{"id":280603,"date":"2024-01-24T08:48:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T08:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=280603"},"modified":"2024-01-26T08:54:36","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T08:54:36","slug":"the-four-horsemen-of-gazas-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=280603","title":{"rendered":"The Four Horsemen of Gaza\u2019s Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Hedges \u2013 The Unz Review Jan 21, 2024<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n

Joe Biden relies on advisors who view the world through the prism of the West\u2019s civilizing mission to the \u201clesser breeds\u201d of the earth to formulate his policies towards Israel and the Middle East.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Joe Biden\u2019s inner circle of strategists for the Middle East \u2014 Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk \u2014 have little understanding of the Muslim world and a deep animus towards Islamic resistance movements. They see Europe, the United States and Israel as involved in a clash of civilizations between the enlightened West and a barbaric Middle East. They believe that violence can bend Palestinians and other Arabs to their will. They champion the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. and Israeli military as the key to regional stability \u2014 an illusion that fuels the flames of regional war and perpetuates the genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

In short, these four men are grossly incompetent. They join the club of other clueless leaders, such as those who waltzed into the suicidal slaughter of World War One, waded into the quagmire of Vietnam or who orchestrated the series of recent military debacles in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. They are endowed with the presumptive power vested in the Executive Branch to bypass Congress, to provide weapons to Israel and carry out military strikes in Yemen and Iraq. This inner circle of true believers dismiss the more nuanced and informed counsels in the State Department and the intelligence communities, who view the refusal of the Biden administration to pressure Israel to halt the ongoing genocide as ill-advised and dangerous.<\/p>\n

Biden has always been an ardent militarist<\/a> \u2014 he was calling for war<\/a> with Iraq five years before the U.S. invaded. He built his political career by catering to the distaste of the white middle class for the popular movements, including the anti-war and civil rights movements, that convulsed the country in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a Republican masquerading as a Democrat. He joined<\/a> Southern segregationists to oppose bringing Black students into Whites-only schools. He opposed<\/a> federal funding for abortions and supported a constitutional amendment allowing states to restrict abortions. He attacked<\/a> President George H. W. Bush in 1989 for being too soft in the \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d He was one of the architects<\/a> of the 1994 crime bill<\/a> and a raft of other<\/a> draconian laws that more than doubled the U.S. prison population, militarized the police and pushed through drug laws that saw people incarcerated for life without parole. He supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest betrayal<\/a> of the working class<\/a> since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. He has always been a strident defender<\/a> of Israel, bragging<\/a> that he did more fundraisers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any other Senator.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one. We\u2019d have to invent one because\u2026 you protect our interests like we protect yours,\u201d Biden said<\/a> in 2015, to an audience that included the Israeli ambassador, at the 67th Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration in Washington D.C. During the same speech he said, \u201cThe truth of the matter is we need you. The world needs you. Imagine what it would say about humanity and the future of the 21st century if Israel were not sustained, vibrant and free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The year before Biden gave a gushing eulogy<\/a> for Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister and general who was implicated<\/a> in massacres<\/a> of Palestinians, Lebanese and others in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon \u2014 as well as Egyptian prisoners of war \u2014 going back to the 1950s. He described Sharon as \u201cpart of one of the most remarkable founding generations in the history not of this nation, but of any nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

While repudiating Donald Trump and his administration, Biden has not reversed Trump\u2019s abrogation<\/a> of the Iran nuclear deal<\/a> negotiated by Barack Obama, or Trump\u2019s sanctions<\/a> against Iran. He has embraced Trump\u2019s close ties with Saudi Arabia, including the rehabilitation of Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, following the assassination<\/a> of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017 in the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. He has not intervened to curb Israeli attacks on Palestinians and settlement expansion in the West Bank. He did not reverse Trump\u2019s moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, although the embassy includes<\/a> land Israel illegally colonized after invading the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.<\/p>\n

As a seven-term senator of Delaware, Biden received more<\/a> financial support from pro-Israel donors than any other senator, since 1990. Biden retains this record despite the fact that his senatorial career ended in 2009, when he became Obama\u2019s vice president. Biden explains his commitment to Israel as \u201cpersonal\u201d and \u201cpolitical.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has parroted<\/a> back Israeli propaganda \u2014 including fabrications about beheaded babies<\/a> and widespread rape<\/a> of Israeli women by Hamas fighters \u2014 and asked Congress to provide<\/a> $14 billion in additional aid to Israel since the Oct. 7 attack. He has twice bypassed<\/a> Congress to supply Israel with thousands of bombs and munitions, including at least 100 2,000-pound bombs<\/a>, used in the scorched earth campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Israel has killed or seriously<\/a> wounded close to 90,000 Palestinians in Gaza, almost one in every 20 inhabitants. It has destroyed or damaged over 60 percent<\/a> of the housing. The \u201csafe areas,\u201d to which some 2 million Gazans were instructed to flee in southern Gaza, have been bombed, with thousands of casualties. Palestinians in Gaza now make up 80 percent<\/a> of all the people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, according to the U.N. Every person in Gaza is hungry. A quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water. Famine is imminent. The 335,000 children under the age of five are at high risk<\/a> of malnutrition. Some 50,000 pregnant women lack<\/a> healthcare and adequate nutrition.<\/p>\n

