The breast beating after 9/11 had predictable consequences which the short-termism of the time created communal blindness to. All attention was placed on the perceived necessity to strike back hard to show America’s enemies that they would experience the justice coming to them for their unconscionable act.
The world by and large stood with America in the period after 9/11/ Very few voices uttered warnings concerning the long-term dangers of the approach that was quite obviously to be taken. America was to strike out at its enemies and would do so with no holds barred. Any and all possible weapons were to be used and no limits would be set. Limits would only hinder the goal to wipe out all those who wished America harm.
The approach taken by ‘The War on Terror’ would be violent in the extreme and would hardly to any extent observe any laws, either those regarded as international in nature regarding the sovereignty of nations or those regarding ethical conduct in time of war. The political elites of the USA, now fully in the grip of neoconservative warhawks, began disregarding national boundaries and the sovereignty of nations, rendition and torture became commonplace alongside the use of drone violence when full scale invasion was not initiated.
In the period talked of above Russia was still extremely weak following the collapse of the Soviet Union and in addition was minded to assist the USA in its determination to punish the Taliban of Afghanistan for harbouring and refusing to give up Osama bin Laden. When it came to Iraq Russia’s line became harder but consisted only of words and an attempt to block the US/UK attempt to initiate a war against Iraq at the United Nations. In the later case of Libya the same rather ineffective approach was again taken by Russia but without the help of France which had previously also stood against the Iraq war.
When it came to the US intervention in Syria through the use of proxy forces, assisted by several other states in proximity to Syria such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar Russia was finally in a position to object with more than words. It took four years of watching the situation in Syria deteriorate with its president and army almost ready to fall and a caliphate emerge in Syria, that Russia became militarily engaged. This crucial engagement turned the situation entirely around and the plans of the USA and its allies were thwarted.
The warhawks in Washington remained in command throughout the various wars of choice that the USA fought alongside its allies in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’. They remain there to this day and nothing short of some almost unimaginable political revolution will unseat them. We saw this during the Trump presidency when several of them were picked for some of the highest positions of government, people such as John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliot Abrams. The latter in fact an admitted war criminal due to his use of the Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. (Abrams by the way has, in the last few days, been tapped by Joe Biden for an important position in Washington.)
It is the influence of the neoconservative warhawks that we see playing out today. They have only one way of thinking and only one playbook regarding how American foreign policy ought to be conducted. That is, with utmost aggression and relentless opposition using all possible means and where diplomacy features not at all. We see now, with the Ukrainian counteroffensive failing, the ultimate end point of the entire process that began in the days and weeks after 9/11. And that process is not leading to ‘The New American Century’ as its warhawk zealots fervently believed but to the relatively dissolution of western power leading ultimately to its almost complete impotence.
Russia was targeted as the next big regime change operation. The concepts the neoconservatives held onto in their hearts and minds informed them incorrectly that Russia remained weak. Their hatred of Putin and Russia for ruining their Syrian project blinded them to all else. Putin and Russia must be gunned down using the same mindset and playbook as before (naturally so as they have NO OTHER mindset nor playbook). This was the greatest miscalculation of our age and the miscalculation that will clearly bring the entire edifice of their hateful dreams crashing down.
The nations of the global south including those across Africa and Latin America are turning away from western powers and linking themselves to others who promise a different world entirely to that advocated by those in the West. One of the most obvious changes in stance has come from Saudi Arabia, long the staunchest ally of the western powers, particularly of the USA and UK. In a startling development of recent months ever more nations are drifting away from the western orbit and are looking toward allies closer to home. The BRICS group now has close to forty applicants who wish to be members or closely associated with it, Russia and China being the most prominent driving forces within it.
In economic terms alone, the small coterie of neoconservative warhawks and their political prisoners in both the USA and Europe, have delivered a mortal blow to their populations. And this while pouring seemingly endless sums into the black hole of Ukraine, a Ukraine delivered into a catastrophic mess due directly to the actions of these warhawks over the years up to and including 2014. And again, of course, the fixed mindset of unlimited (and myopically blind) aggression within the usual (and unchangeable) playbook has delivered their new disaster, a disaster that will prove even greater than that of Afghanistan where the post 9/11 project began.
The western world is headed down a vicious spiral where no end is apparently contemplated to the policies that have led here. The policies remain almost totally unquestioned except at the extreme margins that are excluded from any mainstream discussion. The reality of the present utterly disastrous situation for the West is overlaid by the delusions, fantasy, rabid wishful thinking and downright lies born of chronic, long-term myopia due to goals set after 9/11 that simply CANNOT be questioned. The goals that are informed only by the mindset of neoconservative war hawks who remain standing guard over them refusing at pain of death to anyone who tries in any way to question them let alone change them in any way.
So we see the western world blindly heading over the geopolitical, financial, social and economic cliff they are speeding toward, blinkers held tight to their eyes and with their ears firmly closed to all else but the screams to only ever go forward and do ever more of the same that has led them, their political prisoners and populations, to the catastrophic, misery-inducing, deeply humiliating and unrecoverable disaster that quite clearly faces them now.
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