The UK parliament has voted in favour of British involvement in air strikes on Syria and Iraq. On Saturday 27 September, RAF Tornado jets returned from the first bombing raids on ISIL.
Last week, British PM David Cameron told the United Nations that Britain was ready to play its part in confronting “an evil against which the whole world must unite.” He also said that that “we” must not be so “frozen with fear” of repeating the mistakes of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Cameron spoke of the virtues of the West’s economic freedom and democratic values as well as the horrors of extremism and terror. As with Obama’s UN speech, Cameron’s was a monologue of hypocrisy.
British and French air strikes on Sirte alone killed 15,000 civilians during NATO’s illegal bombing campaign in Libya. Over a million people have been killed via the US-led or US backed attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine,
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, so we were told. It did not. That was a lie and hundreds of thousands have paid with their lives.
We were told that Assad is a brutal dictator who must be removed – with active help from some of the most brutal regimes on the planet, not least the repressive Saudi Arabia one or the one in Tel Aviv responsible for the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza. Such things are never to be mentioned though. And now much of Syria is in violent turmoil.
We were told that Gaddafi was a tyrant. He used the nation’s oil wealth well by presiding over a country that possessed some of the best indices of social and economic well being in Africa. Now thanks to Western backed terror and military conflict Libya lies in ruins and torn apart.
Russia is a threat to world peace because of its actions in Ukraine, we are told. It is not. The US helped instigate the overthrow of a democratically elected government and has instigated provocations, sanctions and a proxy war against Russia.
But how far in history should we go back to stress that the West has no right to take the moral high ground when it comes to peace, respect for international law, self-determination or democracy? The much quoted work by historian William Blum documents the crimes committed by the US in country after country since 1945. And very often the UK has stood shoulder to shoulder with Washington.
According to former CIA asset John Stockwell, US wars and covert ops were responsible for six million deaths in the ‘developing world’ by the 1980s. Writer Annie Day now puts that figure at ten million.
Cameron stated that the root cause of the ISIL terrorist threat is the poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism. Without funding and providing it with military hardware, however, ISIL would probably just be a fragmented band of thugs that pose no serious threat oil fields, oil supplies or allies in the region. The root cause of any terror threat or threat to oil that may exist stems from the funding and arming of ISIL by Saudi Arabia, the US and other allied forces in an attempt to topple yet another sovereign state – Syria.
Cameron stood at the UN and talked of the West’s values of freedom and democracy and the wonders of economic neoliberalism in an attempt to promote Western values and disguise his backers’ imperialist intents.
It’s a thin disguise. The Anglo-US establishment has imposed its socio-economic structural violence on much of the world by bankrupting economies, throwing millions into poverty and imposing ‘austerity’ and by rigging and manipulating global commodity markets and prices. Add to that the mass illegal surveillance at home and abroad, torture, drone murders, destabilizations, bombings and invasions and it becomes clear that Cameron’s eulogy to freedom, democracy and the ‘free’ market is hollow rhetoric.
Stoking up the fear factor, he spoke of extremism and about ISIL having plans to “carry out terrorist atrocities right across the world.”
Little mention of the extremism of neoliberalism, the massive appropriation of wealth by the few and impoverishment of the many, as well as the endless wars to sustain the prevailing economic system. Little talk of those who fund Islamist jihadists to do the bidding of the West in Libya, Syria and elsewhere.
Strip away Cameron’s clipped English accent and the well-delivered speech of falsehoods and the ugly reality will be revealed: the integrated tentacles of arms manufacturers, Big Finance, Big Oil, Big Agritech and associated corporate partners in crime who will profit from the overthrow of Assad, Iran, Putin and any leader or nation that fails to comply with their aims.
On the back of parliament’s decision to bomb Syria, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Kate Hudson is reported by Britain’s Morning Star newspaper as saying:
“Once again we’re hearing the deafening drumbeats of war. Once again there is no legal basis forUK bombing in the Middle East. Once again the government is making it up as it goes along.”
She argues that the UN has adopted a binding resolution compelling states to prevent their nationals joining jihadists in Iraq and Syria, but it has not authorised military attacks.
That doesn’t matter to Cameron. That doesn’t matter to Obama.
The British parliament voted against attacking Syria last year under the bogus pretext of Assad having used chemical weapons. A year on, ISIS is the pretext and the war mongers have finally got their way.
The former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has called the UK a danger to the world. He recently told a meeting at St Andrews University in Scotland
But perhaps that comes as little surprise to many. Wars tend to be fought on behalf of the interests of the rich, as Major General Smedley Butler (the US’s most decorated marine) alluded to when he listed the various corporations on whose behalf he fought during his many military campaigns.
Murray told his audience: “It (the British state) is every bit as corrupt as others have indicated. It is not an academic construct, the system stinks.”
As far as Iraq is concerned, Murray said that he knew for certain that key British officials were fully aware that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction.
The British public should bear that in mind on the back of Cameron saying at the UN that “We should learn the lessons of the past, especially what happened in Iraq a decade ago.”
Murray went on to say that invading Iraq wasn’t a mistake, it was a lie.
However, still peddling the message that it was all just an innocent mistake, Cameron said that “We must not let past mistakes be an excuse for indifference or inaction.”
Whether it’s Blair or Cameron, the deception continues.
Rewind the tape and play it again and again and again. Perpetual war and perpetual deception. Like the now amply financially rewarded Blair before him, Cameron is media-friendly toy monkey beating the drums of war on the cue courtesy of his corporate-financial masters.
