Madeleine Albright

On September 3, 2014 The Associated Press reported:  “Secretaries of State past and present meet for rare reunion for a museum ground breaking event…a museum and education centre that will demonstrate the ways in which diplomacy matters now and has mattered throughout American history.  Secretary of State John Kerry warned Wednesday against creeping American isolationism, making the case that U.S. global leadership is essential in uncertain times as he hosted a rare public reunion of five of his predecessors.”

In early January 1998, aware of the soon-to-break story about the Clinton/Lewinsky trysts, the Project for a New American Century saw its “window of opportunism.”  On January 16—the day before the story appeared in the press—PNAC publicized their “open letter” to President Clinton urging him to consider military action against the Iraq regime of Saddam Hussein, who was again alleged to be evading UN inspections and stockpiling tons of lethal WMDs.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
— Voltaire, 1694-1778

Media with a pro-Western bias usually remind us of 9/11 based on a victim narrative. We just passed 3/20 – the 11th Anniversary of the war on Iraq. Every year they forget 10/7 (Afghanistan) and 3/24, the destruction of Serbia-Kosovo in 1999.
What to do when NATO’s raison d’etre – the Warsaw Pact – had dissolved? Answer: Turn NATO into a humanitarian bombing organisation which in – fake – Gandhian style could say: We are bombing for a higher ethical humanitarian purpose to save lives and on this exceptionalist moral high ground we ignore international law.

During the mid-1980s, right-wing Americans loved to invoke President Reagan’s observation about the Soviet Union: “They reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,” in order to attain a one-word Socialist or Communist state. The Soviet Union was the “Evil Empire.”

U.S. foreign policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan has mostly been counter-productive – enabling the happening of what policies were intended to prevent. The disturbing manner in which the crisis in Ukraine is unfolding — more and more provocative — demonstrates once again that U.S. policy is doomed to be counter-productive.

Ladies und gentlemen, willkommen to the Kit Kat Klub in beautiful Los Angeles, California where even za hood has palm trees! As you know, three weeks ago it was windy for two straight days and last week it was overcast and sprinkled briefly but we’ve talked it out, we’ve recovered and we’re ready to party again! Don’t let the sports on the giant plasma screens or the live dancers distract you from this book review. Stop texting for a moment and let me pour you a Tony Montana, a line of Whole Fools gluten-free, organic, totally vegan, absolutely fair-traded Bolivian marching powder.