Showing posts with label America's War on Terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America's War on Terror. Show all posts

Thursday, 18 June 2020

من المحيط الهادئ حتى جبل طارق الصين وحلفاؤها يعتلون عرش العالم

كلّ ما يدور من حولنا يؤكد بما لم يعد قابلاً للشك او التردّد بأنّ مركز ثقل العالم ينتقل من الغرب الى الشرق..! وانّ محور هذا الانتقال هو العلوم التي بدأت تهيمن عليها وتتقنها كلّ من الصين وروسيا وإيران، فيما لا تزال أميركا هيكلاً ضخماً، لكنها لا تكاد تملأ جوفها إلا أوهام القوة ومحدوديتها…!
وهاجس الصين هو الشبح الذي يطارد في ما كان يسمّى يوماً الدولة الأعظم في العالم…!
وإليكم مسار هذا التحوّل التاريخي بالوقائع:
لا بدّ لأيّ محلل موضوعي ان يعود الى الجذور البعيدة، لأيّ أزمة تظهر في العلاقات الدولية في وقتنا الحاضر، وذلك من أجل سبر أغوارها، والوقوف على مدى عمق هذه الأزمة، واستشراف احتمالات تطورها، والاستعداد للتعامل مع هذه التطورات والتداعيات، بشكل يخدم المصلحة العربية العليا، وفي مقدّمتها القضية العربية المركزية، التي هي قضية فلسطين.
انّ الأزمة التي نعيش فصولها منذ أشهر، بين الولايات المتحدة والصين الشعبية، وما تخللها من حرب تجارية واقتصادية وتكنولوجية وعلمية وسياسية وغير ذلك ضدّ الصين الشعبية، لم تظهر الى العلن منذ انتشار فيروس كورونا في مدينة ووهان الصينية، بداية هذا العام، وإنما يعود تاريخ انطلاقها الى زمن أبعد بكثير.
فمنذ إعلان ضابط البحرية والخبير الاستراتيجي البحري الأميركي، ألفرِدْ ثايَر ماهان عن استراتيجيته لفرض الهيمنة الأميركية على العالم، في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر (توفي سنة 1914)، والتي استند فيها الى انّ الوسيلة الأفضل، لفرض هذه الهيمنة، هي نشر الأساطيل الأميركية في بحار ومحيطات العالم والسيطرة عليها، مبتعداً بذلك عن استراتيجية مونرو، التي كانت تركز على/ أو تدعو إلى/ بسط السيطرة على الأميركيتين فقط.
وقد نفذت الولايات المتحدة هذه الاستراتيجية، منذ سنة 1907، عندما قرّر الرئيس الأميركي الجمهوري، ذو الأصول الهولندية، ثيودور روزفلت الذي انتخب رئيساً سنة 1904، إرسال حملة بحرية عسكرية أميركية، تضمّ العديد من البوارج الحربية، في جولة حول العالم. هذه الجولة التي شكلت تدريباً عسكرياً حياً لمشاركة الولايات المتحدة، بجيوشها البحرية والبرية، في الحرب العالمية الأولى ومن ثم في الحرب العالمية الثانية، التي أدّت بنتائجها الى فرض الهيمنة على كامل بحار أوروبا و«الشرق الأوسط» وجنوب شرق آسيا، ايّ بحار اليابان والبحر الأصفر وأجزاء من بحار الصين وغرب المحيط الهادئ. إلى جانب إقامتها عشرات القواعد العسكرية، البحرية والجوية والبرية في كلّ البلدان، التي «حرّرتها» أي احتلتها خلال تلك الحرب، سواءً في غرب أوروبا او في جنوب شرق آسيا.
