Aletho News

Leading America… to defeat

By Finian Cunningham | American Herald Tribune | February 26, 2016

A soldier is supposed to defend his or her country and people. The honorable duty is even more onerous on a General, one would think. Yet Air Force General Philip Breedlove, as with most of the Pentagon top brass, is leading America inexorably to historic defeat.

Not deliberately mind you. But through incompetence and purveying a futile, crass worldview, which misleads America to grossly mis-spend its national resources.

With a $600 billion a-year allocation, the Pentagon devours over half of the total US national budget. What could be spent on creating jobs, building civil infrastructure and providing top class public services in education and heath care is instead pumped into the dead-end military. Year after year after year.

And for what? Only for this same military to lead America further into defeat as a country mired in debt and non-productive warmongering, which in turn leads to more vital resources being thrown into this bottomless pit. It’s a death knell for the nation.

General Breedlove, who is Supreme Commander of US forces in Europe (EUCOM), as well as the top officer of the NATO military alliance, was giving testimony to Congress this week before the House Armed Services Committee.

His pitch was that the US faces a combination of three global threats. They included: a “resurgent, aggressive” Russia, mass migration of refugees in Europe, and the threat of terrorism from the ISIS or ISIL group.

“This year’s budget request reflects our solemn commitment to the security of our allies and partners and to protecting our homeland forward,” said Breedlove.

Now, you would think that a US General might be basing his “threat assessments”on sound information. After all isn’t that what military leaders are supposed to be about, making sure that the homeland and allies are kept safe in the most effective way. Especially, when the money for the Pentagon amounts to over half of the country’s total annual spend.

Breedlove’s worldview could not be more removed from reality, if not downright riven with falsehood.

On the ISIS terror group, this head-chopping barbaric network of takfirists is without doubt a dangerous outfit. But what Breedlove seems oblivious to, or disingenuous about, is that the ISIS terrorists were fomented and weaponized in the first place by his Pentagon covert warmongers in the CIA. This terror network, as with its Al Qaeda precursors, are the Pentagon’s proxy army for regime change and pretext for waging “war against terror”across the globe.

As for the refugee crisis destabilizing Europe, Breedlove admits that the refugees mainly emanate from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But what he astoundingly fails to comprehend is that the US has ravaged these same countries with criminal wars for regime change over the past two decades. We can add Libya too. Yet, the General has the gall to accuse Russia and the Syrian government of “weaponizing the refugee crisis”.

He told Congress: “Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration from Syria in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

It takes a certain obtuseness to describe the humanitarian crisis in this way. The five-year war in Syria was instigated by Washington and its NATO partners, Britain and France, and fueled by US client regimes, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, for the purpose of regime change. The terror brigades of ISIS and myriad others, including the so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army, were infiltrated into Syria to plunge that country into a bloodbath and so topple the government of President Bashar al Assad.

That up to 11 million Syrians have been displaced –nearly half the population –is solely due to the machinations of Washington and its accomplices.

On the third alleged global danger, EUCOM Supreme Commander Breedlove warned that Russia poses an “existential threat”. He said: “Russia wants to rewrite the agreed rules of the international order… EUCOM, working with allies and partners, is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary.”

Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced that it was quadrupling its military spend in Europe to $3.4 billion. This will be used to expand NATO forces in Eastern Europe on Russia’s borders. Despite the hysterics of Breedlove and other Pentagon chiefs, Russia is threatening no-one. This is just a myth that America’s military-industrial complex thrives on and has milked the US economy with for the past 70 years, since the end of the Second World War.

The only people who have invaded Ukraine are the Neo-Nazi junta and militias that the US used to overthrow an elected government there in February 2014.

Let’s move on here. The American people show signs of waking up to the propaganda that has for too long been billowing out of Washington. Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders is a sign that people are no longer frightened by such words as “socialism”and hopefully other such bogeyman concepts. What the people need is an economy that serves their democratic needs: jobs, education, health, social development, public ownership.

It is not clear if Sanders really gets the task ahead. He has said some corny things in support of US foreign war-making and apparently buying into Russia scaremongering in particular.

What Sanders needs to realize is what many ordinary citizens are increasingly attuned to. America’s leviathan, blood-sucking, warmongering military needs to be sacked. The crass views of military top brass like General Breedlove show that this outsized excrescence is not only leading America to defeat; it is, ironically, the biggest threat to American and world security.

If Americans do embark on a political revolution, as Bernie Sanders implores, they need to not only sack the big banks. They need to sack the big tanks and all the other elements of the freeloading military gravy train that is destroying the country.

February 27, 2016 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | ISIL, ISIS, NATO, Philip Breedlove, United States