Obama, Putin, and Syria

Some rambling thoughts on the ongoing events….

This entire episode, or more specifically the US handling of it, defies rational explanation: on the one hand, I believe little happens in politics by accident.  While bureaucracies are inherently bungling institutions, when it comes to war, they have developed great skills at moving the ball forward.

On the other hand, the steps taken by Obama and his administration appear, on the surface, amateurish to the extreme – if the objective was to actually drop bombs on innocent civilians, Obama could not have done more to mess things up.

Choosing one or the other possibility is not so easy at this moment.  However, it seems to me that either way something fundamental is occurring. 

Could this weakening of US standing in the world have been orchestrated as a purposeful event?  If so, did Obama go lone ranger in doing so?

The answer to the second question is simple: no chance.  Lone rangers don’t get much chance to collect pensions and life-long secret service protection.  There are too many interests vested in continuing the global war on humanity for one person to fight this battle alone or against the wishes of the puppet-masters.

This leads back to the first question.  Assume the answer to the first question is yes.  What might this suggest?  Are the elite pulling back on the leash of the US government?  Are they clipping the wings of their primary tool for achieving global control?

There have been so many reports damaging to the prestige of the US government recently: DOJ spying on reporters, IRS targeting groups with conservative political views, Benghazi, and Snowden – above all Snowden.  As I noted in my post on the DOJ / IRS / Benghazi scandals, these all came shortly after Obama made the following comments:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.

If someone wanted to ensure the maximum embarrassment of the president – both the person and the office – a better script could not be written.

But why?  In its simplest terms, perhaps the US is going too far – and in this internet age the excesses cannot be hidden very easily.  Regulatory democracy is the best tool ever created for the purposes of control by the elite.  They cannot afford to lose this tool.

Keep in mind, the puppets will act.  They have been taught their parts well; they cannot be turned off instantly – in fact, the key players are likely chosen precisely because they do not require daily direction; they act the part well because it is not an act.

The puppets can play the part, but are bad at recognizing the change in landscape or oblivious to the necessity for change.  So they keep going in their roles, automatons. 

The elite might see that all of their work, especially over the last century, might quickly go up in smoke.  As Daily Bell has suggested: perhaps it is time for a pull-back; a strategic pause in order to not lose control.

Or, it is possible that this bungling is solely due to amateur hour at the White House.  Maybe, but I am not ready to buy it…or, if it was amateur hour is it because the puppet masters made sure the place was populated by amateurs?  Hillary, with far more experience, could easily have won the general election.

Obama came into office with less national or executive political experience than any president in…well, maybe forever. 

So, say this is true, that amateur hour was intended.  Is it not possible to come to the same conclusion?  Those in power want to take a step back?

Anyway, so much for that.

Putin’s Op Ed has really upset a lot of warmongers.  I previously suggested that Edward Snowden was the boy who pointed out to the rest that the emperor had no clothes, and that this is why all of the willingly blind have pilloried him: not because he said it but because they were exposed as liars to the world.  Well, I should have saved that lost chapter of the tale for Putin.  Putin’s Op Ed really showed the nakedness of the righteous rhetoric of Washington.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

It is really striking when a man with the background of KGB agent in one of the more tyrannical governments of the last century and who has the skill to hold the top office in the successor to such a country for over a decade (including behind-the-scenes time) makes more sense on human rights and military intervention than does the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

No matter the spin by Kerry and Carney, this episode is a significant blow to the status and stature of the US government.  Not that the reality is different – the opinion of many around the world has long been that the US is an uncontrollable bully – but that, like the exposure through the Snowden episode, the nakedness of the emperor is fully and openly admitted and discussed.

Of course, the nakedness of the US consumer is already exposed for the world to see.  At some point, foreign buyers of US debt – who buy for their mercantilist reasons of subsidizing exports to the US – will conclude that economically it makes little sense to keep buying the debt of those who have no ability to continue to buy goods from their exporters.  This will then support nicely the desire of those same countries to pull the rug out from under the US military machine and the US dollar.

Of course, the oil exporters will have something to say about this.  But oil is a global commodity, and there are enough exporters that one or two of the biggest cannot stop oil from flowing to the demand supported by valued exchange.

Many global political leaders have been exposed to their home-town constituencies as lap-dogs of the US, again due to the Snowden affair:  forcing down presidential airplanes and the like.  Even more so, being listened to and spied upon by the Americans – not that they didn’t know it, but the fact that now everybody knows it.  You don’t think they wouldn’t enjoy taking the US down a few pegs?  They, of course, need a safe environment in which to do this.  Isn’t this Syria debacle creating that safe environment?

Where are the Obama supporters?  Where are all of the actors and actresses with their worshipful prose?  Obama comes across as a bigger war-monger than Putin.  Obama wants to persecute the whistle-blower while Putin gives him refuge.

Why didn’t those same actors and actresses star in this video?

Where is the derision for all who believed in the lies of hope and change?  I think we are seeing it play out on the world stage.  And it seems we are witnessing, to some degree, a real break-down in the left-right nonsense that defines US politics.

Most importantly, we might be seeing a tactical retreat of empire – at least for a time. 

Maybe longer.  There is no replacement.

Anthony Wile really needs to speak up on this issue – it seems to me a more significant event than any other that has been discussed and exposed at the Daily Bell.