A POLITICAL WEAPON
W. Bush warning about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” a lie that led us into a near decade-long war.
Not to be indelicate here, but atrocities happen in the world all the time (and have happened on an even larger scale before in Syria). Humans are capable of unimaginable cruelty. Sometimes the victims die quickly and are made visible by media for the world to see. Other times, they die in slow motion, out of sight and out of mind. Sometimes banned weapons are used; sometimes conventional weapons; sometimes, neglect, isolation and starvation.
And the world in general, and the US in particular, has a way of being wishy-washy about which atrocities deserve responses and which ones don’t. These decisions can be capricious at best and calculated camouflages for ulterior motives at worst.
Indeed, the motivations for military action need not be singular at all, but are often multiple, tucked one inside the other like nesting dolls.
Acts of war can themselves be used as political weapons. They can distract attention, quell acrimony, increase appetite for military spending and give a boost to sagging approval ratings. It is easy to sell the heroism of a humanitarian mission or the fear of terror or the two in tandem, as Trump attempted in this case.
The temptation to unleash the US’ massive war machine is seductive and addictive. Put that power in the hands of a man like Trump, who operates more on impulse and intuition than intellect, and the world should shiver.
The problem comes when the initial glow dims and darkness descends. We punch holes in some place on the other side of the world and the war hawks — many beholden to the militaryindustrial complex — squawk and parade about with chests swollen. But, feeding the beast of war only amplifies its appetite. Syria, it often conducts spectacular attacks elsewhere in an attempt to regain the narrative, boost morale and win recruits,” Garnett said.
In Iraq and Syria, where the group proclaimed its “caliphate” in 2014 as it swept across northern Iraq, IS has faced consecutive defeats over the past year and is on the verge of losing control of Iraq’s second city Mosul.
In a video released in February, IS attacked Christians as “polytheists” and promised there would be further attacks.
After Sunday’s bombings in Market Watch reported last week, “It could cost about US$60 million (RM266 million) to replace the cruise missiles that the US military rained on Syrian targets on Thursday,” but Fortune reported that shares of weapons manufacturers, as soon as they began trading Friday, were “collectively gaining nearly US$5 billion in market value.” War is a business, a lucrative one.
Americans, who rightly are appalled by the images of dead children, applaud. They feel proud to slap the hand of a villain without risking American bodies. But now American might is irrevocably engaged. Our thumb is on the scale, and our reputation on the line. Often, action begets more action, as unintended consequences sprout like weeds.
In the most extreme cases, we take down a bad leader in some poor country. In theory, this helps the citizens of that country. But in the complex reality that we have had to keep learning over and over in recent history, it often creates a vacuum where one bad man can be replaced by even worse men.
We are then already in waistdeep. Tanta and Alexandria, the group said it had deployed two Egyptian suicide bombers against the “crusaders”.
A defiant President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reacted by declaring a three-month state of emergency.
The Copts, who make up about 10 per cent of Egypt’s 90 million people, have been attacked by Islamists for years, more so after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. The Coptic Church was accused by the Islamists of supporting Morsi’s overthrow, which led to a bloody crackdown on Islamists, We have to make an impossible choice: stay and try to fix what we broke or abandon it and watch our nightmares multiply.
The nobility of the crusade is consumed by the quagmire. This is why we would do well to temper the self-congratulatory war speeches and thrusting of pompoms of our politicians and pundits, some of whom hypocritically opposed the use of military force by former US president Barack Obama following an even worse chemical attack in Syria in 2013.
As righteous as we may feel about punishing Assad, Syria is a hornet’s nest of forces hostile to America: Assad, Russia, and Iran on one flank and the Islamic State militant group on another. You can’t afflict one faction without assisting the other. In this way, Syria is a nearly unwinnable state.
We’ve been down this road before. Just over the horizon is a hill: steep and greased with political motives, military ambitions, American blood and squandered treasury.
Being weary here is not a sign of weakness; to the contrary, it is a display of hard-won wisdom. NYT although Muslim clerics and politicians also backed his ouster.
Even before Morsi was toppled, jihadists had targeted Christians, most notably in a 2011 New Year bombing of a church in Alexandria, which police blamed on a group linked to Al-Qaeda.
IS’ “sectarian attacks fuel those ideologically inclined to support the group, while showing it’s still ‘expanding’ despite battlefield setbacks,” said Zack Gold, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Center's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. AFP