US Warmongering: Will Germans
Again Claim ‘They Didn’t Know’?
By Finian Cunningham
June 08, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "SCF"
- Amid knee-slapping and beer-drinking, Germans
greeted US President Obama with rapturous applause as he opened the G7 summit in
Bavaria at the weekend.
Obama was addressing the crowds in
a public square in the historic town of Krün on a sunny morning; with the
Bavarian mountains serving a splendid backdrop. Alongside him was his «great
friend Angela».
Merkel, the German chancellor, was
beaming smiles at every jocular quip from the American president, as if the
American NSA spying on her personal communications never happened.
Obama was on a charm offensive,
talking of the «shared history between Germany and the US», and lauding the past
«great contributions» from German immigrants in the nation-building of America.
He did briefly mention «the war» –
but only fleetingly and in the context of postwar German national progress and
the formation of the «successful NATO military alliance». Obama interspersed his
lines with folksy references to quaffing a few beers and jokingly expressed his
preference for holding the G7 leaders’ meetings over the next two days in the
outdoors of a beer-garden to enjoy the sunshine.
Obama’s charm offensive towards
Germany is understandable. He needs the country’s backing to extend the economic
sanctions against Russia that Washington has corralled the European Union into
adopting. The sanctions were applied back in March last year following the
reunification of Crimea with Russia, or as the West contends, after Moscow
«annexed» Ukrainian territory. The harmful repercussions from this trade war has
left a growing number of EU states increasingly wary of the US-led policy. No
more so than among German manufacturers, farmers and other businesses who have
seen incomes plummet due to the block on trade with Russia.
Without German support for the
Washington-led policy of sanctioning Russia, the US-EU «united front» is in
danger of collapsing. The same goes for the US-led NATO military alliance.
That’s why Obama was so keen to ingratiate himself and his country with the
German public at the weekend, portraying the pairing as a postcard-picture of
«friendship».
As the pretty Fraüleins, with
their plaited hair, together with their strapping menfolk, wearing feathered
caps and lederhosen, applauded Obama’s rhetoric the scene conjured memories of a
previous era when Germans were similarly captivated under the spell of another
demagogic leader. This was Bavaria, the homeland of Adolf Hitler, whose rhetoric
and nostrums were likewise apt to make the crowds swoon.
Fair enough, Obama hasn’t the
overt neuroticism of Hitler, nor the fiery ideological extremism. But there is,
nevertheless, an unerring consistency in how a German public can seem so
gullible and pliable to rhetoric that is fundamentally, dangerously,
misleading.
Obama in his bonhomie, avuncular
style slipped in an outrageous Big Lie into his public address in Bavaria at the
weekend. He cited three challenges facing the leaders of the G7 – the world’s
nominally most powerful economies. Obama said the challenges comprised «Russian
aggression in Ukraine», the terror threat of Islamic extremism, and global
climate change.
This is not the first time that
Obama has offended common intelligence and truth with the audacious comparison
of Russia with international terrorism. He did so before the UN General Assembly
and also the G22 summit in Australia last year. What is audacious about Obama’s
assertion of Russian aggression in Ukraine is that there is absolutely no proof
to support that claim. Yet, this baseless accusation has formed the basis of
Washington-led sanctions on Russia – sanctions that are impacting woefully on
Europe’s economy – and it has been invoked to justify reckless NATO
militarisation on Russia’s borders. Just this weekend, yet another US-led war
games drill was being carried out in the Baltic Sea, involving dozens of
warships, fighter jets and over 5,600 NATO troops
Moreover, the aggression in
Ukraine that threatens to blow apart the tenuous Minks ceasefire is all down to
the violations by the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime that Washington levered into power
through an illegal coup d’état last February. Over the weekend, more civilians
were killed in shelling of Donetsk city and surrounding towns in eastern
Ukraine. These violations are US-backed war crimes, yet Obama holds forth on
non-existent «Russian aggression».
Elsewhere in the world, as Obama
was addressing his captive German audience, American-complicit war crimes were
being perpetrated with a sinister normalcy.
The American-backed Israeli regime
reportedly launched air strikes on the de facto open-air concentration camp of
Gaza, with the usual diplomatic collusion of Washington and military support
from US warplanes and bombs.
In Yemen, the US-backed Saudi
bombing of that country continued apace, adding dozens more civilian victims to
the death toll of thousands since the blitzkrieg began on March 26. The United
Nations estimates that 80 per cent of the Yemeni population – some 20 million
people – are now facing desperate shortages of food, water and medical aid from
the US, Saudi-imposed naval blockade of that Arab country.
In Afghanistan, the Washington
campaign of assassination by aerial drones claimed another 15 victims at the
weekend with a strike on the eastern province of Khost. In Iraq, several Iraqi
soldiers and Shia militia were killed in a US air strike near Fallujah in what
was reported as «friendly-fire». The American bombing of Iraq and Syria is
supposedly aimed at the ISIS terror group of Islamic extremists whom the US,
Saudi Arabia and NATO member Turkey have covertly «incubated» and fuelled,
according to the Guardian’s Seumas Milne, in their machinations of illegal
regime-change operations across the Middle East.
If there is one country that poses
an existential threat to world peace from stoking state and non-state terrorism
and outright geopolitical tensions with Russia and China it is the regime in
Washington, whose figurehead Barack Obama swans around the globe spouting
asinine rhetoric.
All people of the world must
recognise the Big Lie that is continually pumped out by Washington and its
European puppets. This audacious falsification of reality – blaming others for
the litany of crimes that Washington itself is responsible for – is endangering
the world by precipitating even more conflict and possibly an all-out global war
between nuclear powers.
After the Second World War, the
German nation professed that they did not know about the massive crimes that
were being carried out by Hitler’s Third Reich. While they were applauding his
speeches, dressed in lederhosen, plaited hair and quaffing beers in public
squares, they would later lament: «We did not know that millions were being
exterminated».
This weekend, the German public
were similarly applauding Obama as he foisted a pile of ludicrous lies and
propaganda in their midst. And yet, all the while, American war crimes and
crimes against humanity were being committed unabated all around the world.
Germany has an onerous responsibility in Europe to call a halt to Washington’s
war machine. Are Germans once again going to tell us someday in the future: «We
did not know»?
© Strategic Culture Foundation