Helmut Kohl’s Death Reminds us of NATO’s Uselessness

A while back around September, I started to write about why I agreed with those individuals that considered, or expressed the view that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was obsolete.  However, I refrained after reading other people expressing a historical viewpoint that was similar to mine and I did not want to just throw up more words on the same topic just in a different sequence and syntax of word usage.  But I have decided to revisit this topic upon the passing of former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl.

If we walk back in time to 1989, right before the fall of the Berlin wall, we would be able to see that the issues that concerned the western political establishment regarding German re-unification are similar in structure and content to those made in contradiction of the utility of NATO some 30 years later. What is going to happen to the stability of Europe that has been maintained ever since the end of the cold-war? Could and will Gorbachev (easily synonymous with Putin) accept the end of East Germany (soviet tanks were there at the time)?  What will happen to the Eastern borders of Europe (especially Poland in 1989 ironically where NATO is conducting war games currently)?

As then, these issues and questions persist and frequently brought up by pro-Hillary Clinton progressive Neoliberal NATO-crats and folks like Sen. John McCain who recurrently speaks out openly to convict any effort to normalization US and EU relations with Russia (Putin). This is done any time they get, like a talentless rapper who hypes the real star on stage, they hype-up the fake news that presents Russia being a military threat in Eastern Europe (and anywhere else if the can - see Syria). Seems some NATO or Brussel’s big wheel (Secretary-General Jens Stoltenber & German DM Ursulla von der Leyen) comes out of the back room every day to try and show how much they hate Russia over the next man or woman also.

Once upon a time NATO was simply a treaty designed to keep an occupying US army on European soil. Now it is just an outdated means of increasing US influence more so than being able to provide any real security anywhere. Basically, it is just a cash cow that seeks ways to justify immense military spending over the delusion America and European hallucination that we are perpetually on the brink of war with Russia, as well as a repurposed weapon of global neocolonialism and the tool of choice for regime change and national building. Thus, it’s clear that many have a serious interest in seeing the status quo (NATO) continue.

Dr. Kohl’s death is a reminder of this and that diplomacy is a skill set that is mandatory if peace and not war is truly the desired outcome for all conflicts. We must recall that the French said Kohl’s plan for German reunification was out of the question and there was a lot of resistance to the idea of a united Germany in general. Most (France and the UK) felt it would change the balance of the EU forever and it did. Not to mention there was the old axiom - NATO was designed to keep the Russians out, the US military machine in Europe and the Germans down. Making one Germany destroyed all three of these prospects. Moreover, Kohl’s success destroyed the justification for the incessant funding of the NATO war machine.

Probably the best detailed account of what Dr. Kohl had to deal with is described in Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification by Frédéric Bozo. Bozo describes how it only took Kohl less than a month to pre-empt all concerns from France, the U.K. and the United States when he came up with a 10-point plan to fast-track German unification. Of all his actions, his pledge to recognize the post-war German-Polish border (Oder-Neisse line) and his promise to pay for the cost of the Soviet troop withdrawal from East Germany were both shrewd and savvy and led to the end of the cold war. One could also posit that the post-Cold War reconfiguration of NATO that occurred after Kohl’s unification of Germany was the start of the post WWII uselessness of NATO.
The fall of the Berlin wall was then followed by Gorbachev dissolving the Warsaw Pact and relinquishing control over all the Soviet-occupied Eastern European countries. This should have been the end of NATO since it was FORMED and ESTABLISHED to serve as a  cooperative security peacetime military alliance against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact Nations. Kohl’s efforts also included getting the U.S. to promise that we would never expand NATO further eastward if he didn’t object to East Germany’s becoming a member of NATO.

Given the history, hard not to disagree but Donald Trump or anyone else as it regards NATO usefulness. Fact is that when the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union dissolved, the reason for the formation and maintenance of NATO ended too. If you want to keep it real, NATO was never capable of defending Europe without the US and its mission still hasn’t evolved to keep up with threat of international terrorism and combatting the Islamic State. Problem is when you openly say such, you end up hurting the feelings of the D.C. neoliberal establishment war machine profiteer cartel. Cats the likes of Will Marshall, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and Stephen Hadley who see NATO to extend their crony capitalistic ways. These are the folk who are the maddest when Trump and others point out that NATO freeloader nations need to “pay up or get out.”
Yes, Kohl reminds me of how archaic and old-fashined and unserviceable NATO is. Nations like Albania, Croatia Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia  are all member states now (although the U.S. promised Gorbachev that NATO would not encroach upon Russia’s borders). It is easy to see that in 2017 it has a single purpose: to serve as bait to start a world war with Russia.

