“All Wars Must End.” That is the message sent to US military forces on November 13 buy the Acting Secretary of Defence, Christopher Miller. This statement of a truism, a noble sentiment if construed as a general statement, and if followed by its corollary, “and no more must begin,” has disturbed both civilian and military circles in the USA and even caused ripples in Russia. Standing on its own it seems to fulfil Trumps 2016 election campaign promise to end the American wars because they are counter-productive. But just as Trump never followed through on that campaign promise we cannot expect this statement to be a commitment that war will no longer be the most used tool to effect American foreign policy.
So we have to look at the rest of the statement to understand what Colonel Miller is referring to, which is Afghanistan and Iraq. They are the only two countries mentioned in his opening where he refers to his “service” in those two countries suffering under the long American occupation. He continues by stating,
“As we prepare for the future, we remain committed to finishing the war that Al Qaida (banned in Russia) brought to our shores in 2001. This war isn’t over. We are on the verge of defeating Al Qaida and its associates, but we must avoid our past strategic error of failing to see the fight through to the finish…but this is the critical phase in which we transition our efforts form a leadership to a supporting role. We are not a people of perpetual war-it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end.”
Let’s examine this statement to unpack the lies and find the truth. First of all it begins with the big lie that Al Qaida attacked the USA in 2001, a claim for which there is no evidence whatsoever. In fact we know that Al Qaida is an American invention, a fiction used as a foil to provide pretexts to invade several countries in what the west calls the “Middle East.” We also know that the man they claimed led the attack, Osama Bin Laden, denied he was involved, and indeed it is difficult to credit the claim that he was when he was a loyal servant of the United States his entire career, first in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan for them and then in providing his mujahedeen to commit terrorist attacks in Yugoslavia where he was operating under US Army command as late as 1999. But when the Americans need a patsy they are ever ready to turn on even their most loyal agents, as Lee Harvey Oswald also found out. No, it was not Al Qaida that attacked the USA in 2001, and when historians look back on that period they will always answer the question, “who did it?” by looking at who benefitted from the attack and that was of course the United States itself which quickly used the attack as a pretext to invade Afghanistan, and then two years later to invade Iraq.
The second lie is that they are on the verge of defeating Al Qaida. They have claimed they were on that verge every year these two wars have dragged on, and they make the claim to justify the continuation of their occupation of those suffering nations. They even imported armed groups from Syria, who were labelled as “Al Qaida,” into Afghanistan in the last year or so, as their efforts in Syria were confounded by Syrian, Russian and Iranian resistance, in order to attack both the Taliban and their puppet government forces to keep the pot boiling and their puppet government in power.
The third statement is that they will now play a supporting role in those two countries. But this is a lie as well because the support is to puppet governments they installed and control that will be directed on how to “finish” the wars that the US began and wants to maintain.
The fourth big lie, and one has to wonder how anyone can write this nonsense and maintain any credibility, is the statement “We are not a people of perpetual war…” when the world knows that the United States has been at war somewhere for most of its history, from its very foundation in the war against Britain, to the invasion of Canada, the wars against the indigenous territories, the Barbary Coast war, the invasion and occupation of much of Mexico, more wars against natives, the war between the USA and the Confederate States of America, more native wars, the war against Spain in 1898 and seizure of its colonies, the rise to world power in the First World War, the consolidation of its power in the Second, its attempt to crush China in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and dozens of proxy wars around the globe against any government that stood in the way of its interests. The truth, as Colonel Miller knows, is that the United States is a nation of perpetual war. They revel in war.
Indeed, Colonel Miller ended his message with a quotation from a war president, Abraham Lincoln, about duty and firmness and the quest for a “lasting peace.” But again a lasting peace for them is peace on their terms which is essentially a peace imposed by force of American arms on the whole word in order for the world to be completely subject to its interests and to exist for only its benefit, in other words their “new world order,” the American Order.
What we must understand from this message is that the United States is shifting its military focus away from Afghanistan and Iraq, which it has more or less succeeded in bringing under its suzerainty, to Russia and China and allied nations such as Iran and North Korea. They are preparing something bigger. The preparations for war against both nations are going ahead with increased intensity and speed along with the propaganda and the economic warfare labelled “sanctions” designed to undermine their economies, to weaken them. A day before Miller sent out his message, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, slapped China in the face by stating “Taiwan is not part of China,” a statement designed to provoke the Chinese. The Americans are pushing for a war. This is clear, and China has stated that they know what they are doing but will resist if they continue and this the Americans will do.
The Chinese have even warned that Trump may provoke a confrontation in the South China Sea in order to save his position in power, that the Americans are reckless, no matter which party is in power. Meanwhile in the United States itself the struggle for power between the ruling factions continues with the outcome still uncertain. But we can be assured that no matter who ends up as the chief magistrate of that country neither of them will bring peace to the world. They cannot. The power of the ruling class depends on maintaining their world power, every day of chaos and unrest there proves it.
So, what do we have with this statement, a call for world peace, our dream, or just a statement of fact, that these wars are ending so they can begin another? It is my view that the latter is the case. However, Colonel Miller has given the world peace movement a slogan, “All Wars Must End.” It should be at the top of every newspaper front page, in the largest type, it should be the declared by every word leader and national leader, shouted from the roof tops of every town and city, the subject of poems and songs, to join John Lennon’s slogan, “War Is Over, If You Want It.” Well, I do. Don’t you? All wars must end!”
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
