A Bad December for the Empire: The Gloves Come Off Part 3, Open Up a New Front!

US$10 trillion+ Down The War Making Drain

The Middle East: Six Countries in 24 years?

As Wesley Clark revealed, the US plan after 9/11 was “seven countries in five years”; Iraq, then Syria, then Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and then Iran. It seems that we may be on track for six countries in 24 years; with the most important one, Iran, undefeated.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned out to be a pyrrhic victory, as a previously staunch US ally (prior to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq) was destroyed and Iranian influence spread across the nation. Iraq’s compliance to the US is only maintained through the blackmail of all of its oil revenues being held in US$ accounts controlled by the US Treasury. A medium income minority Sunni dominated nation, with many more rights for its citizens than those of the Middle Eastern medieval-style monarchies, was destroyed and transformed into a Shia majority dominated nation.

The interview below covers the incompetence of the US policy elite with respect to the Middle East (from 37 minutes onwards), going from one self-inflicted mess to another.

From 2003 to 2011, the West backed the separatist movement in the south of Sudan in an attempt to separate the oil rich parts of the nation from the rest. The attempt succeeded, with the region becoming the separate nation of South Sudan in 2011; removing the oil resources from Sudan into a Western-exploitable easily dominated nation. If the 8 years of hellish Sudanese civil war had not been enough, the new nation descended into its own horrific civil war between the two main tribes between 2011 and 2020; ended with a peace agreement in the latter year. One of the objectives of the Western and Middle Eastern monarchy-sponsored machinations was to remove Chinese influence over the oil reserves; in fact the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is one of the firms currently involved in the production of South Sudanese oil. The nation of South Sudan is one of the most under-developed in the world, and was only recently involved in more internal conflict; with the oil revenues being used to finance a large military rather than social and economic development.

An important point noted by Dr. Nadi Hashemi is that the West and its Israeli surrogate cannot allow for Middle East and North African governments that reflect the will of the people, as the majority of those people are against the Zionist project and Western imperialism. That is why they are happy to deal with pro-Western medieval monarchies (installed by Britain many decades ago), extremist Moslem caliphates (in reality products of Western, Turkish, Israel and Gulf monarchy long term funding and support) and military regimes (products of the same players as the Moslem extremists). At all costs, truly democratic leaders and those that otherwise reflect the will of the people must be removed if the West is to dominate the region.

“Israel wants to have diplomatic relations with as many Arab states as possible. It cannot have diplomatic relations with democracies in the Arab world because democracies in the Arab world will demand that Israel make concessions to the Palestinians as a condition for diplomatic relations. That’s something that Israel refuses to do,” explained Dr Hashemi.

“Thus, Israel is deeply committed to preserving the authoritarian political order in the Arab world and that applies to Sudan as well.”

Together with the West, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Israel has worked to make sure that the 2023 overthrow of the Sudanese al-Bashir junta, which had ruled Sudan since 1989, has not lead to a move toward democracy but rather a new civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the para-military Rapid Support Forces (RSF); both arms of the junta’s military. Another horrific civil war broke out, including in the capital city that had experienced decades of peace. The RSF is supported by the UAE as well as the Libyan militia leader Khalifa Haftar; the latter is also primaril funded by the UAE and Turkey, as well as supported by the US-puppet Egyptian regime and France. Haftar was also celebrated by Donald Trump during his first presidency. The dominance of the RSF also threatens a renewed genocide against the non-Arab inhabitants of the Darfur region.

From 2006 to 2009 the US provided direct support to the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia (the Ethiopian regime of the time was a US ally). This was to defeat the Al Shabaab movement that had brought stability after so many years of conflict and even the possibility of Somali reunification. This is the intervention shown in the movie “Black Hawk Down” and also the one in which Canadian troops were shown to have tortured Somalians. What followed was the horrific Somali Civil War that has raged from 2009 into the present. Compared to the current set of Moslem forces, Al Shabaab can be seen as a moderate Islamic movement. To this day the US is still fighting a secret war in Somalia, labeling the nationalist Al Shabaab forces as “terrorists” and an “arm of Al Qaeda” (an absolute lie) or “affiliated with Al Qaeda” (the word “affiliated” is doing a lot of work there); as with this NBC News propaganda piece below.

