The question of “Who is the main fighter against international terrorism?” may seem naive to a person who believes that President Obama tells the truth in his speeches. Judging by the declarations, regularly thrown out by the Washington Administration from its bowels, there is no force in the world, but the United States, that is capable of confronting terror. And, in principle, this is true. If the White House stops financing and arming terrorists around the world, the international political life will be as peaceful as in a boarding house for the elderly.
Let us have a look at the facts.
We are not going to talk about students who come to school to shoot as many of their classmates as possible. We are going to talk about international terrorism. If presidents of powerful countries are talking about it, it means that it exists, right? If it is international, hence, there is coordination between terrorist groups in different countries, right? Coordination means control. Who controls the international terrorist network? It is the one who is financing, arming and, most importantly, providing a political cover.
Declarations are one thing, but reality is quite another. Once communists proclaimed their goal of the liberation of the working class from exploitation and built a huge number of labor camps. President Obama declared a “war on terrorism” as one of the main goals of his administration, but the well-known American political expert Professor Noam Chomsky believes that Obama should be tried for unleashing this war. So what is really happening?
This involves the question of using unmanned flying vehicles. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says that Americans killed about 5,000 people in Yemen, Pakistan and other countries of the world with the help of these devices. No one produced arrest warrants for the victims of drones, neither were they interrogated or tried. They were simply killed at the command of UAV operators and American military authorities. Yes, this is war, and terrorists are criminals. If Obama declares war on crime tomorrow, everyone will know the force of law then.
Perhaps there actually were terrorists among those killed, but the fact is that there also were many people completely uninvolved in any illegal activities. Senator Graham says that this is war, and if so, the decisions are made by soldiers and commanders.
However, it should be noted that there is also a category of military crimes, and killing civilians falls into this category!
There is another question. What has Pakistan to do with this? The answer is simple. It has to do with this, the same as Afghanistan, where virtually all the world’s heroin is produced. It is about the struggle for control over drug traffic. Before the U.S. Army invaded Afghanistan, the production of opium and heroin was controlled by the Taliban. Then, all of sudden (perhaps, they did not agree on the price?), the Taliban decided to stop the production of drugs, the U.S. Army invaded Afghanistan, the production of narcotics was restored, and the Taliban had to move their bases to Pakistan. Acting from these Pakistani bases, they repeatedly tried to interrupt the supply of American task force and played as many dirty tricks as they could. The Taliban movement has money, and it seems it has a lot of it.
The Pakistani state and its ruling establishment are staunch allies of Washington, and Washington is very easy on terrorism if it suits its interests. Have these guys in the White House ever condemned Chechen militants or have they ever demanded removal of terrorist bases from the territory of Georgia? No, of course not.
The problem is that the Pakistani army is not able to exterminate the Taliban in its country. They cannot, so what can be done. They are trying hard, carry out various operations, but this does not produce any significant effects. The U.S. may send another task force into Pakistan, get a second Vietnam, a stream of coffins to the fatherland, and increase its military spending sky high, all the more so, as they print dollars themselves and in unlimited quantities. All this is a too high a price for a victory over a people whose annual income is hardly above the income of a medieval landsknecht.
The U.S. military command has decided to use UAVs more actively, after all, who in the world cares about the fate of poor Pakistani peasants who happened to come under a missile attack? First, this is not a war on terror – it is a squabble between two mafia groups, and the control center of one of them is located in Washington. Second, it is terror, i.e., violence to intimidate people. Operations of drones are of no military importance.
How effective is the UAV terror?
According to Reuters, this issue remains one of the most sensitive in the relations of Islamabad and Washington. The U.S. military is actively using drones for strikes on suspected militants, however, civilians and (what an embarrassment) soldiers of the Pakistani army come under fire sometimes. We can assume that the latter fact entertains the Taliban quite a lot.
Meanwhile, the most alarming thing in this whole story is not the violation of national sovereignty of the state of Pakistan by the United States and a blatant trampling upon the rights of its citizens (all this can be applied to any militarily weak state), but something else.
Most people in our world continue to measure the degree of totalitarianism based on the number of guards in concentration camp towers. However, we can see here the model of a new social order, which is being tested (so far) on underdeveloped countries. It turns out that the U.S. government has created a whole army of robocops in recent years, under the cover of a war on terrorism. Yes, these devices still do not work effectively, they indiscriminately shoot at anything that moves, and are not able to recognize human facial expressions themselves. Nevertheless, the elimination of defects in prototypes has always been just a matter of time.
Moreover, it has turned out recently that the American NSA is already watching everyone who has a cell phone, television, computer, etc. up to a washing machine. We will say nothing about satellite navigation systems. They provide great possibilities.
I wonder, do U.S. citizens think that the use of drone-robocops is impossible in their own country, just because they live in a democratic society, which is allegedly governed by an African-American president who used to blow smoke (slander, of course) when he was young? Doesn’t anyone feel embarrassed because of the fact that the Ku Klux Klan hung African-Americans from the trees in southern states until recently?
If you cancel the rule of law for Pakistanis, then you cancel it for yourselves, as well. At first, it will be the case of challenges, then of threats, of the protection of democracy, of survival, and then unmanned vehicles will patrol the streets of your cities.
Here is your place in the new world.
(To be continued…)
Konstantin Penzev, author and historian, observer at the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
