Invaded Iraq in 2003, invade Iran in 2018

As Trump’s presidency gets initial bearings, it’s increasingly marching in step with former President Barack Obama’s pro-Saudi, strongly fundamentalist-Sunni and anti-Shiite (especially anti-Iranian), and anti-Russian, military shoes. They have a very similar military-strategic footprint, one that Trump had condemned during his election-campaign: favoring more jihadists, more invasions, more wars, less security for the American people, and the creation of more failed states, and less security for everyone.

Instead of fighting terrorists, he is producing them. It’s a gift to the jihadists, almost all of whom are fundamentalist Sunnis and obtain their funding from the royal Saud family and from their royal Arab allies, the Gulf Cooperation Council governments, each of which is owned by a fellow-fundamentalist-Sunni clan (the UAE is owned by six such clans, instead of by only one).

American voters turn out to have been cheated by a lying traitor, much as the American people have been cheated ever since at least the election of George W. Bush, who lied us into invading Iraq. A country where inveterate liars become president is no democracy. The voters are cheated.

Trump has joined the fundamentalist-Sunni Sauds’ war against fundamentalist-Shiite Iran, fighting not only in secular but Iran-allied Syria, but also for the fundamentalist Sunni dictatorship over Shiite-majority Bahrain (a protectorate by the Sauds), and also in the Sunni-Shiite civil war in Yemen (which the Sauds insist upon controlling and are bombing with U.S. weaponry in order to conquer—we’ve got no other reason for assisting their slaughterings of people there). So, the Trump administration is turning out to be much better for business, Lockheed Martin and other U.S. weapons-makers, than was expected. Hillary Clinton had been expected to be doing these things, but Trump wasn’t. Defending America, yes; assisting the regimes that finance jihadist groups around the world, no.

Americans are getting a better idea now of why Trump wants to increase the ‘Defense’ Department’s budget by 9% and to cut funds for all other departments (except Veterans Affairs—vets had voted for him) in order to pay for it. The neocons calling him ‘Putin’s puppet’ and ‘Putin’s Manchurian candidate,’ have caused the unprincipled weak and ego-manipulable Trump, to want the world to know that he’s instead allied with Putin’s enemies—the Sauds and the other fundamentalist-Sunni dictatorships of Arabia—safe friends for a U.S. president to have, in the American dictatorship. Trump wants to be known as ‘a true American,’ no ally of “the Kremlin”.

Invade Iraq to get rid of ’Saddam’s WMD’ (Saddam was friendly toward Moscow) was all the rage in the U.S. in 2002–2003 until Americans invaded on 20 March 2003 and found out that the American president and his press had all been lying to us. (No hard feelings on the part of the American public for that, however—CNN reported on 3 June 2015, that their poll showed, “52% of adults had a favorable impression of George W. Bush, 43% unfavorable”—a population of willing suckers, who are blinded by the partisanship between only the local aristocracy’s two wings, ‘Democratic’ vs. ‘Republican,’ and not at all seeing that entire aristocracy’s war against the public is perfect for any aristocracy, it’s lambs to the slaughter.) But now, invading Iran to stop ‘Iranian aggression in Yemen’ and ‘Iranian aggression in Bahrain,’ is building like the passion to slaughter Iraqis did in 2002, and we can all figure out, by now, where this is heading. Like Iraq’s regime then, Iran’s regime now is friendly toward Moscow, and that’s the American aristocracy’s basic no-no. But there’s still question as to which country Trump wants to invade first—that’s not yet at all clear—maybe it’ll even be North Korea; maybe China, maybe even Russia itself.

However, the Middle East seems to be the likeliest place for Trump to start flexing America’s proverbial muscles—like in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, coups in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Ukraine, and all sorts of other massive bloodsheds in other third-world punching-bags, for the muscular Uncle Sam. And, as always, the U.S. ‘news’ media are eager and willing to help any president’s ‘justifications’ to invade—to flex America’s muscles in the names of ‘democracy’ and ‘keeping the peace’ and all the other things we’ve done to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, and, of course, in Latin America, and, really, worldwide.