Of course, the US is directly supporting Al Qaeda in the overthrow of the Syrian state; as with the Al Qaeda and ISIS leader Al-Julani who was recently relabelled by the West as a “rebel leader” with a fawning CNN interview for this Moslem extremist murderer. Of course, now in a nice suit and a trimmed beard.

An official US poster from 2017 defining this “rebel leader” as a wanted terrorist, tweeted by the US Embassy of Syria; with a reward of US$10 million!

The opposite journey of this guy:

Then there was the destruction of Libya in 2011, a regime change operation carried out under the cover of a “no fly zone”; turning the richest country in Africa into a failed state. Fourteen years later it remains a failed state, a previously middle income nation where women enjoyed equality to one wrent by extremist Moslem fighters. Once again, the result has been the take over by highly radicalised Islamic forces, including those shipped to the nation by Turkey.

Recently, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front regime that had dominated Ethiopia since 1991 and was aligned with the West, was overthrown by more nationalist and independent forces. In the West the TPLF were depicted as the “good guys” and their opponents as the “bad guys” when in fact the opposite was true. The new government also moved to restrict the activities of foreign-funded NGOs, the classic tools of Western subversion and colour revolutions; depicted by the Western media, NGOs and states as a crackdown on “civil society”. Ethiopia has recently strengthened its military alliance and economic ties with China, treading a path of independence rather than Western vassalage.

Also in 2011, the West along with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar massively funded and supplied foreign-dominated Muslim extremist to destroy the secular Syria - utilizing the unrest driven by the Arab Spring as a cover. The US supplied weapons to Muslim extremists through the Timber Sycamore program.

The Syrian secular state was close to collapse in 2015 but was saved by Russian and Iranian intervention. The West then did what it had done with Iraq, with the utilization of brutal sanctions and the occupation of the areas containing Syrian oil reserves, to soften the country up for a later final concluding conflict. This final conflict was triggered in late November and has now lead to the utter destruction of the Syrian state; a tragedy for the Syrian people. The result will not be peace but rather the imposition of extremist Islam, and ongoing fights between many different elements for superiority. Another failed state, and a massive setback for basic human rights. Now that Syria is gone, the supply lines for Hezbollah will significantly deteriorate and Lebanon may become a true supplicant of Israel, the West and Turkey. And the Kurds will once again be taught the lesson that they never seem to learn: being the useful idiots of the West never ends well. They should have aligned with Assad in resistance to the foreign terrorists, now they will pay the price.

So to sum up the 24 years of effort to take those 7 countries:

• Iraq is substantially Iran aligned with US influence only through the control of its oil revenues

• Libya continues to be a failed state

• Somalia is aligned with the US, with the latter having engineered the defeat of a more independent leader in 2022. The alignment of Somalia is open to change though, especially now with the new Ethiopian government.

• Syria has now been destroyed, and it will now descend into a new failed state with ongoing conflicts driven by the conflicting aims of the foreign powers of the West/Israel, Turkey, the Gulf monarchies and Iran and Iraq; together with disputes between different factions of the foreign extremist Moslem para-militaries.

• Lebanon will be significantly subjugated as the Hezbollah supply lines across Syria have now been severely constrained.

• Sudan has been divided into a South Sudan that does business with China, and a Sudan that is now a failed state in the middle of an ongoing civil war, the outcome of which is unknown.

• Iran has withstood the many decades of military conflict (starting with the 1980s Iran - Iraq War) and economic warfare designed to destroy it and has shown its ability to withstand any Israeli aggression. Only a direct assault of the US and other Western forces upon Iran, which would be an incredibly bloody conflict and risk a world war, could subjugate Iran. The country has made peace with its neighbours and has deepening ties with both Russia and China. The next step may very well be a nuclear armed Iran.

