By Maitreya Bhakal — an Indian commentator who writes about China, India, the US, and global issues. Follow him on Twitter @MaitreyaBhakal

Kill anything that moves

March 15, 1968 was a normal day in America. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Race riots in Mississippi were entering their fifth day or so. And at the other end of the globe, in Vietnam, soldiers of the Americal Division's Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, were being briefedby their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, about the exploits of the next day, which would later be dubbed the “My Lai massacre” – where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were systematically butchered in over four hours, not counting a lunch break the soldiers took in the middle of the carnage. The orders were clear and explicit: the soldiers were to kill every single human being, burn all houses, kill all animals, destroy all food supplies and poison all wells. 

As the briefing progressed, one incident stuck in the mind of artillery forward observer James Flynn, which he would recall years later. A soldier, whose name has been lost to history, expressed some apprehension about the wide-ranging nature of the orders. “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” he asked naively. 

“Kill everything that moves,” came the reply.

Kill everything that moves. This same phrase would be repeated almost verbatim two years later by none other than Henry Kissinger himself while relaying US leader Richard Nixon’s orders: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

My Lais and my truths

That the popular US media is allowed to discuss this event is not exactly praiseworthy, nor some sign of speaking truth to power, as they claim. The reason why the My Lai massacre was allowed to enter the popular US imagination was to hide America’s much larger war crimes. As Nick Turse points out in his award-winning book Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam: “Today, histories of the Vietnam War regularly discuss war crimes or civilian suffering only in the context of a single incident: the My Lai massacre… Even as that one event has become the subject of numerous books and articles, all the other atrocities perpetrated by US soldiers have essentially vanished from popular memory.”

The strategy worked. And it continues to work to this day. After all, what better way to distract attention from your larger crimes than focus attention on your smaller ones? As a bonus, this also allows you to portray yourself as an enabler and respecter of “free speech” and “open debate”. 

Bomber barbarians

Yes – America loves killing anything that moves. Like the nation-state version of the psychopathic serial murderer, it loves bombing weak, poor, defenseless nations that cannot fight back – nations that have done no harm to it and pose no threat to it.

The US regime wouldn't dare touch North Korea, of course, because it possesses nuclear weapons and can fight back. America killed Muammar Gaddafi's nuclear weapons program, and then killed the man himself as soon as they got the opportunity less than a decade later (he was sodomized and then murdered in the open by pro-US forces). Iraq was attacked not because it had WMDs – but because it didn't. The US regime knew it couldn't defend itself, and went in for the kill. Syria would have probably become another Iraq if not for Russia, who Syria explicitly invited in to counter the twin terrorist threats of Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS) and the US (via its proxies). 

Between 1965 and 1975, the “democratic” US and its allies carried out the largest aerial bombardment in human history, dropping more than 7.5 million tons of bombs in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, twice as many as those dropped on Europe and Asia during the Second World War. They turned Laos, one of the poorest, most defenseless nations on Earth, into the planet’s most bombed country. From 1965 to 1969, the US military dropped 70 tons of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam – or 500 pounds for each man, woman and child. As America’s head of the Strategic Air Command General Curtis LeMay put it, America’s aim must be to “bomb the Vietnamese back to the Stone Age.”

During the “Korean War” (i.e. the US-led invasion of Korea), North Korea was bombed almost to oblivion without the batting of an eyelid. Around 85% of its buildings were destroyed. Literally only two modern buildings were left standing in Pyongyang after the US was done. They bombed and they bombed – they bombed so much that they had to halt for a while because there was nothing left to bomb. By the end of the campaign, US bombers couldn’t find targets and were often reduced to bombing footbridges or simply ditching their bombs into the sea. And when they got bored with that, they started bombing dams, causing widespread flooding. According to historian Charles K. Armstrong, the bombing of the dams and the resultant floods threatened several million North Koreans with absolute starvation; only emergency assistance from socialist countries prevented widespread famine.

The US has largely continued its destructive bombing campaigns even after the Cold War – socialism and the ‘Domino Theory’ had just been the excuse. It found other excuses. 

It was attacked on 9/11 (ironically, by the remnants of the same groups it had once funded to fight the Soviets) as blowback for its war crimes and genocide-by-sanctions policy. In response, it killed 1 million people and displaced 37 million, creating the largest refugee crisis in decades. No nation since World War II has had the power, or indeed, the desire, to cause such death and destruction. The “War on Terror” increased terrorism globally, and also created IS, the most dangerous non-state terrorist actor in the world.

In the last 20 years alone, the US and its allies have bombed West Asia (or to use the Eurocentric term, “Middle East”) and North Africa at the rate of 46 bombs per day. That’s not a typo – that’s almost two bombs every hour, every single day, for 20 years. 

