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Despite demonstrations from its citizens, the Obama administration has waged itself into a war with Syria

Reason  Wafawarova On Thursday

The Mau Mau in Kenya were defined as “terrorists” for fighting for independence from Britain, so were the Zimbabwean guerillas that waged the war for independence

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War veterans could not imagine a life without an adversary – no communism to fight against, no socialist movements to thwart, and no meaningful pretext upon which to launch US imperialistic wars.

The turn of events following September 11 in 2001 is not something US foreign policy planners can really complain much about. One can be forgiven for imagining these Cold War veterans rubbing their hands with elation after that awful tragedy. For more than 10 years the US had failed to identify a satisfactory adversary, only having managed to stage one major war in the Gulf, thanks to the foolhardiness of Saddam Hussein.

Almost by a miracle, the 9/11 attacks had suddenly restored that fundamental strategic element of US foreign policy that the Soviet Union used to conveniently provide before its collapse. The chosen replacement for the adversary that communism was is radical Islamism, professedly labeled “international terrorism,” for obvious political reasons. This new monster provided justification for all excessive authoritarian measures that the empire could choose to carry out, including the targeting not only of declared terrorist organisations, but also of all those who oppose US hegemony, including critics of imperialism and opponents of global neo-liberalisation.

The Guantanamo Bay tortures are just part of the justified illegalities carried out in the name of fighting terrorism, and a significant number of people have been subjected to humiliating treatment based on faulty intelligence. The US embarked on the first war of the 21st century in fury, announcing to the world that the first aim was dismantle the Al-Qaeda network, and also to capture Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” This was probably the first time that the empire declared war, not against a state, but against an individual.

Although Osama bin Laden was finally captured and killed ten years later, the empire is yet to succeed in dismantling Al-Qaeda and its numerous affiliates.
Today the United States has declared yet another war against “international terrorism,” this time against the beheading brutes in ISIS. Well, ISIS is a Western created group of radical Islamists hailing from the mujahedeen tradition, just like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban do. The irony of it all is quite glaring.

Joe Biden furiously screamed that the United States would hunt down ISIS “to the gates of hell,” and the red line this murderous group crossed was the beheading of three Westerners, two American journalists and one British humanitarian worker – not necessarily the thousands of their fellow Muslims they have been freely massacring in Syria and Iraq of late. These are lesser people that ordinarily can be treated as expendables.

When ISIS operatives were unleashing their murderous brutalities against Assad’s government in Syria, Western mainstream media hailed them as revolutionaries, and now the group has earned itself the terrorist tag, not because it has changed its murderous ways, but because it has included Westerners among its victims.
ISIS is a beneficiary of Western funding and the group is still armed with a great deal of Western weapons even up to today, but that can be forgotten as the United States and its allies track down the brutes to the gates of hell.

The ISIS menace is a strong indictment on the US ambitious goal to end “international terrorism,” as declared on September 20, 2001. It appears like the Afghanistan and Iraq military misadventures have only helped in propping up “international terrorism,” if we agree to go by the US definition of the phenomenon.

The term “terrorism” is imprecise, and its indiscriminate use by the West in the last two centuries has been a major source of debate. Essentially, the West designates the term upon all those who, rightly or wrongly, resort to the use of violence or force to change a political order, especially if the order in question is supported or favoured by the United States and its Western allies.

The Mau Mau in Kenya were defined as “terrorists” for fighting for independence from Britain, so were the Zimbabwean guerillas that waged the war for independence based in Mozambique. Frelimo fighters were also labelled terrorists for fighting for independence from Portuguese colonisation.

Many former “terrorists” have in the past become respectable statespeople, like Menahem Begin, who rose from leading Irgun to become Prime Minister of Israel, Sam Nujoma who rose from leading SWAPO to become Namibian President, Nelson Mandela, who was elevated from “terrorist” ANC leader to a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and many others.

One can forgive teenagers of today if they tend to believe that the only form of terrorism in the world is Islamic. This is precisely how the modern day “war against terrorism” has been portrayed by its accompanying propaganda.

For the callous act of beheading three Westerners, ISIS might as well have unwittingly but successfully tagged every Islamic person some sort of “terrorist,” and we are all being dragged to loyally support this new world war against terrorism in Syria and Iraq – a war that is likely to provide a good cover for American military intervention in helping to oust the hated Assad-led Syrian government. The US has publicly declared its support for what it calls “moderate jihadists” – a reference to a splinter ISIS group fighting in Syria.

In the unlikely event of success, the US could have very good grounds for motivation to add Iran to the list of countries to be invaded from George W Bush’s six “axis of evil.” Already invaded are Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, and it is just a matter of time for Syria, a risky possibility for Iran, and surely a very long shot for North Korea.  Karl Hienzen was a German radical democrat and he was certainly not a radical Islamist. In promoting radical democracy he wrote:

“If, to destroy the party of the barbarians, it is necessary to blow up half a continent and cause a bloodbath, don’t have any qualms of conscience. Anyone who is not disposed to willingly offer up his life for the satisfaction of exterminating a million barbarians is not a true republican.”

There is no end good enough to justify all the means, and no sane person would cherish a democracy built on a bloodbath. If Hienzein was not a heartless terrorist, then perhaps nobody will ever make the grade.

We saw the United Nations passing Resolution 1973 in 2011, and the imperial triumvirate of the UK, France and the US immediately invaded Libya. Gaddafi was murdered in the process, and in the aftermath of his demise, Libya has had six Prime Ministers in two and half years, all of them with no control of anything meaningful. The country is under the control of militia goons dotted around its cities, and the only force ruling Libya today is lawlessness.

Is the proposed intervention an avenging tour of duty in honour of the beheaded Westerners? Is it a humanitarian venture to rescue beleaguered Arabs from the jaws of ISIS? Is it another impressive pretext for military intervention in wartorn Syria? Is it part of the long-term objective of US foreign policy where the axis of evil has to be attacked militarily? These are genuine questions that need to be debated freely, and this binary approach where one is labelled a collaborator of terrorists for not singing the war song loud enough is not good for democracy.

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia