America The Victim

America The Victim

Are Enemies Lining Up For Revenge In The Wake Of The Coronavirus?

By Philip Giraldi
Information Clearing House
May 15, 2020

When in trouble politically, governments have traditionally
conjured up a foreign enemy to explain why things are going
wrong.

Whatever one chooses to believe about the coronavirus the fact
is that it has resulted in considerable political backlash against
a number of governments whose behavior has been perceived as
either too extreme or too dilatory.

Donald Trump’s White House has taken shots from both directions
and the response to the disease has also been pilloried due to
repeated gaffes by the president himself.

The latest mis-spoke now being framed by Trump’s press secretary
as, "sarcasm" involved a presidential suggestion that one might
consider injecting or imbibing disinfectant to treat the disease,
either of which could easily prove lethal.

So the administration is desperate to change the narrative and has
decided to hit on the old expedient, namely seeking out a foreign
enemy to distract from what is going on in the nation’s hospitals.

The tale of malevolent foreigners has been picked up by a number
of mainstream media outlets and has proven especially titillating
because there is not just one bad guy, but instead at least four:
China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The accepted narrative is that America’s enemies are now taking
advantage of a moment of weakness due to the lockdown response
to the coronavirus and have stepped up their attacks, both physical
and metaphorical on the, "Exceptional Nation Under God."

The most recent claim that the United States is being targeted
involves an incident in mid-April during which a swarm of Iranian
gunboats allegedly harassed a group of American warships
conducting a training exercise in the Persian Gulf by crossing
the bows and sterns of the U.S. vessels at close range.

The maneuvers were described by the Navy as, “unsafe and
unprofessional” but the tiny speedboats in no way threatened
the much larger warships.

Donald Trump characteristically responded to the incident with a
tweet last Wednesday: “I have instructed the United States Navy to
shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass
our ships at sea.”

Although no context was provided, the president commands
the armed forces and the tweet essentially defined the rules
of engagement, meaning that it would be up to the ships’
commanders to determine whether or not they are being
harassed.

If so they would be able to open fire and destroy the Iranian boats.

Of course there might be a physical problem in, “shooting down”
a gunboat that is in the water rather than in the air.

In the Mediterranean the threat against the U.S. consisted of
two Russian jet fighters flying close to a Navy P8-A submarine
surveillance plane.

The Russian fighters were scrambled from Hmeymim air base
in Syria after the U.S. aircraft approached Syrian airspace and
Russian military facilities.

One of the fighters, a SU-35 carried out an “unsafe” maneuver
when it flew upside down at high-speed 25 feet in front of the
Navy plane.

Also in mid-April, North Korea meanwhile fired cruise missiles into
the Sea of Japan amidst rumors that its head of state Kim Jong Un
might be dead or dying after major surgery.

President Trump was unconcerned about the missiles and also
commented that he had received a, “nice note” from the North
Korean leader.

Wars and rumors of wars notwithstanding, China continues to
be the principal target for Democrats and Republicans alike on
Capitol Hill.

GOP congressmen are reportedly urging sanctions against China
while there are already a number of coronavirus lawsuits targeting
Chinese assets in U.S. courts, at least one of which has a trillion
dollar price tag.

Theories about the deliberate weaponization of the Wuhan virus
abound and they are also mixed in with stories of how Beijing
unleashed the weapons and is now engaged in Russia style social
media intervention to promote the notion that the United States
has proven incapable of handling what has become a major medical
emergency.

However those who are pushing the idea that the Chinese
communist party has declared war by other means fail to explain
why the government in Beijing is so keen on destroying its largest
export market.

If the U.S. economy goes down a large part of the Chinese economy
will go with it, particularly if China’s second largest export market
Europe is also suffering.

The craziness of what is going on in the context of the disruption
caused by the coronavirus has apparently increased the normal
paranoia level at the top levels of the U.S. government.

Pentagon plans to fight a war with Russia and China simultaneously,
first mooted in 2018, are still a work in progress in spite of the fact
that Washington has fewer cards to play currently than it did two
years ago.

The economy is down and prospects for recovery are speculative
at best, but the war machine rolls on.

Many Americans tired of the perpetual warfare are hoping that the
virus aftermath will include demands for a genuine national health
system that will perforce gut the Pentagon budget, leading to an
eventual withdrawal from empire.

In spite of the hysteria, it is important to note that no Americans
have been killed or injured as a result of recent Iranian, Russian,
Chinese and North Korean actions.

When you station ships and planes close to or even on the borders
of countries that you have labeled as enemies it would be
reasonable to expect that there will be pushback.

And as for taking advantage of the virus, it is the United States that
has suggested that it would do so in the cases of Iran and Venezuela
exerting, “maximum pressure” on both countries in their times of
troubles to bring about regime change.

If those countries that are accustomed to being regularly targeted
by the United States are taking advantage of an opportunity to
diminish America’s ability to intervene globally, no one should be
surprised, but it is a fantasy to make the hysterical claim that the
United States has now become the victim of some kind of vast
international conspiracy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55132.htm