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Obama in Iraq: New Strategy, Old Mistakes |
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Friday, 12 June 2015 08:29 |
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Bennis writes: "Almost nine months after President Obama admitted that 'we don't have a strategy yet'; to challenge the Islamic State - and just days after he said he still has 'no complete Iraq strategy' - the non-strategy suddenly has a name: escalation."
Following ISIS's taking of Ramadi in Iraq, the White House will mobilize about 500 more military trainers to bolster its strategy to defeat ISIS and train Iraqi troops. (photo: Getty)
Obama in Iraq: New Strategy, Old Mistakes
By Phyllis Bennis, CounterPunch
12 June 15
 lmost nine months after President Obama admitted that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to challenge the Islamic State — and just days after he said he still has “no complete Iraq strategy” — the non-strategy suddenly has a name: escalation.
According to reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is poised to send 400 to 500 additional troops to Iraq immediately, and to build a new U.S. military base in restive Anbar province to house them — and potentially many more.
These troops would not be limited to the officially narrow training mission of the 3,100 U.S. troops already on the ground in Iraq. They would still be considered trainers and advisers, but their mission, according to the Times, would be “to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi and repel the Islamic State.”
The escalation isn’t exactly the massive deployment of ground troops called for by some hawks in Congress and by neo-conservative commentators, who continue to blame the rise of the Islamic State on Obama’s earlier withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq — rather than on George W. Bush’s initial invasion and occupation of the country, which actually led to the creation of the group in 2004.
But the Journal still recognized that “the new plan is a marked if modest expansion of the U.S. military role in Iraq. It would expose American forces to greater risk of being drawn into direct combat with Islamic State forces that already control territory around likely sites for a planned U.S. training base.”
A Series of Setbacks
The official reason is linked to the Islamic State’s recent seizure of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a key city only 70 or so miles from Baghdad. (As Business Insider so nicely put it, Ramadi is closer to Baghdad than New York is to East Hampton.)
Obama and other top U.S. officials initially attempted to downplay the significance of Ramadi, describing the inability of the Iraqi military to defend it as simply a “tactical retreat.” But there’s no question that the loss of the city, followed quickly by the Islamic State’s seizure of the strategic Syrian city and ancient ruins of Palmyra, reflected a serious consolidation of the group’s military power.
Since then it’s been a rough few weeks for Obama’s war on ISIS.
On June 2, news broke that the Iraq military had managed to lose 2,300 armored Humvees, at least 40 M1A1 tanks, 74,000 machine guns, and 52 or more howitzers, mainly to the Islamic State. Weapons were abandoned by fleeing troops, captured on the battlefield, and in some cases likely sold to ISIS and other militias. In a Reuters article caustically titled “Dude, Where’s My Humvee?” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi admitted blithely, “we lost a lot of weapons.”
The Reuters writers were equally direct: “The United States is effectively supplying the Islamic State with tools of war the militant group cannot otherwise hope to acquire from its patrons.”
Despite the bluster of hawks who crave a deeper war in Iraq and Syria, it isn’t true that Obama has no strategy against the Islamic State. There is a strategy — but it’s wrong, and it’s losing.
The Obama administration has so far been unable or unwilling to act on its own oft-repeated understanding that “there is no military solution” to the so-called ISIS crisis. Instead, the U.S. strategy has relied almost solely on military action, with little or no investment in the funds, personnel, or political capital to wage the kind of powerful diplomacy that’s so desperately needed. If anything, the ongoing air war — and the flooding of the region with arms — is making a diplomatic resolution less likely.
Same Old Mistakes
As the war escalates, Congress is largely sitting on the sidelines.
A new measure sponsored by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy calls for a prohibition on ground troops being sent to Iraq or Syria. But while symbolically important, it would have a very limited impact on the ground, particularly since — on paper at least — Obama has already staked out a similar position. Murphy has made clear that his real goal is to limit potential troop escalations by a post-2016 Republican president.
For now, the latest escalation — like those before it — is taking place without any congressional authorization, indeed without even any discussion or debate.
And it could get a lot worse before anything gets any better.
