CounterCurrents: Inauguration Day News Letter, U.S. Senators Are Even More Neoconservative Than Are Trump’s Appointees, UK Wind Generated More Electricity Than Coal In 2016

Dear Friend,

It's inauguration day of the commander in chief of THE EMPIRE. And what an emperor we've got! As Richard Heinberg says in his article "  Inauguration Day: A Good Day For A Walk In The Woods" - "In my view, the most revealing personal characteristic of president #45 may be his complete disconnection from the natural world. Here is an individual who grew up in a city, who sees land only in terms of profit potential, who proudly covers the tortured ground with high-rise buildings, who lives in a penthouse, and who walks outdoors only on golf courses. One could make some similar comments about many of his recent predecessors (certainly not Teddy Roosevelt), but in this instance the tendency reaches an extreme." On this inauguration day, we may take a walk in the park like Heinberg suggests, hug a tree or hold some mud in your hand and weep. 

The ever sagacious John Avery warns against despair and reminds us of the responsibility of each one of us in a world where many governments today  may be described unjust, and some that even deserve to be called fascist. Avery delves into the thoughts of Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King reminds of our responsibility in the present world drawing inspiration from these trailblazers. Avery also says Nuremberg Principles can also guide us. 

There is some good news in all this gloom and doom. "UK Wind Generated More Electricity Than Coal In 2016"!

Well, it's indeed is a good news, but we must take it with a pinch of salt. Will green energy sustain our current level of consumption? Gunnar Rundgren warns us in his article "Reducing Consumption And Local Exchange Better Than “Sustainable Consumption”".  He writes "While it is clear that global trade play a major role as a driver of destruction of biodiversity there is no way “consumers” in the US or other developed economies can be expected to take responsibility for the effect on biodiversity of their consumption. It is a tall order even for the companies trading or the retailers selling the products. Citizens should rather take responsibility by a general reduction in consumption, by favoring local goods exchange and relationships and by opposing policies that further drive international trade."

Emily Spence throws in another gem from CC archives. "The Economic And Social Losses On The Way" published on 29 April, 2011. Well the role of CC is connecting the dots. People like Emily has helped a lot in our endeavour. As Emily writes in this article, you walk into a super-sized mall and see all the 'stuff' in shiny, happy wrappers. Do you actually realize that you are actually walking into a graveyard! Emily writes so eloquently "They can't look at cotton goods or food and imagine the huge oceanic dead zones and the annihilation of many diverse organisms caused by farm runoff. They can't go to the paper isle and picture that, aside from all of the multitudes of items derived from timber, U.S. toilet paper use alone destroys thirteen million acres of forests per year, along with all life dependent on those forests. " Did anything change since 2011? On this inauguration day it's only going to get worse! 

Perhaps, after all we may  not be 'fake news' peddlers as WashPo and other great truth tellers suggest! I would rather be happy if CC is proved wrong on all counts than see my son and his sons/daughters swept away by the storms of our grandchildren as James Hansen wrote so powerfully in his book. 

And also more stories from around the world. 

If you don't mind, and if you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org





Inauguration Day: A Good Day For A Walk In The Woods
by Richard Heinberg 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/inauguration-day-a-good-day-for-a-walk-in-the-woods/

How can a person so isolated from natural phenomena hope to understand the vulnerability of our planet’s climate, water, air, and innumerable species to the actions of people (one hastens to add—people much like himself)? How can he appreciate that civilization itself is an organism with a constant need for “food” (not just grain and meat, but energy, minerals, and water as well), that is organized by way of hierarchically ordered and interlinked cycles, and that is subject to natural limits and ultimately to death?





Individual Responsibility
by John Scales Avery

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/individual-responsibility/

There are many governments today that can be described unjust, and some that even deserve to be called fascist. What is the duty of the individual citizen, living under such a government? What was the duty of a German, living under Hitler? The thoughts of Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King can help us answer this question. The Nuremberg Principles can also help us to answer it.





UK Wind Generated More Electricity Than Coal In 2016
by Simon Evans  

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/uk-wind-generated-more-electricity-than-coal-in-2016/

The milestone is a first for the UK and reflects a collapse in coal generation, which contributed just 9.2% of UK electricity last year, with 11.5% from wind. The coal decline saw its output fall to the lowest level since 1935. It also means CO2 emissions from UK power generation will have fallen by around 20% in 2016, as coal was largely replaced by lower-emissions gas. This reduction will be enough to cut overall UK CO2 emissions by 6% for the year, if other sectors’ emissions are unchanged.





