The pretext for the assault was that Gaddafi was about to launch a military operation to massacre civilians in Benghazi where rebellious forces had seized power. It had as much substance as the charge that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, another example of utopian social engineering that left over a million Iraqi dead and millions more driven from their homes.

There is one last hope for the United States. It does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the union organizing and strikes by workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

The real Joe Biden will re-emerge in the weeks ahead, as he selects and announces the members of his cabinet. But the best indication we have about the type of leader he will be is the assurance he provided to some of his rich donors at a ritzy Manhattan fundraiser in June of last year: if he were to become the President of the United States, Biden told them, “nothing would fundamentally change.”

Throughout the Trump era the Democratic Party has been happy to welcome into the fold a murderer’s row of former intelligence community operatives and neo-conservative Bush-era Iraq War architects as long as they were critical of the president. If Biden is able to win this election, he will not be leading a party that has any interest in winding down what remains of the moribund American empire. Quite the opposite.

A way to clarify jingoistic biases in foreign policy is to ask the questions: who was the initial aggressor? Who is the invader, the occupier, the ever hovering armed drone operator? Who has backed and armed dictators to repress their people who want no more such nation-building by the U.S.?

For over a year, the United States has played out a scenario designed to (1) reassert U.S. control over Europe by blocking E.U. trade with Russia, (2) bankrupt Russia, and (3) get rid of Vladimir Putin and replace him with an American puppet, like the late drunk, Boris Yeltsin.

Obama’s hysterical and very selective presentation of ISIS crimes forms the pretext for launching another war against a predominantly Muslim country, Syria, while shielding his close ally, the royal Saudi decapitator from US public outrage. ISIS crimes have become another excuse to launch a campaign of ‘mass decapitation by drones and bombers’.

Resistance will come from those willing to breach police barricades. Resistance will mean jail time and direct confrontation. Resistance will mean physically disrupting the corporate machinery. Resistance will mean severing ourselves from the dominant culture to build small, self-sustaining communities. This resistance will be effective only when we refuse to do what we are told.

The launch of two major wars by the US government had two major beneficiaries, one domestic and one foreign. The three major weapons manufacturers, Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOG) and Raytheon (RTN) have delivered record-shattering returns to investors, CEOs and investment banks during the past decade and a half.

Dirty Wars provides a raw and gripping exposé on the dark side of US foreign policy in the post-9/11 era.