If they had believed they had more time they could, and perhaps would, have done things differently. But the political elites of the USA were in a hurry.
9/11 spurred them to get the job done they had agreed upon in the days after very quickly. So, they rushed headlong into the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Their plan to take out all the nations who were in a potential rivalry situation with them was about to go horribly wrong all the way to the present day. But the impetus to get this done for the future defense of the USA ruled all.
The Taliban were guilty (in the eyes of Washington) only of providing a place where al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have a base. Bad enough you might say, but a full scale invasion and occupation of a land impossible to tame? A huge tactical mistake.
Then came Iraq and the pressure to find a reason to attack and invade there too. In a rush the weapons of mass destruction gambit was fixed upon. To add a little more support to their invasion plans a bare-faced lie was told about a possible nuclear program and a fake story about buying Uranium Orange Cake was put together. Not content with this it was put about that Saddam Hussain was in league with the 9/11 plotters, al Qaeda. This was an even greater lie than that about the non-existent nuclear program. In any case, despite no clear mandate from the UN the attack and invasion took place as we all know well. And how that whole saga ended.
Libya was another primary target. Syria too, Both were attacked by one means or another. Libya had its economy obliterated and with it its social cohesion, governmental system ushering an anarchy that rumbles on yet where mutually exclusive rivalries fight it out, often literally... and the disgusting re-emergence of a slave trade leaks out to further despoil another failed regime change operation. As bad as Libya was in the delivery of its murderous and enthusiastically created devastation by NATO the war against Syria was at its heart far more evil in its methodologies. Not only would the previous enemies of America be utilized, armed and funded they would be encouraged to take over a country brought to its knees by every means possible. The rise of ISIS was engineered and encouraged by Washington. Speed was of the essence and both Afghanistan and Iraq had been too expensive in terms of blood and treasure. Now proxy forces would be used, any proxy forces, the more violent and ruthless the better.
Syria, like Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan before it quickly became yet another disaster for the White House. And after four years in, with Syria's president still firmly in place but losing his grip on ever more Syrian territory Russia stepped in to stymie the American's plans just as they believed they were finally getting somewhere. Putin was determined that no caliphate would arise in Syria, the ultimate outcome whether the USA wished it or not. Supplying logistical help, weapons and funding to extremists and losing track of which extremist was which and where the weapons migrated to made the ultimate destination of an ISIS caliphate inevitable. They were the most ruthless of all the ruthless actors fighting the Syrian government and it was inevitable that they would celebrate the final victory, until Russia entered the conflict and turned the tide of war against them. Yet another disaster for the U.S. policy to bring down all its targeted leaders and the economies of the nations that supported them in power.
With all this failure behind them next came the decision to support the rioting mobs on Kiev's Maidan, doing their utmost to bring down the democratically-elected president and government who had come to office in two elections called 'free and fair' by the thousands of presiding monitors. John McCain, Victoria Nuland, Geoffrey Pyatt and those who ran special courses for the leaders of the riots all got behind the chaos and anarchy supporting it to the hilt in complete contravention of all their noble pretensions to safeguarding democracy. The chief agency for the USA created to be involved in such episodes, The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was used, without a trace of irony to use an insurrection to level the democracy of an entire nation in a murderous coup. Ukraine of course is a nation of two distinct halves, the west looking west, the east to the east. The east had been responsible for voting in the president and government now ousted. What were they supposed to do as their democratic rights were subverted by those who had no qualms about telling those in the east just how much they hated them? They did what you would also have done, they took matters into their own hands using the example of what had transpired on Maidan, but WITHOUT the violence. It was Washington's proxies from western Ukraine who brought that.
And what do we see happening now in Ukraine eight years later? The conflict is still a running sore with two regions of the Donbass of south-eastern Ukraine constantly surrounded by Kiev's minions (both the Ukrainian military and the savage, hate-fueled ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi 'volunteer battalions'. The crucial question in regard to all the USA's disastrous previous regime change ops is of course how this one is turning out for it. Not very well as it happens. America and its ally, the EU has had to pour hundreds of millions into the Kiev money-pit with little to show for it. Russia is now strong enough to insist that this whole malignant campaign end and America's chief warmongering tool, NATO, retreat from its borders. Ukraine is buckling under the increasingly disastrous economy which has shrunk down to a shadow of its former level before the U.S./EU intervention took place. Another disastrous campaign by the U.S. One more sore on its decaying level of influence and reputation.
Let us now turn to the primary targets the USA has had in its sights all along, Russia and China. The plan was to get to them as soon as possible, but to take the low-hanging fruit first denying them allies and in any case dealing with the weaker nations first, something that didn't come as easy as expected as we've seen. Those low-hanging fruit turned out to be pretty poisonous for the rapacious gullet of the American war machine. At this point a wild card entered the scene, Donald J. Trump, sociopath. Though a thoroughly self-interested corporate criminal and all round thug Trump may have been cannier than he looked. Was his scheme in currying favor with Putin and Russia in the presidential campaign and the earliest days of his presidency based on a certain obvious logic looking back from today when China and Russia have become closer to an unbreakable alliance than ever before?
If the USA was not in such a hurry to 'get the job done' demanded by 9/11, to eliminate all rivals and potential rivals to its global hegemony, it would have done the smart thing and attempted to win over Russia against China. Is it possible that through the almost totally vacant and narcissistic brain of Donald Trump (or that of Bannon, his chief adviser at the time) that if Russia could be made a friend they could both then do their utmost to bring China down together? When we compare this possibility to what actually transpired, the making of Russia into a despised enemy (on a totally false basis, Russiagate) and the driving of Russia into the arms of China we can see the USA creating yet another mess for itself. Because China has started to rise fast and Russia with it. New pipelines are being constructed from Siberia to China, they are trading more and more in Euros, not dollars, technical and military cooperation is becoming more and more common and a plethora of new agreements have just been signed off on. These two now present the USA with a challenge it cannot possibly surmount. It can certainly now no longer have any real hope of achieving the goals it set itself after 9/11. In fact, with its people at each other's throats, with its national debt now soaring over $30 trillion and Covid-19 having decimated great swathes of its population and inflation now soaring... North America will be lucky to achieve its goals even close to home. Venezuela and Cuba have both shown just how tough that can be and with Argentina now joining China's Belt and Road initiative the rot has only just begun.
Truly, the USA is its own worst enemy. Careering down the road to something approaching oblivion still thrashing its military arms in a vain attempt to hurt whoever is around akin to a terminally wounded animal feeling its power fast draining away. The sorry story of a great nation led by donkeys has been seen before, in Britain during World War One. Now an even more tragic concatenation of error, hubris, over-extended aggression and false pride named exceptionalism, has brought it on a road normally reserved for GOOD intentions, the name of the road being of course the road to ruin.
It is a total mess. A horrible, murderous mess of overweening ambition, hatred, false pride, jingoism, bare-faced lying, dirty tricks and legalized slaughter, torture and a litany of some of the most criminal acts by national elites ever known and serially perpetrated by a single nation. As they sometimes say in the USA, what goes around comes around. It's a little bit like a form of national karma. And we will, in our lifetimes see the outcome for all the crimes the elites of the USA have committed. We will finally see them quarantined as Russia-China rises to eclipse their malignant power and end their rampant criminality once and forever.
The U.S. and its self-created mess will then be dutifully consigned, with no regret observed, to the toilet bowl of history.
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