Time for regime change in the USA

By Rodney Shakespeare

With breath-taking arrogance, the USA opposed the presence of Iran at the discussions about Syria in Geneva.

Turkey - now openly playing the sectarian card and deliberately causing a Phantom jet to fly in fast and low in order to provoke a reaction and so involve NATO - can be present. The USA - supplying arms to al-Qaeda; organizing Salafists, Wahhabists and death squads; broadcasting lying propaganda - can be present. Russia and China can be present. But not Iran.

Yet Iran has political, religious and cultural links with the Alawite (Shia sect) government of Syria. Iran is the one country - not the USA, not Russia, not China, not Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Qatar - which can have frank talks with Syria. Iran is the one country which Syria can trust as understanding its situation. And Iran is the only country which can give hope of avoiding a civil war bloodbath, at the very least, or a probable decade-long regional war.

But Iran is not to be at Geneva because the USA, riddled with bigotry and an example of Ancient Greek hubris if there ever was one, hates any country which wants to be independent. It particularly hates Iran. Indeed, so extreme is the hatred that anything (including war) can be done to achieve regime change in Tehran. It is therefore no surprise that, at all times, the USA quickly side-lines democracy and justice if there is any likelihood that Iran might be involved in the solution. And just to spell out the point, in Syria, the USA is co-operating with Saudi Arabia - a vicious, totalitarian tyranny supplying guns and money - and with Qatar - an anti-democratic country, supplying guns and money.  

Furthermore, bent on regime change in Syria, the USA is comprehensively ignoring the Kofi Annan Peace Plan just as the referendum and election held by Syria are also being ignored. When the USA wants regime change, anything goes - particularly the torturing and slaughter of Shia women and children which, by twisting the facts to their opposite, are blamed on the government when they were really the work of the American-backed Wahhabi and NATO death squads who, when not killing, like to ransack Christian churches.

Nor is Iran banned only from a solution for Syria. It is also banned from the solution for Afghanistan. Iran is next to Afghanistan. It has linguistic, religious, cultural and trading links with Afghanistan. If ever there was a country which can talk to all parties in Afghanistan, it is Iran. However, the USA - full of self-important haughtiness and the major cause of the problem - determines that Iran can never be part of the solution and, by doing so, condemns Afghanistan to many more years of misery.

Yet the world is turning: change is afoot and Russia, wanting Iran to be at Geneva, is one of the countries which is not only sensing the change but is actively doing something about it. Right the way round the globe countries are quietly banding together. They can do so because they are directly experiencing a decline in the economic and political power of the USA. 

On top of which the USA’s moral authority went out of the window long ago so countries are quietly plotting a new course for themselves - one which involves breaking free from Western hegemony. Thus the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation brings together Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and others, with India, Pakistan and Iran as observer members. China and Japan have decided to trade in their own currencies and not the dollar - there’s a sign of the times! And in South America a number of countries are beginning to band together to run their own international bank (the Banco del Sud) thus causing the diminution of American financial and political influence.

Indeed, the amazing thing is that the USA is completely failing to see what is going on. It was completely caught off balance by the Arab Spring so perhaps it is not surprising that it does not understand that it is hated more than it knows; that its traditional mixture of bullying, bribery and attack are not quite as impressive as it thinks; and that, in short, others are fed up with a short-sighted arrogance and even more short-sighted stupidity which is always prepared to go to war (even if that means that the USA is now virtually bankrupt because of its military spending).

All in all, it’s time for all sensible people and all sensible countries (there’s quite a lot of them) to consciously question any assertion by the USA that this or that regime is at fault and needs to be overthrown. Instead all sensible people and countries should start to say that the world is fed up with war-mongering as well as angry at the Wall Street machinations which are destroying the world economy.

Then the way will be opened for impressing on the American people what the situation really requires - regime change in the USA.