The U.S. is in danger of slow-walking itself into a war with Iran.
ONE WOULD THINK: THAT AFTER THE RECENT US INVOLVEMENT IN DISASTROUS WARS, THAT IT AND ALL OF US, WOULD LEARN THAT MILARTY DETERRENCES DON’T WORK.
Since Biden refuses to pressure Israel to stop its bombardment of Gaza and accept a ceasefire, he is escalating the US confrontation with the Houthis.
Biden and his administration are practically sleepwalking the US into another war.
In the process, Biden risks entangling the US in another open-ended conflict, which islikely to expand by accident or miscalculation, rather than by design.
Either way, it threatens to prolong the forever war.
With persistent support of Israel, the Biden administration has alienated its allies in the Arab world and is now a heartbeat or an election result away from another war that it will lose.
The Gaza invasion has already spilled into clashes in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Red Sea.
They all require serious effort and inevitable trade-offs.
Why
Because it’s nearly impossible to dislodge an Indigenous insurgent movement without a huge commitment of ground troops.
Because today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously.
This isn’t because the United States is in decline.
It’s because unlike the United States, which needs to be strong in all three of these places, each of its adversaries—China, Russia, and Iran—only has to be strong in its own home region to achieve its objectives.
Because in past conflicts, it was always able to outproduce its opponents. That’s no longer the case:
Because in past conflicts, it could easily outspend adversaries. That’s no longer the case:
All of that pales alongside the human costs that the United States could suffer in a global conflict.
In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.
——————-
The US administration has multiple options to lean on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
It could threaten to withhold billions of dollars in military aid, which allow Israel to continue its assault, or it couldstop using Washington’s veto power on the UN security council to quash resolutions calling for a ceasefire.
The Houthis are portraying themselves as one of the few forces in the Middle East willing to stand against Israel and its western allies in defence of the Palestinian cause. Aside from the Houthis and Hamas, the alliance also includes several Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, and the powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
True global leadership at this moment means de-escalation and forging visions for a just future for all.
Without demanding a ceasefire in the immediate future, the putative US/UK commitment’s to peace rings hollow and feels more like it’s been overshadowed by their own and very real addictions to war.,
Any sane person would hear this.
Do most Americans realize how steeped in violence their country is?
A country beholden to its own violence’s is not limited to mass murderers.
How many of us have read the Creed of a United States Marine? “My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life,” it states, along with “my rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”
Maybe this makes sense as part of military indoctrination but, let’s face it, culturally, we are all expected to buy into this idea, and with interest.
The truth of the matter is that the US make a lot of war.
Military conflicts make up perhaps 93% of its history. Roughly a quarter of the country has lived only in a time of war. And within that history, American weapons are an industry, a mythology and identity simultaneously.
Why do they call armed, military helicopters “Apache” helicopters for goodness’ sake?
When will the US face the fact that it is a country baked in its own violence, much of it racist in intent and effect? That reflects its own genocidal and racist past. If they were to be honest they would see that this dark heart of violence is not simply a partisan issue but is a much longer and more intimate part of its our own national tragedy.
The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness.
Every one of us must stand up and denounce the killing of every civilian, Israeli or Palestinian or otherwise.
What exactly counts as a provocation?
3 or thousands,
Who gets to count as human?
There’s the nagging hypocrisy of the war in Ukraine.
So many around the world support Ukraine’s resistance to foreign occupation (as they should) but
blithely deny Palestinians any way to resist their occupation.
The only war that matters is the war on Climate Change. It will have no Treaty no Deterrence’s, no
Winners, no End.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In today’s world, it is impossible to find a phenomenon that harms people more than war.
By now in our history, we all know that any war is to blame for people being killed.
It is not only military deaths but every living individual so you might be well asking why do we now have another war breaking out in Ukraine?
We all know that there are so many reasons for starting these wars that no appeal and no desire for peace will ever be heard if the authorities want so. Sometimes it simply is inevitable.
(This post is not to justify the out brake, rather try and understand why it is occurring in the first place.)
It’s not just that Putin has become a “farce with fangs.” in reclaiming Crimea. More than 90 percent of the population of Crimea voted to return the territory to Russia.
The conflict in Ukraine started with the refusal of ex-president Viktor Yanukovich to sign the agreement of Ukraine’s association with the European Union. Thousands of people, shocked by his decision, went to the streets to show their willingness to become part of Europe and live a happier and wealthier life.
Most of us have no knowledge about Ukraine and it’s not possible to explain its history in this post.
However, most of us are still not quite sure what Ukraine was or is.
“Ukraine was a little bit like Ireland used to be within the United Kingdom” It was a subordinate part of a greater whole, of a greater empire.
“During the revolution that ushered in the Soviet Union, Ukraine fought for independence. It lost, and in 1922 was subsumed inside the communist state.
This was followed by Stalin creating “The Holodomor an artificial famine,” to crush its people its language and culture. Just like the Irish Potato Famine known as the Great Hunger, which began in 1845 that saw millions of Irish either starve to death or immigrate. Stalin between 1932 and 1933, starved some four million Ukrainians to death.
The significance of the Potato Famine (or, in the Irish language, An Gorta Mor) in Irish history, and its contribution to the Irish diaspora of the 19th and 20th centuries, is beyond doubt still to this day.
“The attempt to eliminate Ukrainian-ness and the sense of it, of a separate identity and the sense of nationhood, has really been a Russian policy since the 19th century, but its sense of nationhood was growing stronger.
And now this disaster has befallen them and this feeling that they may be dragged back into some horrific Stalin-era or Czarist-era nightmare must be tormenting a lot of them.
—————-
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes, and missiles as part of its Nato Enlargement Project. NATO has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe.
In fact in the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato’s expansion is the biggest military build-up since the Second World War.
Imagine the response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out on America’s borders.
“It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers.”
The once hopeful concept of “Russian reform” now means regression, even destruction. In Orwellian fashion, this has been inverted in the west to the “Russian threat”.
The Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson called “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”
—————————-
As a consequence, we have witnessed Iraq dismembered with between 97,461 and 106,348 civilian deaths up to July 2010.
(The US has lost 4,487 service personnel. Half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five make up the Iraq deaths.)
Syria flattened. A decade of war in Syria has left more than 350,200 people dead.
Yemen. Almost a quarter of a million people have died in Yemen’s war.
Afghanistan, so far the war killed 176,000 people in Afghanistan; some 2,460 US military personnel and 51000 Taliban.
Israel/Palestine. At least 10,316 Palestinians and 1,287 Israelis.
Myanmar. The Rohingya genocide.
“Behind each recorded death is a human being, born free and equal, in dignity and rights”.
Some sources say that the Soviet Union had over 20,000,000 casualties, in world war Two.
_________________
” Perhaps the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature: its conviction that it represents a superior form of life.”
It is “so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable”.
In the modern era, the employment of ethnic differences in western power and propaganda systems is now seen as essential.
