see:

How the West eats its children

by Thierry Meyssan

For Thierry Meyssan, by taking to the streets, the French have become the first Western population to take personal risks to oppose financial globalisation. Although they do not realise it, and still imagine that their problems are exclusively national, their enemy is the same force that crushed the region of the African Great Lakes and a part of the Greater Middle East. In order to understand the project which inextricably unites these apparently disparate events, we have to take a step back.

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International relations experienced a profound change with the paralysis of the Soviet Union in 1986, when the State was unable to control the civilian nuclear incident in Tchernobyl [1], then with the revocation of the Warsaw Pact in 1989, when the East German Communist Party [2] destroyed the Berlin Wall, and finally, with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

At that time, the President of the United States, George Bush Sr., decided to demobilise one million soldiers and devote the efforts of his country to its own prosperity. He wanted to transform US hegemony within its zone of influence, and expand it into that of the leader of the world, the guarantor of world stability. With that, he laid the foundations for a « New World Order », first of all in the speech he gave side by side with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at the Aspen Institute (2 August 1990), then during his speech to Congress (11 September 1990), announcing operation « Desert Storm » [3].

The world of the après-Soviet Union is one of free circulation, not only of merchandise, but also world capital, under the unique control of the United States. In other words, the passage from capitalism to financialisation – not the triumphant culmination of free exchange, but an exacerbated form of colonial exploitation of the whole world, including the West. Within the space of a quarter of a century, the major US fortunes have multiplied many times, and the global wealth of the world has increased considerably.

By allowing capitalism to run wild, President Bush Sr. hoped to extend prosperity to the world. But capitalism is not a political project, it is simply a system of logic designed for creating profit. The logic of the US multinationals was to increase their profits by delocalising production to China, where it is now possible, and where workers are the lowest paid in the world.

Those who were prepared to measure the cost of this advance for the West were few and far between. New middle classes began to appear in the third world, and although they were, of course, far less wealthy than those in the West, they enabled new, mainly Asian states, to play a rôle on the world stage. But simultaneously, Western middle classes began to disappear [4], meaning that it became impossible for the democratic institutions they built to survive. Above all, the populations of entire regions were to be entirely crushed, starting with those of the African Great Lakes. This first regional war caused 6 million deaths, in Angola, Burundi, Namibia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, and was met with general incomprehension and indifference. The aim was to continue to seize the natural resources of these countries, but to pay less and less for them, which meant dealing with gangs rather than with the States who had to feed their populations.

The sociological transformation of the world is happening very fast and is clearly without precedent, although we do not have the statistical tools available today to evaluate it with precision. However, everyone can witness the increase in power of Eurasia, (not in the Gaullist sense of « Brest to Vladivostok », but that of Russia and Asia without Western and Central Europe), which seeks liberty and prosperity, while the Western powers, including the United States, are slowly and progressively declining, limiting individual freedom and ejecting half of their population into zones of poverty.

Today, the percentage of imprisonment in China is four times inferior to that of the United States,while their purchasing power is slightly higher. Objectively therefore, with all its faults, Chine has become a freer and more prosperous country than the United States.

This process was predictable from the beginning. Its application was studied for a long time. So, on 1 September 1987, a US forty-year-old published a page of counter-current publicity in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He warned his compatriots about the rôle that President Bush Sr. was planning to allocate to the United States – to assume and finance out of their own pockets the responsibility for the developing « New World Order ». People read it and laughed. The author of these texts was real estate promoter, Donald Trump.

The application of the economic model to international relations

One month after the attacks of 11 September 2001, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nominated his friend Admiral Arthur Cebrowski as Director of the new Office of Force Transformation. He was tasked with changing the culture of the entire US military in order to enable it to respond to a complete change in its mission

There was no longer question of using US armies to defend principles or interests, but to use them for a reorganisation of the world by dividing it into two parts – one one side the states integrated into the globalised economy, and on the other, the others [5]. The Pentagon would no longer fight wars in order to steal natural resources, but to control access to those resources by the globalised nations. A division directly inspired by the process of globalisation which had already trashed half of the Western populations. This time, it was half of the world’s population which was to be excluded [6].

