An empire is as good as its military and the U.S. military is in crisis: running out of ammunition; Middle East bases destroyed; volunteers exhausted. Ann Wright, Ray McGovern. 8 pm Tonite.
Guests: Ann Wright, Ray McGovern. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.
This Week:
1. Imperial Mismanagement
2. Empty Shells
3. Overboard for Trump
By Joe Lauria
The deterioration of the Roman military was a significant contributing factor to the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The U.S. empire is fraying, if not quite crumbling. A leading indicator is the state of its military. Like in Rome, over territorial expansion plus trouble with recruitment, equipment and training are weakening America’s aggressive and defensive postures. The defense is not at home, but abroad – a defense of empire.
The U.S. has just lost a major war in West Asia and in the process abused its own troops and depleted its munitions in East Asia.
This has alarmed the imperial New York Times, which never says the U.S. has an empire. Instead today it wrote of “Chinese expansion” and the concern of U.S. allies about America’s dwindling fire power. The Times wrote:
“ … no one expects China to curb its expansionist activities in the region anytime soon. And there are growing doubts among Asian nations over what the United States would be willing to do to deter China, given the enormous distraction and resource drain of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
The United States is running low on critical weapons, including air defense interceptors. Iran’s missile and drone attacks have forced U.S. troops to leave bases in the Middle East and destroyed the sites, an indication of what the Chinese military — which is much more powerful than Iran’s — could do in a conflict in Asia.”
American public support for U.S. foreign policy, prosecuted by the military, is also in decline. It has taken bi-partisan support for genocide and defeat in the illegal war against Iran to open many Americans’ eyes to the failures of U.S. military and imperial policy.
The United States has been here before. But cumulative losses may be building to a tipping point.
After Watergate and major defeat in Vietnam, the U.S. took a mature, introspective look at what it had done with the massive power it was left with at the conclusion of the Second World. It wasn’t pretty, as the Church committee found out.
Reforms were just getting underway when Ronald Reagn, just five years later, shut it down, breathing new life into empire. He declared morning again in America when it had hardly turned to night.
Joe Biden took it on the chin in Afghanistan, but nothing changed. Can defeat in Iran and in Ukraine, plus the exposure of U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide, spur another introspection like the Church committee?
— Joe Lauria is editor of Consortium News
GUESTS:
Ann Wright served in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and retired as a colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. She has been with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition since 2010, has been put in Israeli prison twice for attempting to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade on Gaza and has been on segments of flotillas in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2024.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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It is immensely frustrating and disappointing that six years later journalists still appear to be ignoring multiple lines of scientific evidence that COVID-19 was circulating in other parts of the world months before the Wuhan outbreak. It is NOT an established fact that COVID-19 came from Wuhan until these other lines of evidence are interrogated and successfully refuted. Here are a couple sources, I really hope that serious investigators will compartmentalize their biases and engage with them:
COVID-19 RNA was detected in Barcelona sewage samples dating to March 2019:
hxxps://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627
COVID-19 antibodies were found in the blood samples of Italian cancer patients dating back to September 2019:
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xxps://doi.org/10.1177/0300891620974755
Ann, perhaps the Iranians and Yemenis might offer their resources to assist the Gaza Flotilla reach Gaza? They have the reach to zap any Israeli attempt to waylay you. God speed you on your way.
Collapsing under the weight of their own hubris.
Now, where have we seen that before?
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who chaired a Lancet panel’s years-long probe of the origin of the Covid pandemic, claims that the weight of evidence favors the theory that the virus was manipulated as part of government-funded, gain-of-function research at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and shipped for testing on a bat colony at the Wuhan lab from which it escaped. He strongly disputes that Rand Paul’s probe represents a vendetta against Fauchi, whose behavior throughout the epidemic and to this day he characterizes as “disgraceful.”
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdHZDJmaYqg
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, “strongly disputes that Rand Paul’s probe represents a vendetta against Fauchi”.
First, respectfully, get the spelling of Dr. Anthony Fauci correct, before spreading aspersions about the man, based on a politicians point of view; no matter his ‘name’.
As forthright and honorable, as we who take-in most of what Professor Jeffrey Sachs talks about these days believe him to be.
He is an economist, not a doctor of human nature. Is anyone, in actuality? Is he infallible? Has he never done wrong?
Apparently, a stupid question: Was Dr. Fauci the only fallible human being ever born evil?
