The Race that Apparently Wasn’t Won: the US is Taking the Cold War Off Ice

After a fifty-year arm-race that was filled with battles and insurgencies filled via proxy there inevitably could only be one winner. That was the country who held the world’s reserve currency. As the US continued to flex its muscles throughout the world and especially in the oil rich middle east after the Soviet collapse, something started to change.

Russia recovered sooner than we anticipated. They wanted their seat at the table back. It now appears the US has only a table for one. 

“WE COULD DO WITH HAVING A USIA ON STEROIDS TO FIGHT THIS INFORMATION WAR [WITH RUSSIA] A LOT MORE AGGRESSIVELY THAN WE’RE DOING RIGHT NOW,”

Those were the words from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as he sat before the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week and had the courage that so many other have been lacking and finally tell the truth.

To finally place the blame on who’s responsible for our breach of security and confidence in elections. Someone finally nailed it and highlighted our lack of manpower and resources to fend off the evil Ruskies, led by Vladimir the Impaler (Putin).

The man, if you can call him such, who ghoulishly rubs his hands in a heated frenzy at the idea of our destruction, like the bloodthirsty- cannibal – commie he is, hell bent on the destabilization of the entire west.

That’s the script anyway, right? Weird how that works. It’s a strange time we live in. A time where the government decides what questions to ask and just who to ask them to. It’s not new of course but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

The audacity of Mr. Clapper is astonishing. First of all, for us, as Americans to collectively point the finger at another country for meddling and sabotage is laughable if it wasn’t so reprehensible and unequivocally ironic. Sadly, so much of our geopolitical makeup and stances are just this.

• Ban other countries, sovereign states from nuclear programs; while we enhance or polish our own.
• Publicly demand other nations to stop escalating proxy wars of aggression or support hostile nations or terror groups while we conduct and support our own of our choosing
• Rail at other nations (and this is my favorite) to stop their currency manipulation while we fund the largest theft of wealth the world has ever seen 100 x’s over via the petrodollar fiat monopoly scheme
• Condemn the justice or lack thereof of other nations why we operate black sites across the globe without oversight or even public record or knowledge

I could go on. And on. And on. But for the sake of clarity, structure and respect for a sensible word count – let’s get to the point. We demand another country to pay the piper for infiltrating our election while we run the largest covert and clandestine operations of anyone in the world on friends and foes alike.

Disrupt elections. Support coups. Assassinate or help aide the assassination of democratically elected leaders. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that Russia did do what they are accused of. Then I say… so what?

Business as usual. Par for the course. When in Rome… you get the idea. Russia wouldn’t have done anything we haven’t done or will continue to do to our enemies and allies alike on a year – year, day to day & minute by minute basis.

EVEN if this was true what would have happened?  They would never have changed a vote. All they would have done was expose the dirty laundry of the DNC and its quarterback, one Hillary Clinton. And that would have been the point. She was itching for a war with Russia. And has been pushing so for years at her time as Secretary of State. She made it perfectly clear to the US populace during the debates:

“I’M GOING TO CONTINUE TO PUSH FOR A NO-FLY ZONE AND SAFE HAVENS WITHIN SYRIA, NOT ONLY TO HELP PROTECT THE SYRIANS AND PREVENT THE CONSTANT OUTFLOW OF REFUGEES BUT TO, FRANKLY, GAIN SOME LEVERAGE ON BOTH THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT AND THE RUSSIANS.”

A no-fly zone initiated over another sovereign nation that you never declared war on? Where have we seen this before? Seems legitimate.

I have the direct opposite take from that of our intelligence community. One that is quite simply this, knowing what we know about Mrs Clinton if Russia didn’t intervene in some capacity to influence the election

I would assume they were either severely incompetent or awaiting a mutual destruction endgame. Why would they want a presidential candidate who is openly hostile to their standing in the world, in power of the most deadly armed forces the globe has ever seen? So, whether they hacked the emails is of insignificance to me.

Staying with this alternate reality (like the one our intelligence community and administration likes to play ie a reality without evidence) if there was any hacking shouldn’t the onus fall on the DNC? For being quite frankly, lazy, incompetent and just unappealable to the undecided voter? Seems plausible enough.