وبقيت الولايات المتحدة، ورغم تطور الاتحاد السوفياتي وقواته البحرية وتصدّيها للبلطجة البحرية الأميركية، في كثير من بحار العالم، خاصة في البحر المتوسط، في مواجهة الأسطول السادس الأميركي، منذ أواسط خمسينيات القرن الماضي، أو في غرب المحيط الهادئ في منطقة جزيرة غوام، القريبة نسبياً من الساحل الجنوبي الشرقي لروسيا، حيث ميناء ڤلاديڤستوك المطلّ على بحر اليابان، أو في منطقة بحر الفلبين، إلى الجنوب من بحر اليابان، علاوة طبعاً على وقوف الأساطيل السوفياتية بالمرصاد، لأساطيل الولايات المتحدة في بحار أوروبا والمحيطات الواقعة في غرب وشرق الكرة الأرضية، نقول رغم ذلك فإنّ الولايات المتحدة بقيت، تُمارس سياسات الهيمنة نفسها، بواسطة القوة العسكرية، حتى بعد هزيمتها المنكرة في حرب فيتنام، سنة 1975، وفشلها في احتلال كامل شبه الجزيرة الكورية، إبان الحرب الكورية ‪1950 – 1953، ونجاح الاتحاد السوفياتي والصين الشعبية في حماية جمهورية كوريا الديموقراطية (الشمالية) من الاحتلال الأميركي، وبقائها شامخة في وجه هذا الاحتلال حتى يومنا هذا.
وهذا يعني أنّ العقيدة العسكرية الأميركية العدوانية لم تشهد ايّ تغيّر على جوهرها، بل انها شهدت بعض التغييرات على تكتيكات وأدوات تنفيذها، على الصعد الإقليمية والدولية. وفي هذا الإطار قامت الولايات المتحدة، باختراع حجة الإرهاب، بعد تفجيرات نيويورك سنة 2001 وشنها حرباً على أفغانستان، لا زالت دائرة حتى اليوم، ثم حربها الأولى والثانية على العراق واحتلاله وتدمير الدولة العراقية، وبعد محاولتها، عبر قاعدتها العسكرية المسماة «إسرائيل»، تدمير المقاومة في لبنان (حزب الله) سنة 2006 وفشلها في ذلك، ومن ثم اختراع ادوات جديدة، خدمة لاستراتيجية الهيمنة الأميركية واقامة حائط صدّ امام جمهورية الصين الشعبية، يمتد من جزيرة غوام شرقاً وحتى جبل طارق غرباً، منعاً لاستمرار تطور الصين الاقتصادي وتوسيع تعاونها مع هذا الفضاء الجغرافي والديموغرافي الواسع.
ولكن الصين الشعبية وروسيا الاتحادية لم تكونا غافلتين عن هذه المخططات الأميركية واهدافها وعواقبها التدميرية على العالم، الأمر الذي دفعهما، منذ حوالي عقدين من الزمن الى إطلاق مشاريع استثمار عملاقة، في العلوم والمعرفة والتكنولوجيا، وهي المشاريع التي أوصلت الدولتين الى مستوىً متقدم جداً، سواءً في الصناعات العسكرية أو في الصناعات الالكترونية الدقيقة المتعلقة بقطاع الاتصالات بشكل خاص. وهو القطاع الذي يتيح المجال لمن يملك التفوّق في صناعاته المختلفة، وهي الصين وروسيا وإيران حالياً، أن يكون له الدور الطليعي في التطور الاقتصادي والتحول الى القوة الاقتصادية الأولى في العالم.
ومن الجدير بالذكر أنّ ما نقوله ليس دعاية مؤيدة للدول المذكور أعلاه او انحيازاً سياسياً. لها وإنما هو تحليل للواقع الذي نعيشه والأسباب التي أسست لتطوره. فالولايات المتحدة قامت، خلال العقود الثلاثة الماضية، بإنفاق ما يزيد على ثلاثة تريليونات دولار على الحروب وشراء السلاح (البنتاغون تشتري)، بينما لم تنفق الدول الثلاث، المذكورة أعلاه، اكثر من تريليون دولار واحد على التسلح واستثمرت بقية مواردها في التطوير العلمي والتكنولوجي، والاقتصادي بالنتيجة.
