ENDLESS WAR: ENGAGEMENT, RECRUITMENT & RETRIBUTION

The only alternative to letting nations take their own course, no matter what that might be, is engagement. The USA has never taken the former path if its national interests are involved. It has a long and bloody history of interference in sovereign nations in contravention of international law.

There are no signs whatsoever that this history of bloody U.S. engagement and violent interference stops with Afghanistan, as it did not after Vietnam, both humiliations for the U.S. political and military elites.

The signs are clear, even as the West retreats from Afghanistan taking its minions with it that the engagement is undiminished in terms of intent. With its drone strike yesterday killing two purported members of IS-K, U.S. elites sent a clear message on this score. Of course, such acts can reduce the capacity of terrorist groups temporarily, though as has been seen in the past, they can also act as recruiting sergeants for them.

The drone strike yesterday may well have been based on accurate information and will have the temporary effect described, but what of all those which are certainly now to come? The track record of U.S. drones hitting wedding parties and other civilian gatherings is shameful… and ultimately very useful for stirring up anti-western feelings, recruitment to the anti-western cause and calls for retribution.

How long will the USA continue its circular path toward strikes against itself by the core members of the groups it attacks and those who have aligned with them through family tragedies and/or radicalisation through being incensed by perceived acts of savagery by the West? As the saying goes, those who live by the sword die by the sword. Engaging in violence as your primary “solution” creates a condition where all moral and ethical restraints are abandoned.

“All is’ Fair in Love and War”

Striking your enemy wherever you find them and in any way you can becomes the lowest common denominator of any war, atrocities of all kinds become permitted with consequences of many kinds. Within those who commit such crimes against humanity on all sides a horror of mental dysfunction replaces normal existence. Some become capable of anything, brutality, torture, arbitrary murder. Others become so tortured themselves by guilt at what they have done that they commit suicide. Others, on returning to their homes are capable of the most heinous acts to this closest to them, including murder.

The vicious cycle of hatred, mistrust, slaughter and endless engagement in war can hardly reach any end. It is a self-perpetuating circle. This is the overarching folly of the knee-jerk response of the North American and British elites, the speedily-agreed reliance on violence fuels the entire process. A jingoistic fervour continually infests their ranks. And of course, they and many linked to them, profit in various ways, sometimes enormously, from this entire full-on macho enterprise.

Engaging in war transforms all those involved and ropes increasing numbers of others into the cycle of violence as the war escalates as is the normal way of things. Unless at the very least a diplomatic offensive of equal commitment is mounted the end result is inevitable, simply more and more war, more deaths, more destruction and a decreasing probability of a resolution.

The USA and UK appear incapable of employing even the most modest strategy above. Apparently imbued with the sense of power they derive from concentrating on previous victories (WWII) or perceived “victories” manipulated in their minds to suit, they are locked into an engagement with the most simplistic and barbaric solution of all, war.

Thankfully two great nations are fast rising to offset the mindless dedication of the West to the aggressive deployment of military might as the ultimate solution to everything. China, aligned with Russia have a completely different approach to solving the geopolitical problems confronting them. The engagement they involve themselves in seeks to create the bridges that offer the best chance of leading to peace and renewed stability. They recruit as many from all sides as possible in an ongoing attempt to knit together an agreed agenda that has the possibility of achieving a peaceful outcome.

The choice between these two diametrically opposed ways of conducting foreign policy faces the world now as never before. On the brink of climate change catastrophe and further, perhaps even more deadly pandemics to come, the fate of the world may well hang in the balance, depending upon which path predominates now. The West has been given a bloody nose in Afghanistan. Much rests now on what the West’s and in particular the USA’s reaction will be to that humiliation.

Sadly, the reaction of the USA and UK is utterly predictable judging by past events and outcomes. They are already talking of a return to the fray in Afghanistan in belligerent style displaying the intention to remain ‘engaged’, continuing to ‘kill for peace’ and remain locked within the eternal cycle of recruiting more combatants to both sides.

Unless China and Russia with their economic status rising along with their influence on the international stage, can push back effectively against the mindless and repeatedly bloody pseudo-solutions of the West then the future of humanity looks bleak indeed. With them, the hopes of mankind that the cycle of endless war be broken must surely rest. Until the ultimate tipping point is reached and the brutally ignorant, arrogant and aggressive elites of the West are quarantined the world will remain engaged in endless war.