Today’s grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective, and liberal is creating a world of inequalities.
No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damns the corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin reveal the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw have no equivalents today.
“Austerity” is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.
It’s no wonder we have wars.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin
” Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” John F. Kennedy
If you ask Google how many wars have they been in the world.
Here is the answer:
” Early humans could have fought wars that went unnoticed. Sources range from 100,000 to 300,000 WARS.”
Then if you look at wikipedia.org and ask how many are current wars, on top of the list of the 40 active conflicts/ wars around the world at the moment, the Afghanistan conflict is number one, because of the letter A.
You could not be blamed for wondering that after so many wars why it is in these modern days of interconnectivity other than the insanity of one or more leaders that causes wars. The boundary between rational and non-rational is fuzzy. There must exist incentives for conflict and some barriers to the ability to reach an enforceable bargain.
The ideological change is both the most common cause of conflict and the root of most wars, but there is rarely only one cause of dispute.
Not only do we go to war we supply arms to the potential adversity.
War is a better-known word in England that Afghanistan.
(According to Wikipedia,) The Kingdom of England has fought conflicts in 171 of the world’s 193 countries that are currently UN member states, or nine out of ten of all countries.So it is not surprising to learn that the British invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1830s.
You could say England has been at war from the Battle of Edgehill (October 1642)
What do you define as a war? What do you define as the UK?
Take the nicely named Troubles in Northern Ireland – 30 years.
(The leftover of theIrish War of Independence 2 years has its origins in the 12th century when England invaded to create its first colony.)
As with all wars once they start the original reasons are eventually forgotten in the devastation inflicted.
World war one started in 1914 after four years it left over 15 million people dead and set the stage for World war two six short years.
The Holocaust alone resulted in over 11 million people killed, 6 million of which were Jewish. Somewhere between 22 and 26 million men died in battle during the war. In the final act of the war, between 70,000 and 80,000 Japanese were killed when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years and 5 months.
The Falklands 10-week.
The Gulf War six months was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes.
The ongoing war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict with Israel established in 1948 continues to the present day on various levels.
Or the ongoing Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen now 22 years.
So here is what I have learned about the Afghan wars.
During the nineteenth century, two large European empires vied for dominance in Central Asia. In what was called the “Great Game,” the Russian Empire moved south while the British Empire moved north from its so-called crown jewel, colonial India.
Their interests collided in Afghanistan, resulting in the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839 to 1842.
This resulted in a series of unsuccessful wars for the British to control Afghanistan, Bukhara, and Turkey. The British lost at all four wars — the First Anglo-Saxon War (1838), the First Anglo-Sikh War (1843), the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878) — resulting in Russia taking control of several Khanates including Bukhara.
Following this great victory over the British, Afghanistan maintained its independence and continued to play the two European powers off of each other for three more decades.
Soviet-Afghan War.
Afghanistan is not called the “graveyard of empires” for nothing.
The Soviet-Afghan War lasted over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups are known collectively as the mujahideen, as well as smaller Maoist groups, fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government, mostly in the countryside. The mujahideen groups were backed primarily by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy war. Between 562,000 and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran.
More than nine years of direct involvement and occupation.
On April 27, 1978, a Soviet-supported communist government took over the country with the first Soviet deployment into Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. They had President Amin put to death because he was talking to the Yanks and installed their own leader, President Babrak Karmal.
The Soviets resorted to using napalm, poison gas and helicopter gunships against the Mujahideen – but they experienced exactly the same military scenario the Americans had done in Vietnam.
In the years that followed, more than 870,000 Afghans were killed, three million were maimed or wounded, a million were internally displaced and over five million were forced to flee the country.
It became a source of embarrassment for the Soviet Union as the Mujahideen (a guerilla force on a holy mission for Allah) would come down from the mountains in the summer with US-supplied Stinger missiles and after around 13,000 Soviet troops were killed the Russian had had enough with the country becoming one of the poorest nations in the world.
By 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The Soviets suffered some 15,000 dead and many more injured. 1988 the Soviet Union signed an accord with the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and agreed to withdraw its troops.
Mikhail Gorbachev took the U.S.S.R. out of Afghanistan.
Men start growing beads and destroy all non-islamic idols and statues- al-Qaid.
By the end of the 1980s, the Mujahideen was at war with itself in Afghanistan with hard-line Taliban fighters. The word Taliban means “students”
By 1982, the Mujahideen controlled 75% of Afghanistan despite fighting the might of the world’s second most powerful military power.
On 25 April 1992, a civil war had ignited between three, later five or six, mujahideen armies, which escalated into another full-blown conflict. By mid-1994, Kabul’s original population of two million had dropped to 500,000. In 1995–96, the new militia Taliban, supported by Pakistan and ISI, had grown to be the strongest force.
On September 2001 the 9/11 terrorist attack which the USA believed that Osama Bin Laden head of al-Qaida was the behind the attacks. The United States began bombing Afghanistan and 10 years later kill Osama.
As of August 2016, about 104,000 people have been killed in the war in Afghanistan since 2001, more than 31,000 being civilians.
With the rising of ISIS in Afghanistan, the country was plunged into a new humanitarian emergency and Afghans into a new internally displacement and the refugee crisis.
Since invading in 2001, the United States has poured more than $117 billion into Afghanistan.
The war has enjoyed bipartisan support from the beginning. Bush launched it. Obama began his administration approving a “surge” of 30,000 troops for what he called the “good war.”
The United States went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to get bin Laden, quash Al Qaeda and punish the Taliban for harbouring them. Bin Laden is dead; Al Qaeda has metastasized across the region; the Taliban have been hunted for 16 years.
Now there is no clear vision of where we’re headed.
A blank check to wage war anywhere, any time, for any length,
To me it is quite clear with Trump “where we’re headed”—to more years of endless war without victory, wasting more lives ensnared in a war with no exit.
So the situation isn’t complicated:
The origins of opium date as far back at 3400 B.C
There is enough opium production in Afghanistan (something the US was never truly capable of controlling or suppressing.) to ensure that the current war ends in a dream-like state and armed nation-building does not work.
Forty years might seem a long time but its nothing compared to wars back in the days when wars lasted from anything up to 700 years.
So here are few brewing for the future.
The U.S.A. vs. Iran.
Why?
Because of Donal Trump re-election. His inability to learn from Vietnam or Afghan that military power will mean little when drawing into a decades-long guerrilla war with factions of the Iranian regime.
Egypt vs. Ethiopia.
Why?
Because the Ethiopia Blue Nile dam is 60% completed…
Iran vs. Saudi Arabia.
Why?
Because the collapse of Lebanon, the Arab Spring, the Yemen civil war, and the Qatari blockade are all significant global geopolitical events spawned by tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two nations are already engaged in numerous proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and as time goes on this list is only set to grow in size.
North Korea vs. the U.S.A.
Why?
