[Peace-discuss] Oliver Stone - Untold History of US on Showtime

[C. G. Estabrook]

"It backfires, these policies" - if and only if the US wants to reduce the number of "terrorists." ("Terrorists" is what the US government calls the armed resistance to American invasion, occupation, and intimidation of the major energy-producing region of the world.) 

If, on the other hand, the US wants to maintain the "terrorist threat" in order justify its military actions in the region, the policies are working out quite nicely, thank you: the number of terrorists grows, and the threat remains serious...

It's important to see that it's control of this region (the "Greater Middle East" - what the Pentagon calls "Central Command"), not just access to oil, that the USG wants. We in fact import very little oil from the Mideast - no more than we export from the US - but control of Mideast oil gives the US an unparalleled advantage over countries in Europe and Asia who are our economic competitors. (It's Iran's oil production, far more than its nuclear program, that the USG wants to control.) 

If the Last Terrorist throws down his AK-47 and says the Arabic equivalent of, "Screw it, I'm outta here," it wouldn't be long before countries in SW Asia and Africa start respectfully to suggest to the US military that they go home and take Obama's drones with them...

What a blow to US security policy. It would make it clear that it's the US that wants war, not the countries we're attacking. --CGE


On Nov 16, 2012, at 3:57 PM, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" <ewj at pigsqq.org> wrote:

> It is really a quite interesting interview and promises to be a great series.
> I had heard something of it a few weeks ago because of some of the principles expounded upon.
> 
> STONE: ...people will hate us more for doing this, and we’re invading the sovereignty of Pakistan and Yemen and so many countries....the United States is acting with impunity. But the bigger issue is simply that there has been never—in the history of empires, and they’ve all fallen, no one has a monopoly on any weapon ever, and whether it’s the atomic bomb—was copied—or the hydrogen bomb. Or, in this case, Predator drones will be made by other people, and they will be coming this way or to our—we have 800 bases around the world under this empire that we’ve created. So, we’re very vulnerable. In most of them, we’ve created hatred and a desire for revenge.
> PETER KUZNICK: And it doesn’t work. That’s the other point, that when we started our drone attacks in Yemen, there were 300 members of al-Qaeda there; now there are 700 or 800 members. It backfires, these policies. We just make people hate us. We refer—the CIA operators who target people in Pakistan refer to them as "bugsplats," the people who are killed there. To the Pakistanis, those are human beings. To the operators here, they’re bugsplats. That’s the attitude.
> 
> *
> 
> What's that about sowing and reaping?
> 
> Your bad karma will catch up with you?
> 
> *
> 
> 
> “Without Spam, we wouldn't have been able to feed our army.”
> - Nikita Khrushchev
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/17/12 2:52, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>> 
>> Friends,
>> Just saw a clip about Oliver Stone's new miniseries -- The Untold History of the US --  showing NOW on Showtime. Worth yr attention if you get Showtime... or if you (like me) must wait for a rental DVD   www.democracynow.org/2012/11/16/oliver_stone_on_the_untold_
>>  --Jenifer
>> 
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