[rad-green] The Inauthentic Opposition is “Stun ned” by a Crime it Encouraged

*https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/06/the-inauthentic-opposition-is-stunned-by-a-crime-it-encouraged/
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/06/the-inauthentic-opposition-is-stunned-by-a-crime-it-encouraged/>*

*COUNTERPUNCH          JANUARY 6, 2020*The Inauthentic Opposition is
“Stunned” by a Crime it Encouraged
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/06/the-inauthentic-opposition-is-stunned-by-a-crime-it-encouraged/>*by
PAUL
STREET <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/paul-street/>*

Photograph Source: AFGE – CC BY 2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/>

Top Democrats are “stunned” that Trump impulsively ordered the killing of
“the commanding general of a sovereign government” (New York Times) –
Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Soliemani –on the sovereign territory of Iraq
without the permission of Iraq’s government. The imperial assassination of
Soliemani is a criminal act of war guaranteed to provoke a reaction that
could produce a regional war involving U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Liberal politicians, talking heads, and pundits are alarmed at Trump’s
statements that a war with Iran “would be over very quickly” – a clear
suggestion that he might employ nuclear weapons – and his promise of
massive retaliation (“52 strikes”)when Iran strikes back.

But there’s no basis for establishment shock and surprise. Trump is an
amoral militarist and faux-isolationist who opened his presidency by going
to the CIA’s headquarters to complain that the United States had gone too
long without “winning wars” and to say that the U.S. might have another
chance to invade Iraq and “get the oil.”

Trump has complained that he doesn’t see why the United States has a giant
nuclear arsenal if it can never use it and has advocated giving nuclear
weapons technology to the arch-reactionary and absolutist Saudi Arabian
regime.

Trump has out-paced his murderous predecessor Barack Obama as the all-time
targeted assassination drone-killer. And impulsivity has been a hallmark of
his presidency from day one.

Trump is also concerned about his low approval rates and an imminent
impeachment trial heading into the 2020 presidential election. He has a
strong “wag the dog” incentive to move the headlines off his domestic
political trials and try to “unify the nation” around the flag and fog of
war.

At the same time, Democrats and their media allies have little moral ground
to stand on when it comes to criticizing Trump’s action. From the beginning
of Trump’s anti-Iran and Teheran-provoking- and punishing presidency
(replete with previous war-scares and a brutal sanctions regime imposed
after Trump pulled out of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran) and before,
Democrats and the “liberal” media have fully participated in advancing the
ludicrous imperial notion that Iran is a uniquely evil, dangerous,
belligerent, destabilizing, and terrorist actor in the Middle East – the
region’s top malign aggressor.

It’s an absurd narrative. The most truly aggressive, destructive, and
malevolent state actor in the Middle East beyond the racist occupation and
apartheid state of Israel (a U.S. ally and the region’s preeminent military
power) and Superpower itself (the U.S. has murdered well more than a
million Iraqis since 1990 and is the sponsor of Saudi Arabia and Israel) –
is the U.S.-backed Saudi kingdom.

The Saudis spend four times as much on military force power as Iran and are
equipped with far superior U.S.-linked weapons systems.

The regional power that’s wreaking havoc in Yemen isn’t Iran. It’s the
Saudi regime, which has joined with the United Arab Emirates and taken
military assistance from the U.S. to impose an epic humanitarian crisis by
blockading and bombing Yemen.

The regional power providing the great majority of state support for
jihadist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda isn’t majority Shiite-Muslim Iran.
It’s the Sunni-Muslim Saudi regime, along with other Sunni-led Gulf
monarchies.

By comparison to the Saudis and Israel, Iran is a defensive power. Its
modest interventions beyond its borders are about standard realpolitik defense
of regional allies (the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas
in Palestine, the Assad regime in Syria, and the Shiite government in
Baghdad), not destabilizing regime change and terrorism.

Still, top Democrats have long obsessed over the supposed supreme
wickedness of Iran, absurdly calling Teheran the leading source of Middle
Eastern conflict and terrorism.

It’s always been a dangerous game. By playing along with “the Trump
administration’s description of Iran as singularly irrational and
menacing,” the liberal journalist Peter Beinart argued last year,
“Democrats help ensure that normalized U.S.-Iran relations are impossible”
and that “the prospect of war…will return again and again.” By opposing war
with Iran while they continue to advance the Evil Teheran narrative,
Beinart rightly noted, “Democrats may believe they’re splitting the
difference. But if they can’t describe Iran as a normal regional power…they
can’t effectively challenge the sanctions the Trump administration keeps
piling on the Islamic Republic.” And “over time,” as in Iraq in the 1990s
and early 21st century, “permanent sanctions can become a formula for
military conflict,” Beinart added.

As the latest crisis has unfolded it has been darkly amusing to watch
“liberal” talking heads like CNN’s Anderson Cooper (a former CIA intern)
and Fareed Zakaria (a Council on Foreign Relations hack) play along with
the notion that Soliemani “deserved” his fiery murder because he “had the
blood of American soldiers on his hands.” The U.S. troops Soliemani is
accused of killing were enlisted in a criminal Empire occupying foreign
lands. That Empire has killed Iraqis and others across the Middle East,
Southwest Asia, and northern Africa in the millions. But U.S. imperialism
and crimes are of unmentionable on CNN.

The main problem with Trump’s action as depicted in much of the “liberal”
media isn’t that it was an imperial war crime. It’s that it was ordered by
the wrong president, an irresponsible narcissist who lacks the proper
imperial credentials and credentials for carrying out such a deadly,
provocative, and sensitive transgression. The message is clear: it would
have been fine for Obama to kill Soliemani. It would be okay for Joe Biden
or former U.S. Army intelligence officer Pete Butiggieg to commit the crime.

It is reflexively taken for doctrinal granted by “liberal” Democrats no
less than Republicans that the United States possesses the right to
maintain a massive and lethal military and political presence in and around
the oil-rich Middle East. It’s okay because, as the liberal imperialist
Bill Clinton’s’ liberal imperialist Secretary of State Madeline Albright
once said, “we [the United States] are good.”

Remember Albright? She’s the former Madame Secretary who worries about
fascism and who once told CBS News that the murder of half a million Iraqi
children by U.S. economic sanctions was a “price worth paying” for the
advance of Washington’s inherently noble foreign policy goals.

On the night of Soliemani’s assassination, Cooper told leading U.S.
“foreign policy” (imperialism) talking heads Zakaria, Dexter Filkins, and
Max Boot that “thousands of Americans died to bring democracy to Iraq.” The
“expert panel” nodded along with this hopelessly ridiculous statement.
These know-it-all Know Nothing apparatchiks of American Empire, Fake
Resistance, and Inauthentic Opposition really believe that kind of bullshit
– or at least know well enough to act like they do.

*Paul Street’s* latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1612053270/counterpunchmaga> (Paradigm,
2014)

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