US Wars Make Sinister Sense

After the end of the Vietnam War, it was widely believed in the United States that our government would never be able to sell the American people on another senseless war based on a lie. That war blunted an American approval for war that dated back to World War One. Throughout the 1970s, just a hint of American involvement in another war in some far-off part of the globe was met with vehement calls to stay out of it. The Vietnam War was started by a lie from the U.S. government that American naval vessels had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin, and that war cost 58,303 American lives and 303,644 American wounded. It created massive social upheaval within the United States and no one believed, at the time, the government could ever hope to lead America into another war like that.

However, that all changed in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Now if there was one single thing that catapulted Reagan into the presidency, it was the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. This was deeply humiliating for the U.S. and was widely seen as an example of U.S. military weakness from the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The American people did not know that the whole stage for that was set by the U.S. in the first place by the 1953 CIA-backed coup against democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh. That coup installed the U.S. approved Shah Reza Pahlavi, who ruled with an iron fist. The U.S. government never told Americans that. The other thing that got Reagan elected was the economic malaise in America that was pretty much the direct result of the 1973 Oil Crisis, also known as the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. It involved steep price hikes for oil, as well as embargoes on deliveries.That happened in retaliation for U.S. arms support for Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Now, there were other issues involved in this crisis/embargo than just that. The Shah of Iran told the New York Times in 1973, “Of course [the world price of oil] is going to rise….Certainly! And how!…; You [Western nations] increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and the same for sugar and cement…; You buy our crude oil and sell it back to us, refined as petrochemicals at a hundred times the price you’ve paid to us…; It’s only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil. Let’s say ten times more.” Now that was OUR GUY the Shah, that we put into power, who told us that. He didn’t embargo oil on the U.S., but I’m sure he didn’t miss an opportunity to make a buck, either. But he did make a valid point in what he said. Be that as it may, the 1973 Oil Crisis deeply damaged the U.S. at its very core: The auto industry. They got caught with their pants down around their ankles and never recovered. They couldn’t compete with fuel-efficient Japanese cars, and rolled out embarrassing lemons like the AMC Pacer and Ford Pinto. There were lines for gas, when stations had gas. It affected agriculture and food prices went up along with the price of gas. This was where inflation as we know it in America truly began to become an issue.

Then due to the Iranian Revolution, the U.S. had another oil crisis happen, the 1979 Energy Crisis. Again, with the same results. Lines for gas, gas stations without fuel, gas rationing in some states, prices going up across the board, and so on. So, then-President Jimmy Carter got blamed for that, as well as the Hostage Crisis. He inherited the economic stagnation that was a legacy of the 1973 Oil Crisis, too. He was doomed to fail in 1980. People thought Reagan and his brand of conservatism were just what America needed to scare the Middle East into playing nice and also scare the Soviets who were thought to be encouraging them and egging them on. But the truth is, Iran could never have been retaliated against militarily by the U.S. no matter who was president. Back then, Iran bordered the Soviet Union and the Soviets would have come unglued if we invaded Iran, thinking it a pretext to invade them, and retaliated. But the point was, all of this got Reagan elected. And it was he who dabbled America’s toes back into the War Pond with the Grenada Invasion in 1983. America cheered that on as avoiding another humiliating hostage crisis and no one questioned it too much. That was the camel’s nose under the tent. Even Reagan knew Grenada had finally ended America’s VietnamWarophobia and gotten America past the fear of sending American troops into combat. From then on, the use of military force by the U.S. has never been met with insurmountable objections. The only problem was, it had to be done away from the Soviet’s backyard so they didn’t get involved and then it escalates into the Third World War. Being able to get into wars was a vital necessity for what the U.S. government had been foreseeing since the 1973 Oil Crisis, which we’ll get into later.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. had been handed the keys to the kingdom. The USSR was already crumbling when we got into the Gulf War with Iraq, which was the true test of American popular approval of what was then seen as a possible major war. People supported that war and the U.S. victory was just what the government needed to sell another one. And with the Soviets gone, the U.S. could act with impunity throughout the Middle East. From the coinciding of those two key events, the use of American military has gone on without end into today. But as to launching a war based on an outright lie, that had to wait until 2003. The American people were told repeatedly all the way up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!” This was a lie but the government told it so often and with enough conviction, it was widely believed. And what’s more, even when the lie was revealed as a lie in the middle of the war, support for the war continued! Remarkable! The U.S. government learned that you can lie America into a war and even if the swindle is detected, people will still support that war. Americans do not earnestly question who is telling them these lies, or why, or how such a war is in the actual interest of the American people. You need to be able to build a war based on a lie, because the people will not go along with the real reasons for these wars; reasons that date clear back to 1973.