Martin Dempsey, the Pentagon’s top general, is retiring soon. He will be replaced by Marine General Joseph Dunford, who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan and is credited with persuading Obama to slow down the U.S. withdrawal from the country. His appointment as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may signal a broader new commitment to escalating Obama’s global war on terror.
That would mean repeating many of the same mistakes we’ve already made.
In May, the Pentagon said it was sending 2,000 anti-tank rockets to the Iraqi military to use against ISIS car bombs. In response to Iraq’s recent loss of U.S. tanks and Humvees, the Pentagon announced its intention to send 1,000 more anti-tank weapons to the Iraqi military — to use against the same tanks it had sent previously, now in ISIS hands.
Bookmakers haven’t yet announced their predictions for how long it will be before those rockets end up in the Islamic State’s hands as well. But at the current rate of escalation, they won’t be the last things to blow up.
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Obama Lobbied Corporate Leaders to 'Say Positive Things' About TPP Trade Deal |
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Thursday, 11 June 2015 13:01 |
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Excerpt: "The White House invited senior members of the Sony Corporation to make statements in favor of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, according to an internal Sony email published by Wikileaks."
President Obama visited Nike's Beaverton, Oregon, headquarters in May to drum up support for his Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. (photo: Reuters)
Obama Lobbied Corporate Leaders to 'Say Positive Things' About TPP Trade Deal
By Paul Gottinger and Ken Klippenstein, Reader Supported News
11 June 15
 he White House invited senior members of the Sony Corporation to make statements in favor of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, according to an internal Sony email published by Wikileaks. The email, sent by Sony’s executive vice president Keith Weaver to its CEO and other executives, mentions a “meeting with Froman [Obama’s trade representative, Michael Froman] and your peers at the White House last year.” The email then alludes to President Obama’s apparent efforts to lobby the business sector to make statements in support of the TPP: “the President/Froman want key industries saying positive things about the [TPP’s] benefits.”
The email seems to suggest that Obama asked the heads of powerful corporations, like Sony, to help him sell the TPP to the American public. In May, Obama made a highly televised speech from the headquarters of Nike, where he pitched the supposed benefits of the TPP to Americans. At the same event, Nike announced it would create 10,000 jobs in the US if the TPP passed.
Many of the leaked Sony emails demonstrate that leaders of Sony were in communication or on friendly terms with a number of influential Democratic senators, Congressional representatives, US ambassadors and even President Obama.
Another email published by Wikileaks shows journalist Jonathan Alter, who has written two books about Obama, telling the CEO of Sony about the president’s fondness for him: “At White House Xmas party, gene Sperling [Obama’s assistant for Economic Policy] said the president really likes you.And He was telling me how much he dreaded calling you on SOPA.” SOPA, short for “Stop Online Piracy Act,” was a controversial bill that would have curtailed Internet freedoms. Following widespread protest, SOPA failed to pass.
Like SOPA, the TPP is no stranger to widespread opposition, with many of the world’s most respected organizations, from the AARP to Amnesty International, voicing disapproval. The AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), along with Doctors Without Borders, criticized the TPP’s “emphasis on drug industry priorities at the expense of consumer and patient needs.” Doctors Without Borders went a step further, with the organization’s US Access Campaign manager, Judit Ruis Sanjuan, stating, “Make no mistake, in terms of health, the TPP remains the most damaging trade agreement we’ve ever seen.” Ms. Sanjuan also warned that the trade deal will disproportionately impact the poor in the countries negotiating the TPP. “This is a massive, far-reaching trade deal that is putting lives at stake,” she said.
Amnesty International shared these concerns about the TPP’s impact on public health, stating, “No one has the right to trade away our hard-fought legal protections for free speech and the right to health, and much less to do it behind closed doors.”
The TPP’s effect on the environment is also a cause for concern, drawing criticism from environmental groups like the Sierra Club and 350.org. As the Sierra Club warned, “the TPP could lead to increased stress on natural resources and species including trees, fish, and wildlife.” Sierra Club also noted, “The TPP may allow for significantly increased exports of liquefied natural gas without the careful study or adequate protections necessary to safeguard the American public. This would mean an increase of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.”
