Daily Times

Historically, waging wars to occupy independent countries had two main objectives. First, to establish geographical hegemony over the land and, second, to plunder its indigenous resources. In recent times, however, the US invaded independent states and changed their regimes to not only gain control over their land and resources but pre-eminently promote the interests of the Military-Industrial Complex.

President Eisenhower, a renowned US military commander, first coined the phrase Military Industrial Complex in his farewell speech on January 17, 1961. He warned the nation against its expanding influence. During the Second World War, the US armament industry developed on a colossal scale. Eisenhower cautioned, “We recognise the imperative need for this development…We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

He forewarned the federal governments against collaborating with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, as it was vulnerable to abuse of power. Also, he advised the American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the influence of such an alliance. But the US citizenry has remained ignorant either wilfully or kept so by the corporate media, dominated by the armament conglomerate.

Under the pretext of the War on Terror, the US attacked Afghanistan in October 2001. Its air force bombed the poor land for 76 days consecutively and dropped more than 18,000 bombs. A US air force B-2 bomber made history by conducting a 44 hours long sortie. And according to an HRW report, “The United States dropped about 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets between October 2001 and March 2002. Cluster bombs represented about 5 per cent of the 26,000 U.S. bombs dropped during that period.”

George Bush Jr. claimed that Shia-Sunni divide between the Muslims would never bridge and hence must be exploited.

Nonetheless, the US occupation of Afghanistan ended after more than two decades of war of attrition, costing the US taxpayers $2.26 trillion (Brown University Report). US taxpayers may have lost money; many American parents may have lost their sons and daughters, but the war profiteers made hay. Always a win-win situation for them whatever be the outcome of the war.

Tom Stevenson in his long article “The Most Corrupt Idea of Modern Times” in the London Review of Books analysed Simon Akam’s book – The Changing of the Guard: The British Army since 9/11. Stevenson’s article is an excellent read for those interested in knowing the factual story of the Iraq war, which is much different from the stories propagated by the corporate media.

About the British Army’s performance in Iraq, Akam describes it as “an institution in a state of constant insecurity about its reputation with the Americans, but the US military had long since become disillusioned with British claims to expertise. American generals produced their own counterinsurgency manuals, with the aim of building up Sunni tribes against the Shia militias in classic colonial mode – the ramifications are evident today.”

Akam, however, believes that “British soldiers create entanglements and then get out of them and receive medals and citations.” That shows how the US and British brass embellish their chests with rows upon rows of medals.

George Bush Jr claimed that the Shia-Sunni divide between the Muslims would never bridge. Hence, it must be exploited in the Middle East. To our misfortune, the western powers succeeded in widening the sectarian schism to their profit, if the prolonged war in Yemen is any evidence. Simply, it’s a sinister arrangement of Saudi petrodollars buying western armament to spill Muslim blood. Painful indeed! The beneficiaries of the existing situation in Yemen are the US, Britain and France in the corresponding order. According to a Swedish research institute, the US global share of arms exports increased by 37 per cent in the last five years, despite the pandemic. The Middle East absorbed 47 per cent of it while Saudi Arabia alone accounted for 24 per cent of total US arms exports.

Primarily, it’s human greed that triggers wars. Mark Twain put it most succinctly: “Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out… and help to slaughter strangers of his species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel…And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ – with his mouth.”

Some wisdom there for those who wish to see it. Iraqis and Libyans did the US no harm nor did the bearded cave dwellers in Afghanistan. They were victims of imperial greed and hubris.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and can be reached at pinecity @gmail.com.