Queen of Chicken Hawks: Victoria Nuland Had A Hand in Every US Intervention
in the Past 30 Years
As the Senate prepares to confirm Nuland for Under Secretary for Political
Affairs, a reflection of her last 30 years in government shows how she was
connected to nearly every foreign policy disaster undertaken by the United
States.
Mint press News
by Rick Sterling
February 11th, 2021
By Rick Sterling
President Joe Biden's nomination of Victoria Nuland for Under Secretary for
Political Affairs, the third-highest position at the State Department, is a
dangerous sign. Nuland exemplifies the neoconservatives who have led
American foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years,
all while evading any shred of accountability.
As a top-level appointee, Nuland must still be confirmed by the Senate. And
while pro-peace groups have waged a campaign to stop her confirmation,
reflecting on her career in public service makes clear why she is
incompetent, highly dangerous, and should not be confirmed.
Afghanistan and Iraq
From 2000 to 2003, when the Bush administration attacked and then invaded
Afghanistan, Nuland was serving as Bush's permanent representative to NATO.
The Afghan government offered to work with the Americans to remove al-Qaeda,
but the offer was rejected. After al-Qaeda was defeated, the U.S. could have
left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases,
splintered the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.
From 2003 to 2005, Nuland was principal foreign policy advisor to Vice
President Dick Cheney who "helped plan and manage the war that toppled
[Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein, including making [the] Bush administration's
case for preemptive military action based on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction." The foreign policy establishment, including Nuland, insisted
that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a U.S. "ally" would be simple.
The invasion and continuing occupation have resulted in over a million dead
Iraqis, many thousands of dead Americans, hundreds of thousands with PTSD,
and a bill for American taxpayers of 2 to 6 trillion dollars.
From 2005 to 2008, Nuland served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO where her role
was to "strengthen Allied support" for the occupations of Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Victoria Nuland
Victoria Nuland is sworn in as NATO ambassador by Dick Cheney in 2005. Photo
| White House
When Nuland was asked about the lessons learned on the tenth anniversary of
the invasion, she responded:
Compared to where we were in the Saddam era, we now have a bilateral
security agreement . We have deep economic interests and ties. We have a
security relationship. We have a political relationship."
Nuland's response makes clear that she is oblivious to the costs, and that
her loyalties are to the elite who are still benefiting from the tragedy.
Indeed, "one of the top profiteers from the Iraq War was oil field services
corporation, Halliburton." Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in 'federal
contracts related to the Iraq war.' Nuland's boss, Vice President Dick
Cheney, was its former CEO.
In January 2020, seventeen years after the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi
parliament passed a resolution demanding U.S. troops and contractors
withdraw from their country. Now, over one year later, they still have not
left.
Libya
In the spring of 2011, Nuland became State Department spokesperson under
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she ramped up the "regime change"
assault on longtime U.S.-ally, Moammar Ghaddafi of Libya. UN Security
Council resolution 1973 authorized a "No Fly Zone" for the protection of
civilians but not an air assault on Libyan government forces. Yet that
summer, as the U.S. and her NATO allies bombed and attacked Libyan forces,
Nuland dismissed the option of a peaceful transition in Libya and suggested
falsely that the UN Security Council required the removal of Ghaddafi.
The bombing campaign led to the toppling of the Libyan government and the
brutal public murder of Ghaddafi at the hands of anti-government rebels.
Commenting on the murder (and bayonet sodomizing of Ghaddafi) Nuland's boss
Hillary Clinton now famously chortled:
We came, we saw, he died."
Before Ghaddafi's overthrow, Libya had the highest standard of living in all
of Africa. Since the U.S.-led assault though it has become a failed state
with competing warlords, huge inflation, huge unemployment, and exploding
extremism and violence that has spread to neighboring countries. Most of the
migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, or
drowned trying to, are coming from Libya. By any measure, the goal of
"protecting" Libyan civilians has failed spectacularly.
Syria
One reason that Clinton and hawks like Nuland wanted to overthrow Ghaddafi
was ostensibly to gain access to Libya's military arsenal. Doing so would
allow them to funnel arms to insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian
government and any other enemy of the United States or her allies in the
region.
This was confirmed in secret DOD documents which stated:
During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by,
the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early
September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located
in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the
ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.
