THE WAR TO END
ALL WARS
JACO KLEYN
In August of 1914 a British writer by the name of H.G.
Wells publishes as collections of articles under the title The War that will end War. The war he refers to non-other off
course than WWI. In this articles he blames the so called Central Powers for
the war and put it to them that the only way to stop the war is to actually
‘wipe out’ Germany’s military might. The then US president, Woodrow Wilson,
later uses the same words as Wells’ title and put it to the US Congress that
America needs to get involved in the war effort because the war (WWI) will be
the war to end all wars. He goes further in the same address and put it that it
is necessary to go to war because only by taking part in this war will they
(the US) be able to make the world ‘safe for democracy’. Words that will echo
through the decades after the war and be used by not only one but about every
US president since. Adding an ironic twist to the famous words was Field
Marshall Earl Wavell during the Paris
Peace Conference 
when he said “The
war that was supposed to stop all wars now gave way to the peace that will stop
all peace.”
when he said “The
war that was supposed to stop all wars now gave way to the peace that will stop
all peace.”
That was then, what if anything does it have to do
with where the world finds itself today, a hundred and two years after the
famous words were first seen in print? Everything. Today the 17th of
November 2015 the world had had a change to take in breath again after the
attacks by Islamic Extremist on so called soft targets in Paris France. More
than a hundred people dead in less than a hundred minutes. And we, the people
of the world, after waking up on Saturday morning hearing the news, after
changing our Facebook profile pictures to the colours of the French flag, after
everything else we do when confronted by news of this nature, we now still sit
down to CNN, BBC, SKY News and all the rest and listen to presidents saying this will be the war to end all wars.
Have we ever heard one of this leaders telling their
parliaments and congresses exactly what led to Islamic Extremist? Have any of
the leaders ever come forward to tell their voters about the secret deals with
rebel forces? About the millions of dollars paid out to people like Osama bin
Laden, Saddam Hussein, Reza Shah and many others? Probably not. How can they do
that? How can an American President tell the American public that they have
spent millions (if not billions) of dollars on characters that they later had
to spend even more billions on to make them go away. Not to even mention the
countless loss of American and other lives in the process. The region is aflame
and U.S. policy bears much of the blame.
Washington’s relentless attempt to reorder and reshape complex peoples,
distant places, and volatile disputes has backfired spectacularly. America has caused manifold problems while
proving unable to solve any of them. The Forbes reporter Doug Bandow nails it
on the 16th of June 2014 by stating; “Washington helped make the mess in Iraq and elsewhere. The US must stop
trying to dominate and micro-manage the world.” But surely the American
presence in the Middle East cannot be seen as all bad, some people will say.
Granted, they did to a certain extend “protect” the flow of oil to the Western
World, but the question remains; at what cost to the rest of humanity? We have
seen and heard lies about so called weapons
of mass destruction, we have heard Washington telling us that Saddam
Hussein is the pinnacle of all that is evil and with his demise from power the
Middle East and Iraq will be a new born democracy. Their claim that keeping
U.S. troops in Iraq and elsewhere would have prevented that nation’s current
implosion ignores both history and experience.
The bitter divisions among Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds reflect the country’s
artificial creation; the U.S. invasion wrecked the national state, setting the
stage for a bitter sectarian struggle. A sectarian struggle that did not
stay in Iraq but poured fuel on jiaddist all
through the region.
The
simple fact remains, fighting
and killing more foreigners in another people’s conflict would make more enemies
of America and all her allies, threatening more terrorist blowback. The Syrian
civil war and the rise of ISIS in the region is a good point to confirm this. The
civil war is destabilizing the region, but American or any other involvement
would not impose order. Boots on the
ground is inconceivable. Tepid action—no
fly zones and increased arms shipments—would be more likely to prolong the
conflict than deliver a decisive result.
Moreover, Assad’s ouster likely would trigger a second round of killing
directed against regime supporters, such as Alawites and other religious
minorities. What must also be remembered in the Syrian scenario is that the
al-Assad regime to a certain extend rely on ISIS to fight the war for him.
There has been numerous reports of Syrian military officials seen to be operating
with and in cahoots with ISIS fighters. Reports
to this extend has go as far as to say that Syrian fighter planes has laid
waste to areas just before ISIS moved in.
Up and until now weapons have been pouring in to
assist Syrian rebels against al-Bassad and ISIS. At a conference in Paris in
2012, Western and Sunni Arab countries announced they were going to
"massively increase" aid to the Syrian opposition. On 19 September
2013, French President François Hollande hinted that France was ready to begin
supplying lethal aid to the Free Syrian Army. The Financial Times reported that Qatar had funded the Syrian
rebellion by "as much as $3 billion" over the first two years of the
civil war. In July 2012, Switzerland ceased arms exports to the UAE after it
emerged Swiss weapons were finding their
way to opposition fighters. In June 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency
was reported to be involved in covert operations along the Turkish-Syrian
border, where agents investigated rebel groups, recommending arms providers
which groups to give aid to. Agents also helped opposition forces develop
supply routes, and provided them with communications training. CIA operatives
distributed assault rifles, anti-tank rocket launchers and other ammunition to
Syrian opposition. The State Department has reportedly allocated $15 million
for civilian opposition groups in Syria. In December 2013, The United States
suspended the shipments of nonlethal military aid including food rations,
medical kits and pickup trucks after
warehouses of equipment were seized by the Islamic Front. On 24 December
2014, a Jordanian fighter jet was shot down over Syria and its pilot, Jordanian
air force lieutenant Muath Al-Kasasbeh, captured. This pilot was executed by
burning in January 2015 and was later used to attempt to recover jailed
terrorists. Jordan offered to make the exchange, but demanded "proof of
life" first, this wasn't done, and the video of the pilot's execution was
released. In May 2015, The Independent
reported that Saudi Arabia and Turkey "are focusing their backing for the
Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest".
The Army of Conquest reportedly includes an Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, which had been declared a terrorist organisation
by the United States.
The reports on insecure weapon allocations to fighters
in especially Syria can go on for many more pages. The cruel fact is that
nobody giving weapons to these fighters can know who will end up using them and
against whom they will be used. The assumption that Washington, London, Paris,
Moscow and whoever else could get just the right arms to just the right
opposition forces to ensure emergence of just the right liberal, democratic,
pro-Western government of a united Syria is childishly naive. The U.S. and by
implication all the countries currently involved in the Syrian conflict long
ago demonstrated that it is better at destroying than building nations.
Will this then be the war to end all wars? I doubt it.
In fact, this war is the war that will start numerous others and eventually not
only end peace but kill it completely.
Also read: http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/putin-exposes-g20s-financial-ties-isis-during-antalya-summit/ri11199
Russian President Putin accusing G20 members of financing ISIS.
