From Consortium News
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, flanked by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria 'Toria' Nuland, addresses Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 14, 2016.
(Image by [State Department Photo]) Details DMCA
The neocons and their liberal-interventionist chums never seem to think through one of their "regime change" schemes. It's enough that they wrote the plan down in some op-ed article or reached a consensus at a think-tank conference. After that, all there is to do is to generate the requisite propaganda, often accompanied by intelligence "leaks" and maybe some heartbreaking photos of children, to rile up the American people so they can be easily herded into the next slaughterhouse.
We've seen this pattern play out over and over again, from Iraq to Libya to Syria to Ukraine. You could even go back to the 1980s and the project for arming Afghanistan's mujahedeen and a collection of international jihadists led by Osama bin Laden, a project enthusiastically supported by both Republicans and Democrats.
The one consistent in these bloody follies is that the neocon/liberal-hawk plans never work out as they were drawn up. Time and again, it turns out that the great idea -- looking so good on the op-ed page or sounding so smart at the think-tank conference -- wasn't all that great or smart after all.
Remember how the Iraqis were going to welcome U.S. troops with flowers and how neocon favorite Ahmed Chalabi would be hailed as Iraq's new leader; or how the murder of Muammar Gaddafi would be followed by the flowering of Libyan democracy; or how enforcing the "must go" edict on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would be accomplished pretty quickly; or how overthrowing democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was sure to put a stop to Ukraine's endemic corruption.
Instead, the people in those countries were left bloodied and battered while the areas around them became destabilized, too, now with those social and economic disruptions extending all the way to Europe, which not that long ago was one of the world's bastions of stability. And, oh, yes, the Afghan operation from the 1980s gave us the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
No Accountability
The neocon/liberal-hawk elitists never seem to get anything right but they are so well-connected that they never are held accountable. They just keep coming up with new gambits, expressed with the same confidence and certainty -- all beautifully explained in the next round of op-eds and at the think-tank conferences.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right).
(Image by (White House photo)) Details DMCA
When the new scheme arrives, it's as if the earlier disasters hadn't happened. Across the ideological spectrum, the mainstream media's star reporters act as if the only proper reaction toward the latest brilliant idea is to show undying credulity. The only questions that get asked of politicians are why they aren't intervening faster and going bigger, whether the new plan is to blast the targeted country in a "shock and awe" display or ship weapons to some proxy force which may include jihadists and neo-Nazis or sabotage a country's economy so the people will support a coup out of hunger and desperation.
Time and again, the unhappy country at the receiving end of America's latest "regime change" project ends up wallowing in pools of blood as the international circle of chaos widens. But the U.S. public's attention quickly goes elsewhere, like a child bored with a broken Christmas toy. The targeted country is mostly forgotten, except for the occasional op-ed or think-tank complaint that if only the politicians had started the wars earlier or had dispatched a bigger military force or had kept U.S. soldiers there indefinitely or had done more to undermine some demonized leader, then the neocon/liberal-hawks scheme would have worked out just perfectly. Which sets us up for the next grand idea.
Dropping the Big One
But the next grand idea arguably could be the last one. After several years of intensifying anti-Russian propaganda, the United States reportedly is ready to escalate the New Cold War with Russia by inflicting new punishments in retaliation for the still-unproven allegation that President Vladimir Putin authorized the hacking of Democratic emails and then released them to the American people via WikiLeaks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016.
(Image by (Russian government photo)) Details DMCA
Though the Obama administration has yet to provide any public evidence to support the charges, mainstream news outlets -- particularly The Washington Post and The New York Times -- have lapped up their own leaks from the Central Intelligence Agency, which appears to have been operating under instructions from President Obama to discredit President-elect Donald Trump's victory.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).