Friday, January 11, 2013

Huff Post hoists flag of Empire

This story has legs. It's shown here as it appears in Huffington Post Canadian edition, but I found it under "Israel English" in the Google news aggregator.

The first thing to catch my eye was the claim that Syria is such a complicated scenario that it precludes "US-led action to topple another Middle-East dictator."

That sentence leaves the impression that the US is in the business of toppling dictators. By my count Saddam was the only Middle East dictator ever to be toppled by the US, and before that the most recent toppling of a dictator by the US was Hitler, and the Red Army did most of the heavy lifting on that job.

As anyone remotely acquainted with the arc of history over the last hundred years will know, the US is far more inclined to topple democratic governments than dictatorships.

Then the writer, after speculating about a quid-pro-quo arrangement with Russia that may or may not have greenlighted their seizure of Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles, declares this "a model of understanding how power begets principle in today's world."

Power begets principle? What kind of horseshit are we reading here?

The reason that America cannot intervene in Syria, let alone Iran, is because the country is broke and broken. Yes, American power may have toppled a dictator in Iraq. What principles did that beget?

The only principle one can draw from the last fifty years of American meddling in other countries is that the unprincipled use of power leaves mayhem and anarchy and death and destruction in its wake.

And it creates far more enemies for America than it destroys.

The Huffington Post has long enjoyed the reputation of being a left-of-mainstream journal of current events. If this article is any indication, it has joined the mainstream chorus of pro-Empire cheerleaders.


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