In de roman 1984 (1949) schreef de Britse auteur George Orwell dat de moderne oorlog:
helpt om de speciale geestelijke atmosfeer in stand te houden, die een hiërarchische maatschappij nodig heeft. De oorlog, zo zal men zien, is nu een zuiver binnenlandse aangelegenheid. In het verleden bestreden de heersende groepen van alle landen elkaar ook echt, al mochten zij inzien, dat zij een gemeenschappelijk belang hadden en daarom de vernietigende werking van de oorlog zouden moeten beperken, en de overwinnaar altijd de overwonnene plunderde. In onze eigen tijd vechten zij helemaal niet tegen elkaar. De oorlog wordt door iedere heersende groep gevoerd tegen de eigen onderdanen en het doel van de oorlog is niet om gebiedsoverwinningen te maken of te voorkomen, maar om de structuur der samenleving is stand te houden.
Orwell wist dat
op de lange duur een hiërarchische maatschappij alleen mogelijk is op basis van armoede en onwetendheid... De vraag was, hoe de wielen van de industrie draaiende te houden zonder de feitelijke rijkdom van de wereld te vermeerderen. Er moesten goederen geproduceerd worden, maar zij moesten niet worden gedistribueerd. En in de praktijk was de enige manier om dit te bereiken een voortdurende oorlog... Oorlog is een methode tot het verbrijzelen, of tot het in de lucht laten vliegen, of tot het laten zinken in de diepte der zee van materialen, die anders gebruikt zouden kunnen worden om de massa's te veel gemak te verschaffen en daardoor op de lange duur te intelligent te maken.
In The American Way of War (2010) merkte de Amerikaanse auteur Tom Engelhardt op:
Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it is hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere (usually, in fact, many places) at any moment... What does it mean when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who then submitted an even larger Pentagon budget?
Engelhardt wees er ondermeer op dat Obama zich liet omringen door corrupte bankiers, terwijl hij tegelijkertijd het militair-industrieel complex subsidieerde met nog meer gemeenschapsgeld, zodat nu sinds 2000 de militaire uitgaven van de VS bijna zijn verdubbeld. Hoewel deze feiten voor de westerse mainstream pers kennelijk te irrelevant zijn om in de context van het huidige agressieve NAVO-beleid te plaatsen, doen kritische Amerikaanse intellectuelen als Tom Engelhardt dit wel:
What does it mean when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which, year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who has now submitted an even larger Pentagon budget? What does this tell you about Washington and about the viability of non-militarized alternatives to the path George W. Bush took? What does it mean when the new administration, surveying nearly eight years and two wars' worth of disasters, decides to expand the U.S. Armed Forces rather than shrink the U.S. global mission? […]
What does it mean when, for our security and future safety, the Pentagon funds the wildest ideas imaginable for developing high-tech weapons systems, many of which sound as if they came straight out of the pages of sci-fi novels? Take, for example, Boeing's advanced coordinated system of hand-held drones, robots, sensors, and other battlefield surveillance equipment slated for seven Army brigades within the next two years at a cost of $2 billion and for the full Army by 2025; or the Next Generation Bomber, an advanced 'platform' slated for 2018; or a truly futuristic bomber, 'a suborbital semi-spacecraft able to move at hypersonic speed along the edge of the atmosphere,' for 2035? What does it mean about our world when those people in our government peering deepest into a blue-skies future are planning ways to send armed 'platforms' up into those skies and kill more than a quarter century from now?
Tom Engelhardt schreef over de 'conspiracy of silence' onder mainstream-journalisten:
In September 2009, The Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker... wrote a rare piece on the subject, but it appeared inside the paper on a quiet Labor Day. 'Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows' was the headline. Perhaps Shanker, too, felt uncomfortable with his subject, because he included the following generic description: 'In the highly competitive global arms market, nations vie for both profit and political influence through weapons sales, in particular to developing nations.' The figures he cited from a congressional study of that 'highly competitive' market told a different story: The United States, with $37.8 billion in arms sales (up $12.4 billion from 2007), controlled 68.4 percent of the global arms market in 2008. Highly competitively speaking, Italy came 'a distant second' with $3.7 billion. In sales to 'developing nations,' the United States inked $29.6 billion in weapons agreements or 70.1 percent of the market. Russia was a vanishingly distant third at $3.3 billion, or 7.8 percent of the market. In other words, with 70 percent of the market, the United States actually has what, in any other field, would qualify as a monopoly position -- in this case, in things that go boom at night. With the American car industry in a ditch, it seems that this (along with Hollywood films that go boom in the night) is what we now do best, as befits a war, if not a warrior, state. Is that an American accomplishment you're comfortable wih?