Because North Korea operates as a military dictatorship,
Russia vs. NATO.
Why?
Because Nato needs to justify its existence.
The Irish have always been noted for a complete disregard for time.
Venezuelan Civil War.
Why?
Because it is safe to say things are not going too well in Venezuela.
South China Sea War.
Why?
Because it is home to 10% of the world’s fisheries and tens of billions of barrels of oil.
Amazon Apps ves Humanity
Why?
Because we were too lazy and gave away all of our data.
Climate War.
Why?
Because this could very well be the catalyst to end all wars.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WITH SO MANY WARS IN THE WORLD WHY IS ENGLAND TURNING ITS BACK ON THE ASPIRATION OF A UNITED PEACEFUL EUROPE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY CURRENT WARS WE HAVE IN THE WORLD.
As you read this, there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. You could not be blamed for thinking that most of the world is in conflict.
They all seem to overflow into one great swam of human misery that occupy our News on a daily basis.
These days wars are more to do with identity based in historical, geographical, political, social, cultural and economic realities.
The EU endeavors to appease these differences, however the European Community needs to stop worry about protecting yesterday’s accomplishments rather than facing tomorrow’s challenges.
THIS IS HIGHLIGHTED BY ENGLAND PENDING DEPARTURE LEADING TO THE QUESTION:
DOES A DEFINABLE, IF NASCENT EUROPEAN IDENTITY EXIST OR IS IT LIKE ALL OTHERS.
It should come as no great surprise that most EU citizens regard themselves as belonging within a number of culturally defined groups and do not normally feel that these overlapping identities are incompatible.
As we are now witnessing with England’s departure and the divide between northern Europe and the Southern Europe.
The critical moments that lead to war are those when one or more identities take precedence over the others. So the objective of the EU must be to reach a stage at which regional, national, European and other identities are regarded as compatible rather than competitive.
This stage has not yet been reached and it may be argued that reaching this plateau is the major challenge which the Union faces in the next century.
It is extremely difficult to construct a European cultural project which embraces both the differences in European cultures and their common roots but in a world now driven more and more by technology that must be the objective, not isolation.
Europe is by far the most peaceful region in the world. Yet the continent is not immune to war – Britain, France, Belgium and others are heavily involved in external conflict in the Middle East, and face a growing threat to peace from international terrorism.
It is not inevitable that the logic of unity and interdependence will prevail and there is a consequent danger of a return to a dangerously fragmented Europe with potentially devastating consequences.
So given all the dire warnings from either side about the security of Europe if Britain leaves the EU, does the IEP foresee a change in the region’s fortunes in the event of Brexit?
In the short-term it’s unlikely to have an effect.
The longer-term ramifications, more for Britain than for [the rest of] Europe, would probably depend on what the economic outcome of a British exit would be. If there’s a further deterioration in the economy in England we may well witness an increase in violence.
This is a country that is full of places of worship that are thronged with glorification of war, saturated with historical blood, building two new aircraft carriers, while its people are on trolleys in hospitals.
Leaving the EU for all the wrong reasons, expecting to retain all the advantages of being in the EU but none of the responsibilities and costs.
A self-inflicted position.
At the moment they have the best trade deal possible – the best one imaginable – which is a customs union and access to the European Single Market and the European Economic Area.
We are now further away from world peace than at any time in the past 10 years – and it’s creating a global ‘peace inequality’ gap.
There are now just 10 countries which can be considered truly at peace – in other words, not engaged in any conflicts either internally or externally, completely free from conflict.
The lack of a solution to the refugee crisis and an increase in deaths from major terrorist incidents have all contributed to the world being less peaceful in 2016.
Many of the conflicts don’t get the media or policy attention of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Ukraine, and they may not have the same geopolitical or economic importance.
All wars need arms so who is supplying the arms:
Fueling the deadly conflicts for profit.
War kills. And war sells.
Where do nations from every corner of the planet look when they want to increase their arsenals?
Ten countries are responsible for the vast majority of all major arms exports, accounting for 90 percent of global sales with the United States, the world’s largest arms dealers.
The world’s top six major arms exporters are the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, France and China. Together, they account for 74 percent of the total volume of exports.
Sales are in the region of $31.bn
If you don’t believe me here below is a link to interactive map.
The map is part of a series of articles from IRIN around the concept of forgotten wars.is an interactive map of the current conflicts in the world.
It examines the root causes, human cost and potential for peace of conflicts in Myanmar, Casamance, South Kordofan, southern Thailand, and Mindanao in the Philippines.
The map marks each conflict with a red dot.
It is sized to represent how long the battle has been going on, with the
larger dots representing those that have lasted the longest.
To see more about each conflict, click on the dot.
This brings up a fact box explaining the nature of the conflict, when it began and how many deaths have resulted from it.
Syria has been embroiled in civil war, that is also the biggest and most complex proxy war the world has witnessed.
Mexico’s drug war, fueled by 54 ruthless cartels lust for territory, cash, power and violence has slaughtered as many as 85,000 people since 2006.
Mali, AL-Qaeda took root in the country’s north. Around 4,000 people have been killed in Mali since 2012.
Afghanistan, Taliban and IS.
Iraq, the 2003 US-led Iraq war killed up to a million Iraqis, gave birth to Islamic State.
The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for well over a decade, then it spilled into Syria in 2011, and afterwards into Libya and Yemen.
Yemen, AL-Qaeda and IS have fighters in Yemen, over 7,600 people have been killed in the past two years.
Pakistan, since the 9/11 outrage in 2001, war has been raging between the Taliban, IS.
Lebanon, Nearly a quarter of Lebanon’s population is made up of Syrian refugees and sectarian division has risen as IS battles with the Shia militant group Hezbollah.
Libya, 35,000 people have been killed since the Arab Spring uprising.
Democratic Republic Of Congo, more than 70 groups are fighting despite the presence of 20,000 UN troops.
Somalia, Al-Shabaab had 9,000 fighters in Somalia. IS has a foothold in Somalia and is trying to recruit Al-Shabaab fighters.
India,a fragile ceasefire since 2003 with Kashmir, but still exchange fire across the contested border.
South Sudan, over 50,000 people have been killed and more than 1.6 million displaced since war broke out in 2013. It has raged for more than 60 years.
Egypt, at war against Islamist militants in the Sinai.
Central African Republic, 6,000 people have been killed in the Central African Republic, with 25 per cent of the 4.6 million population displaced.
Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Nigeria, 50,000 people have died in the war between regime forces and Islamic State-affiliates Boko Haram.
Israel -Palestine, has forced tens of thousands of Arabs from homes in land grabs.
Turkey, fighting the Kurdish Workers Party the PKK, is hostile to the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party’s armed wing, the YPG, but has good relations with the Kurdish Peshmerga of Northern Iraq. The Turkish and Syrian Kurds are fighting IS and others in Syria but are against the Turkish government.
Potential Wars:
North Korea, technically, it has never stopped being at war with the South since 1953.
