By Michael Pravica, Ph.D
On the morning after the allied/colonial powers (i.e. the US, Britain and France) bombed Syria over one week ago (US time zones), I happened to glance at a Sunday morning television interview of Tim Kaine who ran with Hillary Clinton and lost. I did a double-take when I heard him say these words: "Trump not a 'king,' he can't go to war without Congressional authorization..,,". And then, all of the horrible memories of everything bad that was the Western "humanitarian" intervention in Yugoslavia - particularly NATO's vicious bombing of Serbia in 1999- horrible flashbacks - flooded into my mind. I honestly wondered, watching this apparently serious politician as he muttered these words and further commented on the need to obtain UN authorization and to work within our Constitutional framework, if he was just plain dumb, mad, or was just a straight faced liar.
His former running mate's husband (Bill Clinton) did just what Donald Trump did almost 20 years ago: viciously bomb Yugoslavia for 78 days straight without UN approval and without Congressional approval, violating a slew of international and domestic laws including the War Powers Act of 1973 which specifically states that the President does not have the right to declare war on a sovereign nation without the approval of Congress. For the sake of distracting the American public from the "frosted dress"/Monica Lewinsky scandal and at the encouragement of his wife, President Clinton viciously bombed Serbia, our historical WWI and WWII Orthodox Christian ally and the world hasn't been the same ever since.
The bombing and subsequent illegal recognition of Kosovo demonstrated to the world that terrorists could indeed alter the borders of sovereign nations as long as NATO supported them. It has encouraged the unraveling of nations (e.g. Spain/Catalonia) which has caused deep global instability.
And yet, beyond this outrage, there was something even more sinister that has rarely if ever been discussed in the mainstream and highly controlled "debate" pertaining to the earlier bombing of Serbia and the most recent "enemy du jour:" Syria.
Donald Trump called Assad an "animal" because of an highly alleged but as of yet not fully investigated chemical attack. Yet "General" Wesley Kanne Clark (whom many around the world view as a war criminal who has yet to be prosecuted) used banned cluster bombs in NATO's barbarous assault on the Serbian people in 1999.
Children are still being killed or maimed to this very day as a result of the unexploded bomblets that were rained on Serbia which are on the list of banned weapons of war. At least 15 tons of depleted but still radioactive and highly toxic uranium was used as a convenient means to rid the US of radioactive waste by dumping it on its imagined enemies, causing untold cancers, suffering, and deaths of civilians in the Balkans and even among the occupying NATO soldiers (some of whom even developed eye cancers).
Beyond the radioactive nature of "depleted" uranium, the heavy actinide metal is extremely dangerous to living organisms. Finally, the Pancevo chemical complex was savagely bombed releasing thousands of tons of toxic chemicals such as hydrochloric acid, vinyl chloride, liquid chlorine, dioxin, and mercury (at least 100 tons) into the soil, the air, and the Danube river, severely poisoning Europe's longest river.
Now, American "leaders," who unleashed demonic banned weapons, radioactive and chemical horrors onto the Serbian people some 19 years ago claim the "moral authority" to bomb the long-suffering Syrian peoples and create yet more desperate refugees for refugee-laden Europe because of some shoddy/poorly-investigated "chemical" attack? Yet, to consider a mere example of the pathetic anti-intellectual propaganda emanating from the Western mainstream media: Though the word "chlorine" attack frequently heard in the mainstream agitprop sounds so terrifying, we should all be aware that chlorine gas is easily produced by mixing bleach with vinegar! Anyone could have made chlorine gas if they wanted to - not just Syrian government soldiers - but the mainstream media cheerleaders blame Assad with no evidence whatsoever!
Thus, the extremely vague and hysterical reports of "massacres" are eerily similar to the fake and staged massacres such as the Racak "massacre" which was long since been debunked and which was used as the "smoking gun"/catalyst/casus belli for starting NATO's war on the Serbian people. Yugoslavia redux. It seems that some things never change.
Despite the astonishing hypocrisy, the march toward serious WWIII confrontation with Russia continues unabated with the ever increasing and downright stupid McCarthy-esque fanaticism propagated in the Western mainstream media that the Russians are to blame for everything. However, we need to be aware that though the US with "moral" support from it's imperialist "allies" may be able to savagely and illegally bomb small nations with impunity (for now), they cannot do the same to Russia as Russia will not accept same treatment that was meted to Yugoslavia and Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other nation.
Is there any sanity in the swamp or it just a heart of darkness? Will Donald Trump keep sinking deeper and deeper into the morass and start WWIII or will he manage to extricate himself from the swamp and drain it as promised? We should all be deeply concerned.
Michael Pravica, Ph.D