The American wars

The US government misled its own people, lied to the world and created a war deemed illegal under international law. A war that continues to be in grave violation of the Geneva Conventions. A war for which we are all now paying the price.

Lord Bingham, one of Britain's most authoritative judicial figures and retired senior law lord, delivered a speech in late 2008 regarding the invasion of Iraq. "If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK, and some other states was unauthorised by the Security Council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law," he said.

Bingham continued with explicit reference to the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib: "Particularly disturbing to proponents of the rule of law is the cynical lack of concern for international legality among some top officials in the Bush administration," he added.

OK, so we have a fair idea of why Iraq was invaded, but what about Afghanistan? The US says it is looking for bin Laden - with all the technology in the world and they still can’t find him? It makes you wonder that perhaps Afghanistan has something more valuable on offer.

It does: Afghanistan holds the keys to the rich natural gas and oil of the Caspian Basin, which will be transported through the yet to be developed Trans Afghan Pipeline - a blueprint the US has had on the backburner for some years now. Once implemented, this lucrative pipeline will hungrily carry all the natural resources it possibly can across Afghanistan, down into the seaport of Gwadar in south-western Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan also allows the US to keep pressure on the only Islamic country to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan poses a serious threat to US control in the region: “destabilise and disarm” is the general theme, how it will be played out is yet to be seen.

Just as Bush propagated his lies about Iraq concealing some of the “most lethal weapons ever devised,” President Obama, six years on, remarked on March 27 this year that "we are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies - So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Slightly more eloquent than his predecessor, but it is more or less the same old rhetoric.

In a White Paper from the Interagency Policy Group's Report on US. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan it was stated that “in Pakistan, al-Qaida and other groups of jihadist terrorists are planning new terror attacks. Their targets remain the US homeland, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Europe, Australia, our allies in the Middle East, and other targets of opportunity.” Well that just about covers the globe, so according to this report al-Qaida is planning to destroy the entire world. Quite ambitious for a group whose leader lives in a cave.

Obama delivered another speech earlier in the year about “responsibly ending the war in Iraq”. Desperate to try to turn the humanitarian disaster that America created into some kind of humanitarian aid mission, Obama made it clear that “America’s men and women in uniform have fought block by block, province by province, year after year, to give the Iraqis this chance to choose a better future. Now, we must ask the Iraqi people to seize it,” he said.

To seize what? A country that you destroyed? It’s a farcical remark. The whole idea of an irresponsible country preaching about “responsibly ending the war in Iraq”, is ludicrous. The responsible thing to do would have been not to invade in the first place.

Obama then went on to portray US military violence and aggression as acts of friendship and kindness: