What started as a War on Terror in Afghanistan has now become
the front for an Orwellian never ending War of Terror which is
rapidly draining the heart, resources and spirit of America: Allen L
Roland
War
against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are
going to profit from it.
~ George Orwell
Wikipedia
defines Perpetual war as such "Perpetual war refers to a lasting
state of war with no clear ending conditions. It also describes a situation of
ongoing tension that seems likely to escalate at any moment, similar to the
Cold War."
The obvious goal of Obama's perpetual war on
terror is economic control and manipulation which has been more
than borne out by the neo-colonialism war of terror being waged by the west in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and eventually Iran with the obvious intent
of Regime Change.
As Peter Symonds correctly points out in WSWS
~ "Afghanistan has been the testing ground for 21st Century
neo-colonialism. The occupation has set the pattern for US-led operations in
Iraq, Libya and now Syria, as Washington seeks to extend its economic and
strategic dominance in the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central
Asia. "
In
the landmark George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty Four, Eurasia is described
as having "always been at perpetual war with Eastasia" ~
a fictional super state in Orwell's novel but far from fictional in America's
current war of terror in the Middle East.
Obviously, the model for 21st century neo-colonialism is
Afghanistan ~ America's current longest standing occupation and so-called 12
year war on terror. Claims that the US occupation will end in 2014 are
most certainly refuted by obvious plans for an indefinite American military
presence in Afghanistan.
According to the New
York Times,
" General John Allen, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has
submitted three options to the Pentagon for the period after the supposed
withdrawal of “combat troops” at the end of 2014. One is to maintain US
troop levels at 6,000, another calls for 10,000 soldiers, and the third is
based on a force of 20,000. As explained by unnamed defense officials, central
to all three proposals is the continued presence of “Special Operations
commandos who would hunt down insurgents.” Additional US forces would be
used to bolster the Afghan security forces through air support, logistics and
training. All of this continues to be justified on the phony pretext of
the “war on terror.” In reality, over 12 years of relentless, bloody
war, Afghanistan has served as a base of operations for the projection of
American influence and military force throughout the region."
See WSWS article http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/05/pers-j05.html
The object
of this perpetual war, as Orwell describes, is to keep a society or 'Our Way
of Life' intact ~ The war in actuality is
waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war
is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure
of society or the status quo intact.
Who
can ever forget Tony Blair justifying the Iraq war and occupation as "protecting our way of life" ~
War
criminal Blair wearing Yarmulke
The
very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be
accurate to say that by becoming perpetual and continuous ~ war has ceased
to exist.
From the book 1984 ~
" The economy of
many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital
equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from
working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed
military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously
unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the
wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods
must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the
only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. "The essential
act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products
of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the
stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might
otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long
run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed,
their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labor power without
producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example,
has locked up in it the labor that would build several hundred cargo-ships.
Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material
benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labors another Floating Fortress
is built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any
surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the
population..."
However,
the
American Killing machine most certainly still exists and now we have Nick Turse’s new book, Kill
Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam to confirm this
obvious truth ~ "No
one has ever described the American killing machine in that country the way he
has; nor, as
he did, tracked down Americans charged with war crimes by the U.S. military in
that era, nor tramped through distant rural Vietnam to hear what it felt to be
on the other side of massacres or experience the American-imposed “system of
suffering” in those years. A decade in the making, it is a book
that should reshape in fundamental ways how we remember the Vietnam War."
Afghanistan excerpt: "Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of
everything from lack of access to medical care (there are just 2 doctors
for every 10,000 Afghans) to exposure, including shocking reports of children freezing to
death in refugee camps last winter and again this year. They were among the hundreds of
thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war. Millions
more live as refugees outside the country, mostly in Iran and Pakistan. Of the women who remain in the country, up to 2 million are widows. In addition, there are now an
estimated 2 million Afghan orphans. No wonder polling by Gallup this past summer found 96% of Afghans
claiming they were either “suffering” or “struggling,” and just 4% “thriving.”
So
there you have it, The Cheney/Bush/Obama War on Terror is a never ending war of terror and no one
understood the implications of this perpetual war better than George
Orwell.
"I guess every
generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old
illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own." ~
Phillip Caputo
Allen
L Roland
Freelance Alternative
Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L
Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private
consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who
also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com
He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net