The Economic And Social Losses On The Way
By Emily Spence

http://www.countercurrents.org/spence290411.htm

At present, numerous environmental researchers are warning of future resource shortages. The list of them is large and includes water, oil, a variety of minerals and metals, as well as other materials. Yet, most people carry on as if they do not hear the message at all. They refuse to cut back in their dreams of continuing economic growth. In relation, part of the problem with them is perhaps an inability to make connections. For the most part, they seem to have little or no idea about the collective consequences of their individual behaviors.






Reducing Consumption And Local Exchange Better Than “Sustainable Consumption”
by Gunnar Rundgren 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/reducing-consumption-and-local-exchange-better-than-sustainable-consumption/

While it is clear that global trade play a major role as a driver of destruction of biodiversity there is no way “consumers” in the US or other developed economies can be expected to take responsibility for the effect on biodiversity of their consumption. It is a tall order even for the companies trading or the retailers selling the products. Citizens should rather take responsibility by a general reduction in consumption, by favoring local goods exchange and relationships and by opposing policies that further drive international trade.






A Look At What Works And — And Doesn’t — In The World Of Conservation
by Haley Madderom 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/a-look-at-what-works-and-and-doesnt-in-the-world-of-conservation/

What Works in Conservation 2017, a free online book just published by University of Cambridge conservation specialists, aims to help conservation workers navigate that sea. With the guidance of an international team of experts, the book summarizes, organizes and evaluates the outcomes of specific conservation practices reported in more than 150 scientific journals as well as in unpublished reports and other literature from around the world. By providing detailed information on various practices and outcomes, it attempts to answer the questions: What worked? What looked promising, but didn’t end up making a difference in the long haul? What actually ended up doing more harm than good? And in what context?






U.S. Senators Are Even More Neoconservative Than Are Trump’s Appointees 
by Eric Zuesse 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/u-s-senators-are-even-more-neoconservative-than-are-trumps-appointees/

The confirmation hearings for the members of incoming President Donald Trump’s national-security team showed that neoconservatism dominates the U.S. government today: neoconservatism didn’t end after George W. Bush’s alleged certainty that “Saddam’s WMD” existed in 2002






Three Denials And Discussion Denied
by Richard Oxman 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/three-denials-and-discussion-denied/

The denial of clemency for Leonard Peltier — courtesy of Obama — inspired me to write this piece, along with the denial of Climate Change on the part of the new U.S. Administration.






Myanmar: A scribe’s Murder And Its Aftermath
by Nava Thakuria 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/myanmar-a-scribes-murder-and-its-aftermath/

Ko Soe Moe Tun (35), a Monywa (Sagaing) based Burmese journalist was found dead on 13 December 2016, who was convincingly targeted for his extensive investigation & coverage on the wood smuggling, illegal logging and mining in northwest Myanmar. The reporter, engaged with Daily Eleven newspaper, published by the Yangon based Eleven Media Group, also posted few details in his facebook account about the people involved with the illegal timber trades.





TOI Editorial On Indian Newspaper Industry Smells Like Match-Fixing
by M J Pandey 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/20/toi-editorial-on-indian-newspaper-industry-smells-like-match-fixing/

With reference to the unsigned editorial ‘Indian Newspaper industry: Red Ink splashed across the bottom line’ (TOI, Jan 19, 2017), a case is being made out for concessions to the newspaper industry on the grounds that it is in the doldrums and is beleaguered by various burdens, including that of wage board wages, GST, DAVP, etc. Without mentioning the recent illegal closure of six editions of The Hindustan Times as the obvious peg for this, the editorial seeks a range of concessions – from a part-discontinuance of the wage board for newspaper employees, to subsidies on advertising and tax.

