This week we learned that there is enough opposition to war in the United States that diplomacy can defeat war. When the Senate voted to derail a deal to stop war with Iran over nuclear weapons ,it was a major victory for the peace movement. It is also an opportunity for much more.
There are great risks of war looming especially with the US’ Asian Pivot surrounding China and the surrounding of Russia with NATO bases. The peace movement needs to build its power and focus on these major upcoming conflicts, while also dealing with current military conflicts like Syria and the Islamic Republic (IS).
To achieve the peace potential we now know exists, it is important to face the reality of current US foreign policy. The truth is shrouded by politicians of both parties who believe in “American exceptionalism,” a viewpoint rooted in the Manifest Destiny of previous generations. The people of the United States have been given numerous opportunities to reflect on the nation’s foreign policy but each time we have avoided the deeper issues.
The Refugee Crisis and an Honest Look at US Foreign Policy
This week another opportunity to look honestly at US foreign policy has arisen. The refugee crisis in Europe of people fleeing their homes in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan has been caused by chaos, civil wars and foreign military action in many nations.
In Syria, half the country has been displaced creating four million refugees. The UN reports a record 60 million refugees around the world, the number doubling since the US invaded Iraq. Ben Norton summarizes a reality that we must face: “The US has fueled the conflicts in all five of the Middle Eastern nations from which most refugees are fleeing, and it is directly responsible for the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.” Iraq has 3.3 million refugees, Afghanistan, 2.6 million and Libya, 360,000.
In Al Jazeera, Imran Khan describes the Iraq War as the key event in creating chaos of the Middle East: “The Iraq war was the war too far – the one that has changed the Middle East. It was the war that solidified and unified disparate young men from different countries into following the path of violent jihad.” He tracks how Al Qaeda was a small unimportant group that grew dramatically in reaction to the US attack on Iraq, how it led to Al Qaeda gaining a foothold in Iraq and people donating money and arms to it. The failure of the US to support a popular revolt in Syria backed Assad into a corner, creating a civil war in Syria; and all of this has led to IS and the mass refugees. If there were no Iraq war and occupation, there would be no IS today. There would be no refugee crisis.
Patrick Smith, a long-time foreign journalist writes in Salon, describing the crisis as blowback for an even longer term foreign policy. He writes that “a great reckoning has begun” where 500 years of abuses “start to come back to haunt us.” Regarding today’s refugees he writes “one way or another, directly or indirectly, immediately or at a slight remove, they are all victims of the policies through which the Western powers have sought over centuries to impose their will upon weaker people they thought worth disrupting, subjugating and exploiting.” He also notes the similarities between the so-called “illegal alien” issue in the US with the migrants in Europe and urges us to look at the similarities; if we do, the fingerprints of US foreign policy is all over these crises.
Writing in ROAR, Jelle Bruinsma, clarifies the role of western foreign policy’s impact on the refugee crisis in an article decrying the calls for more war in response to it. He writes these calls for war “erase from memory our real responsibilities for causing the current catastrophe.” He describes a whitewashing of our role and reliance on myths instead of reality. Bruinsma goes on to write:
“The whitewashed history includes our blundering interventions in Syria, helping to turn it into a ‘broken state,’ but extends much further.
“Our ‘responsibilities’ have a long history – a history with enduring consequences – and follow a familiar pattern. During colonization, the Middle East and Africa were divided up between European powers, drawing borders and playing out ethnic groups against one another. When they were forced out, they left behind ethnic tensions and poverty.
“In subsequent years they kept in power dictators and helped to crush democratic uprisings, fought wars against those who disobeyed, and enforced a political economy on many states that ensured Western access to natural resources and largely stunted economic development in these post-colonial societies.
“This history has not ended; it is not the material of dust-covered textbooks. It continues today. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen have all caused those countries to unravel and ‘destabilize.’”
