The US has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the name of fighting terrorism. The war is all too real. But it’s also fake. There is no clash of civilizations, no ideological battle, no grand effort on the part of the United States to defeat terrorism. As long as terrorism doesn’t threaten core US interests, American elites are content to allow it — and help it — flourish. They don’t want to win this war. It will go on forever, unless we make them end it.
That's the conclusion to
my piece at Jacobin that I hope you read. The piece is a response, first, to the catastrophe known as the U.S. War on Terror and, second, to a flawed, even dangerous, line of argument often used by the war's ostensible opponents.
The standard liberal analysis has American elites bumbling into another war, oblivious to the consequences, unwittingly acting against their own interests.
How much death and destruction would American terror warriors have to cause before their ostensible opponents rejected their claims of noble intent? During the thirteen years of the “war on terror,” actions of the United States government have consistently and predictably strengthened anti-American terrorist groups. To chalk this all up to stupidity — rather than unstated imperial imperatives — is to choose ignorance.
The ugly consequences of the war on terror aren't unintended; those are the goals -- or at least acceptable results as the US seeks to pursue its actual core goals.
Many liberals recognize the economic imperatives at stake, yet these rarely enter their analyses of the “war on terrorism.” Without an awareness of economic motive — or, if you prefer, “geopolitics” — certain military moves of the United States make no sense.
The utter fraudulence of the US War on Terror is best revealed not by the war itself by US actions in Libya and Syria, which have empowered jihadist groups. Clearly, in both cases, fighting "terror" was not the overriding concern. On the contrary, the US was content to unleash terrorism as it sought to secure its interests. (In the piece I analyze what the US was/is really up to in Syria and Libya.)
The upshot: the war on terror isn't sincere. It's violence perpetrated and perpetuated by people who don't want it to stop, because stopping it doesn't serve their interests.
American war-makers — who’ve done so much to create terrorism — claim that opponents of war and imperialism are “soft on terrorism.” And some liberals believe that those who’ve done so much to create terrorism are sincerely trying to fight it. Compelled by the destructive logic of capitalism, American war-makers are playing dirty and playing for keeps, yet many of their foremost “critics” depict them as Keystone Cops.
As blogger Kevin Dooley points out, such analysis defies common sense and precludes the possibility of resistance: “[T]he notion that the ruling elite are so stupid they don’t even know their interests, much less how to go about securing them, is ahistorical, power-serving nonsense.”
For tweets on war, imperialism, state violence, and related left-wing agitprop [smiley face] follow me @davidmizner