The reorganisation of the world began in the political zone known as the « Greater Middle East », that is to say stretching from Afghanistan to Morocco, with the exception of Israël, Lebanon and Jordan. This brought about the alleged epidemic of civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Syria and Yemen, which has already caused several million deaths.

Like a monster eating its own children, the global financial system based in the United States faced its first crisis in 2008, when the subprime bubble burst. Contrary to a commonly-held belief, this was absolutely not a global crisis, but a Western problem. For the first time, the NATO states experienced the first consequences of the policy they were supporting. Yet the upper Western classes changed nothing in their behaviour, as they witnessed with compassion the wreck of the middle classes. The only notable modification was the adoption of the « Volcker rule » [7], which forbade banks from profiting from information obtained from their clients in order to speculate against their interests. But while conflicts of interest enabled a number of crooks to get rich fast, they are not the root of the problem, which is far more wide-reaching.

The revolt of the Western populations

The revolt of the Western middle and working classes against the globalised upper class began two years ago.

Aware of the Western recession as compared with Asia, the people of the United Kingdom were the first to attempt to save its life-style by leaving the European Union and turning to China and the Commonwealth (referendum of 23 June 2016) [8]. Unfortunately, the leaders of the United Kingdom were unable to conclude the agreement they hoped for with China and experienced great difficulty in reactivating their links with the Commonwealth.

Then, witnessing the collapse of their civil industries, a part of the United States voted, on 8 November 2016, for the only Presidential candidate who was opposed to the New World Order, Donald Trump. He spoke of a return to the « American dream ». Unfortunately for his voters, although Donald Trump began to question the rules of globalised commerce, he had no team with him apart from his family, and was only able to modify, but not change, the military strategy of his country. Almost all of the general officers had adopted the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski ideology, and could no longer imagine themselves in any other role than defenders of financial globalisation.

Aware of the collapse of their national industry, and certain that they would be betrayed by their upper class, the Italians voted, on 4 March 2018, for an anti-system party composed of the Ligue and the 5-star Movement. These parties built an alliance in order to implement social policies. Unfortunately, they were rejected by the European Union [9]. In France, tens of thousands of SME’s (small and medium-sized enterprises), subcontractors of industry, had gone bankrupt over the last ten years, but their compulsory tax deductions [please read CONTRIBUTION], already among the highest in the world, increased by 30 % over the same period.

Several hundreds of thousands of French people suddenly took to the streets to demonstrate against abusive financial measures. Unfortunately for them, the French upper classes have been contaminated by the very idea that was rejected by the United States, and therefore did their best to adapt their policies to the popular revolt, but not to change its basic causes.

If we look at each of these four countries separately, we will find four different explanations for what is happening there. But if we analyse the situation as a single phenomenon affecting different cultures, we will discover the same mechanisms across the board. In these four countries, consecutive with the end of capitalism, the middle classes disappeared more or less rapidly, and with them the political system that they incarnated - Democracy.

So either the Western leaders abandon the financial system they have developed and return to the productive capitalism of the Cold War, or they will have to invent a different organisation that no-one has so far been able imagine. Failing that, the West, which has directed the world for five centuries, will sink into a long period of internal chaos.

The Syrians were the first non-globalised People capable of surviving and resisting the destruction of Rumsfeld-Cebrowski’s infra-world. The French were the first globalised people to rise up against the destruction of the West, even if they are not aware that they are fighting the same unique enemy of all of humanity. President Emmanuel Macron is not the man for the situation, not because he has any responsibility for the system that preceded him, but because he is pure product of that system. In response to the riots in his country, he spoke from the G20 in Buenos-Aires, declaring that the meeting was a success in his eyes, (which it was not), and that he intended to advance more efficiently than his predecessors - in the wrong direction.

