It has been a busy weak for President Obama. On Memorial day he secretly flew off to Afghanistan just to let the troops know he genuinely cares and is thinking about them. Or so his PR advisors want it to appear as his ratings continue slumping and his disastrous foreign policy continues to come under heavy fire from all sides. A true characteristic of psychopaths is that everything they do is to self-servingly promote their own image and position. Currently finding himself on the defensive, what does Obama the psychopath do? He opportunistically rushes off as Commander-in -Chief to spend the day that America mourns its fallen warriors with the live ones still fighting his lost cause in Afghanistan.
Then as a lead-up to today’s foreign policy initiatives detailed in his graduation speech at West Point today, yesterday President Obama declared that America’s longest running wars in history in both Iraq and Afghanistan are over almost for the US military occupiers. But he did stipulate just under 10,000 US troops will remain in Afghanistan as “advisors” and counterinsurgency support forces for the national Afghan Army at least for the next two years until 2017.
Plus a small contingent of NATO forces will likely continue their deployment in Afghanistan as well. The two leading candidates facing off in the Afghan presidential runoff election on June 25th have both already pledged to sign the agreement for US security forces to remain as “unofficial” occupiers that Obama assures will no longer be engaging in combat missions and patrols. Meanwhile, a number of US military officers are expressing doubt that that amount of US troops will be enough to hold back the surging onslaught of a revitalized Taliban enemy.
It is also worth noting that Obama bragged in today’s speech to West Point cadets that “al Qaeda has been decimated.” That is just one more in an endless supply of lies from the lips of a psychopath who will never admit the truth nor ever admit error, two hallmarks of a psychopath. The truth is that the enemy al Qaeda now occupies more area in Iraq and the Middle East than ever before and the enemy in Afghanistan likewise holds more territory outside the cities in Afghanistan than any time since the Taliban government was overthrown twelve years ago.
Today Obama emphatically reiterated the rhetoric that “America must always lead,” which is nothing more than his invoking the stand-by foreign policy of exceptionalism – “do as I say, not as I do.” He formally announced moving away from the costly protracted wars with which the US has drained the national economy and middle class taxpayers for over a dozen years. Obama’s plan for the US to lead the world involves countless dirty little secret wars waged on every continent involving Special Operations forces consisting of Green Beret, Delta Force and Navy Seals. Nothing will change in terms of the US military’s role in foreign policy continuing to act as world policemen and bully, only using smaller elite counterinsurgency units deployed in at last count and rising
134 nations. Because their operations are covert, oversight and accountability is virtually absent.
The only truth we know is their funding is virtually unlimited because it is hidden from public awareness justified by secrecy under the familiar guise of national security. What we also know based on past history is these secret unlimited US taxpayer dollars will continue to be given away to warlords to “rat out” their fellow countrymen deemed anti-US, so called insurgent terrorists or al Qaeda (to be differentiated from the al Qaeda mercenary Islamic extremists in whose pockets more US tax dollars are going to fight US proxy wars in places like Syria and Libya). Outsourcing with al Qaeda thugs has become a new way America “leads the world” in its desire to destabilize and promote regime changes wherever the US does not want to bother placing black ops on the ground.
For convenience sake, the Obama administration embraces a policy of al Qaeda the enemy whenever Washington says so, but simultaneously supports, finances and allies with (ever since the pre-al Qaeda Mujahideen in the late 70’s) certain al Qaeda terrorists to oppose selected sovereign nations that Washington dislikes and is committed to the imperialistic agenda of regime changes – calling it US exceptionalism. What’s good for the US government is good for the entire world like it or not, because the US as still the sole global superpower says so (despite the surging power of Russia and China in the renewed cold war challenge Obama instigated). Exceptionalism amounts to one set of international rules applying to the rest of the world subject to arbitrary US enforcement through bullying and extermination and another set that defies and remains immune from all international laws and governance that apply exclusively to the US only. Obama’s meta-message is that the US will continue our “might makes right” policy.