Even the new calls for war are rooted in myths, e.g. that the mass migration can only be stopped by bringing peace and stability in these regions by more war. We can see how war brings ‘peace and stability’ in Yemen where the US is complicit with its close ally Saudi Arabia in mass killings and people fleeing their homes. War does not bring peace but creates instability.
When will people learn that war is not an effective policy. Terror attacks have jumped by 6,500% since 2002 and casualties resulting from terror attacks have increased by 4,500%, according to an analysis of State Department reports by Reader Supported News. These massive upsurges took place despite the worldwide war on terrorism that has been led by the United States. Is the United States creating more enemies than it captures or kills?
There are some who are waking to the reality of the history of US foreign policy as well as beginning to broach the topic of Empire. This week actress Natalie Portman got into trouble with the Jewish media and spokespersons focused on the Holocaust when she described her Jewish miseducation where she was only taught about the Holocaust, not other genocides. At the time of her education the Rwandan genocide, rooted in US desire to dominate Africa, was occurring but she did not learn about it until going to a museum. Of course, genocide has occurred throughout the world, the US has still not faced up to the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Peoples of North America – still the largest genocide in history where 50 million, some estimate 100 million, were killed.
The Manifest Destiny that led to the conquering of North America and the mass murder of the indigenous, was the mentality that led to the US becoming the largest global empire in world history. This empire of transnational corporations dominating economies around the world and military bases and outposts protecting US economic interests is never discussed in the US media. Now, on The Real News and Telesur, Abby Martin has begun a series on empire, “The Empire Files,” which will cover the reality of empire. This is critical education needed so people can understand US foreign policy as well as the economy which has become an empire economy.
How Peace and Diplomacy Won Over War
This week there was a major victory for diplomacy and peace when independents and Democrats in the Senate blocked efforts to derail the nuclear agreement between Iran, the United States and five other nations.
To achieve this objective required a national campaign to support the nuclear agreement. There were rallies and protests around the world. Hundreds of thousands of petitions were delivered to Congress and protests were held focusing on swing votes who could determine the outcome in the Senate. There was a peace picnic at the White House. And advocates for war, like former Vice President Dick Cheney, were interrupted by protesters. A broad coalition of groups was involved in fighting for the Iran nuclear agreement.
Tens of millions of dollars were spent by those opposed to the nuclear agreement, led by the right wing Israeli lobby, AIPAC. This was a stunning defeat for AIPAC, a group known for its ability to get whatever it wants from Congress, and an incredible victory for diplomacy over war.
This is not the first time in recent years that mobilized people have helped to stop a war. In August 2013, the people organized across the political spectrum to stop an impending war on Syria as Congress refused to give President Obama congressional approval for military action. We quickly saw how the war advocates do not give up. In September 2013 there were reports of the CIA arming rebels in Syria. By 2015 we learned that the CIA was spending about $1 billion a year on Syria. The Obama administration participated in a peace conference in January 2014 that was a subterfuge for war and by 2014 the neocons were urging a military attack on Syria for humanitarian reasons. There was an ongoing brutal civil war between President Assad and rebels. Today, the war in Syria evolved into a war on IS without much debate. Syria is in ruins and is much of the source of the refuge crisis.
Highlighting Syria is a message to the peace movement. The effort for ongoing peace between the US and its allies with Iran needs to continue. The US dominated Iran for decades and since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the US foreign policy establishment has been seeking ways to regain control of Iran. We can have a major legislative victory but the momentum for war can lead to its undoing in ways that cannot yet be seen. The Republican presidential candidates are largely hawks and Hillary Clinton said on the day the Senate voted “I will not hesitate to use military force if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon.” All of this is a message for the peace movement to be vigilant. As World Beyond War’s David Swanson told us on the day of the Senate vote: “We helped stop a war on Syria two years ago without follow through, and now the U.S. military is getting deeper and deeper into Syria and Iraq. This time we need a celebration but we also need follow through.”
