Unprecedented Global Wars

By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront

The facts of history are diverted and they sometimes become misleading. 

The Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, which Obama visited in 2010, has become a new centre for war crimes, and the war talk is barely mentioned on the mainstream media.

Let go back to 1960's and talk about the war in South Vietnam which probably killed seventy to eighty thousand people. When American President, John F Kennedy became involved in 1961, the situation had become out of control. 

Kennedy authorised the use of napalm, chemical warfare, to destroy ground control and crops of poverty-stricken farmers in the government of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. It was a process of diverting the rural population in a process called ‘strategic hamlets.’ 

In the coming years, U.S expansionism continued with the takeover of Cuba, trying to liberate it from Spain. Then it stole Hawaii from its population and also invaded the Philippines, killing thousands of people and imposing a reign of colonialism, with strong notions of rejectionism. 

In international relations theory, there is a world of anarchic states and each state tries to pursue its national interest on a global scale. Only an elite few countries can seal a global domination like the United States or Britain.

Quite recently, Barack Obama added a couple of naval bases in Panama. In 2008, U.S reactivated the Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean and Latin American waters, which it deactivated in 1950, after the Second World War. In Honduras, an air force base was used to bomb Nicaragua. In fact, after the military coup in Nicaragua, U.S leaders also tried to make a military deal with Colombia.

The Arab Spring event was mainly perceived by many as a revolt against the U.S backed dictators. Actually, the Arab Spring started in Western Sahara in 2010, by the invasion of Moroccan troops, which gave rise to Saharawi movement from the indigenous population. 

The Tahrir Square demonstrations in Egypt became significant when labour movement joined them. Tunisia introduced moderate levels of political Islam with a strong labour movement as well during the revolution there.

Bahrain has an uprising going on, which has been brutally crushed by Saudi led invasions. Complicated things are happening in Yemen, which is of concern to Saudi Arabia. Attacks against Libya’s largest tribe Warfalla have left plenty of resentments.

About 80 percent of arms for Turkey’s war against Kurds were coming from the United States during the Clinton administration, killing tens of thousands of people, with thousands of towns and villages destroyed.

In March 2011, a leading Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk was fined for his sheer verbosity on a Swiss newspaper stating, “we have killed 30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians”.

Kevin McKiernan, an Armenian journalist, once described a mountain in Northern Iraq called Mount Qandil, with Kurdish nationalists hideouts. It has two sides. There is a doublethink perception run by Americans that the side which faces Iran are freedom fighters and the side which faces Turkey are terrorists.

The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting for Hamas was too severe. It resulted in U.S backed bombings in Gaza, with a cut off of the flow of water to the Gaza strip, and Israeli takeover of the Jordan Valley. The rhetoric of Obama can be verified when he said: ‘two nations living side by side is vague enough and problematic to U.S and Israeli hawks.’

The United States also formulated efforts to control the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia) in the war on terror.

In 1992, United States also sent a dubious humanitarian assistance after the overthrow of Somali dictatorship, with casualties up to 7,000 to 10,000. There was also a participation in Ethiopia's overthrow of the Islamist regime.

In 2006, during  Israel’s U.S backed invasion of Lebanon, Obama passeSenatenate resolution, against Iran and Syria, insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a cease fire with the threat of Hezbollah missiles. 

The invasion of Lebanon thus killed more than thousand Lebanese and once again destroyed much of southern Lebanon, as well as parts of Beirut.

Infact, James Jones, Obama’s National Security Advisor and NATO’s supreme allied commander advocates reinforced U.S control over Middle East supplies, which gives the U.S a military alliance, “much more flexible capability to do things rapidly at very long distances.”

Perhaps, these unprecedented global wars have again raised the debate for the clash of civilisations.