Intrepid Report: Week of December 12, 2016

Intrepid Report Newsletter

We cannot keep publishing without your help. We rely on you to help us pay our monthly expenses. So please Donate Monday Corporate media buy CIA claim, without evidence, of Russian meddling in US presidential election By Jack Balkwill On Saturday CNN put forth on program after program that the recent US presidential election was interfered with by the Russians, offering no proof. Besotted Ayn Randians now rule in America Media, morality and the neighbor’s cow By Neal Gabler If you have any doubts that the phenomenon of Donald Trump was a long time a’coming, you have only to read a piece that Gore Vidal wrote for Esquire magazine in July 1961, when the conservative movement was just beginning and even Barry Goldwater was hardly a glint in Republicans’ eyes. Faux populist Trump wages all-out  Fake news By Lauren McCauley President-elect Donald Trump, a supposedly populist candidate who rose to power on promises made to frustrated American workers, has now seemingly launched what Politico is describing as an outright “war on unions.” Neocons urge war on Iran By Stephen Lendman Bipartisan neocons infest Washington, supporting endless wars of aggression—Iran a prime target to attack, regime change the objective, wanting pro-Western puppet governance replacing its sovereign independence. Dismal jobs report By Paul Craig Roberts The presstitute media delivered the false news, not from Russian propaganda websites such as the Washington Post accuses this one of being, but from Obama’s US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The false news is that the collapsing economy continues to boom with 178,000 new jobs in November and a further fall in the rate of unemployment to 4.6%. Tuesday The Russians are coming, oy vey, the Russians are coming By Dave Alpert I was reluctant to use an ethnic expression but I felt that the Yiddish expression “oy vey” was a better reflection of the panic that has gripped this country. The CIA’s absence of conviction By Craig Murray I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story—blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish was the lead Sunday in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. Congress passes measure opposing speech and media freedoms By Stephen Lendman First Amendment rights are America’s most precious. Without them, all others are endangered. Trump is the fulfillment of an ancient Chinese curse By William T. Hathaway “May you live in interesting times” was a curse the ancient Chinese hurled at their adversaries, wishing them strife, oppression, and struggle. For all the uncertainties a Trump presidency holds, it will certainly be an interesting time, filled with opportunities for resistance and perhaps revolution. Will Trump give Pharma a pass on overseas jobs? By Martha Rosenberg Even before a Clinton concession speech, Pharma stocks were hopping and Wall Street saluting over a Trump administration. No pesky price regulation over drugs like EpiPen or Sovaldi. No speed bumps over the safety of drugs like the blood thinning Xarelto, linked to 500 deaths. No DOJ lawsuits about off-label marketing. Wednesday U.S. authorizes jihadists to shoot down Russian aircraft over Syria By Wayne Madsen While Senator John McCain has called an alleged, but in no way proven, CIA report that Russia “hacked” the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump a form of warfare, he and his neo-con colleagues are secretly supporting the CIA’s covert operation to provide shoulder-launched missiles to jihadists fighting in the Syrian civil war. Where’s the proof? Calls grow to declassify evidence of alleged Russian hack By Deirdre Fulton “Let’s have some proof.” How to beat the post-election blues and recapture the true spirit of Christmas By John W. Whitehead I keep waiting to encounter the “kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant” Christmastime environment that Charles Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol: “when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” Focus on the solution: Publicly finance the largest political parties By Roger Copple Two, long, boring years before every presidential election, we hear a constant barrage of empty promises. Candidates will say whatever voters want to hear, but then once elected, they change their views and do a position switch. The result is that we get the same old prototypical leaders over and over again. It happens because “the system is rigged,” as George Carlin said. Our so-called “democracy” is a sham, a big joke. Voting does not change anything significantly, and it is understandable why many individuals do not even vote or vote for a third party. This must be a dream By Philip A Farruggio For those who study metaphysics like this writer, there is the concept that this 3rd dimension we live in is really just a dream. When they say ‘dream’ they mean that the higher consciousness which is our real self is actually creating this 3rd dimension part of us. Thursday ‘Fake news’: Who is really making the war on truth? By Michael Jabara Carley The other day David Ignatius, a columnist at the Washington Post, declared sententiously that “truth is losing.” He meant of course “the truth” according to the US government. Ignatius recently interviewed Richard Stengel, a State Department official responsible for “public diplomacy,” someone who had previously worked for Time magazine, a stellar source of “truth” and the “American way.” Things are getting tough, Stengel said. We’ve entered “a ‘post-truth’ world, where the facts are sometimes overwhelmed by propaganda from Russia and the Islamic State.” You can see right away where this conversation is headed. And how outrageous to compare Russia and the IS, when the original purveyors of Salafi-Jihadism are located in Washington, DC. Jewish Power is now British law—it’s official! By Gilad Atzmon For years I have argued that Jewish power is the power to silence criticism of Jewish Power. Now, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed that my observation is spot on. Radiation: Preventing and minimizing radiation skin damage By Sara S. DeHart, MSN, Ph.D. While it is a true statement that “not everyone burns” during or following radiation, skin burns and dermatitis occur in about 90% of persons treated with radiation for breast and throat cancers. This means that to minimize or avoid burns or dermatitis each patient must take the responsibility to actively treat and protect their skin on day one of radiation and continue these preventive treatments for two to three weeks following radiation. Bob Dylan doesn’t exist By Edward Curtin Because there is no Bob Dylan, he did not attend the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, to accept his prize in Literature. He is a figment of the imagination—first his own and then the public’s. Perhaps behind the character Bob Dylan there is a genuine actor, but if he had shown up and given a truthful speech about his actor’s life, he would have been dismissed as a charlatan, an impostor. His ardent fans would have received it as a slap in the face, and their illusions would have transmogrified into delusions as the spell was broken. SATIRE: Conspiracy vs conspiracy: 911 Truthers sue government By Frank Scott Calling government charges of a Russian conspiracy to elect an American president “a clear and dangerous policy designed to strip our movement of its supporters,” 911 Truthers, Inc., a subsidiary of Galaxy Conspiracies Corporation, introduced a libel suit against the “far out fanatics of the CIA and major media fake news who think their story of Russian infiltration of our electoral system is on a par with our story of unspeakable, unknowable, unexplainable and unintelligently brilliant plotters who magically took down the twin towers and convinced several billion morons to believe it was done by terrorist “Arabs from caves” can stand up to logic, reason and other stuff we learned at community college and used to prove beyond any semi-reasoning creature with brains larger than a spider’s genitals doubt.” Friday Foreign meddling in our vote? Remember how this feels. During the Cold War, the CIA did everything it’s accusing Russia of doing today—and more. By Peter Certo Even in an election year as shot through with conspiracy theories as this one, it would have been hard to imagine a bigger bombshell than Russia intervening to help Donald Trump. But that’s exactly what the CIA believes happened, or so unnamed “officials brief on the matter” told the Washington Post. How come no one involved in the Russian hacking conspiracy talked? By Paul Craig Roberts The claims that the Russian government hacked US voting machines are absurd. Voting machines are not connected to the Internet. To hack a voting machine you have to be physically in proximity to the machine and use a hand held device. The machines can be programmed to throw the vote count to one candidate or the other, and there are other ways to interfere with elections. Possibly if a foreign power had server presence in the US, some precinct reports of results could be intercepted and altered, although a voice check over the telephone is an easy way to verify the electronic transmission. What is clear is that Russia cannot hack the voting machines. Navigating war: Has the war in Syria also destroyed journalism? By Ramzy Baroud When a veteran war reporter like Robert Fisk constructs his argument regarding the siege of Aleppo based on ‘watching’ video footage, then one can truly comprehend the near impossibility of adequate media coverage on the war in Syria. Freedom Rider: Fighting for Southern human rights By Margaret Kimberley The need to organize against various oppressions is ever present across the United States. But the South is the region which illustrates most clearly the need for black people to assert their political and human rights. It is the innermost part of the belly of the beast. Unhappy women By Linh Dinh Years ago in McGlinchey’s, a Philly dive, I overheard a female voice, “I don’t know how anyone can get married, I don’t know, before they’re 45. I mean, hello!” The woman was in her mid-20s.