Nogmaals Tom Engelhardt:
Diplomacy itself has been militarized and, like our country, is now hidden behind massive fortifications, and had been placed under Lord of the Flies-style guard. The State Department's embassies are now bunkers and military-style headquarters for the prosecution of war policies... And peace itself? Simply put, there's no money in it. On the nearly trillion dollars the United States invests in war and war-related activities, nothing goes to peace. No money, no effort, no thought. The very idea that there might be peaceful alternatives to endless war is so discredited that it's left to utopians, bleeding hearts, and feathered doves. As in Orwell's Newspeak, while 'Peace' remains with us, it's largely been shorn of its possibilities. No longer the opposite of war, it's just a rhetorical flourish embedded, like one of our reporters, in Warspeak.
Ondertussen wordt dit gewelddadig beleid gelegitimeerd door mainstream 'opiniemakers' die de bevolking vertellen dat 'het vredestichtende Westen' onder aanvoering van Washington druk doende is 'orde' te scheppen in de chaos, en niet alleen 'als ordebewaker en politieagent' optreedt maar tevens fungeert als 'anker van het hele Atlantische deel van de wereld in de ruimste zin van het woord.' Orwell heeft gelijk gekregen:
Oorlog is vrede. Vrijheid is slavernij. Onwetendheid is kracht.
Om deze waarheden van het Ministerie van Waarheid goed te laten doordringen in het bewustzijn van de massa is een vijand onontbeerlijk. En bestaat de vijand op een bepaald moment niet dan wordt die gecreëerd. In zijn onlangs verschenen The Jihadis Return. ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising schrijft de Midden Oosten-correspondent van The Independent, de journalist Patrick Cockburn — volgens Seymour Hersh 'quite simply, the best Western reporter at work in Iraq today' — :
Western support for the Syrian opposition may have failed to overthrow Assad, but it was successfully destabilizing Iraq, as Iraqi politicians had long predicted… US official documents stress repeatedly that financing for al-Qa'ida and jihadi groups came from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Monarchies. As for Pakistan, its army and military service played a central role since the early 1990s in propelling the Taliban into power in Afghanistan where they hosted bin Laden and al-Qa'ida… today the armed opposition to the Assad government is dominated by jihadis who wish to establish an Islamic state. They accept foreign fighters and have a vicious record of massacring Syria's minorities, notably the Alawites and the Christians… non-jihadi groups are today peripheral in the Syrian opposition. In particular the more secular Free Syrian Army (FSA), whose political wing was once designated by the West add the next rulers of Syria, has been marginalized… This sharp increase in strength and reach of jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq has generally been acknowledged until recently by politicians and media in the West…
In Syria, the Americans backed a plan by Saudi Arabia to build up a 'Southern Front' based in Jordan that would be hostile to the Assad government in Damascus, band simultaneously hostile to al-Qa'ida-type rebels in the north and east. The powerful but supposedly moderate Yarmuk Brigade, reportedly the planned recipient of anti-aircraft missiles from Saudi Arabia, was intended to be the leading element in this new formation. But numerous videos show that the Yarmouk Brigade has frequently fought in collaboration with JAN, the official al-Qa'ida affiliate. Since it wads likely that, in the midst of battle, these two groups would share their munitions, Washington was effectively allowing advanced weaponry to be handed over to its deadliest enemy. Iraqi officials confirm that they have captured sophisticated arms from ISIS fighters in Iraq that were originally supplied by outside powers to forced considered to be anti-al-Qa'ida in Syria…
Precisely the opposite PR tactics were employed by Western governments in 2011 in Libya,m where any similarity between al-Qa'ida and the NATO-backed rebels fighting to overthrow the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was played down… The falsity of the pretense that the anti-Gaddafi jihadis in Libya were less threatening than those in direct contact with al-Qa'ida wads forcefully, if tragically, exposed when US ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by jihadi fighters in Benghazi in September 2012. These were there same fighters lauded by Western governments and media for their role in the anti-Gaddafi uprising. Al Qa'ida is an idea rather than an organization, and this has long been the case… Unsurprisingly, governments prefer the fantasy picture of al-Qa'ida because it enables them to claim victories when it succeeds in killing its better-known members and allies.
Dit alles zult u niet snel via de polder mainstream vernemen, omdat deze context niet past in de officiële versie van de werkelijkheid, de propaganda die de 'vrije pers' elke dag weer verspreidt. Immers, 'De oorlog, zo zal men zien, is nu een zuiver binnenlandse aangelegenheid.' Meer daarover later.
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