‘No foreign policy benefit for Americans’

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Dankof, broadcaster and commentator from San Antonio, over the influence of the American people on the US government and the decisions they make.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The US prides itself on the government for the people, by the people. Do Americans influence US policy makers, especially when it comes to wars?

Dankof: I think increasingly the answer is no. when we look at the latest actions of President Barack Delano Bush we see both in Libya and in Syria that there is a policy continuing here that has nothing to do with the interest of the average American but has everything to do with the Israeli lobby principally, central bankers secondarily, oil and natural gas consortiums thirdly.

The fact of the matter is the American people have figured out by this time that they were sold a bill of goods by [Former US Secretary of State] Colin Powell in 2003 and George Bush when this country invaded Iraq. We are not coming to find out things about 9/11 and who may really have been behind that.

They suggested the American intervention in Afghanistan which is obviously also a mistake, as the Soviets and the British found out previously, is motivated by completely different agenda with hidden hands than those that have been advertised to the American public.

So now we have a situation where Barack Delano Bush is trying to figure out along with his foreign policy experts and these Pro-Israeli people in both major parties on the [Capitol] Hill; how they are going to sell this absolutely idiotic policy to the American people.

Press TV: [The other guest of the program ] Richard Hellman clearly thinks that the Us does not have a formative foreign policy stance regarding Syria. Do you agree with that, giving the fact that there is another camp that says you are not serious, just part of a list of countries that the US is ploughing to the region based on what the project for the New American Century dictated back in 1997, but the think tanks in Washington, which after that comes Iran and after that, once that happens, in some particular sequence, it is going to be Russia and China, that the US is going to be after?

Dankof: That is exactly writer and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts had analysis of all of these and I think it is poorly emphasized of the project for a New American Century, largely financed by Richard Millen… in this country and the so-called Clean Break Document that produced in 1996; I understood that group is now known as the foreign policy initiative.

When you look at those folks, when you look at other Israeli German think tanks in Washington DC, that are producing some of this propaganda about [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and the Syrian regime and this alleged use of chemical gas on the part of Assad and all of these other things; it is clear who is driving this and it does not take a real genius to figure out that we have got a foreign policy in the United States, both with the executive branch of our government and also legislative branch of our government and that foreign policy is based upon whatever [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionist entity wants in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere.

This is what is going on here and the destabilization of the Assad regime in Syria has everything to do with pursuing the Israeli agenda in getting rid of Assad is a prelude to an Israeli-American military preemptive strike on Iran.

Press TV: I am going to back to some of the goals set by this project for New American Century, which described it as their four core missions aside from defending the American homeland, fighting decisively with multiple simultaneous major threats to wars performed the constabulary duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions and transform US forces to exploit the revolution in military affairs; I mean it sounds like what is going on right now.

Why is there excessive focus on military strategies and adventurism by the US and not enough focus on diplomacy?

Dankof: Well, because in terms of honest diplomacy, we presumably would have a seriously different policy from the ones we presently have.

It seems to me that when you look at Assad and Syria, again looking at Paul Craig Roberts’ article today, the fact of the matter is that of the so-called 93,ooo deaths that have occurred in Syria; I think Paul Craig Roberts seconds Dr. Philip Giraldi that

the vast percentage of these deaths that have occurred in Syria, have occurred not because of President Assad, but because of the sponsorship of Saudi Arabia in the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation states and Britain and France and the United States and Israel in a deliberate attempt to overthrow the Alawites Shia regime in Syria and to install someone who is compatible, someone or something that is compatible with its diverse coalition that is trying to overthrow that government.

The fact of the matter is, if we ask ourselves that what it is that Barack Delano Bush is proposing that we support in Syria, we have to look no farther than the video that is now floating around on the Internet about how the so-called freedom fighters with al-Nusra who are being supported by the United States and the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council states have just beheaded the bishop of the Syrian Christian Orthodox church in that country and that if we want to look at this whole issue of nerve gas Carla Del Ponte who is a former Swiss attorney general and was a UN representative, looking into all of these allegations that Assad had used Sarin gas in Syria discovered that in fact Sarin gas had been used in Syria but it was being used by these so-called rebels and freedom fighters.

They were being supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Britain and France and covertly Israel.

This is what is going on here and as long as this Israeli propaganda think tanks in Washington, along with their allies and the American media and these Israeli purchased people in the House, in the Senate and the relevant committees continue to parrot this line, this is what all of the American people are going to understand about Syria; basically what Israel and the neoconservatives want them to understand or to perceive about Syria.

But the bad news for the neocons and for the Israeli agents in the American government is this again this latest poll shows that the American public is sick of this stuff, they are sick of the Iraq war, they are sick of the Afghan war, they are sick of this intervention in Libya, they are sick of this intervention in Syria and they are sick of Benjamin Netanyahu, leading the president of the United States and the American Congress around by the nose.

Press TV: I am going to test your memory; I am going to give you a quote, remember who said this?

“There is going to be no significant alternation of American foreign policy until the American people stand up and say that we have had enough of enforcing the Sykes-Picot Agreement, we have had enough of the Belford Declaration, so froth and so on.”

Dankof: That sounds like me.

Press TV: Exactly. Now, the American people [are] standing up and saying that we have had enough. Mark Dankof, how do you propose that what is going to happen? Cannot Obama see what has happened for example from North Africa to the Middle East, in terms of what is called the so-called Arab Spring? Is that something that he is not afraid of happening in the United States?

Dankof: Well, you raised an interesting question there; Barack Delano Bush as a matter of fact, was publicly quoted in all the Israeli dailies in his last trip to Israel, crediting Jewish money and Jewish lobby with having a disproportionate influence in Barack’s election to the US Senate Seat in Illinois and subsequently the American presidency.

When you look at the amount of Israeli money that continues to buy, the corporate money that continues to buy Federal Elections at all levels; this I think is the context which we need to see what is transpiring at this point.

The scary thing is Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has said is that empires, over-extended empires, dying empires like the United States end up discovering as the ancient Roman Empire did that the over-extended in terms of the commitment of manpower and that the running out of money.

If you look at present situation in the United States with its overcommitments militarily abroad, its burgeoning national debt, these horrific trillion dollar plus Federal budget deficits, overrunning every year and the fact of the death toll in this entire thing continues to rise for everybody involved, it is time to take another look at who is driving our foreign policy and why.

Just in one area, we have not even begun to discuss the amount of massive … the United States has conflicted both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but I think it is also a situation when we look at just the American casualties alone. Not simply American deaths, but the fact that was published the other day that for every one of these wounded casualties in the United States armed forces that occurs as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan, is going to cost us a minimum of USD 2 million life time per casualty and taking care of these poor people.

The fact of the matter is that there is not a compelling of immaturely American national security interest and overdoing over there that involves the average American citizens, that involves our homeland, that involves protecting our families and our communities.

It has everything to do with the multinational corporate political and economic structure including the banks and the Zionist entity that is making the armed forces of the United States….