وعوضاً عن ان تتعظ واشنطن من هزائم مشاريعها وسياسات الهيمنة التي اتبعتها، عبر العقود الثلاثة الماضية بشكل خاص، عمدت، وبعد تولي ترامب رئاسة الولايات المتحدة، الى الإعلان عن استراتيجية أمنية أميركية جديدة، سنة 2018، مكونة من 14 صفحة وصادرة عن البنتاغون، أسمتها: استراتيجية الولايات المتحدة الأميركية للدفاع الوطني.
وقد حدّدت فيها نصاً أنّ الاولوية، في هذه الاستراتيجية، تتمثل في مواجهة الخطر الداهم، على الولايات المتحدة، ومصدره الصين وروسيا وكذلك التصدّي للخطر المحتمل، من قبل الدول «المارقة» مثل كوريا الشمالية وإيران، وهو الأمر الذي يجعل من الضروري الاستثمار (زيادة الاتفاق العسكري) في تطوير القدرات العسكرية الأميركية اللازمة لبلوغ تلك الأهداف (التصدي للخطر الروسي الصيني الداهم والخطر الكوري الإيراني المحتمل).
وهذا يعني، في تقديرنا، أنّ جوهر هذه الاستراتيجية الجديدة يتلخص في ما يلي:
1
ـ تخلّي الولايات المتحدة عن استخدام أكذوبة الإرهاب، داعش وغيرها، التي اخترعتها وأدارتها واشنطن طوال العقد الماضي، والتركيز او اختراع خطر جديد تسميه هذه الاستراتيجية بالخطر الصيني الروسي الداهم وذلك الكوري الإيراني المحتمل.
2
ـ إن هذه الاستراتيجية ستقود، وبشكل منطقي وموضوعي، إلى تخلي الولايات المتحدة عن دول النفط العربية، خاصة في ظل انعدام قيمة هذه المادة حالياً وانتهاء دورها الاستراتيجي (الوظيفي) في السياسة الأميركي، الذي استمر قرابة قرن من الزمن.
3
ـ وغنيّ عن القول طبعاً إن هذا يعني، وفي ظل الأزمات والمآزق الأميركية الناجمة عن انتشار فيروس كورونا، ان سحب القوات الأميركية، من المنطقة العربية وافغانستان، وكذلك تخفيف الانتشار العسكري الأميركي في مناطق اخرى من العالم، قد أصبح حقيقة واقعة برسم التنفيذ، حتى لو تأخر ذلك بعض الشيء.
4
ـ ان قيام الولايات المتحدة بنشر ثلاث حاملات طائرات، هي رونالد ريغان وثيودور روزفلت ويو إس إس نيميتس، تحمل كل منها 60 طائرة حربية، حسب تصريح قائد قيادة المحيط الهندي والهادئ، الجنرال ستيفين كولَر (Stephan Kohler)، لا يتعدّى كونه استعراض عضلات لن يؤدي حتى الى استفزاز الصين، التي تعلم تمام العلم أن هذه التحركات تهدف الى تعويض العجز والتراجع الاستراتيجي، الذي تعاني منه الولايات المتحدة، سواء. على الصعيد الاقتصادي او الصعيد العسكري.
5
ـ انه، وكما يقول الكاتب، الأميركي الاسرائيلي سيث فرانتس مان ، في موضوع نشره على موقع الجروزاليم بوست الإسرائيلية وكذلك على موقع ناشيونال ريڤيو بتاريخ 25/5/202، أننا وعلى عكس ظهور الولايات المتحدة الأميركية كقوة عظمى، قبل مئة عام، فإن جائحة كورونا وما سينتج عنها من كوارث دولية، ربما ستضع الاستراتيجيين الأميركيين في مواجهة احداث، هم غير مهيأين لمواجهتها، ستفضي الى جلوس الصين على عرش قيادة النظام العالمي.