Who/what is he protecting by not openly coming clean, and why?
Guess who was US President during the Covid pandemic, when America had the highest death toll, attributed to the disease, in the whole world.
What we are witnessing is retributive Justice?
What does the word justice, across the board, even mean today, when “just deserts” are borne only by those without the power to defend their constitutional rights?
Ask republicans.
What the h? With respect, I’ll cop to misspelling (Fauchi) if you’ll cop to having submitted a barely coherent, rambling rebuttal.
Dennis, the menace lies in the fact that in ego-based cultures (there are most definitely other ways of being) “we” all, at times, tend to react unconsciously – becoming defensive when receiving criticism – from hidden emotions stored in our individual egos.
Regarding differentiating ‘blown out of proportion’ from ‘responding objectively’:
No one was questioning your thesis on the subject or your preferred writing style.
I’m in total agreement with Ray in his worries about whether or not we’ll have an election in November, much less one that isn’t rigged (like the rest of the elections in the last 60 years or so). After years of in-depth study, I’ve taken to calling the “Deep State” the Western Mafia. Gangsters. Or more properly, banksters. Run mostly out of the City of London and Wall Street. The US military became the Mafia’s enforcers pretty early in the 20th century, as the British Empire faded, and as Lt. Gen. Smedley Butler figured out (his Congressional testimony about the attempted Wall Street coup d’etat less than a year after FDR took office is still secret – why is that?) Things only got worse when the Mafia founded the CIA, for their own use (the operations side, anyway). All of the American wars since WW2 have been for two purposes – expanding the Mafia’s turf and punishing the disobedient. The Mafia is losing control, which helps explain a lot of the brazen behavior we’ve seen since 9/11. Needless to say, a successful mafia doesn’t believe the rule of law applies to them, especially one that has taken control of the governance institutions that make, enforce, and interpret the law. The Mafia is ruthless, powerful, and infests all of the West’s major institutions. So yes, I’m with Ray – we, and our Constitution, are in big trouble. All is not yet lost, but we had better get off the couch, like Ray and Ann have been doing for quite some time now. I admire them greatly. CDR Charlie Stephens, USN (Ret.)
I’m with you almost 100%. Deep State Western Mafia, became a global mafia with an American flag.
Call them banksters, the likes of Sullivan and Cromwell’s Dulles Brothers.
You have my attention. I have to ask if you are familial with Arthur B. Darling’s , THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY – an instrument of government to 1950?
JJ Angleton coveted Israel, drawing from Israeli intelligence mastery. JJ Angleton was 10o% with the Zionist cause.
I’m curious about major cast players. You lose me but I know this history pretty well myself. Your jump from CIA inception through creation is one I have some issues with. The mafia was present for sure, world bankers were calling the shots. United Fruit for instance.
Maybe I’m hung up on your mafia designation too much. The CIA has been compromised by Israel since JJ Angleton allowed himself to be compromised by the Israeli during his last days with OSS and his move to CIA. The CIA and Israeli intelligence have been attached at the hip ever since he traded access to them to gain a counter intelligence superiority, something which never occurred in my opinion.
Once CIA allowed the diversion of highly enriched U-235 from Hyman Rickover’s nuclear powered sub program to Israel, Angleton was toast. If JFK had lived Israel would not have gotten it’s nukes. JJ Angleton would have been outed and CIA trashed.
From where I sit I see the Mafia as being used by Zionists.
Bretton Woods Conference, July 1 – July 22. 1944. Know of this history?
Could be we would benefit from further exchanges. Regardless JFK was right about Israel not getting nuclear weapons.
The Japanese research vessel off Hawaii was sunk by a US submarine whose commander was on his retirement last cruise with dignitaries on it so it has the appearance of a retaliation based on WWII symbolism and may well have been intentional as a final gesture.
note – There were many more Mai Lai’s see Nick Turses’ book “Kill Anything That Moves”
Plus US election years are an existential threat to world civilization every time.
Thank you again for another interesting show Ray McGovern and Ann Wright. Tour perspective is very helpful.
The stories coming from service-persons in the Navy are horrific.
“An empire is as good as its military”, is the equivalent of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Presuming the empire here being referred to is the U.S., for far too long uniformly hiding behind its erstwhile military prowess, now has no clothes.
Contemporaneously all that it is, is its sheepish commander-in-chief constantly “acting out” to the detriment of all.