But haven't the US' friends changed or transmuted into enemies in the past? Weren't Saddam Hussein and even Muammar Gadhafi close to the White House once? And wasn't Hosni Mubarak a US friend until protests broke out in Egypt?

Moreover, aren't those the US calls friends in Syria fellow fighters of an opposition strongman, who in a matter-of-fact way tore open the chest of a fallen Syrian soldier, plucked out the heart, stuffed it between his teeth, and had it recorded on video and posted online for billions of earthlings to "admire"?

The US top guns are busy hammering out details of schemes on how to kill more men like the fallen Syrian soldier even if that means lending support to al-Qaida militants embedded in that country. The US leaders say they believe, full-heartedly, the conclusion drawn by their ours-only intelligence on the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, even though investigators dispatched by the world's most authoritative organization are still studying the samples collected from the alleged site of the chemical attack in Damascus.

The same US intelligence, which taps phones and intercepts e-mails of people from anywhere, fooled the world about Saddam Hussein having "huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction" a decade ago, which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The US politicians have simply used the intelligence to apply their own laws to other countries to further their goals. They still are.

The world's most advanced military has proven its edge worldwide. In former Yugoslavia, its bombs sent the limbs and bodies of children, women and men flying. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, some US soldiers have single-handedly shot more than a dozen innocent men and women to reach their "target". In Libya, US planes buried people deep into the desert sand and turned homes into ruins. The only thing they were worried about was not damaging the oil pipes nearby.

And each time they have emerged unscathed, with their commanders assuming higher pseudo-moral grounds. The inveterate idiosyncrasy of these experts in "surgical" operations against the sea of humanity is about to descend with full force again.

But the US export of destruction and bloodshed is coupled with a nightmarish byproduct: fear at home. Just visit the grave of former US ambassador to Libya and ask: How come the life of US citizens is losing value outside the US?

The author is a journalist with China Daily.

(China Daily 09/07/2013 page5)