What future do you want?

Syria: 

The NeoCons MARCHED TO WAR with Iraq for no reason....except OIL? 
The NeoCons MARCHED TO WAR with Syria for no reason....except OIL? 
The NeoCons MARCHED TO WAR with Libya for no reason....except OIL? 
The NeoCons MARCHED TO WAR with Ukraine for no reason....except OIL? 



Sit back....shut off the distraction....think about the World you want to leave for your kids and grandchildren. 

Do we want to live in PEACE and address Global issue? 
Do we want to support candidates for election who promote ENDLESS WARS? 

If your children can grow up in PEACE, enjoying the Fields of Flowers, shouldn't every nation's children have that right? 

RSN: The Deposer in Chief: Hillary in Honduras

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FOCUS: Robert Parry | Hillary Clinton Seeks Neocon Shelter

Robert Parry, Consortium News
Parry writes: "Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time."
READ MORE 

Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time, asks Robert Parry.

n seeking to put Sen. Bernie Sanders on the defensive over his foreign policy positions, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is embracing a neoconservative stance on the Middle East and gambling that her more hawkish approach will win over Democratic voters.

Losing ground in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent polls, the Clinton campaign has counterattacked against Sanders, targeting his sometimes muddled comments on the Mideast crisis, but Clinton’s attack line suggests that Sanders isn’t adequately committed to the positions of Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his American neocon acolytes.

Clinton’s strategy is to hit Sanders for seeking a gradual normalization of relations with Iran, while Clinton has opted for the neocon position of demonizing Iran and siding with Israel and its quiet alliance with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states that share Israel’s animosity toward Shiite-ruled Iran.

By attaching herself to this neocon approach of hyping every conceivable offense by Iran while largely excusing the human rights crimes of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Sunni-run states, Clinton is betting that most Democratic voters share the neocon-dominated “group think” of Official Washington: “Iran-our-enemy, Israel/Saudi Arabia-our-friends.”

She made similar calculations when she voted for and supported President George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq; when she sided with the neocons in pushing President Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan; and when she instigated “regime change” in Libya – all policies that had dubious and dangerous outcomes. But she seems to still believe that she will benefit politically if she continues siding with the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” side-kicks.

On Thursday, the Clinton campaign put Sanders’s suggestion of eventual diplomatic relations with Iran in the context of his lack of ardor toward defending Israel.