Instead of heeding the wisdom of former statesmen before Kohl like Sen. Robert A. Taft in 1949 or President Eisenhower’s via his prophetic cautioning in 1961 that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," the west has yet to objectively examine the utility of NATO – especially if the desire is peaceful co-existence globally. Taft understood all of this and saw the formation of NATO, regardless of what was said, as “an offensive and defensive military alliance against Russia,” saying that he believed “such an alliance is more likely to produce war than peace. A third world war would be the greatest tragedy the world has ever suffered.” True, the UN Charter supposedly only allows nations to use force only in self-defense when under threat of imminent attack, but it seems that NATO knowing it is no longer valid, is just itching to provoke a fight with Putin, against reason and even to the detriment of humanity.

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Obama Didn’t Found ISIS, He Just Breast Feed Them

A few weeks ago I read Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump assert that President Barack Obama was the founder, or creator of ISIS. I just wanted to say for the record, I could not let this mistruth, as any mistruth stated by a politician regardless of party, pass without clarifying the record. What Mr. Trump forgets is that ISIS started long before Obama was President and in my view if we really want to know the deal, on its founding, birth or creation, we must go back to the Iraq war more than twelve years ago, under the Presidency of Bush 43.

As history has shown, the current leader of what we call ISIS is Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry, a man we now refer to as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. What is known about him before proclaiming himself the leader of DAESH is that in early 2004 he was housed in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. U.S. Defense Department reports note that coalition forces first captured Baghdadi on February 4, 2004, in Fallujah, Iraq. After the fiasco at Abu Ghraib, he was transferred to Camp. Bucca, located some 400 miles south of Baghdad in the southern town of Garma along the Kuwait border. It held some of the most radical extremists of the war. 

One could argue that the procreation of what we now call the Islamic state begin when Camp Bucca was created and birthed during the peak of the Iraq troop surge in 2007 at a time when Bucca contained 24,000 – 28,000 inmates. It held both Sunnis and Shiites, who were separated because moderate Sunnis and extreme Sunnis and Shiites were at odds with one another.  All and anyone who coalition forces figured look like the enemy or in the area of any type of bombing or sniper fire were rounded up in mass, in particular  military-aged males, without due process since few if any U.S, military personnel spoke Arabic and all in general were incapable of distinguishing enemies for friendlies.

Detention facilities like Bucca played a major part in the rise of the Islamic State. After the Bush administration’s policy of de-baathfication, what Bucca did was allow these individuals to link up with members of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime and develop new relationships. First it was unique, for as many have reported, it allowed for former Baathist secularists to get to know Islamist fundamentalists, both of which had nothing but hatred for the West and the U.S. Being once in politics and/or the military, the former Baathists provide jihadists with public relations, organizational and military skills. In the other side the jihadist were able to instill something to fight for in the former government ruling class of Iraq before the U.S. invasion and occupation. Some have estimated that nearly 90 percent of those freed from Bucca and other facilities returned to the battlefield to fight against coalition forces.

Like in America, prison served as a college or university for Islamic fundamentalism and jihadist training.  In the long run, it would be these hardcore jihadists and former Iraqi military officials who would eventually become the leadership of the Islamic State. While Bucca, Sharia Law was instituted by radical extremist and fundamentalist which by some reports, even included  gouging out eyes or cutting out their tongues for anti-Islamic behaviors considered to be Western in origin. A story reported by Al Jazeera based on first had reports suggested that jihadist were able to build relations and network in ways they would have never been able to do outside of Camp Bucca and that hard core extremist were able to radicalize other inmates and even give courses using the resources of the prison to teach inmates how to make explosives, and carry out suicide bombings. This is the start of what we currently refer to as the Islamic State and this was up to the year 2008, all of which was under the tutelage of George W. Bush.