And it could all end if the U.S. chose to intervene.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it\u2019s all from the U.S.,\u201d retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told<\/a> the Jewish News Syndicate. \u201cThe minute they turn off the tap, you can\u2019t keep fighting. You have no capability\u2026 Everyone understands that we can\u2019t fight this war without the United States. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blinken was Biden\u2019s principal foreign policy adviser<\/a> when Biden was the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. He, along with Biden, lobbied for the invasion of Iraq. When he was Obama\u2019s deputy national security advisor, he advocated the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi<\/a> in Libya. He opposed withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria. He worked<\/a> on the disastrous Biden Plan<\/a> to partition Iraq<\/a> along ethnic lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the Obama White House, Blinken played an influential role in the imposition of sanctions against Russia over the 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and subsequently led ultimately unsuccessful calls for the U.S. to arm Ukraine,\u201d according to<\/a> the Atlantic Council, NATO\u2019s unofficial think tank.<\/p>\n

When Blinken landed in Israel following the attacks by Hamas and other resistance groups on Oct. 7, he announced<\/a> at a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: \u201cI come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

He attempted, on Israel\u2019s behalf, to lobby Arab leaders to accept the 2.3 million Palestinian refugees Israel intends to ethnically cleanse from Gaza, a request that evoked outrage among Arab leaders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sullivan, Biden\u2019s national security advisor, and McGurk, are consummate opportunists, Machiavellian bureaucrats who cater to the reigning centers of power, including the Israel lobby.<\/p>\n

Sullivan was the chief architect<\/a> of Hillary Clinton\u2019s Asia pivot<\/a>. He backed the corporate<\/a> and investor rights<\/a> Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which was sold as helping<\/a> the U.S. contain<\/a> China. Trump ultimately killed the trade agreement in the face of mass opposition<\/a> from the U.S. public. His focus<\/a> is thwarting a rising China, including through the expansion<\/a> of the U.S. military.<\/p>\n

While not focused on the Middle East, Sullivan is a foreign policy hawk who has a knee jerk embrace of force to shape the world to U.S. demands. He embraces<\/a> military Keynesianism, arguing<\/a> that massive government spending on the weapons industry benefits the domestic economy.<\/p>\n

In a 7,000-word essay for Foreign Affairs magazine published five days before the Oct. 7 attacks, which left some 1,200 Israelis dead, Sullivan exposed<\/a> his lack of understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges,\u201d he writes<\/a> in the original version of the essay, \u201cthe region is quieter than it has been for decades,\u201d adding that in the face of \u201cserious\u201d frictions, \u201cwe have de-escalated crises in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan ignores Palestinian aspirations and Washington\u2019s rhetorical backing for a two-state solution in the article, hastily rewritten in the online version after the Oct. 7 attacks. He writes in his original piece:<\/p>\n

At a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last year, the president set forth his policy for the Middle East in an address to the leaders of members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. His approach returns discipline to US policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors.<\/p>\n

McGurk, the deputy assistant to President Biden and the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House National Security Council, was a chief architect of Bush\u2019s \u201csurge\u201d in Iraq, which accelerated the bloodletting. He worked<\/a> as a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority and the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. He then became Trump\u2019s anti-ISIS czar.<\/p>\n

He does not speak Arabic \u2014 none of the four men does \u2014 and came to Iraq with no knowledge of its history, peoples or culture. Nevertheless, he helped<\/a> draft Iraq\u2019s interim constitution and oversaw the legal transition from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Interim Iraqi Government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. McGurk was an early backer of Nouri al-Maliki, who was Iraq\u2019s prime minister between 2006 and 2014. Al-Maliki built a Shi\u2019ite-controlled sectarian state that deeply alienated Sunni Arabs and Kurds. In 2005, McGurk transferred to the National Security Council (NSC), where he served as director for Iraq, and later as special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq and Afghanistan. He served on the NSC staff from 2005 to 2009. In 2015, he was appointed<\/a> as Obama\u2019s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL<\/a>. He was retained by Trump until his resignation in Dec. 2018.<\/p>\n

An article in April 2021 titled \u201cBrett McGurk: A Hero of Our Times,<\/a>\u201d in New Lines Magazine by former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood, paints a scathing portrait of McGurk. Wood writes:<\/p>\n

A senior Western diplomat who served in Baghdad told me that McGurk had been an absolute disaster for Iraq. \u201cHe is a consummate operator in Washington, but I saw no sign that he was interested in Iraqis or Iraq as a place full of real people. It was simply a bureaucratic and political challenge for him.\u201d One critic who was in Baghdad with McGurk called him Machiavelli reincarnated. \u201cIt\u2019s intellect plus ambition plus the utter ruthlessness to rise no matter the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u2026.]<\/p>\n