ويتابع الكاتب قائلاً: إذا ما كانت الولايات المتحدة وحلفاؤها جديون، في حماية النظام الليبرالي، فإنّ عليهم التحرك بسرعة، وإلا فإننا سنرى، خلال 25 سنة، متغيّرات سريعة شبيهة بتلك التي حصلت قبل مئة عام. ولكنها هذه المرة لن تنتهي بسيطرة الولايات المتحدة، وإنما ستنتهي بجلوس الصين الشعبية وروسيا وإيران في مقعد القيادة.
يهلك ملوكاً ويستخلف آخرين.
بعدنا طيّبين قولوا الله…

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Saturday, 2 November 2019

Questions Remain Over Alleged Death of Islamic State Leader

Image result for Questions Remain Over Alleged Death of Islamic State Leader
November 1, 2019
Russia’s Ministry of Defense this week said it had not seen any credible evidence that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (IS) terror group, had been killed in northern Syria last weekend, allegedly in a daring US military operation.
US President Donald Trump boasted last Sunday that American Special Forces raided a base in Idlib Province, which purportedly led to al-Baghdadi’s death from a suicide explosion. The Pentagon said six other people were killed in the operation. In addition, two of al-Baghdadi’s children were killed when the IS leader blew himself up as American troops were closing in, according to Trump’s own dramatic telling of the event.
Curiously, Trump gave prominent thanks to Russia for its help in the logistics of carrying out the attack.
However, Russian MOD spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov has subsequently stated that Russia was not involved in the raid, as Trump had claimed. He said that Russian flight data indicated that there were no US air strikes in the vicinity of the declared raid. The spokesman went further and remarked that there were no doubts as to whether the assassination mission even took place in the way that Washington is publicly claiming.
Another anomaly in the official US account is that the base where al-Baghdadi was purportedly hiding out is in a location known to be a stronghold for another al-Qaeda affiliate that is a sworn enemy of their perceived rival jihadists belonging to IS. Why and how then was the IS leader able to maintain a base surrounded by enemy jihadists?
According to the New York Times, it is claimed that al-Baghdadi paid $67,000 to the rival terror group, Hurras al-Din, for protection. Somehow that sounds a dubious explanation.
A glaring omission in US media coverage of the alleged killing of al-Baghdadi is the historical background as to who he was and how his former so-called caliphate came into being straddling Iraq and Syria.
There is copious evidence that Iraqi-born al-Baghdadi was recruited by American intelligence while imprisoned during the US war on Iraq in the mid- to late-2000s. He was held in the notorious Abu Ghraib US-run torture prison, but subsequently was released by the Americans despite his known jihadist past. It was around 2012 that the Obama administration was covertly mobilizing and weaponizing jihadi assets to carry out its clandestine war for regime change against the Syrian government. It is believed that al-Baghdadi was a key CIA asset for the US dirty war in Syria, even though Washington was proclaiming its involvement in Syria was to “defeat IS” and other terror groups.
It is entirely plausible that US intelligence assets are “terminated” whenever it is politically convenient and when it is calculated that their usefulness has expired.
Trump and the mainstream US media depiction of a spectacular success in exterminating a feared terror chief is almost certainly a distortion of reality and events.
The way Trump in particular has crowed about the purported operation suggests he is seeking a boost to his re-election chances next year. The thuggish rhetoric of killing the IS leader “like a dog” smacks of Trump trying to project an image of a tough president.
More generally, the event has afforded US media to proclaim the virtue of American military power in apparently bringing a notorious renegade “to justice”.
The timing could not be more important. The nearly eight-year war in Syria has exposed the criminality of Washington and its NATO partners for fueling carnage. By contrast, the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies have been vindicated in their long-held claims that a criminal US-backed aggression using terrorist proxies has been thwarted.
When Trump abandoned the Kurdish militants last month, the move was condemned for throwing Syria into further turmoil. It was Russia’s deft diplomacy which managed to contain the situation. At that point, Washington’s international credibility was scraping the barrel of duplicity and malign responsibility for conflict and chaos in Syria.
Hence, a sensational operation resembling “a movie” – as Trump put it – was a timely public relations remedy for Washington’s badly tarnished image. Ostensibly, “taking out” a terrorist leader gives the US the means to renew its propaganda narrative that it is “fighting against terrorism” rather than the reality of using terrorism for its regime-change wars and other imperialist objectives.
