Tuesday 16 September 2014

Whose War is it, anyway?

With around 48 hours to go to referendum day I am turning my sights away from the, "Who said what, about who,and why that left them crying?" media coverage of the Yeserendum and back to things global, stuff we soon to be independent Scots need to start thinking hard about and first up in my mind is what is happening in the Middle East.

Cameron and his media friends in the Telegraph, Daily Mail, Express and the rest are trying to drum up support to put UK citizens in military garb back into Iraq to:
  1. Try and stop Islamic fundamentalists killing each other
  2. To stop both sets of Islamic fundamentalists from killing Iraqi Christians who no one apparently knew about until last week
  3. To stop a different group of Islamic fundamentalists set up with Saudi Arabian money and trained by the CIA, US and UK Special Forces from killing the fundamentalists (of bullet point 1) and the Christians (of bullet point 2)
  4. Be absolutely clear it is not about the oil reserves in Iraq which are in danger of being overrun by the fundamentalist nutters (of bullet point 3) it is about humanitarian aid and the preservation of human life - well humans Cameron and the UK Media have selected as being worth saving
You can throw in the Islamic nutters of bullet point three are currently killing anyone in Syria who does not believe in 'their manifestation of God' but apparently those Christians and Islamic folk in Syria are not worth saving anymore -  a crying shame, but they do not have oil. There are also the Palestinian Christians who are suffering oppression, random violence, their land stolen and imprisonment without trial ..... but that is OK because the nice Israeli's are doing that and they are the USA's best friends (but sometimes its the Saudis) in the region.

The answer, as it appears to Mr Cameron, is to put back into Iraq the very same military forces which caused this whole shebang in the first instance. I can not be the only person thinking - utter madness - why not just send in gun slinging Christian fundamentalists from the USA Bible Belt and be done with it?

The reality is there is a psychological game going on here where the three main players (Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel) alternate in their own and the world's eyes between victim, accuser and rescuer. Israel (accuser) attacks Palestinian Gaza (client of Iran) and Saudi Arabia seeks to act as peacemaker (rescuer) via an embassy in Egypt. All three payers in this game are happy to see an end to Assad in Syria simply because he is in their way. The question nobody asks is just why are these three happy to play this game of Middle East unhappy families?

A look at their scarily similar under belly is avoided by keeping the world's attention on this tension (always on the point of ripping apart the Middle East but never quite gets there) is it stops people looking at the torture, imprisonment without trial, quasi religious judicial murder and generally genocidal actions against perceived minorities that underpin each of these three states daily acts - all are as bad as each other and all are useful to each other as the ultimate baddy who is coming to get you, you Wahhabbist, Sunni, Shi'ite, Middle Eastern Christian or Jew.

The rewards each country gains are simple:

  • Israel it is billions in USA foreign 'aid' - if by 'aid' you allow Reathon stand off laser guided bombs
  • Saudi Arabia - the USA keeps the world media away from the true oppression and brutality of the Saudi regime and the USA acts as a check on Israel when things get out of hand
  • Iran - at first review it is difficult to see what this country gets apart from world media being diverted from their equally oppressive and brutal regime. Then you look carefully and see, by playing the game, Iran gains direct and indirect concessions from the USA, helped by keeping Russia and Putin as an ever present threat over the USA's head.
At this point you begin to understand why all three want something done about ISIS because ISIS taking control of Iraq, a chunk of Syria and threatening Saudi Arabia's own borders is potentially a game changer and a threat to the current brinksmanship game. Worse ISIS as a territory, sitting like a spider in the middle of a web, is a threat to USA oil supplies from the whole Gulf region because if Saudi Arabia falls to ISIS, the rest of the oil producing 'mini states' on the peninsula fall as well. The USA can not allow that as it endangers their current neo-liberal economic model based on low oil and gas pricing - hence the rush in the USA to frack itself to bits and ignore the serious environmental and local geological consequences.

It is into this seething, chaotic, unstable and violent mix in the Middle East, Cameron and his London media friends are wanting to put the UK Military. Putting the UK Military into a mission which can have no end as long it is to the benefit of the three main players, in the Middle East, to keep it going. A UK Military under going a contraction in size and capability orchestrated by the self same political and media weasels who are trying to persuade the general public to request the Government to put the shrunken and still shrinking UK military in harms way.

Why?

The only answer which bears any real scrutiny is;

To help secure the USA's oil and gas supplies from the Middle East.

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