But US leaders aren’t perturbed – it isn’t white people they’re killing after all, they’re only killing the proverbial “other” who were coming to destroy “us” innocent people, and we are simply fighting the good fight. On the highly nationalistic US internet, images of US Marines saying goodbye to their kids at airports often go viral, as they fly away to slaughter children much like their own. 

The more things change...

When Barack Obama became US leader, people were led to imagine that things would be different. They even gave him the Nobel Prize to cement his promised legacy even before it was created. He was painted as a peaceful president and a reluctant, cautious warrior, if at all. In truth, he was America’s drone-warrior in chief, pioneering the art of such warfare at scale – which allowed him to reduce boots on the ground. He calculated that by bringing US troops back, he could achieve popularity at home – no matter how many people he killed abroad. He was right.

Obama dropped more bombs than Bush did during his presidency. This included 26,171 bombs in 2016, his last full year in office. That’s about 72 bombs every single day – for one whole year. And these are just the publicly known bombings. Civilian deaths are rarely acknowledged by the US regime.  

President Joe Biden, Obama’s former vice president, has sought to continue the bombings now that he is in charge. In late June, the US regime bombed Iraq and Syria. Again. This was one week after Congress had voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq. 

Ostensibly, the attacks were against “weapons storage facilities” used by “Iranian-backed militias” – shorthand for any group that opposes US occupation. Just like Nazi Germany justified killing resistance fighters opposing its occupation by calling them “partisans,” the US regime dismisses resistance fighters opposing its occupation as “militants” or “combatants,” often referring to them as “Iran-backed” as a bonus. None of these statements can be trusted or verified, of course; the US regime has a long history of publicly lying and misleading the world.

Continuing its addiction, the US regime also recently bombed Somalia, one of the world’s poorest countries. The Pentagon’s “initial assessment” found that no civilians were killed, which is a standard US claim for all its bombing raids in that impoverished country. Human rights groups – the same ones that the US cites and trusts wholeheartedly when criticizing its enemies like China and Russia – disagree. In 2017, the US regime relaxed bombing rules for Somalia, increasing the risk of civilian deaths. 

According to the regime’s bombing guidelines, the Pentagon is allowed to bomb only Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq without White House approval. Thus, it is likely that Biden personally approved the Somalia airstrike. Ostensibly, it targeted the Al-Shabaab militant group, and was carried out in “coordination” with the Somalian government. 

A few days later, the US regime launched multiple airstrikes in Afghanistan too, a nation it is apparently withdrawing from, after being thoroughly trounced and defeated in a 20-year-old war. This time, it was ostensibly to come to the “aid” of the Afghan government against the Taliban. Lest anybody think that a US “exit” from Afghanistan means an end to its bombings, a top US general clarified that the regime had no such intention. 

More bombings can be expected in the future. The US regime will not develop morals because it has no incentive to do so – it faces little criticism from the international community for its bombings and killings, and faces even less criticism at home, even from the “anti-war” lobby. 

However, one thing is beyond doubt: it will continue claiming that it is the moral leader and guardian of the world; that the most war-mongering nation on Earth is the paragon of peace and virtue; and that it deserves the divine right to lecture others and hold them “accountable” for their “human rights violations”. Old habits die hard – and lie harder. 

Read more: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/531316-us-bombs-defenceless-nations/

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U.S. Navy Kicks Off Large-Scale Exercise 2021

03 August 2021

Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, U.S. Pacific Fleet, and U.S. Naval Forces Europe commenced Large-Scale Exercise 2021 in the USFF, PACFLT, and NAVEUR areas of responsibility, today.

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Decorated CIA veteran Douglas London has recently called for enhancing clandestine warfare against Russia and China, insisting that the US has enough tools to trump Moscow and Beijing. However, economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and CIA veteran Philip Giraldi have pointed out some apparent flaws in London's doctrine. 

On 5 August, an op-ed titled "Defence alone will not protect us from Russia and China" by Douglas London, a retired senior CIA operations officer and adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University's Centre for Security Studies, was published in The Hill.

He argued that "bolstering defences alone and adding military firepower" will not deter Russia and China "who pay little price for malign behaviour." The US intelligence community is "good at sabotage," possesses "robust covert and overt cyber capabilities," and knows how "to steal secrets [and] change the course of history with covert deeds," according to him. All that's needed to rein in Moscow and Beijing are Washington's political will, "a more agile and balanced strategy of offence and defence," and "a dash of clandestine mischief," London argues.

The timing of the article coincides with two major developments, according to Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer: first, "the already disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan with disengagement in other theatres of operations"; second, the September legislative elections in Russia.

The US military-industrial complex is increasingly concerned about the pullout from Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the CIA counter-terrorism veteran. He notes Israel also fears that the US military disengagement would embolden Tehran and "already warned, repeatedly, that it is prepared to strike Iran alone, if necessary, though its Lobby is working hard to make sure that Washington becomes involved in whatever results."

At the same time, London "appears to be a spokesman for a certain type of thinking, it is to be assumed that many in the national security community will urge the White House to take steps to interfere covertly in upcoming Russian elections while also stirring up unrest in China," according to Giraldi.

Election interference and regime change ops have been the US' modus operandi for quite a while, notes Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a former Wall Street Journal editor, ex-Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, and former member of the Cold War Committee on the Present Danger. It would be frivolous on the part of Moscow and Beijing to host US and EU-backed NGOs, according to the economist.

On 1 August, Director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin warned in an interview with a Russian journalist that the September legislative elections could become a focal point for interference, stressing that Russia's security services already know "which areas will be struck."

Earlier, in May, a draft proposal prepared by European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs called upon the EU to be prepared "not to recognise the parliament of Russia" after the September vote. On 4 August, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly announced that they would not send election observers to Russia for the first time in nearly three decades. The OSCE move was endorsed by the US Department of State.

To convince his readers of the necessity to launch what appears to be an all-out shadow war against Russia and China, London outlined a long list of Moscow and Beijing's "faults," including election interference, disrupting US confidence in its own vaccines, and ransomware attacks, neither of which have ever been backed by credible evidence. He went even further by blaming Russia for fuelling both racial enmities during the Black Lives Matter's summer 2020 unrest and the 6 January riots in the US, which, according to Dr. Roberts, indicates that the ex-CIA official "has clearly lost his hold on reality."

London also mentioned the so-called "Gerasimov doctrine" – a 26 February 2013 article written by Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov and detailing a hybrid strategy which "blurs war and peace." Still, the ex-senior CIA official seems to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the general was actually describing Western hybrid warfare techniques and methods to withstand them.

Apparently, London believes that clandestine warfare against Moscow and Beijing would be a safer option than an overt standoff: "Operating asymmetrically with plausible deniability facilitates the means to pivot and de-escalate, providing adversaries a face-saving off-ramp from further retaliation," he wrote. However, he seriously miscalculates Moscow and Beijing, according to Dr. Roberts and Giraldi.

London's strategy aimed at deterring Russian and Chinese decision-makers "would amount to an all-out semi-covert war against powerful adversaries which could easily escalate into a shooting war," echoes Giraldi.

The CIA counter-terrorism veteran refers to London's earlier remarks on the assassination of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 that when carrying out a major covert action against an opponent "the US must first decide what's most important, the price it's willing to pay and anticipate the consequences." However, "by his own standards he has gone off the rails in his recent peace recommending sustained clandestine actions against adversaries Russia and China," Giraldi highlights.

According to Giraldi, "Apocalypse Now makes for an exciting story but to threaten whole countries with annihilation based at best on a desire to change their forms of government makes no sense." He does not believe that this agenda would be endorsed by the Americans.

Moscow and Beijing remain "the necessary enemies for Washington and NATO," to "justify the annual thousand billion dollar US military/security complex budget, and NATO is Washington’s method of controlling European foreign policy," Dr. Roberts emphasises.

Still, the former Reagan official argues that "militarily, Washington is not a match for Russia or China, much less for both together."

The situation in European NATO member-states is no better, according to Dr. Roberts: "Throughout Europe and the English speaking world there are no nations, only Towers of Babel… which are divided against themselves… [and] cannot resist a unified opponent."

Given this, Russia and China have nothing to fear for now, the economist believes, warning Moscow and Beijing against deluding themselves into believing that the US and NATO will play by rules with them.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/202108121083591013-apocalypse-now-what-are-risks-of-cias-possible-all-out-clandestine-war-against-russia--china/

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As part of a concerted effort to pressurize Iran ahead of the expected resumption of nuclear talks in Vienna, Washington and its European allies appear to be using a mysterious and not entirely understandable attack on an oil tanker operated by Israel to extract additional concessions from Tehran.   In doing so, says the well-informed Iranian newspaper Ettelaat, they are unwittingly playing into the hands of an Israeli scheme aimed at railroading the very nuclear deal that Washington and the Europeans are supposedly trying to revive. The controversy over the recent attack on the Israeli Mercer Street continues unabated, and the US and Britain rushed to bring the issue even to the UN Security Council. However, they failed to reach a consensus on Iran there.

In this connection, it may be recalled that an Israeli ship was attacked off the coast of Oman on July 29 while it was sailing from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to the Port of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. An oil tanker operated by Zodiac Maritime, owned by Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer, was reportedly attacked by suicide drones. A Zodiac Maritime spokesman said two crew members, British and Romanian nationals, died in the attack. The attack, for which Tel Aviv, London, and Washington instantly and unsubstantiated accused Iran, marked the beginning of a coordinated diplomatic campaign against Tehran at a time when nuclear talks on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal had stalled after six rounds of painstaking negotiations in Vienna. The last round of talks in Vienna was completed more than a month ago, and differences over how to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are still unresolved. The US has steadfastly refused to lift all sanctions imposed by the Donald Trump administration and to give assurances that it will not withdraw from the JCPOA again, as it did in the past. The sixth round was also held when a transfer of power in Iran connected with the June 18 presidential elections, in which Ebrahim Raisi won a confident and predictable victory.

In a separate statement, US CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said that based on the fact that “the vertical stabilizer is identical to those identified on one of the Iranian UAVs designed and manufactured for the one-sided kamikaze attack, we could assume that Iran was actively involved in the attack.”  In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States) condemned Iran for the attack. “This was a deliberate and targeted attack and a clear violation of international law,” the statement said. “All available evidence points to Iran.” There is no excuse for this attack.   Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh instantly responded that the G7 condemnation consisted of unfounded accusations. “Israel is likely to be the real culprit behind the attack,” the spokesman added. “For experts and those who know the history of our region, it is nothing new that the Zionist regime is scheming such plots,” Said Khatibzadeh emphasized.

Sensing a change of plans in Tehran, the US and its European allies launched a diplomatic campaign to intimidate Iran into returning to the talks in Vienna without any new demands. Washington’s main concern was that the negotiating team of new President Ebrahim Raisi would return to Vienna with new spirit and demands, amounting to a reversal of the American progress made in the last six rounds. This concern is not groundless: the Tehran Times, which presents the official point of view, reported that the Iranians were even considering, among other options, abandoning the results of the Vienna talks under Hassan Rouhani. The same newspaper, citing official sources, concludes that Tehran may reject the results and set a new agenda for negotiations with the West to resolve the remaining issues in a new format and spirit.  This is why the US, in an apparent attempt to influence the plans of the Iranian ayatollahs, has sought to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran since the end of the sixth round. They have threatened and are threatening to withdraw from negotiations, openly opposed to lifting all sanctions, and have even prepared new oil sanctions against Iran.

Then there was the incomprehensible attack on Mercer Street, which the US and its allies saw as a gift to exert further pressure on Iran. While the hype surrounding this attack is still going on, the known provocateur, Britain and its allies, in a spirit of high probability, have concocted several stories about the hijacking of commercial ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf of Oman. Once again, they have accused Iran, without evidence and with impudence, of playing a role in these events. How can we not recall the dirty work of London and its notorious international organization Médecins Sans Frontières in accusing Damascus of the use of poisonous substances?

Iran fully understands the ulterior motives behind this drama, which the West has habitually turned into a farce. Iranian officials warned the West not to engage in dirty propaganda games to gain concessions. Commenting on the alleged attempted seizure of a ship in the Gulf of Oman, the Iranian Embassy in Britain stated on Twitter: “To mislead the public around the world for diplomatic gain in New York is not fair game.” But this unfair game can lead to the opposite result. The US and Britain have enlisted Israel’s help in their campaign of putting pressure on Iran, which is likely to have unintended consequences for them.

“We have just heard a distorted statement about the Mercer Street incident. Immediately after the event, Israeli officials blamed Iran for the incident. That’s what they usually do. This is a standard practice of the Israeli regime. Its purpose is to divert world attention from the regime’s crimes and inhumane practices in the region,” said Zahra Ershadi, the charge d’affaires ad interim of Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations. She made the remarks after a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on the recent oil tanker incident in the Gulf of Oman.

Israel’s ambassador to the US and the UN, Gilad Erdan, threw aside his restraint and revealed some of these targets. He said that Israel would ultimately like to see the current regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran overthrown. “In the end, we would like [the government] to be overthrown and [for] regime change to take place in Iran,” Gilad Erdan said when asked about Israel’s strategy toward the Islamic Republic, according to the Times of Israel. The statement was made after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s blunt remarks that Tel Aviv allegedly knows for a fact that it was Iran that attacked Mercer Street.

Regardless of Israel’s goals for Iran, the current approach of London and Washington is unlikely to produce results, as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has unequivocally and firmly made it clear that the West is unlikely to succeed in intimidating the Iranians and the country’s leadership. Moreover, no one will force the Iranians to give up their legal rights and freedoms.

Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” .

Read more: https://journal-neo.org/2021/08/17/the-persian-gulf-is-once-again-at-the-center-of-western-provocations/

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