This Is Not America
By Timothy V. Gatto
31 August, 2012
Countercurrents.org
A beautiful song, being sung by a beautiful girl, the combination of both should make us feel anything but angry. Yet this song makes me angrier than hell. It’s because she sings the truth. This is NOT America. We live in a nation that is no longer what it once was. From time to time in this country, we have committed our share of atrocities and made our share of mistakes.
The genocidal wars against the Native Americans, the overthrow of legitimate governments by our military and the CIA, the wars of Imperialism against nations like Spain and Mexico, the list goes on. Yet today I am proclaiming that we no longer live in America.
Of course we live in America! How could we not be living in America?
Physically we still live in America, the landscape is still America. The people are still Americans. Still, this is not the America I was taught to respect and love. Since the end of World War II, and especially after the end of “The Cold War”, America has morphed into something else, something a bit more sinister, more self-involved, and something more imperialistic. This nation now strives for global hegemony, for control of this planet, all powerful and led by the wealthiest elites.
I’d like to examine one particular aspect of our foreign policy. I’d like to examine our actions in Libya, Bahrain and in Syria.
Libya was a tremendous tragedy, not only for the Libyan people themselves, but for the entire world. President Obama used a Security Council vote to take America into a war that was not sanctioned by Congress. We supplied militias with modern heavy weapons and anti-aircraft guns and missiles while our jets bombed a good majority of that nation back to the stone-age. Now that nation is basically a lawless State with no effective central government.
“But the government in Tripoli doesn’t control most of the country. The central government is still being established amid tribal violence and bedlam caused by what analysts call the West’s reckless disregard of Libyan “social and cultural nuances” during the invasion. The effect is a problem of armed autonomous groups not aligned with the central government and who refuse to lay their weapons down. “Militias that are roaming the countryside and the other cities have very directly and clearly asserted that they are not accountable to the government,” Ms. Bennis told The Final Call.”
The nation is in a shambles. There is no real central government anymore. Lawless militias roam across the country and disagreements are settled by gun-barrels. “The future remains uncertain and the new Libya appears to be worse than what the old Libya was only accused of being by its foes. After betrayal, regime change and assassination, what are left are confusion, chaos, mayhem, and unfettered access to the natural wealth”.(The Final Call)
Bahrain had a genuine Arab-Spring democratic uprising that was stopped by force by the Bahraini monarchy, the al-Khalifa Family and an incursion by the Gulf Cooperation Council (the GCC), made up of Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE, all of these nations monarchies themselves. The democratic protestors have had many of their kind killed by government and GCC member-states, including many doctors and medics that have treated the wounded. The US turns a blind eye to the stomping out of dissent in that nation, home to the US Fifth Fleet.
Syria, which has a sectarian government, is fighting a war with the Syrian Free Army. Don’t let the name of the FSA fool you, most of the fighters it contains are not even Syrian. The militia is made up of Sunni fundamentalist mercenaries. They come from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other member state of the GCC. They are funded by the CIA, UK’s MI-6, Israel’s Mossed and Turkey. The war is spilling over into Lebanon and other border areas including the Kurdish border lands.
During an interview I had with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts yesterday, I asked him what the future of America looked like considering the path we have undertaken (Global Hegemony). His answer was “nuclear war”. I was not taken aback by his answer as this is my opinion also.
The United States spends 53% of its discretionary budget on the military and for weapons of war. The percentage of military spending vs. the GDP is the most since 1945. You never hear a word about the continuous wars and about the huge sums we spend on our military when mainstream media lackey’s ask the Presidential candidate’s questions.
I watch Scott Pelly on CBS just to hear the government’s “spin” on events. I actually get nauseous when he “report’s” on Syria. He always uses the same words. “Today in Syria the dictator Bashir al-Assad used the full power of its military to strafe its own cities and to fight back against the “freedom fighters” of the Free Syrian Army. Could this be anymore Orwellian? First of all, the majority of fighters aren’t even Syrian and secondly, they are mostly made up of Sunni fundamentalists that desire a Sunni Caliphate. Democracy isn’t even in their vocabulary, except when they are talking to the western news media.
Could you imagine how the U.S. Government would respond if we were attacked in our own cities by foreign militias funded by other nations? Maybe the media will someday get its head out of its ass and actually report real news. That “someday” can’t come fast enough. The world won’t last too long after the US goes to war against China and Russia. That is unfortunately where we are headed to.
Tim Gatto is former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. He is the author of "Complicity to Contempt" and "Kimchee Days" available at Oliver Arts and Open Press.
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