Obama's Expanding War On Terra

By Pete Stanislaw, Get Off This!


A new front is revealed in our Nobel Peace Laureate President's war for the last few resources left on Terra. That front is Yemen, with cruise missile attacks ordered by the commander-in-chief against alleged "al-Qaeda" targets for the purpose - we are repeatedly told - of fighting the threat of terrorism. The last cowardly lobbing of incredibly powerful ordnance across the Yemeni border killed a large group of high school-age boys. This brings the total of largely Muslim nations that our government's military is either occupying or bombing the shit out of from a safe distance to five - Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Yemen, the last two added since the new administration took office on a surge of pro-peace votes.


Since Yemen has been acknowledged to be a "covert" front in the alleged war on terror (until now), there may be others our government doesn't think we should know about. At this point, our docility in the face of utter lies and proclaimed absurdities is comic in the extreme. Whoever still believes that these violent interventions have anything at all to do with fighting terrorism is suffering from willful blindness.


In the last eight years, our government's military has done more to expand the cause(s) of terrorism on the planet than any nation accused (by our government) of "harboring" or "sponsoring" terrorists. The story for the mediated masses has always been that we have to "get in there and smoke 'em out", which makes for entertaining movies but lousy international relations, especially since it only takes 3 minutes of rational thought to realize that terrorism and terrorists are red herrings. How in hell does killing civilians in poor Muslim nations fight against angry extremists? Wouldn't such actions produce more angry extremists? Yes they would and indeed they do!


The object has never changed. Control over the resources which are absolutely necessary to sustain our wasteful and largely ignorant lifestyles remains the rationale for mass murder of those who happen to occupy the earth above said resources. The continued war and occupation in Afghanistan by the US forces as well as the puppet government we have entrenched there has much more to do with the completion and the securing of two oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea across Afghanistan from existing Turkmenistan fields. They would continue through Pakistan to shipping ports in the south. Unfortunately, they will have to pass through areas controlled by the theocratic Taliban, who are actively maneuvering for position in whatever government should result in the aftermath of the violence. These fighters for their perceived birthright are known in the US mass media as "insurgents". One would do well to realize that they were here before our government's military was. This is their nation, when imperial powers aren't occupying it. But I digress.


My point is this: As Alexander Cockburn said in Counterpunch two months ago, President Obama's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize should come as acknowledgement that absurdity is part and parcel of the human condition. That he can order cruise missiles to be launched over sovereign borders the world over and still be regarded by the Nobel Committee as deserving of a Peace Prize is patently absurd.


Remember, Henry Kissinger has one too...