Mad-Dog Mattis Going Rabid
byEric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
On Monday, April 25th, the AP headlined, “US general in Afghanistan suggests Russia arming the Taliban” and reported that U.S. Pentagon chief James “Mad Dog” Mattis was accusing Russia of violating the sovereignty of unnamed nation(s) and was supplying weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan — the very same group that the U.S. back in 1979 had begun arming in Pakistan so that the Taliban would invade Afghanistan and lure Soviet forces into Afghanistan, so as to make the Soviets “bleed” there, as the U.S. itself had bled in its Vietnam War. The U.S. National Security Advisor at that time went to Pakistan and rallied the Taliban there by saying “Your cause is right, and God is on your side!”
(see above video).
Mattis was also quoted in this news-report as saying, “We’re going to have to confront Russia where what they’re doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries.”
The United States has, in fact, invaded Syria — routinely violating the sovereignty of that country. It’s aggression, in order to overthrow Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with Russia. The U.S. also has been protecting any jihadist group in Syria that cooperates with Al Qaeda to overthrow Assad.
(The U.S. never abandoned the Cold War, but Russia did; and, ever since Russia did, in 1991, the U.S. government has secretly had a plan in place to bring every country that was allied with or part of the Soviet Union, except for Russia itself, into NATO or otherwise under control by the American aristocracy, and finally to take over Russia itself.)
The U.S. has even preferred to help ISIS defeat Assad, over helping Assad defeat ISIS. Syria consequently requested Russia to assist in defending the survival of its internationally-recognized-as-legal government, so as to prevent its downfall and replacement by the jihadist forces that the U.S. and its Saudi, Qatari and Turkish allies have been trying to replace by imposing a fundamentalist-Sunni, Al Qaeda approved, regime.
Whereas the presence of Russia’s military in Syria was requested by the legal government and is therefore legal, America’s is not — the U.S. is instead officially an “invader” there — and yet Mattis is saying that the U.S. will impose international law against Russia, for vague allegations by Mattis of Russia’s “denying the sovereignty of other countries” — which the U.S. routinely does, and which it did excruciatingly in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria since 2011, just to mention a few of the nations that the U.S. has recently destroyed. The U.S. government has long been in the regime-change business, especially to replace any ally of Russia, by an enemy of Russia.
However, Mattis, rabid as he is, is less rabid than is U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster. On April 13th, Eli Lake of Bloomberg News bannered “Trump Said No to Troops in Syria. His Aides Aren’t So Sure.” He reported that:
Meanwhile, White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources…Two sources told me one plan would envision sending up to 50,000 troops…Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, opposed sending conventional forces into a complicated war zone, where they would be targets of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Iran and Russia. In Flynn’s brief tenure, he supported a deal with Russia to work together against the Islamic State and al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, similar to a bargain Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry’s tried and failed to seal with Moscow.”
The reason that Kerry “failed to seal [the deal] with Moscow” is that the deal was reached on 9 September 2016 by Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but was destroyed by Obama eight days later by his bombing Syria’s army at Der Zor to allow ISIS to overrun the place.
Trump is taking over where Obama left off.
Russian Television reported (and U.S. ‘news’ media refused to report) U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on April 6th, two days after the alleged sarin attack, as essentially demanding Putin’s capitulation, regarding the Syrian war:
‘It is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their support for Bashar al-Assad.’ Tillerson added. Asked if the US will lead a regime change effort in Syria, Tillerson said that ‘those steps are underway.’
Russians got the message, even if Americans did not. In other words, they know that the Trump Administration is continuing what had originally been the Obama Administration’s objective, prior to Russia’s entry into the war on Assad’s side on 30 September 2015: regime-change in Syria. The Trump Administration is apparently willing to go to war against Russia in order to remove Assad and replace him with a leader who is supported by the U.S., Sauds, and America’s other allies in the war to replace Syria’s existing government.
It’s not only Mattis who is “rabid.” So is his President, Trump; and, if the even more rabid H.R. McMaster gets his way, so too will be the entire world.
