Impeach McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor Today: US is main predator of humanity, War Criminal team of Pentagon and US taxpayers won 37 of 57 attempts to overthrow other governments from WWII to 2014-William Blum…Infantile US President hurls spoiled brat insults at leader of another nation

“Whatever the sympathy we may have for the people of the United States, their country is still the main predator of humanity. We can in no circumstance claim to share their “values."” July 2019, Manlio Dinucci

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“Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List," by William Blum

“Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (*indicates successful ouster of a government)

China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Honduras 2009 *
Libya 2011 *
Syria 2012
Ukraine 2014 *

Q: Why will there never be a coup d’état in Washington?

A: Because there’s no American embassy there.”

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Added: Biden calling President Putin names and refusing to converse is typical of late empire behavior: “indifference to other people’s rights, views and interests."…..(Ordinary Americans get the same treatment that Pres. Putin gets. We're either totally ignored or written off as selfish racists).

3/21/22, “PATRICK LAWRENCE: Imperial Infantilism," Consortium News .....

“We find that hurling playground insults at the leader of another nation has become normal in post-9/11 Washington….

Question of Statesmanship…

When those purporting to serve as America’s statesmen and stateswomen think calling other world leaders names is properly part of the diplomatic repertoire — a prominent part, I’ll add — we are left with only one conclusion: The U.S. has no one capable of sailing its ship of state, no one in a position of influence worthy of the title “diplomat.”

3/16/22, “President Biden: “I think he is a war criminal.”” Cspan, You Tube

To qualify it, I’m certain there are plenty of mid-level people trained in the foreign service now in mid-level positions at the State Department. But they do not count, by and large, because what passes for diplomacy in Washington is driven not by skill, experience or subtle intelligence but by fidelity to American ideology and a nose for what plays in Peoria.

Over the weekend I found myself thinking about FDR. I thought about Roosevelt in that famous photograph with Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference. There they are in their overcoats against the cold of February 1945 (FDR in a dashing cape). Then I thought about Biden and his nonsense name-calling and his refusal to even consider an encounter with Putin at this crucial moment….

It’s simply not easy to find truly good diplomats in the post–1945 annals of the American Foreign Service. I am talking about people who understand that one of the primary responsibilities of a diplomat is to understand how those on the other side of the table think and see things, what the other side wants and why. Here’s why they don’t exist anymore: Simply stated, power obviates the need for serious statecraft. The powerful nation has no need of diplomacy. A figure such as George Kennan was the exception proving the rule, and he was an exception because he saw the need to understand how the world looked to the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger proved the rule: For all his claim to diplomatic skill, Hank K. was a wielder of American power with a calculating mind, nothing more.

The rest follows naturally: Antony Blinken is not a serious diplomat. Samantha Power is not a serious diplomat. As a diplomat (and various other things), Hillary “He’s Hitler” Clinton is a walking calamity. Biden, who’s spent his career selling snake oil off the back of a buckwagon, is not a statesman of any kind, serious or otherwise. We should consider when, precisely, calling other leaders names became an accepted feature of American “statecraft” (and I insist on the quotation marks.) When, why, and what are the consequences of this undignified practice?

Sept. 11

I date this phenomenon to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. The lineup of secretaries of state and senior diplomats prior to the attacks in New York and Washington is other than brilliant, but it was by and large accepted that talking to one’s adversaries was at least as important (and often more so) as talking to one’s friends.

It was the Bush II regime, with all its kooky ideologues in positions they never should have gotten near, that declared: “We don’t negotiate with our enemies.” This pronouncement was advanced, if you recall, as if it were a sound, baseline rule of wise statesmanship. There were corollaries. Diplomatic contacts with those deemed enemies would “give them credibility.” At the outside there was Richard Perle’s infamous dictum. Perle, one of Bush II’s intellectual ornaments, urged “decontextualization”: We must not put things in context lest we understand them. Instead, we must be confined to reaction (in both senses of the term). Responses to the events of 2001 bear careful interpretation….The American way of defining the world was the only acceptable way.Nothing else need be considered. This is how empires conduct themselves when aware of their vulnerability as the Sept. 11 attacks forced Washington onto its back foot.

Descendants of George W. Bush

Is there much distance between decontextualization and the we-don’t-negotiate-with-enemies bit plus “he’s Hitler, he’s a thug, a dictator, a criminal”? I see none. In this way all post–2001 U.S. administrations descend from George W. Bush —characteristic of late-empire regimes.

One can argue the Obama administration was an exception, but I don’t buy it. At bottom, Barack Obama’s perspective on the world and] America’s place in it was no different from that of any other post–2001 president’s. He tinkered with methods of American power — fewer invasions (except Libya), more drones, a veneer of diplomacy —to obscure continued reliance on power alone and indifference to other people’s rights, views and interests.

[“In 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs....That’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day."]

Look where this has landed us. Every time I hear Biden call Putin or some other world leader, not to Washington’s liking, a name out of the American inventory of epithets it is a reminder of how grotesquely U.S. “statecraft” has been infantilized. We cannot be surprised. How much distance is there between the infantilization of the American public and the infantilization of the post–2001 excuse for diplomacy?…

Americans post–2001 live in a state of intellectual isolation so pervasive most are not aware of it. Name-calling, as a third-grade symptom of the anxiety and insecurity of the past two decades, is a way of expressing patriotism (a comforting euphemism for nationalism). America is left utterly incapable of imagining —to say nothing of creating — new possibilities in a new, multipolar world….

Every time Biden or another American “leader” hurls one of their playground insults at the leader of another nation, (Putin as the Beelzebub du jour) they are reminding us: There will be no diplomacy emanating from Washington because they have no idea how to conduct it. Power and coercion are all they know.”

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“Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site. The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.”