East China sea, South China Sea.
Will any end soon. Not likely.
This autocracy must stop.
The shelf-life of weapons is often longer than the governments and situations they were sold to.
Britain – is now the world’s second largest arms exporter after America – around 120,000 people are employed in weapons dealing.
Two-thirds of UK weapons have been sold to Middle Eastern countries.
If Europe is to escape the cauldron of fragmentation and national strife our shared bonds of European identity must be more broadly defined, given concrete expression and have the flexibility necessary to create an outward-looking and self-confident union of people’s.
The logic of global socio-economic interdependence that spells integration and the logic of ethnicity and nationality that demands separation both apply.
If England leaves the EU without a satisfactory solution to the Irish Border it could reignite one of the longest conflicts in the world going back 700 years.
To make the Irish less Irish backfired once and it will again.
With the coming Climate Change, doubts about the science are being replaced by doubts about the motives of scientists and their political supporters.
Once this kind of cynicism takes hold, is there any hope for the truth?
Climate change deniers argue they are only trying to discover the truth.
We should all be sceptical about that.
No Technology, No Artificial Intelligence, No inequality adjustment, No Frontiers, No Nuclear weapons, No alliances, not anything is going to stop migration.
Where will the next War be?
It will be between the countries relying on the Nile for power and water.
The toll of decades-long conflicts – from Colombia to the Ogaden, from Kashmir to Western Sahara – will be just as devastating for the people who do not live there.
All of the above presupposes that the development of Europe’s cultural identity is a worthy and attainable goal.
Europe, when you think about it, is a pretty small place. Jump on a plane in London and you can be all the way across the continent, in big old Russia, within just a few hours.
Europe stresses the importance of a continuing dialogue between the present and the past.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Yesterday the UK government spent 10 hours debating whether to expand its Bombing on ISIS/Daesh into Syria.
During the debate there was hardly a mention of Arms Sales other than,
“Isis didn’t come from nowhere, its weapons don’t come from nowhere. We sell vast amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and a number of other places” Mr Corbett.
When it comes to how arms sales are perceive – whether they are British or US or whatever – it tends to be seen as a domestic economic issue.
The Middle East has now descended into proxy wars, sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorist networks. Countries in the region that have stockpiled American military hardware are now actually using them and wanting more.
Adding to the concern is the fact that the spending spree on arms comes against the background of a marked increase in military interventions by countries in the region since the Arab spring in 2011. Saudi Arabia has intervened in Bahrain (at the request of that kingdom’s ruler during the so-called Pearl revolution), in Yemen in 2009 and again in Yemen this year.
$18bn expected to be spent on weapons this year.
War is good for business.
In March 2015, the Syrian civil war, rightly declared by the United Nations as the “worst humanitarian disaster since the Cold War,” entered its fifth year.
Today, a number of factors make the conflict intractable.
The revolution began around issues of social inequality and the desire for freedom from fear and repression.
The Syrian civil war was never just about Syria. From the beginning, regional and international powers intervened in the conflict by supporting the different warring parties.
The rise of mainly foreign jihadist groups like the “Islamic State” (ISIS) have exacerbated the situation by both wrestling further decision-making power away from Syrian actors and by establishing itself as a radical “spoiling” force that would hinder any negotiated political agreement.
As more actors become involved, one constant factor remains: no single group or faction has the military strength to be able to simultaneously defeat all its adversaries and declare military victory.
Russia:
Russia has continued to supply the Syrian military with weapons and equipment throughout the conflict. Moscow insists it is only fulfilling pre-existing contracts and that it is not violating any international sanctions.
The S-300 surface-to-air missile defence systems recently delivered to Syria.
Despite Western pressure, Moscow insisted earlier this year that it would be honouring its previously agreed contract with Damascus for supplying sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems.
Given the unprecedented levels of weapon sales by the west (including the US, Canada and the UK) to the mainly Sunni Gulf states, Vladimir Putin’s decision last week to allow the controversial delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran – voluntarily blocked by Russia since 2010 – seems likely to accelerate the proliferation.
Russia has already reportedly sent advanced Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles, SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, and short-range Pantsyr-S missile systems.
Iran:
Tehran is believed to have become a key supplier of rockets, anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Iran has stepped up its military support of Syrian government forces since the end of 2012.
However, Iranian officials deny breaking the UN sanctions imposed on its arms exports.
To evade the sanctions, Tehran has allegedly been transporting most of the weapons through Iraqi airspace on commercial planes and, more recently, overland through Iraq by lorry, something the Iraqi government denies.
Photographs and videos published online appear to provide evidence of recent Iranian arms shipments.
One purportedly shows an Iranian-made rocket, on which the date of manufacture is listed as 2012; another an ammunition crate containing mortar shells made by a Iranian defense ministry subsidiary in 2012.
Syria:
The Free Syrian Army (FSA), have said that the vast majority of its weaponry has been bought on the black market or seized from government facilities.
European Union: May 2011, it imposed an arms embargo on Syria.
As the uprising entered its third year, several member states – led by the UK and France – lobbied to be able to supply arms to “moderate” forces in the opposition.
Despite deep rifts, foreign ministers agreed to let the embargo lapse in May 2013.
Though EU member states do not appear to have already sent arms directly to the rebels, another European country has been linked to a secret, large-scale airlift.
In January 2013, a British blogger began to notice weapons made in the former Yugoslavia were appearing in videos and images posted online by rebels fighting in southern Syria.
The recoilless guns, assault rifles, grenade launchers and shoulder-fired rockets appeared to be from an undeclared surplus from the 1990s Balkan wars stockpiled by Croatia.
Western officials told the New York Times that the weaponry had been sold to Saudi Arabia, and that multiple plane loads had left Croatia since December 2012, bound for Turkey and Jordan.
They were reportedly then given to several Western-aligned FSA groups. Croatia’s foreign ministry and arms-export agency have denied any such shipments occurred.
US:
The US has repeatedly said it is reluctant to supply arms directly to rebel groups because it is concerned that weapons might end up in the possession of militant jihadist groups.
But on 14 June 2013 Washington said it would give the rebels “direct military aid”after concluding Syrian troops had used chemical weapons.
The CIA is reported to have played an important role behind the scenes since 2012, coordinating arms shipments to the rebels by US allies.
In June 2012, US officials said CIA officers were operating in Turkey, helping decide which groups would receive weapons.
The CIA is also reported to have been instrumental in setting up the alleged secret airlift of weapons from Croatia.
Turkey:
The Turkish government is a firm supporter of the rebels, but has not officially approved the sending of military aid.
However, reports suggest it has played a pivotal role in sharp acceleration of arms shipments to the rebels since late 2012.
The Turkish authorities had oversight over much of the airlift of weapons from Croatia, “down to affixing transponders to trucks ferrying the military goods through Turkey so it might monitor shipments as they move by land into Syria”, according to the New York Times.
