The missile strikes in Syria were a joke.

Western officials claimed the 105-missile attack, including on a scientific research and development center in the capital of Damascus’ Barzeh district and two facilities nearly the city of Homs, had crippled Assad’s chemical weapons abilities.

The attack wasn’t really about chemical weapons at all. In fact, there’s a strong case to be made that the chemical attack was fabricated. Instead, the attack was an attempt to disable the Syrian air force by destroying its airports. It failed and now the Pentagon is hiding this failure by claiming that all its cruise missiles hit the undefended targets some of its missiles reached.

Here’s what the military experts at Sic Semper Tyrannis, have to say about the West’s cruise missile diplomacy.

“Do not believe a word you have heard from the Pentagon and the White House about the “success” of the cruise missile strikes on Friday last. A fraud is being perpetrated on the American people and the world at large. Frankly, General Mattis and General Dunford have dishonored themselves by going along with this charade.”

The martial exercise was not just about a purported chemical weapons attack in Syria. Let’s be honest, Trump and the mandarins of US foreign policy could care less about dead Arab children. The problem goes much deeper.

The US empire is running into post-primacy faster than anticipated, and Russia, due to geographical, historical, cultural and military factors, is today the objective leader of the worldwide resistance to the Empire. Hence, Russia-gate.

In my opinion, the US empire is in steep decline because the US maintains a very unique empire based on greedy/ideology. As a nation of hustlers, that’s just how we roll.

However, this greedy/ideology is really starting to bite us in the ass. We are ruled by fools, where the pursuit of profit interferes with competent empire management. The way in which our feral elite thought they could “manage” China, offers a useful testament to this greedy/ideology. Our leading lights, while recognizing China as a long term adversary, couldn’t pass up the chance to offshore US industry to China, largely to destroy American unionized labor and increase shareholder value and executive compensation. Except, now China is seen as an existential enemy. Recently, Trump launched a trade war with China as the enormity of the blunder becomes clear.

Even worse, the ceaseless demonization of Russia and China has brought the two together, violating the maxim about uniting enemies. Even the Machiavellian ghoul Henry Kissenger understood this and sought to keep Russia and China divided during the Cold War. Presently, Russia and China are working together on the One Belt One Road project in central Asia, that promises to be a game changer  Add the Petro-Yuan to the equation and you have the emergence of a new Eurasian model which threatens to make the US corporate empire irrelevant.

Most of this starts with the basics. Not only does the US not have anything remotely resembling a consistent foreign policy, it does not even do diplomacy. The Department of State does not deal with diplomacy simply because the US leaders don’t believe in diplomacy as a concept. They simply issue threats, like UN Ambassador Nikki Haley openly declaring at a UNSC meeting that the US is willing to ignore the decisions of the UNSC and act in complete violation of the UN Charter.

Despite the enormity of their failure, the managers of the US corporate empire do have at their disposal the worlds best propaganda system. However, this system has limits. The reason that the corporate media works so hard to manufacture support for war because they still require that consent from the American people.

Meanwhile, there is a brewing dissatisfaction. Indeed, for the last two elections Americans have clearly voted for a different foreign policy. First for Hope and Change, where they voted for Obama as a turn from the disastrous foreign policies of George W. Bush, and now Make America Great Again, where Trump supporters voted to end these disastrous wars of empire that are sending their kin home in body bags.

The reason for the lack of change can be attributed to the bi-partisanship of empire, and to the suppression of the discussion of the morality of the empire by the feral elite that directly benefit from this empire. It’s pretty simple: America is now involved in so many wars in so many different places, and there exists such an overwhelming bipartisan consensus that involvement in these wars is necessary and to the US advantage, that to confront the morality of our militarism honestly would require an almost total overhaul of America’s role in the world.

It’s beyond time for an overhaul.

If we are to have any hope of doing so we’re going to have to put aside  partisanship. No more team red or team blue. Those artificial constructs allow the feral elite to divide and rule. Instead we’re going to have to make alliances across those lines in the pursuit of an anti-empire foreign policy.

We don’t have much time.

Update: Colonel W. Patrick Lang, a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets), details the malign influence of the neocons on US foreign policy.

“I am told that the old neocon crew argued as hard as possible for a disabling massive air and missile campaign intended to destroy the Syrian government’s ability to fight the mostly jihadi rebels. John Bolton, General (ret.) Jack Keane and many other neocons argued strongly for this campaign as a way to reverse the outcome of the civil war. James Mattis managed to obtain President Trump’s approval for a much more limited and largely symbolic strike but Trump was clearly inclined to the neocon side of the argument. What will happen next time?”