Can’t Make This Up – U.S. Providing Aid in Fight Against ISIS in Iraq Alongside Iranian Troops

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This — although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense — is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.

– George Orwell, 1984

While the incompetence and idiocy of U.S. foreign policy remains on clear display across the globe, nowhere is it more embarrassingly evident than within Iraq. Ironically, nowhere is it playing out more tragically within Iraq itself than in the birthplace of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, Tikrit.

Naturally, there is another explanation for the insanity of it all besides incompetence. That is the 1984 explanation from the quote at the top, which is that endless war represents a deliberate strategy of the oligarchy in order to to crack down on dissent at home and keep enemies divided abroad.

As I outlined in the post, The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya, there are only two logical conclusions that can be reached about American foreign policy leadership in the 21st century.

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The New York Times Admits – Despite Going to Congress, Obama is Still Defending Unlimited War Powers

Screen Shot 2015-02-12 at 10.25.44 AMPresident Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making.

People who take the Constitution seriously, on both sides of the aisle, must not allow this to happen. They should insist on the repeal of the 2001 resolution and an explicit repudiation of the “associated forces” doctrine. Only then will the next president be required to return to Congress to gain its consent if he or she wants to continue the war past the 2018 deadline. If it fails to take a stand now, its sham debate will generate another destructive cycle of distrust that will further alienate Americans from their representatives.

– From Bruce Ackerman’s New York Times op-ed: Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War

First off, I want to thank Bruce Ackerman for writing this op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. Although the Obama administration already claims unlimited war powers in practice, this claim is illegitimate, which is why he is going to Congress to solidify his ability to declare worldwide warfare against a terrorist group that is a direct result of U.S. foreign policy: ISIS.

I previously covered the shadiness with which Obama was justifying his clearly illegal and unconstitutional war against ISIS last year in the post: Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here’s an excerpt:

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Leon Panetta, Head of Pentagon and C.I.A. Under Obama, Says Brace for 30 Year War with ISIS

Screen Shot 2014-10-07 at 12.31.19 PM“I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless.”

– Glenn Greenwald, in his latest piece for the Intercept

Leon Panetta is pretty much the epitome of a status quo insider. Someone, who due to his influence and mainstream veneer of respectability, is capable of inflicting an almost inconceivable amount of damage to freedom and prosperity in America. In fact, you could say that Mr. Panetta is as responsible as almost anyone else for the banana republic laughing stock that this nation has been transformed into over the past several decades. Why? Because he served in top positions for several of America’s Presidents over that time.

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