The Big Task: Undermining a Deep War Culture
The United States has a deep and broad war culture. Every town has a war memorial. There are multiple holidays that honor war and soldiers. The media puts forward the war culture view interviewing former military leaders, most of whom are now in the weapons industry, every time a potential military conflict arises, but almost never interviewing a peace advocate. Hollywood continues to produce propaganda films that re-write history in support of war. Even when public officials and media spokespersons speak in support of the Iran agreement they do so from the perspective of stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program – even though US intelligence and international arms inspectors agree there is no such program.
The US has numerous agencies that work for war and many disguised agencies like the US Institute for Peace, US Agency for International Development, National Endowment for Democracy and others that hide that they are part of war-making, but have a history of being part of US domination and hegemony, as well as regime change and war around the world. These agencies help to disguise war as humanitarianism and bringing democracy.
War, militarism and empire are at the heart of the United States. We are a nation who has been at war almost every year of our existence. The Washington Post reports that the United States has been at war 93% of the time – 222 out of 239 Years – since 1776. No nation can match the US record for war. Our mass media may turn Russia, China and Iran, among others, into nations threatening war but all those nations combined have not been involved in as many wars as the United States.
Indeed, there are great risks ahead because of the aggressive actions of the United States especially toward China and Russia. The US is surrounding China with the Asian Pivot and urging allies to challenge China. The US is pushing Japan to change its constitution so it can participate in wars attacking other countries. It is forcing Japan to accept an enlarged base in Okinawa despite protests. It is building new Navy bases in Korea on Jeju Island despite protests. The US has entered into an agreement with the Philippines for a massive increase in US military bases, which protesters call the new colonialism. It is increasing US military involvement in Vietnam, using USAID as cover, and encouraging conflicts with China over disputed Islands. It is conducting constant war games in the Asian Pacific.
The US is also being very aggressive against Russia with deep mass media propaganda falsely describing Russia as an aggressor-nation while the US surrounds Russia with NATO military bases. The US fomented a coup in Ukraine which has caused chaos on the Russian border between Kiev and Eastern Ukraine. The Ukraine is a ‘total failure‘ for the US and requires reconsideration of the policy of overthrowing democratically elected governments.
Yet, Americans do not think of themselves as a warrior nation. Indeed, most Americans do not realize the United States is the largest empire in world history far outstripping Rome and the United Kingdom at their peaks of power. They do not realize we live in an Empire economy that provides profits to transnational corporations and allied oligarchs around the world even if it means undermining the economy within the United States. But, empire is rarely talked about and the link between transnational corporate power and empire is not understood.
This week a poll showed that a plurality of Republicans, 43 percent, and a large minority of Democrats and independents could imagine a scenario where they would support a military coup in the United States. There are amazingly high levels of trust in the military despite the consistent lies we hear about why we go to war and once the US is in a war, lies about the success of war. The corruption of the Defense Department is shown as an agency that has been impossible to audit, despite reports of missing trillions in the military budget, corrupt inside deals on military contracts and epic waste.
So, we have our work cut out for us to end the war culture in the United States, educate people about US Empire and change the course of the nation.
But, we also have an opportunity now to build on the success of the agreement with Iran. The same parties, Iran, the US, Germany and the Security Council, perhaps including Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, could begin to seek a negotiated settlement in Syria. Russia has put out some ideas that should be considered, saying Assad would support an election. If these nations agreed that funding and weapons should be cut-off to IS it would undermine their militarism. There have been massive protests against the Iraqi government for its poor management but also against the sectarian religious electoral system that the US put in place 12 years ago. Iraqis want an end to a process which encourages religious division. An effective, non-sectarian government in Iraq would also undermine IS.
Finally, the US needs to face up to how its recent history of militarism and occupation in North Africa (the US hides the wars it is currently fighting in Africa), the Middle East and Afghanistan is a key cause of the current refugee crisis. The US needs to accept responsibility and welcome refugees – who US policies created – to come to our shores.
The peace movement has been part of a major success. Now is an opportunity for us to build on that success, hold up the mirror of reality to help people understand the destructive war culture and begin to take responsibility for US actions.
May we go from strength to strength and build on our success to create a lasting peace.