350.org had even harsher words: “This bill is a climate disaster, and amounts to nothing more than a taxpayer-funded handout to corporations. We’ve seen leaked text showing that TPP would allow fossil fuel companies like Exxon to sue any member country that dares to act on climate, and hold up any law or regulation that hurts their bottom line.”
The ACLU also condemned the TPP on freedom of speech and privacy grounds, stating, “We are concerned that an overly broad policy to crackdown on copyright infringement would allow for the takedown of non-infringing content as well, in violation of the First Amendment, which was the same concern presented by SOPA and PIPA. We also have strong concerns over any provision that would create legal incentives for ISPs to step up surveillance of Internet communications in search of suspected copyright infringement, which would potentially endanger the privacy of users.”
A vote on giving President Obama “fast track” authority, whereby he can bypass Congress in negotiating the terms of the TPP, is set for tomorrow in the House. The authority has already passed in the Senate.
After much lobbying from the White House, the bill seems poised to pass in the House. Nineteen Democrats have said they are leaning toward voting for “fast-track,” while only 30 Republicans have stated they will vote against it.
Paul Gottinger is a staff journalist at RSN whose work focuses on the Middle East and the arms industry. He can be reached on Twitter @paulgottinger or via email.
Ken Klippenstein is a staff journalist at Reader Supported News. He can be reached on Twitter @kenklippenstein or email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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A Letter to Obama: You Still Have Time to Be a Climate Champion - But Not Much |
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Thursday, 11 June 2015 12:54 |
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McKibben writes: "I feel a little awkward writing a letter to you, perhaps because I helped organize the largest demonstrations outside your house during your residence there: It's odd to write someone when the closest you've ever come to them is being chained to the fence outside their home protesting the Keystone pipeline."
President Obama. (photo: Pete Souza/White House)
A Letter to Obama: You Still Have Time to Be a Climate Champion - But Not Much
By Bill McKibben, Grist
11 June 15
 feel a little awkward writing a letter to you, perhaps because I helped organize the largest demonstrations outside your house during your residence there: It’s odd to write someone when the closest you’ve ever come to them is being chained to the fence outside their home protesting the Keystone pipeline.
But I’ve had a very long time to think about global warming — since the late 1980s, when I published the first book for a general audience on the topic of what we then called the greenhouse effect. And so I thought I might offer a few thoughts. It’s only in the last three or four years that climate’s political dimensions have come into clearest focus for me, beginning in some ways with those Keystone demonstrations. As I’ve learned more about how Washington works, I’ve understood better some of the paths you took and didn’t. With 18 months left in your administration, the summing-up mood is appropriate — but not entirely, since time remains for a series of fateful decisions that will shape your legacy, but more importantly the planet’s future atmospheric chemistry.
Credit where it’s due
There are moments, I think, when some in your administration have thought the climate movement paid too little heed to the things you have accomplished. And so one begins there, with credit that is in fact due:
- Significant green funding in the Recovery Act. Compared to the effort in places like, say, Germany, the sums may not have been enormous, but they played their part in the remarkable fall in the price of renewable energy.
- Taking advantage of the auto bailouts to dramatically improve the mileage our cars get. It’s hard to remember for how many administrations — Democratic and Republican — Detroit simply refused to bend. You had them in a place where they couldn’t refuse, and you followed through — and this summer that effort is continuing with new rules for trucks and airplanes.
- The EPA coal regulations that have been the high point of your administration’s second-term efforts. They are a coup de grace to the expansion plans of a coal industry already hit hard by years of enviro campaigning; just as in China, and the rest of the developed world, the U.S. has seen “peak coal” during your term.
In fact, that list beats the combined efforts of all the presidents that came before you in the global warming era. And that you achieved these things in the face of GOP congressional intransigence that made the obvious policy change (a price on carbon) impossible means that no one can accuse you of neglecting the issue. It’s true that our carbon emissions have risen the last two years, but perhaps you’ve put us on a course to meet the moderate reduction targets you and the Chinese agreed on.
But it’s not nearly enough
The problem, of course, is that 20 years ago those changes would have gotten us ahead of the physics. Now, given the hole we’re in and the pace that the world is warming, we’ve lost ground during your tenure despite those efforts. The G7 communique talking about getting the world off fossil fuel by century’s end is way too close to business as usual.