How to save privilege

It appears that the British ruling class has its solution - if London in particular and the Western nations in general are no longer capable of ruling the world, it will be necessary to cut one’s losses and divide the world into two distinct zones. This is the policy implemented by Obama in the final months of his presidency [10], then by Theresa May, and now by Donald Trump, with their refusal to cooperate and their ready-made accusations, first of all against Russia and now against China.

It also seems that Russia and China, despite their historical rivalry, are aware that they will never be able to ally themselves with these Westerners who have never ceased trying to carve them up. This is the source of their project, the « Eurasian Economic Union » - if the world must be split in two, each participant will have to organise its own. In concrete terms, for Beijing, this means abandoning half of its « Silk Road » project and its redeployment with Moscow only in Greater Eurasia.

How to determine the line of demarcation

For the West and Greater Eurasia, it will be necessary to determine the split line as fast as possible. For example, what side will Ukraine choose? The construction by Russia of the Kertch bridge was aimed at separating the country, absorbing the Donbass and the Azov Sea basin, then Odessa and Transnistria. On the contrary, the incident at Kertch, organised by the Western powers, is aimed at enrolling all of Ukraine into NATO before the country fractures.

Since the ship of financial globalisation is sinking, many people are beginning to save their personal interests without any care for others. For example this is the source of the tension between the European Union and the United States. As far as this game is concerned, the Zionist movement has always had a length’s lead, which explains the mutation of Israëli strategy, which has abandoned Syria to Russia, and turned to both the Gulf States and East Africa.

Perspectives

Taking into account what is at play here, it is obvious that the insurrection in France is only the beginning of a much wider process which is going to spread to other Western countries.

It would be absurd to believe that at a time of financial globalisation, a government, whatever it might be, could resolve the problems of its country without first of all questioning international relations and at the same time regaining its capacity for action. But precisely, foreign policy has been kept on the sidelines of the democratic field since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is both necessary and urgent to resign from almost all of the treaties and engagements of the last thirty years. Only the states which are able to re-affirm their sovereignty can hope to recover.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 

Pete Kimberley

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204208.html

George H.W. Bush was America’s closer.

Called in to pitch the final innings of the Cold War, Bush 41 presided masterfully over the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, the liberation of 100 million Eastern Europeans and the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent nations.

History’s assignment complete, Bush 41 was retired.

And what happened to the world he left behind?

What became of that world where America was the lone superpower, which 41 believed should lead in creation of the New World Order?

The Russia that back then was led by Boris Yeltsin, a man desperate to be our friend and ally, is now ruled by an autocratic nationalist.

Was not Vladimir Putin an inevitable reaction to our treating Russia like an untrustworthy and dangerous recidivist, by our expansion of NATO into the Balkans, the eastern Baltic and the Black Sea — the entire front porch of Mother Russia?

Did the America that in her early decades declared the Monroe Doctrine believe a great nation like Russia would forever indulge the presence of a hostile alliance on her doorstep led by a distant superpower?

In this same quarter century that we treated Russia like a criminal suspect, we welcomed China as the prodigal son. We threw open our markets to Chinese goods, escorted her into the WTO, smiled approvingly as U.S. companies shifted production there.

Beijing reciprocated—by manipulating her currency, running up hundreds of billions of dollars in trade surpluses with us, and thieving our technology when she could not extort it from our industries in China. Beijing even sent student spies into American universities.

Now the mask has fallen. China is claiming all the waters around her, building island bases in the South China Sea and deploying weapons to counter U.S. aircraft carriers. Creating ports and bases in Asia and Africa, confronting Taiwan—China clearly sees America as a potentially hostile rival power and is reaching for hegemony in the Western Pacific and East Asia.

And who produced the policies that led to the “unipolar power” of 1992 being challenged by these two great powers now collaborating against us? Was it not the three presidents who sat so uncomfortably beside President Donald Trump at the state funeral of 41?