I mean it’s THEIR security that was hacked after all. If not the bumbling DNC, then who? You can’t blame another nation for doing what we (and every other nation mind you) do on a day to day basis and that is mine for data to use to said nation(s) advantage.

So then, I turn my attention to the real culprit here and that lies at the feet of our national security. Because no matter what; shouldn’t the role of national security involve ummm…. SECURITY? And if the security is breached shouldn’t we look at our security in place or lack thereof?

• As of last year, we had over 100k people working on our behalf in the US intelligence community.
• Just two years ago taxpayers funded and completed the NSA’s Data Center, the 1.5 billion dollar/1 million square foot facility in Utah whose sole purpose is spying and data collection.
• In 2003 we see the creation of Homeland Security whose budget often lies anywhere in the 40-80 billion dollar range annually.
• Let us not forget about the FBI and of course, where would we be without the CIA and its black budget. A virtual blank check from the Department of Defense for the Central Intelligence Agency and its brother and sister agencies working in the intelligence community. A budget which has been reported to be in the 50 billion dollar range

That seems like quite the defense. It would seem we have all we need to stop or thwart any mass scale, state-sponsored hacking program. Yet, James Clapper is asking for more? An INCREASE? That begs the question, could our national security really be incompetent? And this is where things go off the rails in opposite directions.

It would seem, a regional strategy to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan to defeat Russia was an end justify the means approach despite the blowback that occurred with Al Qaeda and subsequently 9-11. An unforeseen error I would surmise.

What about a strategy that has seen us embrace regime change in Iraq. A nation that was secular in an Islamic theocracy dominated middle east? To then promote nation building then abandon said nation while creating vacuums that foster groups like ISIS? Do those ends justify the means too? Was Iraq such a threat?

Or what about Libya? We participated in air support and a no-fly zone (ah there it is) in the overthrow and the removal of another secular leader in Gaddafi who grew Libya into the richest nation on the continent of Africa. To only see it fall into the hands of rebels and a climate of total deprivation and chaos.

How about secular Syria who has seen us wave the sword at for decades? Always right there to punish them by sanctions and or by proxy as the US backs the same terrorist ties that the US pinned 9-11 on. Does this seem like a sound strategy?

And then there is Iran.

If radicalization and theocracies don’t share our values then why are our intelligence community and the nation following a script that has us doing the exact opposite shaping our geopolitical landscape? That leads to only one logical answer because that is the objective. We want to destabilize the region.

We want to protect the petrodollar hegemony (as Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya have all left or tried to leave the US dollar as a reserve currency). We want to control the energy in the region via pipeline deals and the players who sit in an area where ⅔’s of the world’s oil supply is derived from. All of these are true. All of these are objectives.

If Russia infiltrated the election to merely expose the neocons and hawks of the left (Clinton) they do so at the behest of the entire free world. The world that would rather not end.

So the witch hunt that’s taking place regarding Russia via our intelligence community and our mainstream “media” is the US trying to reshape the narrative. A narrative where they are back trying to dupe the public into another hail mary from the cold war playbook. However, the cold war has ended and we have the internets. We won’t be fooled again.

Romney has a bazooka in his front pocket... but an empty wallet in has back pocket

Its been a rather hot item this week. People have been picking apart Mitt Romney's latest budget proposal and it isnt pretty. The lates offering (or borrowing might fit better) of a Romney proposed budget would actually result in equal or larger deficits then we already have under the current administration. I find that odd, considering Romney has said recently that it is: "immoral to pass burdens on the next generation like that" meaning deficits and in turn the national debt.

This is the same Mittens who also said how he "can’t wait to get my hands on Washington". I had to ask myself; get your hands on it for what? Clearly, by his own admission in his proposed budget, he would actually increase the deficit not shrink it, let alone not balance the budget. 

Romney's proposed budget got me thinking... is he seriously supposed to be the candidate with business experience? You can't argue with the wealth he built up. Hell, paying only 13% of your income in taxes can have that effect on a multimillionaire, no? You can't argue with his education background or the fact that he saved the Olympics, so why is it he has a problem balancing a budget?

Surely, he had to do so in his business dealings, haggle with budgets. We know he had to do so as governor, so why is trimming the existing deficit so hard to do, let alone balance our nations budget? The short answer? He wants to appeal to everyone. That why he is flip-flop Mitt. Period.

