War as a Means of Natural Selection and Societal Evolution
The US ought to ask itself two very relevant questions: Was Saddam worse than ISIS? Was it worth $3 trillion to the American people to kill Saddam? I know it was worth it to Bush because he and his war-profiteering cronies all profited handsomely while the American people are left destitute. We attacked Saddam without justification and then violated the Geneva Convention and waged war on Iraq “because it was doable” according to Dick Cheney.
The UN stood by as an accomplice to US war crimes by providing a thin veneer of legitimacy to US aggression. All the priior crimes of Saddam were aided and abetted by the US as Rumsfeld met with Saddam to give him chemical weapons with which to attack Iran. After Saddam’s US approved-and-supported 7-year war with Iran, the US then provided Saddam with tacit approval for his attack upon Kuwait for their stealing Iraqi oil and helping drive down the price of oil at the behest US. The US demanded OPEC drive down the price of oil as it engaged in economic war against the USSR. Russia was cash starved and the amount of money it could earn on the international market for oil exports was greatly reduced. Saddam green-lighted the Kuwait invasion which caused the US to intervene. After Saddam’s forces took a beating from the US in the Iraqi desert and attacks on Iraqi infrastructure brought the nation to collapse, Saddam agreed to withdraw from Kuwait using an impossible timeframe dictated by the US in exchange for the US promising to end its Desert Storm attacks.
Saddam agreed to US demands to withdraw and his army massed in one giant convoy that was necessitated by the US’s stipulations. While Saddam’s army was returning to Iraq on the “Highway of Death”, the US reneged on its promises of a ceasefire and utterly destroyed Saddam’s entire invasion force that was withdrawing. The army was not retreating to trade space for time. It was not trying to shape the battlefield. It was not massing forces to conduct operations elsewhere. What it was doing was leaving combat to bring hostilities to a halt.
Attacking an army that is leaving combat is a war crime. This war crime was hidden from the American people, but the Iraqi Sunnis who now comprise ISIS did not forget US treachery, nor soon will they. This is yet another an example of the US outsmarting itself. I am sure ISIS will wait for a situation in which to repay Bush’s favor in spades.
One can be sure Bush the Elder had this scenario and battle plan already staffed out by his military leaders as he betrayed Saddam. As I am a retired US Army officer, I spoke with military leaders at the division and corps levels. What amazed me is that even within the Army command structure, some of the Army’s senior leaders were ignorant to this truth. When I explained what happened they told me I did not know what I was talking about. It is a scary situation when the US Army has its history replaced with lies.
It was these lies that led the American people to believe that the US could defeat any foe and conduct war without having to suffer losses. It was these lies that would make the US citizenry falsely believe that it was alright to wage war merely because “it was doable” because Americans believed the cost to the US was little or nothing while US military agression would have a huge upside. Now Americans are paying the price for Bush’s crimes against humanity for which he and his accomplices ought to be facing war crimes trials in the Hague. What American ought to do is hold a national strike until Bush is remanded to the custody of the International Criminal Court.
The potential for blowback caused by waging war against ISIS is now many times worse than when the US was attacking an Iraq that was not divided as it is now by sectarian slaughter. The Us now faces all the problems associated with fighting a trans-national entity engaging in 4th Generation Warfare. ISIS has no capital or even population it legitimately controls. There are no cities ISIS owns which the US can use to hold hostage and coerce ISIS into obedience. With every city the US destroys in its attempt to defeat ISIS, it will merely swell their ranks with new fighters eager to strike back at the US. Soon after the US begins its campaign Iraqis will adapt to that situation and continue to strike targets of opportunity.
The US government will never admit that it has no ability to keep us safe. The government cannot protect everything. It is said that the government that tries to protect everything will end up protecting nothing. A historical maxim postulates that no army is so powerful that it can stop war in times of peace, nor guarantee victory in times of war.
While the US now argues that ISIS has no legitimacy, it cannot now be argued that it does not have sovereignty. The US demonstrated that international law is a sham and is merely a weapon to be used against the less powerful nations with which the US disagrees. ISIS now relies on the US’s example of might making right and the maintaining of a monopoly on the use of violence in a geographic area. In this respect ISIS is no better and no worse than the US.
The US had no problem causing the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children by denying penicillin for a decade, nor did it have a problem with killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by waging a war merely because “it was doable”. It had no problem lying the American people into a battle that has really lasted since Desert Storm up until the present.