“Normal relations with Iran right now?” said Jake Sullivan, the campaign’s senior policy adviser. “President Obama doesn’t support that idea. And it’s not at all clear why it is that Senator Sanders is suggesting it. … Many of you know Iran has pledged the destruction of Israel.”

Actually, the Clinton campaign is mischaracterizing Sanders’s position as expressed in last Sunday’s debate. Sanders opposed immediate diplomatic relations with Tehran.

“Understanding that Iran’s behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we’re hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable,” Sanders said. “Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should.”

Standing with the Establishment

But the Clinton campaign’s distortions aside, there is the question of whether or not the Democratic base has begun to reject Official Washington’s whatever-Israel-wants orthodoxy.

Hillary Clinton seems to be betting that rank-and-file Democrats remain enthralled to Israel and afraid to challenge the powerful neocon propaganda machine that controls the U.S. establishment’s foreign policy by dominating major op-ed pages, TV political chat shows and leading think tanks. The neocons also maintain close ties to the “liberal interventionists” who hold down key jobs in the Obama administration.

Clinton’s gamble assumes that progressives and foreign-policy “realists” have failed to develop their own infrastructure for examining and debunking many of the neocon/liberal-hawk propaganda themes and thus any politician who deviates too far from those “group thinks” risks getting marginalized.

In other words, Clinton is counting on the establishment structure holding through Election 2016 despite the populist anger that is evident from the surge of support for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders on the left and for billionaire nativist Donald Trump on the right.

In effect, this election is asking American voters if they want incremental changes to the current system – represented by establishment candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush – or if they want to shake the system up with insurgent candidates like Sanders and Trump.

Though most neocons are supporting Republican establishment candidates who have sworn allegiance to the Israeli/neocon cause, the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio, some prominent neocons have made clear that they would be happy with Hillary Clinton as president.

For instance, neocon superstar Robert Kagan told The New York Times in 2014 that he hoped that his neocon views – which he now prefers to call “liberal interventionist” – would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration. After all, Secretary of State Clinton named Kagan to one of her State Department advisory boards and promoted his wife, neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the provocative “regime change” in Ukraine in 2014.

According to the Times’ article, Clinton “remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.”

Kagan is quoted as saying: “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. … If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Though Clinton recently has sought to portray herself as an Obama loyalist – especially in South Carolina where she is counting on strong African-American support – she actually has adopted far more hawkish positions than the President, both when she was a senator and as Obama’s first secretary of state.

‘Team of Rivals’ Debacle

Arguably, Obama’s most fateful decision of his presidency occurred shortly after the 2008 election when he opted for the trendy idea of a “team of rivals” to run his foreign policy. He left Bush family loyalist Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, retained a neocon-dominated senior officer corps led by the likes of Gen. David Petraeus, and picked hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. Thus, Obama never took control of his own foreign policy.

The troika of Clinton-Gates-Petraeus challenged Obama over his desire to wind down the Afghan War, bureaucratically mouse-trapping him into an ill-advised “surge” that accomplished little other than getting another 1,750 U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Afghans. Nearly three-quarters of the 2,380 U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan were killed on Obama’s watch.

Ironically, it was Gates who shed the most light on Clinton’s neocon-oriented positions in his memoir, Duty, written after he left the Pentagon in 2011. While generally flattering Clinton for her like-minded positions, Gates also portrays Clinton as a pedestrian foreign policy thinker who is easily duped and leans toward military solutions.

Indeed, for thoughtful and/or progressive Democrats, the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton could represent a step back from some of President Barack Obama’s more innovative foreign policy strategies, particularly his readiness to cooperate with the Russians and Iranians to defuse Middle East tensions and his willingness to face down the Israel Lobby when it is pushing for heightened confrontations and war.

Based on her public record and Gates’s insider account, Clinton could be expected to favor a neoconservative approach to the Mideast, one more in line with the dominant thinking of Official Washington and the belligerent dictates of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Standing with Israeli Bigots

As a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State, Clinton rarely challenged the conventional wisdom on the Mideast or resisted the use of military force to solve problems. She famously voted for the Iraq War in 2002 – falling for President George W. Bush’s bogus WMD case – and remained a war supporter until her position became politically untenable during Campaign 2008.

Representing New York, Clinton avoided criticizing Israeli actions. In summer 2006, as Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese, Sen. Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s bigoted Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman who had said, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.”

At a pro-Israel rally with Clinton in New York on July 17, 2006, Gillerman proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon. “Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah.

Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]

Sen. Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks, since doing so would presumably have offended an important pro-Israel constituency, which she has continued to cultivate.

In November 2006, when President Bush nominated Gates to be Defense Secretary, Clinton gullibly misread the significance of the move. She interpreted it as a signal that the Iraq War was being wound down when it actually presaged the opposite, that an escalation or “surge” was coming.

From her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton failed to penetrate the smokescreen around Gates’s selection. The reality was that Bush had ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in part, because he had sided with Generals John Abizaid and George Casey who favored shrinking the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Gates was privately onboard for replacing those generals and expanding the U.S. footprint.

On with the Surge

After getting blindsided by Gates over what became a “surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, Sen. Clinton sided with Democrats who objected to the escalation, but Gates quotes her in his memoir as later telling President Obama that she did so only for political reasons.

Gates recalled a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009, to discuss whether to authorize a similar “surge” in Afghanistan, a position favored by both Defense Secretary Gates and Secretary of State Clinton, who supported an even higher number of troops than Gates did. But the Afghan “surge” faced skepticism from Vice President Joe Biden and other White House staffers.

Gates wrote that he and Clinton “were the only outsiders in the session, considerably outnumbered by White House insiders. … Obama said at the outset to Hillary and me, ‘It’s time to lay our cards on the table, Bob, what do you think?’ I repeated a number of the main points I had made in my memo to him [urging three brigades].

“Hillary agreed with my overall proposal but urged the president to consider approving the fourth brigade combat team if the allies wouldn’t come up with the troops.”

In Duty, Gates cited his collaboration with Clinton as crucial to his success in getting Obama to agree to the Afghan troop escalation and the expanded goal of counterinsurgency. Referring to Clinton, Gates wrote, “we would develop a very strong partnership, in part because it turned out we agreed on almost every important issue.”

The hawkish Gates-Clinton tandem helped counter the more dovish team including Vice President Biden, several members of the National Security Council staff and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, who tried to steer President Obama away from this deeper involvement.

Gates wrote, “I was confident that Hillary and I would be able to work closely together. Indeed, before too long, commentators were observing that in an administration where all power and decision making were gravitating to the White House, Clinton and I represented the only independent ‘power center,’ not least because, for very different reasons, we were both seen as ‘un-fireable.’”

Political Expediency

Gates also reported on what he regarded as a stunning admission by Clinton, writing: “The exchange that followed was remarkable. In strongly supporting the surge in Afghanistan, Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary [in 2008]. She went on to say, ‘The Iraq surge worked.’

“The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.” (Obama’s aides disputed Gates’s suggestion that the President indicated that his opposition to the Iraq “surge” was political, noting that he had always opposed the Iraq War. The Clinton team did not challenge Gates’s account.)

But the exchange, as recounted by Gates, indicates that Clinton not only let her political needs dictate her position on an important national security issue, but that she accepts as true the superficial conventional wisdom about the “successful surge” in Iraq.

While that is indeed Official Washington’s beloved interpretation – in part because influential neocons believe the “surge” rehabilitated their standing after the WMD fiasco and the disastrous Iraq War – the reality is that the Iraq “surge” never achieved its stated goal of buying time to reconcile the country’s sectarian divides, which remain bloody to this day and helped create the conditions for the emergence of the Islamic State, which began as “Al Qaeda in Iraq.”

The truth that Hillary Clinton apparently doesn’t recognize is that the “surge” was only “successful” in that it delayed the ultimate American defeat until President Bush and his neocon cohorts had vacated the White House and the blame for the failure could be shifted, at least partly, to President Obama.

Other than sparing “war president” Bush the humiliation of having to admit defeat, the dispatching of 30,000 additional U.S. troops in early 2007 did little more than get nearly 1,000 additional Americans killed – almost one-quarter of the war’s total U.S. deaths – along with what certainly was a much higher number of Iraqis.

For example, WikiLeaks’s “Collateral Murder.” video depicted one 2007 scene during the “surge” in which U.S. firepower mowed down a group of Iraqi men, including two Reuters news staffers, walking down a street in Baghdad. The attack helicopters then killed a Good Samaritan, when he stopped his van to take survivors to a hospital, and severely wounded two children in the van.

The Unsuccessful Surge

A more rigorous analysis of what happened in Iraq in 2007-08 – apparently beyond Hillary Clinton’s abilities or inclination – would trace the decline in Iraqi sectarian violence mostly to strategies that predated the “surge” and were implemented in 2006 by Generals Casey and Abizaid.

Among their initiatives, Casey and Abizaid deployed a highly classified operation to eliminate key Al Qaeda leaders, most notably the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. Casey and Abizaid also exploited growing Sunni animosities toward Al Qaeda extremists by paying off Sunni militants to join the so-called “Awakening” in Anbar Province.

And, as the Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings reached horrendous levels in 2006, the U.S. military assisted in the de facto ethnic cleansing of mixed neighborhoods by helping Sunnis and Shiites move into separate enclaves, thus making the targeting of ethnic enemies more difficult. In other words, the flames of violence were likely to have abated whether Bush ordered the “surge” or not.

