Note by the Saker: In my commentary to Trump’s speech yesterday I wrote in a sidebar “There are plenty of highly-educated officers in the US armed forces who understand history and who know that money brings corruption, not victory. But they are mostly kept at ranks no higher than Colonel and you will often find them in military teaching institutions and academies“. Today, I am posting the example of one of such officers, Lawrence Wilkerson who, sure enough, retired at the rank of Colonel and who does not mince his words about the utter stupidity and incompetence of the generals surrounding Trump which he illustrates by the absolutely ridiculous notion of Mattis that the USA can attack North Korea and not have South Korea suffer terrible consequences. Wilkerson worked as an assistant to Colin Powell during the first Iraq war, so he is not exactly my kind of anti-imperialist. But what he is is a competent officer and a true American patriot. He is an illustration of the fact that the USA, as a country as opposed to an Empire, and the Americans, as a people as opposed to a ruling elite, are not necessarily enemies of the rest of the planet. If Trump had appointed Wilkerson as Secretary of Defense instead of that Mad Dog character we would not be in today predicament. But listen for yourself:
We have Nixon’s “irrational rhetoric and Christmas bombing” as the most successful diplomatic thrust to thank for Trump’s and Mattis’ lunacy.
The US regards that as a tool in the “diplomatic toolbox”. Bomb them first is clearly America’s diplomatic credo.
If not bombs, then missiles (Syria) or artillery (Donbass) will do.
Note that Tillerson is not a co-equal to these follies. He’s a go-along.
State Dept is only powerful when it’s CIA at the lead. That’s their teammate.
For objectives like North Korea, Iran, Syria, Ukraine the Pentagon shapes the action and the “statements”. Trump sees himself as Warrior-King. He knows he’s not Emperor. But he is the frontman for the Generals.
They are bound as one. And they do offer him protection from the ideologues of the IC and Deep State. He has opened the Treasury (and debt) to them and the MIC. He allows them more war. They could not have a more useful tool. He’s virtually powerless to wander from what they want, and he and they are on the same page. “Crazy” is the new America First Doctrine.
on MSNBC? Really?
Saker gets it wrong again!
All this will be used against Trump to proclaim he is incompetent to
be POTUS and impeach him. Trump is to be blamed for everything,
the economic collapse, the lost wars, the allies/vassals turning away from
US leadership, everything…
Not that I mind though…
yes, that’s what I’m thinking too – I was a Trump supporter – now I’m a Trump hater – but what happens when Trump gets what coming to him ? Will things get better ?
Trump’s UN Speech
Paul Craig Roberts
I listened to part of Trump’s UN speech this morning. I was so embarrassed for him and for my country that I had to turn it off.
I wonder if whoever wrote the deplorable speech intended to embarrass Trump and inadvertently embarrassed America as well, or whether the speechwriter(s) is so imbued with the neoconservative arrogance and hubris of our time that the speechwriter was simply blind to the extraordinary contradictions that stood out like sore thumbs all through the speech.
I am not going to describe all of them, just a couple of examples.
Trump went on at great length about how America respects the sovereignty of every country and the people’s will of every country, and how the US, despite its overwhelming military power, never tries to impose its will on any country. What was the administration thinking, or can it think? What about Yugoslavia/Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Crimea, Ukraine, Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, just to mention countries in the 21st century that have been subjected to US military attacks, government overthrows, and removals of political leaders who did not conform to US interests?
Is it respect for the sovereignty of countries to force them to support US sanctions against Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela? Is it respect for the sovereignty of countries to impose sanctions on the countries? If this is not imposing Washington’s will on other countries, what is?
Is it respect for other countries to inform them that unless they do as they are told, “we will bomb you into the stone age”?
I heard Trump complain that the UN Human Rights commission had as members countries with the worst human rights records of our time, and I wondered if he was talking about the United States. Clearly, Trump, the speechwriter(s), the State Department, the National Security Council, the US Ambassador to the UN, indeed the entire administration, do not think that the endless slaughter, maiming, orphaning, widowing, and dispossessing of millions of peoples in many countries, producing waves of refugees, comprise human rights violations.