Was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed last weekend? It is not the first time his “death” has been reported by US forces who have made similar claims in past years. There are too many questions and discrepancies to take Washington’s version of events as accurate. More plausibly, it was a carefully contrived propaganda stunt to burnish Washington’s disgraced image.
One thing for sure, however, is that the US will continue to use terror proxies and assets into the future in order to achieve its pernicious geopolitical aims. There are plenty more “al-Baghdadis” to be cultivated and orchestrated by Washington as it sows chaos and destruction in the Middle East and beyond for its selfish interests.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Thursday, 11 April 2019

Terrorism Is What We Say It Is

By Jeremy Salt
Source
Ahwaz terror attack 54fc1
There is no consensus when it comes to defining terrorism. The most acceptable is ‘the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political aims.’ Some definitions insert the word ‘systematic’ so the act is defined as the regular, standard behavior of an individual or a group and not just one aberrant or anomalous action.
Terror is not quite the same as terrorism. Terror is experienced by many people in many ways and at many levels of their lives. There is terror at home in the hands of an abusive husband. There is the terror experienced by sexually abused children. There is terror in the school and the church, from abusive priests and teachers.
There is terror in the streets, from the man holding a knife to your throat as he demands your wallet and there can be terror at the hands of police, there to protect but frequently to abuse and even kill.
A violent father will terrorize his family for years. He will terrorize them regularly, day after day. He will assault his wife and children. He might even kill them. The family will live in a state of fear for years. There will be no end to it any more than there seems to be an end to occupation for the occupied.
This is a digression but it is not unreasonable to compare the fear of an abusive father in the home to the fear of soldiers and settlers amongst a people living under occupation. Violence is always just around the corner in both circumstances.
The home is turned into occupied territory, a place of violence and terror from which there is no escape for the trapped child. The abusive father becomes the soldier, the border police and the settler.
The state and the media tell us who the terrorist is. It is never us. It is always them. The terrorist is the Islamic State in Syria, the terrorist is the gunmen shooting dead 90 young people in the Bataclan theatre in Paris and the terrorist is the man driving a 19-ton truck into a mass of people strolling along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. The central problem with this mainstream definition is that it excludes the terrorist actions of a state, except, of course, when the state is part of ‘them’ and not ‘us’ and needs to be set up as a fitting target for attack.
The killers at Bataclan and Nice had their own political motives but so do ‘western’ governments and their regional allies when launching their wars of aggression in the Middle East. Their actions meet their own criteria of terrorism – unlawful violence against civilians with a political aim in mind – and they have killed infinitely more people than the victims of all individual or group terrorist attacks put together.
Their wars would be more accurately described as onslaughts by the most powerful armies in the world on countries scarcely capable of defending themselves. Israel’s war on Lebanon in 1982 was a terrorist war directed against a civilian population, with the political aim in mind of extinguishing the PLO. Its ‘wars’ on Gaza have been terrorist attacks on a civilian population with the aim of destroying support for the Palestinian government elected in 2006.
When the US and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003 the entire Iraqi population south of the Kurdish region was terrorized. Across the country, people did not know whether they or someone close to them would live to see the next day. Hundreds of thousands did not.
They were the sacrifice that had to be made so a dictator could be stripped of the weapons of mass destruction he did not have and the architects of the killing of these civilians knew he did not have.
There were no elegies, no regrets, and no remorse. No flags waving over coffins and no sound of the last post. They were pulp, no more than dross, the scourings in the factory of war, a faceless, nameless pile of bodies with a sign stuck on the top reading ‘collateral damage.’
This did not mean that death did not concern the folk back home. Many were horrified and came out into the streets to demonstrate but most were concerned only with the death of their own, the soldiers sent to kill in this senseless war.
The same governments that led the attack on Iraq then took advantage of the ‘Arab spring’ to turn their attention to Libya. This most developed country in Africa was not destroyed by ‘rebels.’ It was destroyed by the air forces of the US, the UK, and France. The ‘rebels’ moved forward only under cover of aerial attack. Without it they could not have gone beyond the municipal boundaries of Benghazi.
These same governments changed gear when it came to Syria, where they knew they could not get any kind of UN Security Council backing for what they intended to do. They claimed to have been engaged in a ‘war on terror’ since 9/11 but now they and their regional allies used the terrorist gangs they had pledged to destroy to destroy Syria. Their takfiris were no more than the equivalent of the contras Ronald Reagan used against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
The criminality in all of this is enormous. The Nuremberg tribunal defined an aggressive war as the supreme international crime. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, the destruction of Libya in 2011 and the slow-motion destruction of Syria from 2011 onwards were aggressive wars and thus supreme international crimes for which no-one who commissioned them has been held accountable in a court of law.
The 2003 attack on Iraq followed ten years of sanctions described by senior UN humanitarian coordinators as genocidal. This was a decade of terror suffered by the Iraqi people, deprived of food, clean water, and energy supplies. Half a million children who would have lived died. The sanctions sickened so many governments they refused to apply them any longer.
With the sanctions regime collapsing, and with it becoming clear that Saddam would survive and Iraq would again take its place as a front line Arab state against Israel, the US decided to attack again and break Iraq up.
The second war on Iraq was launched and sustained under cover of the most reprehensible lies, not one of them being challenged let alone exposed by the corporate media. Up to one million people were killed within a few years and millions more fled their country. Until the attack on Syria, it was the greatest outpouring of refugees in the Middle East since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.
The refugees scattered in all directions. Some managed to reach Indonesia, where they took rickety boats across the Timor Sea to Australia. Many drowned when their boats sank.  Others were turned back and some actually made it through the naval cordon. Taking no responsibility for its military role in the destruction of their country, the Australian government then locked them up in ‘detention centers’ or in camps behind razor wire in the middle of the desert.
The vicious, inhumane treatment of such vulnerable people will rank for all time as one of the most despicable episodes in Australian history. What it exposed yet again was the racism deeply embedded in Australian society, directed against one vulnerable group of people after another, the indigenous people from the beginning of white settlement, Chinese miners in the 19th century, ‘boat people’ escaping the Vietnam war in the 1970s and most recently the ‘boat people’ escaping the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The irony could not be lost on anyone, as it was the white settlers themselves who in 1788 were the first ‘boat people,’ massacring the native people and claiming the entire land under the lie of terra nullius. Neither should the similarities with the Zionist occupation of Palestine be lost on anyone.
War turned Libya into a jumping-off point for Libyans and other Africans escaping war or seeking a better life in Europe. Thousands drowned crossing the Mediterranean. The Aegean was another death zone, for Iraqis driven out of their homeland or Kurds escaping theirs.
Then it was Syria’s turn.  If there is any redeeming feature in this latest attempt to destroy an Arab country it is that Syria has survived and in time foreign forces will eventually have to withdraw from the territory they have occupied.  The governments responsible have again violated international law in the most shocking fashion and again no-one has been punished or even held accountable.
These state crimes are the greatest in modern history, far worse in the scale of destruction and the numbers of people killed than the crimes of the national socialists and fascists in the 1930s. One would have to go back to the war on Vietnam for a parallel measure of death and destruction.
Israel was a central element in the wars on Iraq and Syria. It has long been agitating for war on Iran. Its politicians and lobbyists in the US were pushing for ‘regime change’ in the Middle East two decades ago, with the aim of clearing the region of all possible threats to Israeli military domination.
Psycho-historically, Israel also wanted to destroy what was left of the ‘Arab idea’ and what lay at its heart – Palestine. This project began with its establishment.  Israel would decide what the Arab world would be and Israel would tell the world what Arab and Palestinian history had been. Indeed, there would no longer be an ‘Arab world’ in any integrated sense.  As the Yinon planrevealed in the 1980s, it would be broken up into ethno-religious enclaves that Israel could dominate.
Along with the gross crimes committed in Iraq, Libya and Syria there have been the drone missile attacks ordered against Yemen, Somalia and other countries by that paragon of western liberal democracy, Barack Obama.
Now we have his successor dismissing international law with his claim that Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are part of Israel. Thus encouraged, Netanyahu is pledging that after the forthcoming elections he will annex at least parts of the occupied West Bank. ‘A Palestinian state would endanger our existence’ he says. If he does, Trump is likely to follow through with recognition.
What else are these attacks on the governments and people of the Middle East but terror and terrorism as defined – ‘the unlawful use of violence … especially against civilians … in the pursuit of political aims’?
This terrorism is not random but part of the DNA of certain states, no different in essence from the terror of the gunmen who burst into the Bataclan theatre and began shooting down civilians as innocent as the Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians and Palestinians killed by tank fire and missile strikes or shot by gunmen along the Gaza fence. Only the uniform separates them from the Bataclan killers.
These two governments, the US and Israel, have turned the canons of international law upside down. Their law is no more than the law of the jungle, the law not of the civilization whose virtues they endlessly spout but of brute force. They have demonstrated by their actions that where their perceptions of national interest are concerned there is no law they will obey and every law they will break.
They are the Leviathan without the social contract. They have taken the world back to Thomas Hobbes’ ‘state of nature,’ in which, for millions of people in the Middle East the life of a man or a woman, adult or child, becomes ‘brutish and short.’
In their eyes, the ‘terrorist’ is not just the Bataclan gunmen but anyone who stands in their way, whether an individual, an organization or a state. The latest addition, put on the list of designated terrorist groups by Donald Trump, is Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), which has sent forces to support Syrian and Hizbullah resistance to western-led and Israeli aggression against Syria and Lebanon. In response, Iran’s Supreme Security Council has designated the US government as a terrorist government and CENTCOM, the US central military command, as a terrorist group.
The attack on Syria has been yet another terrible violation of international law, at numerous levels, by the US and its ‘western’ and Middle Eastern regional partners. As usual, the UN Secretary-General refuses to speak out, further whittling away the UN’s credibility as the supposed defender of international order. The response by the Syrian government and its allies to the attack on Syria is not terrorism, but resistance to it.
US and Israeli orchestrated terror in the Middle East has to be put in the right semantical order. Israel was founded through terror and by terror it has been maintained. Its terrorism is not random but normalized and necessary to its existence as a state that has chosen to live outside the law, with the full support of the US.
Israel is not ‘defending’ itself when it attacks Gaza or when its soldiers, police, and settlers kill Palestinians in Jerusalem or on the West Bank. What is it is ‘defending’ is its theft of someone else’s property. It is the Palestinians who are defending their rights, under law, not Israel.
Israeli civilians living illegally on occupied land in east Jerusalem or the West Bank put themselves in harm’s way and are to be held primarily responsible for the consequences to themselves and their families.
The terror experienced by Israeli Jews living close to the Gaza fence is the minutest fraction of the terror routinely inflicted on Palestinians on the other side of the fence. They are being targeted not because they are Jews, as Netanyahu and Zionist lobbyists would have the world believe, but because they are living on land stolen from its owners more than seven decades ago after being ethnically cleansed. It would not matter who they are.  They would still be resisted because of what they have done.
Adherence to international law would redress the situation in Palestine yet the joint US and Israeli response to the violence and terror they have initiated across the Middle East is more violence and more terror. This is their answer. You will do as we say or else, signaling that the ‘special relationship’ between these two unruly, lawbreaking countries is one of the most dangerous in history.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Thursday, 22 November 2018

New Study: War On Terror Cost $5.9 Trillion (And Counting). Do You Feel Safe?



or-41773.jpg
A new study by Brown University has found that the post 9/11 wars have, when all totaled up, cost an estimated $5.9 trillion (and counting) as interest on the borrowed money continues to accrue. What did we get for our money? Safety and security? No. More threats and more wars. Was the whole thing a scam?


River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!