Consider: It was during your time in office that the world came to truly understand climate as an issue of justice above all, as refugees began to flee the damage of drought and flood on every continent. In your years, the Arctic melted in earnest, the ocean rapidly acidified, and America suffered through its hottest year ever. That was 2012, when you were campaigning for re-election, and yet you virtually never mentioned global warming till Hurricane Sandy in the closing days made it impossible not to. Instead you gave a talk at Cushing, in Oklahoma, that I’ve never forgotten, the one where you said:
Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. That’s important to know. Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.
And that’s a huge problem. Because cutting demand for dirty energy at the same time that you increase its supply is called running in place. America on your watch has passed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the biggest oil and gas producer on Earth. That may have been a short-term boost to the economy, but it’s a long-term horror for the atmosphere. If we send those hydrocarbons overseas to burn (coal exports have jumped in your tenure, and you’ve been granting permits left and right for new natural gas shipment facilities), then the secondhand smoke causes just as much global warming as if we’d burned them here; if we substitute them for imported energy, that frees up that much more oil and gas abroad.
In the course of your term, scientists have become unambiguously clear: to deal with climate change, we need to leave 80 percent of global carbon deposits — coal mines, oil fields, and shale gas sites — underground. Instead, you and your agencies have promoted every kind of mining and drilling here; you’ve even set up a special bureau at the State Department to push fracking overseas.
Much of this you could not realistically have prevented. Little of the Bakken Shale in North Dakota lay under federal land, for instance; clearly Congress was not about to help you regulate its development.
Here’s the checklist for your final 18 months
But earlier this year a team of scientists at Nature published a crucial paper explaining exactly which resources had to stay underground to prevent the globe from warming past the 2 degree Celsius limit you set in Copenhagen. Their work reads like a to-do list for the last 18 months of your administration.
- The carbon in Canada’s tar sands has to stay underground. You don’t control those deposits, of course, but Transcanada needs your permission to build the Keystone pipeline to bring it south to the Gulf. For four years now, we’ve done everything we can think of to give you the room to block it: the largest civil disobedience actions in decades, the most public comments on any infrastructure project, the most emails in a day to the Senate. It’s time, finally, to assert control over the bankrupt State Department process and block the damned thing for good. If you do, you won’t just be recognizing the legitimate demands of native Americans and Nebraska ranchers — you’ll also be the first world leader to stop a major project because of its effect on the climate.
- The carbon beneath the Arctic has to stay beneath the Arctic. Think of the irony here. You came into office just as Arctic sea ice was hitting record lows. The world’s giant oil companies, instead of seeing that as a signal to switch to investing in solar and wind, lined up for permission to go drill in the newly thawed waters. And you gave Shell the go-ahead to plumb the Chukchi Sea, even though, as the Nature team said, no 2-degree scenario is consistent with drilling that new area. You must find a way to block this plan; we fear, yes, an oil spill into the pristine Arctic waters, but far more we dread the guaranteed spill of carbon into the overloaded atmosphere.
- Just this spring your Interior Department yet again offered vast new leases to coal companies in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. The total carbon in those newly opened deposits is three times higher than the carbon savings that will come from the hard-fought EPA regulations. The coal sale is not quite final yet, and it must not go through.
- Somewhat remarkably, you seem inclined to approve new offshore drilling off much of coastal America, including the Atlantic seaboard. If the lessons of Deepwater Horizon (and last month’s Santa Barbara spill) don’t move you, realize that these too are deposits that must remain underground to meet the climate targets you yourself set.
None of this is special pleading — it’s just math. Liberate that carbon and the temperature climbs. Given what we know now about climate change, you have every right to draw the line in these places — and more, you have all the power. None of these are places where Congress can force your hand; at least for the course of your presidency, you can keep that carbon stored safely away. And in so doing you’ll help set the kind of precedent that might move the rest of the world. Already other power players are starting to recognize the future: from the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund to France’s largest insurer to Oxford to Georgetown to, yes, the University of Hawaii, responsible institutions are lining up to divest from fossil fuels. If you begin to strand some carbon beneath the earth, the wisdom of investing instead in renewable energy will become even clearer.
