World War is upon us. It has been unfolding in slow motion for years. The only question now is who will get blamed.
Humans tend to view each stage of history in isolation. As a result they rarely see the chain reactions that build over decades, until a flash point catches their attention.
September 11th, 2001 was one such flash point. You could make the case that this was where it all began. There's some truth in that, but it's also an oversimplification.
Of course the dancing with the stars version of the story: the U.S. backed the Mujaheddin in response to the Soviet invasion of December of 1979.
You might want to run that version by Robert Gates, director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, and Secretary of Defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, because in his memoir entitled "From the Shadows", he revealed that the U.S. actually began the covert operation 6 months prior. With the express intent of drawing in the Soviets.
The Carter administration began looking at the possibility of covert assistance to the insurgents opposing the pro-Soviet, Marxist government of President Taraki at the beginning of 1979. On March 5, 1979, CIA sent several covert action options relating to Afghanistan to the SCC. The covering memo noted that the insurgents had stepped up their activities against the government and had achieved surprising successes. It added that the Soviets were clearly concerned about the setbacks to the Afghan communist regime and that the Soviet media were accusing the United States, Pakistan, and Egypt of supporting the insurgents. The SCC met the next day and requested new options for covert action.
The DO informed DDCI Carlucci late in March that the government of Pakistan might be more forthcoming in terms of helping the insurgents than previously believed, citing an approach by a senior Pakistani official to an Agency officer to discuss assistance to the insurgents, including small arms and ammunition. The Pakistani had stated that without a firm commitment from the United States, Pakistan “could not risk Soviet wrath.” Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, a senior official also had raised the prospect of a Soviet setback in Afghanistan and said that his government was considering officially proposing that the United States aid the rebels …
On March 30, 1979, Aaron chaired a historic “mini-SCC” … Walt Slocombe, representing Defense, asked if there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, “sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire?” Aaron concluded by asking the key question: “Is there interest in maintaining and assisting the insurgency, or is the risk that we will provoke the Soviets too great?”
The day before the SCC meeting on April 6 to consider Afghan covert action options, Soviet MO Arnold Horelick sent Turner a paper on the possible Soviet reactions … The risk was that a substantial U.S. covert aid program could raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended.
The meeting was finally held on July 3, 1979, and — almost 6 months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan — Jimmy Carter signed the first finding to help the Mujahedin covertly. It authorized support for insurgent propaganda and other psychological operations in Afghanistan; establishment of radio access to the Afghan population through third-country facilities; and the provision either unilaterally or through third countries of support to the Afghan insurgents, in the form of either cash or nonmilitary supplies. The Afghan effort began relatively small. Initially, somewhat more than half a million dollars was allocated, with almost all being drawn within six weeks.
By the end of August, Pakistani President Mohammad Ziaul-Haq was pressuring the United States for arms and equipment for the insurgents in Afghanistan … Separately, the Pakistani intelligence service was pressing us to provide military equipment to support an expanding insurgency.
When Turner heard this, he urged the DO to get moving in providing more help to the insurgents. They responded with several enhancement options, including communications equipment for the insurgents via the Pakistanis or the Saudis, funds for the Pakistanis to purchase lethal military equipment for the insurgents, and providing a like amount of lethal equipment ourselves for the Pakistanis to distribute to the insurgents.
On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1979, the Soviets massively intervened in Afghanistan. A covert action that began six months earlier funded at just over half a million dollars would, within a year, grow to tens of millions, and most assuredly included the provision of weapons.
From the Shadows (1996) - Robert Gates pp. 144-149.
Oops!
And they still haven't learned their lesson.
Speaking of Al-Qaeda, if you do a google search for "Jet fuel maximum burning temperature" you'll find an article from popularmechanics.com informing you that under ideal conditions jet fuel tops out at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, and that steel melts at 2750 degrees. They go on to explain how isn't a problem because "for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt".
Trouble is, the steel DID melt.
Of course little details like the laws of physics never got in the way of a good story.
Oh by the way, did you ever find anyone who could credibly explain how a third building, World Trade Center building 7, fell straight down at 5:21 pm that day though it was not hit by any plane?
And did they ever explain how the BBC reported this event 26 minutes before it actually happened?
Oh I know what you're thinking: maybe it was a green screen and shoddy editing, and that we can't confirm the actual time from that clip. Or can we? Turns out there was a second clip that did show the time: 21:54. That's 9:54 in England, 4:54 Eastern. Twenty six minutes BEFORE the building actually fell.
But I digress.
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were not motivated by the fall of the twin towers. Nor was the evisceration of your rights and privacy that followed. To say 911 was a pretext would be putting it lightly.
Obama picked up where he left off by toppling Libya and funding extremist in Syria (the precursors of ISIS). They knew the weapons were ending up in the hands of jihadists since at least 2012. They knew what would come next.