• Ethiopia has freed itself from US domination under the TPLF and is now travelling along a more independent path.

Not exactly a statement of success given the colossal resources expended by the West, and the destruction of its global legitimacy by its support for the Zionist genocide. More the failure of a West that is becoming more and more desperate as its economic and technological base declines on a relative basis to China and Asia, it incurs greater and greater defeats (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, Ethiopia, Sub-Saharan Africa etc.), and even countries in the US “backyard” of South America increasingly turn to China. In any long conflict a losing side may have tactical victories, Syria is one of those tactical victories for the West which may still turn into a pyrrhic one. Especially when it takes the Western elite’s focus away from the main event of EurAsia’s rise and the West’s relative fall. BRINKCISSTAN (Brazil, Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, Iraq, Syria and the “Stans”) may have lost an “S” but Syria was a peripheral player at best. The loss of Afghanistan, in the middle of Central Asia, and much of Ukraine by the West is many times more important; as well as the many other Western losses.

As the Duran notes, the collapse of Syria may in fact be much more advantageous for Turkey; Israel may have swapped a weak Syria for a strong, expansionist Turkey.

The Cost of These Failures

The Cost of War Project at Brown University estimated that the 20 years of war post-9/11 cost the United States US$8 trillion, as well as costing the lives of over 900,000 people directly (and millions more indirectly). Add in the past 4 years, together with the usual associated “black budgets” and the cost is most probably significantly above US$10 trillion for little real foreign policy benefit; but of course to the benefit of US military contractors. By December 2024 the US budget deficit was about US$36 trillion, so the cost of all the needless wars since 2001 represent probably a third of that (not even including normal US defence spending of US$1 trillion per year when all related budgets are taken into account). US government debt/GDP is 123%, an amount that would be around 80% without all the war spending.

The US current account deficit shrank to US$818 billion in 2023, but has widened significantly in 2024 and looks to top US$1 trillion for the full year. In Q3 2024 it was US$310.9 billion, 4.2% of GDP. The current account has widened much faster than the trade deficit, as the investment account became negative due to the increasing foreign indebtedness of the US. With a rapidly increasing current account deficit (from 4.2% of GDP), a government debt to GDP ratio of 123% and a government deficit of 6.5% of GDP, most nations would already be implementing austerity policies to save themselves from a currency crisis.

But not the US with the benefit of the US reserve currency, and control over its vassals. As with anything though, there is a limit and the US is pushing its luck. That is why we hear Trump demanding that Europe buy more US oil and gas and threatening tariffs. Even talking about removing the Russian and Iranian sanctions to help protect the dollar. But instead of taking some measures to reduce the government deficit, Trump fully supports spending like a drunken sailor on “defence” and talks about big tax cuts while pointing to mythical savings from the DOGE; much like Reagan’s “voodoo economics”.

The US in the current period is very much like the Soviet Union in the 1980s, a slow growing sclerotic economy attempting to keep up with a much faster and financially fit competitor. China spends only 2% of GDP on defence spending, and does so with a much greater level of efficiency and effectiveness than the US; while its economy grows at 5% per year against the US level of about 2% (and little or no growth in the European and Asian vassals). China can simply outspend the US with ease, while focusing its forces in a single theatre and on defence. Then we also have a very efficient and effective Russian MIC within an economy bigger than Germany, focused on its single theatre of operations. Then we have Iran focusing on defence within its own theatre. The US has spread itself across the globe. It is the US that needs to stop spending like a drunken sailor before it destroys its US$ reserve currency benefits, and is finally forced by external financial realities to cut back its foreign aggressions. A judgement day that it delayed for decades when it removed itself from the gold standard and moved to floating currencies in the early 1970s, while using its economic, financial and military muscle to maintain the US dollar as the reserve currency.