A great opinion piece on American actions all around the world, all the while, boasting of its moral superiority over others. That moral superiority, which US achieves through its military might & forcing others (notably Europe) to follow, has gained US & its citizens more of hateful scorns from around the world than grateful praises.
The so-called "independent" media & journalism all over the world follows the US command of showing the Western Europe, Australia, & North America (US & Canada only) as the beacon of hope, honesty, fairness, law & order, & freedom & independence. That same "independent" media also shows how their own countries are worthless pieces of lands where anarchy & chaos apparently rules & people have nothing else to do but fight each other. As I have said multiple times before in my blog posts that Global North's polished image is like the Snow White's poisoned polished apple.
As the Chancellor correctly points out in movie, "V for Vendetta," that fear is the best way to control populations, American politicians have resorted to the same tactic. Donald Trump isn't the first one resorting to lies & false news stories to increase divisiveness & fear, & rile up its followers. Every American President from Second World War onwards has done the exact same thing; Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cubans, Russians, Muslims have already been targeted, or are being targeted, & the Chinese are the next in the American & its European crosshairs.
As an aside, I love the Star Trek series; "Star Trek: The Next Generation". I always wonder while watching this TV series that if American & European politicians learn how to lead & govern from this TV series, the world would become a far better place by itself.
The right to lead can never be earned through military might & covert backroom agendas but by leading by example. America wants to be considered exceptional because it thinks it has those noble qualities of honesty, fairness, hope, justice etc., & hence, it thinks it has the right to lead the world towards a better place, but then it institutes double standards & injustices to put in place policies (sanctions, wars etc.) to control people & information, even at the expense of innocent lives. In some respect, what is going on in US right now; the violence being borne out of racial fears among its own American citizens, is a direct result of its actions on other nations, countries, & people around the world.
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As the Middle East continues to descend into madness, wrecked by wars & convulsed by human tragedies, America stands at the center of it all - the grand engineer of instability, the architect of a world system which cornerstone is profoundly ademocratic.
For well over a decade now the world has been force-fed American exceptionalism; taught to believe that America knows best what the world needs, how it needs to be organized & more importantly under whose leadership countries should be allowed to function.
Any challenge to Washington's authority & its supra-national moral legitimacy have systematically been met by furious media slander & threats of sanctions - Russia, more than any other country knows what it cost to stand up to this new American political deity.
The self-appointed political world police, the US has run, dominated & of course dictated the world's media narrative, playing democratic mind games with a gullible public while pursuing violent covert agendas. The Middle East of course has stood at the epicenter of this grand play for regime change & race for control.
If you thought America' s military interventions in Afghanistan & Iraq in the wake of 9/11 only exacerbated tensions, adding more fire to the predetermined narrative of perpetual war, then what of the destruction which has rained on Libya, Syria & now Yemen? Where exactly will the drones & tanks stop? How many communities will have to be laid waste before this prodigal democratic era US politicians have so fervently talked about actually manifests itself?
We have gone so far down the rabbit hole that people have become desensitized to human rights violations, breaches in privacy laws & blatant disregard for international law, all in the name of evasive national security.
With US politicians running the rationale of fear on all platforms available, reason & logic have been labeled under temporary insanity & conspiracy. According to Washington, the world needs direction - the type of righteous direction only America can give since its very constitution stands the perfect expression of all things fiercely democratic & freedom perfect. In this Orwellian play we find ourselves stuck in, all countries have been made-to-measure to Washington's political standards & expectations. Democratic devolution you say?
I would argue this train has already left the station. We have now entered the uncharted territories of a US-run supra-national police state system, where globalism rhymes with authoritarianism. A brave new world indeed.
So Arab leaders are dictatorial & despicably abusive toward their own people, or so the US says. Well in most cases that's true enough, but that never stopped the US or other Western capitals for that matter to develop close economic & political ties with them. Funny how dutiful America only woke up to the horrors of Arab fascism when nations began clamoring for independence.
From Muammar Gaddafi to Saddam Hussein & the Shah of Iran, Washington's friends & allies have not exactly been choir boys - more the who's who of the world most violent tyrants.
