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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/23/13

America in Distress, The Sinister Actions by the Government

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In the present vernacular of "connecting the dots", connecting seemingly unrelated events and concluding they are part of some intentional scheme would on the surface seem conspiracy thinking.

  But in reality the real conspiracy has been the propaganda disseminated to the American people by its government and its triumphalist, sycophantic corporate media to distract from the real nature and intentions of the government by what President Eisenhower referred to in his farewell speech in 1961 as the "military/industrial complex".   He saw the lurking dangers of a structure that could unravel our constitutional democracy and turn it into a state with no bounds, unrestrained and now without any adversaries capable of containing it in its single minded pursuit of exercising hegemony over the world.

And make no mistake; Ike's fears have been realized.

Yet how did this happen?

Again, if we view any single action by our "government", (i.e. the military/corporate/political complex, a more up to date version of Ike's message to the American people), in isolation as single, unrelated events and not interconnected as part of actual covert "government" policy, it could be a stretch to consider that "government" as having sinister intentions.

But if we do look closely, in reality our "governments" actions do form a recognizable pattern of malevolence, and when connected reveal the true nature and intentions of that "government".

In that regard let's take a look at some of these seemingly isolated "government" actions and we'll see a pattern.

As indicated above, at the conclusion of the 2 nd world war the U.S. was the supreme power, alone had the A-bomb and incurred no devastation from the war unlike the Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union. Of course when the latter attained its own nuclear capability in 1950 the cold war ensued and containing the spread of "Communism" became the all but consuming policy by the U.S. and was used to justify many sinister actions that could be said to begin with the CIA inspired coup of the legitimately elected Mossedeigh government in Iran in 1953 and the subsequent installation of Shah Pahlavi as the new strongman governing Iran.

With the French defeat by the Communist Viet Min at Dien Bien Phu in what was then French Indochina in 1954 the U.S. replaced the French and became entwined in the civil war in the newly independent Viet Nam and some 9 years later the CIA assassinated President Diem of then South Viet Nam and installed a puppet government that was fighting a civil war against the Communist North under Ho Chi Min. Then with the trumped up and fictitious "Gulf of Tonkin" incident in 1965, then President Lyndon Johnson used the "incident" and got Congress to authorize the escalation of what would become America's Viet Nam war.

Throw in the CIA led coup in Chile in 1968 of the popularly elected President Salvatore Allande and the installation of General Pinochet as the new military dictator and it was clear the U.S. "government" wouldn't tolerate an independent, democratic government that wouldn't cow tow to Washington's line.

When finally the trauma of America's Viet Nam war was ended in 1973 and with our non interference in the inevitable Communist takeover of South Viet Nam in 1975 it could be said there was a lull in U.S. misadventures but that all ended with the fall and overthrow of the hated Shah in Iran in that countries revolution in 1979, the hostage taking of American embassy personnel by the Ayatollah Khomeini regime; an event that could be directly traced to the American led coup in 1953.    

Couple these assassinations and coups with our "government's" support of authoritarian regimes in Egypt under Mubarak, South Africa's white apartheid regime, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikdoms, then President Ronald Reagan's 1980's covert support of the Contra's in Nicaragua and the clandestine Iran/Contra affair with Israel as a secret mediator, U.S. mendacity saw no bounds in justifying its actions in the name of fighting against and containing Communism under its trumped up "Domino Theory".    

Then came the unexpected demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the great cold war Communist bogeyman and legitimate adversary to U.S. pretentions came to a sudden end.

But then another 10 year lull came to a crashing halt with events of September 11, 2001 and a new bogeyman came into being with the global war on terrorism and the face of Osama bin Laden as the poster child of this new "enemy".   Though contrived as a mortal menace it hardly measured up as a legitimate threat adversary that could challenge U.S. supremacy as our "government" made it out to be.

Nevertheless and regardless of how one depicts 9/11, the events of that day did change everything particularly our "government's" mendacious actions that continue unabated to the present day which again clearly depicts its sinister intentions.    

Within days we got Bush's global war on terrorism, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Guantanamo, indefinite detention of suspects, denial of habeas corpus,, extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, secret Department of Justice memos authorizing torture, secret CIA detention facilities, the lies of Iraq's Saddam Hussein having WMD, in league with al Qaeda and associated with 9/11 all used to justify the pre-emptive war and occupation of Iraq in March 2003, the infamous torture videos at Abu Ghraib prison, Bush's grandstand act aboard an aircraft carrier depicting the fictitious end of the war,   along the idea of establishing a "unitary executive," essentially a power grab by the president to do anything and answerable to no one.

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Dave Lefcourt Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Retired. The author of "DECEIT AND EXCESS IN AMERICA, HOW THE MONEYED INTERESTS HAVE STOLEN AMERICA AND HOW WE CAN GET IT BACK", Authorhouse, 2009
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