The USS Gerald Ford – see my October 26 post, Floating pointlessness …
I was watching a David Attenborough documentary. A polar bear, reduced by receding ice and departing seals to foraging for gulls’ eggs, was being mobbed by parents unintimidated by its status as the planet’s largest land predator. They dived and swooped on its nose; exposed and acutely sensitive. Each sortie drew blood and palpable flinches, leaving the bedazzled ursine to swipe at empty space – with a paw capable of braining a gorilla had it landed – as the counter offender soared out of reach.
Did the crews roped in for Operation Prosperity Guardian, sitting ducks in the Red Sea, also see that encounter? Did war planners and policy makers in Washington and its London vassal think it a good idea to put on an analogous show of force in the face of RPG and drone attacks by sandal wearing Yemeni fighters who’d seen off the Saudi proxy they’d armed to the teeth?
Bears are unencumbered by complex and egoic calculations, let alone the politics of a Beltway – sorry for making so free with animal metaphors – snake pit. This specimen did not compound its miscalculation – driven by need not greed – by doubling down on it. Rather, it beat a wise if dejected retreat, decorating a pristine snowscape with scarlet droplets as it went.
Park that thought. I’ll return to it.
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Let’s make two things clear. The precise location of Tower 22 – which sits on the cusp of Syria, Jordan and Iraq – is beside the point.
It services the Tanf base, which is in Syria. That makes Tower 22 a party to an illegal occupation even before we get to Tanf as launchpad for US missile strikes on resistance groups. Before we get, also, to US oil thefts analogous to Israel’s illegal exploitation of occupied lands including but not confined to Syria’s Golan Heights.
(We might ask: would Israel or the US agonise over whether the target of a punitive attack lay a few metres in – or out – of a third party’s sovereign terrain? I’m spoiled for choice here but let’s take Israel’s murder in Beirut of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri, and America’s of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.)
More importantly it points to the truth that, were polar bear wisdom to prevail in Washington (it does exist but is drowned out by louder and crazier currents) the madness could be thrown into immediate reverse by two things. One, stop the blank cheques to Israel, its regime desperate to broaden this war as the only way of winning it. Two, for once heed the will of ordinary Iranians and Arab Street alike, and get all US forces, from lowly grunt to paper tiger aircraft carrier, out of the Middle East …
Just get the fuck out. Stop backing a genocide in Gaza, stop murdering people to shore up domination of world resources, and leave. Leave before you unleash something far worse than the nightmare you’ve already inflicted upon our species.
Caitlin Johnstone
… because those blank cheques, and that US presence – a useless liability in the event of wider war but, like the Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914, an escalator to the same – are the root cause of everything in a region which will not, regardless of the compradors in Cairo, Amman, Doha and the rest, return to its century of post Ottoman, Zionist aided subservience to the West.
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Further sources apropos the strike on Tower 22
We could do worse than start with Caitlin’s post yesterday, just cited. A quick and easy read.
Simplicius the Thinker, also writing yesterday, gives more detail. He sets out Washington’s dilemma in ways consistent with my polar bear parable:
1. If the US withdraws, it will be viewed as the mother of all failures and weaknesses for the Biden administration, akin to the Afghan withdrawal x 100. I have no idea why it should be viewed that way, when in reality it’s a giant win for Americans to disentangle their country from globalist and MIC pursuits, but that’s how it will be spun by the totally compromised media which is the enemy of humanity. Most Republican warhawks will of course agree and stoke this interpretation as well, as they’re on the MIC payroll.
2. If Biden escalates and orders major strikes on Iran itself as Lindsey Graham and others are now cheerleading for, it could lead to an escalatory cascade that would shut down the entire region by engulfing it in flames, crashing the world economy to new levels, which would be a massive shock to any establishment re-election chances this year.
Simplicius’s piece also links to this 13:42 video …
.. to show just how powerful a player Iran is. It’s a point with which Scott Ritter, whose job both as a US Marine Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector it was to know such things, fully concurs. As does my next offering, yet another gamekeeper turned poacher in the shape of the former British senior diplomat, Alastair Crooke.
Those relieved, as I am, of the burden of wage labour may have time and inclination to check out all these offerings. For those pushed for time yet looking beyond mainstream media utterly and systemically incapable of getting to the heart of a matter so vital to ruling class concerns, I suggest my next and final source as the one to go for. The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris is not only one of the best informed voices out there. He takes more care than most to differentiate between fact, probability, outside possibility and human hope. That’s rare. So what if he does come over a tad geeky? Learn to love him for it!
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