Was the assassination of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud carried out by the dark forces of the military-industrial complex to keep the war going and make lots of money in the process, asks blogger The Akh.
Whenever “The Enemy” wishes to enter peace talks, it’s “The West” that refuses terms and responds with violence. The CIA assassination of TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud is the most recent example of this long standing policy of blatant aggression.
The Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently invited Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan for high level, direct peace talks.
Days before the meeting and in direct violation of Pakistani sovereignty, the CIA assassinated Mehsud along with 25 other people in a drone bombing in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of northern Pakistan.
Negotiating a settlement with the Taliban is the only option left to “The West”, one they openly admitted and committed to in the summer.
The context for the drone strike has to raise the question of whether John Brennan, head of the CIA, is deliberately attempting to forestall any peace in the region. Why was Hakimullah Mehsud killed when he agreed to peace talks?
Peace talks
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This of course isn’t the first time such peace talks have been derailed by Western aggression. The Pakistani Taliban will of course seek revenge and will bomb mainland Pakistan as a response.
So who stands to gain?
In June 2011 Radio 4′s Today Show had a very interesting discussion with Michael Semple, the former Deputy to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan and a key proponent of talking to the Taliban. Here’s what he had to say on the subject:
“Western military theory is based primarily on Carl von Clausewitz’s teachings, what is taught in every single military academy is: War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means.”
The Afghan War Logs showed the true nature of the Afghan War, one that the media doesn’t report on. Is it democracy that keeps western nations at war? Or the armies and the vested interests now massed behind them?
President Eisenhower’s farewell message to America was a simple warning against the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” of a “military-industrial complex” with “unwarranted influence on government”.
A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a “military-industrial-congressional complex”.) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to “endanger our liberties and democratic processes”.
I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today’s America, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do.
The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.”
That adversary is Islam and virtually every single country that has a large Muslim population.
War on terror
The war on terror has fulfilled this prophecy fears, as Britain has followed America’s lead and sunk into a swamp of kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without trial.
The belligerent posture of the US and Britain towards the Muslim world has fostered antagonism and moderate threats in response. The bombing of extremist targets in Pakistan is an invitation for terrorists to attack us, and then a need for defence against such attack. A self fulfilling perpetual cycle of violence.
Only last week three British Royal Marines went on trial charged with murdering an Afghan man in cold blood while in their custody.
Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of appeasing the complex is astronomical. For each long range cruise missile and bomber built a hospital ward and a classroom in Britain doesn’t get built.
As long as bullets are fired in war, there will be a company profiting from their sale, with the invention of the global war against terrorism, it provides a blank cheque opportunity for the defence industry – the military industrial complex – the scenery maybe variable – Iraq or Afghanistan – the money source remains the constant and the end result remains constant.
Yet your average Daily Mail reading Britain will be fed the myth that “they hate us for our freedom & democracy”.
It’s because our militarised media is so strong that no one will believe that it’s possible that our armed forces are capable of committing such evil acts such as breaking into people’s homes, killing them while they slept and then burning their bodies.
Still want to know why they hate us?
It becomes hard to be taken seriously if you are talking peace, yet continue to kill the people you want to bring to the negotiating table.
War is a conduit to achieve a political objective, if you have no political objective to achieve, or the remit is changed regularly as has been the case in Afghanistan, then you are in a perpetual state of war, a never ending war, that has no end game in sight.
Violence begets violence, a deadly self-fulfilling foreign policy prophecy.
You can read The Akh’s blog on the link below and you can follow him on twitter @HotterThanCurry
