Last week we saw dramatic new evidence of illegal government surveillance of our telephone calls, and of the National Security Agency’s deep penetration into American companies such as Facebook and Microsoft to spy on us. The media seemed shocked.

Many of us are not so surprised.

Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least four wars ago.

We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA authority need expanded? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand over our personal information to the government?

It was all a build-up of the government’s capacity to monitor us.

The reaction of some in Congress and the Administration to last week’s leak was predictable. Knee-jerk defenders of the police state such as Senator Lindsey Graham declared that he was “glad” the government was collecting Verizon phone records—including his own—because the government needs to know what the enemy is up to. Those who take an oath to defend the Constitution from its enemies both foreign and domestic should worry about such statements.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers tells us of the tremendous benefits of this Big Brother-like program. He promises us that domestic terrorism plots were thwarted, but he cannot tell us about them because they are classified. I am a bit skeptical, however. In April, the New York Times reported that most of these domestic plots were actually elaborate sting operations developed and pushed by the FBI. According to the Times report, “of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.”

Even if Chairman Rogers is right, though, and the program caught someone up to no good, we have to ask ourselves whether even such a result justifies trashing the Constitution. Here is what I said on the floor of the House when the PATRIOT Act was up for renewal back in 2011:

“If you want to be perfectly safe from child abuse and wife beating, the government could put a camera in every one of our houses and our bedrooms, and maybe there would be somebody made safer this way, but what would you be giving up? Perfect safety is not the purpose of government. What we want from government is to enforce the law to protect our liberties.”

What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around. We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.

May was Iraq’s deadliest month in nearly five years, with more than 1,000 dead – both civilians and security personnel — in a rash of bombings, shootings and other violence. As we read each day of new horrors in Iraq, it becomes more obvious that the US invasion delivered none of the promised peace or stability that proponents of the attack promised.

Millions live in constant fear, refugees do not return home, and the economy is destroyed. The Christian community, some 1.2 million persons before 2003, has been nearly wiped off the Iraqi map. Other minorities have likewise disappeared. Making matters worse, US support for the Syrian rebels next door has drawn the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government into the spreading regional unrest and breathed new life into extremist elements.

The invasion of Iraq opened the door to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which did not exist beforehand, while simultaneously strengthening the hand of Iran in the region. Were the “experts” who planned for and advocated the US attack really this incompetent?

Ryan Crocker, who was US Ambassador to Iraq from 2007-2009, still speaks of the Iraqi “surge” as a great reconciliation between Sunni and Shi’ite in Iraq. He wrote recently that “[t]hough the United States has withdrawn its troops from Iraq, it retains significant leverage there. Iraqi forces were equipped and trained by Americans, and the country’s leaders need and expect our help.” He seems alarmingly out of touch with reality.

It is clear now that the “surge” and the “Iraqi Awakening” were just myths promoted by those desperate to put a positive spin on the US invasion, which the late General William Odom once called, “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” Aircraft were loaded with $100 dollar bills to pay each side to temporarily stop killing US troops and each other, but the payoff provided a mere temporary break. Shouldn’t the measure of success of a particular policy be whether it actually produces sustained positive results?

Now we see radical fighters who once shot at US troops in Iraq have spilled into Syria, where they ironically find their cause supported by the US government! Some of these fighters are even greeted by visiting US senators.

The US intervention in Iraq has created ever more problems. That is clear. The foreign policy “experts” who urged the US attack on Iraq now claim that the disaster they created can only be solved with more interventionism! Imagine a medical doctor noting that a particular medication is killing his patient, but to combat the side effect he orders an increase in dosage of the same medicine. Like this doctor, the US foreign policy establishment is guilty of malpractice. And, I might add, this is just what the Fed does with monetary policy.

From Iraq to Libya to Mali to Syria to Afghanistan, US interventions have an unbroken record of making matters far worse. Yet regardless of the disasters produced, for the interventionists a more aggressive US foreign policy is the only policy they offer.

We must learn the appropriate lessons from the disaster of Iraq. We cannot continue to invade countries, install puppet governments, build new nations, create centrally-planned economies, engage in social engineering, and force democracy at the barrel of a gun. The rest of the world is tired of US interventionism and the US taxpayer is tired of footing the bill for US interventionism. It is up to all of us to make it very clear to the foreign policy establishment and the powers that be that we have had enough and will no longer tolerate empire-building. We should be more confident in ourselves and stop acting like an insecure bully.

After nearly a week of increasing public protests in Turkey, ostensibly over government plans to turn a last bit of green space in Istanbul into another shopping mall, matters became far more serious on Friday. Riot police descended on the protestors with various forms of tear gas (and possibly worse chemical and biological agents — raw sewage?) and water cannon, blasting everyone and everything in sight including non-participants. When they caught protestors, they beat them violently and brutally, as can be seen in this video. Photographs show that police fired tear gas into crowded underground metro stations, leading to panic and worse. Istanbul looks like a war zone.

Today indications are that protests have only increased in number and fury in response to the violence with which they were met yesterday.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has come under increased criticism at home over his enthusiastic support for those fighting to overthrow the government in neighboring Syria. Turkish government support for the rebels came early and has included providing safe havens for the Islamist insurgents and safe passage into Syria from Libya, Yemen, and other countries of the insurgents’ origin.

Erdogan’s stated policy of “zero problems with neighbors” has been turned on its head by his support for the rebels fighting next door. Public dissatisfaction with the Turkish government’s policy of encouraging an Islamist insurgency next door has steadily increased.

The insurgents fighting the Syrian government were still unsatisfied by the level of support they received from their Turkish hosts and they took to false flag attacks in places like Reyhanli and a planned false-flag sarin gas attack on southern Turkey in Adana in attempt to provoke a Turkish (and NATO) military response against Syria.

