Who knew Defense Secretary Mattis had such a refined sense of humor?

SEC. MATTIS:  “We don’t invade other countries, in Russia’s case — Georgia, Ukraine.  That we settle things by international rule of law, you know, this sort of thing… One point I want to make is we respect these as sovereign nations with a sovereign voice and sovereign decisions, and we don’t think anyone else should have a veto authority over their economic, their diplomatic or their security decisions. So one of the points I will be making just by being there is we respect these countries, and we respect their sovereignty, their sovereign decisions.”

Maybe Mattis has a medical marijuana card? It’s legal in D.C., after all.

If he does, I want to know what he’s smoking.

Here’s the thing–not only does the US not respect sovereignty, but our Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, recently announced our new foreign policy with respect to Syria, where the whole policy violates Syrian sovereignty. Tillerson spoke to the press on January 17: “The United States will maintain a military presence in Syria … Our military mission in Syria will remain conditions-based.”

Maybe the Secretaries of State and Defense ought to get together once and a while and discuss policy? Or, at least keep their stories straight?

Just a thought.

Any American with a working brain cell understands that the US violates other nations sovereignty–regularly.

Nevertheless, it’s extremely difficult to get Americans, liberal or conservative, to frankly discuss this obvious reality.

The Trump supporters who believed the president when he promised to pull back from regime change and foreign conflict in pursuit of empire should be pissed. It’s beyond obvious that the neocons have made Trump their bitch.

I know it sounds harsh, but what the fuck?

And, members of the McResistence, way to go! Your obsession with Russia-gate has greatly aided the neocon machinations. Again, good job.

Don’t forget the corporate media with their propagandistic 24-hour news cycle, and strategic deployment of the memory hole, with regards to statements like Mattis’s.

There’s a method to the madness.

The empire that the US maintains through perpetual war is key to the wealth and power that our plutocrat owners have amassed.

Since the Second World War the wealthy and the corporations they own have maintained  a permanent wartime economy in order to maximize profits. WWII provided these managers and captains of industry a very important lesson: during a war there is lots of money to be made.

In my opinion, it’s for this reason that the Cold War was unleashed in 1945, not by the Soviets but by the US military/industrial/complex, or as C. Wright Mills described them–the power elite.

While the profits generated by the Cold War were privatized to the advantage of the elite, its costs were largely socialized. Up until the 70’s this arrangement was bearable for the majority of Americans who were employed under this military/Keynsian arrangement, and protected from the savagery of the market with New Deal welfare programs. Over time, neoliberalism has taken away these benefits from average Americans. In fact, since 9/11 the war on terror with its precarious gig economy has been an unmitigated disaster for average Americans.

Trump was elected for articulating this grim reality.

No matter. War is obscenely profitable for the elite that control our country, and they have no intention of returning to a peacetime economy whether average Americans like it or not. And, with their control over the corporate media, maintaining a state of perpetual warfare is child’s play.

Rogue blogger Nina Illingworth explains how Americans are propagandized into supporting endless war, through an insidious public/private/partnership.

“The simple truth is that the rich warmongers who dominate the center establishment in US politics require little if any justification to start wars; no matter how disastrous the conflict, or how many lives it ends–politicians still get bribes, military contractors still get to bill taxpayers trillions of dollars to replace the bombs we rain down like hellfire and wealthy elites invested in the national security industry still get their yearly stock bonuses.

Furthermore, because the US corporate media is either dominated by the same interests who stand to profit from endless conflict, or is just happy to repeat propaganda the government offers to justify military action; manufacturing consent for virtually any war can be easily accomplished in a span of months not years.

It is important to note that in practice if not by design, this combination of the US administration’s need to control public opinion about foreign interventions, as well as mainstream media’s profit-driven imperative to attract viewers, effectively makes the government and major American news corporations partners in producing and packaging a given war for public consumption.”

I’m in awe of this all-American propaganda system. In 2002 and 2003 conservatives were whipped into a war frenzy in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and now, liberals have been converted into cold-warriors by Russia-gate, promulgated endlessly by liberal media stars like Rachel Maddow.

The upshot is that the neocons and Russia hawks on Capitol Hill have gotten the new cold war their military-industrial complex donors have so desperately craved, as have the oligarchs who own America’s mainstream media.

Trump hasn’t made America great again, but he has kept America perpetually at war.

George Orwell had something to say about this state of affairs.