America’s War Against International Civil Society Is Permanent

Rasa - This week, ISIL lost its medieval caliphate in Mosul. The fringe terrorist organization is also fast losing the remaining places it has occupied in Syria. It will soon be relegated to the ash heap of history. But it may not matter much if the US Empire of Bases decides to stay and entertain supposedly to fight terrorism.

News ID: 431024

Date: 16 July 2017 - 20:37

RNA - The terrorist organization, which once mesmerized and horrified the world, only has a few small desert towns left in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Its biggest lasting impact will most likely be on the Capitol Hill, where the political class has every intention to maintain a global state of emergency, occupy Muslim lands, launch a permanent war on Islam (alias War on Terror), and use it as a pretext to maintain the global colonial order. This development is no surprise in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain - but Syrian, Iraqi and Yemeni democracies are in danger:

- After powering Saudi-led war on Yemen, war-party Washington imposed a state of emergency and began building a closed military zone on the Yemeni Island of Hanish al-Kubra, which is 130 km from the city of Hodeidah.

- After getting involved directly in regime-change campaign in Syria – again on the pretext of fighting terror – the US began building military bases along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

- The US also has military and drone bases in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – among many other illegal sites scattered across the region and beyond.

Neither President Trump nor his predecessors Obama and Bush have seriously addressed US policy for any of these multiple wars and bases, and the Trump administration has not publically stated its grand strategy for any of them. For the first time in its history, the United States has no intention to seriously debate or discuss where its permanent war is going, or what its longer-term impacts will be.

If anything, both American politics and the “fakestream” media seem to focus far more on whether or not President Trump had any contacts with Russia during the presidential race than ending the permanent war. This focus disregards whether or not his policy involves the ability to actually win any of what are now very different conflicts in a form that will have an outcome that serves global interests.

Given that America’s state of emergency is going to be permanent long after ISIL and Trump, it has allowed the US government to continue its vendetta against the resistance front, a non-aligned group that seeks to stay outside the realm of American power and influence – mainly Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. The Trump administration continues the lie that the resistance front supports terrorism, while it is fighting designated terrorist organizations like ISIL and Al-Qaeda in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, where they have the full backing of the United States and its allies, mainly Saudi Arabia.

This situation does not require a state of emergency throughout the region, especially since the US government routinely rides roughshod over basic sovereign rights in any case. Presumably, the state of emergency – and the subsequent terror war - is a hedge against any nation brave enough actually to take the US government to an international court in defense of its sovereign rights.

Into the argument, America’s state of emergency and permanent war is not primarily related to ISIL or Al-Qaeda, though the bombings and attacks carried out by terrorists from those groups in Europe and the United States contributed to a sense of insecurity that lies in the background of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia blame Iran, Iraq and Syria for the emergence of ISIL which works for the first three regimes.

Many nations targeted by ISIL, however, are not pro-US at all but critics of Washington’s meddling in internal affairs of the Muslim world. The US and its allies are also fighting what amounts to a proxy war with Iran in the region as the forces of the latter nation have helped liberate so many ISIL-held cities and towns recently.

That time of hope is now in jeopardy. The state of emergency, which Washington has said will not be lifted as long as the threat of global terrorism remains, is the nail in its coffin. After ISIL was defeated on many fronts by the allied forces of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia, the Trump government escalated the conflict. Most recently, it has been trying to capture Raqqa from ISIL with support from proxy forces. It allows permanent occupation without a warrant from Syrian government or United Nations. The Trumpsters are trying to enshrine these repressive measures in International Law by statute, making them permanent. To this end, every military base is precious.

Make no mistake. The danger of terrorism is real, and as ISIL dwindles it may lash out in revenge at any country. But that does in no way give an international warrant to the US to build illegal bases, occupy Muslim lands, and police the world in between. The real threat, nonetheless, is America’s permanent state of emergency and war, under which it can make law, occupy lands, and create colonial crises at will. The aim seems not so much to combat terrorism as to strengthen the US influence against international civil society.

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