And while the US never considered that Shock and Awe from Operation Iraqi Freedom would become the societal norm for Iraq and lose its novelty and ability for intimidating the natives, we can now see clearly that the US has reordered the Iraqi society in a way that provides ISIS with a means of natural selection for promoting the greatest, most determined, most effective, most cunning and most brutal warriors to wage and lead war against the US. For an enemy that wants its land free of US invaders, we have created the means through which our enemies will be promoted within an hierarchy that seeks to create an end state that has been decided by those with the greatest hatred for Western civilization. The neocons may have now achieved their aim of creating a war between civilizations.
What we are now witnessing is a form of evolution that has been perverted through a man-made system of violence that has fostered a form of natural selection for selecting all the traits the US tried in vain to suppress. An Al Qaeda spin-off now has evolved into a group so violent that even its al Qaeda predecessors disavow its savagery.
The “Shock and Awe” of the Iraq invasion seemed like a video game to Americans and was always viscerally disconnected from Americans’ ability to comprehend what was a decade-long reality burned into the psyche of Iraqis. War is an environment that weeds out those who do not adapt and it selects those who mean to rule through slaughter. As man is the only creature that carries out organized warfare, this “unnatural selection” as a means of societal evolution has proven that humanity can be sucked into a never-ending downward spiral by those who despise civilization itself.
It now seems that the US political establishment and its war planners and strategists now stand stupefied as ISIS achieves its goal of Shock and Awe against the American public and the US government. As the political class in D.C. is so fond of saying, “Let’s be clear about this.” Accordingly, I am telling you now that the blowback from attacking ISIS will now wreak the type of havoc that will be as quick, brutal and unforeseen as was the takeover of land in Iraq and Syria by ISIS.
And, if the American people think the abuses and depredations caused by the US police/national security state and the warfare state have reached anywhere near their zenith, they are entirely mistaken. What we will now suffer will now serve as the excuse to drive the final nails into the coffin of what was once a country alive in liberty. The attacks we will suffer for waging a bombing campaign against ISIS will serve as the justification for every type of police state tyranny the government can imagine.
There are a million unforeseen consequences in the US’s battle with ISIS. One consequence the political class has not imagined is the result of Turkey having its NATO ally expend itself into attrition as Erdogan stands idly by in an area of the world where the Turkish military would be more useful and appropriate than any strategy the US could develop. And if Turkey does this, do not be surprised if the US starts arming Kurds with advanced weapons in exchange for oil. The US will not allow Turkey to stand back and smirk without playing tit-for-tat. This is a guarantee. If any remember how Reagan bombed the French consulate in Libya “by accident” when France refused to allow FB111s to fly over French territory on their way to bomb Libya, you can bet the US will take the “either you are with us or with the terrorists” mindset to its logical conclusion and attempt to punish Turkey. And let’s admit it, the US has much less respect for Turkey than it does for France.
The US hoped its military would serve as a pesticide to exterminate the pests to US imperialism, but its efforts have left behind a few US military resistant “pests” that have now given rise to an entire new population of US-resistant organisms that have evolved to know the all tricks, lies, propaganda and operational methods used by criminal empires. Lies, betrayals, promises, torture, assassinations, threats, killings and slaughter will now prove to be much less effective than when these methods were first used to try to exterminate Sunnis.
The US’s entire system of global domination is crumbling before its eyes. Those in power will do whatever they can to remain in power. Since the world is also evolving and organizing itself upon institutions outside of US control, the elite will do whatever is necessary to maintain their hold on that power. Since the system is providing for the exodus away from the US, the US now seeks partners, be they allies or enemies, that are willing to smash everything with a sledge hammer to sow chaos with the hopes of creating events that the US can exploit that will provide new opportunities for subjugation and oppression. But, it is also somewhat amusing that the US plan to sow chaos now has chaos sucking the US into its very vortex. We see the US now speaking with Iran and talking about bombing ISIS rebels in Syria in support of Assad. Hezbollah has even came out in favor of the US bombing ISIS forces.
Any attempt to rebuild the Sunni Awakening Councils or the Sons of Iraq Sunni militia will now be met with opposition by Shiites and will be disregarded by most Sunnis after the US’s betrayal of Sunni Iraqis and Bush’s disbanding of the Iraqi military. Given the strength and effectiveness of ISIS there will be even fewer Sunnis to take up the US’s call to arms, this is especially true when you realize that ISIS’s manpower already includes many disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis.
I am sure Nasrallah now understands the US is in the
last throes of its attempts at imperial conquest and neo-colonialism.
I am sure ISIS understands that the US will expend itself long before there
is an end to militant Islamists willing to lop of the heads of journalists.
I can understand why jihadists would kill those in the mainstream media, but
its too bad that Islamists hate the US so much that they refuse to kill our
bankers, politicians and lawyers too. If they did this they may end up
finding they have much more support within the US than they could have ever
imagined.
Mr Zrnchik can be reached through jar2@jar2.com