Suddenly the tables are turned at home.

Faced with a nascent but growing protest movement of his own, Erdogan expresses a very different view toward the people in the street. The Prime Minister strongly supported the “Arab Spring” overthrow in Egypt and supports the overthrow of Assad next door because he said the leaders of these countries did not listen to their people. Just last week he met with President Obama and agreed that “Assad must go.” Now with protesters in Turkey chanting “Erdogan must go” he is singing a different tune. Now “the people” he claimed to speak for — on the streets in Egypt and Syria, at least — were, in Turkey, “with terror, have dark ties,” in his words.

Suddenly “the people” are not so noble when they are calling for his ouster. With the tables turned on Erdogan, he can only demand order! “I call on the protesters to stop their demonstrations immediately,” he thundered yesterday.

Erdogan caught the tiger by the tail and thought he would become a new Ottoman Sultan. Reality bites back hard on the streets of Istanbul and elsewhere. This is far from over.

What could be less controversial than a US public high school social studies teacher informing his students that they have the right to refuse to answer whether they have done something illegal? In fact, this concept—the right against self-incrimination—is part of the typical high school curriculum. Nonetheless, in Illinois this week the Batavia Public School District 101 school board reprimanded and disciplined Mr. John Dryden, a public high school social studies teacher, for informing some of his students of just this concept.

Dryden, who received a student survey just before his first class of the day, realized his students’ names were on their respective survey forms, meaning the survey was not anonymous. He also noticed the survey asked about matters including the students’ drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, as well as their emotions. Dryden then informed some of his students they could apply to this survey the right against self-incrimination. The school district found this otherwise routine lesson unacceptable when the lesson stood in the way of school officials reviewing completed surveys.

While the school district argues, as have other school districts, that such surveys will aid the school district in helping students at risk for suicide, students who admit to drug or alcohol use in such surveys have a legitimate concern that this information could be used against them. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most recent Crime in the United States report, there were over 155,000 arrests of people under 18 years old for alleged legal violations in the categories “Drug Abuse Violations” and “Liquor Laws” in 2011. Further, students have reason for concern when they consider that some schools invite drug-sniffing dogs to campuses for locker-to-locker and car-to-car drug searches and participate in programs awarding cash for tips leading to school administrative action, arrest, or charging of students for drug or alcohol legal violations.

Many parents and students are also concerned about the widespread use of mental health screening surveys of students that include detailed questions about drug use, sexual activity, and other personal matters and are administered without parents’ knowledge and consent. Concerns about mental health screening include the risk of misdiagnosis and the pressure to use pharmaceuticals that may cause worse problems than any mental issues the drugs are supposed to address.

Parents and students also may be concerned that records of drug use or emotional issues could be used against a student who may later desire to own a gun or work in certain kinds of employment

There are many reasons parents and students would refuse to participate in surveys such as the one administered by the Batavia school district. But one reason should be more than sufficient: The information sought in these surveys is private and none of the school districts’ business.

Our experience in the U.S. government — running from roughly the period of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s until March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, when we left our positions at the White House on the National Security Council staff — effectively spanned the high-water mark of American primacy in the Middle East. In an interview for the University of California’s Conversations with History series, see here, we discuss how our government service gave us “ringside seats” to watch as “the United States really misused that primacy, misused its supremacy in ways that were grossly counterproductive for its own interests, and for America’s standing in international affairs.” We also reflect on how our experience in government has both prompted and helped us to explore the ways in which succumbing to an “imperial temptation” in the Middle East distorts American perceptions of the region and warps U.S. policy outcomes.

Turning to Iran, we argue that “structure” alone can’t explain modern Iranian foreign policy; one must also pay attention to culture and agency (in non-social science-speak, “choice”). In particular, one must appreciate the enormous differences between Iranian strategic culture under the Shah and Iranian strategic culture under the Islamic Republic. These differences explain why the Shah’s foreign policy was hegemonic, while, as Hillary puts it, “The Islamic Republic looks at regional and international relations, at regional politics in terms of balance.” It seeks to replace U.S. and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East not with Iranian hegemony, but with balance.

In the interview, we describe how encouraging the spread of more popular and representative governments in the Middle East is a central element in the Islamic Republic’s balancing strategy. This leads into a discussion of the extremely polarized reaction to Going to Tehran — including, on the negative side, highly personal attacks against us.  On this point, Flynt says:

“The problem that people have with us — they’ll say it’s a question of ‘tone,’ or this or that — the real problem is that what we’re saying is that, particularly in a Middle East in which public opinion is mattering more than ever before, the United States does not have a narrative with which to compete for influence. We’ve got carrier battle groups coming out our ears, but we do not have a narrative…The Islamic Republic has one, and it knows how to use it to its strategic advantage…[For Americans with a hegemonic perspective on the Middle East,] we’re creating cognitive dissonance.”

Of course, we take up the place of Israel in both American and Iranian grand strategies. We have enormous respect for John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt; Flynt was one of the few former U.S. officials to speak to them on the record for their essential book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. But we differ somewhat from John and Steve in our argument that “blind” American support for Israel is not primarily a function of the Israel lobby. Rather, the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” is driven by American elite perceptions, since the 1967 war, that a military dominant Israel helps America’s own hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East; in this context, the Israel lobby is “pushing on an open door.”

We discuss other topics during what turned out to be a substantively very rich conversation with Harry Kreisler: the Iranian case for the integration of participatory politics with Islamic governance as the only way for Muslims to reassert their independence and embrace true self-determination; the Islamic Republic’s 2009 presidential election; the Iranian nuclear program; and the imperatives for U.S. rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. We end on the “Nixon-to-China” model, the real requirements for a U.S. diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran, and the future of America’s role in the Middle East.

