So the War on Terror was a mistake
January 15th, 2009Today David Miliband will say in the course of his Indian trip that the so-called War on Terror was misconceived and may have caused “more harm than good”. Pity the Foreign Secretary didn’t have the courage to say this 7 years ago, pity it has been left till just 5 days before Bush disappears from office, but at least he has now officially laid bare the terrible canard which has lain at the heart of US geostrategic policy throughout the Bush Presidency. What a tragedy the Foreign Office didn’t have the guts, directly after 9/11, to condemn and reject this cloak for US domination which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The real lesson for the future is that this country should never again, as in the Blair era, kow-tow to every imperialistic demand of a US President. We should have our own foreign policy.
Some of us did say from the outset that the war on Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but was being cynically exploited to provide an excuse for extending American control across the world, as was clearly proposed in Bush’s 2000 campaign document ‘Project for the New American Century’. In an article in the Guardian on 6 September 2003 entitled “The War on Terror is bogus”, I set out the case for regarding this US expansionism as targeted at getting control of the major remaining repositories of oil across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Caspian, in the face of the rapid approach of ‘peak oil’ and the prospect of diminishing global oil supplies within the next 40 years. There are now US troops in 135 countries, no less than 70% of the total. I believe my claim made over 5 years ago has been fully validated by events, as is now at least partially acknowledged in David Miliband’s remarks.
What is so terrible, given the untold suffering of so many thousands of innocent civilians consequent on this policy, is that it is only now being admitted, what was obvious from the start, that manufacturing a war on terror for other covert purposes would actually generate the terrorism it was allegedly designed to eliminate. And by using the claim of a terrorist threat as a basis for pre-emptive aggressive military conquest, for long-term detention without trial (Guantanamo), and for interrogation methods now condemned as torture (water-boarding), the policy actually destroyed the US and Western contention that it was motivated by a belief in democracy and freedom
October 30th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
EXACTLY!
there is no such thing as WAR on Terrorism!
WAR IS terrorism.
The Afghan war and the Iraq war have made the world an unsafe place to live in.
IF only this had been the way USA saw its way in the world, how different things would have been, Martin Luther King is probably one of the Greatest Americans! Bush & Blair claimed they were Christian, but their actions must have made Jesus turn in his grave in shame, at having his name associated with what they did.
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In
fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only LOVE can do that.”
Martin Luther King. ”
Keep up your writing and actions Michael Meacher. WELL SAID