Iraq was a war of choice, not of necessity. Proactively, a decision was taken to invade and occupy Iraq despite the fact that Iraq had not attacked America or American interests. Nor was there any evidence linking Iraq with 9/11. Additionally, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and the reasonableness of the basis put forward for believing in their existence has been questioned. This leaves one to ask whether there may have been other objectives for waging war. Such objectives could have been five-fold:
1. Oil;
2. Ensuring Israeli supremacy;
3. Curbing Muslim militancy;
4. Establishing the unchallenged supremacy of the US as the sole global cop;
5. Exposing the futility of resistance to the American writ through the sheer use of overwhelming force, as evidenced by the language “shock and awe”
The decision to invade Iraq revealed fault lines and fissures within the US. It split the Democrats from the Republicans. It also divided the neo-Cons, Zionists, and right-wing Christian Evangelicals from the rest of the US public. It cleaved the European Union from the US, putting Blair and Britain on the back-foot. It re-ignited traditional Anglo-American phobia in France and Germany and may have spiked anti-Semitism in Europe. A recent European Union poll depicted Israel as a major threat to world peace. Massive anti-war rallies in Europe bore testimony to the disquiet over US policies.
Within the Muslim world itself, the gulf has widened between the Muslim elite and the Muslim street. The Muslim elites are not reflecting public will on Iraq and Palestine. There is a rough symmetry of sorts between the US, Israel, and the Muslim establishment, all having been affected by the blowback repercussions of Muslim militancy.
Heretofore, it was assumed that world events mostly would be determined by nation-states. Not anymore. It is the lone bomber who is practically throwing a spanner in the works. The threat is asymmetrical. This is the case in Palestine where a mother of two, for example, blew herself apart; in Iraq where, undeterred by US supreme technology and fire power, suicide bombers are causing havoc; and in Chechnya where the ‘black widows’ are conducting reprise attacks on Russians.
From his exile in Zurich, Lenin wrote that sometimes decades pass and nothing happens, and sometimes weeks pass and decades happen. Such is the legacy of the post 9/11 world. The principal confrontation may appear to be between Islam and the West, but the actual clash is occurring within the West and within the Muslim world.
Without the world realizing it, the world may be at war.
