Obama: Our “measure of strength internationally is not simply how many countries we’re occupying and bombing”

by Melissa Dykes

Didn’t George Orwell write a book about this?

Here’s a pretty revealing statement from our Nobel Peace Prize winning Commander-in-Chief earlier this week:

“The measure of strength internationally is not simply by how many countries we’re occupying, or how many missiles we’re firing, but the strength of our diplomacy and the strength of our commitment to human rights and our belief that we’ve got to cooperate with other countries together to solve massive problems like terrorism but also like climate change,” Obama said as he headlined a 350-person fundraiser in Potomac, Md. (source)

(Still doing fundraisers, eh?)

So the measure of US strength isn’t the number of countries the US is occupying and bombing (oh, and blah blah blah human rights and terrorism and climate change, oh my).

Do most Americans even know how many countries America is currently occupying?

Probably not, since the controlled media doesn’t really discuss it much. Besides, it’s all a semantics game. Technically the US has military personnel on bases in nearly 150 nations around the globe (not including temporary training missions or “humanitarian assistance” operations).

“Such activities are so pervasive you almost have to wonder how the other 70 countries manage to avoid hosting such operations,” said John Pike, the director of globalsecurity.org, a national security think tank. (source)

But somehow in the Orwellian land of doublespeak, this not the same as “occupying,” apparently.

Art by Anthony Freda

The US is, however, drone striking a multitude of countries, including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia. Some 2,500 people have been killed in covert US drone strikes outside of officially declared war zones, including hundreds of civilians, and yet, somehow magically, none of this is called a “war” or “combat”.

It’s called a “US-led intervention”.

The US is not at war, traditionally defined as “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state,” it’s simply leading an “intervention”. Uncle Sam is merely helping a drunk family member “see the American democratic light”… with boots on the ground and airstrikes.

Oh but wait, it isn’t “boots on the ground” anymore, because we are continuously reassured these are all “military advisors”. Now Obama is sending 50 of them to Syria, something he swore he wouldn’t do. Just like Obama started by sending 50 or so troops to Iraq… now that number is well over three thousand.

They’re over there “advising,” and in the case of Syria, advising in some other country’s CIA-created civil war. They are apparently floating off the ground while they advise in uniforms carrying weapons of war, riding and flying around in weapons of war, somehow not engaged in official combat.

That’s why we’ve already had one troop die in the “non-war” “non-combat” against the Islamic State… it was, instead a “special mission” that wasn’t actually advising and was even reported by the Military Times as “combat,” but also somehow the White House Press Secretary still keeps saying it’s “not combat”.

Recently, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter reaffirmed that America is definitely not in active combat at a press conference… a press conference where he said, “Americans are flying combat missions, thousands of combat missions, over Syria and Iraqi territory” and a press conference he ended his discussion on by saying quote, “this is combat”.

Somehow, it’s still “not combat”? Bit of a mixed message, no?

But the measure of US strength isn’t how many countries America occupies or bombs, Obama says.

Well, is the measure of US strength how many leaders of other nations the US attempts to topple for empire building?

Even our own Congressional representatives are opening going on national TV to say that the federal government and CIA should really stop trying to overthrow leaders because it’s putting us on a path to World War III.

Earlier this year, Obama told VOX:

“We occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn’t do what we need them to do if it weren’t for the various economic or diplomatic or, in some cases, military leverage that we had — if we didn’t have that dose of realism, we wouldn’t get anything done, either.”

Realism? Sounds like The Empire from the Star Wars franchise.

Oh, so admittedly none of this is justified war.

This is just the US using its sanctions and military leverage to avoid, “twisting the arms” of countries that don’t do what the US “needs them to”… essentially, in other words, twisting those country’s arms.

At least the president is being honest about that much.

Then again, this is the same guy who said, “We must declare war on war, so the outcome will be peace upon peace.”

(H/T: RINF)