Radical Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr also helped by issuing a unilateral cease-fire, reportedly at the urging of his patrons in Iran who were interested in cooling down regional tensions and speeding up the U.S. withdrawal. By 2008, another factor in the declining violence was the growing awareness among Iraqis that the U.S. military’s occupation indeed was coming to an end. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted on – and got – a firm timetable for American withdrawal from Bush.

Even author Bob Woodward, who had published best-sellers that praised Bush’s early war judgments, concluded that the “surge” was only one factor and possibly not even a major one in the declining violence.

In his book, The War Within, Woodward wrote, “In Washington, conventional wisdom translated these events into a simple view: The surge had worked. But the full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge.”

Woodward, whose book drew heavily from Pentagon insiders, listed the Sunni rejection of Al Qaeda extremists in Anbar province and the surprise decision of al-Sadr to order a cease-fire as two important factors. A third factor, which Woodward argued may have been the most significant, was the use of new highly classified U.S. intelligence tactics that allowed for rapid targeting and killing of insurgent leaders.

However, in Washington, where the neocons remained very influential, the myth grew that Bush’s “surge” had brought the violence under control. Gen. Petraeus, who took command of Iraq after Bush yanked Casey and Abizaid, was elevated into hero status as the military genius who achieved “victory at last” in Iraq (as Newsweek declared).

Buying Fallacies

Even the inconvenient truths that the United States was unceremoniously ushered out of Iraq in 2011 and that Iraq’s Shiite-Sunni divide widened into a chasm that has since spread divisions into Syria and even into Europe did not dent the cherished conventional wisdom about the “successful surge.”

Yet, it is one thing for neocon pundits to promote such fallacies; it is another thing for the alleged Democratic front-runner for President in 2016 to believe this nonsense. And to say that she only opposed the “surge” out of a political calculation could border on disqualifying.

But the pattern fits with Clinton’s previous decisions. She belatedly broke with the Iraq War during Campaign 2008 only when she realized that her hawkish stance was damaging her political chances against Obama, who had opposed the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Yet, as Secretary of State, Clinton sought to purge officials seen as insufficiently hawkish. After Obama hesitantly approved the Afghan “surge” – and reportedly immediately regretted his decision – Clinton took aim at Eikenberry, a retired general who had served in Afghanistan before being named ambassador.

Pressing for his removal, “Hillary had come to the meeting loaded for bear,” Gates wrote. “She gave a number of specific examples of Eikenberry’s insubordination to herself and her deputy. … She said, ‘He’s a huge problem.’ …

“She went after the NSS [national security staff] and the White House staff, expressing anger at their direct dealings with Eikenberry and offering a number of examples of what she termed their arrogance, their efforts to control the civilian side of the war effort, their refusal to accommodate requests for meetings. …

“As she talked, she became more forceful. ‘I’ve had it,’ she said, ‘You want it [control of the civilian side of the war], I’ll turn it all over to you and wash my hands of it. I’ll not be held accountable for something I cannot manage because of White House and NSS interference.’”

However, when the protests failed to get Eikenberry and General Douglas Lute, a deputy national security adviser, fired, Gates concluded that they had the protection of President Obama and reflected his doubts about the Afghan War policy:

“It had become clear that Eikenberry and Lute, whatever their shortcomings, were under an umbrella of protection at the White House. With Hillary and me so adamant that the two should leave, that protection could come only from the president.”

The Libya Fiasco

In 2011, Secretary of State Clinton also was a hawk on military intervention in Libya to oust (and ultimately kill) Muammar Gaddafi. However, on Libya, Defense Secretary Gates sided with the doves, feeling that the U.S. military was already overextended in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and another intervention risked further alienating the Muslim world.

This time, Gates found himself lined up with Biden “urging caution,” while Clinton joined with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and NSC aides Ben Rhodes and Samantha Power in “urging aggressive U.S. action to prevent an anticipated massacre of the rebels as Qaddafi fought to remain in power,” Gates wrote. “In the final phase of the internal debate, Hillary threw her considerable clout behind Rice, Rhodes and Power.”

President Obama again ceded to Clinton’s advocacy for war and supported a Western bombing campaign that enabled the rebels, including Islamic extremists with ties to Al Qaeda, to seize control of Tripoli and hunt down Gaddafi, who was tortured and executed on Oct. 20, 2011.

Clinton expressed, delight when she received the news of Gaddafi’s murder. “We came. We saw. He died,” she chortled, paraphrasing Julius Caesar’s boast after a victory by Imperial Rome.

