Eric Zuesse -- Sickness of American Foreign Policy

The Sickness of American Foreign Policy

by Eric Zuesse

September 23, 2019

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org…

The Military-Industrial Complex runs US foreign policies. What passes for international ‘news’ reporting in the United States media was supremely represented by the instance of those ’news’ media stenographically reporting the Government’s lies about ’Saddam’s WMD’, even after it was unarguably clear that those were just blatant lies from the President and his Administration. America’s media were merely passive megaphones for the regime’s lies. Instead of disproving the regime’s lies — as they could have done if they were journalistic, instead of propagandistic, media — they merely reported the lying government’s assertions. It was like 1984 “Big Brother”; and it still is, as today’s 2019 USA. In between 2003 and now, the regime invaded Libya and Syria and Yemen, on the basis of lies that in some respects were even more blatant. The same groups of billionaires control the US ‘news’ media today as controlled the media in 2003; and they continue, in their ‘news’-media, the same stenographic ‘reporting’ — propaganda by their Government, regarding which nations are the latest targets, for the masses to hate and fear, as being our nation’s ‘enemies’. These are the lands suitable for US weapons and bombs to destroy. These ‘news’-media simply ‘justify’ what are, in fact, international war-crimes: US-and-allied invasions, of nations that never had invaded the US

There’s always the Big Lie that the hate-target is only ‘the tyrant’, and not the nation. But it’s the targeted nation that gets strangulated by America and its allies imposing ‘sanctions’ that are really economic blockades (such as against Venezuela and Iran today, but formerly against Iraq before we invaded and destroyed it); and, then, if that doesn’t bring down the targeted Government, a coup is attempted; and, then (if no coup results), paying and arming ‘rebels’ (such as Al Qaeda in Syria) to overthrow the targeted nation’s Government; and, then, missiles and bombers are used, in order to destroy the infrastructure. It’s no better now than it was then, in 2003 in Iraq, and later in Libya, Syria, and so much else. There has been no change, except in the identities of the nations for Americans to hate and fear, and overthrow. And especially under Trump, refugees are being banned to immigrate from the countries the US regime has destroyed. He’s “making America great again,” like his predecessor Obama had insisted that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.” Every other nation — including Libya and Syria and Yemen — is consequently “dispensable,” in that view. America’s voters tolerate, or even respect and re-elect, such vile leaders as this. How, then, should the citizens of other countries feel about America? And yet, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama as President is overwhelmingly respected around the world, notwithstanding his having destroyed, or participated in destroying, Libya and Syria and Yemen, whereas as soon as the obviously uncouth Trump came into office and ever since then, Trump has been widely despised throughout the world — as all three US Presidents during this Century thus far, reasonably ought to be. The public responds more to surfaces than to reality. Thus, though the reality of Obama was overall as horrendous as the reality of Trump, the reputations of those two Presidents could hardly be more different from one another. The deeper reality of the United States is Big Brother, which was born in the United States when FDR died in 1945, and it has grown larger ever since then — and especially since 2001. America’s voters are kept ignorant of the ongoing and bipartisan ugliness of its Government’s bipartisan imperialistic (or “neoconservative”) foreign policy. After all, the motivation behind it is to ‘protect human rights’ and ‘spread democracy’ in other countries (if you can believe the liars). How ‘nice’ is that (while the bombs are dropping and the target-country is being economically strangled)? And so, the US, as policeman to the world, has become an insult to the UN that FDR had been so proud to design and establish.

The US regime’s hatreds are bipartisan because all of this hate comes actually from America’s billionaires (the masters of America’s top brands) who control America’s international corporations and who are America’s political mega-donors; and these billionaires are of two types, Republican and Democratic; and both types of American billionaires are neoconservatives — champions of US imperialism — because extending the American empire is very profitable for America’s international corporations. That’s what it’s really all about.

Here’s one example:

On 25 July 2017, the US House of Representatives voted 419 to 3 to expand America’s economic blockades against “the Governments of Iran, the Russian Federation, and North Korea”, via “Sanctions”, which are a device that has become the US regime’s typical first step toward an ultimate military invasion. They always produce suffering amongst the targeted nation’s population, and far less so against the targeted nation’s leaders. Yet sanctions and coups and invasions are done because of the US Government’s ‘humanitarian’ concern for the attacked nation’s people, and in order to install ‘democracy’ there. How can a militaristic regime function if it’s not constantly lying, like that? It can’t. That’s why it continually lies.

Iran, Russia and North Korea are the enemies authorized in this virtual declaration of war against all three nations.

