[rad-green] The West’s Present Misconduct Has a Long History

*https://journal-neo.org/2019/12/28/the-west-s-present-misconduct-has-a-long-history/
<https://journal-neo.org/2019/12/28/the-west-s-present-misconduct-has-a-long-history/>New
Eastern Outlook          28.12.2019 *



*The West’s Present Misconduct Has a Long History*
*Two major wars -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- illustrate a number of facets,
including deceptive motivations for the wars; persistent lying about the
realities following the invasions; and the extraordinary difficulties by
the victim nations in dislodging the invaders, even decades later.*

*By James ONeill*

[image: KOR342342]
<https://journal-neo.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/KOR342342.jpg>

One of the persistent themes of western political leaders is that they
support the notion of “the rule of law”. By this they generally mean the
system of law as developed by western nations, and in the international
context the formulation over the past 120 years or so of international law.

By this of course, they mean “their law”. Any deviation from this by
non-western nations is to be deplored and where appropriate punished.

The epitome of this approach was to be found in the Nuremberg trials and
their Japanese equivalent that followed victory in the Second World War.
The waging of war was declared to be the supreme international crime. The
chief American counsel at the Nuremberg Tribunal, Robert Jackson, stated
that the Nuremberg trials placed “international law squarely on the side of
peace as against aggressive warfare.”

The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials may be seen in retrospect as the apogee of
the concept that waging war was an offence against humanity. Since 1945 the
major western powers, notably but not exclusively limited to the United
States, have waged almost continuous war.

This has mostly been directed at countries that lack the ability, military
or otherwise, to fight back.

Neither is this a new phenomena. Wikipedia has an astonishing list of wars
involving the United States going back to the Revolutionary War of
1775-1783 and continuing almost unabated up to the present day. With
unintentional humour, World War Two is listed as a “United States-Allied
victory.”

As any student of that war knows, the vast bulk of the fighting and the
casualties, took place on the eastern front between Germany and its allies
and the Soviet Union. The war had been waging for more than two years
before the Americans became a formal party. Total American losses during
World War II were just over 407.000, fewer than Russia lost in the battle
of Stalingrad alone (478,000 killed or missing) over a period of five
months.

The West’s proclivity for war continued unabated after the end of World War
Two. The Korean War (1950-53), the Vietnam War 1945-1975), Afghanistan
(2001-?, Iraq 2003- ?) and Syria (2008 – ?) are only some of the better
known conflicts. There were constant lesser battles carried out by the
United States and its allies, particularly in the Caribbean and Latin
America, seen (by the United States) as part of its own sphere of influence
since the Munro doctrine was first proposed in December 1823.

One of the outstanding features of these post-World War II invasions,
occupations, or warfare by other means, is that they have shown a
diminishing degree of success. Where they have been unsuccessful on the
battlefield, the United States has continued to wage economic and financial
war on its foes.

The classic illustration of this is the Korean War, the origins and conduct
of which has always been grossly misrepresented by the West. It is however,
instructive on a number of levels. The North-South boundary was drawn by
two United States functionaries following the defeat of the occupying
Japanese in 1945. The Soviet army, which occupied the North following the
end of the war, withdrew in 1948. The United States, which occupied the
South, has never left and today sees South Korea as an essential element in
its encirclement of China.

There are literally hundreds of United States military bases in proximity
to or aimed at China, yet the western media are solely preoccupied with
alleged Chinese “aggression” actual or potential. Apart from its multiple
military bases, the United States regularly carries out military exercises
with its regional allies such as Japan and Australia that are thinly
disguised preparations for waging war on China. One such regular exercise
practices blockading vital Chinese trade routes through the Straits of
Hormuz.

The Korean War was instructive on a number of levels. The invasion of the
North by United States and Allied troops reached the Chinese border, which
threatened the new PRC. We now know that the United States military command
sought President Truman’s consent to use their virtual monopoly of nuclear
weapons (certainly China had none) to bomb the PRC.

The primary objective was to reinstate the Chiang Kai Shek Government that
had fled to what was then called Formosa following its defeat in the
Chinese Civil War.

