Washington talks peace, wages proxy war

Contradicting peace gestures by the Obama administration, U.S. warplanes attacked Syria. U.S.-made F16s fired U.S.-made missiles at two bases of the Syrian Arab Army on Oct. 31, allegedly causing large explosions. On the same day U.S. planes also fired missiles into the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza, killing two young men.

The U.S. government announced the attack on Syria, saying it was carried out by Israel. But the only difference between a U.S. air strike and an Israeli air strike are the colors painted on the fuselage of the airplanes. Israel’s warplanes and air-to-ground missiles are made in the U.S. Israeli pilots train in the USA and may be U.S. citizens. Israel’s military machine runs on U.S. dollars.

The very evening of the attack, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told a Zionist dinner in New York City that Israel would be the first state to receive the Marine Corps’ new V22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and that production was being sped up to get them there quickly. “The Israeli and American defense relationship is stronger than ever, and it will continue to strengthen,” Hagel said.

Millions more military aid to Israel

On Nov. 1, the day after the attack, the House Armed Services Subcommittee proposed a nearly half-a-billion-dollar increase in U.S. military aid to the racist Israeli state. That is on top of the $3.1 billion in direct military aid already promised Israel this fiscal year. That same day Washington cut more than $3 billion from its domestic food stamp program.

On Oct. 21, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan said that the oil-rich Saudi kingdom would scale back cooperation with the U.S. because the U.S. had not attacked Syria. He said the Saudi kingdom would continue to arm and fund right-wing terrorists in Syria without U.S. help. It is worth remembering that in the 1980s the Saudis funded covert wars against Nicaragua and Afghanistan at the request of the Reagan administration.

The alleged rift between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia made headlines in major capitalist papers. There was little if any mention of the fact that only four days earlier the Pentagon said it would sell nearly $11 billion worth of sophisticated weapons, including air-to-surface missiles and “bunker-buster” bombs, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Boeing and Raytheon will be the main beneficiaries of the sale.

People in the U.S. owe thanks to Syria, Iran, the Lebanese Resistance and Russia for stopping the bankers’ state in Washington from launching a direct U.S. attack on Syria, at least for now. That’s what Washington is — a bankers’ state, no matter who lives in the White House.

Since the “Cold War” supposedly ended in 1991, the U.S. military has been on a rampage. U.S. troops invaded and occupied Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Haiti. U.S. planes rained bombs and missiles on Libya and Yugoslavia. U.S. drones massacre families in Pakistan and Yemen. When President Barack Obama pulled back from the attack on Syria, it was the first public U.S. military retreat since the fall of the USSR.

Eight weeks ago the Obama administration seemed almost desperate to risk both world war and political suicide for the sake of attacking Syria. Now the U.S. is opening talks with both Syria and Iran in Geneva. The White House says it will ease sanctions on both countries. It has also cut aid to Egypt’s military regime.

‘Shift from war footing’? Not likely

On Sept. 24, President Obama told the U.N. General Assembly that the U.S. is “shifting away from a perpetual war footing” in the Middle East. National security adviser Susan Rice told the Oct. 24 New York Times that the U.S. will play a “more modest” role in the region. “We can’t just be consumed with one region, 24/7, important as it is to us.”

After decades of war, is the U.S. really retreating from this energy-rich part of the world? Has Washington given up on regime change in Syria and Iran? What about the endless flow of U.S. arms and dollars to the Israeli apartheid state?

Not likely.

The position of the U.S. dollar in the world economy owes much to what amounts to protection money paid to Wall Street banks by the House of Saud and other royal families of the Arabian peninsula. The covert war against Syria, like the wars against Iraq and Libya, is about preserving that arrangement, which is enforced by U.S. and Israeli arms.

The current form of that arrangement was engineered in the 1970s by Rockefeller-protege Henry Kissinger, who was national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon White House. The flow of Arabian petrodollars bailed the U.S. out of a financial crisis caused largely by the monstrous war against Vietnam.

On Sept. 11, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kissinger to seek his advice about Syria. The corporate media glorify Kissinger as the architect of “detente” with the USSR and the opening of U.S. relations with People’s China. He has other claims to fame.

From the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia to the CIA-South African mercenary war against Angola, Kissinger presided over some of the bloodiest covert operations in U.S. history. The very date if their meeting, Sept. 11, was the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile, in which Kissinger played a major role.

To be continued.