The arrogance conveyed by Trump’s speech is unprecedented.
After assurances that America respects everyone, Trump then made demand after demand and threat after threat against the sovereignty of Iran and North Korea, demanding that the rest of the world back him up.
Neither country is a threat to the US. Unlike the US and Israel, Korea has not been at war since 1953. Iran’s last war was in the 1980s when Iran was attacked by Iraq. Yet both North Korea and Iran are subjected to constant threats from the US. At the UN Trump threatened North Korea with destruction, and Washington is telling more lies about Iran in order to justify military action.
Here is what former Secretary of State Colin Powell says about how carefully Washington thinks about other peoples:
“We thought we knew what would happen in Libya. We thought we knew what would happen in Egypt. We thought we knew what would happen in Iraq, and we guessed wrong. In each one of these countries the thing we have to consider is that there is some structure that’s holding the society together. And as we learned, especially in Libya, when you remove the top and the whole thing falls apart . . . you get chaos.”
That’s what Washington does. It brings chaos to tens of millions of peoples, destroying their lives and the prospects of their countries. This is the behavior that Trump described as American compassion for others. This is what Trump says is respecting others and the sovereignty of their countries. Washington dresses up its crimes against humanity as a “war on terror.” The tens of millions of slaughtered, maimed, and displaced persons are merely “collateral damage.”
This is why the US is considered the greatest threat to peace. International polls show that the world regards the US as a much greater threat to peace than North Korea and Iran. Yet Trump described the US, universally regarded as the greatest threat to the world, as the great protector of peace. Has there ever been a greater disturber of peace?
One wonders if the rest of the world, especially Russia and China, got Washington’s message. Washington’s plan for UN “reform” is a plan to turn the organization into another instrument of US foreign policy, like NATO and the EU. The message that Trump was sent to deliver to the UN is that henceforth the UN is expected to support Washington’s foreign policy agenda. Opponents to Washington’s war policy are to be isolated and lumped together with the bad countries as defined by Washington.
In other words Washington accepts no limits on its unilateralism. This means war for every country that does not accept Washington’s hegemony.
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More Thoughts on Trump’s UN Declaration of War Against Iran and North Korea
Paul Craig Roberts
Trump’s UN speech makes it clear that Trump’s presidency, in terms of his campaign promise to remove Washington from the “policeman of the world” role, exit the Middle East, and repair the damaged relations with Russia, is over. The CIA and the military/security complex are in full control of the US government. Trump has accepted his captivity and his assigned role as the enforcer of Washington’s hegemony over every other country. Washington uber alles is the only foreign policy that Washington pursues.
At the UN Trump actually threatened to wipe North Korea off of the face of the earth. He added to this threat threats against Venezuela (http://stephenlendman.org/2017/09/trump-threatens-venezuela/ [1]) and Iran. He demonized these countries as “rogue states,” but it is Washington that is playing that role. Washington has destroyed in whole or part eight countries in the young 21st century and has 3 to 5 more in its crosshairs.
One question is: why did not the UN audience shout Trump down, a man standing before them telling obvious lies? The answer, of course, is money. The US taxpayers pay roughly one-quarter of the UN’s annual budget, leaving the other 130+ countries a light load. Washington is succeeding in driving the world to Armageddon, because the world’s leaders prefer money to truth, to justice, to survival. The UN diplomats see in their cooperation with Washington the opportunity to make money by sharing in the West’s exploitation of their own countries.
Washington, absorbed in its effort to destroy Syria, left it to its Saudi Arabian puppet to destroy Yemen. The Saudi autocracy, a major sponsor with the US of terrorism, has done a good job, thanks to US supplying the weapons and to the US refueling the Saudi attack airplanes. This totally gratuitous war has helped to maximize the profits of the American military/security complex, a collection of evil never before present on the face of the earth. UNICEF reports that one million Yemeni children will be the victims of “American compassion” of which Trump bragged in the CIA’s UN speech.
One wonders if the Russians and Chinese are so absorbed in getting rich like America’s One Percent that they are unaware that they are on the list of countries to be eliminated for not accepting Washington’s hegemony. Really, where was the Russian government when Washington overthrew the Ukranian government? It was at a sports event. And I call Americans insouciant. Where was the Russian government? How could it have not known?
