War of Choice:

It Is Time for the West to Take Questions from the Middle East

Rasa - The issue of America’s war of choice and grandiose thinking in the Middle East is putting the entire world in danger. It has become deeply entangled with lingering resentments from the world community.

News ID: 429218

Date: 25 April 2017 - 23:39

RNA - This is often stated explicitly. At the United Nations many members say it is very obvious that it’s exceptionally important for war-party Washington to accept that the reason they lost the war of choice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen is because they were wrong, and because they chose a coalition of allies who are corrupt, who are allied with terror groups, who are extremely disliked by the nations they rule or invaded, and who symbolize all of the worst failings of the United Nations and humanity. If they inflate the importance of the purported Iran meddling in their affairs it is to excuse their painful defeat. They see Iran bashing as a way to undermine efforts to end America’s endless wars and support for the tyrannical regimes.

The problem with thinking about the allegations in these terms is that they have lost the war and they will not return to the good old days when their terror proxies were roaming free across Iraq and Syria. But America’s new escalation of the war of choice almost everywhere tells us that a notably authoritarian Trump White House is likely to continue to intervene in these countries on behalf of vassals who share at least some of its illicit interests, and it’s especially important for the world community to take the new mission creep statements from the White House seriously.

The evidence is overwhelming that America is playing a very harmful role, an unacceptable role in the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and that playing at war with Iran is Trump’s way of helping the failing terrorist groups, appeasing disappointed allies, and also an effort to try to undermine in a significant way the anti-terror alliance of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. The alliance is not, as they claim, a self-interest group relying only on its members. They are drawing support from the world community - unlike the West which relies on fake news and reports from the Oscar winning White Helmets, and confirmations by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a one man NGO operated out of a bedsit in Coventry, England.

Finally, if the US-led coalition really want to excuse the role of the allied forces of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia in their defeat, they would be on much more solid ground by blaming their own self-defeating shell game, and their own terror proxies which have had a demonstrable impact on the deterioration of security throughout the West. That’s a standard that they should also apply to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Middle East, which like their terror proxies continues to threaten international peace and security.

Let us not forget that the dire situation across the region, marked by the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, fractured societies, proliferation of non-state actors, and unbelievable human suffering, could still be resolved through policy reversal and a surge in diplomacy for peace.

In any true sense, it is America’s misadventures, threats of nuclear war, as well as the self-appointed roles as the warden of world order, the guarantor of other nations’ security, the shepherd of the world economy, and the custodian of the global commons, that opened the doors to foreign intervention and manipulation, breeding instability and sectarian strife. The new military escalation by the Trump White House will not solve the West’s or the region’s problems. It will continue to feed them.

What is anyway clear is that a new Middle East is now under construction. Such process will not include those who destroyed it; it will not include those who look for the next war of choice; it will not include those who order the launch of cruise missiles on civilians and anti-terror national forces; it will not include those who pose for a selfie beside Qaeda-allied “moderates”; and surely it will not include those who provided fertile ground for the rise of interlinked conflicts, cross-border humanitarian impacts, and violent extremism.

No matter where one stands on the issue of Trump’s war of choice, chest-beating, and vapid blathering, it should be possible to agree on one thing: There will be no end to terror attacks in the West without the sustained and active participation of the West in ending America’s war of choice in Syria and in the surrounding region.

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