Threats to World Peace and America’s Imperial Wars

Afghanistan has gained lead story status in the western corporate and government-sponsored media outlets again for the wrong reasons.

This Central Asia state has been at war since the late 1970s when the United States under the then President Jimmy Carter developed a counter-insurgency program to remove the socialist-oriented administration ruling from Kabul.

Of course today there is largely no mention in these same press agencies about the organization, training, funding and diplomatic cover provided by Washington through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Pentagon and State Department for al-Qaeda (the core) which facilitated the armed struggle waged against the Soviet-backed system in Afghanistan.

With the intervention of the Soviet army in December 1979, the stage was set for continuing interference by successive U.S. administrations from Carter to the present regime of President Donald Trump. Although Trump suggested during his campaign that he would lessen involvement by Washington in geo-political flashpoints ignited by both Republican and Democratic heads-of-state, he also said of the proliferation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that “I will bomb the shit out of them.”

Perhaps this is the sentiment among his supporters that he was appealing to when the decision was made to drop the Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb on tunnels in Afghanistan on April 13. The attack was carried out in the Achin district of Nangahar near the border with Pakistan.

The bomb utilized is technically called the GBU-43 and reportedly weighed 21,000 pounds. It is a GPS-guided weapon and was dropped by the M-130 fighter aircraft.

Although a tactical nuclear weapon is far more powerful and damaging to targets than the MOAB, its usage is clearly a warning not only to the people of Afghanistan as well as those in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The DPRK has been developing and testing its own medium and long range missiles. The DPRK is now a nuclear power and this factor has served as a deterrent to bombings and invasions by the Pentagon and NATO.

Despite the size of the ordinance, Afghan Ministry of Defense spokesperson Dawlat Waziri said:

“No civilian has been hurt and only the base, which Daesh used to launch attacks in other parts of the province, was destroyed.”

However, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report claimed that some 36 Islamic State fighters were killed in the bombing.

Nonetheless, the usual narrative for the imperialist states which engage in such blanket bombings of other countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa is that they only target so-called “terrorists.” More often than not the actual victims of these raids turn out to be civilians who are the most vulnerable within war zones. The direct U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan has resulted in the deaths and injuries of hundreds of thousands of people. Millions have been dislocated from both countries while the current administration of Trump has no intentions of withdrawing the 9,000 troops still remaining the region.

Imperialist interventions through the Pentagon and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have done tremendous damage to the Central Asia region. The flood of refugees out of this area contributes to the overall crises of displacement and political turmoil extending across Asia to the Middle East and Africa. The countries that have been the most severely impacted are those where U.S. military forces laid waste over a period of decades.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Defies U.S. Imperialism

April 15, 2017 represents the 105th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung, a nationalist and communist leader who fought against both Japanese and U.S. imperialism for many years. The Korean Revolution grew out of the anti-colonial struggle against Japan and the consolidation of patriotic forces in defense of its independence and sovereignty.

After 1945, Kim Il Sung and other revolutionaries sought to unite the Peninsula under a system of socialist development. Nevertheless, the U.S. had other plans based on its desire to curb Soviet influence in Asia in the aftermath of World War II. The DPRK was founded in September 1948 prompting the antagonism of Washington.

The following year in October 1949, the Communist Party of China took control of the mainland of that Asian state. Moreover, in Vietnam, the forces aligned with Ho Chi Minh had established a revolutionary Democratic Republic in the North and sought to also unify the country under one government in September 1945.

Consequently, the Cold War outlook of the U.S. maneuvered the United Nations to back an invasion into Korea aimed at eradicating the revolutionary government of Kim Il Sung. By June 1950 the imperialists were staging a full scale assault on the country. Later the massive bombing of Korea compelled Mao Tse-tung and the Communist government to back the DPRK in the war against the U.S. The Chinese deployed over 500,000 People’s Volunteer Forces which assisted in beating back the U.S. from establishing full control of the North leading up to the border with China.

An armistice agreement between the U.S. and the DPRK has been in effect since July 1953. This means that the two states are technically still at war. The provocations of Washington have been continuous for decades. During the so-called Korean War the U.S. had threatened to use an atomic bomb against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China.

