"Good Boy" Dutch PM Mark Rutte Rewarded NATO Leadership by Daddy America

Mark Rutte succeeded as Dutch Prime Minister precisely to the degree he betrayed his own country's interests, sovereignty and integrity on the altar of the American empire.

His jovial looks belie the predatory capitalist policies and sympathy for fascist political ideology which Mark Rutte has so successfully advanced.

In a testament to his decades of obsequious service carrying water for American imperialism, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has been granted one of the highest honors the military-industrial complex can bestow - leadership of the NATO military alliance.

Despite overseeing a litany of war crimes and human rights abuses facilitated by deploying Dutch military forces at Washington's behest, Rutte has been duly rewarded for his stalwart commitment to upholding U.S. hegemony across West Asia, North Africa and beyond. His tenures as prime minister were defined by the naked prioritization of corporate and imperial interests over those of the Dutch public he was elected to serve.

The Netherlands, a key financial center of Europe and home to many global corporations, has long been a vital cog in the Atlanticist power structure allied with the United States and Britain. Rutte and the Dutch ruling elite, including the Dutch royalty who are leading figures in the powerful Bilderberg Group, counted themselves among the upper echelons of European high society, regularly rubbing shoulders with power brokers at elite conclaves. Rutte hails from the conservative VVD party which has historically pushed free market, pro-corporate policies in lockstep with Washington's agenda.

Rutte also has a troubling track record of cooperating with and mainstreaming far-right, populist forces in Dutch politics. In 2010, he led the most right-wing Dutch government since 1945, supported by Geert Wilders' far-right and extremely Zionist Freedom Party. Rutte played a pivotal role in furthering the normalization of extreme anti-immigrant, xenophobic ideologies that had previously been on the fringes. His willingness to embrace the far-right's racial resentment politics exemplified his situational principles - fascist ideology was no barrier as long as it consolidated Rutte's hold on power and facilitated capitalist expansion by any means necessary.

To the privileged titans of industry and high-ranking Pentagon officials he obediently took orders from, Rutte was indeed "America's good boy" - the deferential junior partner they could always count on to rubber stamp whatever imperialist aggression was on the agenda. From enthusiastically participating in the catastrophic illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to amplifying NATO's disastrous regime change operation in Libya, Rutte embodied the ethos of the servile European client state.

Dutch Ignorance

Despite the well-documented trail of death, destruction and human suffering left in the wake of these military adventures rubber stamped by his government, a vast swath of the Dutch public remains thoroughly uninformed about their country's complicity in American crimes against humanity worldwide. This hypnosis of ignorance made it all too easy to gaslight the population about the country's egregious behavior on the global stage.

Thanks to the media's practiced art of manufacturing consent through selective coverage that obsessed over trivial ethnic grievances, Rutte operated in the open knowledge that hardly anyone was paying attention beyond the Netherlands' borders. In the Netherlands, news and politics revolved around Muslims, Black Pete, refugees and other fabricated domestic non-issues, allowing Rutte's imperialist foreign policy to escape any real scrutiny.

Little did (and does) the average Dutch citizen know that their elected leader was greasing the wheels for multinational energy conglomerates and turbo-charged gentrification while simultaneously deploying military forces to inflict wanton death and destruction under the guise of human rights and democracy promotion.

The Dutch government's unquestioning participation in the U.S.'s "War on Terror" saw its military personnel regularly implicated in a pattern of potential war crimes that went largely unscrutinized. From killing civilians in airstrikes gone awry during the occupation of Afghanistan to the indiscriminate bombardment of urban areas in Iraq, the Hague shouldered its share of the imperial carnage.

Whitewashing the crimes of Israel

While families of the innocent victims called for justice and accountability, back home, Rutte deftly mastered the age-old art of whitewashing his government's abuses. None exemplifies this better than his sycophancy towards America's foremost ally and human rights pariah, Israel.

In one particularly disturbing leaked conversation, Rutte was recorded brainstorming with colleagues ways to publicly gaslight the Dutch population about Israel's human rights abuses – apparently a top priority for the obedient minion of the American empire.

"Mark Rutte was caught on secret audio asking colleagues how to make it look to the public that Israel was not committing war crimes," revealed one investigator detailing the damning audio.

Somehow the Prime Minister's guidance for pro-actively laundering the image of an apartheid regime perpetrating ethnic cleansing and massacring civilians - mainly children - failed to seriously register on the nation's moral outrage meter. Then again, 'apartheid' is both a Dutch word and invention that was systematically applied across the Dutch colonial empire from Indonesia and Suriname to South Africa. Just another day at the office for NATO's newest head cheerleader carrying on that ignoble tradition.

Daddy America

Make no mistake, the blunt truth is Mark Rutte succeeded as Dutch Prime Minister precisely to the degree he betrayed his own country's interests, sovereignty and integrity on the altar of American empire.

"All for daddy America" characterizes Rutte's dutiful service enabling war crimes across the Middle East and avoiding criticism of U.S. assassination programs from Dutch soil.

In a just world, Rutte's unsavory record of vassal to the empire and collusion with corporate plunderers should permanently disqualify him from holding any position of international leadership. In reality, it is exactly this obedient pedigree that makes Rutte such a perfect face for heading up NATO's next campaign of ultra violence against whichever convenient enemy the military-industrial complex deems profitable enough to destabilize next.

The Dutch public has every reason to be outraged as their national sovereignty and natural resources have been permanently sacrificed to secretive multinational boardrooms and Washington's war planners under Rutte's tenure. But for the American empire, entrusting NATO with a trusted and reliable servant like Mark Rutte is a calculation rendered in much simpler terms: Loyalty to imperialism must always be rewarded, no matter the human cost and trail of bodies left in its wake.

For now, the so-called leader of the Dutch people can continue basking in his self-satisfied fealty to the U.S. war machine as he assumes the high-profile reins of NATO. But whether he ultimately ends up discarded in the dustbin of geopolitics or celebrated as a conquering hero rests entirely on his willingness to carry out whatever orders come down the pipeline. And as history tells us, he is more than willing, body count be damned.

- Karim