Jordan:
The Yugoslav-made weapons first seen in the hands of FSA units in southern Syria in early 2013 are believed to have been smuggled over the border with Jordan.
The Jordanian government has denied any role and said it was trying to prevent smuggling.
However, the New York Times found evidence to suggest Royal Jordanian Air Force transport planes and Jordanian commercial aircraft had been involved in the alleged airlift of arms from Croatia.
Iraq:
Syria’s rebels, who are drawn mostly from the country’s majority Sunni community, are said to have acquired weapons, ammunition and explosives from Sunni tribesmen and militants in neighbouring Iraq.
Arms are reportedly smuggled over the long, porous border and sold or given to the rebels. Al-Qaeda in Iraq played an active role in founding the al-Nusra Front and provides it with money, expertise and fighters.
Lebanon:
As with Iraq, Lebanon’s Sunni community is reported to have helped supply Syrian rebel fighters with small arms purchased on the black market or shipped from other countries in the region, including Libya.
The Lebanese authorities have seized unmarked shipments of ammunition, including rocket-propelled grenades.
The Syrian town of Qusair, which was recaptured by government forces in June 2013, was a transit point for weapons smuggled from north-eastern Lebanon.
Libya:
The North African state has been a key source of weapons for the rebels.
The UN Security Council’s Group of Experts, which monitors the arms embargo imposed on Libya during the 2011 uprising, said in April 2013 that there had been illicit transfers of “heavy and light weapons, including man-portable air defence systems, small arms and related ammunition and explosives and mines”.
“The significant size of some shipments”, it said, “and the logistics involved suggest that representatives of the Libyan local authorities might have at least been aware of the transfers, if not actually directly involved.”
Saudi Arabia:
Saudi Arabia is reported recently to have taken the lead in channelling financial and military support to the rebels.
Unlike Qatar, the Gulf kingdom is believed to be suspicious of the Islamist rebel groups, and has focused on supporting nationalist and secular factions of the FSA.
In late 2012, Riyadh is said to have financed the purchase of “thousands of rifles and hundreds of machine guns”, rocket and grenade launchers and ammunition for the FSA from a Croatian-controlled stockpile of Yugoslav weapons.
These were reportedly flown – including by Royal Saudi Air Force C-130 transporters – to Jordan and Turkey and smuggled into Syria.
Qatar:
Until now, Qatar is widely believed to have been the main supplier of weapons to the rebels.
The Gulf emirate has denied providing any arms, although it has promised to support the opposition “with whatever it needs”.
Most of the weapons are thought to have been given to hard-line Islamist rebel groups, particularly those aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has acted as an intermediary.
This has reportedly drawn criticism from Western officials who say many of the groups are extremist.
Qatar Emiri Air Force transporter planes flew to Turkey with supplies for the Syrian rebels as early as January 2012, according to the New York Times
By autumn 2012, Qatari aircraft were landing at Esenboga airport, near Ankara, every two days.
Qatari officials insisted they were carrying non-lethal aid.
A complete and detailed picture of the arms race in the Middle East is impossible to construct.
But the availability of weapons in the region, from which British firms make billions of pounds a year, was a “contributory factor” in the ongoing conflict.
In 2013 the Independent reported that the UK made £12.bn from arms sales to repressive regimes around the world, most of which are in the Middle East and Africa.
Over the last decade, the Middle East has become a focal point of the world arms buildup. Each year, the regional arsenal grows, as the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and others ship billions of dollars worth of weapons to the countries there.
Today, the region receives over half of all arms deliveries to the Third World, and more than a quarter of all world arms shipments.
In less than 20 years, these have grown tenfold in value — from $4.7 billion in 1962 to $46.7 billion in 1980, nearly nine times the world average.
When the states of the world are ranked by military spending per capita, six of the top seven are in the Middle East.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Brunei, Kuwait, United States, Soviet Union and France.
By the end of the 1970s, the region was spending between 13 and 15 percent of its gross national product for the military, compared with 8.3 percent for the Warsaw Pact countries, the next highest.
If Israel’s battle-ready reserves of some 300,000 are included, the Middle East now has almost twice the total military manpower of the US, and is approaching the 4.7 million total for the US and all NATO countries except Turkey.
During the same period, operational combat aircraft in the region grew by more than 50 percent, from 2,900 to 4,400, surpassing the size of the combined European NATO air forces.
The one Canadian deal alone – to supply Saudi Arabia with light armoured vehicles – will account for 20% of the military vehicles sold globally in years covered by the contract.
With conflicts raging in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, this is just the thin edge of the wedge. Saudi has booked enough arms imports in 24 months for them to be worth $10bn a year.
Arms sales to the top five purchasers in the region – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt and Iraq – surge this year to more than $18bn, up from $12bn last year.
Abu Dhabi staged the 13th edition of the International Defence Exhibition and Conference in 2015 it attracted 1,200 exhibiting companies and over 100’000 visitors.
According to the New York Times, defense industry officials have notified Congress that they are expecting additional requests from Arab states fighting Isis – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt – for thousands of new US-made weapons, including missiles and bombs, to rebuild depleted arms stockpiles.
Haider al-Abadi, disclosed that he was seeking arms worth billions of dollars from Washington – with payment deferred – for the battle against Daesh/Islamic State (Isis).
Ironically, among the key weapons suppliers in the arms race are permanent members of the UN security council who have been at the center of two unconventional arms control initiatives – disarming the Syrian government’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and negotiating for a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme.
They showed how Saudi Arabia had become the world’s largest importer of weapons and fourth largest military spender and that other Middle East states were sharply increasing their arms purchases.
Last week France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, disclosed progress in talks to sell Rafale fighter jets to the UAE, one of the Middle East’s biggest and most aggressive arms buyers.
CHINA could be on the verge of teaming up with Russia to unleash its military might in Syria and destroy Islamic State (ISIS).
For perspective:
During the first year of the war on terror, approximately 72 million rounds were expended in Iraq and another 21 million in Afghanistan — about 2,000 rounds per war fighter.
There are over 80 million gun owners in the U.S. If every single one went out and bought just 100 rounds – barely enough for one afternoon on the range – it would require 8 billion rounds of ammo.
If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands.
So how do we reverse the trend?
To do this,
Our approach needs to go well beyond the current focus on militarily downgrading and defeating ISIS and keeping the conflict from spreading to Syria’s neighboring countries — a strategy that has arguably already failed.
Syria is now functions as a war economy, and fighting is seen as one of the few options available to generate income.
Within the country, there are over 7 million people who have been internally displaced and over 12 million people who need basic humanitarian aid to survive.
Current international funding and resources fall short of covering Syria’s enormous humanitarian needs — including basic food assistance — and it must be increased.
What’s more, the international community’s priority needs to be to work on ensuring access for humanitarian aid workers, as they cannot reach parts of the Syrian population, whether due to the Syrian regime’s obstruction or ISIS’s extensive control.