 

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not the only high profile prisoner detained at Bucca. Another was a former Iraqi military official who became head of the Islamic State’s military council named Hajji Bakr and the future official spokesperson and a senior leader of the Islamic State Taha Subhi Falaha, commonly called Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami. Others included al-Baghdadi's deputy Abu Muslimal-Turkmani, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, the military leader responsible for planning the seizure of Mosul and the founder of the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

But objectivity cannot leave out the role that President Obama has played in nurturing the Islamic State. Since the CIA inspired uprising against Assad, Obama has been very busy sowing the seeds of war instead of diplomacy.  It is clear that the reason for such are similar to the reasons he in concert with Hillary Clinton, led events that resulted in the murder of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi (with the use of Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition trained byU.S. special operation forces that had been inside Libya before the start of protests).

This is the plan they (Obama, Clinton, NATO and the West) have on deck for Assad and Syria as evidenced by leaked emails between Sidney Blumenthal and Obama’s Secretary of State. Like Libya, Syria’s Central Bank is state-owned & isn’t controlled IMF (International Monetary Fund), has no IMF debt and more importantly maintains immense oil and gas reserves. Plus, being the only secular Muslim states in the Middle East, this gets in the way of the West divide and Conquer modus operandi. The first and last may be even more important than the two in the middle. 

As of 2003, the only countries left in 2003 without a Central Bank owned by western interest were Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria.  After September 11th The U.S. was able to knock out two-for one by invading both Afghanistan and Iraq to then establish a Central Bank in those countries. Now back to Obama.

Obama is protecting Al-Nusura, Al Qaeda and ISIS-ISIL-Daesh by using  the US Airforce to provide cover on behalf of terrorists invading a sovereign nation state for the reasons I stated above:  it has nothing to do with protecting the citizens of Syria because if such was the case, the Obama Administration would bomb Saudi Arabia and protect the citizens of Yemen, whom the Saudi’s are slaughtering with U.S. supplied planes, weapons, cluster bombs and White Phosphorus.

Although it was the Bush administration with the assistance of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz that broaden the idea of birthing terrorist organizations to fight U.S. wars under the name of freedom fighters, Obama took it to another level.  Up until 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) was called al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). What President Obama breast fed with guns and intelligence, Al Nusra (an al Qaeda affiliate) is overnight called the “Moderate Opposition” and even worse, “The Free Syrian Army.”

Either way it goes and regardless of what we call them, both are supported covertly by US intelligence and are merely malignancies of the same tumor – the Islamic State. Yes, Obama has got both his titties working: one for ISIS and the other for Al Nusra.

It is easy for the Obama Administration to keep on breast feeding these jihadist weapons especially since it is impossible to vet who is friend or foe (or rather foe or foe). Like any good hustler, anyone who is down to be a rebel no matter what we call them, get a gun and a regular salary know how to play the game and tell a random dumb American what they want to hear. And if they are not jihadist, the weakest of those the administration recruit cower under the first sight of ISIS extremist.  Case and point was when U.S. officials reported openly that frequently, “moderate” rebels give up their weapons and vehicles to al-Qaeda. How else did ISIS get freshly FSA supplied US-made anti-tank TOW missiles (“Tube-launched, optically tracked, Wire-guided")? Also, they even openly admit to the media and U.S. representatives that they got no problems with al-Qaeda or ISIL and often work with and conduct military operations together.

The bottom line is that Mr. Trump is incorrect, it was the Bush Administration: specifically Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Obama did however, take the infant into his bosom and feed them when he took office. Now he and the rest of the West (many reluctantly) wants to place the blame what is happening in Syria at the feet of Russia when in actuality it is a consequence of Obama’s foreign policy (or lack of) of aiding Syrian jihadists which has resulted in the intentional devastation of Syria, the massive migration crisis and the inordinate death toll of the nation’s civilian population. Thus distinguishing between the FSA and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same organization. Taking it a step further, it could be argued strongly that the moderate Free Syria Army is just a cover for al-Qaeda (al-Nusra).

The Russians are right: the Obama Administration has never had any desire or intention to defeat al-Nusra (as required by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2268 - 2016). President Obama got ISIS and al-Nusra sucking on his breast good and has them nearly strong enough to do his dirty work in his effort to destroy Iraq and Syria.

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