With that said, I want to focus on one particular part of Romney's budget and that is defense. Mittens recently said he would not only not cut defense, he would commission a bump from building "nine per year to fifteen" new ships for the Navy as well as new aircraft for the Air Force. Apparently, Mittens was feeling the love from the USS Yorktown and maybe a little patriotic and nostalgic in the World War sense, because he then dropped this bomb saying (as you can see below) he would "add at least 100,000 troops to the boots on the ground capability".

The problem with that is first of all, we are not entering a world war. So where could we use this 100k influx? Iraq? We just withdrew (but lest not mention the 15K people left behind to defend the city-like embassy) our combat troops. Afghanistan? It was said two years ago that Al-Qaeda is 75-100 strong in country. That was out of the mouth of then CIA director and now Department of Defense chairman Leon Panetta. I'm guessing Panetta has no advantage of actually underselling our enemy now does he.

 These are also the same terrorists who are "on our side" in the uprising that is taking place in Syria. Hmmm, we are going to be supplying and siding up with terrorists to defeat a nation that we do not like today, but will tomorrow in efforts to stop the terrorists that we now all of a sudden hate who once used to help us.... stop me if I am wrong, but have we not seen this movie before; in Afghanistan no less, circa 1979? Oh, never-mind, this movie is titled the "forever war" (thanks Clearwater) thus we never know how it ends and the perpetual boogy man? He just keeps a comin', he just gets a new face (and accent) every now and then, ala Herbert West.

So, why do we need 100,000 additional troops for? To invade Iran? To combat terrorism? Doesn't seem plausible. Seems like using a sledgehammer to swat flies. I would assume the troop levels we have now are more than enough to defend our nation but Mitt doesn't agree:

 “We all recognize that America needs to economize, but I don’t believe that we can economize on securing our nation and protecting our citizens and ensuring that the world remains safe and free for us and for our children,” 

 In fact, if you compare our spending on defense to the rest of the world as I pointed out in an earlier article this year; it's not even close in how much we outspend the rest of the top 17 nations who spend the most on defense combined.

National defense spending has increased 38% since 2001. This idea that we are going to spend more on defense and drastically increase its scope and sheer size, leads me to the answer to my original question. So why do we need 100,000 additional troops for? And the answer is quite obvious. Just look at Romney's quote when he says:

 "ensuring that the world remains safe and free for us"

There it is. And that is the shared mentality from most of Washington not just Romney. Kind of reminds me of the newest Navy slogan "A global force for good". The problem with that? The word "Good" is awfully ambiguous. How "good" are we, if you're an innocent bystander whose lost their life or a loved one(s) in Iraq or Afghanistan. Is that "good" worth a son who was put into a battle field without even a deceleration of war from Congress?

"Good", just like the words "safe" and "free" in Romney's quote are equally indistinct. I thought we already were pretty safe. Apparently, Romney does not agree and that is why he is touting a pretty substantial face lift for the DOD. The phrase "free for us"? How can the world be free for us? Chew on that one, I know i still am.

Which leads me to my final point. Romney is proposing not only an agenda that is completely out of whack compared to what the rest of the world is spending on defense, it is also an agenda that is mathematically infeasible in an environment where we should be embracing austerity measures to live within our means. Here is a recent quote from of all people, Valdimir Putin, on the past, current and future US foreign policy outlook:

"the United States, have developed a peculiar interpretation of security that is different from ours. The Americans have become obsessed with the idea of becoming absolutely invulnerable. This utopian concept is unfeasible both technologically and geopolitically, but it is the root of the problem. By definition, absolute invulnerability for one country would in theory require absolute vulnerability for all others" 

I know some of you out there are thinking "why do we care what the future President of Russia has to say about us" and I understand that sentiment; however, it's awfully sobering to have the Russians more in line with reality than a hopeful for the Presidency of the United States. To be fair, Romney is not alone on the campaign trail in this insanity, and it clear the Oval office shares this paranoia as well.

With that, I leave you with a quote, that in today's Republican Party would be considered a Liberal stance on foreign policy. From the same man who shed the initial light on the Congressional Military Industrial Complex (how apropos), former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower:

  

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security"