Hosted by Harry Kreisler, Conversations with History has for 31 years recorded interviews with some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of international affairs, journalists, writers, and other public intellectuals (e.g., Andrew Bacevich, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, the late Chalmers Johnson, Kishore Mahbubani, John Mearsheimer, Kenzabuo Oe, and Stephen Walt). We are humbled and gratified to be included in the series, and grateful to Harry Kreisler for inviting us. We encourage everyone to watch the video — and urge all who do to leave comments where the video is posted on You Tube as well as here.

From Going to Tehran website, printed with permission.

In Mafia terms, it’s called “making an offer that can’t be refused”. The “offer” is not one of free choice between options that may benefit the object party. In reality, it is about setting up a scenario of duress, under which the object party is coerced to capitulate to detrimental terms of extreme prejudice determined cynically by the other party.

This is the scenario that Washington and its NATO allies are contriving for the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad…

The so-called international peace conference that may take place in the coming weeks, at the behest of Washington and Moscow, is ostensibly aimed at finding a negotiated end to the conflict in Syria that is now in its third year and which has resulted in up to 80,000 deaths. At least half of these deaths are believed to be civilian.

Russian officials have confirmed that the Syrian government is willing to participate, in principle, in the conference with factions of the Syrian “opposition” – provided, says Damascus, that the latter participants do not have “blood on their hands”.

That criterion may yet turn out to make the forthcoming conference a non-runner since the main opposition group – the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) – is entwined with a host of mercenary forces on the ground that are drenched in blood from a relentless campaign of terrorism and sabotage. 

However, it is not even clear if the fractious and mainly exile-based SNC has any authority over the motley crew of militant groups – more than 75 per cent of whom are foreign self-styled jihadi extremists that emanate from 30 or more Arab and other countries, according to United Nations reports. 

Chief among these groups that comprise the so-called Free Syrian Army is the Al Nusra Front, the main fighting force, which is aligned with the Al Qaeda-affiliated network that stretches from Russia’s Caucus region, through Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya, Mali and Niger. 

It has to be said that Russia’s intentions for a negotiated peace settlement seem to be honourable – and based on the principle of arriving at some kind of internal Syrian consensus. To that end, Russia maintains the position of not setting preconditions about the political fate of the incumbent President Assad. Russia is supported in this view by Iran and China. It is not, they say, for foreign governments or their regional allies and proxies to determine the outcome of the conference and in particular the political future of Assad.

Contrast that with the position of the other broker – Washington. At a preliminary meeting in Jordan this past week, the US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted, along with NATO allies, Britain, France, Italy and Germany, as well as the Persian Gulf Arab sheikhdoms, that Assad “must go”.

Kerry told the assembled “Friends of Syria” that the US was not dictating the outcome of the planned peace conference, but then contradicted himself flatly by repeating the assertion that President Assad would not be part of any Syrian political transition. 

“Can a person who has used artillery shells and missiles and Scuds and tanks against women and children and university students – can that person possibly be judged by any reasonable person to have the credibility and legitimacy to lead that country in the future?” asked Kerry.

The veracity of these allegations against the Assad regime is more than a moot point. There is substantial evidence that the violations Kerry was attributing to Syrian government forces, such as the rocket attack on Aleppo University in January that resulted in more than 80 deaths, were in fact committed by Western-backed militants. The use of chemical weapons near Aleppo in March has also been shown recently by Russian RTR journalists to be the work of Western-backed militants, not the regime, as Western governments have been insinuating. 

But that aside, the immediate point here is that Kerry and his “Enemies of Syria” coalition are very much trying to dictate terms on the anticipated political process. That same Western intransigence was largely why the Geneva accord reached last June by the UN Security Council came unstuck – and tens of thousands more Syrian deaths followed. 

Adding to the warped framework of negotiations, the US, Britain and France are also insisting – in contrast to Russia and China – that Iran should not be permitted to take part in the process. Of course, the NATO powers can rely on their Sunni allies among the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to endorse that stipulation. Why the Western powers and their Arab dictator friends have any more right than Iran – an ally of Syria with vital interests at stake in the conflict – is beyond their permitted rationale or discussion. 

So, the upshot is that Assad is being offered a poisoned political chalice. On one hand, he is being told to forfeit the sovereign rights of his people to have him as their leader, and by all accounts a leader with a popular mandate, to give way to a negotiation with “opposition” parties who are solely designated, funded and patronised by foreign powers. 

The SNC’s Ghassan Hitto, a Texas-based Syrian businessman, is designated by Washington, London and the former colonial power Paris as Syria’s premier-in-waiting. It is fair to say that Hitto, as with many other American-accented members of the SNC, has negligible popular support within Syria. That is, without any mandate from the Syrian population, these exiles are being foisted to negotiate the political future of Syria – a future that is extremely prejudicial in favour of Western geopolitical interests. 

On the other hand – and this is where the Mafia analogy takes hold – the Western powers are making thinly veiled threats that if Assad does not conform to the warped political framework, that is, drink from the poisoned chalice, then all hell will break lose on this country with an even greater escalation of Western-backed violence. 

“The United States is lobbying European governments to back a British-led call to amend [lift] the EU arms embargo on Syria,” reported the British Guardian this week, as Washington and its friend were gathering in Jordan. 

Up to now, Washington has at least been maintaining the fiction that it is not arming the anti-Assad militants. It has, of course, been plying the mercenaries covertly with weaponry and logistics, along with its NATO allies and the Gulf Arab dictatorships. 

