Samantha Power, the current US Ambassador to the UN, is one of those ‘liberal interventionists’, people who like to think of themselves as liberals but are always on the look out for ‘good’ wars to wage to show how tough they are, a disease that many Democrats suffer from. It does not seem to bother them that all the other military interventions have been disastrous, not least for the people at the receiving end of our military largesse.
These people never seem to quite get that bombing other countries, destroying their infrastructure, toppling their governments, and then leaving doesn’t seem to produce good results. For example Sarah Topol, writing in the December 2014 issue of Harper’s magazine (firewall) says that the bombing of Libya by the US has been a bonanza for ISIS and other warring parties in the region. Why? Because when the US bombed Libyan arms depots, they did not completely destroy them. So now these repositories of high-tech arms that Ghaddafi purchased are lying completely unguarded and are being simply collected and sold to arms dealers and are finding their way to groups like ISIS.
But no worries! Maybe next time the intervention will work like a charm and a magic fairyland will emerge from the chaos we leave behind.
What really worries people like Power is not the suffering that we cause but that the American people might be a little weary of these promises of the next time being different never quite panning out and nixing their plans for yet more glorious wars, a recurrence of the ‘Vietnam syndrome’, that nightmare for warmongers. In a recent speech she warns that we must not lose heart and must be prepared to wage more and more wars.
Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, warned the American public against a kind of intervention fatigue, emphasizing that U.S. leadership is needed now more than ever amid global threats from Ebola to the Islamic State.
“I think there is too much of, ‘Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought’ … one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons,” Power said Wednesday during the Defense One Summit.
Oh these silly American people, thinking that just because past attacks on other countries have created a mess means that we should not repeat that policy. Because really, what could go wrong?
So she wants to bomb Ebola?
‘liberal interventionists’
Funny name for “war criminals”
““I think there is too much of, ‘Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought’ … one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons,” Power said Wednesday during the Defense One Summit.”
Holy crap, she’s actually equating ‘learning from past actions and their consequences’ with ‘overdrawing lessons.’ So in her world, learning anything at all is learning too much, if it would prevent the next war. What a horrifying person to have in any position of influence at all.
I doubt any of these neocon barbarians believe an iota of the bullshit they sell the public to justify their wars. The wars and support for proxy terrorist armies have nothing to do with “liberating” people or somehow “protecting” them against alleged dictators by killing them. Their purpose is to destroy the targeted countries and convert them from viable states into sectarian hell holes crippled by endless civil war, terror and murder which will not be able to resist Israeli and US hegemony.
The neocons have made clear what these wars are about in their policy papers, many written decades ago and well before 9-11. What has unfolded in this time is perfectly consistent with Israeli strategist Oded Yinon’s plan to destroy Israel’s enemies by inflaming sectarian, tribal and national divisions and turning them against each other. By this measure Iraq, Libya and Lebanon have been resounding successes while Syria has been amazingly resilient in the face of all the murder and destruction unleashed on her.
“Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815
Any political figure in the US who expresses support for Israel is not only a traitor to the US, but to civilization itself.
So now our ambassador to the UN is openly equating medical relief with jackbooted thuggery. Is this a deliberate action to throw medical workers who volunteer to help overseas under the bus or has that just become a reflexive action at this point?
Caveat: I do not work in the medical field, I just think this sounds incredibly wrong on many levels and shows continued governmental disdain for people who risk their lives and livelihoods to provide actual humanitarian aid around the world.
FWIW, Samantha Power is married to Cass Sunstein, a man who believes the decline in bowling leagues and other forms of civic participation is a good thing because leagues like that can lead to Fascism.
Dinner at the Powers\Sunstein household must be a surreal experience.
P.S. I support Israel. I don’t think US foreign policy should revolve around them to the extent that it does, but I mostly support their efforts at building and maintaining their society. I think of myself and those of like mind not as a traitor to civilization but a defender of it. All of matter of opinion I suppose.
Marcus@2: It’s a bit tricky, but you can anagram it….