A Department of Defense document from 2012 (acquired through an FOIA request) shows that the U.S. government was aware that these fighters intended to form a caliphate, and that this conflict would likely lead to a proxy war with Russia and China.
The Middle East was being balkanized. Every pocket of resistance broken up into bite sized chunks, but it was taking too long, so Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen, and Israel did their part by repeatedly bombing the Syrian army (the most recent attack was in July). Oh, and Turkey helped too! It's a been a team effort.
In 2013, when the U.S. backed rebels in Syria got caught using sarin gas against civilians and the western narrative fell apart fell apart, Russia became a diplomatic thorn in Washington's side. So like a true gambler doesn't know when to walk away, Obama doubled down by backing the coup in Ukraine, installing a puppet government with extensive ties to the U.S. State Department, bankrolling their ethnic cleansing campaign in the East and blaming the entire mess on Vladimir Putin.
Russian aggression, Russian aggression, Russian aggression... because reducing Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria to rubble is about spreading democracy, but accepting the results of a peaceful referendum in Crimea... well that's just beyond the pale.
The war on the Ukrainian front continued through 2014 and into 2015. Somewhere along the way, the preparations for an open conflict between the U.S., Russia and China were normalized and brought from the shadows. Open threats were leveled in full view. Coverage was predictably one-sided.
We've been through this before. Weapons of mass destruction, human rights, Russian aggression... New excuses, same goal.
If you want to start a to war, the unwashed masses must be convinced to send their brothers, sons and fathers to die on the front lines. The specter of an external enemy must be etched into their collective mind through trauma, exaggeration and repetition. History must be whitewashed, twisted and cherry picked down to a politicized nursery rhyme. At no point should the real motives or consequences of such an endeavor be discussed.
It stands to reason that if we want to STOP a war we must reverse this pattern.
Let's start with a realistic look at the consequences.
The United States and Russia alone possess a total of over 15,000 nuclear warheads (as of 2014), each of which are 10 to 30 times more powerful than those that the U.S. used against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
During the Soviet era it was understood that a hot war between these two countries would inevitably lead to the use of these weapons, and would therefore be an act of mass suicide. This idea was so deeply engrained, that it had its own acronym: M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). In recent years scientists have realized that this should be taken as a literal truth, regardless of which side may suffer the most in the initial exchange.
A nuclear war between just these two countries, utilizing only the weapons which are slated to be active after the implementation of the START treaty in 2018, would release over 150 million tons of debris into the atmosphere. This debris would block out the sun, dropping global temperatures between 8 and 30 degrees centigrade. Agriculture would become impossible. Mass extinctions would follow, and our species would not likely be exempt.
This is a mild description. We're not even touching upon the direct consequences of the blasts, firestorms, and radiation poisoning or the secondary deaths caused by exposure, and disease.
In this context you might be inclined to believe that the use of these weapons would be completely off of the table. That every effort would be made to reduce stockpiles and that no new bombs would be built. Unfortunately this is not the case.
In recent years U.S. strategists have begun to promote the idea of "limited nuclear warfare" with a focus on tactical nukes. The idea being that smaller weapons are more effective because they are actually usable.
This isn't just talk. Under Obama the U.S. military developed the most expensive and most dangerous nuclear bomb ever: the B61-12. The B61-12 is a guided nuclear missile, the first of its kind, and it's yield can be dialed down electronically for the desired effect.
This capability has been promoted by the CFR as a means of preemptively destroying China's hardened missile silos.
Apparently the Obama administration took these recommendations to heart, because section 1063 of the NDAA of 2013 Directed the U.S. Strategic Command to prepare a report assessing the capability of the U.S. military to destroy a network of tunnels in China and "the known hardened and deeply buried sites of foreign nations" with "conventional and or nuclear forces". While Russia wasn't mentioned directly here, it should be clear that they are on that list.
Those promoting this new stance claim that this is merely a new form of deterrence, but this line of argumentation (even if it were sincere), is fatally flawed.
A preemptive nuclear strategy, especially when discussed in public, sends a clear message to those who being threatened: that they themselves must strike first. And Russia and China do not possess dial-a-yield tactical nukes, so their preemptive strikes would be full scale.
Of course America's political establishment has a good reason to play chicken with all of our lives, and the future of this planet. The balance of geopolitical and financial power has been shifting, and not in Washington's favor.
China's new Silk Road project, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and outposts in the South China Sea, in tandem with the Eurasian Union spearheaded by Russia, are edging the United States out of the world's new center of gravity.
Pivots have failed, bilateral discussions have gotten no where, sanctions have backfired, trade agreements have stalled, influence has eroded... Washington is running out of options, and time.
The dollar denominated financial system has peaked. This is the end of a debt super cycle, and of the petrodollar. The next leg down is going to be epic.
The powers that be would rather tip the board than lose the game. They'd rather take us to war than to take the blame. And if you let them get away with it, that's just the beginning.
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