Militant commander Brigadier General Salim Idriss has been pleading for Washington to begin openly supplying anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles – not just the assault rifles and explosives that have come so far through the clandestine CIA/MI6 conduits of Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. 

Since last month, Washington officials have begun briefing media outlets, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, that the Obama administration is moving towards more direct military intervention in aid of the militants in Syria. “We’re clearly on an upward trajectory,” a senior US official said somewhat cryptically on 30 April. “We’ve moved over to assistance that has a direct military purpose.”

Days later, in the first week of May, US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel hosted a press conference at the Pentagon with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond. “Arming the rebels, that’s an option,” said Hagel, indicating an apparent reversal of White House policy of ostensibly only sending “non-lethal aid”.

And this week a US Senate committee voted in favour of Washington arming the “rebels” in Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry is adding to this increasingly articulated threat. Voice of America reported from the Jordanian meeting last week: “Kerry says the Obama administration hopes President Assad ‘will understand the meaning of that’ [shift in US military policy towards Syria].”

This latent threat of greater aggression against Syria by the US, if it does not toe the political line as ordained by Washington, is not a new tactic in America’s underlying objective of regime change. 

Last month, the Iranian FARS news agency reported that Syrian envoy to Iran, Adnan Mahmoud, disclosed that as far back as March 2011 – when the conflict was kicking off in Syria – that the then US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, had starkly told the Damascus government that it faced “a choice”.  

The Syrian envoy to Iran was quoted by FARS as saying: “Of course, in the very first weeks of the conflict in Syria, the US Secretary of Defence [Robert Gates] sent a message to the Syrian government, and said we should have cut our ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran if we wanted to stop the war, and stressed that if we did so, they [the US] would provide us with whatever we want”. In other words, Washington was making Syria back then “an offer it couldn’t refuse”. Well, Syria did refuse back in early 2011 to comply with US demands to cut its strategic ties with Iran, and as time has shown Damascus has since paid a heavy price in terms of human lives and the destruction of the country.

Now again, as the American-backed “peace conference” is being dangled in front of Damascus, Washington is replaying that same cynical offer. Either, drink from this poisoned political chalice – or “we’ll send the boys around to do their worst”. 

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

This past Thursday and Friday, President Obama delivered two speeches designed to outline his new thinking on national security and counter-terrorism. While much was made in the media of the president’s statements at the National Defense University and the US Naval Academy suggesting that the most active phase of US military action overseas was coming to an end, this “new” approach is but the same old policy wrapped in new packaging. In these addresses, the president panders to the progressives, while continually expanding and solidifying the “enabling act” principle.

The president will continue and even expand drone attacks overseas because they are “less deadly” than ground invasions. He promises to be more careful in the future.

He is entertaining the introduction of “kill courts” which will meet in secret to decide who is to be executed without trial or charge. He promises these will have sufficient oversight.

He will seek a new and updated Authorization for the Use of Military Force to expand his legal authority to wage war wherever and whenever he wants. He promises it will one day be repealed.

He will continue to indefinitely detain at Guantanamo individuals who have been neither charged nor convicted of any crime, and who cannot even be tried because they were tortured and thus the evidence is tainted. He promises to “commit to a process of closing GTMO.”

The speech speaks of more war and more killing and more interventionism all masked in the language of withdrawal.

The president warns of the threats of the new al-Qaeda affiliates that have sprung up in places like Iraq without explaining that it was the US invasion of Iraq that opened the door to their entry in the first place. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein, just as there was little extremism in Libya before the US attack on that country in 2011.

The president claims that “unrest in the Arab world has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria.” However, it was the US-led attack on Libya that resulted in extremists gaining power there, with many fighters afterward spreading unrest and destruction by joining the wars against the Syrian and Malian regimes. The extremists brought to de facto power in places like Benghazi were responsible for the murder of the US ambassador, yet the president says nothing about that unintended consequence of his interventionist policies.

He calls for even more interventionism in the future, but he promises that it will be a different kind of interventionism. He wants the US to shape democratic transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya while actively supporting those seeking to overthrow the government in Syria.

He wants to take nation-building to a whole new level, urging that the US “help countries modernize economies, upgrade education, and encourage entrepreneurship.” He promises to battle extremism overseas by “training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.”

What the president does not seem to understand is that we do not have the money to build schools, upgrade education, modernize economies, and encourage entrepreneurship overseas at a time when our national debt is $16 trillion. And besides, isn’t it a deeply flawed idea that the US government can achieve all of these remarkable results overseas when we know what a disaster these big government undertakings have produced at home? What we reject at home as Soviet-style central planning is fully embraced as effective foreign policy overseas. Should it really be the US government’s role to “modernize economies” or “encourage entrepreneurs” anywhere? Those are activities best left to the private sector, whether here at home or in far off lands.

President Obama’s speech is not at all what it seems. It is a call for more empire and more power to the executive branch. The president promises that “this war, like all wars, must end.” Unfortunately the war on the American taxpayer never seems to end. But end it will, as we are running out of money.

Several observers have pointed out the similarities between today’s savage attack in London, where a British soldier was reportedly beheaded by two men shouting “Allahu Akbar,” and the gruesome recent attack by US/UK-supported Free Syrian Army Commander Abu Sakkar, who cut out and devoured his Syrian Army soldier victim’s heart.

Indeed one of the eyewitnesses of today’s London attack could well have been describing Syrian rebel Commander Sakkar’s butchery a few weeks ago in Syria:

“We thought the two guys were helping him. We then saw two kitchen knives like you would find in a butchers shop, they were hacking at this poor guy literally. We thought they were trying to remove organs or something.”

Nearly identical behavior.