And it’s with that renewable energy that you can make your final mark on this debate. Solar power is a very different animal from when you came to office: a panel costs 75 percent less today. It’s gone from being a necessary change to a completely possible change, and though you’ve waited too long to be the politician who really exploits that fact, you can make sure that everyone in America at least knows about the new economics. (That’s why we were so hopeful that you’d put solar panels on the White House roof, so sorry it took you two years longer than promised, and so perplexed that you made so little out of it when it finally happened.)
People in D.C. stay snakebit by things too long: Solyndra is long-forgotten outside the Beltway, and every poll shows Americans of all political stripes love solar panels. Heck, there’s a left-right Green Tea coalition pushing for progress in the Southeast. We need you pounding the bully panel, not on the stump but on the roof, day after day — reminding everyone that far more people work in solar than in mining coal.
Just maybe, you also could take that new vision and use it to make the climate talks in Paris more than they’ll otherwise be. At the moment they look set to ratify a global temperature increase of 3 or 4 degrees C — that is, to lock us into a kind of slow-motion guaranteed catastrophe. They lack a vision beyond the mediocre (and unenforceable) targets that countries are now producing. But given the changed economics of sun and wind, the talks could be the moment when the world commits to electrifying every house on Earth with a solar panel on the roof. That’s now not only possible, it’s a practical and a moral imperative.
The sad part of this battle, for all of us, is that physics doesn’t really care about political realities — about how tough Congress has been, or for that matter how burned out and tired some of the rest us can get. Physics just cares about carbon. Reality reality trumps political reality. You alone know whether you’ve given this greatest of human crises everything you’ve got, but the rest of us hope there’s something left in your arsenal for these last 18 months.
Sincerely,
Bill McKibben
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FOCUS: Obama's Stupid Propaganda Stuff |
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Thursday, 11 June 2015 11:35 |
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Parry writes: "President Barack Obama must know better regarding the crisis in Ukraine, but he insists on reciting the propaganda lines drafted by his neoconservative and 'liberal interventionist' advisers blaming everything on Russian President Vladimir Putin."
President Obama. (photo: Reuters)
Obama's Stupid Propaganda Stuff
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
11 June 15
Just last month, President Obama dispatched Secretary of State Kerry to secure Russian President Putin’s help in addressing the Syrian crisis and other world hotspots – but despite Putin’s agreement, Obama has reversed himself and is back hurling insults at the Russians, a troubling development, writes Robert Parry.
 resident Barack Obama must know better regarding the crisis in Ukraine, but he insists on reciting the propaganda lines drafted by his neoconservative and “liberal interventionist” advisers blaming everything on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Perhaps, Obama just doesn’t have the nerve to go against Official Washington’s “conventional wisdom” no matter how misguided it is. The last time that Obama went against the grain in a decisive way was when he objected to the Iraq War in 2002, but then, of course, he was just a state senator in Illinois.
Watching his behavior in the White House over the past six-plus year, I’ve come to suspect that – if he had been a national politician amid the Iraq War fever – he would have gotten in line just like ambitious Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden did. Even as President, a position that gives him enormous power to push back against Official Washington’s “group think,” he won’t.
Instead Obama spouts stupid propaganda stuff that is ultimately damaging to the American Republic. At a moment when Obama needs Putin’s help in addressing dangerous crises in the Middle East – particularly to deal with advances by Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda’s hyper-violent spinoff, the Islamic State – Obama insists on joining in more misrepresentations about the Ukraine crisis.
At the end of the G-7 summit in Bavaria, Germany, Obama proudly announced that he had gotten the other six industrial powers to continue sanctions on Russia, based on the dubious argument that it is Russia, not the U.S.-backed regime in Ukraine, that requires more pressure to implement last February’s Minsk-2 agreement.
The Minsk-2 deal largely reflected Putin’s ideas regarding negotiations with ethnic Russian rebels in the east and constitutional changes granting the region substantial autonomy. However, after Minsk-2 was signed, hardliners in the Ukrainian government immediately sought to sabotage the political side by inserting a poison pill that required the rebels to essentially surrender before any negotiations could begin.
