Who has gained from the endless “War on Terror”, as it is called, 10 years on? Not the people of Iraq or Afghanistan, or now those in Libya, with threats to take “shock and awe” to other theatres. As one writer points out the threat to security of western countries is economic rather than military, so spending on dropping ever increasingly sophisticated and horrifying weaponry has no point. That is unless you work in the arms industry or have shares in it, as many proponents of the endless war tend to do.
Modern warfare is made endless because of the use of weapons which are supposedly illegal. So cluster bombs continue to kill and maim years after they are used, often deliberately sown towards the end of a conflict to reap a grim harvest of life and limb of the young and innocent for years to come. The US and Israel did this in Vietnam and the Lebanon. An increasingly widely used menace is the drone. Just sit back in your arm chair thousands of miles away and find your target. Kids do it in their living rooms, except they are playing games. Actually they are being programmed to become the next murderers as fantasy becomes a reality. What is the difference?
Yet David Cameron is still able to spout about how everyone has benefited from unleashing terror upon terror. How the wretched in Iraq and Libya have been helped to democracy, their overthrown leaders replaced by unknown, untested, shadowy figures who will bow to western governments demands for the worlds limited resources. The cost? Enough in monetary terms to settle the economic crisis many times over I would guess, but this doesn’t begin to look at the human misery in terms of lost and damaged lives. It doesn’t consider the environmental damage, which has been enormous but hardly registers as a concern in media coverage.
Obama told the world he can change things. He can stop the war. He can close Gitmo. Apparently he can’t, and egged on by the likes of Cameron continues with yet more. A once settled Libya is now open for the taking. Yes there may have been serious concerns about life and liberty there, but this overlooks the concerns that exist in these hypocrites’ own back yard.
Ten years ago Tony Blair bared his chest and placed an image of Britain on it saying “shoot here”. They heard him and obliged!