After Clinton’s “victory,” Libya became a major source for regional instability, including an assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel, an incident that Clinton has called the worst moment in her four years as Secretary of State. The Islamic State also gained a foothold inside Libya, chopping off the heads of Coptic Christians.

Gates retired from the Pentagon on July 1, 2011; Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Nov. 9, 2012, amid a sex-and-secrets scandal; and Clinton stepped down at the State Department on Feb. 1, 2013, after Obama’s reelection.

In 2013, with Clinton gone, Obama charted a more innovative foreign policy course, collaborating with Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve diplomatic breakthroughs on Syria and Iran, rather than seeking military solutions. In both cases, Obama had to face down hawkish sentiments in his own administration and in Congress, as well as Israeli and Saudi opposition.

But the neocon empire struck back in 2014, with Assistant Secretary Nuland orchestrating a “regime change” in Ukraine on Russia’s border and with the neocon-dominated opinion circles of Official Washington placing the blame for the Ukraine crisis on President Putin’s “aggression.”

Faced with this new “group think” – and still influenced by liberal interventionist advisers such as Susan Rice and Samantha Power – Obama joined the chorus of hate-talk against Putin, ratcheting up tensions with Russia and agreeing to escalate covert U.S. support for Syrian rebels seeking the long-held neocon goal of “regime change” in Syria.

However, Obama continued to collaborate behind the scenes with Russia to achieve an agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program — to the dismay of the neocons who wanted instead to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran on their way to seeking another “regime change.”

Bashing Iran

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a hawk on the Iranian nuclear issue. In 2009-2010, when Iran first indicated a willingness to compromise, she led the opposition to any negotiated settlement and pushed for punishing sanctions.

To clear the route for sanctions, Clinton helped sink agreements tentatively negotiated with Iran to ship most of its low-enriched uranium out of the country. In 2009, Iran was refining uranium only to the level of about 3-4 percent, as needed for energy production. Its negotiators offered to swap much of that for nuclear isotopes for medical research.

But the Obama administration and the West rebuffed the Iranian gesture because it would have left Iran with enough enriched uranium to theoretically refine much higher – up to 90 percent – for potential use in a single bomb, though Iran insisted it had no such intention and U.S. intelligence agencies agreed.

Then, in spring 2010, Iran accepted another version of the uranium swap proposed by the leaders of Brazil and Turkey, with the apparent backing of President Obama. But that arrangement came under fierce attack by Secretary Clinton and was derided by leading U.S. news outlets, including editorial writers at the New York Times who mocked Brazil and Turkey as being “played by Tehran.”

The ridicule of Brazil and Turkey – as bumbling understudies on the world stage – continued even after Brazil released Obama’s private letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva encouraging Brazil and Turkey to work out the deal. Despite the letter’s release, Obama didn’t publicly defend the swap and instead joined in scuttling the deal, another moment when Clinton and administration hardliners got their way.

That set the world on the course for tightened economic sanctions on Iran and heightened tensions that brought the region close to another war. As Israel threatened to attack, Iran expanded its nuclear capabilities by increasing enrichment to 20 percent to fill its research needs, moving closer to the level necessary for building a bomb.

Clinton’s Course

Ironically, the nuclear deal reached in late 2013 – and solidified in 2015 – essentially accepts Iran’s low-enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes, pretty much where matters stood in 2009-2010. But the Israel Lobby quickly set to work, again, trying to torpedo the new Iran agreements by getting Congress to approve new sanctions on Iran.

Clinton remained noncommittal for several weeks as momentum for the sanctions bill grew, but she finally declared her support for President Obama’s opposition to the new sanctions. In a Jan. 26, 2014 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, she wrote:

“Now that serious negotiations are finally under way, we should do everything we can to test whether they can advance a permanent solution. As President Obama said, we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed, while keeping all options on the table. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that imposing new unilateral sanctions now ‘would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.’ I share that view.”

One key question for a Clinton presidential candidacy has been whether she would build on the diplomatic foundation that Obama has laid regarding Iran and Russia— or dismantle it and return to a neocon foreign policy focused on “regime change” and catering to the views of Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In her campaign’s latest comments, Hillary Clinton has made clear that she has little interest in deviating further from the Israeli-neocon prescribed hostility toward Iran by letting her campaign accuse Sanders of softness on Tehran.

So, with her once-solid polls numbers softening, she has decided to appeal to hawkish Democrats and the muscular support of the Israel Lobby to help her fend off the Sanders surge.

Clinton is rolling the dice in the belief that most Democrats won’t think through the fallacious “group thinks” of Official Washington – or will at least be scared and confused enough to steer away from Sanders. That way, Clinton believes she can still win the nomination.

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Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34830-focus-hillary-clinton-seeks-neocon-shelter