They’ll be home before Christmas in this war to end all wars
Posted by John, September 14th, 2014 - under Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, War.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Masque of Pandora”.
Truth in placards
The latest cabal of war mongers – the US, the UK and Australia plus
the other usual white western suspects and a few Quisling Arab states –
has rushed back into Iraq to defeat the death cult, Islamic State. I
have no love for IS, but they didn’t kill 2 million civilians in
Indo-China; they didn’t kill more than one million civilians in Iraq;
they didn’t kill tens of thousands of innocents in Afghanistan. They
aren’t drone bombing women and children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia and elsewhere.
The real death cult is western imperialism. Australia is worshiping at the altar with the high priest, the US.
Like all the liars of war, this time it is
humanitarian. Just like Vietnam. Just Like Iraq in 1990. Just like
Afghanistan in 2002. Just like Iraq in 2003. Of course Vietnam was built
on a lie, the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin . Iraq 2003 was built on the
lie of weapons of mass destruction. And now the latest war in Iraq is
built on fear of Muslims at home and abroad and the lie of humanitarian
intervention.
ISIS is a logical consequence of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Islamic State might be a bastard child of US foreign policy but its
parentage is clear.
This next round in the war in Iraq is a war to remove the mistakes
of the past war. It won’t work because the wars in Iraq are the problem,
not the way they are carried out. All our intervention will do is
invigorate those fighting against us and possibly make Australia a
target for an attack here. Indeed that may well be Islamic State’s
intention – to draw us in to their trap.
War and capitalism are a long married couple. As US economic power
declines and that of China rises the world will become more unstable.
The US will resort more and more to force to keep China in second place,
a second place far behind the US. It cannot work in the long term
because the forces unleashed in China are the very forces that built US
capitalism and imperialism – the drive for profit protected and expanded
by a strong state.
So why the return to Iraq? Because of its sectarianism and abuse of
Sunnis, the US puppet regime in Iraq sowed the seeds for ISIS. Islamic
State was in fact supported by the US in Syria for a while. The arms
they use are American.
Islamic State receives major support from Saudi Arabia who, perhaps
not coincidentally, is not part of the white man’s war brigade in
Iraq. (As an aside Saudi Arabia beheaded up to 40 ‘criminals’ last
month, including some for sorcery. Unsurprisingly there was not a
mention in the mainstream press. Beheadings are OK when our erstwhile
allies do it.
Australia is supporting the US as part of its insurance policy deal
with American imperialism. Our ruling class provide cover for an
alliance to provide protection in the future against Chinese imperialism
and to enable Australian power under cover of US power to expand in the
region.
Clearly the Australian ruling class has aligned itself closely with
the US, and therefore against China. Pine Gap is for the Americans. The
Darwin base and its expansion is for the Americans. We might sell our
resources to China but our ruling class’s long term interests they
believe lie with the US. Hence the insurance policy with the US. What
are a few dead Australians sacrificed on the altar of the US alliance
compared to being on the hopefully winning side and for ever in
America’s gratitude?
One problem. The US isn’t even the winning side. The defeats that
dare not speak their name – Afghanistan and Iraq – are about to be
repeated, in Iraq.
There is an added bonus for the government, they hope. A good war
will distract attention away from their war on Australia’s poor and
workers. There’s unlimited money for war but none for the poor.
And if anyone still has illusions in the Labor Party, Bill Shorten’s
‘all the way with TA’ should put the final nail into that coffin.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that this war in Iraq would take months. No doubt they’ll be home before Christmas.
Have we learned nothing over the last century? Or is this the war to
end all wars? This time, no doubt, the Western ruling classes will get it right. Oh yeah, just like 100 years ago.
Later articles will try to address why the US is doing this, why
Labor is in partnership with the Abbott government and how we can
resist.
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