Searching for Dragons to Slay

By Michael Rozeff

America as a people has no enemies, none: not North Korea, not Iran, not Russia and not China.

Our government says these are enemies, but they are not. Their forces are not bent on attacking us. They are not preparing to attack us, anymore than Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen were preparing to attack us. None of these countries began a war against us; but in one way or another the government claimed to see enemies and inserted our country into new battles and wars in these places. We must stop supporting the government when it invokes “national security” in situations where national security is not anywhere near being at stake. We should stop supporting our government when it expansively claims that it has “interests” all over the world.

Americans have been conned by warmongers. We continue to be conned. The warmongers who go out of their way to target countries like these and others as enemies use a cunning scheme. They claim that their prey is ready and willing to grow into an enemy. To the warmongers, a potential enemy is not “potential” anything: it’s an enemy, period. Stop them now, we are told. Take preventive steps now, we are told, which means, treat them as if they were an enemy. This makes us into their enemy:

“The United States is preparing for all options to counter the growing threat from North Korea, including launching a ‘preventive war,’ national security adviser H.R. McMaster said in an interview with MSNBC that aired Saturday.”

Hearing this, North Korea will surely regard the U.S. as its enemy, even if we have no basis for thinking of it as our enemy.

By forming alliances with “friends”, the U.S. government goes out of its way to expose us to countries that it can then label as enemies. The enemies of our “friends” and allies become our enemies. Those who favor a large U.S. military like this. They want us always to be on a war footing. That brings them profits, positions, power, promotions, glory and fame.

With reference to countries and states, America has no enemies. There are other countries with substantial military forces and nuclear weapons, but they are not threatening us. They require attention, some vigilance, some caution, but not hostility or threats of our own. We can certainly keep our sword sheathed while extending a hand in friendship.

We need to be careful how we think about terror movements. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are not states. They are terrorist movements that aspire to become states. Are they enemies? No, they are not. They are criminals and then some. It’s a mistake to grant them the status of “enemy”, as if they were a state. This allows warmongers to use them as a rationale for huge expenditures on the military and intelligence operations. They are more like larger scale criminal enterprises or syndicates that gain recruits by ideology. They are more like a Mafia, a mob, a network. Al-Qaeda means “the base”. They are more than an isolated criminal and less than an enemy state.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS are or have been supported in part by states that the U.S. regards as allies, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Even the U.S. has supplied them with arms and equipment, albeit indirectly. In Syria, the Russians, Assad’s forces and elements of Iranian forces are dealing deadly blows to ISIS day after day after day and paying a price in fighters killed in action and wounded. They are defeating the terrorists.

If ISIS were [our] enemy …the U.S…. would be applauding Putin and Assad for winning the day against ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria. Instead, the Congress of the U.S. almost unanimously has just passed a sanctions bill against Iran and Russia that specifically condemns them for their activities in Syria when they’ve been invited in by the Syrian government. (See, for example, Sec. 103(6)(d), Sec. 211(2), and Sec. 234.) This kind of outrageous sanctions bill compels Russia and Iran to view the U.S. as more hostile and more of an enemy. This in turn is what warmongers want, because then it becomes easier for them to claim that Iran and Russia are enemies.

The warmongers do everything in their power to create enemies of Americans where they previously did not exist. This is an absolutely corrupt, unlawful and dishonest aim, one that’s taken over both major political parties.