This bill, which passed the House by 419 to 3, became voted 98 to 2 in the US Senate, and was then signed into law by US President Donald Trump, on 2 August 2017. It was a triple farce (and “farce” here is a euphemism for fraud). Here’s just a bit of the evidence for that:

THE CASE AGAINST IRAN

The US regime constantly refers to Iran as “the foremost state sponsor of terrorism”, which it never has been even close to being, and which phrase describes the US regime itself far more than it does Iran. But did Iran ever invade America? Of course not! However, Americans actually did become enemies of Iran when our Government overthrew Iran’s progressive and democratically elected Government, in July and August of 1953, and the US regime at that time had the full cooperation of the UK regime, and of Iran’s own mullahs, in that coup d’etat, which installed the US regime’s chosen brutal dictator, the Shah, to rule there. But did Iran ever even threaten America? No, not even threaten. The US regime constantly threatens Iran, and Iran’s Government would need to be idiots to take lightly these threats by the US regime — the same regime that had installed the brutal Shah in 1953. Yet the US regime has the nerve to continue, and even to intensify, these threats, and even to blame Iran’s suffering economy on Iran’s own Government (which America’s billionaires want to replace), instead of on America’s Government (those billionaires’ own government) and on this regime’s allies, and on the strangulating economic sanctions which this US team leads, and imposes, against Iran.

The case against Russia

The US regime overthrows governments routinely, and doesn’t just propagandize in those targeted countries so as to influence their elections; but when the Obama regime’s frame-up against Russia as having supposedly acted in collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, as having constituted a merely possible excuse for the failure of Obama’s chosen successor to win the US Presidency, even the Special Prosecutor’s efforts to find evidence that might be able to convict Trump on such a charge after he leaves office, drew only blanks. There was no such evidence, of any such collusion, the Special Counsel Robert Mueller reluctantly admitted.

Actually, there does exist statistically overwhelming evidence to the exact contrary — that, as the definitive scientific analysis of the evidence reluctantly reported:

What is most striking about the data in this table is that Donald Trump actually slightly under-performed the model’s predictions in all three states. He did about one point worse than predicted in Michigan, about two points worse than predicted in Pennsylvania, and between two and three points worse than predicted in Wisconsin. There is no evidence here that Russian interference, to the extent that it occurred, did anything to help Trump in these three states.

In other words: the single predictive model that has a flawless record of predicting Presidential winners, and which was the only model that predicted Trump to beat Hillary in 2016, showed Trump winning the three toss-up states by slightly higher margins than he actually did win them. If there was any influence upon the electoral outcome that came from a factor (such as from Russian influence) that was not being considered in this model, then that factor ended up benefiting Hillary, not Trump. That’s the exact opposite of the Obama-engineered hypothesis, which falsely alleges that ‘Trump is Putin’s stooge’.

And, now, the Trump regime is trying to establish a convictable case against Trump’s predecessor, Obama, for having tried to frame Trump (and Russia) for Hillary’s loss in 2016. (There’s considerable evidence that Obama did try to frame Trump, and Russia’s Government, for that loss. And the US Government — even under Trump — has been trying to keep this information secret, unless and until House Democrats become serious about ‘impeaching Trump’. If they won’t try to impeach him, then he won’t try to convict Obama for treason.) (What? Democrats want Mike Pence to become President? Not really: it’s all just a show, for stupid voters in their own Party — and they obviously think that there are plenty of those. Rooting for Pence to become President is apparently very popular amongst Democratic Party voters. Perhaps many Republican Party billionaires are even hoping that those Democratic idiots will get what they want. Is this democracy in action, or just a threatened counter-coup to punish the Democratic Party’s prior coup-attempt against the Republican President?)

The case against North Korea

So, Iran didn’t ever invade America, nor did Russia. What about North Korea, then? Did North Korea ever invade America? No, neither did that alleged ‘enemy’ of America. But America did invade North Korea during the Korean War. Have you ever seen the 764-page “REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMISSION FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE FACTS CONCERNING BACTERIAL WARFARE IN KOREA AND CHINA”? It documents America’s biological warfare program against North Korea in 1952. You probably haven’t even heard about it, because the US regime managed to keep it hidden from the public until just this year, and because America’s ‘news’-media continue to blacklist its existence so as to continue the ‘justification’ for the US regime’s still-ongoing efforts to conquer North Korea. But look at it here, as soon as its 764 pages have finished loading into your computer. Now that the US regime is increasing its threats against both North Korea and China, the Governments in those countries recently released this document to the public, and thereby are challenging the US propaganda-media to allow the publics in the US and its vassal nations to see it — to see real history about this matter, not just propaganda (such as the US is the world’s champion of).