A U.S. diplomat who was in the embassy when McGurk arrived found his steady advance astonishing. \u201cBrett only meets people who speak English. \u2026 There are like four people in the government who speak English. And somehow he\u2019s now the person who should decide the fate of Iraq? How did this happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those who didn\u2019t like McGurk had to admit that he had a formidable intellect \u2014 and was a hard worker. He was also a gifted writer, no surprise as he had clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. His rise mirrored that of an Iraqi politician named Nouri al-Maliki, one careerist helping the other. That is McGurk\u2019s tragedy \u2014 and Iraq\u2019s.<\/p>\n

[\u2026.]<\/p>\n

McGurk\u2019s critics say his lack of Arabic meant he missed the vicious, sectarian undertones of what al-Maliki was saying in meetings right from the start. Translators censored or failed to keep up. Like many Americans in Iraq, McGurk was deaf to what was happening around him.<\/p>\n

Al-Maliki was the consequence of two mistakes by the U.S. How much McGurk had to do with them remains in dispute. The first mistake was the \u201c80 Percent Solution\u201d for ruling Iraq. The Sunni Arabs were mounting a bloody insurgency, but they were just 20% of the population. The theory was that you could run Iraq with the Kurds and the Shiites. The second error was to identify the Shiites with hardline, religious parties backed by Iran. Al-Maliki, a member of the religious Da\u2019wa Party, was the beneficiary of this.<\/p>\n

In a piece<\/a> in HuffPost in May 2022 by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, titled \u201cBiden\u2019s Top Middle East Advisor \u2018Torched the House and Showed Up With a Firehose,\u2019\u201d McGurk is described by a colleague, who asked not to be named, as \u201cthe most talented bureaucrat they\u2019ve ever seen, with the worst foreign policy judgment they\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGurk, like others in the Biden administration, is bizarrely focused on what comes after Israel\u2019s genocidal campaign, rather than trying to halt it. McGurk proposed<\/a> denying humanitarian aid and refusing to implement a pause in the fighting in Gaza until all the Israeli hostages were freed. Biden and his three closest policy advisors have called for the Palestinian Authority \u2014 an Israeli puppet regime that is reviled by most Palestinians \u2014 to take control of Gaza once Israel finishes leveling it. They have called on Israel \u2014 since Oct. 7 \u2014 to take steps towards a two-state solution, a plan rejected<\/a> in an humiliating public rebuke to the the Biden White House by Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

The Biden White House spends more time talking to the Israelis and Saudis, who are being lobbied to normalize relations with Israel and help rebuild Gaza, than the Palestinians, who are at best, an afterthought. It believes the key to ending Palestinian resistance is found in Riyadh, summed up in a top-secret document peddled by McGurk called the \u201cJerusalem-Jeddah Pact,\u201d the HuffPost reported<\/a>. It is unable or unwilling to curb Israel\u2019s bloodlust, which included missile strikes in a residential neighborhood in Damascus, Syria, on Saturday that killed<\/a> five military advisors from Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a drone attack<\/a> in South Lebanon on Sunday, which killed two senior members of Hezbollah. These Israeli provocations will not go unanswered, evidenced by the ballistic missiles and rockets launched<\/a> on Sunday by militants in western Iraq that targeted U.S. personnel stationed at the al-Assad Airbase.<\/p>\n

The Alice-in-Wonderland idea that once the slaughter in Gaza ends a diplomatic pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia will be the key to regional stability is stupefying. Israel\u2019s genocide<\/a>, and Washington\u2019s complicity, is shredding U.S. credibility and influence, especially in the Global South and the Muslim world. It ensures another generation of enraged Palestinians \u2014 whose families have been obliterated and whose homes have been destroyed \u2014 seeking vengeance.<\/p>\n

The policies embraced by the Biden administration not only blithely ignore the realities in the Arab world, but the realities of an extremist Israeli state that, with Congress bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, couldn\u2019t care less what the Biden White House dreams up. Israel has no intention<\/a> of creating a viable Palestinian state. Its goal<\/a> is the ethnic cleansing of the 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of Gaza by Israel. And when Israel is done with Gaza, it will turn on the West Bank, where Israeli raids now occur on an almost nightly basis and where thousands<\/a> have been arrested and detained without charge<\/a> since Oct. 7.<\/p>\n

Those running the show in the Biden White House are chasing after rainbows. The march of folly led by these four blind mice perpetuates the cataclysmic suffering of the Palestinians, stokes a regional war and presages another tragic and self-defeating chapter in the two decades of U.S. military fiascos in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Chris Hedges<\/em><\/strong> is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for <\/em>The New York Times , where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for <\/em>The Dallas Morning News , <\/em>The Christian Science Monitor , and <\/em>NPR . He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally posted at https:\/\/scheerpost.com\/2024\/01\/21\/chris-hedges-the-four-horsemen-of-gazas-apocalypse\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Biden and his advisers join a club of other clueless leaders, such as those who waltzed into the suicidal slaughter of World War One, waded into the quagmire of Vietnam or who orchestrated the series of recent military debacles in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":280604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280605,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280603\/revisions\/280605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/280604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}