It is important to point out that while the US and UK increasingly condemn (and exaggerate) the role of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters on the side of the government in next-door Syria, the truth is thousands of foreign fighters, including at least hundreds from Europe and handfuls from the US, have signed up to fight with the radical Islamist insurgents in Syria.

Time Magazine reported yesterday of a young Belgian teenager who dropped his Western life and went to Syria to fight a jihad against the secular government of Bashar Assad. The story is repeated thousands of times, as foreign fighters in Syria are so significant a part of the insurgency that they overshadow domestic Syrian rebels.

The Moon of Alabama blog has helpfully assembled just a few of the press reports of foreign fighters

Strangely enough, just a couple of weeks ago the Economist published an article titled “British fighters in Syria: Will they come home to roost?”, which points out UK fears:

“British intelligence sources cite three particular worries. First, some of the British fighters may have already been inclined to attack their home country, but simply lacked expertise: they will acquire that. Second, they may be exposed to al-Qaeda’s ideology in Syria, and perhaps even talent-spotted as potential leaders. Third, the prospect of a large, ungoverned space close to Europe that could be used as a base from which to stage an attack on Britain is troubling.”

Though there is no indication the attackers had spent time in Syria, clearly these fears are all of a sudden much more relevant.

Incredibly, US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Prime Minister David Cameron appear blind to this reality. Speaking in Jordan today, Kerry condemned the violence of a handful of Hezbollah fighters in Syria while acting as if the documented evidence of the overwhelming foreign radical Islamist presence in the insurgency simply did not exist:

“The United States, I think, joins the other core nations who are supporting the opposition in condemning Hezbollah’s destructive role of all of the foreign fighters who are in the region, particularly in Syria. And active military support to the Assad regime simply exacerbates the sectarian tensions and it perpetuates – perpetuates – the regime’s campaign of terror against its own people.”

That US overt and covert support of the insurgency in Syria, including its radical and al-Qaeda affiliated elements, is a known fact. Yet Kerry with a straight face simply fails to mention it. As in the days of Bush, the Obama administration is making its own reality. But we know that eventually these US-supported Islamist radicals with Western passports will come home — and now we have a better idea of what might be in store for us when they do.

Kerry today in Jordan also drags out the old tried and true trick — see Saddam, Gaddafi, etc. — of condemning a foreign leader for killing his own citizens and using that to demonstrate that therefore the leader has lost all legitimacy and must be regime-changed:

“And finally, with respect to Assad and the future of Syria, just as a matter of practical negotiation, I’d ask anybody of common sense: Can a person who has allegedly used gas against his own people; can a person who has killed more than 70,000, upwards of 100,000 people; can a person who has used artillery shells and missiles and Scuds and tanks against women and children and university students – can that person possibly be judged by any reasonable person to have the credibility and legitimacy to lead that country in the future? I think the answer to that is obvious.”

This is particularly devious considering that any government on earth — the US certainly included — would use the force of arms if a foreign-funded and supported insurgency sought its overthrow.

But here is the really good part: Kerry in the above quote argues that a government using deadly military force on its own citizens without trial justifies foreign-sponsored “regime change” on the very day that the US government has admitted to using deadly military force on its own citizens without trial!

It is also interesting to see Kerry walking the administration back from his colleague Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s claim that the Syrian government has used WMD against its citizens — while leaving the implication squarely on the table. No mention at all of the UN findings that it was the Syrian rebels who used the prohibited weapons.

Kerry also misrepresents the Russian position on implementing last year’s Geneva agreement for a political settlement in Syria, suggesting that the Russians agree with the Obama administration that Assad must go as a precondition for any meaningful talks between government and insurgent forces scheduled for next month. Said Kerry:

“I want to thank President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov for their willingness to say that they will work in good faith, in good conscience, to try to find a way to implement Geneva 1. And I will simply remind everybody: Geneva 1 is clear; it says there must be a transition government with full executive authority with mutual consent. And it is very, very clear as a starting point that mutual consent will never be given by any member of the broad opposition of Syria for Assad to continue to run that government.”

Kerry is putting words into Putin’s and Lavrov’s mouth that are very different from what they actually said. On Monday the Russian Foreign Minister was clear that the insurgent pre-condition that Assad must depart is a non-starter. Period:

“The main thing is to ensure the consent of opposition groups to take part in the conference without any precondition. Our colleagues, including Americans together with who we put forward this initiative [to hold the conference], took the obligation to work closely with the opposition in order to make it change its approach to the immediate start of the negotiations and stop conditioning it with unrealistic things.”

Will the Russian government correct Kerry’s “mistake”?

And God help us when the European and American Islamist insurgents the US and EU sponsor in Syria come home.

TIME magazine reports on a gruesome video of a member of the armed rebel forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian government:

In the video a man who is believed to be a rebel commander named Khalid al-Hamad, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, bends over the government soldier, knife in hand. With his right hand he moves what appears to be the dead man’s heart onto a flat piece of wood or metal lying across the body. With his left hand he pulls what appears to be a lung across the open cavity in the man’s chest. According to two of Abu Sakkar’s fellow rebels, who said they were present at the scene, Abu Sakkar had cut the organs out of the man’s body. The man believed to be Abu Sakkar then works his knife through the flesh of the dead man’s torso before he stands to face the camera, holding an organ in each hand. “I swear we will eat from your hearts and livers, you dogs of Bashar,” he says, referring to supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Off camera, a small crowd can be heard calling out “Allahu akbar” — God is great. Then the man raises one of the bloodied organs to his lips and starts to tear off a chunk with his teeth.