In January of 2012, Nuland claimed that the United States was "on the side
of those wanting peaceful change in Syria." At the same time, the U.S. was
supplying sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and 125 mm and 155 mm
howitzer missiles to the purportedly "peaceful" anti-government protestors
in the country,
The U.S. "regime change" strategy for Syria followed the pattern of Libya.
First, claim that the protestors are peaceful. Then claim the government's
response is disproportionate. Put pressure on the target government to
paralyze it, while increasing proxy support for protesters and subversive
anti-government groups. As documented, there were violent protesters in
Syria from the start. During the first days of protest in Deraa in mid-March
of 2011, seven police officers were killed. As a spokesperson for the State
Department, Nuland was a major figure promoting that narrative in order to
justify the "regime change" campaign.
Ukraine
In September of 2013, Nuland was appointed to the post of Assistant
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The uprising in
Ukraine's Maidan central plaza began soon after her arrival. To underscore
American support for the protests, Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out
bread and cookies to a crowd of anti-government protesters.
The protests continued into January of 2014. The issue at hand was a loan
from the International Monetary Fund which would require a 40% increase in
natural gas bills, or to accept a loan from Russia with the inclusion of
cheap oil and gas. The opposition, wary of Russia and in favor of Ukraine's
alignment with "western" powers, wanted the Yanukovych government to accept
the IMF loan. That opposition was comprised of different factions, including
the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector.
In early February of 2014, an audio recording of Nuland talking to U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The
four-minute-long conversation was a media sensation as it included Nuland
saying, "F**k the EU," in reference to the European Union's interests in
Ukraine.
MintPress News . Victoria Nuland Leaked Call on Ukraine
But Nuland's cursing was a distraction from what was truly significant of
the recording. It showed the extent to which Nuland was meddling in domestic
Ukrainian affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders and was
managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would - and would
not - have a seat at the table in the post-coup government. In the
recording, Nuland says:
I don't think Klitsch [Vitaly Klitschko] should go into government.. I think
Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy. "
The reason she wanted to "F**k the EU" was that she did not approve of the
EU's preferred method of negotiation and compromise. Nuland and Pyatt wanted
to "midwife" and "glue" the toppling of the Yanukovych government despite it
being in power after an election that was observed and substantially
approved by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).
Over the next few weeks, the protests escalated. The president of the
American Chamber of Commerce in Kyiv, Bernard Casey, described what happened
next.
On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protestors and
police] on the Maidan .. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition
blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots
coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics
revealed that the protestors and the police were all shot with the same
weapons."
The Estonian foreign minister would later echo those claims: "behind the
snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new
(opposition) coalition."
Casey continues:
On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between
President Yanukovych and the protestors, agreeing to early elections - in
May 2014 instead of February 2015.. Despite the signing of an agreement .
the ultranationalist protestors, and their American sponsors, rejected it,
and stepped up their campaign of violence."
The coup was finalized in the following days. Yanukovych fled for his life
and, as planned, Yatsenyuk became president.
Victoria Nuland Ukraine
Nuland, right, offers cookies to pro-EU protesters in Independence Square in
Kiev, Dec. 11, 2013. Andrew Kravchenko | AP
One of the first acts of the coup leadership was to remove Russian, the
first language of millions of Ukrainians, as an official state language.
Over the coming period, the "birth" of the coup government, violence by
ultranationalists and neo-Nazis were prevalent.
In Odessa, those peacefully protesting the coup were violently attacked. One
video published online shows an especially vicious attack on peaceful
protesters followed by the fire-bombing of the building where protestors had
retreated. Fire trucks were prevented from reaching the building to put out
the fire and rescue the citizens inside. Forty-two people died and 100 were
injured. In another incident, a convoy of buses heading to Crimea was
attacked and the anti-coup passengers beaten and some killed, and in the
Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, protests against the coup were met with
deadly force.
Nuland claims to be a "victim" because her conversation was leaked publicly.
The real victims are the many thousands of Ukrainians who died and the
hundreds of thousands who were made refugees because of Nuland's crusade to
bring Ukraine into the NATO fold.