Since then, the Kiev regime has bulked itself up militarily, including training from 300 U.S. military advisers. In May, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko talked publicly about resuming the war and retaking rebel-held territory in the east, a position that even caused U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to suggest that Poroshenko should “think twice” about such an action.
Kerry made that remark during meetings with Putin and senior Russian officials in Sochi, Russia, in what then appeared to be a realistic shift in Obama’s foreign policy, recognizing the grave dangers from a possible Al-Qaeda victory in Syria and the need for Russian help in averting that disaster. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Strategic Shift.”]
However, in the last few weeks, the flip-flopping Obama seems to have flopped back into the hard-liners’ camp of neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and liberal-interventionist Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Not only did Obama press the G-7 allies to renew sanctions on Russia, Obama hurled personal insults at Putin.
Pointing Fingers
In remarks to the news media on Monday in Krun, Germany, Obama said, “there is strong consensus that we need to keep pushing Russia to abide by the terms of the Minsk agreement … [and] that until that’s completed, sanctions remain in place. There was discussion about additional steps that we might need to take if Russia, working through separatists, doubled down on aggression inside of Ukraine. …
“Ultimately, this is going to be an issue for Mr. Putin. He’s got to make a decision: Does he continue to wreck his country’s economy and continue Russia’s isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to re-create the glories of the Soviet empire? Or does he recognize that Russia’s greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries?
“And as I mentioned earlier, the costs that the Russian people are bearing are severe. That’s being felt. It may not always be understood why they’re suffering, because of state media inside of Russia and propaganda coming out of state media in Russia and to Russian speakers. …
“And, ironically, one of the rationales that Mr. Putin provided for his incursions into Ukraine was to protect Russian speakers there. Well, Russian speakers inside of Ukraine are precisely the ones who are bearing the brunt of the fighting. Their economy has collapsed. Their lives are disordered. Many of them are displaced. Their homes may have been destroyed. They’re suffering. And the best way for them to stop suffering is if the Minsk agreement is fully implemented.”
In other words, Obama was doing the Full Monty of Official Washington’s “group think” on the Ukraine crisis – that it was all caused by Putin’s “aggression” and his delusions about reestablishing the Soviet or Russian Empire. But Obama knows the real history of the U.S.-supported coup d’etat that ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, despite Yanukovych’s political agreement a day earlier with France, Germany and Poland to accept reduced powers and early elections.
Rather than defending that political settlement, the United States and its European allies immediately recognized the coup regime as “legitimate,” although it included neo-Nazis and other violent right-wing extremists who were rabidly hostile to Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority.
In the face of worsening violence, the people of Crimea – where ethnic Russians are a substantial majority – voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, an action supported by Russian troops who were based at Russia’s historic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. Russia accepted Crimea’s request but balked at a similar appeal from ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Then, amid feverish anti-Russian propaganda in the U.S. and European news media, the Kiev authorities designated the ethnic Russian resistance in the east as “terrorists” and mounted a brutal “anti-terrorism operation” against the population with the regime’s neo-Nazi and other extremist militias spearheading the attacks. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine.”]
It was in the face of this ethnic cleansing that Russia moved to assist the defense of the so-called Donbass region. Yet, now Obama places the blame for all the destruction and suffering in eastern Ukraine, where thousands have died, not on the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government and its thuggish militias but on Putin.
And, with no sense of irony, Obama suggests that it is the Russian media that is distorting the story, another favorite theme of the U.S. propaganda campaign on Ukraine pushed by both the Obama administration and the mainstream U.S. media.
There was an up-is-down quality to the way that Obama presented the Ukraine situation which is troubling in one of two ways – either he believes his own propaganda or he is a conscious liar. There’s also a third possibility, that he has completely lost his bearings and adopts one position one day and veers in the opposite direction the next depending on who last talked to him.
But whatever the case, Obama cannot expect Putin and the Russians to view his public comments and contradictory behavior in a favorable light – and then agree to cooperate with Obama on other hotspots where U.S. interests are much more endangered.
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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). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
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ay McGovern knows the terrain – he is a former CIA analyst who has prepared presidential Daily Briefs and has chaired National Intelligence Estimates.