Videos like this prompt a troubling question: How do countries who want to support Syria’s rebels make sure they’re not unintentionally aiding rebels who might commit war crimes? Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already providing the rebel forces with military aid, and the U.S. is helping with nonmilitary aid. There is an ongoing debate in Washington about whether the U.S. government should provide further aid to the rebels, possibly including weapons. Eating an enemy’s liver may be an extreme example of what appears to be a rebel atrocity, but there is enough documented evidence of extrajudicial killings, torture and desecration on the part of the rebels that it would be near impossible to know for certain who, exactly, are the “good” guys, says Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies for the New York–based group Human Rights Watch. “In this context, where different rebel groups are fighting alongside each other, and sharing weapons, it’s difficult to control where the weapons end up. It is very likely that some of the weapons will end up in the hands of the likes of Abu Sakkar.”

There are no good options for the international community. Western intervention on behalf of the rebels could exacerbate sectarian tensions.

Western intervention on behalf of the rebels “could” exacerbate sectarian tensions? As though the U.S. hasn’t already intervened on their behalf, including by coordinating the flow of arms to the rebels, amongst whose top fighters include Islamic extremists such as the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra group?

I’ve repeatedly commented on the media’s propaganda narrative whereby these facts are swept down the memory hole. See my last post on the subject, which includes links to previous ones.

The New York Times offers yet another example. Reporting on the same video and other atrocities committed by the rebel forces, it states:

That lurid violence has fueled pessimism about international efforts to end the fighting. As the United States and Russia work to organize peace talks next month between Mr. Assad and his opponents, the ever more extreme carnage makes reconciliation seem more remote.

So the U.S. is working “to end the fighting”. That is all you need to know. No one single mention of how the U.S. has been in fact working to escalate the fighting by backing the armed rebels to implement its policy of regime change, thereby contributing to “the ever more extreme carnage” that “makes reconciliation seem more remote.”

For another example, there’s this op-ed in the Times asking “Can Obama Save Turkey from a Syrian Quagmire?” and urging the administration to do so because “Only Washington can change the equation”, which it should do “by arming the rebels or enforcing a no-fly zone” so as to “tilt the balance of power in favor of the rebels”. Perhaps if the U.S. was really interested in saving Turkey from a Syrian quagmire, it wouldn’t have joined Turkey in helping to create that quagmire in the first place.

Another recent Times article comments on some of the consequences of the U.S. policy of backing armed rebels to overthrow the Assad regime:

The black flag of jihad flies over much of northern Syria. In the center of the country, pro-government militias and Hezbollah fighters battle those who threaten their communities. In the northeast, the Kurds have effectively carved out an autonomous zone.

After more than two years of conflict, Syria is breaking up. A constellation of armed groups battling to advance their own agendas are effectively creating the outlines of separate armed fiefs. As the war expands in scope and brutality, its biggest casualty appears to be the integrity of the Syrian state.

On Thursday, President Obama met in Washington with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and once again pressed the idea of a top-down diplomatic solution. That approach depends on the rebels and the government agreeing to meet at a peace conference that was announced last week by the United States and Russia.

Once again, we see that the narrative is how the lack of U.S. intervention has resulted in Syria falling apart, making its most recent effort to seek a peaceful solution all the more urgent. Syria is Humpty-Dumpty:

Increasingly, it appears Syria is so badly shattered that no single authority is likely to be able to pull it back together any time soon.

All the King’s men have their work cut out for them. Further down the page, one reads:

Although the Obama administration and its allies share the rebels’ goal of removing Mr. Assad from power, they have little else in common with the many rebel brigades that define their struggle in Islamic terms and seek to replace Mr. Assad with an Islamic state. Among them is Jabhet al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, the local branch of Al Qaeda, which the United States has blacklisted as a terrorist group.

No mention of the fact that most of the arms directed by the CIA to the rebels have ended up in the hands of such Islamic extremists (again, see my last post on the subject), which is undoubtedly what prompted the U.S. to blacklist al-Nusra in the first place, in order to be able on one hand to paint the public picture that it opposes such forces while the other hand it continues to back the same rebel forces whose ranks include this al-Qaeda affiliate.

And while we are supposed to believe that the only role of the U.S. in Syria is that of the peacemaker, that villain Bashar al-Assad is showing his true colors by backing away from any willingness to negotiate with the armed opposition, according to another Times article. The lede tells us how Assad “appeared to dismiss the possibility of serious progress arising from any peace talks”. Further down we read what Assad actually said:

“We do not believe that many Western countries really want a solution in Syria,” Mr. Assad told Argentina’s Clarín newspaper in an interview published online on Saturday, blaming those countries for supporting “terrorists” fighting his government.

No mention, naturally, of the fact that the U.S. has indeed been supporting Assad’s armed opposition, whose ranks include an al-Qaeda affiliate even the U.S. government has labeled as a group of “terrorists”. Returning to Assad’s actual remarks:

“We support and applaud the efforts, but we must be realistic,” he said, referring to efforts by the United States and Russia to broker talks they hope will be held in June. “There cannot be a unilateral solution in Syria; two parties are needed at least.”

…“We are willing to talk to anyone who wants to talk, without exceptions,” he said. “But that does not include terrorists; no state talks to terrorists. When they put down their arms and join the dialogue, then we will have no objections. Believing that a political conference will stop terrorism on the ground is unreal.”

“We, the government, and me, personally, will meet, without exceptions, with Syrian opposition groups inside and outside” the country, he said. “The president of the country has said that we will try with everyone that is against us politically. And even those who use arms — we must try with them.”

So while the Times would have readers believe that Assad—unlike the greatest of peacemakers, the U.S.—is uninterested in peace talks, what he actually suggested was that his government is interested in talking to the armed opposition, but not as long as they are engaging in acts of terrorism, and that the idea of a U.S.-led peace effort would be beneficial while the U.S. at the same time backs the very same armed groups seeking to overthrow him should be met with skepticism.