Late in the 20th century, Osama bin Laden declared war on us for our having planted military bases on the sacred soil of Mecca and Medina; and, on Sept. 11, 2001, he made good on his declaration.

America recoiled, invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban, and set out to build an Afghan regime on American principles. Bush 43, declaring that we were besieged by “an axis of evil,” attacked and occupied Iraq.

We then helped ignite a civil war in Syria that became, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions uprooted, the greatest humanitarian disaster of the century.

Then followed our attack on Libya and support for Saudi Arabia’s war to crush the Houthi rebels in Yemen, a war that many believe has surpassed Syria as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Where are the fruits of our forever war in the Middle East that justify the 7,000 U.S. dead, 60,000 wounded and untold trillions of dollars lost?

Since George H.W. Bush left the White House, the U.S. has incurred $12 trillion in trade deficits, lost scores of thousands of manufacturing plants and 5 million manufacturing jobs. Our economic independence is ancient history.

After 41 left, the Republican Party supported an immigration policy that brought tens of millions, mostly unskilled and poor, half of them illegal, into the country. Result: The Nixon-Reagan coalition that delivered two 49-state landslides in the ’70s and ’80s is history, and the Republican nominee has lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections.

From 1992 to 2016, the American establishment contemptuously dismissed as “isolationists” those who opposed their wars for democracy in the Middle East, and as “protectionists” those who warned that by running up these massive trade deficits we were exporting America’s future.

The establishment airily dismissed those who said that pushing NATO right up to Russia’s borders would enrage and permanently antagonize a mighty military power. They ridiculed skeptics of our embrace of the Chinese rulers who defended the Tiananmen massacre.

The establishment won the great political battles before 2016. But how did the democracy crusaders, globalists, open borders progressives and interventionists do by their country in these decades?

Did the former presidents who sat beside Trump at National Cathedral, and the establishment seated in the pews behind them, realize that it was their policies, their failures, that gave birth to the new America that rose up to throw them out, and put in Donald Trump?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/who-lost-the-world-george-h-w-left-behind/

Historically, G H W Bush inherited a simple job from Reagan who had already smoothed (lied about) things with Gobachev. G H W B muffed a lot of other things which historically were not going to favour the next presidents. Meanwhile none of the presidents who followed G H W Bush understood anything about humanity, only about money (if that), mostly for their mates — the rich. Each of them had their own deceitful "style" and basically a president like Obama did a lot of damage to the presidency, ending up with the election of Trump — which should never had had to happen. This exposed of course the American lies we have been fed since the end of WW2...

Will we be cleverer? I doubt it. The deceit from the US political beast is massive and we have to hope that the next President — a woman — is not Hillary, but clever enough to make peace. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZblPwNLH6hg

Meanwhile the dog had flees...

SloMo, the sideshow spruiker, said that the recently deceased George H. W. Bush was a “true and great friend of Australia who fought for freedom and democracy”.

Of course he was. In particular he was a true and great friend to John Connolly, aircraft sales and spare parts man, originally from Broken Hill. Connolly, not to be confused with the Sydney corporate affairs guru, was a little known but larger-than-life character who did secret and pressing work for the CIA.

When he was elected president in November 1988, Bush insisted Connolly attend his inauguration the following January. “You’re coming,” he ordered.

How did this happen to an Australian cowboy who left school at 13 and went into the aircraft leasing, sales, and spare parts business?

Even before he was CIA director, Bush had connections with Connolly, coming to Australia and meeting him at his home in Darling Point. Those with memories of the time understand that Connolly had the job of sourcing for the CIA second-hand aircraft and getting them to Taiwan, from where they would be sent into service for the South Vietnamese on behalf of the Americans.

The planes were diverted in this backdoor manner so that, for political purposes, there were no US fingerprints on the supply of equipment to the South Vietnamese.

