Photo: AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO
The United States is more than $18 trillion dollars in debt, but like a teenager with a credit card it continues to take on financial obligations seemingly without a care in the world. Maintaining a world empire requires the US to hemorrhage wealth to defend its dominant position against any real or perceived upstart nation-threat. Even if that “threat” comes from the world’s second largest economy, China, it seems.
Last month President Obama promised to put the US military at the disposal of the despotic, head-chopping Saudi regime. As the Saudi-Iranian cold war heats up, this commitment if honored could run up incalculable costs in dollars and American lives. The US already backs Saudi aggression against Yemen and the Saudi financing of al-Qaeda and ISIS to take down Assad in Syria. Will the US join in a potential global war that may emerge from a Shia-Sunni conflagration?
This week, Obama sent US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, to Israel to reaffirm yet another US financial and military commitment to yet another country with serious human rights problems.
Israel, whose idea of a “just war” is to just slaughter as many civilians as possible, was given a solemn promise from General Dempsey that Israel “has no greater friend on the face of the earth than the United States military.”
In return for Gen. Dempsey’s commitment of the American military to the service of a foreign country, he was awarded a badge of appreciation from Israeli Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. It was the top American general’s fifth trip to Israel in his four years as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Strange to be such a frequent guest in a country with which the US has no actual defense treaty.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no dummy, knows a good thing when he hears it. “We have no better friends than the people, soldiers, and government of the United States,” he grinned, while grasping Dempsey’s hand.
Ah yes, American soldiers. Promised by Dempsey. To defend a foreign country. With which the US has no treaty. Swipe the credit card again.
More US commitments to more morals-challenged “allies.” The end will come, however, and it is coming soon. The rest of the world is noticing a nation $18 trillion in the hole and is wondering why it should continue to take dictation. Americans don’t know it yet because the US media is in the service of the empire. But the fat man in the bar buying drinks with a maxed-out credit card is soon exposed as a fraud and a joke.