So it is we find ourselves today being told yet more lies to start yet more wars. Where do we find ourselves today? Safer as a result? Far from it. We were promised a “change we could believe in” from President Obama. But what has changed? He believes in the same “regime change” ideology as his predecessor. We “had” to topple Qaddafi in Libya, so we did. We “had” to topple Assad in Syria, so we tried and badly miscalculated that one and started a civil war and the rise of one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in world history: ISIS. Both of those things were started by lies. Lies that this would bring peace, democracy, and stability to the region. Now we had a special guest warmonger, Benjamin Netanyahu, come tell us Iran is building a nuclear weapon to lie us into another war. Yeah, we’ve heard this one before, Benji: “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!”  Now we’re being told by the U.S. government that Russia has thousands of troops in Ukraine. Uh-huh, and Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Then they tell us we need to possibly send in ground troops to fight ISIS. Yeah, and how did that crap get started in the first place, you guys? Trying to topple Assad! So, you start a war and create the enemies you need to fight later who were once your friends. But I detect another fraud. I tend to think sending in ground troops to fight ISIS is the lie and the real mission is to topple Assad. Just like the lie that the Russians are already in Ukraine means we need to be in there. What’s it all about? What links the Middle East and Ukraine? It is, and always has been, about energy. But not just as a natural resource we need to run the show over here, but also as a product to sell as a major part of our economy going into the future.

We need to return to the 1973 Oil Crisis. We learned two things from that. First, we needed to secure overseas supplies of oil, including possible future sources. Second, we needed to ramp up domestic production for ourselves and to export that, or a related energy product, into overseas markets. Our manufacturing industries never recovered from the 1973 Oil Crisis. The future market was in energy and we knew that. The 1979 Energy Crisis confirmed that for us. The big lesson learned was being an energy-exporting nation gives one considerable clout and wealth. Forget selling American cars and manufactured goods, what we need to be exporting are petroleum products! But we can only do that if we have plenty left over after our own needs are taken care of. So, we needed to do several things.

First, we needed to lock the Soviets out of the Middle East, which we did by supporting anti-communist Islamic regimes opposed to pro-Soviet secular/socialistic regimes. The U.S. had headaches with the Soviets over there dating back to the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis. What happened there is Soviet-friendly Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, angering the French and British who wanted to keep it. They then egged the Israelis into trying to take it and then France and Britain used that as an excuse to jump in and get their troops over there. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was furious and told U.S. President Eisenhower he’d start nuking France and Britain if they didn’t get the heck out of there and leave Egypt alone. Eisenhower got scared of that drawing the U.S. into a response that would start World War Three. Thus, Eisenhower ordered the French, British, and Israelis out of the area and Egypt kept the Suez Canal. The U.S. never forgot that, so saw the need to pull countries over there away from Soviet influence before the Soviets ended up with the whole pie. But it wasn’t until the 1973 Oil Crisis when the need to start working harder to lock out the Soviets from the Middle East became critical. The only way to do that was to buddy up to Islamic regimes vehemently opposed to secular socialism.

But the Israeli problem remained an issue and threatened to drive more nations into the Soviet sphere. We hammered out a peace plan to stop another Israeli-Arab war with the Camp David Talks. Then we were able to pull the Arab OPEC nations back into the fold promising to defend them against the Soviet-backed regimes in the area, such as Iraq. And we proved that in the 1991 Gulf War. The Soviets collapsed and provided us with a windfall since now we’d be the only major superpower with any clout in the region. Thus, we secured the current suppliers we knew that weren’t in or of the Soviet sphere. And even though the Middle Eastern nations sell oil, it’s purchased by U.S. companies and sold back at a big profit once it’s refined or simply resold when the price goes up. Remember? The Shah told us that in 1973. So controlling the oil supply is paramount. Even if the U.S. can’t export domestic oil, it can import oil and hold on to it until the price goes up, then export it. If we basically control the source, and hold that territory under some defense agreement, we make money off the oil. The Romans did that with olive oil.