There was also activity in supplying aircraft for American missions in Laos against the Pathet Lao, which ultimately took over the country in 1975, when Bush was head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In the process, Connolly collected huge brokerage fees and lived rather high on the hog in Sydney and beyond. There is a suggestion that he also had an important role in Air America, used for CIA operations in Indochina.

He had the lease on hangar No. 1 at Mascot, in which lived a gleaming Lockheed Electra of the type flown by Amelia Earhart, a gift to him from the US Navy. One of his friends said he also flew a plane under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and was defended for breaches of the flying regulations by the barrister John Foord.

And there he is, the Boy from Broken Hill, in the photo of Poppy Bush being sworn in by chief justice William Rehnquist at the US Capitol.

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2018/12/08/gadfly-saltbush-silly-lim...

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

The US is addicted to endless wars of aggression against one nation after another - enemies invented to attack because real ones don't exist.

America glorifies war in the name of peace it abhors. Today's super-weapons if used risk humanity's destruction like never before.

In 1982, founder of America's nuclear navy Admiral Hyman Rickover warned Congress of the existential threat, saying:

"The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapons it has available" to defeat an adversary, adding:

"I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it" - referring to the destructive power of nuclear weapons able to kill us all if used in war.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/12-12-2018/142115-language_us_understands-0/

Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Harry Elmer Barnes, Arnold Toynbee, HG Wells, and other notable world figures warned that if war isn't ended, it'll end us.

Washington's imperial agenda is humanity's greatest threat. Its rage for unchallenged dominance may doom us.

Republicans and undemocratic Dems get away with bullying other nations to bend to their will because the world community doesn't challenge their hubris and arrogance with toughness short of war.

It's the only language they understand. Diplomacy with hegemons doesn't work. It failed with Hitler. Appeasing him encouraged greater belligerence. 

WW II might have been avoided if Washington and European nations challenged his actions against other countries before things spun out-of-control with the invasion and defeat of France.

Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" appeasement and similar Western actions made WW II inevitable as things turned out.

The US is pursuing the same aggressive policies as Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. WW III may be inevitable because of its rage for global dominance - a doomsday scenario if nuclear weapons are used.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/12-12-2018/142115-language_us_understands-0/

Sino/Russian unity is a vital anti-imperial alliance - an essential counterforce to America's aggressive agenda, threatening world peace, perhaps more than ever before.

Washington's rage for dominance by whatever it takes to achieve it makes unthinkable nuclear war possible, maybe inevitable if its ruling authorities aren't challenged with toughness. 

Strong Sino/Russian unity against humanity-threatening US imperial arrogance may be the only way to prevent global war before Washington launches it by accident or design.

When will China and Russia say enough is enough? When will they no longer accept US bullying and other hostile tactics? When will they stop pretending diplomacy is the only way to deal with Washington? It doesn't negotiate. It demands.

When will they cease calling the US their partner? When will they accept reality? Washington wants dominance over their countries and all others.

Republicans and Dems want their ruling authorities replaced with pro-Western puppet rule - war an option if other methods fail to achieve their objectives.

Things appear heading inevitably toward global war if their imperial agenda isn't challenged with toughness.

Acting as a US proxy against China, Canada's arrest of Huawei Technologies' chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou is one of countless examples of how the US disdainfully and aggressively treats other countries - serving its own interests at their expense.

Beijing's only alternative is to respond with toughness - demanding her immediate release, suspending talks and other dealings with the US until the offense against her, Huawei, and China is reversed.

It's the only way to get the Trump regime's attention. Nothing else can work. In response to what happened, China's Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said his government "will take further action based on the US actions."

Meng's arrest by Trudeau regime authorities in Vancouver on orders from Washington to detain and extradite her to the US is all about trying to undermine Beijing's "Made in China 2025" strategy - aiming to prevent Beijing from becoming an economic powerhouse, especially in sophisticated technological areas, able to challenge and perhaps surpass America's prominence.

