These are the words of US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. The world should be, and largely is, baffled by the stupidity and arrogance of such statements.
ISIS beheads, tortures, and kidnaps people. It has shocked the world with well publicized, horrendous acts of brutality — such as burning people alive. How exactly can Russia and China to be equated to such forces?
Russia has not invaded any country. Neither has China. Russia and China have not kidnapped anyone. They are not abducting and torturing people. Even if the most extreme allegations from anti-China and anti-Russia fanatics are to be believed, in no way can these two major countries be compared with ISIS.
Restraint in the Face of US Provocations
Both Russia and China have shown a great deal of restraint in recent years. For four years, the United States funded and supported a campaign of violent terrorism against Russia’s allies in the Syrian government. Only after four years of relentless attacks, and the emergence of ISIS, did Russia finally dispatch its forces to defend the legitimate, internationally recognized Syrian government.
Meanwhile, a hostile anti-Russian regime has been forcibly installed in Ukraine. Ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine are facing an onslaught of violence from the US-backed, -trained and -armed Kiev regime, which was installed in a violent coup. Russia has not sent its military into Ukraine, despite endless calls for war and hostility from the new regime in Kiev. Russia has shown amazing restraint in response to open threats from an illegitimately installed regime, led by Hitler-admiring fanatics who have set up shop on its borders.
And what has China done? A pro-US regime has controlled China’s island of Taiwan since 1949. China has not sent its soldiers to reconquer this stolen territory, despite the fact that the virulently anticommunist Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party and the CIA use Taiwan as a base for subversion against the People’s Republic on the mainland.
The Central Intelligence Agency has funded and promoted unpopular and violent religious extremists in China. With US support, the Tibetan separatist movement, the takfiri militants among the Uighurs, and the Falun Gong have all been actively working to destabilize the country. Falun Gong has kidnapped children and promoted anti-government propaganda. The takfiri sects among the Uighurs, with growing links to ISIS, have launched a campaign of mass stabbings and bombings. Tibetan separatists have at various times launched campaigns of random assaults and street attacks on people perceived to be ethnically Han.
Meanwhile, US airplanes continue to provoke China by intentionally violating its airspace. China is being actively surrounded by US military bases, as the US escalates its presence in the Philippines, south Korea, Azerbaijan, and many other countries in the much heralded “Asian Pivot.” The United States has recently established the Trans Pacific Partnership as a direct economic attack on China.
Despite so many provocations, China has not attacked the United States, and has worked very hard to keep political and economic relations between the two countries on good terms.
Questions about ISIS and the Pentagon
In no rational way can the terrorism of ISIS be equated with the geopolitical maneuvers and economic re-alignment led by the governments of China and Russia. What’s behind Ashton Carter’s crazed statement?
The reality is that ISIS is very convenient for his friends in the Pentagon and on Wall Street. Who is ISIS targeting with its terrorism? ISIS has attacked the Syrian Arab Republic, the Shia community in Iraq, and the revolutionary forces of Yemen. Recently, ISIS has begun to clash with Russian forces.
All the forces that ISIS is targeting with its terrorism are forces that the United States is also targeting with sanctions, military attacks, and other violations of sovereignty. ISIS presents itself as being a group of Islamic radicals, but it has actually declared, “God has commanded us never to attack Israel.”
ISIS did not arise from nowhere, but originated among the US-backed forces fighting to depose the Syrian government. ISIS is a direct result, not only of US destruction of Iraq, but of US, Saudi, Jordanian and Turkish cultivation of extremism and terrorism intended to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic.
Ashton Carter speaks as a representative of the rich and powerful forces that control the United States. The Wall Street monopolists are far more threatened by the stability and economic prosperity emerging in the rising anti-imperialist bloc of countries than by the terrorism of ISIS.
Ashton Carter is not insane. His words reflect rational honesty. The plan of the billionaire financial elite is for global chaos to ensure that Wall Street, London, and Tel Aviv can remain unrivaled as centers of economic power. Russia and China, not the bloodthirsty, US-spawned terrorists in ISIS, present a real threat to these plans.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