He would seem to make a valid point.

As three administration-wrecking scandals – Benghazi, the IRS, and the AP phone records – continue to unfold, it will become increasingly clear that President Obama is: (a) stupid; (b) unable to control his felonious subordinates; or (c) a liar and a trimmer. And as this clarity evolves, Obama will engineer a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria. This week Obama told the press his administration has fairly solid evidence that chemical weapons were used by Damascus against al-Qaeda and its allies. Obama also said he still wants more and better evidence that Asaad used the weapons. This long has been his standard line.

But then, before closing his remarks, Obama lapsed into his patented weeping-for-humanity mode, saying in an almost off-hand manner enough thousands of Syrians had been killed in the civil war to justify intervention by that American-killing and nation-bankrupting fiction of our bipartisan governing elite’s imagination, the “U.S.-led International Community.” In other words, our beleaguered president already is looking to distract Americans from his administration’s rampant felonies, and what better way to quiet the hounds of just retribution than by consigning U.S. soldiers and Marines to death in a useless intervention in Syria, a place where no genuine U.S. national interest is at stake. One straw in the wind: Friday’s news brought word of Obama’s talking-points-changing, intelligence-leaking lickspittle of a CIA Director, John Brennan, sneaking into Israel to “discuss Syria.”

Odds are that we are going to see the same old story: Obama will intervene militarily in Syria, get Americans worried about the safety of their soldier-children, stoke their patriotism and fierce support for the troops, and – voila – the Obama-butt-kissing media will refocus the victims of the Obama-ites’ domestic felonies on an unnecessary war in the Levant.

The saddest part of the foregoing scenario is that it probably will work. Obama artfully masks his casual willingness to get Americans killed – seen in his zeal for abortion; keeping troops in Afghanistan to die (6 more on 16 May 2013) long after conceding defeat there; and refusing to try to save soon-to-be-dead Americans in Benghazi – with a maudlin “deep concern” for people suffering abroad, in this case in Syria. Obama’s faux concern for those suffering overseas is just another indelible sign of his and his party’s absolute disdain for the needs of everyday Americans. Under Obama’s two secretaries of state – Clinton and Kerry – the United States have dispersed more than $500 million to strengthen the “Syrian Resistance”; which is to say, to strengthen al-Qaeda and its allies. Both secretaries and their master have deceitfully described the aid as “humanitarian,” but as always this funding is military in every way because it frees up the Islamists’ other funds to be spent for weapons.

With Democrats ever ready to leave Americans to fend for themselves, Obama’s diversionary campaign – obscure impeachable offenses by launching an unnecessary war – will be abetted by Senators McCain, Graham, Lieberman, and dozens of other U.S. Senators and Congressman intent on war with Syria. Obama will use these useful idiots to convince the American people of three bipartisan lies: that (a) genuine U.S. interests are at risk in Syria; (b) Americans “owe” the Syrian people U.S. dollars and blood to stop their suffering in a war they started; and that (c) Americans “must” expend their dollars and kids to staunch the anarchy spreading in the Levant in order to protect our “loyal and indispensable ally Israel.” Most of the media – left and right – will concur in and support this self-defeating nonsense and, once again, we will all go off intervening in a Muslim country where we have nothing at risk, thereby prolonging our already losing war with Islam and motivating more U.S. Muslims to stage attacks like April’s in Boston.

Will Americans ever see the plain fact that they are being played for fools? If every Syrian dies tomorrow – along with every Palestinian, Israeli, Saudi, etc. – it matters not a lick to the way we live and conduct ourselves in North America. Is it too bad and very sad that they die? You bet, but it is neither our fault they are fighting nor our responsibility to stop their wars; say a prayer for them, but know their deaths are of their own making and no skin of an American’s nose.

And if some self-righteous Americans want to help these folks, let them open their individual wallets and donate; or let them light candles, pile up bouquets, weep, hold hands, and sing for peace; or, better yet, let them renounce their U.S. citizenship and go abroad to fight alongside those in the countries they love better than their own. In fact, it seems only right that some leaders of the anti-U.S., pro-Israel movement – perhaps people like Limbaugh, Lieberman, Levin, McCain, Hannity, and Graham – set the example for others of their ilk. These fearsome tough guys could buy airline tickets to the Levant; turn in their U.S. passport and acquire – at long last – the passport from their country of first allegiance (if they do not have it already); and then go off to the war they have tried so hard to start from their out-of-harm’s-way safety in North America. I would like to be helpful here and would willingly contribute to a fund to buy Rush, Joe, Mark, John, Sean, Lindsey and all others of their interventionist, anti-U.S., and Israel-First orientation an AK-47 and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Each of these folks could claim their arms as soon as they renounce their citizenship and turn in their U.S. passport. America would be far better off without them.

Sound harsh? Well, think for a moment of the cruel and cynical madness of a situation that finds Americans in New Jersey and New York still flat on their backs from Hurricane Sandy while both U.S. political parties are dumping a half-billion dollars into the hands of al-Qaeda-ism in Syria. And think of the billions going to Turkey, Egypt, and Israel, while America’s infrastructure continues to rot; millions of our kids are undernourished; our borders remain undefended; and thousands of wounded and crippled U.S. military veterans must depend on public charity to assist their recovery. And think of all the money and military lives we have and will waste making Muslim enemies overseas by intervening at bayonet point to promote education, women’s rights, irreligion, and the spread of secular democracy.