It's about wanting China, Russia, and all other countries transformed into US vassal states. It's about Washington's rage for unchallenged global dominance at the expense of world peace.

It's about hugely destructive US imperial arrogance, its rage to rule, mindless of rule of law principles and the human cost.

It's about risking planetary destruction and all its life forms. It's about forcefully challenging its agenda before we're all enslaved or killed - either way doomed.

Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) think tank head Andrey Kortunov believes "Russian patience is coming to an end."

Trump was co-opted by sinister dark forces straightaway in office. "(H)e's unreliable and unsuitable as a partner," Kortunov added.

He "may have stood up Vladimir Putin once too often" after snubbing him during the Armistice Day centennial anniversary in Paris last month and at the G20 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The issue isn't Trump. It's how Washington operates under Republicans and Dems - pursuing the same imperial agenda, featuring endless wars of aggression and global turmoil.

It's about US-controlled one-world government, Washington rules overriding international and nation-state laws, NATO becoming a global military, endless wars against invented enemes, might over right, raping and destroying one nation after another, carving up whole continents for control and profits, along with creating ruler-serf societies worldwide.

It's about a world unsafe and unfit to live in. It's about challenging Washington's megalomaniacal agenda before it dooms us all.

It's up to Russia, China and other key nations united to save humanity from disaster if Washington isn't challenged with toughness.

It's the only language it understands - the only effective strategy against its destructive imperial agenda.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/12-12-2018/142115-languag...

I disagree with the piece. Toughness would not cut it. We should ignore the USA altogether and do as if the USA DID NOT EXIST. 

READ FROM TOP. 

How the Gulf War Gave Us the Antiwar Right

A scrappy libertarian-conservative group forged a path and opposed H.W. Bush's signature conflict.

By JON BASIL UTLEY • December 21, 2018

The recent veneration of George H.W. Bush has been wonderfully uplifting, especially as it recalled his cautious use of persuasion and honest argument.

Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s former speechwriter, beautifully described Bush’s funeral in the Wall Street Journal as reminding us of our dignity and “re-summoning our mystique.” The event, Noonan said, harkened back to when America was respected and admired, generous and “expected to do good.” President Bush, she noted, had presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union diplomatically and without humiliating Russia’s leaders or its people. He also declined to occupy a Muslim country after defeating Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Bush was indeed a very decent man. In fact, he was a great statesman, as TAC’s editor Jim Antle has noted on these pages. 

Yet almost none of the news reported on what was the darkest chapter of his legacy: the First Gulf War. I was a co-founder at the time of a small and vastly outgunned opposition group of conservatives and (mainly) libertarians, the Committee to Avert a Mid-East Holocaust. Today, with at least a million Arabs, Afghans, and Americans dead from the unending chaos the United States unleashed in the Muslim world, the name seems very appropriate.

Our group included truly great conservatives: Henry Regnery, almost the only publisher of conservative books, who helped keep liberty alive during the dark days of the 1940s and ‘50s, along with the always brave Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran. Regnery and Buchanan were the main contributors to our group. But we were a virtual who’s who of the incipient libertarian movement: Ron Paul, the once and future Texas congressman who would eventually gain a wider following as a presidential candidate; Lew Rockwell, founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an important libertarian think tank; the economist Murray Rothbard; Bill Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute; Sheldon Richman, longtime editor at FEE; Justin Raimondo, who would go on to be a co-founder at Antiwar.com; and Burt Blumert, who helped fund much of Rothbard and Raimondo’s work.

Our chair and guide was Phil Nicolaides, former deputy director at Voice of America during the Reagan era. The executive committee included myself, Richman, Sobran, and chess champion Phil Collier. Fran Griffin, a strong Catholic and founding member of Young Americans for Freedom, did tremendous work for almost no pay handling our mail-outs and administration with her company Griffin Communications. 

