Big B, let’s not forget about the money from the heroin trade, a major source of cash for US and UK banks, and one of the primary reasons the US/UK are interested in getting rid of the anti-drug Taliban.  Also, let’s not forget that the reason the pay-offs worked in Iraq was because the genocide against the Shias that the invasion precipitated was mostly completed by the time the bribes became an effective tool.  There is one sure way of getting the Iraqis, the Afghanis and others to stop killing US troops: end the damnable occupation, and get the empire’s thugs, er, I mean troops, out of there.

Why don’t we just pay them to not shoot at us, or blow up our convoys? (after all, that policy worked in Iraq. most of the violence against the occupying US army stopped after we started paying the Sunni tribesman, warlords, and yes, Osama and the boys, to just stop fighting us) Our boys just stay huddled now in the over 50 military bases that dot the pipeline from the kurdish north to Basra.

We are only there to protect the oil, after all.

Afghanistan is a whole other sticky kettle of fish. Or is it? Are we just there to prevent radical elements of Islam from taking over Pakistan, and thus a small but effective nuclear arsenal? Or is still to just protect the oil from said arsenal?

I hate to give anyone any bad ideas, but the easiest way to bring the west (the US) to its knees would be to nuke not Israel, but the oil fields and shipping stations along the Saudi coast. Imagine what would happen then. We would be forced to close ranks, and procure oil by any means possible (perhaps invade and occupy Nigeria, Venezuela, or Canada) There is no low we won’t sink to in order to keep our petroleum addicted economy afloat, even if it’s just for a few more years ‘till the shit runs out and we have to go back to swinging from the trees.

One would hope that, if such meetings are held, there would be more listening on the part of the US and its allies and less talking. We have a lot to learn—if we can just stop flexing our military muscles for a few hours, days, weeks.

Conclusions and just settlement will not be reached by one side dictating to the other, using threats, making unreasonable demands and expecting unrealistic goals that pay no attention to specific circumstances of the opposition, to cultural differences and to historically embedded complaints.

Of course Obama knows these things.  The difficulty is in getting the popular but ignorant bombast out of long-standing American foreign policies. The war corporatioins, and even the so-called “think tanks” are full of it, not to mention the politicians of both major parties.