Second, we needed to topple regimes in the area who weren’t going along with the program. This needed to come after securing the current supply, which took time. This is one of the reasons Syria needs to go, Libya and Iraq did go, and Iran must go. That secures future sources. The idea behind toppling Assad was to isolate Iran and try to bait them into a war. Unfortunately for the U.S., this one blew up in our faces when ISIS formed from Syrian moderates the U.S. backed and got out of U.S. control. Iran is keeping their king, queen, and both knights away from the American pieces on the chessboard and frustrating our moves. Iran sending what amounts to their foreign legion to fight ISIS was a brilliant move on their part. Iran’s troops are some of the most effective in the fight against ISIS. If the U.S. attacks Iran, it strengthens ISIS. If the U.S. defeats ISIS completely, it strengthens Iran. Iran’s got the American rook nicely boxed in on the chessboard. As far as Iran goes, the U.S. acts like it’s playing checkers, but Iran came to play chess. However, the U.S. may very well be able to use Israel to handle that problem. Iran may have miscalculated and not noticed Israel is America’s second rook. And that piece is moving into position.

Third, we increased domestic production of oil to take care of our needs when overseas supplies were disrupted by our re-shuffling of governments over there. We’ve made some big discoveries since 1973, including several major discoveries of Liquefied Natural Gas. This also ensures that the Middle Eastern nations cannot effectively retaliate with another 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. All they’ll do with an embargo is hurt themselves in the long run. Domestic production keeps our prices at a somewhat manageable level so the people don’t scream as loud as they did in 1973 and 1979. It also gave us the ability to begin exports, which is what we also wanted. We’ve now got rather vast exportable quantities of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) as a result. LNG is the pick of the litter for what the U.S. wants to use to get into the world energy market. World demand for LNG is rapidly increasing and expecting to peak in the year 2020. LNG is the future and quite a bit of money in the U.S. has been invested in LNG transport modes.

The crisis in Ukraine has scared the Baltic states who rely on natural gas from Russia, as does Ukraine and much of Western Europe. It isn’t by accident Lithuania has just signed a deal to buy LNG from the United States. So, that market is already opening up and that’s probably the test market to iron out the logistics. That’s where the U.S. interest in Ukraine enters and it isn’t by accident Vice President Joe Biden’s son is high up in a Ukrainian gas company. It isn’t enough to just control the energy supplies for ourselves. We want to sell it, too. We learned that from the 1973 Oil Crisis. Things OPEC didn’t realize we’d learn at the time. To quote George W. Bush, they misunderestimated the sneaky, conniving, swindler nature of the United States government. They probably thought we just wanted to have a secure supply of oil. No, we want to buy cheap and sell high and also sell our own LNG especially!  And we want to lock the Russians out of that, too. If things keep going as hoped, we’ll be selling LNG to Ukraine, all of the Baltic states, and probably other European nations, too. Those are our friends, we’ll own that market. This is also why the Black Sea coast of Ukraine needs to be defended, to ensure LNG tankers access to Ukraine once we rope them in as customers. A pipeline could be run from the coast of Romania, but it would cost money on top of the cost of the tanker delivery to run it through a pipeline. Recent U.S. naval exercises in the Black Sea point directly to this issue. The Baltic nations are already in our pocket and they have their own coasts for tankers to land upon.

These wars in the Middle East and U.S. involvement in Ukraine have nothing to do with creating democracies, defending freedom, or any such nonsense. If anyone believes that, he’ll believe anything the government tells him, up to and including the existence of unicorns. The U.S. government doesn’t care about any of those things. Just like the Romans never really cared about “Pax Romana”. Their wars were to secure the wealth and natural resources of their era. That being, grain, olive oil, gold, silver, metals, precious stones, strategic regions necessary to control the areas those resources were found in, and so on. And they wanted to own the markets for those products, so they could sell the stuff. It just so happened that the more land they controlled, the more powerful they got. Much like the United States today, though the U.S. doesn’t have some of the other ambitions the Roman Empire had.

