Posted on 04/11/2023 5:21:51 AM PDT by FarCenter
There is no peace on earth today for reasons mainly rooted in Imperial Washington — not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus, Mosul or the rubble of what remains of Raqqa. Imperial Washington has become a global menace owing to what didn’t happen in 1991 (when the USSR collapsed). At that crucial inflection point, Bush the Elder should have declared “mission accomplished” and parachuted into the great Ramstein Air Base in Germany to begin the demobilization of America’s war machine.
So doing, he could have slashed the Pentagon budget from $600 billion to $250 billion (2015 $); demobilized the military-industrial complex by putting a moratorium on all new weapons development, procurement and export sales; dissolved NATO and dismantled the far-flung network of US military bases; reduced the United States’ standing armed forces from 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand; and organized and led a world disarmament and peace campaign, as did his Republican predecessors during the 1920s.
Unfortunately, George H. W. Bush was not a man of peace, vision or even middling intelligence.
He was the malleable tool of the War Party, and it was he who singlehandedly blew the peace when, in the very year the 77-Years’ War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union, he plunged America into a petty argument between the impetuous dictator of Iraq and the gluttonous emir of Kuwait. But that was none of George Bush’s or America’s business.
Furthermore, George H. W. Bush should never be forgiven for enabling the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Gates and their neocon pack of jackals to come to power — even if he eventually denounced them in his doddering old age.
Alas, upon his death, Bush the Elder was deified, not vilified, by the mainstream press and the bipartisan duopoly. And that tells you all you need to know about why Washington is ensnared in its Forever Wars and is the very reason there is still no peace on earth.
Even more to the point, by opting not for peace but for war and oil in the Persian Gulf in 1991, Washington opened the gates to an unnecessary confrontation with Islam and nurtured the rise of jihadist terrorism that would not haunt the world today save for forces unleashed by George H. W. Bush’s petulant quarrel with Saddam Hussein.
All true.
I find it pretty hard to argue with Mr Stockman.
“Unfortunately, George H. W. Bush was not a man of peace, vision or even middling intelligence.”
However, I think President GHW Bush had a higher intelligence than just ‘middling’.
.
“when the European Union was formed, people such as Senator John McCain called it a strategic threat & argued for NAFTA, which was the beginning of a North American union to compete with the new EU. But we already had a North American Union with a central bank, common currency, and free trade between member states, plus free movement of people and capital.....called the United States of America. Fake news luminaries such as McCain saw the Europeans trying to emulate the success of the USA as a threat, instead of trying to bury the USSR for good by making a free trade, monetary and monetary alliance with the emerging EU, letting the new EU provide for its own common defense. It made sense to end the NATO alliance and instead create a new alliance with the EU. and the USA stood idly by when Germany just let East Germany become part of the a whole....even though NATO existed to keep Germany occupied and keep Russia at bay, Doing the WRONG thing led to NATO in Kosovo, getting regime change in Yugoslavia, which led directly to Putin getting elected and regime change in Iraq under George W Bush. A USA-EU alliance would have buried USSR and China, too....but instead we did all the wrong things and now the USA is destabilized and demoralized.”——a friend wrote this
Powering down NATO would have been a good idea, and he is right that American adventurism has often been ill-advised. But the rest is
dangerous delusion. He sounds like the “End of History” guy who was blind to the rise of Red China in the 90s and blindsided by the gathering Islamic storm. To disarm would have only invited more aggression from those who wish us ill and renders us unable effectively to deter that aggression.
but should the US/western allies have stopped Iraq after it invaded Kuwait?
Why? What is so special about Kuwait? It’s only a country because the Brits wanted to control it after WWI when they drew up their post-war map of the Middle East.
oil and access to saudi
so yah, basically global oil markets
At the time, the Bush Administration was apparently uncertain of the public support for invading Iraq. So they and a PR firm dragged the daughter of some high level Kuwaiti functionary before a congressional committee to tearfully testify that she had been there when the Iraqis invaded, personally saw Iraqi soldiers turn off the incubators holding premature babies, and other atrocities decent people can’t conceive of. She was a flat out liar, never saw any of this happen, hadn’t visited Kuwait in years and there was never any prosecution of her or the PR firm for lying to Congress. So the Bushes have a long history of lying through their teeth to get us involved in the Iraqi wars.
I agree with every word.
Proud I voted for Perot in 1992.
We should have told Saddam to go on to Riyadh, our buildings would still be standing and there would be no Patriot Act.
Mena AR, comes to mind.
SEPTEMBER. 11th. Hmm.
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