Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
It's Not
Just Syria. Trump is Ratcheting Up Wars Across the World
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/10/not-just-syria-trump-ratcheting-up-wars-world?
Trevor Timm
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
The Guardian
Donald
Trump’s missile strikes on Syria have attracted worldwide attention (and
disgraceful plaudits) in recent days. But much less airtime is being given to
his administration’s risky and increasingly barbaric military escalations on
several other fronts across the world.
Let’s put
aside, for the time being, that the Trump administration openly admits it has
no clue what it is going to do in Syria next. Or that key members of Congress
and in the administration are clearly eager for “regime change” in Syria with
no plan for the aftermath. And the fact that hardly anyone seems to care that
Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev said over the weekend that Syrian
strikes put the US “on the verge of a military clash with Russia” – a nuclear
power with thousands of warheads.
As
troubling as these developments are, we should be just as concerned about the
explosion of civilian deaths – more than 1,000 in March alone – that have come
directly as the result of the Trump administration’s other reckless military
campaigns across the Middle East over the past few weeks.
Recently, US airstrikes have claimed the lives of 200 civilians in Iraq, dozens
were killed in separate strikes supposedly aimed at Islamic State in Syria and
several more women and children died in a raid gone awry in Yemen. Those are
just a few examples of the many attacks – launched under the pretext of
defeating Isis – that wreaked havoc on civilian populations as the US military
ramps up its bombing campaigns in multiple counties.
At the same
time, the Trump administration has been expanding official US “war zones” in
Somalia and Yemen, while working to “make it easier for the Pentagon to launch
counterterrorism strikes anywhere in the world” and loosening restrictions on
preventing civilian deaths that were put in place by the Obama administration,
as the Washington Post reported a few weeks ago.
Drone
strikes, already accelerated under the Obama administration, have increased
even more under Trump. Micah Zenko, who tracks the numbers at the Council on
Foreign Relations, noted in March that Trump was carrying out a drone strike
every 1.8 days, compared to every 5.4 days under Obama.
On the
other side of the world, the Trump administration is responding to North
Korea’s nuclear program with even more saber rattling, sending in US ships over
the weekend to the region as some vague “show of force”.
This comes
just as NBC News reported, “the National Security Council has presented
President Donald Trump with options to respond to North Korea’s nuclear program
– including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim
Jong-un”. Pressure is mounting from the outside too, as the Wall Street
Journal’s right wing neocon-in-residence Brett Stephens loudly called for
“regime change” in North Korea two weeks ago.
And then
there’s Iran, which the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol is once again saying is
the ultimate “prize” for regime change, now that Trump is directly bombing
Assad’s forces.
Weeks ago, Trump’s defense secretary James Mattis was reportedly planning a
brazen and incredibly dangerous operation to board Iranian ships in
international waters. This would have effectively been an act of war.
Apparently, the only reason the Trump administration didn’t carry it out was
because the plan leaked and they were forced to scuttle it – at least
temporarily. But that hasn’t stopped the ratcheting up of tensions towards Iran
ever since he took office.
On top of all this madness, 16 years after America’s longest war in history
started, a top general has already testified to Congress that the military
wants more troops in Afghanistan to break the “stalemate” there. Well before
the end of the Trump administration, there will be troops fighting and dying in
Afghanistan who weren’t even born when the 9/11 attacks occurred.
To further
shield the public from these decisions, the Trump administration indicated a
couple weeks ago they have stopped disclosing even the amount of additional
troops that they are sending overseas to fight. The numbers were already being
downplayed by the Obama administration and received little attention as the
numbers continually creeped up over the last two years. Now, the public will
have virtually no insight into what its military is doing in those countries.
It should
go without saying that Bashar al-Assad is a monster and a butcher and the
people of Syria have suffered incredibly over the past five years. North Korea
is potentially dangerous and unpredictable, and Iran is far from innocent on
the world stage. But the idea that starting or expanding wars against these
countries is going to solve anything belies the last 15 years of history, where
the US has intervened and overthrown leaders in country after country, only to
cause even more chaos and destruction, with trillions of dollars and millions
of lives lost.
With
several conflicts likely brewing with countries that have significant military
power, the Trump administration is putting the US – and the world – on a
potentially catastrophic collision course. And so far, pushback from
politicians, the media and anyone else with influence in Washington has barely
been seen.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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