Onward Christian Soldiers: Bombing of Syria Reveals the US as Communist State

Onward Christian Soldiers: Bombing of Syria Reveals the US as Communist State

Column: Politics

Region: USA in the World

The recent bombing of Syria is another action which rests on the concept of the “coalition of the civilized”. As many other countries can be brought into this action as possible, the more justified it is, in the eyes of the US.

The United States of America claims to be a predominantly Christian country. Many of its politicians, including its president, who has multiple sexual harassment claims against his name and a wife who has posed for pornographic pictures, openly court a self-proclaimed Christian electorate.

But when Christ was brought to trial Pilate couldn’t even get a seconder for the proposal to spare His life. It was only His enemies who loudly insisted that they were the majority and therefore must be right, as the US is doing now. This indicates that the US knows it no longer supports just causes, and is hiding behind different variations on the “might is right” principle to try and quell any argument.

But this in turn lays bare the one fact no one in the US wants to face up to. It has always maintained that it won the Cold War, and has thus become the world’s only superpower, because it was morally superior. Communism was bound to collapse one day because it was wrong and evil, while democracy and the free market were good.

Most of the people on earth at any given time would agree with this assessment of the qualities of the two systems. Therefore the Western triumph was Manifest Destiny, just like the slaughter of the Native Americans in the nineteenth century was. But what has happened since?

Most people who lived under Communism don’t need to be told how bad it was. They would agree that it only survived for as long as it did through declaring war on the people in whose name it claimed to be acting. No one could disagree with the system; no one could get away. Eventually even the rulers themselves, having long since lost the people, saw the moral problem with this and disappeared into obscurity if they got the chance

But contrary to Vladimir Putin’s assertions, the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc have not gone away. The US has become the new Soviet Union, and all its allies are increasingly turning into helpless, only nominally independent satellites after the Warsaw Pact model.

They all knew the intelligence about a gas attack in Douma was flawed at best, and most likely a false flag. But as always they have gone along with the bombing because Big Brother has told them too, even though their governments could win kudos at home by telling the Americans to do as they said they would, and stop getting involved in foreign wars.

As many individuals found, it was very difficult to escape from the Soviet bloc. The US offered a warm welcome to anyone who made it, if we leave out the Yalta agreement.

But what happens to the individuals of today who want to leave the US bloc? What happens to countries who think there might be a better way of doing things than recreating the Evil Empire under a different flag?

Same excrement, different era

It is often said that the Rothschild family controls the world’s banking system. If this is so, the Rothschilds could base themselves in any country and run their empire from there, pulling the strings of all governments through its financial instruments. But the Rothschilds choose to remain in the US, despite the growing strength of other countries, such as China, which are currently giving a greater return on investment.

One reason for this is that the USD has been the world’s reserve currency since Richard Nixon, who needed friends, took the US off the gold standard in 1973. Through this mechanism the US can retain its place as the driver of global trade, and thus retain political influence, even though other countries outperform it in every sphere you can think of.

However the USD has come under increasing pressure for this very reason. More and more countries, including China and Russia, no longer peg their currencies to the dollar. When a big country, with significant investments in the US and its partners, does this there is only so much the US can do about it. When a smaller country does so however Big Brother consistently does one particular thing about it.

Iran abandoned its link with the dollar. So did Iraq, who the West had supplied millions of armaments to bash the Ayatollah. So did Libya, under Gaddafi, the protégé of Senator Jesse Helms. So did Syria, under the Assad regime which continues to succeed at being everything the US says can’t work in the modern world.

These governments did this to “take back control”, as the promoters of Brexit are fond of saying. But unlike the UK after Brexit, their countries had somewhere else to go. They could peg their currencies to others which could challenge the dollar, controlled by new partners the US couldn’t control.

The nearest analogy to this would be the communist Afghan government of Nur Muhammad Taraki becoming increasingly independent of Brezhnev-era Moscow, and turning to the non-aligned movement for support. We all know how that particular invasion ended. The US condemned that one, but has entered Iraq, Libya and Syria in recent years for exactly the same reasons, determined to maintain its levers of influence over supposedly independent countries, who by definition are entitled to choose their own path, whether or not others agree or that path is correct.

South and Central America have long seen oppressive regimes forced upon them by the US and then propped up by CIA torture trainers and other “diplomats”. But if that was the only alternative the communism, most would still grin and bear it.

Now there is supposed to be no communism, only terrorism, but the US is even supporting terrorists to keep its own allies in line. Even US president Eisenhower, the committed old soldier who once directly ordered the murder of Patrice Lumumba would have balked at this.

Protected from all but their friends

Of course the US cannot attack its closer allies because they are all members of NATO. According to that organisation’s constitution, if one member is attacked all the others must defend it. So if the US attacked a NATO member it would be taking on all the other NATO members, and wouldn’t want to isolate itself in that way when it still insists it is only doing what any decent, sensible country would do.

