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Biden’s Intent Is To Sow Chaos – Netanyahoo And Zelensky Are Working For Him
There is a great believe peddled by main stream media that the Biden administration is trying to hold the Zionists back from their devastating action in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond, but unfortunately fails to do so. Some commentators argue that this is the case because the Israel lobby has a very strong position in U.S. policies and can direct the U.S. government into any direction of its liking.
My hunch is that this is putting the cart before the horse.
It is in fact the Biden administration which is using the Israeli (and Ukrainian) government to serve its foreign policy purposes. As I remarked:
This has been the general theme of a media campaign for a while. "Natanyahoo is steamrolling Biden and the poor guy can do nothing about it."
I do not buy it. One phone call from the White House to the Pentagon would hold resupply flights from the U.S. to Israel. Without constant supply renewal the Israeli Air Force would have to stop its bombing campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen within days if not within hours.
But instead of calling the Pentagon, the whole Middle East team around Biden, Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk and IDF soldier Amos Hochstein, has been urging Israel to extend its campaign.
They are hoping, like the neoconservatives in 2006 during the Bush administration, for the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East', which will forever change the strategic situation on the ground.
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The conclusion from this is that Netanyahoo is largely doing exactly what the Biden administration wants him to do.
Gilbert Doctorow, the well known historian and journalist, is of similar opinion:
More on tails wagging dogs and vice versa
Some viewers/readers support my contention that the United States is using Israel as its proxy in the Middle East and is not just enabling but even directing Israel’s rampage in the region to ‘kick ass’ generally and to reinforce American dominance there in line with American global hegemony. Far from being outraged by the Israeli atrocities, the U.S. government is satisfied to see Israel take revenge for the many humiliations that the United States has suffered in the Middle East, most recently in the disorderly and disgraceful pull-out from Afghanistan but going back, say, 40 years to the hostage taking at the American embassy in Teheran by the new revolutionary Iranian leadership there that overthrew the American backed Shah.
Others in my audience have not hesitated to say that they think I am wrong, and that indeed Prime Minister Netanyahu is leading Joe Biden & Company around by the nose, which just happens to be the consensus view in mainstream media.
Most of this discussion is not visible to the broad public. However, the ‘Judging Freedom’ channel which has 450,000 subscribers and its host, Judge Andrew Napolitano put my proposition on the dog (USA) wagging the tail (Israel) to several of his best-known panelists in the 24 hours following my interview with him. To be sure, my idea seemed so ‘contrarian’ that it demanded a response from the mightiest minds in the alternative media camp. They obliged. With one exception, the mightiest minds were dismissive of my interpretation in more respectful, less respectful ways.
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Professor John Mearsheimer and Larry Johnson are two of the guest on the Napolitano show who reject Doctorow's thesis.
However, Doctorow and I are not the only ones delving into this conundrum. Professor of history at Columbia University Adam Tooze, a rather famous commentator, joined us with his current Guardian comment:
Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act?
There is one school of thought that says the Biden administration is muddling through. It has no grand plan. It lacks the will or the means to discipline or direct either the Ukrainians or the Israelis. As a result, it is mainly focused on avoiding a third world war.
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But what if that interpretation is too benign? What if it underestimates the intentionality on Washington’s part? What if key figures in the administration actually see this as a history-defining moment and an opportunity to reshape the balance of world power? What if what we are witnessing is the pivoting of the US to a deliberate and comprehensive revisionism by way of a strategy of tension?
Revisionist powers are those that want to overturn the existing state of things. In an extended sense, this can also mean a desire to alter the flow of events; for instance, to redirect or halt the process of globalisation. Revisionism is often associated with resentment or nostalgia for an earlier, better age.
Tooze digs down into the various action the Biden administration has taken against Russia, China and in the Middle East. He concludes:
In all three arenas – China, Ukraine and the Middle East – the US will say that it is responding to aggression. But rather than working consistently for a return to the status quo it is, in fact, raising the stakes. While insisting that it supports the rules-based order, what we are witnessing is something closer to a revival of the ruinous neoconservative ambition of the 1990s and 2000s.
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[T]here is more going on here than simply muddling through. First the Trump and now the Biden presidencies are willing contributors to the controlled demolition of the 1990s post-cold war order.
People seem to have forgotten that Biden was never a liberal in the progressive sense. Since being a freshman in Congress Biden has always been on the conservative side of things:
Alliances With Segregationists
1975: Mr. Biden joined Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican segregationist from North Carolina, in supporting an anti-busing amendment to an education spending bill. When the amendment failed, Mr. Biden wrote a narrower measure that prevented schools from using federal dollars to assign teachers or students by race. It passed, 50-43.
In a television interview, Mr. Biden called busing an “asinine concept” and said he had “gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing may be a constitutional amendment.”
In 2002 Biden was joined at the hip with the neoconservatives when he, as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, feverishly argued for launching the war on Iraq:
In a speech days before the 2002 [Iraq war] vote, Bush did say approving the resolution “does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable,” but he also laid out in detail why military action “may” be needed. And on the day the war broke out, Biden acknowledged, “We voted to give him the authority to wage that war. We should step back and be supportive.”
When the Biden administration is sowing global chaos the way it currently does, it is acting along a path which Biden has long favored and with the intent to sow chaos, not because this or that outside power is pressing him to do so.