The United States had the “perfect storm” for imperial ambitions. The 1973 Oil Crisis, 1979 Energy Crisis, and 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis caused the economic and political conditions necessary for a pro-militarism president to rise to power and end America’s fear of another war. Both the 1973 and 1979 Energy Crises created the need to shift away from an industrial/manufacturing economy and into something else. Also, both crises caused the U.S. to feel its energy supply threatened and, thus, need to control it even more than it had in the past. Plus, develop domestic supplies so vast, it could export and sell some type of energy product the world would need in greater demand moving ahead into the 21st century. All of these things require military power and intervention to make it work in the way the U.S. desires. We’ve known a nation requires that to build an empire based on government-controlled markets with the use of military power as far back as the Romans. The U.S. government did not intend for the 1973 Oil Crisis, 1979 Hostage Crisis, and 1979 Energy Crisis to happen. But, like a virus, the government showed a remarkable ability to mutate, overcome, and adapt in those new environments and then to thrive and replicate itself.

You see, you can’t tie U.S. militarism to being a regional gig centered around the Middle East. Not with Ukraine in the mix now, you can’t. But if you factor in Ukraine, plus the fears of Russia driving the Baltic states into buying LNG from the U.S., then you can see what the end game really is. Now it all makes sinister sense, doesn’t it? Of course ISIS is a U.S. creation. The U.S. has always used Islamic fundamentalist radicals as its unwitting footsoldiers. Of course the U.S. wants Iran and Syria out of the way. They’re the last holdouts against U.S. hegemony in the region, although Egypt appears headed towards Russia again. Which is one more reason the U.S. hates Russia, not to mention they’re cozy with Syria and Iran. But, at the same time, the U.S. needs Russia posing a threat to Ukraine and the Baltic states, and Western Europe, too. Those are LNG markets for us.  Just like the good ol’ days of the Cold War, the Russkies can be counted on to be the fear-factor we can use to pull nations into the U.S. corral. We knew the Russians would react to us boxing them in by pulling former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO. And when they did, those markets would be ours.

The U.S. learned from the 1973 Oil Crisis that an industrialized, manufacturing economy is highly vulnerable if you do not have energy. That’s why the U.S. has gone ahead and let Europe and Asia eclipse us there. We don’t care about that anymore; we’ve moved on. Their factories need energy to build those products or their economies will end up in the commode. So we decided we want to be the energy source for those factories going into the future. Those folks also need to heat their homes or they’ll freeze to death. We’ll sell that energy, too, and control the sources of oil for their transportation on top of that. We also control the ability of countries to invest in nuclear energy. All we need to do is accuse them of trying to build nuclear weapons, like we do with Iran. What’s more, with more nations enacting climate-change protocols, we sell even more LNG because it is seen as the better environmentally-friendly option than coal or other fossil-fuels. But more to the point, we have the military power capable of pulling it all off and getting away with it. The only countries who can stymie our efforts are Russia, China, and Iran. Well, now Russia’s the enemy again, Iran’s been the enemy since 1979, and China is a possible energy market we don’t want to upset quite yet. But bear this in mind. One of the world’s largest LNG companies is Cheniere Energy, a U.S. company. Those are the guys Lithuania just signed a deal with to buy LNG and get away from Russian-supplied natural gas.

People like to think 9/11 was the major event that caused all this turmoil. In fact, it was just a convenient excuse. If 9/11 had not happened, there would have been some other reason to get the ball rolling as far as getting rid of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Iran. This dates back to 1973, folks, and there’s been many events leading up to where we are today. Boxing Russia in to open up the Eastern Europe and Baltics market to our LNG dates back to the 1990s. Israel has nothing we want or need, but they remain a valuable piece on the board. They might just be what we need to justify attacking Iran and getting rid of them once and for all. We’ve been waiting to do that since 1979. Not out of revenge, but to garner that oil again. Even better would be a unilateral military attack on Iran by Israel that we could claim we didn’t approve or know about. There’s a reason we just looked the other way as Israel fielded its thermonuclear Jericho 3 ICBM system which became fully operational just a couple years ago. Americans won’t care if Israel destroys Iran or we do it claiming we were defending Israel. Americans are already buying the lie that Iran’s building a nuclear weapon. Americans are already buying the lie that Putin is another Hitler. And if there’s one product that the U.S. is undeniably the world’s top exporter of, it’s lies.