Russia is now surrounded by missiles pointed at it because most of the former Soviet satellites rushed to sign defence agreements with the US. These countries were heartily sick of the Russians, so if that is what the Americans were offering they were glad to take it. But try and pursue their own paths and they soon found out what happens to those who try and cross the invisible contemporary Berlin Wall.

The first Georgian Zviad Gamsakhurdia, legally elected, was virulently anti-communist and an avowed admirer of Ronald Reagan. When he finally gained power in Georgia, with 87% of the vote, he did what he said he would do and replace Soviet influence with Georgian traditions. But this did not mean adopting US policies – indeed, his biggest error in the eyes of Washington was persisting with state sponsored capitalism because it was working in Georgia.

Gamsakhurdia lasted a few months, but those who had genuine grievances against him and his works gained nothing from what followed. Ever since, Georgia has had to live in a virtual reality of “democracy” and “economic liberalism” which no one on the ground there, whatever their politics, has ever seen.

The price Georgia has had to pay for the preservation of this fiction, and the protection offered for doing it which mysteriously vanished during the 2008 war, has been to become the CIA dirty tricks capital of the region. That lesson has not been lost on most Georgians, but apparently Viktor Yanukovych wasn’t aware of it when he assumed that if the Americans wanted to help his country they wouldn’t object to others helping it too.

We also know what happened to him, and now Ukraine is replacing Georgia as the regional dirty tricks base, by the merest coincidence. What are the benefits for those countries? Widespread poverty, and continual instability because there is no common understanding between governments and the people about what the country should and should not be. But only the US can resolve these problems, as the US has gained for itself all the necessary levers for doing so, and has no interest in allowing any more independent thought and action amongst even peripheral allies.

No one is safe

Recently this journal went offline as a result of hacking activities from outside Russia. This could have happened at any time, as it publishes material mainstream Western outlets often ignore because they are too true for comfort.

A lot of people in high places do not like what these articles say, and as we have seen from rebuttals issued by John McCain over his arms smuggling links, the Government of Georgia over its drug testing on unwitting victims and various other people, the more they pretend they don’t read the articles the more likely it is that they do.

So it was interesting that the hack, coincidence or not, occurred just after one particular article appeared – this one. If the content of this piece is accurate, the US has plotted to remove the UK from the EU to get its hands on Gibraltar, which it would use to supply its various existing conflicts and perhaps new ones. This move also makes a number of existing bases less important, thus giving the US more levers to keep those countries under control, as they will need continued US support more than the US needs them when potential rivals see not so many US protectors around.

Others will have different interpretations of these events, if they are interested. But apparently this argument was too much for the sophisticated hackers who closed this journal down at that particular time. It is very reminiscent of the Czechoslovak government finally agreeing to broadcast an opposition rally in 1989, and then cutting the broadcast off as soon as a participant said the word “Dubcek” In true communist fashion, freedom of speech is fine provided you don’t say anything the rulers don’t like.

Nor do the concepts of free speech and difference of opinion apply only to the press in countries not aligned with the US. Around 15 years ago an ethnic minority community organisation in London called ACP devised a development plan for a part of Africa its founders were associated with. It had made contacts with local villagers and political leaders, and worked out how to improve their livelihoods on a “trade not aid” basis, so went seeking support from other organisations active in the area.

When it approached aid organisations sent by Western governments, the local programme managers invariably said that they knew who was who locally and what could be done. The organisation was pleased with this response, and asked for more details. But in each case it was told that it hadn’t understood: the aid agency bosses were in charge, and only they were allowed to distribute any aid or comment on why it was necessary.

Whatever the needs of the people, no one else was allowed to come and help them, and potentially challenge what others were doing. Is it any wonder that bodies such as USAID have become notorious for money laundering, political manipulation and all the other crimes real aid agencies would be trying to protect people from?

We told you so

When communism was at its height Czechoslovakia almost prided itself on being the most repressive of the Eastern Bloc states. One of the regular victims of this repression was the avant-garde musical group The Plastic People of the Universe, whose members were harassed at every turn because they were different rather than dissident, though they were dissident too.

One of their songs is called 100 Bodu. It lists 100 things the communists were afraid of, including their own party members, the young, the old, art and science and both socialism and democracy. At the end of this long list, the song asks “So why are we afraid of them?”

Trump revealed in a recent interview that he doesn’t even know which country he is bombing. Nevertheless, his allies have gone along with it because they fear what will happen to them if they do not. Is this the world any Western ally, and Americans themselves, ever wanted? The US will only have itself to blame when its greatest friends suddenly realise that the US is now so afraid of everyone.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.