Prescript: We are headed to Freedom Fest in Las Vegas this week. We have two panels, both of which are on Friday. If you’re going to the conference, I hope you’ll attend our panel discussions and come by our booth to visit.
*********
In the last few days, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have contained the following news stories:
1. “North Korea Cuts U.N. Line With U.S.” The story showed how the U.S. government’s latest round of sanctions against North Korea failed, once again, to bring North Korea to its knees. Instead, in retaliation for the sanctions, North Korea severed the last diplomatic link to the United States, thereby eliminating any possibility of communications between the two regimes. The North Korean regime called the sanctions “an open declaration of war.” It also announced that American citizens incarcerated in North Korea would be held under wartime conditions, which isn’t a positive development for American college student Otto Warmbier and Korean-American missionary Kim Dong-Chul, both of whom are jailed in North Korea.
Bottom line: Another crisis for the U.S. national-security state.
2. “In Pattern, Iranian Boats Veer Close to U.S. Warships.” This story detailed complaints by U.S. national-security state officials that Iranian patrol boats were coming too close to American warships traveling in international waters near Iran, thereby increasing tensions between the two regimes.
Bottom line: Another crisis for the U.S. national-security state.
3. “U.S. Will Deploy More Troops to Iraq to Help Retake Mosul.” This story detailed how President Obama is sending more U.S. troops back to Iraq, the country that the U.S. national-security state invaded and occupied more than 10 years ago, with the aim of finding WMDs and, later, bringing peace, prosperity, stability, and freedom to Iraq and the Middle East. That aim has clearly never been fulfilled, especially given that the invasion and occupation gave rise to ISIS, which didn’t exist before the U.S. national-security state’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. So, now U.S. troops are back in Iraq (without any congressional declaration of war) helping the Iraqi regime that they installed more than a decade ago with their regime-change operation.
Bottom line: Another crisis for the U.S. national-security state.
4. “NATO Unity, Tested by Russia, Shows Some Cracks,” which pointed out that U.S. national-security state officials are sending U.S. troops into Poland and carrying out military exercises there, ostensibly to protect that former Warsaw Pact nation and other Eastern European regimes from potential Russian aggression. According to the article, the foreign minister of Germany accused the United States of provoking Russia with the military exercises, which he called “saber rattling.”
Bottom line: Another crisis for the U.S. national-security state.
5. “Russia Expels 2 US Diplomats in Retaliation for US Evictions.” This article points out that Russia recently expelled two suspected CIA agents operating under cover of the U.S. State Department. This followed the U.S. expulsion of two Russia diplomats, following an altercation between Russian police and a suspected CIA agent outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Bottom line: Another crisis for the U.S. national-security state.
We also shouldn’t forget about the crises with China in the South China Sea. Also, the continued regime-change operation against Syria, whose regime, ironically, several years ago partnered with the U.S. national-security state to brutally torture a Canadian citizen named Mahar Arar.
Bottom line: More crises for the U.S. national-security state.
I have three points to make and some questions about all this:
1. Notice that all the crises occur over there — that is, thousands of miles away from American shores. None of them occur over here (except terrorist attacks over here in retaliation for U.S. interventionism over there). That is, there are no Iranian warships over here traveling near the U.S. coast, North Korean missiles aren’t being installed in Venezuela, and Russia isn’t sending troops and missiles to Cuba and undertaking military exercises near the United States.
2. Notice that Switzerland doesn’t have any of these crises. That’s because the Swiss government minds its own business. It’s not going around the world provoking crises in the name of bringing peace,freedom, and stability in the world with a very violent, provocative, and death-producing war machine.
3. Spending and debt on the U.S. welfare-warfare state continue to soar out of control, threatening to bankrupt our nation, just like Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Greece.
Here are my questions: Why is the Department of Defense called that? I can understand why Switzerland would have a Department of Defense given that the Swiss government minds its own business. But the U.S. government clearly does not mind its own business. Instead, it minds everyone else’s business and, in the process, provokes other regimes and embroils itself in endless crises all over the world. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it the Department of Empire, Intervention, Assassination, Meddling, Provocation, Interloping, and Regime Change?