License to Kill - Dmitry Orlov

Written by Dmitry Orlov

The story is the same every time: some nation, due 
to a confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes 
powerful—much more powerful than the rest—and, 
for a time, is dominant. But the lucky circumstances, 
which often amount to no more than a few advantageous 
quirks of geology, be it Welsh coal or West Texas oil, 
in due course come to an end. In the meantime, the 
erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.

As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in 
charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of 
desperate measures—all except one: they will refuse 
to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower 
is at an end, and that they should change their ways 
accordingly. 

George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation 
for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game 
approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation 

to breed a special-purpose ruling class—one that is incapable 

of understanding that the end-game is approaching. Because, 

you see, if they had an inkling of what’s going on, they wouldn’t 

take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as 

long as possible.

The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever 

worsening results the empire gets for its imperial efforts. 

After World War II, the US was able to do a respectable 

job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the rest of 

western Europe. Japan also did rather well under US tutelage, 

as did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean 

peninsula.

With Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly 

damaged by the US, the results were significantly worse: 

Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia lived through 

a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos—the 

most heavily bombed country on the planet—recovered on 

its own.

The first Gulf War went even more badly: fearful of 
undertaking a ground offensive in Iraq, the US stopped 
short of its regular practice of toppling the government 
and installing a puppet regime there, and left it in 
limbo for a decade. When the US did eventually invade, 
it succeeded—after killing countless civilians and 
destroying much of the infrastructure—in 

leaving behind a dismembered corpse of a country.

Similar results have been achieved in other places where 

the US saw it fit to get involved: Somalia, Libya and, most 

recently, Yemen. Let’s not even mention Afghanistan, since 

all empires have failed to achieve good results there. So the 

trend is unmistakable: whereas at its height the empire 

destroyed in order to rebuild the world in its own image, 

as it nears its end it destroys simply for the sake of 
destruction, leaving piles of corpses and smoldering 
ruins in its wake.

Another unmistakeable trend has to do with the efficacy of 

spending money on “defense” (which, in the case of the US, 

should be redefined as “offense”). Having a lavishly endowed

military can sometimes lead to success, but here too something 

has shifted over time. The famous American can-do spirit that 

was evident to all during World War II, when the US dwarfed 

the rest of the world with its industrial might, is no more. 

Now, more and more, military spending itself is the goal—

never mind what it achieves.

And what it achieves is the latest F-35 jet fighter that 
can’t fly; the latest aircraft carrier that can’t launch planes 
without destroying them if they are fitted with the auxiliary 
tanks they need to fly combat missions; the most 
technologically advanced AEGIS destroyer that can 
be taken out of commission by a single unarmed Russian 
jet carrying a basket of electronic warfare equipment, 
and another aircraft carrier that can be frightened 

out of deep water and forced to anchor by a few 
Russian submarines out on routine patrol.

But the Americans like their weapons, and they like handing 

them out as a show of support. But more often than not these 

weapons end up in the wrong hands: the ones they gave to 

Iraq are now in the hands of ISIS; the ones they gave to the 

Ukrainian nationalists have been sold to the Syrian government;

the ones they gave to the government in Yemen is now in the 

hands of the Houthis who recently overthrew it. And so the 

efficacy of lavish military spending has dwindled too. At some 

point it may become more efficient to modify the US Treasury 

printing presses to blast bundles of US dollars in the general 

direction of the enemy.

With the strategy of “destroying in order to create” 
no longer viable, but with the blind ambition to still try 
to prevail everywhere in the world somehow still part 
of the political culture, all that remains is murder. 
The main tool of foreign policy becomes political 
assassination: be it Saddam Hussein, or Muammar 
Qaddafi, or Slobodan Milošević, or Osama bin 
Laden, or any number of lesser targets, the 
idea is to simply kill them.

While aiming for the head of an organization is a favorite 

technique, the general populace gets is share of murder too. 

How many funerals and wedding parties have been taken out

by drone strikes? I don’t know that anyone in the US really 

knows, but I am sure that those whose relatives were killed 

do remember, and will remember for the next few centuries

at least. This tactic is generally not conducive to creating a

durable peace, but it is a good tactic for perpetuating and

escalating conflict. But that’s now an acceptable goal, because 

it creates the rationale for increased military spending, making 

it possible to breed more chaos.

Recently a retired US general went on television to declare 

that what’s needed to turn around the situation in the Ukraine 

is to simply “start killing Russians.” The Russians listened to 

that, marveled at his idiocy, and then went ahead and opened 

a criminal case against him. Now this general will be unable to 

travel to an ever-increasing number of countries around the 

world for fear of getting arrested and deported to Russia to 

stand trial.

This is largely a symbolic gesture, but non-symbolic non-gestures

of a preventive nature are sure to follow. You see, my fellow 

space travelers, murder happens to be illegal. In most jurisdictions, 

inciting others to murder also happens to be illegal. Americans 

have granted themselves the license to kill without checking 

to see whether perhaps they might be exceeding their authority. 

We should expect, then, that as their power trickles away, their

license to kill will be revoked, and they find themselves 
reclassified from global hegemons to mere murderers.

As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their 

own populations to the same ill treatment to which they 

subjected others. Here, America is unexceptional: the 

number of Americans being murdered by their own police, 

with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, 

is quite stunning. When Americans wonder who their 

enemy really is, they need look no further.

But that is only the beginning: the precedent has already 

been set for deploying US troops on US soil. As law and 

order break down in more and more places, we will see 

more and more US troops on the streets of cities in the 

US, spreading death and destruction just like they did in 

Iraq or in Afghanistan. The last license to kill to be 

revoked will be the license to kill ourselves.

Source:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.ru/2015/03/license-to-kill.html 

__________________________________________

Paul Craig Roberts – As Greece Pivots, Putin Unleashing 

Ultimate Move To Crush The EU And NATO: 

http://lichtweltverlag.blogspot.co.at/2015/04/paul-craig-roberts-as-greece-pivots.html

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