Dmitry Orlov

On Saturday night Washington launched 120 cruise missiles at what was declared to be the positions of pro-Iranian Shiite groups. This was intended as retribution for over 167 attacks on US military bases in Syria, Iraq and, most recently, Jordan, plus attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The attacks were very loosely attributed to unknown “Islamic Resistance Forces” (not an actual name of any armed group or groups) that the Washingtonians seem to have simply dreamt up. What provoked this most recent launch of a volley of cruise missiles was the death of three US servicemen, plus a much larger number of wounded, from an attack on the curiously named al-Tower logistical base in Jordan, close to the Syrian and Iraqi borders.

Why was this particular incident the one to provoke such a reaction? We don’t know. We also don’t know why the attack was attributed to some Iran-associated organization rather to the one that actually took responsibility for it — a Sunni group associated with Qatar. That’s like blaming Mormons for something that Jehovah’s Witnesses said they did. This may seem like a very odd thing to do, but only until one realizes that this is absolutely typical of the Washingtonians. What follows is an article I published in March of 2016 — eight whole years ago. As you read it, you will notice that nothing at all has changed.

There are numerous tactics available to those who aim to make problems worse while pretending to solve them, but misdirection is always a favorite. The reason to want to make problems worse is that problems are profitable — for someone. And the reason to pretend to be solving them is that causing problems, then making them worse, makes those who profit from them look bad.

In the international arena, this type of misdirection tends to take on a farcical aspect. The ones profiting from the world’s problems are the members of the US foreign policy and military establishments, the defense contractors and the politicians around the world, and especially in the EU, who have been bought off by them. Their tactic of misdirection is conditioned by a certain quirk of the American public, which is that it doesn’t concern itself too much with the rest of the world. The average member of the American public has no idea where various countries are, can’t tell Sweden from Switzerland, thinks that Iran is full of Arabs and can’t distinguish any of the countries that end in “-stan”. And so a handy trick has evolved, which amounts to the following dictum: “Always Attack the Wrong Country.”
Need some examples? After 9/11, which, according to the official story (which is probably nonsense) was carried out by “suicide bombers” (some of them, amusingly, still alive today) who were mostly from Saudi Arabia, the US chose to retaliate by attacking… Saudi Arabia? No, Afghanistan and Iraq.

When Arab Spring erupted (because a heat wave in Russia drove up wheat prices) the obvious place to concentrate efforts, to avoid a seriously bad outcome for the region, was Egypt — the most populous Arab country and an anchor for the entire region. And so the US and NATO decided to attack… Egypt? No, Libya.

When things went south in the Ukraine, whose vacillating government couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to remain within the Customs Union with Russia, its traditional trading partner, or to gamble on signing an agreement with the EU based on vague (and since then broken) promises of economic cooperation, the obvious place to go and try to fix things was the Ukraine. And so the US and the EU decided to fix the Ukraine problem by putting pressure on Russia, even though Russia is not particularly broken. Russia was not amused; nor is it a country to be trifled with, and so in response the Russians inflicted some serious pain on… the Washington establishment? No, farmers within the EU; that was more profitable. The Russians can play such games too.

Who was at fault became exceedingly clear once the Ukrainians that managed to get into power (including some very nasty neo-Nazis) started to violate the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking majority, including staging some massacres, in turn causing a large chunk of the country to hold referendums and vote to secede. And so the US and the EU decided to fix things by continuing to put pressure on… the Ukraine? No, still on Russia.

When Russia started insisting on a political rather than a military resolution to the crisis in the Ukraine, and helped negotiate the Minsk agreements together with the Ukraine, France and Germany, a similar thing happened. These agreements obligated the Ukrainian government to pass constitutional reforms to grant autonomy to its Russian regions. The Ukrainian government refused to abide by these agreements. As a result, the US and the EU decided to put pressure on… the Ukrainian government? No, on the Russian government,again.

When a nasty terrorist group calling itself ISIS and composed of Islamic Salafi/Takfiri extremists started to seize power in large parts of Iraq, and then spread to Syria, something had to be done about it. These extremists were being financed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia with plenty of help from the CIA and the Pentagon. And so the US and NATO decided to put some pressure… on Turkey and Saudi Arabia? Or on themselves, perhaps? No, on Syria.

In response to all this foolishness, Russia decided to actually go and fix something that was broken: Syria. And now Syria is on the mend, and members of the Central Misdirectorate in Washington are left scratching their heads: someone actually fixing something? How is that even possible?

So far so good. But this method of pretending to be solving problems by making them worse has some definite downsides.

For one thing, eventually even the dimmest, most geographically challenged bulbs in the American general population might start to get a clue that such activities are an unproductive waste of their scarce tax dollars, and then they might start refusing to vote for the establishment candidates. Then it would becomes hard to continue with the misdirecting because the people doing the misdirecting would be voted out, and (horror of horrors!) somebody who might actually try to fix a problem or two might get voted in. But that’s not terribly likely because causing problems and then making them worse is so profitable that those who are profiting always have the surplus funds to buy whatever votes they need.

More significantly, continually making problems worse by attacking the wrong country tends to eventually make the sheer number problems get completely out of hand. Take the massive terror attack in Brussels, down the road from NATO headquarters, for which ISIS took credit. In recent years, Europe has been experiencing a large-scale influx of people from the Middle East and North Africa, who have been forced to flee their native lands because of all the previous acts of misdirection, and a fair number of these people are ISIS terrorists. And so, to protect itself, NATO is planning to fight ISIS… in Europe? No, in Syria. Also, it is well known that the influx into Europe has been orchestrated by Turkey. In response, the EU has decided to put pressure on Turkey? No, give billions of euros to Turkey and tell Turkey that it might at some point be welcome to join the EU. Makes perfect sense.

This pattern of misdirection has an overall momentum that, over time, becomes harder and harder to break. It starts out as just one group of plutocrats doing incredibly vile, underhanded but profitable things; later on, an even bigger group of plutocrats turns out to be doing equally vile but now completely idiotic, self-defeating, embarrassing things; and right near the end a really huge group of plutocrats does things that are absolutely suicidal — but they can’t stop themselves. For example, the Biden clan can’t bring itself to shut down the southern border because then it would lose all the bribe money coming to it from the Mexican narco cartels.

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