To #188, Johnny Dollar, re: “No Wars:” Don was powerless all 4 yrs, was ignored by Pentagon. Whatever “his admin.” did was at someone else’s orders. Meaning, he should’ve resigned. In Aug. 2017, in front of the whole world, congress removed all Russia matters from him. Medvedev commented at the time that Trump had been humiliated. (Don’s 2016 voters were erased). Further humiliating his 2016 voters, Don became a vicious cheerleader for neocons. In July 2017 Don went on tv to announce he’d changed his mind, now thinks endless Mideast wars are necessary…As a 2016 Trump voter (the only time) I remember my embarrassment when in April 2017, only weeks after his inauguration, Don bombed Syria for no reason except a few whispers from US-backed jihadists in Idlib who’d sent fake photos of gassed children. Trump took to his global microphone almost sobbing about “the children” in obviously fake photos. Ivanka believed the photos too and Don’s son Eric said Ivanka’s opinion no doubt affected Pres…In 2017 alone your “no wars” Trump dropped over 60,000 bombs, 179 per day, beating Obama’s 2016 record by 13,050….Airpower Summary…https://www.afcent.af.mil/Portals/82/November%202021%20Airpower%20Summary_FINAL.pdf….12/29/2017, “How Donald Trump Learned to Love War in 2017,” Micah Zenko, Foreign Policy,… https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/29/how-donald-trump-learned-to-love-war-in-2017/, Yahoo, “The president promised to deliver peace. But in his first year, he expanded every war he inherited.”…”In reality, the Donald Trump administration has demonstrated no interest in reducing America’s military commitments and interventions, nor committed itself in any meaningful way to preventing conflicts or resolving them. Moreover, as 2017 wraps up, the trend lines are actually running in the opposite direction, with no indication that the Trump administration has the right membership or motivation to turn things around.
President Trump has maintained or expanded the wars that he inherited from his predecessor.
As Jennifer Wilson and I pointed out in an appropriately titled column in August, “Donald Trump Is Dropping Bombs at Unprecedented Levels.” Within eight months of assuming office, Trump — with the announcement of six “precision air strikes” in Libya — had bombed every country that former President Barack Obama had in eight years. One month after that, the United States surpassed the 26,172 bombs that had been dropped in 2016. Through the end of December 2017, Trump had authorized more airstrikes in Somalia in one year (33), than George W. Bush and Obama had since the United States first began intervening there in early 2007 (30).
The growth in airstrikes was accompanied by a more than proportional increase in civilian deaths, which Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal documented in the most impressive work of investigative journalism that I read this year, as well as the killing of militant fighters. In July, Gen. Tony Thomas, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, claimed “in conservative estimates 60,000 to 70,000” Islamic State fighters had been killed in Iraq and Syria. In 2014, just after the war began, the CIA claimed that the Islamic State could “muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters.” The fact that the United States more than doubled the size of its enemy in pursuit of defeating it on the battlefield — for the time being — should lead to a re-examination of U.S. counterterrorism strategies.
But as the volume of airstrikes and deaths increased, the Trump administration has subsequently made no progress in winding down America’s wars. Moreover, it doesn’t even pretend that the United States should play any role in supporting diplomatic outcomes. For example, in the U.S.-backed air war in Yemen, Secretary of Defense James Mattis has stated, “Our aim is that this crisis can be handed to a team of negotiators under the aegis of the United Nations.” Of all parties to the conflict, the United States has the greatest leverage in brokering an end to the 33-month civil war, but American diplomats have been nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, commander of the longest-running war in American history, has adapted a time-tested tactic of several of his predecessors: repeating that the United States is winning (or will win) and that the Taliban is not (or cannot). He also appears uninterested in supporting any political settlement involving the Taliban, pledging instead to achieve an undefined end state of “We will be here until the job is done” — whatever that means.
President Trump has also repeatedly threatened pre-emptive strikes against nuclear-armed North Korea (a terrible idea), as well as threatened to terminate the Iran nuclear agreement, which he calls “the worst deal ever.” He can do so in mid-January [2018] by refusing to certify that Iran is meeting its obligations under the deal, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified that Iran has, in fact, been doing so for nine straight quarters. If Trump abandons the agreement, Iran will kick the IAEA inspectors out. This will vastly decrease what the United States knows about Iran and increase the probability of attacks on any suspected nuclear sites — as well as concurrent attacks on Iran’s air defense system, command and control networks, and other military facilities. The United States spent more than one trillion dollars (so far) to disarm Iraq of its nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The IAEA monitors and verifies Iran’s nuclear-related commitments for the low price of $11 million a year.
In May, Trump declared, “I’m getting As and A+s on foreign policy. And nobody thought about it.” No nonpartisan grader would assign the president such high marks. The reasons are simple: He has achieved none of his major foreign-policy initiatives and has further destabilized already unstable conflict zones by increasing America’s military footprints, intensifying military operations, and generally abandoning conflict prevention activities.”…https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-learned-love-war-194610463.html….https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/29/how-donald-trump-learned-to-love-war-in-2017/
…..8/1/2017, “The Donald Trump administration has further expanded former President Barack Obama’s use of lethal counterterrorism operations in nonbattlefield countries—namely Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. During the final 193 days of Obama’s presidency, there were 21 such operations. Over a comparable number of days under President Trump, there have been five times as many operations: at least 92 in Yemen, four in Pakistan, and six in Somalia.”…Micah Zenko…https://www.cfr.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/Zenko%20Donald%20Trump%20Is%20Pushing%20America%27s%20Special%20Forces%20Past%20the%20Breaking%20Point_0.pdf
Posted by: susan mullen | Oct 11 2024 7:19 utc | 437
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