“Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity,” as the old phrase goes.
Once again our imperial elitists are “making the case” to utilize instruments of death and destruction against a country thousands of miles away that has not attacked us. In order, we are told, to bring about more peace and less death.
Let us ponder that logic once more. Western powers — who are already steeped in historical and contemporary blood-letting of monstrous magnitude — are once again trying to justify their latest illegal imperial venture in noble terms: of military necessity and moral superiority.
And that we — who have no right to interfere in another country — will bring less murder and destruction through engaging in more murder and destruction.
Even though a year of such apparent bombing in Iraq and Syria has not only not brought peace, it has made the situation worse, and had no impact on ISIS. In fact they now have more weapons, more money and more territory.
We ought to reflect on that. Because it gives us an indication as to the real motives rather than the professed motives. That perhaps our goal is not to attack ISIS but is to illegally remove Assad.
That in fact we have facilitated directly and indirectly — through arming, training, funding, buying oil from, giving political support to — the very head-chopping takfiri fanatics we proclaim to be against, because it is strategically expedient.
Indeed we support the very Salafist fundamentalists we are supposedly in a civilisational war against!
And we must bear in mind that there would be none of this without the 21st centuries greatest crime of imperial aggression: the killing fields of Iraq.
Having failed to achieve the strategic goal of regime change in 2013 under the false pretense of “humanitarian intervention”; this time they are trying the deceitful rationale of engaging in a necessary pre-emptive security measure by attacking a barbaric threat to Western values, and that there is a (fantasy!) army of “moderates” on the ground to help in this endeavour.
But of course, there is always “a case” for “war”. Which basically translates to there is always deceit and propaganda to mask murder for strategic self-interest.
Once it is understood that we do not act out of benign intent but out of strategic interest, the propaganda disintegrates.
Weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian intervention, nuclear threats, self-defence, security, the war on terror, democracy, human rights, stability, civilisation, peace.
The rationale this time always sounds so reasonable. It always sounds so necessary; so justified; so urgent.
The lies used to justify illegal state murder of human beings in foreign lands always sounds noble. But the reality of the despair and death they bring are anything but noble.
They are monstrous and barbaric.
Stand in the line of a hellfire missile and tell me if it feels civilised, benign and peaceful.
You couldn’t. You’d be dead. And along with it would lay the lies and deceit of benign Western mass murder.
The late Uruguayan dissident writer Eduardo Galeano distilled it well: “The words uttered by power are not meant to express its actions but to disguise them.”
Remember that next time our leader tries to justify a civilising mission of death and destruction.