Pleasing America’s “military-industrial complex” is hard to do, but Trump’s Administration is trying hard to out-do its predecessors, at that task.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
It is concerning when someone who should know better – Mattis – comes out with such arrant nonsense.
He must know he is spouting nonsense – so why is he doing it?
Is he trying to provoke the Russians in some way?
Surely, he must recognise they are not easily provoked?
So, why is he behaving in this incredible way?
The only other possibility is that he has lost complete touch with reality, which is even more concerning.
If George Carlin were still alive, he would no doubt call Mattis’ hubris a “great big steaming pile of red, white, and blue, star spangled bullshit.” America has torn up the International Law book, ripped out every single page and scrawled ‘bullshit’ on it; and dumped on (from varying height) the sovereignty of most every country on the globe. It takes a special kind of arrogance and denial to call out Russia on those grounds – look at the elephant of US Imperial guilt in the room. Wake up and smell the freshly deposited pile of BS!
Has anyone suggested stopping paying the top 5000 US military officers’ salaries until they understand that they serve the President, not the other way round?
Name all 5000 on every single global news medium and effectively tell the world thst they only get paid if they do their job, which is not supplying chemical weapons to insurgents seeking to overthrow elected Governments.
Presumsbly the psychopaths in the military have a death squad on standby to assassinate any President who tries to do HIS job?!
It a bit unfair to blame Obama for the attack on Syrian troops because it was basically a rebellion by the military to thwart the President; and it worked. Obama had signed a Cease Fire agreement with Russia that involved the sharing of Intelligence on Syrian affairs. The top brass publicly said not only were they opposed to that but didn’t intend to do it. Possibly they had fears that their double dealing with jihadi groups would have been exposed. Two days before the bombing the Chief of Staff, no less, announced the Army wouldn’t share anything with Ivan. Two days after the bombing the Cease Fire collapsed as a direct result of the raid. The American jets bombed the Syrian army as it was fighting IS in a strategic battle of some significance; they had to withdraw. The raid took over an hour but strangely the American officer who was supposed to be manning the “hot line” between the US and Russia, to be used in emergency situations, didn’t answer the desperate calls intended to warn the Americans they were attacking the “wrong”target. Obama is an easy target just as he was in August 2013 for not bombing Damascus after the Turkish backed jihadis released Sarin claiming it had been done by Assad ( a common trick). In reality Obsma had asked the CIA Director if it was true that Assad was responsible. “Mr President, it isn’t a slam dunk” was the famous reply. He knew better than most the gas had been smuggled from Libya by elements of the CIA and given to the Turks. Ever since the warmongers have derided him for being “weak”. Meanwhile Trump is said to have “come to his senses”by the military in reacting with missiles to the same trick. Who was really the weak one?
John kerry has long maintained – that despite the BBC’s best propaganda “Saving Syria’s Children” – it was the fact that the UK Parliament voted no to intervention that prevented action over the ‘red line’ incident at Ghouta. If we had been in, it would have been bombs away, whether the intel supported the action or not.
Of course, this could just be what we call in rugby a ‘hospital pass’ – offloading (blame) at the last second before being smashed by the opposition. In other words, Cameron was weak, the UK squeamish, and the US gets to maintain its hegemony of blamelessness. Who really knows what passes for policy between low empathy sociopaths?
https://www.rt.com/uk/372821-syria-obama-kerry-military/
The other – principal – factor which decided Obama against bombing Syria was the clear opposition among the opinion-polled US public to such a course of action.
Obama passed-on to Congress the decision as to whether or not to bomb Syria.
Congress dropped the issue like the real hot potato it was!
They – and he – knew the US public had seen through all their BS!
My guess is that a majority of Americans know most of the statements emanating from Washington DC are total rubbish – but what can they do about such an irresponsible clique?
The radical and non-violent “revolution of values” MLK called for 50 years ago?
It may have worked for a while but now that Trump’s menagerie is in the White House, who the heck knows?
Reblogged this on Susanna Panevin.