With no clear military victory in sight, a political arrangement is still the best — albeit extremely complex — bet to see an end to the war.
Only a stronger, non-jihadist Syrian opposition can ultimately wrestle control and support away from radical groups like ISIS/Daesh and al-Nusra and sit at the negotiating table.
Something’s got to give.
And when it does, these are some possible scenarios:
If Assad is killed, the regime will likely fall and the rebels could claim victory. That would lead to an attempt at a transitional government, likely composed of members from the newly formed Syrian National Council, despite its immediate problems and the fact that jihadists have been the most organized rebel force up to this point.
A truly dangerous scenario would be if it went from the proxy war which it now is to a full-blown world war with Iran-Syria-Russia on side against the West and its Gulf allies.
The destabilization of the entire region. Syria would then turn into a free-for-all.
President Bashar al-Assad is given a safe passage out of Syria to end the nation’s bloodshed. This great compromise is not likely since Assad vowed he would never leave Syria alive. France is good at giving Mass killers a home.
With the amount of arms sales there is every likely hood that the Arab forces could become the Middle East’s newest source of Anti- democratic, sectarian- based, instability, potentially intensifying the Sunni-Shia conflict.
While most of the warring parties are exhausted, they also believe they have no alternative to war, that the only possible conclusion is either victory or death.
In light of the recent events in Paris this post is sure to touch on some
very raw nerves but if we are to honor those who lost their lives
we must come to some understanding of the horrification or
glorification of killing other than the frenzy of fear now being created
by the media.
Television is an energy drain and a large source of fear and negativity for many. Watching violence, diminishes the harshness and reality of these acts, by gradually numbing us. Along with Social media it is one of the fastest ways to disconnect yourself from the world.
Most people just want to live their lives in peace.
however this is completely undermined by modern day, which would make you think that most people are violent and destructive.
Violence on television is however part of our societal experience.
The number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000. The number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
Most of us will never engage in an act of extreme brutality.
We will never shoot, stab, or beat someone to death. We will never rape another human being or set them on fire. We will never strap a bomb to our chests and detonate ourselves in a crowded café.
And so, when faced with these seemingly senseless acts, we find ourselves at a loss.
At the same time for most of us in the world we have become so use to killing it means little or nothing to us unless it directly affects us.
If you stop and ask yourself why are we so prone to kill this is a subject that has been intensely debated for centuries, probably because it says so much about who we are and whether we can justify war and other collective violence.
If we really want to solve the problem of violence, there is nothing for it but to risk a kind of understanding that threatens our own values, our own way of life. We have to gaze into an abyss.
People are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory.
Usually when someone is murdered, people expect the murderer to feel culpable. This though, is not the case in war. When in war, a soldier is taught that the enemy deserves to die, for no other reason than that they are the nation’s enemy. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should.
Has warfare been handed down to us through millions of years of evolution?
Is it part of who we are as a species?
Is warfare is rooted in evolution?
At the heart of these question is whether humans have a natural capacity to kill other humans. Some social scientists have concluded that evolution has in fact left us with this unfortunate ability.
Luckily there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow-man.
Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations.
Many people assume that soldiers in a firefight instinctively respond to enemy fire by shooting back, and that soldiers in a kill-or-be-killed situation will choose to kill. But informal interviews conducted with thousands of American combat soldiers during World War II by army historian S.L.A. Marshall revealed that as many as 75% of soldiers never fired their weapons during combat.
Very few people would seek out an opportunity to kill others.
At the same time, you may find it hard to believe that it is sometimes impossible for soldiers to kill others even when their own lives are at risk.
Throughout history and around the world people have come up with ways to overcome an aversion to killing, such as dehumanizing the victim, placing distance between the killer and the victim, and using drugs or loud music to induce a trance-like state in a killer. This trait would have been amplified and passed down through the generations until it was eventually inherited by modern humans, who presumably took this predisposition and ran with it, inventing more and more efficient ways to kill each other.
Aftermath of World War II, the U.S. military embarked on a campaign to more effectively prepare soldiers for combat by employing realistic training exercises. New recruits began to practice shooting at pop-up, human-shaped targets rather than the traditional, stationary bull’s-eyes. More and more elaborate and realistic combat simulation exercises and ’war games’ were implemented.
The point of this new training was to make killing an automatic response under combat conditions. And it worked. Combatants in institutional wars do not fight primarily because they are aggressive. Humans excel at overcoming our biological limitations using technological innovation.
All terrorism and war co-evolved, promoting conflict between groups and greater harmony within them.
There is no morality in war.
The original founders of the religions were the human incarnations of the same God like Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha etc.
Every religion says that their God only created this entire earth or this entire humanity. Unfortunately, there is only one earth and this proves that there is only one God mentioned by all the religions.
Along came those religions about 4000 years ago and endless war! in the name of religion (so they can not be religions or spiritual they can not be So new armies formed called Religion?.
Since God is one and the same, there cannot be contradicting concepts between the religions. But we find some contradictions and people are divided based on these contradictions. This division is leading to quarrels and finally killing each other. These contradictions cannot be from God because there is only one God as said above.
The Q`ran says that you should protect even the follower of other religion and convey the message of Allah to him. It is left to him to follow or not.
The same God exists in different forms in different religions.
Unfortunately we are the only living species that can reason and as a result, we realized that the only way to have things your way is by domination therefore, we divide and conquer. And as we become more powerful, we distort things. We twist the truth to fit our ulterior motive. And to convince the mass to adopt your belief in the name of God.
Unfortunately, it does not follow that every problem comes with its own prepackaged solution.
War is vague and illogical because it forces humans into extreme situations that have no obvious solutions. In a war, you kill someone and even if you win, you lose. The parts that are left out are the tragedies, and the permanent scars the war left.
And yet despite this apparent aversion to killing, we still manage to kill each other with alarming frequency.
Fortuitously this aversion to killing exists, and it reassures us that warfare is not an inescapable part of human life, and gives us hope that one day we might stop fighting wars.
Killing isn’t something that comes naturally to people.
Funny that people decry killing when it is because of their own demands that make it happen.
How can this be?“
Is that we’re simply too smart for our own good with propaganda to brainwash the masses into accepting this bloodshed day after day.
I’m interested how this applies to terrorists.
So would it be social engineering like “dehumanizing America, Israel, the West” or the cult of violence in many of those societies, plus enticements of financial rewards for the family of the suicide bombers in question that would help over come terrorists from their natural inclination not to kill. Most terrorists are paid mercenaries.
It isn’t easy to change a culture of violence.
You have to give people the structural, economic, technological and political means to regulate their relationships peacefully.
Legal sanctions are insufficient on their own.
Critically, the message has to come from respected people within the killer’s own community. Their own ideas about right and wrong matter most;
The ideas of those they care about and respect matter more.
Only when violence in any relationship is seen as a violation of every relationship will war diminish. Once everyone, everywhere, truly believes that violence is wrong, it will end.