To be frank. The point is this. Unless Russia and China can take out the US, the US will take out Russia and China. The only question is who strikes first. The only way to avoid this is for Russia and China to surrender and accept Washington’s hegemony. This is the firm undeviating path on which the neoconservatives, the CIA, and the military/security complex have set the United States. The entire point of North Korea is US nuclear missiles on China’s border. The entire point of Iran is US nuclear missiles on Russia’s border.
As far as I can ascertain, hardly anyone is aware that Armageddon is just around the corner. There is no protest from the Western presstitutes, a collection of whores. In the US the only protests are against ancient “civil war” statues, which the ignorant rabble say are symbols of black slavery. There is no peace movement and no peace marches. In London the transgendered and the radical feminists are protesting one another, engaging in fist fights in Hyde Park. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4891484/Fists-fly-politically-correct-rally.html [2] No one seems to have any awareness.
In US online propaganda websites such as Americans for Limited Government—funded by who? serving who?—endorse Trump’s destabilizing UN speech as a non-threat to world peace:
“President Trump has provided a cogent and inspiring defense of America and the American constitutional system of governance to the world not as imposition but an example to be followed, while at the same time respecting the sovereignty of other nations. However, the President also made it clear to those nations that threaten humanity with nuclear destruction [which Washington has done to N. Korea and Iran] that the United States will not be held hostage, and continuing down their current paths guarantees their annihilation. While many will focus on Trump’s threat to North Korea and Iran, the real focus of his speech is that it is a call to all nations to embrace their own sovereignty without threatening world peace.”
I have never in my long life read such a misrepresentation of a speech. The United States has become the complete propaganda state. No truth ever emerges.
It is only the US government, which is not a government of the people, that has ever threatened another country with total destruction as Trump did to North Korea in the CIA’s UN speech.
This is a first. It trumps Adolf Hitler. The US has become the 4th Reich. It is doubtful that the world will survive the foreign policy of the United States of America.
Those generals surrounding Trump better think about Europe. Any attack on North Korea will not find much support among Europeans, who are sick of Americas wars. I also hope the generals have not underestimated the influence and popularity which Vladimir Putin and Russia enjoy in Western Europe, and that influence is greater than perhaps those generals realize it. Russia, from the political point of view, is now viewed as more mature than the US.
Those You-R-Peons better think about Crazy. ‘Coz if ‘generals surrounding Trump’
nuke North Korea, what is to hinder them from nuking non-compliant WestEuropeans?
Just a thought…
They really don’t care about “support” from Europe. They can always get a “coalition of the insane” ,made up of stooge countries to follow them. What they con’t want is “opposition” from Europe. And with the European leaders there are today,that isn’t a problem for the US. You saw how the invasion of Iraq wasn’t prevented because most of Europe didn’t like it. It was enough for the US that they didn’t actively “oppose” it. No sanctions against the US. No break in relations with the US. No UN resolutions to condemn the US.Just a mild disagreement. That isn’t a problem for the US.So no,Europe’s disapproval ,but without actions is meaningless.
thanks for posting this Saker – a few months ago I heard WIlkerson’s views on Trump and I wanted to put it on a back burner in my mind, but Wilkerson comes across as a sane individual and he has hated Trump from the get go – not a Trump supporter ever –
And now sadly, I agree with Wilkerson, and it gives me some sort of perverse satisfaction that he comes onto one of the high end, mainstream media news shows, and talks like he has always talked about Trump. Trump deserves it – and yeah, the point about the teleprompter was so true.
And his next point too – about the fact that the Euphrates has been crossed and now the Iranians, Hezbollah, and the various deadly Syrian Army forces and facing – with no barriers – the Americans and their stooges.
I wish the Colonel could change the face of the events of our times as he obviously has the know-how – to do. Trump’s an idiot. My opinion of his daughter and his gangster whimply soninlaw has dived below depths too.
its also weird that although Trump is sounding the war drums towards Iran, the two foreign ministers are meeting tomorrow ? How does that work ? and how did it work ?