But that's not even the point. The point is, when a country decides to drop names & list offenses it better make sure that its own government is not committing the very crimes it finds so revolting in others.
US officials today have justified their intervention in Syria by arguing terror militants need to be dealt with as a matter of urgency to protect Western democracies. Those same officials have, in the same breath, argued that "moderate" radicals should be used to depose Syrian President Bashar Al Assad as the latter no longer holds popular legitimacy. The rationale here is that a democratically elected head of state should be actively brought down by way of terrorism to help promote stability. I have to say, I'm confused here.
More confusing still, in recent weeks Russia was slammed for allegedly planning to actively oppose ISIS militants in Syria. You would think that Western powers would actually hail counter-terrorism efforts. Wrong! As far as Washington is concerned only it can wield military force to oppose terror - anyone else's efforts are illegal.
Commenting on the matter on September 10, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed, “As we are facing unfounded accusations that we are doing something illegal and reinforcing the ISIL, I'd recommend watching the coalition's actions.” He added, "I am convinced that coordinated efforts are quite possible if double standards are rejected."
And indeed, double standards stand at the core of all the world's problems.
For example, when asked why President Assad lost all legitimacy officials & analysts have intermittently advanced that his rule was forfeited the second he began targeting his own people for political advancement. The same rhetoric has held for Libya, Yemen, Iraq & everything in between.
Since 9/11 America has moved in a higher plane of morality, on account of its political, economic & military might.
But let's turn the mirror around for a second & see what reflects back.
Wasn't it America which gifted the world with such things as renditions, institutionalized surveillance, black sites, systematic tortures, ethno-religious profiling & other niceties?
Wasn't it America again which opened an illegal black hole when its leaders decided that unmanned drones should enter the military fray as murdering weapons of choice?
America has no lesson to give when it comes to democracy building & legitimacy … & it certainly cannot claim to any form of exceptionalism; not when it has so much blood on its hands & not when it has committed so very few funds to humanitarian aid.
If anything Washington officials have mastered the art of terror-propping & radical-funding - from Ukraine to Syria, America has some of the world most despicable characters on its payroll … All for the greater good of course.
Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others. Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia’s Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam
The so-called "independent" media & journalism all over the world follows the US command of showing the Western Europe, Australia, & North America (US & Canada only) as the beacon of hope, honesty, fairness, law & order, & freedom & independence. That same "independent" media also shows how their own countries are worthless pieces of lands where anarchy & chaos apparently rules & people have nothing else to do but fight each other. As I have said multiple times before in my blog posts that Global North's polished image is like the Snow White's poisoned polished apple.
As the Chancellor correctly points out in movie, "V for Vendetta," that fear is the best way to control populations, American politicians have resorted to the same tactic. Donald Trump isn't the first one resorting to lies & false news stories to increase divisiveness & fear, & rile up its followers. Every American President from Second World War onwards has done the exact same thing; Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cubans, Russians, Muslims have already been targeted, or are being targeted, & the Chinese are the next in the American & its European crosshairs.
As an aside, I love the Star Trek series; "Star Trek: The Next Generation". I always wonder while watching this TV series that if American & European politicians learn how to lead & govern from this TV series, the world would become a far better place by itself.
The right to lead can never be earned through military might & covert backroom agendas but by leading by example. America wants to be considered exceptional because it thinks it has those noble qualities of honesty, fairness, hope, justice etc., & hence, it thinks it has the right to lead the world towards a better place, but then it institutes double standards & injustices to put in place policies (sanctions, wars etc.) to control people & information, even at the expense of innocent lives. In some respect, what is going on in US right now; the violence being borne out of racial fears among its own American citizens, is a direct result of its actions on other nations, countries, & people around the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the Middle East continues to descend into madness, wrecked by wars & convulsed by human tragedies, America stands at the center of it all - the grand engineer of instability, the architect of a world system which cornerstone is profoundly ademocratic.
For well over a decade now the world has been force-fed American exceptionalism; taught to believe that America knows best what the world needs, how it needs to be organized & more importantly under whose leadership countries should be allowed to function.
