Respect warranted for at least two bright Americans

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - One does not normally equate a person (who is retired now from decades in the CIA) as one with sound views and good instincts about the challenges to the world of a government that has been making – to put it simply – stupid moves and continues its errant ways under Donald Trump. But one such person is Philip Giraldi who writes articles outside the mainstream media about what he sees that is slowly destroying U.S. credibility worldwide.

In one article penned this month by Giraldi, he points out that the most disturbing aspect of the Trump gangsters is their presumption that decisions made by the government are binding on the rest of the world, as if the U.S. literally rules the world. For example, no other country has ever demanded that nations halt trading with each other outside of actual war, and sought to penalize them if they did trade.

 Various rulings against Iran in the context of legislation have been particularly damaging, but any group or country that has been deemed a “state sponsor of terrorism”, and that includes Syria of late, have been vilified. The notion that the U.S. ought to respect the sovereignty of other nations even when their internal policies disagree with the U.S., Giraldi says, has been abandoned. Nothing new here, sadly.

Giraldi is an American patriot in the very best sense of the word because he is not merely knowledgeable, but also quite simply an honest person at a time when, given the fact that most of the world’s oil business is transacted in fiat dollars, the U.S. uses dollars, or their withdrawal, to interfere overseas and quite literally impoverish other countries that don’t do the bidding of the U.S.

Iran is a case in point, but there are many others such as Maduro’s Venezuela. But at the same time the U.S. is also, inadvertently, slowly destroying U.S. dollar hegemony, having weaponized it, to the point where across the world governments are trying desperately to figure out ways to do business without it. Someday, and no one knows when, the Petrodollar itself will in all likelihood be a relic of the past.

 Will, for example, Saudi Arabia begin to sell oil for other currencies, and what would be the ramifications of that? A U.S. takeover in some fashion of Saudi resources, as the U.S. blatantly has said it wants to more or less take over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves? That won’t fly. The U.S. would fast lose its only firm ally, besides Israel, in the Middle East.

But besides right-thinking commentators like Giraldi, and he is just one of several worth noting, there are others who are emerging and one definitely worth attention is U.S. Congressional Democrat representative from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard. She recently announced her 2020 candidacy (in what is going to be a very crowded field) for President.

 Gabbard, 37, a Hindu, a still serving major in the U.S. Army National Guard had two regular Army tours of duty in Iraq and independently went to Syria a couple years ago and met with Assad to try to figure out on her own initiative what the Syrian war has been about given the misinformation spewed by the mainstream U.S. media. She has been under attack because of her views by the “establishment”. 

Gabbard’s primary campaign initiative has so far been to condemn U.S. interference, sanctions and wars of choice by the U.S. on other countries for “regime change”, and not because she “sides”, say, with Assad’s Syria, but because countries like Syria or Iran or Venezuela do not, she claims, literally threaten the U.S. In fact, she points out correctly that U.S. warmongering actually damages the U.S. widely and deflects attention from pressing and growing problems inside the U.S.

In one recent interview on national television on a morning talk show where the interviewers tried desperately – and embarrassingly – to corner Gabbard and force her into a misstep and destroy her candidacy, she acquitted herself brilliantly, soundly deflecting the attacks to the point where she has likely made herself, if any female could be, the most viable female candidate for President ever.

 This is because, to cite just one reason, a majority of Americans – outside Trump’s base of ignorant faux “Christian” evangelicals and Zionists and Neocons, seem to be realizing that U.S. militancy and regime change wars are quite simply wrong, unhealthy and counterproductive.

Meanwhile, Trump just this week delivered a delayed annual “State of the Union” address to Congress to the usual obligatory and absurd applause. It was delivered by the Prince of Lies, Trump, and was full of lies about the real state of the “union” under his Presidency. And on top of that the Senate passed legislation that effectively would undercut the cherished 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (that in part guarantees “free speech”) by making it a crime to support the BDS movement to halt Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 Hard to know whether the rest of Congress will agree with the Senate vote, but if it does make it in to law, it’s bound to reach the U.S. Supreme Court for review. If the court did not strike it down, you can kiss U.S. democracy goodbye forever and the U.S. government will be further reviled and damaged in world opinion by its obsession with supporting Zionist apartheid. 

And for sheer lunacy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, grubbing for any reason to send U.S. soldiers on a rampage in Venezuela, is claiming that Hebzbollah has installed active “cells” in Caracas and throughout South America. Hmmm. One wonders where that assertion originated. Can you spell Zionistaland?