The audio recording confirms that Nuland was managing the protests at a
top-level and that the result (Yats is the guy) was as planned. If Nuland
was willing to go to such lengths, it's possible that she also approved the
decision to both deploy snipers in order to escalate the crisis and to
overturn the mediated agreement by the EU which would have forced elections
in three months time and effectively undermined the protest movement.
Why were snipers deployed on February 18? No one can say for sure, but time
was running out, the Russian leadership was distracted by the Sochi Olympics
and perhaps the coup managers were in a hurry to "glue" it in advance.
Russia
During the 1990s, Nuland worked for the State Department on Russia related
issues, including a stint as deputy director for former Soviet Union
affairs. During that time, the U.S. interfered in Russian internal affairs
in myriad ways. Time magazine proudly proclaimed, "Yanks to the rescue: the
secret story of how American advisors helped Yeltsin win."
Yet Yeltsin's leadership and the policies pushed by the United States had
disastrous consequences. Between 1991 and 1999, Russia's gross domestic
product decreased by nearly 50% as social safety nets were removed. The
Russian economy collapsed, oligarchs, and lawlessness arose. Nuland was part
of the U.S. team leading the efforts in Russia, deploying economic "shock
therapy" and causing widespread social despair.
Meanwhile, the United States reneged on promises to Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev that NATO would not expand "one inch" eastward. Instead, NATO
became an offensive pact, bombing Yugoslavia in violation of international
law and then absorbing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic
states, the Czech Republic, Albania, Croatia, and more.
Coming into power in 2000, Putin clamped down on the oligarchs, restored
order, and began rebuilding the economy. Oligarchs were forced to pay taxes
and start investing in productive enterprises. The economy and confidence
were restored. Over seven years, GDP went from 1.3 billion (U.S. dollars) to
2.3 billion. That is why Putin's public approval rating has been
consistently high, ranging between 85% and a "low" approval rating of 60%.
Most Americans are unaware of these facts. Instead, Putin and Russia are
persistently demonized. This has been convenient for the Democratic Party
establishment as it served as a distraction for their efforts against Bernie
Sanders, efforts which ultimately led to their loss to Donald Trump. The
demonization of Russia is also especially useful and profitable for the
military-industrial complex.
Victoria Nuland
Nuland speaks to lawmakers after testifying on 'Policy Response" to Russian
election Interference, June 20, 2018. Andrew Harnik | AP
Nuland boosted the "Steele Dossier" which alleged collaboration between
Russia and Trump among other salacious claims. The allegations filled the
media and poisoned American attitudes towards Russia. Belatedly, the truth
about the "Steele Dossier" is coming out. Last summer the Wall Street
Journal reported "the bureau (FBI) knew the Russia info was phony in 2017"
and that "there was no factual basis to the dossier's claims."
While promoting disinformation, Nuland is pushing for a more aggressive U.S.
foreign policy. In an article titled "Pinning Down Putin." she insists that
"Russia's threat to the liberal world has grown," that Washington should
"deter and roll back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin," and "rebuff Russian
encroachments in hot spots around the world."
The major "hot spots" are some of the same conflicts that Nuland herself
promoted, especially Syria and Ukraine. In Syria, the U.S. and its allies
have spent billions promoting the overthrow of the Assad government. So far,
they have failed, but have not given up. The facts are clear: American
troops and military bases in Syria do not have the authorization of the
Syrian government. They are actively stealing the precious oil resources of
the Syrian state. It is the United States, not Russia, that is
"encroaching."
The queen of chicken hawks
Victoria Nuland has promoted a foreign policy of intervention, coups, proxy
wars, aggression, and occupation and that policy has been implemented with
bloody and disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and
Ukraine.
With consummate hypocrisy, she accuses Russia of spreading disinformation in
the United States, while she openly seeks to put "stress on Putin where he
is vulnerable, including among his own citizens." She wants to "establish
permanent bases along NATO's eastern border and increase the pace and
visibility of joint training exercises."
Nuland is the queen of chicken hawks, the Lady Macbeth of perpetual war.
There are hundreds of thousands of victims from the policies she has
promoted. Yet she has not received a scratch. On the contrary, she has
profited from a stock portfolio likely filled with military contractors.
Now Nuland wants to provoke, threaten, and "rollback" Russia. Yet a quick
look at any map of U.S. military bases shows who is threatening whom.
Victoria Nuland is highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.
