conscious people every day, undermining the base of support for future military adventures abroad.

And there can be no doubt that new U.S. military campaigns are on the horizon. As Obama ignores Israel’s obvious war crimes he’d like us to pay particular attention to Russia, and China, or push us back onto the warpath with Syria.

The snowballing unpopularity of U.S. foreign policy will not stop the corporate-influenced U.S. government in attempting to lie its way into a new war, since the ultra-rich rightfully fear their profits are threatened by the rising economic powers of China, Russia, and other countries.

As political consciousness rises among new layers of Americans they will become less susceptible to the lie that there is “no money” for jobs, schools, health care, and social services, since they are watching hundreds of billions of their tax dollars find expression in the Israeli demolishing of Gazan’s homes, with families buried under the debris. This U.S. sponsored war — as well as future ones — are laying the foundation for the end of wars, based on the political awakening and consequent action of the next generation.

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