Hey there.
Donald Trump's assassination of Qasem Solemani, a high official of a country we are not at
war with is the logical outgrowth of 20 sordid years of disgusting developments in US foreign
policy.
Bush's illegal and idiotic invasion of Iraq was one step down the path.
Another was Obama's due process free murder from the air of anybody he designated as an
enemy, even US citizens.
Most importantly, the US congress's cowardice in the face of these actions, and craven renunciation
of their constitutional duty to protect us from war mad kings has brought us to this
place.
I am honestly not sure what scares me more at this point.
Iran's reaction to this could be terrible, and we could be heading for out next multi-trillion
dollar war.
But Donald Trump could also get away with it.
One of this channel's most consistent messages is that the United States is much more powerful
than our media and government pretends it is.
This vast power is now wielded by a man who kills anybody he wants, thinks that the highest
use of US power is stealing oil, and issues pardons to soldierw the US military has arrested
for committing war crimes.
If we fail to stop this man, there is no longer any denying it.
We are the bad guys.
That honestly scares me more than any Iranian retaliation.
But I will tell you something that doesn't scare me in 2020: Russia and China.
There has been a lot of loose talk about world war III bandied about this week.
It's even been trending on Twitter.
This is an idea you see a lot in the YouTube comments, and in less responsible places,
like the Washington DC think tank community.
In the week before the assassination, respectable sources were panicking about joint naval exercises
between Russia, Iran and China.
On the day of the assassination I was even reading an article talking about an emerging
Eurasian axis of power arising to confront the Unoted States.
Strangely I can't find that article anymore.
One silver lining to the Soleimani killing is the fact that the ridiculousness of all
this talk has been exposed.
You had to look pretty hard to find the Russian and Chinese reactions to the assassination.
It's mostly just weak calls for calm, and correct but toothless observations about the
damage the US attack does to Iraqi and Iranian sovereignty.
World War Three is not coming any time soon.
China or Russia would have to be involved to make that happen and they have no interest.
Iran stands alone, and it will continue to do so for the next few years.
Despite all the Pentagon hype, Russia and China are powerless in the Middle East.
Putin puts up a good show, but whenever he actually gets in the US's way in Syria, Russians
die in large numbers.
That has already happened by the way.
The US and Russia both worked hard to make sure you never heard about it.
I am not saying this out of some sick pride by the way.
I am pointing this out because Washington DC's lies need to be exposed.
Trump, and a whole bunch of other people that are supposed to be more respectable than him
rely on a myth of US weakness.
That's how they justify horrors like what we did to Libya and Iraq.
It's supposedly scary out there, and unless we do brutal, insane things like assassinate
world leaders, nobody will respect US.
The truth is so much sadder.
With each passing year of forever war it gets harder to deny that we are the bad guys.
It's the United States that is pissing away it's authority with actions like last Friday's
assassination.
Our power is slipping away, but it is doing so more slowly than the Defense industry and
it's pet institutions claim.
Our power will diminish enough to make a third world war possible but that should take a
couple decades.
If we continue on the same evil trajectory we are on now, the world will breath a sigh
of relief when our power is finally destroyed.
Hopefully it will end with a whimper, like the Suez crisis rather than with the bang
of another world war…
Thanks for watching, please subscribe, and if you want to read about how the last world
system fell in a very similar way, you should read my new book, avoiding the British empire,
available now in paperback and ebook form.