For a few years now, I’ve had a thought going that counters what we’re told in the media concerning the “war on terror,” including that which is put out by FOX News and other neo-conservative outlets: the real geo-political battle we face and have always faced is two major empires battling it out for resources, land, and economic superiority. That battle is East versus West and more specifically, the Western empire, consisting of the US and Europe as well as Australia, versus the Eastern empire consisting of Russia, China, Iran, Syria and a few other smaller nations. We are now seeing signs that these theories are proving to be true. I don’t mean to say I have exclusively thought of these things, because I haven’t. There are a number of commentators who have made similar calls long before I have.

After the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a political and economic restructuring they had to go through. This took time and it took a while to get on their feet again after such a great fall. But it’s been two decades now. They never lost their nuclear status and have maintained some semblance of a core infrastructure from which to build upon. On top of that, China has risen strong and mighty, a nuclear power, extremely technological, and innovative themselves (or at least really good with corporate and military espionage in the West). Iran is still peeved at us for our CIA’s 1953 coup d’etat. And Syria just thumbs their noses at us and calls on Russia to bow up to us, especially in the wake of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would expect more to join this Eastern bloc in the near future.

We have a very strong staging area in the Middle East now, but for what? Looking back over the past 15 years, reading over information even before 9/11 occurred, we had the Middle East in our sights all along. 9/11 sped that process up, whatever the causes and forces were that brought that event about. The Iraqi invasion was planned in the late 1990’s. The Patriot act had also been written in the same time frame, before 9/11. Yeah, I was shocked to find these things out too. There are a number of other things I won’t go into. But long story short, we have bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel of course, UAE, Kuwait, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and I’m sure I’m missing some. On top of this, we are setting up even more missiles pointed in an offensive posture toward Russia in Eastern Europe and a number of other places. So militarily we have them surrounded to some degree. We’re at the very least lining Russia’s southern and western borders.

Now with all of that said and barring the lack of humanity the Syrian government has toward its own people and the authoritarian nature of that state, how ironic it is for Krauthammer, on FOX News tonight, to get so agitated and offended that Putin would bow up to the US and essentially say, “Syria is ours.” This is exactly what we’ve been doing throughout the Middle East for more than a decade! And even before that, it’s the very thing we tried to do in Iran in 1953, which back-fired in 1979 (or what the CIA calls “blowback”), and to this day is one of the reasons they hate us, cited even by Ahmadinejad! Of course, when it’s us doing the empire and resource building for our own interests, it’s right, right? Iraq and Afghanistan then become “humanitarian” missions or “freedom” missions for the “cause of liberty,” PR and marketing designed to persuade the masses into acquiescing to whatever our elite, empire-building leaders want. “You love this country don’t you? Then you’ll see the necessity of war and spreading democracy. And support the troops in our endeavor! If you don’t you must not love this country.”

Al Qaeda is a pawn in our chess game with the other rising super powers who are consolidating power. When it suits us, we buddy up with Al Qaeda and use them as tools (like in Egypt and Libya over the past year), who we essentially created, trained and funded beginning in the 1980’s to fight (oddly enough in this discussion) the Soviet Union. There again, when it suits us we attack Al Qaeda when we need to gain more ground “for the cause of liberty,” aka empire-building and creating a defensive posture toward the Eastern bloc of power.

Why do we Americans think we’re somehow any different as an empire than other empires that have come and gone throughout history? Granted, we have had a great thing going with our Republic in its Constitutional form, but we’re quickly losing that. What remains then? Power, exerted by forces outside of democratic control.