Tripping over the foreign trip
The fact that ‘democracy’ and the western empire is in decline should be no surprise to readers of Khakis & Leather.
The leader of the senile world is on display while on his foreign trip that begun yesterday in Israel and on cue, he is exhibiting an obvious aberration.
What a memorable start. Expect more gaffes.
The aim of this trip is to mend an already sour relationship with the MENA region since the Biden Administration turned a blind eye towards them as the focus is now on Ukraine or gender issues while ignoring the complete destruction, invasion and disruption America has been conducting in the middle east for two decades till now.
While he starts off in Israel, he is expected to gush about the special relationship America has with Israel (meaning an assurance of funding and moral support) while ignoring the illegal West Bank settlements, skipping over the two state solution and ramping up the Israel-Iranian belligerence.
From there he heads to the West Bank for photo ops with an empty bag of promises and desperately praying no one takes him to task on the recent targeted killing of a Palestinian-American journalist by Israeli forces.
His final stop will be to Saudi Arabia to pay homage and kiss their asses as per tradition of every sitting US president.
Political cartoonist Ted Rall states, “Every president does it: Democrat, Republican, Trump, Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, they all do it, they’ve done it since the 1950s. There is nothing new here. This is just the continuation of a relationship that is particularly sordid given the fact that the US is constantly lecturing other countries about human rights and Saudi Arabia is pretty much one of the worst countries on the planet when it comes to human rights.”
When it comes to oil and the $, we have to throw morality and principles out the window!
In the case of Donald Trump, it was his claim that if he was elected, we would find out the truth about Saudi involvement in 9/11. For Biden, his promise was that he would put an end to U.S. support for the genocide committed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. Those were merely campaign slogans and soundbites that one should not take seriously especially now that the Biden Administration is struggling to combat record high gas prices at home.
The Saudi Kingdom is powerful and growing more powerful as one of the largest oil producers in the world, its insistence on maintaining support of its OPEC Plus partner, Russia in the Ukraine debacle making it a reliable partner, the kingdoms brazenness in the killing of US based journalist Jamal Kashoggi in Turkey and finally, the report early this year that the kingdom is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in Yuan, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market.
According to independent journalist Rachel Blevins,
“While the U.S. has convinced it allies in the UK and EU to pursue a path of economic ruin for the sake of fighting a proxy war against Russia that is doing more destruction to the West than to its intended target, Washington’s allies in the Middle East continue to benefit from their financial deals with the US—while Saudi Arabia specifically using the growing international frustration with U.S. Foreign policy to become even more powerful—and that’s something everyone should be talking about.”
So as Biden tries not to trip over his words or his steps coming down Air Force One, it is evident he is in a bind to placate another growing regional power even as many can see through the charade called “western democracy.”
With each act and gaffe, we witness real time desperation, self-destruction and degradation of the American-led Western Empire to complete irrelevance.
See you tomorrow!
- Ope