The intervention of the PRC in the Korean War was decisive. United States
and Allied troops were rapidly expelled from the North. What was
instructive also however was that the United States used its overwhelming
air superiority to effectively destroy North Korea’s civilian
infrastructure and food producing capacity.

This was instructive on a number of levels. Not only was the destruction of
civilian targets a monumental war crime (for which they hung Germans
following the Nuremberg trials), but there has never been legal
accountability for these crimes. Again, this precedent is instructive for
the actions and lack of accountability for American war crimes to this day.

Despite enormous Western pressure, most of it illegal under international
law, the North Koreans have survived to this day. There is still no peace
treaty to formally end the war, although it is now more than 66 years since
the armistice. North Korea is now a nuclear armed power and in this
writer’s view any expectation that they will disarm is delusional.

Those nuclear weapons, and the military protection of Russia and China are
the major deterrent to further United States aggression in the region.

Vietnam was a similar defeat for United States imperialism in the region.
Again, a long war (1945-1975) fought first by the French and then by the
United States and its Western allies following the French defeat at Dien
Bien Phu In May 1954.

Although the United States did not use nuclear weapons, they employed a
full range of other chemical and biological mechanisms, the use of which
were again war crimes perpetrated on a civilian population. The
consequences of this chemical and biological warfare persist to the present
day in the form of ravaged agricultural land, and most distressingly,
children still being born with deformities directly attributable to the
chemical and biological warfare agents employed by the United States
throughout the war.

Again, in what is by now a manifestly common pattern, the perpetrators of
these war crimes remain completely immune from prosecution, notwithstanding
token prosecutions of low level military officers such as Lieutenant
William Calley for the My Lai massacre. An article in the United States
publication Foreign Policy (21 May 2019) in titled “America Loves Excusing
its War Criminals” is a perfect encapsulation of the reality.

More recently two other major wars illustrate a number of facets, including
deceptive motivations for the wars; persistent lying about the realities
following the invasions; and the extraordinary difficulties by the victim
nations in dislodging the invaders, even decades later.

The two wars in question are Afghanistan (2001 – to the present and
counting) and Iraq (2003 to the present and counting). In both cases the
ostensible justification for the invasion were blatant lies. Ron Susskind’s
book on Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill (The Price of Loyalty 2004)
revealed how the decision to invade Afghanistan was made well before the
purported reason of the events of 11 September 2001. Rather, the invasion
and occupation had more to do with Afghanistan’s strategic location and the
oil routes from the Caspian Sea basin than any alleged role by Osama bin
Laden who was alleged (falsely) to have orchestrated the use of aeroplanes
to destroy public buildings in New York and Washington.

In Iraq’s case the monstrous lies told and repeated ad nauseam by loyal
allies, was Saddam Hussain’s “weapons of mass destruction.”

It is not difficult to perceive recurring patterns here. Countries that are
strategically located with valuable resources become the object of
invasion, occupation and the theft of those resources and suffering
enormous civilian casualties (well over 1 million people in the case of
both countries). None of the allegations ever bear any resemblance to the
truth.

Similarly, in another recurring pattern, none of the perpetrators of these
monstrous activities ever face a court holding them to account for their
crimes. There are of course many examples. When one examines the record of
invasions, occupations, demonstrable lies uttered in justification, and
ongoing theft of natural resources it is impossible to reconcile this
history with the “rules based international law” mantra so solemnly
repeated by western leaders.

There are however, some encouraging signs that this era of lawless banditry
may be approaching its end days. I refer here to the rapid rise of China,
or more accurately, the reemergence of China as the dominant power in the
world.

Through a variety of initiatives, of which the BRI is the biggest and best
known (and significantly, opposed by the United States and Australia).
There are a variety of other economic and political initiatives that are of
a truly transformative nature. Their very successful present and likely
future trends are a major reason the United States is using every weapon in
its political, economic and financial arsenal to oppose and undermine these
predominantly Chinese led initiatives.

In this writer’s view, that attempted sabotage will ultimately fail,
although at considerable cost to a number of nations. As we enter 2020
however, these initiatives, from China in the East to Russia in the West
and beyond, offer the best prospect of a stable world than the past
disastrous two centuries of western dominance have proved to be.

*James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the
online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” <https://journal-neo.org/>.*

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