Any challenge to Washington's authority & its supra-national moral legitimacy have systematically been met by furious media slander & threats of sanctions - Russia, more than any other country knows what it cost to stand up to this new American political deity.
The self-appointed political world police, the US has run, dominated & of course dictated the world's media narrative, playing democratic mind games with a gullible public while pursuing violent covert agendas. The Middle East of course has stood at the epicenter of this grand play for regime change & race for control.
If you thought America' s military interventions in Afghanistan & Iraq in the wake of 9/11 only exacerbated tensions, adding more fire to the predetermined narrative of perpetual war, then what of the destruction which has rained on Libya, Syria & now Yemen? Where exactly will the drones & tanks stop? How many communities will have to be laid waste before this prodigal democratic era US politicians have so fervently talked about actually manifests itself?
We have gone so far down the rabbit hole that people have become desensitized to human rights violations, breaches in privacy laws & blatant disregard for international law, all in the name of evasive national security.
With US politicians running the rationale of fear on all platforms available, reason & logic have been labeled under temporary insanity & conspiracy. According to Washington, the world needs direction - the type of righteous direction only America can give since its very constitution stands the perfect expression of all things fiercely democratic & freedom perfect. In this Orwellian play we find ourselves stuck in, all countries have been made-to-measure to Washington's political standards & expectations. Democratic devolution you say?
I would argue this train has already left the station. We have now entered the uncharted territories of a US-run supra-national police state system, where globalism rhymes with authoritarianism. A brave new world indeed.
So Arab leaders are dictatorial & despicably abusive toward their own people, or so the US says. Well in most cases that's true enough, but that never stopped the US or other Western capitals for that matter to develop close economic & political ties with them. Funny how dutiful America only woke up to the horrors of Arab fascism when nations began clamoring for independence.
From Muammar Gaddafi to Saddam Hussein & the Shah of Iran, Washington's friends & allies have not exactly been choir boys - more the who's who of the world most violent tyrants.
But that's not even the point. The point is, when a country decides to drop names & list offenses it better make sure that its own government is not committing the very crimes it finds so revolting in others.
US officials today have justified their intervention in Syria by arguing terror militants need to be dealt with as a matter of urgency to protect Western democracies. Those same officials have, in the same breath, argued that "moderate" radicals should be used to depose Syrian President Bashar Al Assad as the latter no longer holds popular legitimacy. The rationale here is that a democratically elected head of state should be actively brought down by way of terrorism to help promote stability. I have to say, I'm confused here.
More confusing still, in recent weeks Russia was slammed for allegedly planning to actively oppose ISIS militants in Syria. You would think that Western powers would actually hail counter-terrorism efforts. Wrong! As far as Washington is concerned only it can wield military force to oppose terror - anyone else's efforts are illegal.
Commenting on the matter on September 10, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed, “As we are facing unfounded accusations that we are doing something illegal and reinforcing the ISIL, I'd recommend watching the coalition's actions.” He added, "I am convinced that coordinated efforts are quite possible if double standards are rejected."
And indeed, double standards stand at the core of all the world's problems.
For example, when asked why President Assad lost all legitimacy officials & analysts have intermittently advanced that his rule was forfeited the second he began targeting his own people for political advancement. The same rhetoric has held for Libya, Yemen, Iraq & everything in between.
Since 9/11 America has moved in a higher plane of morality, on account of its political, economic & military might.
But let's turn the mirror around for a second & see what reflects back.
Wasn't it America which gifted the world with such things as renditions, institutionalized surveillance, black sites, systematic tortures, ethno-religious profiling & other niceties?
Wasn't it America again which opened an illegal black hole when its leaders decided that unmanned drones should enter the military fray as murdering weapons of choice?
America has no lesson to give when it comes to democracy building & legitimacy … & it certainly cannot claim to any form of exceptionalism; not when it has so much blood on its hands & not when it has committed so very few funds to humanitarian aid.
If anything Washington officials have mastered the art of terror-propping & radical-funding - from Ukraine to Syria, America has some of the world most despicable characters on its payroll … All for the greater good of course.
Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others. Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia’s Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam
