We can go through the
wars that the UK, as a Western imperialist power, has been involved
in since the beginning of the 20th century, World War 1,
1914-18, World war 2, 1939-45, Korea, 1950-53, Suez, 1956-56, and the
short but bloody Falklands 1982-82. All these wars have one thing in
common, the all have an end date. However in 2001 Western imperialism
entered a new phase, we entered the era of the war without end, the
war on terrorism. Not long after the 9/11 attacks in America,
president George W. Bush announced a new doctrine, a new national
security strategy of pre-emptive war,
to strike at terrorist groups and states that allegedly pose a
threat, or are developing a credible threat, to the United States,
Britain and most of the Western nations actively supported this
stand. Obama continued this doctrine, and what it is, is basically a
licence for the West to wage aggressive war whereever they think fit. Ironically,
Obama endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive war, when giving a speech accepting the
2009 Nobel Peace Prize. What he endorsed was the type of action that
the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War 2, had outlawed and
condemned.
There is
absolutely no doubt that our cynical political class have been using
the war on terror to keep the population in a permanent state of fear
and to push through military and surveillance contracts, handing the
corporate world trillions in tax payers money. In America since the
9/11 event, the US ruling political elite has spent US$8 trillion on
homeland security. The war on terror is also intended to give their
imperialist wars across the globe, a stamp of legitimacy. Of course
we can ask, is the world any safer because of the illegal war on
terror and its accompanying financial cost and human death and
suffering? Has the obliteration of Iraq as a functioning country and
the 10 year slaughter in Afghanistan made the world a safer place to
live?
I think it is
safe to say that the war on terror has failed miserably to stop
attacks on Western countries. We are told that it has foiled numerous
attacks on Western cities, but we never get the information to verify
these stories. What we can be sure of is that the actual
manifestation of the war on terror, extraordinary renditions,
unmanned drones with their death and destruction, barbaric torture
and inhumane treatment at Guantanamo and Bagram prison, Western
forces killing thousands of Muslim civilians across large swaths of
the planet, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, to mention a few,
is and will continue to build up an unstoppable anger and hatred of
the West. You can't make friends with people while you destroy their homes and kill their
family and friends. The war on terror is one method of securing natural resources for the West and feeding
trillions of tax payers money to the massive corporate military
industrial complex that controls our subservient and complicit
political class. In the West, imperialism is alive and well.
