[Peace-discuss] Peace-discuss Digest, Vol 152, Issue 13

[Carl G. Estabrook]

> On Sep 2, 2016, at 4:50 PM, Stephen Francis via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> To be antiwar is to be anti-Zionist. They are absolutely inseparable. AWARE never touches the subject. You are totally intimidated by the local Jewish power structure. It's obvious and in plain sight. Times are changing. The BDS movement is growing. Anti-Semitism (whatever that is) is growing leaps and bounds because of the internet. It will be a replay of South Africa.  Just will take time.... like Chief Illini...was doomed... human nature prevailed.

War is the issue in the presidential election.

The Higher Antisemitism, beloved by liberals and conservatives alike - "the Jews/Israelis direct US policy in the Mideast" - isn't true; US government policy, in the Mideast as elsewhere, is directed by the interests of US economic elite (the '1%'), which are opposed to the interests of the vast majority of the US population. The US government kills people (more than 20 million people in 37 countries since WWII) to secure the interests of that elite. 

US government policy in the Mideast since WWII is based on the US demand to control the vast energy resources of the region. Control - and not just access - is what the US demands. Zbigniew Brzezinski: US control over the Middle East “gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region.” (Since 1967 Israel has functioned as a "stationary aircraft carrier" for US control of the Mideast, so the US has acquiesced in the Israeli government's apartheid policies.)

The long-term goal of US foreign policy, stretching back more than a century, is to prevent the economic integration of Eurasia as a rival to the economic hegemony of the US elite. 'Manifest Destiny' hardly stopped at the water's edge but spread across the Pacific, already by the end of the 19th century. 

(See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History>; <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memo_PPS23_by_George_Kennan>: "Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.")

That long-term geopolitical goal is at heart of the neoliberal and neoconservative movements within the US political class today. Hillary Clinton is their presidential candidate. The remarkable thing - so dangerous to the Clinton candidacy that they can't mention it, and so must concentrate on Trump's connection to racist right-wingers (and Putin!) - is that Donald Trump is not a neoliberal (more austerity) or a neoconservative (more war). With Clinton as president, we're certain to get more war, in the tradition of the last 25 years. With Trump as president, we might not. How can that be a difficult choice?

“Yes, Trump’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?” [William Blum, author of “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II"]

“The CIA has demanded Trump is not elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he is not elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears - demands that he is not elected. Something is up. These tribunes of "perpetual war" are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China's Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world's great power talking peace - however unlikely - would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire.”

—CGE