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Reason Wafawarova on Thursday
IF there is one thing the ISIS crisis in Iraq has brought to the open it is the lack of foreign policy consensus in the West, be it on the US domestic front, or across the Western alliance. In fact, there is hardly any foreign policy coherence on the matter. 

In the US the Republicans wildly divagate from the interventionism of John McCain to the isolationism of Ron Paul. Hillary Clinton has been dismissive of Obama’s policy positions on ISIS, inasmuch as she does not seem to have any alternative options herself.

In Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbot has deployed 600 soldiers to the United Arab Emirates for a mission against ISIS without any clarity on a success plan, no timeframe for the engagement, and Senator Christine Milne has denounced this decision as “ill-considered”, adding: “It is time Australia had a foreign policy of its own.” There is a general belief that when it comes to foreign policy, Australia simply operates on a “me too” slogan as it blindly follows the United States.

Senator Milne argues that lessons from the misadventure of the 2003 Iraq invasion and from the Afghanistan disaster must make Australia wiser this time around, adding that the complex situation in Iraq must be dealt with diplomatically, cutting off the weapon and money supply lines to ISIS, and fostering an inclusive government in Iraq. She argues that “no amount of military might is going to address the situation” in Iraq.

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote forcefully about how human goodness is grossly exaggerated, and he argued that since nation states are inherently more flawed than individuals, this realistically means that power politics is unavoidable. In his view America has a huge role in bringing justice to this world, and the only way to do so is for the United States to exercise its vast powers, economically, politically and militarily.

We live in an unfastidiously messy world, and as such there is really no opting out for the civilised nations of this unfortunate planet: Great powers must of necessity take chances and get their hands dirty in order to cleanse this world of the slapdash raunchiness caused by the unthinking ways of some of the lesser peoples across the globe; so argues Niebuhr. An average Westerner probably thinks this makes sense, and some of the lesser people actually concur.

By his own admission US President Barack Obama is a great disciple of Niebuhr, and in his speech on ISIS and Iraq, he adopted a Niebuhrian line: specifically outlining the evil ISIS. He spoke of the abuse of women, the killing of children, the attempted genocide, the mass executions, and of course the callous beheading of American journalists.

With unequivocal impressiveness in passion, Obama spoke of America’s obligation to lead the world in promoting justice and freedom, and the speech was delivered with the precision of a soul-winning evangelist.

This writer will take the reader through this narrative. It was September 11. Pilots that have been diverted from their programmed route would stop at nothing as their fury charged planes hurtled towards the heart of the big city. What was their mission? To bring down the symbol of a political system so much detested.

It all happened so swiftly: starting with bangs and explosions, followed by the massive destruction of buildings, then a huge inferno, and the shocking collapsing of the massive buildings, then the heart-rending terror of fleeing survivors, all covered in dust, and the global shock as the media started to broadcast the horrendous deed.

If you are thinking of New York 2001 you are dead wrong. This was Santiago de Chile on September 11, 1973. Powered by the United States, the Chilean Air Force was systematically bombing the presidential palace. This was a US-sponsored coup d’etat led by General Pinochet against the popular socialist president, Salvador Allende.

Many lives, including that of Allende, were lost as the coup capped President Richard Nixon’s economic warfare on Chile, and for Chile the coup marked the beginning of a 17-year reign of terror by the murderous Pinochet, the US favourite dictator.

We must out of common decency and in the gracious name of humanity register our legitimate and sincere compassion for the victims of the atrocious attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, just like we register today our legitimate and sincere compassion over the gruesome beheading of three Westerners by the despicable ISIS.

However, it would be hypocritical on the part of the intellectual community for us dispute the fact that the United States is no holier than any of the perpetrators of these heinous acts. History is littered with events of the United States engaging in violent, illegal and clandestine political acts, especially in Latin America, Africa, and of late in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

We are aware of the attitude of Western leaders, that of the mass media, or that of the pro-US fervour in the wake of the threat of terrorism, especially after the criminal September 11 attack in New York, and more recently after the barbaric beheading of three Western citizens, two Americans and one Briton. However, this justified anger cannot conceal the cruel reality before us.

The public sentiment from the developing world in particular is that the tragedies are really sad, but many people will qualify their sympathies by adding that the US “had it coming”, or “they invited it upon themselves”.

As can be seen with the outrageous acts of ISIS, there is this paradox that clearly shows that the September 11 attacks have inspired not waves of sympathy for the United States, but the contrary.

President George W. Bush had a rude awakening after discovering that his country and its citizens were so much hated across the planet. He just could not believe this hatred, and on September 20, 2011 he asked: “Why do they hate us? We are so good.”