It seems likely that today’s preeminent Democratic and Republican foreign-policy motto –“Give and pander to foreigners and to hell with the real interests and welfare of America and Americans” – is not one the Founders had in mind when they created America. Indeed, if the Founders could hear it now, they would have yet another reason to thank Providence for their decision to include the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair willfully and gleefully disseminated and embellished the lies of President Bush to propagandize the public and pave way for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of its secular dictator, Saddam Hussein. In the process Blair invented plenty of lies of his own. The ongoing UK Chilcot Inquiry investigation of the dodgy events leading up to the attack on Iraq continues to produce damning information about Blair, including that he most surely knew at the time that he was spreading lies about Iraq’s WMD.

Because of Bush and Blair‘s lies, hundreds of thousands have died.

But feeding the war machine is always profitable for those who deal in death, and Blair is no exception. In fact, not only is Blair not ashamed of the carnage that his lies produced, he has actually directly personally profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from his miserable deeds. According to the above link:

“The former Prime Minister of the UK is earning an estimated 5 million (British Pounds) per year from private business ventures connected to his role in the illegal wars in the Middle East — particularly the invasion and conquest of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Now we hear that in the poorest country in Europe, Albania, the successor party to that of communist dictator Enver Hoxha, the Socialist Party of Albania, has hired Tony Blair to tell some more lies to Europe about how suited it is to govern Albania and bring it into the European Union. The Albanian Socialists are expected to pay Blair several million British pounds as a “consultant.”

The Albanian Socialist Party was responsible for a violent coup against the democratically-elected government of Sali Berisha in 1996 which left thousands dead, including leading politicians of Berisha’s party. The party is now headed by Edi Rama, a politician with deep familial ties to the communist nomenklatura, who was investigated for misappropriation of funds while serving as mayor of Albania’s capitol city, Tirana.

In a glowing profile in the New Yorker magazine in 2005, Rama is praised for shutting down the small businessmen who sprang up spontaneously when communism fell, to provide goods and services where before there had been — literally — nothing to buy. He is also praised for attracting all manner of foreign funding to assist him in wiping out the nascent domestic capitalist entrepreneur to make way for the big European and US corporations to snap up at “special” prices everything left in the wake. The New Yorker writes disdainfully of the “post-communist freedom feeding frenzy” and approvingly of Rama’s West-funded move against it:

“Within a few years, Rama had managed to clear the choked, riverine city center of two thousand illegal kiosks and bars and cafes and shops and whorehouses and sleeping barracks and traffickers’ storeroom ‘motels’ — the detritus of a decade of post-Communist freedom frenzy on city property…He cajoled the money for this transformation out of the World Bank and the European Union and the United Nations Development Program and George Soros and the scores of foundations and aid agencies and N.G.O.s that had set up shop in Albania in the nineties. And he cajoled the work out of local contractors: anybody who wanted to build anything in the capital had to ‘contribute.'”

This is, sadly, quite often the story of the post-communist pseudo-capitalist development. A collusion between the best connected of the former communist elite and their offspring with government-connected Western large corporations. In many cases the small businessman was a former victim of the profoundly anti-market communist state and was bewildered when the privileged offspring of the former elites transformed their prior status to new, unheard of levels of prosperity by teaming up with eager Western partners. This is the world from which sprang the Edi Ramas of the former East. The other political parties in Albania have unfortunately seen the benefit of such arrangements and made their own deals.

So where does Rama’s current opposition party in the poorest country in Europe — where the average gross salary is $332 per month — come up with the millions of dollars with which it will pay Tony Blair for his consulting work? We likely know the answer. There are still many beautiful beaches on Albania’s Mediterranean coast to be developed by the right companies…

The armed drone is being heralded as the next generation of American military technology. It can fly overheard with its unblinking eye, almost invisible to its targets below. Without warning, its missiles will strike, bringing certain death and destruction on the ground. All the while, the military pilot, sitting in a cushioned recliner in an air-conditioned room halfway across the world, is immune from the violence wrought from his or her single keystroke.

While the debate about drones in this country swirls around the precision of the weapon, the sometimes faulty intelligence behind its unleashing of a missile, the ability to keep American boots off the ground, or the legality of the strikes, few take into consideration the morality of the weapon and the damaging effects of its use on both the people targeted and the individuals operating it. The ripples of the drone strikes are felt far beyond those killed or wounded in the actual strike.

The drone is destabilizing the small tribal communities of the Pukhtun, Somali, and Yemeni with their ancient codes of honor, making it difficult to implement any long-term peace initiatives in the volatile regions already being pounded by their own militaries. Too many stories have filtered into the media of innocent men, women, and children being killed.

People have fled their families and their homes due to the constant violence and are forced to live as destitute and vulnerable refugees in the slums of larger cities. They are lost without the protection of clan and code. The drone is also feeding into a growing anti-Americanism, becoming a deadly symbol of the United States, and fueling the recruitment of future terrorists.

At one stroke, the drone has destroyed any positive image of the United States in the countries over which it operates. It has contributed to the destruction of the tribal codes of honor, such as Pukhtunwali among the Pukhtun tribes of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And this immorality and destructive nature reflects back on those who use it, harming the warrior ethic of the American military so critical to battlefield bonding among soldiers in combat.

The warrior ethos may be largely a myth but, like most myths, it protects something very important: the psychology of killing in the name of the state. That killing becomes nothing less than murder when the soldier doing it is utterly invulnerable. Most US citizens, so long divorced from any responsibility to take up arms and fight and kill, do not understand this. Soldiers – good ones – do. Such understanding was behind the recent cancellation by Secretary of Defense Hagel of the valor award for drone operators.

Moreover, remote-controlled killing is a dishonorable way of fighting battle, not simply because it often results in the deaths of women and children and removes the combatants from face-to-face combat. It is making war more like a video game and giving technicians the dissociated power of life and death for the figures on the screen before them. It is making war into murder.

Read the rest of the article here.