The danger for Europe as a result of the horrific loss of life in Paris is not declaring war on terrorism but shutting down its borders. Open Borders is a declaration of intent that countries share goods and wealth and if they don’t they should. If all countries helped each other I think there would be no need for war.
This would separate out those who wish for war due to some perversion. If dangerous people can be motivated by genuine moral beliefs, we face a troubling dimension to morality.
If Paris is to teach us anything it is that there is a cost to modern-day warfare, that people will kill each other quite deliberately not just with particularly technologically advanced, like drones.
Our ancestors would have carried out deadly attacks only when they severely outnumbered their victims and not with low-cost attacks on unsuspecting neighbors.
When you declare war like Mr Holland and before him Mr Bush with Mr Blair you create fear which leads to killing and loss of the very liberties that so many died for.
France’s military efforts against ISIS have developed gradually over the course of the last 15 months. France began airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq in September of 2014 so Mr Hollands declaration of war is somewhat retrospective.
Prior to the American invasion in 2003, which France pointedly refused to join. Hollande insisted that France’s involvement would be strictly limited. “We will only intervene in Iraq,” he said.
Now he declaring a war ( rightly so) that France can not win it on its own. Nor will NATO who will have to get its arch-enemy Mr Putin on its side.
Unlike the wars created by 9/11 this time the drum beat is not a war against civilization as you could not describe ISIS as Civilized.
These days we have portable power.
This is a war to protect the West concept of Liberty which we will win by turning every Smart Phone into the eyes and ears of Freedom.
My message to ISIS is.
You may not tell us to kill. The society that you insist on – Killing is living. This is not a society anyone other than a barbarian would want to live in.
This lesson has being with us from the creation of man. The danger is that we forget it.
Whatever drove the Paris attackers to commit their horrific acts is certainly more complex and varied than the French government’s conduct in the world. It is no secret that the world’s attention can only be split so many ways.
The lessons of Paris today provide our best chance to get to the bottom of the ‘peace versus justice’ debate, expose its fallacies, and move beyond it.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the First World War, a global cataclysm.
Like many I was watching the Televised remembrance ceremony at Cenotaph in London. It stuck me ( without any disrespect to those that lost their lives. Millions and millions dead.) that perhaps we are remembering the wrong thing.
What we realty should be remembering today, a century later, is the unfathomable, gory, wasteful and mad catastrophe that ended growth and left a de-globalizing world economy in the hands of statists or worse.
By setting it apart as uniquely awful we are blinding ourselves to the reality of not just WW1 but war in general. We are also in danger of belittling the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other appalling conflicts throughout history and the present day.
When World War started on July 28, 1914, every nation fighting thought it knew why. England, France, and Russia blamed Germany and Austria-Hungary, while the latter blamed the former. Socialists blamed imperialists, pacifists blamed warmongering leaders, and Americans blamed the Old World for succumbing to its usual barbarism. It shattered the old world in Europe and paved the way for Stalin, Hitler, and, in 1939, the second World War. Historians today often call 1914-45 a single crisis spanning 31 years.
The wars united modern science and the horrors of the Middle Ages.
A century on we still live with the consequences – and some feel global chaos in the air again. An old, familiar order teetering.
To day war has evolved away from big groups of nations fighting other big groups of nations. Now we have bands of violent groups with no specific affiliation with any country at all.
The global political shakeups that stretched from the Middle East to Asia that are now familiar to most of us. Afghanistan has allowed jihadists to portray us as infidel occupiers, a potent casus belli that has arguably made Britain’s streets less safe than before departure may well plunge the country back into civil war – in which case, all our blood and treasure will have been for nought.
The financial costs are no less startling. Since 2006 we have spent at least £15m per day to maintain the British military presence in Helmand. By 2020, the UK will have spent, at a conservative estimate, £40bn in Afghanistan, 90 per cent of it on the military, equating to £650 for every resident of the UK, or more than £2,000 per tax-paying household. And for what? Successive prime ministers (but especially Gordon Brown) have told us that this war directly safeguarded Britain’s streets; it was a necessary evil in which we “fought them over there so that we didn’t have to fight them over here”. But this was true only immediately after 9/11, when Bin Laden was still hiding on Afghan soil.
Syria is currently the world’s most lethal and overall “biggest” war, with an estimated 170,000 deaths in the past three years, of which fewer than half were battle-related deaths but those made up a majority of the world’s total battle deaths in 2013. (The subset of battle deaths is more reliably counted through time, but does not include some categories such as bodies mysteriously dumped in the street or deaths from disease.) In 2014, fighting spread into Iraq, where Sunni insurgents control considerable territory and where in 2014 the most radical militants declared an Islamic State in Syrian and Iraqi territory they control. The war is internationalized by its spread into Lebanon where bombings and clashes happen regularly, and by the presence in Syria of both Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian revolutionary guards fighting for the government and on the other side Sunni jihadists from many countries.
So perhaps We shall remember them needs the word learn added.
“We shall remember them and learn.” would be more potent.
Consciously or unconsciously, the Great War should be in all our hearts before any call to arms with God on our side.
Religions are the scourge of life. How strange they preach peace,but promote violence. And people still believe in these religions as the one to follow for the answer to peace…My God! Are we a gullible species.
As Alexander the Great said once at war ” The will to fight. Nothing else matters in war. Not weapons or tactics, philosophy or patriotism, not fear of the gods themselves. Only this love of glory, which is the seminal imperative of mortal blood, as ineradicable within man as in a wolf or a lion, and without which we are nothing.
To day we have:
10 wars, 8 serious armed conflicts
AFRICA:
(26 Countries and 166 between militias-guerrillas, separatist groups and anarchic groups involved)
Hot Spots: Central African Republic (civil war), Democrati Republic of Congo (war against rebel groups), Egypt (popular uprising against Government), Libya (war against islamist militants), Mali (war against tuareg and islamist militants), Nigeria (war against islamist militants), Somalia (war against islamist militants), Sudan (war against rebel groups), South Sudan (civil war)
ASIA:
(16 Countries and 138 between militias-guerrillas, separatist groups and anarchic groups involved)
Hot Spots: Afghanistan (war against islamist militants), Burma-Myanmar (war against rebel groups), Pakistan (war against islamist militants), Philippines (war against islamist militants), Thailand (coup d’etat by army May 2014)
EUROPE:
(9 Countries and 71 between militias-guerrillas, separatist groups and anarchic groups involved)
Hot Spots: Chechnya (war against islamist militants), Dagestan (war against islamist militants), Ukraine (Secession of self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic)
MIDDLE EAST:
(8 Countries and 187 between militias-guerrillas, separatist groups and anarchic groups involved)
Hot Spots: Iraq (war against Islamic State islamist militants), Israel (war against islamist militants in Gaza Strip), Syria (civil war), Yemen (war against and between islamist militants)
AMERICAS:
(5 Countries and 25 between drug cartels, militias-guerrillas, separatist groups and anarchic groups involved)
Hot Spots: Colombia (war against rebel groups), Mexico (war against narcotraffic groups)
Its time to change and to declare war on Inequality,Greed, Climate change if we are to learn anything.
