Folks, this is starting to sound pretty ominous. The Washington War Party is coming unhinged and appears to be leaving no stone unturned when it comes to provoking Putin's Russia and numerous others. The recent collapse of cooperation in Syria----based on the false claim that Assad and his Russian allies are waging genocide in Aleppo---- is only the latest example.

So now comes the US Army's chief of staff, General Mark Milley, doing his best imitation of Curtis LeMay in a recent speech dripping with bellicosity. While America has no industrial state enemy left on the planet that can even remotely challenge its economic might, technological superiority and overwhelming military power, General Milley unloaded a fusillade of bluster at the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting in Washington DC:

The strategic resolve of our nation, the United States, is being challenged and our alliances tested in ways that we haven't faced in many, many decades," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the audience.

I want to be clear to those who wish to do us harm … the United States military -- despite all of our challenges, despite our [operational] tempo, despite everything we have been doing -- we will stop you and we will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before. Make no mistake about that.

That is rank nonsense. We are not being "tested" by anyone. To the contrary, Imperial Washington is provoking tensions and confrontations everywhere -- from the South China Sea to Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, the Black Sea, the Baltics and Ukraine---that have no bearing whatsoever on the safety and security of the citizens of  Spokane WA, Topeka KS and Springfield MA.

Indeed, the clear and present danger to peace and freedom in the homeland lies not in the machinations of foreign capitals, but in the arrogant and bombastic groupthink that has overtaken the denizens of the Imperial City.

The latter is again on display in the full-throated fulminations about the siege of Aleppo being emitted by the Washington War Party and its trained poodles in the establishment media----most especially the New York Times.

We are told that the Russian Air Force and Assad's military are targeting schools, hospitals and the 200,000 or so civilians of Eastern Aleppo for indiscriminate bombing and slaughter. It's shades of Benghazi 2011 all over again-----an incipient genocide that Washington must stop in the name of R2P (Responsibility to Protect).

No it's not!

What is happening in Aleppo is a raging sectarian civil war and a proxy battleground for the regional political maneuvers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran. They are none of America's business and haven't been since the so-called Arab spring uprising spread to Syria in 2011.

Indeed, Syria is a lawless, bombed-out, economically decimated failed state today owing to Washington's heavy-handed intervention at the behest of  the War Party's bloody twin sisters. That is, the neocons -- led by the contemptible Kagan clan -- and the R2P liberal interventionist claque around Hillary Clinton, including UN Ambassador Samantha Powers and National Security Council head Susan Rice.