In his P&I article ’ The Real death toll in Gaza’ posted on 5 September, John Menadue reminded us that “Israel has become a criminal state” and “Now it is committing genocide”.

Australia should therefore be, he asserted, “banning .. all trade with Israel and recalling our ambassador in Tel Aviv and telling the Israel Ambassador to leave Canberra”.

Fine, but given the US’ robustly open engagement with and monumental resourcing of this war, as well as its insistence on the support of its allies, shouldn’t such venting (in which John is by no means alone) be at least as much directed at the US?

It is not that hard to see Israel and Netanyahu as mere stooges of an American plan to regain the dominance it once enjoyed over the Middle East. Yes, the Americans are, and have long been, this vengeful, devious and damnably uncaring about the human cost.

This behaviour first acquired some focus way back in the Korean war of the early 1950s when American-led forces deliberately failed to distinguish between North and South targets – both military and civilian (where, in their parlance, they couldn’t tell one “gook” from the other). The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Bridge at No Gun Ri quoted the infamous USAF general, Curtis LeMay, as having exulted that “We burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea too.” And the celebrated CBS newsman, Edward R. Murrow, had wondered, in a report which CBS refused to broadcast, “whether the South Korean people would ever forgive America”. The civilian death toll was about two million. And in Vietnam, it was almost as appalling. In both instances, it was clear that racial and religious inclinations, of the kind which has morphed into genocidal in Palestine, were played out. Inclinations which have long been visible in just about every conflict instigated or supported elsewhere by the Americans.

The plan had its beginnings during World War II in the Office of Strategic Studies, first led by “Wild Bill” (!) Donovan, which became the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency (along with its gathering of collaborators in the complex cohort of other American intelligence agencies) has been at the forefront of the US’ true Deep State – the dangerously creepy underworld of the business of the US that designs and orchestrates its world dominance.

Who will ever know why, with the connivance of many of its Western allies, its dubious beginnings included the safe relocation of a great many Nazi war criminals around the world (including to Australia). One of the OSS’ main conspirators in running this aptly dubbed “Ratline” was the Vatican and its much-conflicted Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius X11.

Despite his marked shallowness in office, John F. Kennedy, way back in the 1960s, was one of the very few American leaders to get the drift of what these boys (there were few girls) were doing during his time – as exemplified by his courageous decisions during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Decisions which caused such enduring fury within this dark underworld of the CIA cohort that they may have played into his demise.

So … today’s war in Gaza should in fact be seen as but one piece of the US’ ever updating architecture for continued world dominance – with its influential “big picture” schemers most likely betting that when it’s all over and the Palestinians have been dispersed enough to erase any appearance of nationality or claim to what was once theirs, most of the world will, as has invariably been the outcome of past American atrocity, shrug it off and move on. The US’ Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee — a prominent evangelical Southern Baptist pastor — has, in fact, already declared that “there’s really is no such thing as a Palestinian”.

The Americans are never more at peace with themselves than when they are at war with others, especially given their belief that, win or lose, their economy and their lucrative cutting-edge technologies — not least in weaponry — flourish. And that, again, win or lose, their dominance and their self-image of supreme warriorhood is amply reinforced by the demonstration of how much suffering anyone who takes them on must endure. Which is not unlike the manner in which Donald Trump — God’s gift to the far right — handles his creditors and his enemies.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.