Can you think of another country which has caused so much grief and violence throughout the world?
I wince when I hear John Mearsheimer or Jeffrey Sachs talking about the chaos that the United States has (and is) raining down on us all. We can’t unhear the dire predictions of experts in their respective fields, and that prediction is that the U.S. is taking us all down a very dark and dangerous path with their belligerent foreign policies and never ending warring mindset.
We can object, decry, write articles, join protest marches and write to our local government, but until the well-oiled war machine of successive U.S. government administrations decide that perhaps they would prefer that their children and grandchildren aren’t subject to the horrors of a nuclear war, we can bellow all we like that we don’t agree with war. Government leaders the world over may rue the day they dropped the reins and watched the crazed horse bolt from the stable.
The U.S. was supposed to be a, ‘City upon a hill, a beacon of hope’, a Puritan haven for people to live in peace and prosperity. It was conjured as the true meaning of a democracy, full of brave men and women who wanted justice for all. Turns out the “all” just means those at the top of the U.S. heap who crave more than just Plymouth Rock.
Fortunately, there are days when there’s a flickering light on the horizon and hope that humanity will prevail. Billions of people throughout the world have deep humanity and empathy for those who are blighted by U.S. military actions all over our planet and the innocent victims who are left in the dust as America forges ahead with its plans to rule the world. Why aren’t leaders of countries who are still on the fence standing up to the yard bully? We will see nothing like what needs to be done for an equitable and just world for all until the U.S. stops steamrolling through the globe.
Jeffrey Sachs talks of the urgent need for diplomacy, which is what many countries who have suffered the wrath of the U.S. would have preferred, rather than have their governments overthrown, their countries bombed or their elected leaders ousted, or ‘removed’. But diplomacy doesn’t feed the MIC machine. War does. Sachs has said that the “US is the only country in the world that relies on regime change as the lead foreign policy instrument.” Not economic cooperation, not diplomacy, not trade or mutual respect – but regime change. ‘You don’t suit our agenda and you are not malleable to our needs and hunger for power, therefore you gotta go’. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan et al, know only too well.
Descriptions of Putin as an evil monster and megalomaniac are used in the Western media to alert the general public to feel that their governments are justified when they shout ‘Charge!’ on the battlefield. But even a high school student could tell you that it was the U.S. who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and that Vietnam was a disaster as they poked their finger into that pie. This article is not long enough to list the meddling, destructive and violent overthrows, invasions and regime changes that successive U.S. administrations have actioned. Can you think of another country which has caused so much grief and violence throughout the world? And to think we Australians are following the thug down a dark alleyway and to potentially start wars with people we have no argument with.
John Mearsheimer was explaining to an Australian audience the U.S. government mindset – “When we [the US government] are not happy, you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be.” Eisenhower put the world on notice back in 1963/65, when writing his memoirs, that the United States power would be utilised and transported to all corners of the globe, for whatever reason and at any time. If the U.S. was (is) dissatisfied, look out! The world was in no confusion as to who the one superpower was – the United States. The U.S. speaks of the need for countries to “cooperate”. What this means is that countries are bullied into behaving in a way that America approves of – usually as a mirror image of themselves and to be completely malleable to American rules.
If WWIII breaks out it will be a case of young people going to fight each other yet have no argument with each other on behalf of the thugs at the top who didn’t want to utilise diplomacy, dialogue and political idealism as tools to make peace for us all. It is possible to make peace. The playbook simply has to be rewritten in a way that allows all humans to live with dignity, peace, safety and prosperity. Not hard to do with good will. The alternative is to watch the U.S. in survival mode rather than prosperous mode for all world citizens. Usually when someone is drowning and trying to survive, they will cling to anyone or anything around them and take them down with them as they flail and flounder. If the U.S. is the home of the brave, then be brave enough to forge peace in our world.
Reb Halabi
Reb Halabi focuses on the intersection of religion and geopolitics.
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