Obama’s graduation speech at West Point today in large part was a defensive maneuver to answer all his hawkish foreign policy critics, typical Republicans like McCain who have basically called Obama a wimp that has only weakened America’s global superpower status for not starting more major wars around the world. If they had their way, the US would have GI boots on the ground in Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Libya and God knows where else. Obama may be a psychopathic war criminal, but he is not quite that crazy – though that is debatable in view of last September when Obama was hell bent on launching a military strike on Syria until the whole world stopped him.
Basically Obama’s form of Teddy Roosevelt’s “walk softly but carry a big stick” means continued US night raids invading homes in secret unknown places all around the world, killing, detaining and torturing many innocent victims under the umbrage of counterinsurgency warfare. Or it might entail financing, training, accompanying and supporting death squad commando units doing the same thing in their own countries against their fellow countrymen.
Since the Bush days the US has maintained a standard foreign policy toward people in every nation, “either they are with us,” us including the US puppet government, allied warlords “or they are against us/US puppet government/allied warlords.” In this way, by design the US polarizes, destabilizes and otherwise stirs up civil wars everywhere the US goes at will. A more accurate way to describe Obama’s so called foreign policy initiatives is the King Midas touch in reverse. Cases in point include the ongoing civil wars that the US has purposely created in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Ukraine, Sudan and to some extent Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, Somalia and Venezuela.
And based on recent revelations of how the CIA has lied for years to the pro-CIA Congressional Intelligence Committees and America, the CIA and Special Operations continue their practice of torture that no doubt includes waterboarding in secret detainment prisons around the globe, the most notorious one 90 miles from the US homeland in Guantanamo, Cuba. Despite a campaign
promise in both 2008 and again in 2012 to close Guantanamo Prison down once and for all, for over half a dozen years as president Obama continues failing to keep his word.
But then broken promises to the American people have become an Obama trademark. So somewhere in the world more innocent civilians who have been fingered by some informant being paid to lie with US taxpayer money is suddenly being apprehended in one of those counterinsurgency night raids and brought to a secret location in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Central Asia or Guantanamo and without charges being tortured and imprisoned for years at a time. The US is still holding innocent victims at Guantanamo who have been cleared of all charges for at least a dozen years. If we know this is true of cases in Guantanamo, hidden from the public are likely hundreds if not thousands of other victims whose human rights have been violated for decades in numerous secret locations.
And then there is Obama’s favorite form of modern warfare that he personally prefers hand picking his targets himself that include Americans in the crosshairs of thousands of drone attacks. Obama’s foreign policy signature calling card consists of launching missile strikes from his terror drones in the skies on mostly what turns out to be innocent victims in a number of nations. Drone warfare has been escalated over tenfold on Obama’s watch. His open admission that he could foresee killing Americans on foreign soil reflects his “world is changing” views. Today he simply repeated his past promise of turning drone deployments over from the CIA to the military to give the illusion of “more transparency.” Americans have heard that empty word before as just another broken promise since Obama’s track record has only demonstrated that he is the most secretive, least transparent president in US history.
Obama’s rhetoric today at West Point that the US will show restraint in looking for non-military solutions uttered in one breath, and then in the next breath that the US will continue to support “anti-terrorism” all around the world is just more psychopathic double talk. The bottom line is the US will continue leading by example as the world’s worst human rights offender while supporting regimes all over the planet that also have abysmal human rights records.
More of the same disastrous, unethical, haphazard and inconsistent, imperialistic foreign policy means that the US will continue financing corrupt weak puppet governments that permit transnational corporations to rape and steal their precious natural resources while enslaving its people that become even more exploited once their nations cannot repay IMF and world bank loans. In other words, there is absolutely nothing new that came out of Obama’s speech today. It will simply be business as usual, polarizing and destabilizing the world on the global chessboard stage ushering in more death, destruction and austerity paving the way toward the oligarch New World Order. Obama is simply doing his psychopathic doubletalk dance for his oligarch puppet masters.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. His written manuscript based on his military experience examines leadership and national security issues and can beconsulted at http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/. After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist working in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now focuses on writing.