Kim Jong Un, the present leader of the DPRK and the grandson of Kim Il Sung and son of Kim Jong Il, has vowed to retaliate in the event of a preemptive strike by the Pentagon. The government has held a series of nuclear missile tests which have illustrated their capacity to inflict damage on U.S. warships, military bases from the Peninsula to Japan.

At present the U.S. is placing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile weapons system in South Korea which serves as a base of imperialist operations in Asia. Both the DPRK and China oppose THAAD. However, the Trump administration is determined to keep this program intact as a way of threatening Pyongyang and Beijing.

The DPRK government under the Worker’s Party (WPK) led by Marshall Kim Jong Un is maintaining its defiance. In an article published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 11, it said:

“Service personnel of the Army, Navy, Air and Anti-Aircraft Force of the Korean People’s Army held a ceremony at the plaza of the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on April 10 to pay high tribute to Generalissimos Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and vow to remain loyal to Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un on the occasion of the Day of the Sun.”

This same report goes on to note that:

“Present there were KPA Vice Marshal Hwang Pyong So, member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, vice-chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK and director of the General Political Bureau of the KPA, KPA Vice Marshal Ri Myong Su, chief of the General Staff of the KPA, Army General Pak Yong Sik, minister of the People’s Armed Forces, and other commanding officers of the KPA.”

Syria War Escalates Under Trump White House

On April 6 news reports revealed that the Pentagon had fired nearly 60 long-range cruise missiles from a U.S. Navy Destroyer into the Sharyat airbase in Syria. This blatant act of aggression was said to be in response to the deaths of people from a putative chemical weapons attack a few days earlier in the village of Khan Sheikhou.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad denied any involvement in the attacks and said in an interview with the Agence France Press (AFP) on April 13 that this story was a “fabrication.” Russian Federation foreign ministry officials have called for an independent investigation into the incident where people died from sarin gas. President Assad has also welcomed such an investigation.

U.S. administration spokespersons have provided no concrete evidence that the Syrian Arab Army was at all involved in the attack. The damage to the airfield by the tomahawk missiles was wholly unwarranted and could have easily sparked a wider war involving Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Conclusion

All of these wars from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Korean Peninsula and Syria were based upon falsehoods and motivated by the desire for geo-political hegemony and the control of strategic resources.

If it is common knowledge that the U.S. manufactures untruths to justify war from the beginning of the post-World War II period through the conclusion of the 20th century and well into the final years of the second decade of the 21st century, it is not beyond reason that the current saber rattling with Afghanistan rebels, the DPRK government and the Syrian state is based upon the same imperialistic aims and objectives.

In addition to the tensions in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula, Trump has deployed more U.S. troops to the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia just weeks after he pledged to intensify bombing operations in this oil-rich embattled country. The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in South America is also waging a defensive war against destabilization efforts funded and coordinated by Washington. A massive U.S.-supported campaign to force the resignation of the African National Congress (ANC) government of President Jacob Zuma in the Republic of South Africa has compounded economic uncertainty in the continent’s most industrialized state. Similar to what has been taking place for years in neighboring Zimbabwe the imperialists have never been in support of genuine independence and unity in Africa.

Antiwar and social justice movements in the imperialist countries must oppose Pentagon and NATO interventions in these geo-strategic areas irrespective of the rationales provided by the Trump administration and its allies. In order for genuine peace to be achieved internationally it requires the dismantling of the war machines emanating from Washington, London, Paris and Brussels.

Originally published on 2017-04-17

Author: Abayomi Azikiwe

Source: Global Research

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

READ MORE!

Kosovo Albanian Jihadists Planned to Attack Venice’s Rialto Bridge

Italian police broke up an alleged jihadist cell in Venice who had celebrated last week’s terrorist attack in London and planned to blow up the city’s famous Rialto Bridge in the hope of killing hundreds of tourists. In a series of overnight raids, anti-terrorism police arrested three suspects, all of them Kosovars who were living in Italy. Fisnik Bekaj, 24, Dake Haziraj, 25, and Arian Babaj, 27, were allegedly admirers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and were secretly recorded discussing how they were ready to die for the sake of jihad. A fourth person, an unnamed minor ...

Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes Speech

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest. Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

Israel is a War Criminal

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations. Save

** FILE ** President Bush declares the end of major combat in Iraq as he speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast, in this May 1, 2003 file photo. Democratic congressional leaders on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 sent Iraq legislation setting timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals to President George W. Bush and a certain veto. On the fourth anniversary of the president's "Mission Accomplished" speech, Senate Majority Democratic Leader Harry Reid said that Bush "has put our troops in the middle of a civil war. A change of course is needed." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

How America Spreads Global Chaos

As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people. As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented, the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as Pete Seeger satirized it, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to “credibility”: the domestic political credibility of the politicians involved ...

Trump’s “Mein Kampf” Tirade at the United Nations (September 2017)

The speech delivered Tuesday by Donald Trump to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York was without precedent either for the UN or the American presidency. Speaking before a world body ostensibly created to spare humanity the “scourge of war” and founded on the principles elaborated at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, the American president openly embraced a policy of genocide, declaring that he was “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea and its 25 million people. The fact that nobody in the assembly moved for Trump’s arrest as a war criminal, or even ...

Croatian Ministers Salute Criminals and Dishonour the Dead

Last week was marked by the moral acrobatics of two Croatian ministers – War Veterans’ Minister Tomo Medved and Defence Minister Damir Krsticevic – who publicly endorsed two convicted Croatian war criminals, Tomislav Mercep and Mirko Norac. A WWII Independent State of Croatia in which 700.000 Serbs were brutally killed Croatian news site Index reported last week that Mercep, who is serving a prison sentence, spent a total of 45 days at a spa instead of in jail this year and last year. As Mercep is a Croatian war veteran, Medved said he vouched for him as worthy recipient of the spa ...

The Kurds Under Erdogan’s Tyrannical Governance

Tens of thousands have been killed over 40 years of bloodletting between Turkish forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and tragically there seems to be no end in sight. In May 2016, President Erdogan stated that military operations against the PKK will continue until “the very last rebel is killed.” What is alarming about Erdogan’s statement is that he still believes he can solve the conflict through brutal force. Erdogan does not understand that he cannot wish the Kurdish problem away—a problem that will continue to haunt him and the country for countless more decades unless a solution is ...

Sixteenth Anniversary of the Attack on Yugoslavia: Expulsion of Roma from Kosovo

Once NATO’s 1999 war on Yugoslavia came to an end, units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) poured across the border. The KLA wasted little time in implementing its dream of an independent Kosovo purged of all other nationalities. Among those bearing the brunt of ethnic hatred were the Roma, commonly known in the West as Gypsies. Under the protective umbrella of NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR), the KLA was free to launch a pogrom in which they beat, tortured, murdered and drove out every non-Albanian and every non-secessionist Albanian they could lay their hands on. Not long after the war, I ...

“Beating the Drums of War”: How Obama and Clinton are Endangering All of Us

I am a lifelong FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) Democrat and therefore am anything other than prejudiced against the Democratic Party. But, that Party died when Bill Clinton became President and undid FDR’s regulations on the megabanks and FDR’s AFDC income program for children in poor families, and when Clinton replaced that with restoration of Wall Street’s control over America (like before FDR, only a more convoluted form of it). However, the way in which both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton endanger all people’s lives and property and health and welfare, has to do with something else, something that’s even more ...

International Injustice: The Conviction of Radovan Karadzic

Last Thursday, news reports were largely devoted to the March 22 Brussels terror bombings and the US primary campaigns. And so little attention was paid to the verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for (former) Yugoslavia (ICTY) finding Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic guilty of every crime it could come up with, including “genocide”. It was a “ho-hum” bit of news. Karadzic had already been convicted by the media of every possible crime, and nobody ever imagined that he would be declared innocent by the single-issue court set up in The Hague essentially to judge the Serb side in the ...

Obama’s Ukrainian Coup Caused 2.5 Million Ukrainian Refugees into Russia

On Tuesday, March 7th, Russia’s top parliamentarian dealing with the Ukrainian refugee influx into Russia — dealing, that is, with the people who have fled Ukraine as a result of U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2014 coup overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych — presented the first-ever comprehensive number of asylum-applicants from Ukraine who have received asylum there after that February 2014 coup. The Russian government had never before publicly provided a number, but does have an established system of processing refugees, including assignment of official refugee status, which «allows the recipient various social benefits, including unemployment compensation» and so each Ukrainian refugee has ...

Pseudo-Democracy, Reparations, and Actual Democracy

It is hardly a coincidence that the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s On the Natural Variety of Mankind were all published within a year of one another, for each supports a necessary aspect of a larger, integrated project. Not only was the rationale for seizing political power (provided by the Declaration) supported by Smith’s popular text (which justified rule by the wealthy business class). Because this wealth and power was contingent on slavery, and territories seized by conquest, Blumenbach’s theory that the “Caucasian race” (a designation he coined, by the way) was the supreme race was ...

The USA – The Real Reason Why They Are Never Winning Their Wars

This essay is inspired by Professor James Petras’s article, describing that the US never wins wars despite trillions of investments in her war budget and obvious military superiority. Professor Petras is of course right, the United States is currently engaged in seven bloody wars around the globe (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya) and has not been winning one, including WWII. The question is: Why is that? To these wars, you may want to add the totally destructive and human rights adverse war that literally slaughters unarmed civilians, including thousands of children, in an open-air prison, Gaza, the US proxy war ...

The West vs Russia: Towards the End of a Pax Americana?

A peaceful dissolution of the USSR according to the agreement between Mikhail Gorbachew and Ronald Reagan in 1988 in Reykjavik brought a new dimension of a global geopolitics in which up to 2008 Russia, as a legal successor state of the USSR, was playing an inferior role in global politics when an American Neocon concept of Pax Americana became the fundamental framework in international relations. Therefore, for instance, Boris Yeltsin’s Russia capitulated in 1995 to the American design regarding a final outcome of the USA/EU policy of the destruction of ex-Yugoslavia in November 1995 (the Dayton Agreement) followed by even ...

The Destabilization of Macedonia? Greater Albania and the Process of “Kosovization”

Introduction The last open armed conflict in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – FYROM (former Socialist Republic of Macedonia as one of six federal republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in the May 2015 was just an expected continuation of constant tensions between the ethnic Albanians and the Macedonian Slavs during the last quarter of century.[i] However, these tensions are time to time transformed into the open armed conflicts of the Albanian extremists, usually coming from Kosovo, with the Macedonian security forces. The most notable conflict incidents in Macedonia after the Kosovo War in 1998−1999, when the Kosovo Albanians ...

Turkey and the European Union: The Question of Cultural Minorities and Their Religious Identities

Introduction Recently expressed by Turkey’s President R. T. Erdoğan a possibility to organize a national referendum on Turkish membership to the European Union (the EU) opened many questions of different nature followed by old and new problems. A current European political concern is reflected in many controversial issues and one of those the most important is facing the EU about whether or not to accept Turkey as a full member state (being a candidate state since 1999). Turkey is, on one hand, governed as a secular democracy by moderate Islamic political leaders, seeking to play a role of the bridge between the ...

Is it an Empire? See the Facts

Donald Franciszek Tusk: “Blood Is Thicker Than Water”?!

Donald Franciszek Tusk, (born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician and historian. He has been President of the European Council since 1 December 2014. Previously he was Prime Minister of Poland (2007–2014) and a co-founder and chairman of the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) party. Tusk began his public career as an activist in his home town of Gdańsk, supporting Solidarity and organizing his fellow university students. With the exception of one four-year stretch, Tusk has served in the Third Republic Sejm (parliament) continuously since its first elections in 1991. He was Vice Marshal (deputy speaker) of the Senate from 1997 ...

Did the Cold War Ever Really End?

The official end of the Cold War era in 1989 brought during the first coming years a kind of international optimism that the idea of the „end of history“ really could be realized as it was a belief in no reason for the geopolitical struggles between the most powerful states. The New World Order, spoken out firstly by M. Gorbachev in his address to the UN on December 7th, 1988 was originally seen as the order of equal partnership in the world politics reflecting „radically different international circumstances after the Cold War“.[1] Unfortunately, the Cold War era finished without the „end ...

Zionism, Anti-Semitism, BDS, and the United Nations

An earlier abridged version of this post was published by Middle East Eye under a different title on June 5, 2016. The focus is upon the misuse of anti-Semitism by those defending Israel to deflect a rising tide of civil society activism and public criticism of Israeli policies and practices. Zionism as Racism? Zionism and the State of Israel 8 Jun 2016 – More than 40 years ago the UN General Assembly adopted controversial resolution 3379 by a vote of 72-35 (with 32 abstentions), determining “that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” This resolution was bitterly opposed by Israel and its ...