It is important that we analyse the hostile reactions towards the United States, and in doing so it would not be extremist to recall the events of the Cold War era. Starting 1948 the United States launched a vicious war against communism.

From that time up to 1989 the anti-communism drive escalated to wars of extermination, genocides, elimination of suspected communists, the killing of a quarter of a million leftwing opposition activists in Guatemala, the massacring of over half a million communists in Indonesia, the killing of over a million civilians in Mozambique, and of more than double the number in Angola. Assassinations of communist or leftwing leaders became a common feature in world politics.

We cannot forget the atrocities of the Vietnamese war, and if reality were to be narrated correctly the most abominable pages of the dark history of US imperialism were written during this period. What happened then makes the Libyan, Iraq and Afghanistan invasions all put together look like an innocent netball match.

For Washington it has always been “good against evil”, and the fact that the US was supporting certain terrorists, as they do today in Syria and Libya, does not really matter, and is not necessarily immoral.

During the Cold War the CIA organised attacks in public places, the disappearances of opponents, the hijacking of aircraft, mass killings, various acts of sabotage, and many coups as well as assassinations, like that of Patrice Lumumba, or that of Thomas Sankara.

In Cuba the evil was Fidel Castro, in Nicaragua it was the Sandinistas, in Chile it was Allende, in Mozambique it was Samora Machel, in Angola it was MPLA, and in Afghanistan it was the Russians.

To deal with the Russians in Afghanistan the US had to rely on the support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the most undemocratic countries in the world at the time, and perhaps even today.

This was the time the United States actively sponsored the creation of Islamic brigades, the very foundation of what we know as Islamic radicalism today. The United States actively helped in the recruitment of Arab youths across the Arab world, mobilising them to join the indoctrinating madrasahs.

The Western mass media proudly called these people “freedom fighters”, and it was under these circumstances that Osama bin Laden was recruited and trained. Now radical Islam has spawned the likes of the Benghazi rebels in Libya, and, of course, the menacing ISIS.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the United States declared its intention to usher in a more just “international order”, effectively elbowing the United Stations out of the way as it asserted its new position as the sole super power.

In the name of this democratisation project the United States gave the world the Gulf War in 1991, the Afghanistan War in 2001, the second Iraq invasion in 2003, the invasion of Libya in 2011, the Syrian War in 2012, and now it is giving us the third Iraq invasion.

We are not talking about petty projects like the illegal sanctioning of Zimbabwe, or the continued scandalous acts of bias towards Israel and against the rights of Palestinians.

The United States has created for itself this Frankensteinian fate where its old creations rise against it with demented rebellion, the way Al-Qaeda did with September 11, the way the Benghazi rebels callously murdered the US ambassador as a thank you for the US support they got in toppling Gaddafi, and the way ISIS is callously beheading Western citizens.

Nations by their very nature have no inclination towards humbleness. They are great monsters thirsty for sustenance. Many times they assume they can change the world in ways they cannot, and the Western alliance is no exception. While humanitarianism is the preached rhetoric behind the politics of interventionism, the reality is that nation states act for their own benefit, not necessarily for the benefit of those they purport to be helping.

Nations deify their own states and their own intentions, and that is why we are always told about the unparalleled goodness of America, and its ever-noble intentions to take away the misery of this planet.

No one asked whether invading Iraq would help or hurt. No one asked whether bombing Libya would help or hurt. No one is asking whether bombing Iraq and Syria in the name of hunting down ISIS will help or hurt. No one asked whether sanctions against Iraq would help or hurt, or those against Zimbabwe.

Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

• Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia .

 
What we are always told are the best of intentions, and we are supposed to admire the virtuous status of these our superior benefactors, at whose benevolence we all owe our sorry living. But what is the result?
We have harvested tragedy after tragedy from the sabre-rattling US foreign policy, from Vietnam and its after war sufferings, Iraq and the grand lie of weapons of mass destruction, Libya and its murderous gangs of Islamic radicalism, the Syrian War and the creation of the head-beheading ISIS, the list is endless.
Africa has not been spared the side effects of Islamic radicalism. We have the menacing Boko Haram in Nigeria; the murderous Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Sudanese Islamic radicals actively supported the murderous rebellion in Libya.
It is hard to believe that these radicalised gangs can be bombed into submission. There must be diplomatic ways of dissuading religious radicalism, and what is happening right now could just be the contrary.
Our wrath against Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab is certainly well grounded, but seeking to exterminate the members of these groupings is not the best way to deal with the situation.
There are diplomatic avenues that could be followed in the spirit of social justice and inclusivity, and these could possibly provide more permanent solutions for the continent.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia