A week ago I went to the downtown Charlottesville library and was in the audience when Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson gave this talk on the current state of the American empire.
Wilkerson served as chief of staff for Colin Powell when he was at the State Department.
Before he spoke the Congressional candidate Leslie Cockburn of the 5th district of Virginia gave a nine minute introduction.
I’m curious about this race as I live in this district and both candidates are not professional politicians – having never won an election before.
Wilkerson’s topic is of course somethig I’m very interested in as I wrote a book on it titled The War State.
I also recognized Cockburn’s name, because I have a book written by her husband back in the 1980’s titled The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine.
I remember that book, because my Dad served as the chief of preventive medicine for the US army in the late 1980’s and one day talked with me about the contents of this book. In his position he was involved in war planning against the Soviet block with NATO and aware of intelligence data involving some of their weapons with conclusions in this book that no one wanted to recognize.
Here is Wilkerson’s talk:
Some notes I took:
65 million people have been displaced in wars since 9/11.
Saudis are greatest sponsor of terror in the world.
Douglas Feith who was working under Rumsfield was obsessed with getting the oil pipeline in the Middle East for Israel as his reason for the Iraq war. Wilkerson complained. Cheney wanted to secure the strait passage.
“no stop in site” to endless wars.
Recounts personal dealings with Bolton whose career is talking about making wars, but told him it’s not his job to “do war” that’s the job of people like him.
US is now flying across borders of 9 countries for bombing.
26:00 minute video mark – Afghanistan – says will be there for 50 years. Terror fighting cover for blocking China’s belt road, having force next to Pakistan as nuclear danger, and to support low grade CIA ops in China Xinjiang province that could be ramped up if necessary.
[CIA played that game in Tibet in 1950’s]
29 minute video mark: Wilkerson believes Saudi Arabia will one day collapse as it won’t “win” in Yemen. Nassar invaded Yemen and failed.
If Saudi goes then Israel would be isolated and would be dangerous situation and would end up dragging US into a win less situation.
Pentagon sees climate change as a real threat. 92nd air borne was stranded for days in NC during flooding of other year.
Failure of elites produced Trump who now has Bolton there. Wilkerson talks as if Trump simply doesn’t know what he is doing and is therefore dangerous to the future course of national security.
Wilkerson thinks only reasonable policy is a strategic retrenchment and says it is inevitable one day one way or the other.
In Q&A which was not filmed says that he does not think that Bolton will get Trump to start war in Iran. Instead thinks their goal is regime change in order to change Iran’s foreign policy in regards to Syria and Israel, but says that nothing would change as these policies are simply in the strategic national security interests of Iran as a nation state even if it became a democracy. The Bolton plan is to create total fear in Iran to force regime change. A real war with Iran would take 500-700k American soldiers to win and be a disaster.
No one will work in the national security council because of Bolton and Trump except nuts. Bolton can’t get people to work on his staff.
[Everyone knows Bolton is a jerk to people, but he knows how to kiss the butt of whoever is above him as he kicks down].
If Pence became President he would fire Bolton as Bolton curses all of the time and would not get along with him. Doesn’t think he will last with Trump.
Wilkerson says Bahrain is the biggest US naval base.
Says US now has a base in Israel.
