American exceptionalism in action

Is there another country, other than the US, that assumes they have the right to send drones across the border of a sovereign country in order to assassinate a prominent political and military figure of another sovereign country? Of course, I’m referring to the recent US assassination of Iranian General Soleimani while he was visiting in Iraq.

In order to justify this action, US officials, predictably, have taken to demonize General Soleimani, claiming he presented an imminent threat to US personnel in the Middle East and was planning attacks on US embassies. As usual these claims were made by US officials without any proof or evidence.

The conversation being promoted by the media and the political community regarding this illegal attack is interesting. Commentator after commentator questions the legality of Trump’s action. Not because he has violated international law, not because he has violated the national sovereignty of Iraq and Iran, but rather he neglected to get congressional approval to violate international law as well as the sovereignty of the above two countries.

It is clear that the US, over many years, has demonstrated that it takes national sovereignty seriously (LOL). For the past three years, we have been bombarded with official US outrage against Russia for their so-called interference in our 2016 presidential election, an interference that supposedly compromised the democratic nature of our national elections. According to the official narrative, Russia was instrumental in releasing information that implicated Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee in a conspiracy to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. What’s interesting is, while everybody was getting their balls in an uproar about Russia’s interference in our election, the fact that the DNC along with the Clinton campaign conspired to interfere with the election process was completely ignored.

It is implied in all this nonsensical rhetoric that Russia’s actions allowed for Trump’s victory. But this can only be true if we ignore the fact that Hillary won the election by a significant popular plurality of 3 million votes. It was the ability of the electoral college to overturn the results of the vote that allowed for Trump’s victory. The electoral college stands as a correction to the will of the people when the will of the people runs contrary to the will of the ruling class. As a point of information, the same correction exists in the Democratic Party, the people’s party, where the superdelegates can be relied on to maintain the will of the party’s establishment if it runs contrary to the will of the people.

We must also not forget that while the US was angry that Russia supposedly interfered in “our democracy,” it has not hesitated to interfere in the political processes of other countries. Although there is a long historical list, allow me to concentrate on the more current ones… the US involvement in the overthrow of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the current attempts of the US to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela, the overthrow of the Hussein government in Iraq, the overthrow of the Gaddafi government in Libya, the attempted overthrow  of the Assad government in Syria. Any country that has established a government that considers the welfare of its people first is a threat to US world dominance and becomes a target of US imperialism and militarism.

Dave Alpert has master’s degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner-city adolescents.

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