Now I am no Historian so the Biblical and Historical Origins of the Problems in the Middle East are to say the least some what beyond me.
Anyway for what its worth here is my stab at explaining the Middle East.
Tell me if I am wrong.
In light of the attacks of 9/11 the big question to answer was why.
Why do these people hate us so much.?
So much that they are willing to give their own lives simply to kill, to start a war, or make a statement.
The answer to this question truly lies in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and the utter failure that Westernization has been in the Middle East.
As far as I can see the present day situation in Israel may be the most difficult political situation in world history.
It alone dates back to thousands of years before Christ when the Israelites left Egypt after two hundred years of bondage they began forty years of wandering the desert in which they encountered many enemy tribes such as their sworn enemies, the Amalekites.
While these days, the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes place at a domestic level, its roots, as well as the frequent failed attempts at peace that spanned the 20th century, stemmed from international interference and mismanagement.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been one of the defining political issues in the Middle East for decades.
Since its inception the State of Israel has been at war with the Arab countries surrounding it.
The ethnic conflict theory explains that it is not territory, politics, or economics that prevents the achievement of peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people’s, instead, it is a deep-seated hatred of one another that neither group can overcome.
Unless they do so by some miracle and form one nation (which will be the saving of the Middle East) there will be no coming back from a full scale perhaps nuclear war.
It is simplistic and self serving for political leaders in the West to tell us that the terrorists attacks happen because they “hate freedom,” or “hate our democratic values” or “they despise our love of liberty.” Many, in fact, hate what they perceive as materialistic Western values, but this is not what leads them to kill themselves in suicide bombings, or to murder thousands of innocent civilians it is the paranoid rhetoric about Western attacks against Islam elsewhere that is spreading from the religious fringe to the mainstream and now ISIS.
Indeed, the events of the past few years have broken the precarious old Middle East order without replacing it with a new order. And although rival
external and regional players have been pushing their own agendas for a new
regional order, none of them has prevailed. The competition among these rival visions and forces appears destined to continue in the years ahead.
So what is the middle east? It would be easy to describe it as an area of the world, a simply a breeding ground for turmoil, and has been for centuries.
Now, however, the region can expansively be said to contain “the area from Libya E to Afghanistan, usually including Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the other countries of the Arabian peninsula”so the Middle East can only be loosely defined, and it is important to know that these countries are separate and do not truly form one cooperative unit.
Within this vast area there are many different nationalities within their population including Arabians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, and many more.
The most common religion found in the Middle East is Muslim. However not every Middle Easterner is Muslim, there are also other religions just as in any country such as Christian and Jewish.
So here is no set definition for the area known as the Middle East since shifts in global power over the years have affected the topography.
Many dynasties and kingdoms have ruled the area of what we now call the Middle East.
In almost all of the societies, it is the wealthier, educated, and a particular race or ethnicity that ruled. These positions were usually acquired through power, either by a civil war or an overthrow of the previous government.
Not every country mentioned above has the same access to the water sources, which will naturally cause problems. …. (Water Issues in the Middle East One would think there are enough conflicts to be had in the Middle East.)
Of the many conflicts that revolve around the area’s history, politics, religion, territory or ethnicity, one more can be added to the group: Water.
These societies all need water, but not all have the same resources to get to that water.
This is a hotbed of vice in this area as only a few of the countries in the Middle East have total control over their own water, leaving most of the others to depend on the graces of those few countries to manage their water magnanimously enough to supply them with what they need.
For example, Israel has control of the Golan, and Egypt of the Nile, and Kuwait of the Persian Gulf. Oil is in abundance, but only to a limited number of countries in the Middle East causing great economic disparity between those who have, and those who do not. Kuwait, having access to the Persian Gulf, produces a large supply of oil to international players. Given its high value internationally, and its worth.
But this is not the main reason behind the difficulties of bringing Peace to the Middle East.
A major source of conflict in the Middle East during the last fifty years has been the dispute between Arabs and Jews over Palestine.
For hundreds of years, the great majority of the people living in Palestine were Arabs. But at the end of the nineteenth century some Jews in Europe were becoming increasingly bitter about growing anti-Semitism. They started to talk about setting up a state of their own where they would be free from persecution. The conflict itself can be dated to 1948, when the state of Israel established independence, but the underlying problems responsible for the creation of Israel, and as a result, the conflict, can be traced back as far as the 19th century.
Now it far too difficult to track back through the centuries the History to the sorry state of the Middle East.
Lets just say its full of stories of betrayal. If you want one just look at what the British did with caretaker of Mecca Sharif Husayn in 1914.
Anyway its water under the bridge, but for any serious understanding it will have to be swum in.
We will put our toe in. At the end of world war one when the Allies had secretly carved up most of the Middle East among themselves in what came to be known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916 which I am sure you have all heard about.
No. Not surprised. It was a secret agreement between the British and French involving the partition of the ottoman empire.
It effectively handed over the control of Syria, Lebanon and Turkish Cilicia to the French and Plalestine, Jordon and areas around the Persian Gulf and Baghdad to the British. It was never completely fulfilled because Valdimir Lenin who was to have influence in Turkish Armenia and Northern Kurdistan took the hump and released it to the press.
Moving on.
The Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha said this statement below on September 16, 1947, eight months before the state of Israel was established.
” But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions”
The Arabs held this mentality in a time when Israel was not yet a fact.
To Day there can be no solution to the Middle East until the Israelites and Palestinian people come together. If they form separated states the war will go on and on.
At the moment we have numerous conflicts that have the potential to join up into a WAR.
Conflict: A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash. War: A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties“
To stop this happening America should set a time-table to withdraw its financial and military aid to Israel unless it offers a one nation solution giving equal right to all. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage.
There are more than seven million Muslims living in America what has Israel to fear.
I know that this is a very simplistic solution’s to a problem that has been festered for centuries and has now burst like a boil into a Barbaric group called ISIS.
Bombs and guns (which will swap hands) will no doubt change frontiers and kill many but they will not and can not eradicate ethnic conflicts that are well rooted in the world’s history and perhaps inherent in human nature.
Come on Israel extend the hand of peace and tear down the walls of occupation.
PS. You might wonder why I HAVE LEFT OUT recent Invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and all other recent developments. It seems to me that there is little point in highlighting the mistakes that have contributed to worsening of the present day state of play. We will all have different fingers of blame to point whether they are pointed at Osama bin Laden, Bush, Blair, Bush, Saddam Hussein, Obama , Bashar al-Assad, Hamid Karzi, over the centuries we HAVE ALL CONTRIBUTED.
Most of us will never engage in an act of extreme brutality.
bobdillon33blog 