Wars of the American Global Frontier

This thought from Fred Perry:

“What about 911? The Terrorists who intended to hit four limited targets and ended up only hitting three were not seeking regime change either. Still the same politicians now screaming limited military strike were calling the Terrorists’ action an act of war. What a bunch of hypocrites. If someone does it to us it is an act of war, but if we do it to someone else it’s a military strike.

“Now the typical American may swallow the government’s BS but the world has wised up to our treachery and deceit. Backing a lying American government and its military has become a ‘Bridge Too Far’ for some countries.”

He’s correct. Charles Krauthammer wrote: “A tragedy is an act of God. Sept. 11 was no act of God. It was an act of man. An act of war.”

For a very brief period, some called it a crime or terrorist attack. This swiftly changed even before Bush declared war:

“On September 12 CNN was reporting that ‘people see this as far more than a crime or an isolated terrorist incident. That came through loud and clear in four different polls.’ CNN reported that in their own poll ’86 percent of Americans described yesterday’s attack as an act of war against the United States.’ By this time George Bush, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Dick Gephardt and others had spoken to the American people and referred to the attacks as an act of war. Other than a brief discussion between two reporters, who quickly discounted the idea of anything but a military response, we had reached the end of the second day with no discussion of any response other than war.”

So, Mr. Perry is correct. Americans felt that 911 was an act of war, but when the U.S. bombs Libya or Syria, these are regarded as military actions or military strikes.

I will now posit that the wars of the past dozen years or so, or back to the Kosovo war, are Wars of the American Global Frontier. Their beginning occurs after the collapse of the USSR. They will continue until their costs become so high that the supporting economy can no longer bear them, or until war exhausts the people and the treasury, or until the empire runs into opposing nations that block further expansion and control, or until foreign forces infiltrate the empire and bring it down from within, or some combination of all of these.

The fact is that the Obama has issued executive orders creating sanctions on Syria. Sanctions are regarded by some as an act of war, by others as a mild form of war, and by others as force short of war. I see them in the Syrian case as part of an ongoing pattern by which Obama and company are seeking, by a variety of means and pressures up to and including military force, to alter Syria’s politics fundamentally. It is a form of war. Just as 4th generation war is a new form of war, so is the subversion of other countries. This was what the USSR was always accused of doing during the Cold War. The only thing missing at present is a name for this activity and era in which the US has been doing the same kind of thing. The name GWOT (Global War on Terror) is one possibility but it doesn’t describe the actions in Libya and Syria. Obama has tried to jettison the term GWOT. He actually does not want the world thinking that he is conducting various wars, has intensified them in his own ways, has retreated in certain ways, and has spread them to new countries.

These wars have the intent of regime change (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iran). Terrorists are secondary or tertiary because these wars produce more anti-American terrorists and more instability. The regime change intentions are part of deeper intentions of linking the new governments more closely to Western interests and bringing them under American domination. The American Frontier has been taken to foreign lands. These are frontier wars of the empire. They are Wars of the American Global Frontier.

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8:05 am on September 3, 2013