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Thursday March 28, 2024

The silence of the left

By Iftekhar A Khan
May 04, 2017

Fleeting moments

Before Donald Trump completed his 100 days in office, he ordered to fire salvos into the distant wars that the imperial power has launched thousands of miles away from home.

In his election speeches, he gave the impression that he opposed sending troops to fight foreign wars and he would, if elected, call the forces back home. It seems the lobbies that flourish in wars have had the better of him.

While former US presidents, goaded by the neoconservatives and other ultra-right interest groups, launched wars in the Middle East, why did the liberals – especially the lefties in Europe – remain tight-lipped over the death and destruction inflicted upon the populations of defenceless countries?

The perception of the left-leaning liberals is that they oppose the wars, unequivocally give a voice to their concerns and openly side with the oppressed and the wronged because religious beliefs do not encumber them. Thousands of people have been killed and left homeless in Syria while the ‘men of conscience’, the liberals and lefties have not protested against the gruesome atrocities of the imperial powers.

Donald Trump made his debut into the war on April 7 when the US launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in Syria, ostensibly on the report that the Syrian president had subjected his own people to a chemical weapons attack. Professor Theodore Postol at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes there is a strong likelihood that the intelligence report on which the US launched a missile attack in Syria was fictitious. According to the professor, reliable methodologies to assess the veracity of intelligence reports were not applied.

Several former US intelligence officials have asked the American people to demand the US government for incontrovertible evidence of the Syrian government’s involvement in the April 4 Sarin-like gas attack against its own people. These officials suspect that cruise missiles attack in Syria was based on a spurious intelligence report.

When the US could attack and destroy Iraq and kill more than million of its men, women and children, based on a fabricated dossier on the weapons of mass destruction, there remained no need to assess intelligence reports. Similarly, before attacking Libya and assassinating its leader – Muammar Gaddafi – the super power didn’t need to produce any intelligence report to justify the change of regime.

Destroying Libya and killing its ruler on ‘humanitarian grounds’ was enough to justify the action. Both the Muslim countries – once prosperous welfare states – are now in turmoil. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the president of France at the time of change of regime in Libya, reminded the rulers of the Gulf States to take heed of Gaddafi’s lynching. The other option he hinted at was obvious.

Donald Trump further blew away the public illusions about his opposition to foreign wars when he ordered to drop the Mother Of All Bombs in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. The MOAB is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal that was dropped for the first time in any war. The bomb, which explodes in the air and detonates 11 tonnes of TNT sucks oxygen from the targeted area underneath it, has the potential to pulverise rocks and turns the living into black dust.

The world was informed that the MOAB destroyed the tunnels and underground bunkers of insurgents and killed 60 of them. But nobody was allowed to visit the site of devastation. Who knows how many innocent people were killed in the blast?

Now preparations are under way to take on North Korea. Members of the US were briefed by the top military brass about the threat that the tiny country poses to the super power located thousands of miles away. Warring is a profitable business for the US. It must have enemies, real or imaginary, at all times.

 

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore. Email: pinecity@gmail.com