On April 2, the neoconservative Washington Post (which never saw a U.S. invasion that it didn’t support) headlined “U.S. increasingly sees Iran’s hand in the arming of Bahraini militants”, and reported about “Bahrain, a stalwart U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf and home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Six years after the start of a peaceful Shiite protest movement against the country’s Sunni-led government, U.S. and European analysts now see an increasingly grave threat emerging”—consisting of U.S.-regime allegations such as: “‘We are seeing more evidence of an Iranian destabilization effort,’ said a U.S. intelligence official with years of experience monitoring Bahrain’s civil and political unrest. The official, like several others interviewed, insisted on anonymity in discussing sensitive intelligence from the region.” Nothing was mentioned of the relevant background, such as this—a reality systematically suppressed by the U.S. ‘news’ media, of the royal fundamentalist-Sunni Saud family’s clients, the royal fundamentalist-Sunni Khalifa family’s brutal ownership of all of Bahrain and their hiring of the U.S. Fifth Fleet to keep the Khalifa clan in control there, crushing the nation’s Shiite majority, and using U.S. weapons to do it. America, after all, is “the land of the free,” over their and their victims’ dead bodies. Some ‘friends’; some ‘allies’; some American aristocracy, behind it all.

On March 22, Reuters bannered “Exclusive: Iran steps up support for Houthis in Yemen’s war—sources” and the “sources” turned out to be the U.S. regime and its allies, just like in 2002 the “sources” all turned out to be the U.S. regime and its allies. Totally ignored in the Reuters ‘news’ (or propaganda) article (take your pick which it was), was this background on the conflict there: it’s an intensification of the Sauds’ war against Shiites; so, we’re supplying them the weapons and the training to slaughter Shiites. So, together, we and they are turning Yemen into another failed state, just perfect for the fundamentalist-Sunni outfits, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. No one can say that Americans didn’t learn from Iraq, and from Libya, and from Syria, how to do it—right . . . very far right, fundamentalist-Sunni far right. It keeps America’s weapons-factories humming.

Everybody knew that Trump is big on ‘manufacturing’—we just didn’t know that it would all be led by firms such as the “Top 100 Contractors of the U.S. federal government”:

1: Lockheed Martin. 2: Boeing. 3: General Dynamics. 4: Raytheon. 5: Northrop Grumman. 6: McKesson. 7: United Technologies. 8: L-3. 9: Bechtel. 10: BAE. 11: Huntington Ingalls. 12: Humana. 13: SAIC. 14: Booz Allen Hamilton. 15: Healthnet. 16: Computer Sciences. 17: UnitedHealth. 18: Aecom. 19: Leidos. 20: Harris. 21: General Atomics. 22: Hewlett-Packard. 23: Battelle. 24: United Launch Alliance. 25 Los Alamos National Lab. Those 25 are about 35% of the total.

It’s socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. And the U.S. aristocracy call the kettle black, such as, “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”; and, Russia must be the answer whenever a person is asked “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” (But, actually, worldwide, including all the 65 countries surveyed, the U.S. came up tops on that one, “the greatest threat to peace.”)

Instead of exposing the lies upon which the prior President, Barack Obama, had ‘justified’ his aggressive policies against Syria, and against Ukraine, both of which were directed really against Russia, Trump is continuing both policies. He is doing everything possible to ramp-up America’s weapons-sales, in alliance with the Saud family and their friends, to conquer Russia ultimately, so as to take over the entire world.

Call it not the U.S. Defense Department, but the U.S. Aggression Department. It’s not only corrupt; it (actually the American aristocracy, whose will it enforces worldwide) is, indeed, “the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” It protects and installs dictators, not democrats. That’s the reason why it mowed down the Shites who were demonstrating against the Khalifa dictatorship. And, so, now, “U.S. increasingly sees Iran’s hand in the arming of Bahraini militants”. And yet there is serious reason to think that quite possibly, Iran had nothing to do with that. Should mere speculation, by representatives of a country that’s famous for lying its way into invasions, be reported at all, in any authentic news medium? Of course, it wouldn’t be. Only a dictatorship has ‘news’ media such as that. But in a dictatorship, its being a dictatorship is the most unpublishable reality of all. It is the ultimate samizdat, in any dictatorship. So, one can’t expect this reality to be published in any prominent ‘news’ medium in America, though it will be sent to all of them, freely to publish. It’s just a ‘blog’ item—‘fake news’ they call such reports. In a dictatorship these days, truth is no longer outright banned (like in the old days), it is instead consigned to the category ‘fake news,’ along with gossip and regime-planted misinformation. They figure: if you’re not smart enough to check things carefully for yourself, you don’t deserve to be anything more than their cannon-fodder. And, of course, such soldiers are also the most obedient ones. Aristocrats always have wanted the cheapest labor-force they can get; so, this is the stage, in the reach for global empire, to which things now have advanced. We are there, now, right here. This is today’s stage, of the actually timeless, though ever-evolving, aristocratic scam.

It harms the public everywhere. And that’s why it’s hidden, everywhere.

This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910–2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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