On Sunday May 5th, National Security (sic) Advisor, John Bolton, announced that America was deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to Iran in order to “send a clear and unmistakable message” to thar regime.
The message is certainly clear: the Neocons are once again agitating for war. This time against a country that is surrounded by 40 U.S. military bases, and one which hasn’t started a war of its own in over 200 years.
In that same period of time, America has been involved in countless wars and conflicts, and has meddled in the internal affairs of Iran itself, like when the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. In addition, America is constantly imposing economic sanctions upon the oil-rich country, even going so far as to audaciously threaten sanctions on those who do business with them. Just who is a threat to who here?
What should now be apparent to all as the drums of war thunder again is that President Trump is a total lackey for the Neoconservative war-hawks, fulfilling the same role in this regard as his predecessors Bush Jr. and Obama.
This most recent provocation against Iran didn’t just come out of nowhere. On the contrary, war with Iran has been a goal of the Neocons since at least the year 2000 when the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published the document ”Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (and in all actuality, probably much longer than that. See 1982's Yinon Plan).
In the PNAC document, this group of homicidal criminals – which included amongst its ranks Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton – outlined a plan to ‘regime change’ multiple countries in the Middle East, beginning with Iraq and ending with Iran. Since the document’s publication we have seen the list checked off in a methodical fashion, regardless of whichever puppet has occupied the Oval Office.
In October of 2001, General Wesley Clark visited with the Pentagon and was informed of these plans for conquest in the Middle East. In numerous talks and interviews he has given since, the well-decorated general has affirmed: “About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. One of the generals called me in. He said ‘We’ve made the decision, we’re going to war with Iraq.’ ‘We’re going to war with Iraq?’ I said, ‘why?’ ‘I don’t know’ he said. I came back a few weeks later; and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ He said, ‘Oh, it’s worse than that…we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran.”
People who have been paying attention the past 18 years or so may recognize a pattern.
The plan for ‘regime change’ in all of the countries listed by both PNAC and General Wesley Clark has continued along over the course of 3 different presidential administrations, both republican and democrat, without any interventions or deviations from the script (although it has taken a bit longer than apparently expected).
In a speech he gave in 2007 to the Commonwealth Club of California, Wesley Clark explained why this plan continues on regardless of who sits in the Oval Office:
“And what happened on 9/11 is we didn’t have a strategy, we didn’t have bipartisan agreement, we didn’t have American understanding of it and we had instead a policy coup in this country, a coup, a policy coup. Some hardnosed people took over the direction of American policy and they never bothered to inform the rest of us. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, if you’re an American you ought to be concerned about the strategy of the United States in this region. What is our aim? What is our purpose? Why are we there? Why are Americans dying in this region? That is the issue.”
The ‘hardnosed people’ referred to by General Clark are the Neoconservative war-hawks who have exerted their power from just behind the scenes of every American president since 9/11.
When Trump appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton to their positions of influence, it didn’t take a clairvoyant to see that the potential for war with Iran was increased almost to the point of becoming an inevitability. Both of these men are dyed-in-the-wool Neoconservatives who have never scrupled to let their hatred for Iran be known far and wide.
According to a statement issued this week by John Bolton, an attack launched by a “proxy” of Iran on not just assets but “interests” of the U.S. in the region or “interests” of a U.S. ally in the region, would now be sufficient to trigger a U.S. attack on Iran, even if Iran itself was not directly responsible. It is clear that once again the tables are set for just such an event as is necessary to serve as a prerequisite for war.
Over the past two-and-a-half years Trump’s supporters have managed to turn a blind eye to a great many things – his flip-flop on prosecuting the Clintons, his mass-funding of a brutal Saudi regime that beheads 16 year old children, and his admitted close relationship with convicted child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – but his reversal on his ‘no more wars in the Middle East’ platform should cause even his most ardent supporters to deflate with dismay.
Unless Americans wake up to the reality of who is truly in control of their country’s foreign policy, illegal wars which serve no national interest will continue to be waged in our names. The map of the Middle East is not so much a map to these people as it is a wish list; and one whose ‘rewards’ have been reaped in a systematic fashion following a carefully constructed script for almost two decades now. The same methods that were used to kickstart this entire ‘war on terror’ campaign continue to be used to further its administrator’s ambitions. Hopefully the American people won’t be so gullible as to fall for it this time around.
