by William Skink
US troops are not leaving Syria, and the US-backed slaughter in Yemen will not stop. Committing war crimes and violating international laws are just the casual, normalized ways US foreign policy imposes a world order to benefit its capitalist titans and the obscene wealth they have accumulated.
That the world order is shifting to a multi-polar global struggle for resources is not well understood by the American taxpayers who are footing the bill for the .01%, who seek to enslave them and maintain their global dominance.
One reason we don’t understand what is going on is because a form of State media exists that Americans don’t recognize as State media. Sure, liberals think Fox news and Breitbart are terrible propaganda organs of right-wing oligarchs, and they are not wrong, but what about NBC/MSNBC?
In a scathing indictment of his former cable news network, journalist William Arkin lays it out in an email explaining why he is leaving NBC. Here is a portion:
To me there is also a larger problem: though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security, the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested. Despite being at “war,” no great wartime leaders or visionaries are emerging. There is not a soul in Washington who can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the Petraeus’ and Wes Clarks’, or the so-called warrior monks like Mattis and McMaster, we’ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently have done little of consequence. And yet we (and others) embrace them, even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as “analysts”. We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one county in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous. …
Windrem again convinced me to return to NBC to join the new investigative unit in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign. I thought that the mission was to break through the machine of perpetual war acceptance and conventional wisdom to challenge Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness. It was also an interesting moment at NBC because everyone was looking over their shoulder at Vice and other upstarts creeping up on the mainstream. But then Trump got elected and Investigations got sucked into the tweeting vortex, increasingly lost in a directionless adrenaline rush, the national security and political version of leading the broadcast with every snow storm. And I would assert that in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself – busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.
I’d argue that under Trump, the national security establishment not only hasn’t missed a beat but indeed has gained dangerous strength. Now it is ever more autonomous and practically impervious to criticism. I’d also argue, ever so gingerly, that NBC has become somewhat lost in its own verve, proxies of boring moderation and conventional wisdom, defender of the government against Trump, cheerleader for open and subtle threat mongering, in love with procedure and protocol over all else (including results). I accept that there’s a lot to report here, but I’m more worried about how much we are missing. Hence my desire to take a step back and think why so little changes with regard to America’s wars. …
So the wars will go on, supported by liberals whole-heartedly now that any remnants of being anti-war has been lethally associated with right-wing populism.
These are your crimes too, citizens of America. And you’re not going to do a damn things about it because the grey matter inside your skull is occupied territory.