In those days, communication consisted of direct mail, while most of the media just accepted pro-war government handouts. If only we’d the internet! We did get some news coverage but of course we were no match for Kuwaiti money and evangelical supporters of Israel. Still, the Senate vote in favor of the war was only 52-47, despite the overwhelming propaganda in favor of it as described below.

The war led to a major break between libertarians and conservatives, especially as the giant Heritage Foundation became a champion of war from that moment on. Even today, Heritage has backed continued U.S. support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen.

Much about the Gulf War and especially its lies and subsequent brutality were not reported. Bush himself may not have known all that took place in the military campaign. After all, Dick Cheney, whom we know now to be a liar, was his secretary of defense. But the deeds need to be remembered and indeed researched.

Particularly odious was the calculated destruction of Iraq’s sanitation, irrigation, and electrical grid, with the intent of causing mass civilian disease and starvation, as specified in a Defense Intelligence Agency report. It would have been interesting to find out who ordered this policy. Reconstruction supplies were then blockaded over the following nine years, including during the Clinton presidency. The consequent half million deaths of children were deemed acceptable by Clinton’s former secretary of state Madeleine Albright in this famous 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl. Osama bin Laden later listed civilian suffering in Iraq as one of the three reasons for his subsequent terrorist attack on America.

Public support for the war was in part ginned up by the infamous “incubator babies” lie and claims that aerial photographs showed 200,000 Iraqi soldiers waiting along the border to invade Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the reason given to Americans for sending troops was to protect the Saudis. 

The Christian Science Monitor and LA Times reported later how it was untrue and that such photographs never existed. Photos of the border showed no troops congregated there. The Defense Department claimed the photos were secret and never released them even after the war.

Such misinformation is critical if you’re trying to get America into a war. Remember the British propaganda that got us into the First World War? A repeated story was that German soldiers were eating Belgian babies. In the second Iraq war, it was lies that Saddam had aided bin Laden and was developing nuclear “weapons of mass destruction.” 

Kuwait’s ruling family spent billions of dollars and paid for top public relations in Washington. I remember particularly the yearly CPAC meeting when the Kuwaitis paid for a dozen tables to be filled with students to cheer for war. Saddam was sending cash bequests to the families of Palestinian terrorists whom Israel had killed, so pro-Israel forces in Washington also supported the war, though they were less important to the lobbying effort than Kuwait.

Nevertheless, the United States initially hesitated to go to war. There was the meeting of the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, with Saddam Hussein during which she told him that inter-Arab quarrels were not the concern of the United States government. A top State Department official told Congress the same thing. The ambassador strangely disappeared from the news after the war started.

Then there was President Bush’s rather casual attitude about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Only after he met with British Prime Minister Thatcher and faced the vast pro-war publicity campaign did he change his mind. Thatcher was very alarmed because Kuwait’s vast deposits in British banks were important for their solvency. She feared Iraq might continue threatening other Gulf states and their bank deposits. She insisted and begged America to save Kuwait. Bush than organized a United Nations Security Council vote to condemn Iraq and a coalition that included many Arab nations. He did it with full international legality (unlike his son’s subsequent war) and above all he got our allies to pay for the war. There was massive support in America for the operation.

Bush’s national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, later opposed the younger Bush’s attack on and subsequent occupation of Iraq in 2003. He understood well the limits of power and the importance of having allies—something the next President Bush cared little about.

Jon Basil Utley is publisher of The American Conservative.

Read more:

Read from top. 

Bush was indeed a "very decent man" (ON THE SURFACE), except for all the discreet crap he did — which was full-on CIA deceit. Our perception of people, especially men,  is often based on illusions maintained by the perfectly manicured suit and tie they wear... With women the illusion is created by the way they pluck their eyebrows...

Great to see the anti-war movement standing on both side of the fence, yet despite Trump removing troops from Syria it seems that the full-blown warriors and Hollywood (a place that rely on fairy-telling the "courage of fighting whatever") are up in arms.

(see as donald decides that daesh is kaput... in delicate diplomacy...)