By Michael Collins Piper

.One of America’s most outspoken academics is under fire again, once more accused of “anti-Semitism” — even though he’s Jewish — and charged with being “anti-American.” Dr. Richard Falk’s latest crime is having suggested the Boston Marathon incident was a result of the misconduct of U.S. foreign policy.
The late Chalmers Johnson, another harsh critic of American global adventurism — often referred to as the New World Order — famously described such unpleasant consequences as “blowback.” Falk sees a great deal of blowback ahead unless drastic changes are soon made in the direction of U.S. policy.
Earlier, Falk upset many by writing the foreword to the hotly controversial book by Dr. David Ray Griffin — The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11 — which raised serious questions about the U.S. government’s version of 9-11.
Addressing the government contention that the Boston bombing was the work of two young Muslims dissatisfied with American policy, Falk took a broad-ranging view of U.S. global relations and predicted a bleak future if things continue on the course they have during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Writing in Foreign Policy Journal on April 21, Falk slammed what he called “the American global domination project” — and concluded it is “bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.” In fact, he said, “in some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink U.S. relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East.”
Falk summarized the consequences of what he referred to as “the failed wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not only did those wars devastate those countries, while adding nothing to American security, but, he pointed out, “these unlawful wars wasted trillions expended over the several years during which many Americans were enduring the hardships and pain of the deepest economic recession since the 1930s.”
Republicans — typically — are up in arms over Falk’s assessment, demanding Falk be ousted from his UN post, but the no-nonsense professor has not spared Obama from criticism either.
Referring to what he calls Obama’s “obsequious diplomacy” and “backpedaling” in dealing with Israel, Falk said that although some at first saw signs Obama might be moving to put a brake on Israel, “it seems that Obama has given up altogether, succumbing to the Beltway ethos of ‘Israel first’.”
While Obama and the American foreign policy elite initially appeared to be moving away from “irresponsible and unlawful warfare” as “the centerpiece of America’s foreign policy” — the hallmark of the George W. Bush era — this is unfortunately, in Falk’s estimation, “far from a certainty.”
Right now, noted Falk, “the war drums are beating . . . in relation to both North Korea and Iran, and as long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy.”
Noting that “bipartisan support for maintaining the globe-girdling geopolitics runs deep in the body politic, and is accompanied by the refusal to admit the evidence of national decline,” Falk contended that “the signature irony is that the more America’s decline is met by a politics of denial, the more rapid and steep will be the decline, and the more abrupt and risky will be the necessary shrinking of the global leadership role so long played by the United States.”
Despite media and government elites continuing to defend American globalism, Falk sees some signs that grassroots Americans are waking up to the dangers and are beginning a “long-overdue” reflection on America’s role in the world.

(Issue Number 20, May 20, 2013,
AMERICAN FREE PRESS)