When a Walmart worker in Iowa hears the term “Arab Spring”, the only conceptualization he or she understands comes from Fox News, or the next-door neighbor’s overheard cookout rant. “Murika!” is usually chanted above the crackling of 4th of July firecrackers, and the smell of Oscar Meyer franks sizzling on the BBQ back home. This nationalistic blood chant usually happens just before the second six-pack, and assertions of warfighter superiority over “rag heads” and “camel jockeys” in some desert. (yes, Americans are just that bigoted still) There may even be a few pistol shots into the air (or at a watermelon) if the American belongs to the NRA. We love guns in America, they’re part of our heritage and all, and they make great cookout conversation go forward. But right here let me assert; “I love you guys”, so my countrymen are assured “I been there” with em. Yeah, “I can kill a buck and run a trout line too”, as the Hank Williams Jr. tune goes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, my friends, is swallowing a load of BS. So….
Now before any reader runs of “half cocked”, please understand that I include the above comic-relief, so that we can all get down to business. I know my countrymen, so perhaps we can just “cut the crap” any dissenters may have.
Americans are not stupid, even my dumbest (it is how we speak plainly down yonder) redneck hunting buddies down south, some of whom never made it past grade school, can grasp any concept. But first, they need the facts, and this is what is lacking in America.
Take my “Arab Spring” example as a “for instance”. While Americans widely believe the mainstream press’ and governmental narrative that the current U.S. role anywhere in the world, the truth of Arab Spring and other crises is to the contrary. If you ask a Georgia high school teacher when the Syria crisis started, they will tell you that Arab Spring in 2011 was the beginning of a “democratization” of the Arab world. But Syria’s refugees began being exiled the instant Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey, back in 2000. Don’t take my word for this, read what the nephew of slain President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reveals in this piece on EcoWatch earlier this year. Let me quote from Kennedy’s expose:
“Qatar shares with Iran, the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo, until recently, prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad and ensured that Qatar’s gas could only reach European markets if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs.”
I know, my South Georgia students in my geography class from back in 2000 are the only Americans reading this who even know where Qatar is. You see I focused on maps and especially Africa and the Middle East, since American college students I surveyed in 1997 for a thesis thought the United States was 2.5 times larger than Africa. Qatar, “over yonder where them thar’ Al Kaaadah terrorist come from.” Sorry, but don’t fight me here, you know I am right. Don’t worry, Germans and French people are no better off, they think all Americans drive 4×4’s and holler “yeeeehaaaah” at every turn. (Okay, maybe Europe is enlightened). My point here is, our schools don’t teach us anything about the world, and then later on our news media tells us bold faced lies about the world. So unless you are a Baptist preacher with a direct uplink to Gawd Awlmighty! You are bound to have some trouble figuring out how come America is in such deep _____ stuff. Some of you laughed, but I am not funning you.
The map Mr. Kennedy supplies in his EcoWatch piece tells the geographic story of the Syria situation. As you can see in the image below, the Iran pipeline through Iraq and then Syria, was made impossible by sanctions on Iran, the Iraq war, and later Arab Spring crisis. Syria was and is the key component, for America’s closest allies in the Middle East to replace Russian natural gas (Ukraine) with Qutar supplies.
So, the nephew of the last US president of the people, JFK, spells it all out for us all. Russia, as we all know, has been attacked with everything western leaders and media have to throw at it. Mr. Putin rightly viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. The “mission”, is to reprive Russia of geo-strategic gain, economic leverage, and to even starve the Russian people into another revolution. Remember (or know for the first time) it was in 2009, Syria’s President Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria. He was even transparent about why. The move was made to “protect the interest of Russia, Syria’s ally.”
So much for American transparency and truth, the man Obama is trying to kill in Damascus has more honesty in his little finger than the whole White House staff does.
In 2009 the CIA started funding the opposition groups we see being protected by the Obama administration now. In a bit of bitter irony, my home folk who hollered from the pine thicket about killing them Al Qaeda killers…. some of them went to Afghanistan, and came back shot to pieces by the same group of jihadists Obama backs against Assad! Now to my point.
Here’s the thing. I know all of you. Maybe this makes me special, but I think not. We hunted together, we went to the country club swimming party together. I sat in your boar room, and ate the same friend chicken as you. We toasted one another at the bar, then woke up face down at the beach together. I installed your cable, then later waited your table. Hell, I probably made the steel that your BBQ is made out of, or the tire cord or brake pads for that old car you own. We are Americans, and if we cut the BS we know “what is what”. I am a Dallas Cowboys fan, and I love a Coney Island hot dog. Shrimp gumbo, or Forest Gump and the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company from the Tom Hanks movie, we cannot BS one another really.
You don’t care who has to pay, as long as your way of life goes on. It is okay, admit it, the world already knows this. Cheap gas and the rolled back price at Walmart, nobody in Germany blames us for being spoiled and self centered, it is ever worse here. The Russians don’t even blame us, I know, I talk to them every day. But the problem America has right now, it is not about having too much. The problem with Americans is, most cannot visualize or imagine how much more they could have if Washington were not so crooked. If you read this far, I know I have you. 90% of Americans on the internet today stopped reading after the funny part up top. But for those of you smart enough to have read this far, how much more could your family have if the Clintons, the Bushs, and Obama had not spent $19 trillion dollars lining pockets and fighting wars? More importantly, what is the real cost of Walmart, or Monsanto, or Washington’s war on Putin? Let me put it this way, for the simple folk in South Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and so-forth. $19 trillion dollars is enough to give every household in America $153,255 dollars in cash. That’s $19 trillion, divided by 124 million households.
Oh, and had you known there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, if you’d known the Taliban would take back over once we left Afghanistan, there would be no overflowing VA hospitals, no relatives with post traumatic stress, and no expanded terror like we see with ISIL. There are hundreds and thousands of other probabilities I am not mentioning here. But knowing that Obama might be telling the Federal Reserve to just “print” some more bribe money for the CIA to use in Europe is only a piece of America’s foreign policy idiocy. Another big part is, YOU are paying for it. That’s right. That mysterious “debt” everybody talks about, Americans pay for it 20 times over. You are being milked dry, and fed the narcotic of “Murika!” on Super Bowl Sunday. Now I can hear the die hard redneck policy maker uttering; “Them sons of bit____es.” And you should be.
How’s that for transparency from a fellow American? Maybe you’d better elect another Kennedy, and quick.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