This massive historical document opens:

On the 22nd. Feb. 1952, Mr. Bak Hun-Yung, Foreign Minister of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and on the 8th. March, Mr. Chou En-Lai, Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China, protested officially against the use of bacteriological warfare by the USA. On the 25th. Feb., Dr. Kuo Mo-Jo, President of the Chinese People’s Committee for World Peace, addressed an appeal to the World Peace Council.

At the meeting of the Executive Committee of the World Peace Council held at Oslo on the 29th. March, Dr. Kuo Mo-Jo, with the assistance of the Chinese delegates who accompanied him, and in the presence of the Korean representative, Mr. Li Ki-len, placed the members of the Committee, and other national delegates, in possession of much information concerning the phenomena in question. Dr. Kuo declared that the governments of China and (North) Korea did not consider the International Red Cross Committee sufficiently free from political influence to be capable of instituting an unbiassed enquiry in the field. This objection was later extended to the World Health Organisation, as a specialised agency of the United Nations. However, the two governments were entirely desirous of inviting an international group of impartial and independent scientists to proceed to China and to investigate personally the facts on which the allegations were based. They might or might not be connected with organisations working for peace, but they would naturally be persons known for their devotion to humanitarian causes. The group would have the mission of verifying or invalidating the allegations. After thorough discussion, the Executive Committee adopted unanimously a resolution calling for the formation of such an International Scientific Commission.

Ultimately, as Jeffrey S. Kay recently explained in his superb article at Global Research introducing this document to US-and-allied publics:

Written largely by the most prestigious British scientist of his day, this report was effectively suppressed upon its release in 1952. Published now in text-searchable format, it includes hundreds of pages of evidence about the use of US biological weapons during the Korean War, available for the first time to the general public.

Back in the early 1950s, the US conducted a furious bombing campaign during the Korean War, dropping hundreds of thousands of tons of ordnance, much of it napalm, on North Korea. The bombardment, worse than any country had received up to that point, excepting the effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiped out nearly every city in North Korea, contributing to well over a million civilian deaths. Because of the relentless bombing, the people were reduced to living in tunnels. Even the normally bellicose Gen. MacArthur claimed to find the devastation wreaked by the US to be sickening.[1]

The massive document itself authenticates numerous reports of the US flying planes over North Korea and dropping containers of fleas, clams, and other creatures, that were tested and verified as being contaminated with plague and cholera. For example, on pages 24-26 are described several such incidents. Typical was one in which “the Commission had no option but to conclude that the American air force was employing in Korea methods very similar to, if not exactly identical with, those employed to spread plague by the Japanese during the second world war.” Furthermore, one expert “gave evidence to the effect that he had urged the Kuomintang government to make known to the world the facts concerning Japanese bacterial warfare, but without success, partly, he thought, as the result of American dissuasion.” In other words: the US regime not only protected and hired ‘former’ Nazis to use against USSR, but it did the same with Japan to use against China and North Korea. This 1952 operation against North Korea was perpetrated by the regime under US President Harry S. Truman — the former Vice President who had been forced onto FDR’s final ticket by that Party’s top donors in order to get a war started against the Soviet Union and thereby keep their enormous government contracts continuing after WW II. Right after FDR died, Truman got fooled by Churchill and Eisenhower into starting the Cold War against the Soviet Union; and this 1952 international war-crime against China and North Korea was part of that.

Conclusion

Okay, then: When will US President Trump, and the 419 members of the US House, and the 98 members of the US Senate, eat crow and come clean about what they actually represent? (It’s certainly not democracy.)

Congress is very partisanly split over domestic issues, because Republican and Democratic billionaires are split about them, but America’s billionaires are united in their support for US imperialism; and, so, the members of Congress, and Presidential candidates, are, too. When do you see near 100% support in Congress for a domestic policy? Never even close to that. But for American aggressions, it’s virtual unanimity. The billionaires are solidly for aggression; and, so, their Government is, too. Virtually all politicians who are elected to national office are psychopaths. Otherwise, they’ll get nothing from the billionaires, and therefore won’t win public office.

Americans are supposed to trust such a government. Well, of course, the billionaires can trust it, because they bought it. And that’s the sickness, and slickness, of American foreign policy. It’s just a global scam, which destroys millions of people, and creates misery for hundreds of millions, all in the name of ‘defending America’, and of ‘protecting human rights’ and ‘defending democracy’, around the world.