The ‘humanitarian’ war furphy

This new rush to war not an intervention designed to meet humanitarian goals and objectives, writes Dr Adam Hughes Henry, but simply another bloody bombing campaign to protect strategic Western interests.

Yet the actions of IS, in terms of our contemporary world, are very far from unique and as grotesque as their crimes are, cannot possibly be considered the worst of the worst. There are examples of barbaric behaviour which continue to be exhibited by U.S.-UK allies all over the world.

Bombing from the sky is not a very useful humanitarian response. Current actions do not appear to have any such UN sanctioned legitimacy. Furthermore, there are no foreign troops on the ground to specifically defend these threatened ethnic populations, set up safe zones or sanctuaries and there is also absolutely no talk from nations like Australia of taking in any of the threatened groups as refugees as a matter of priority. As in Kosovo in 1999, the way to save civilians from the stated threat of ethnic cleansing is apparently to bomb the place. The bombing did not decrease atrocities, they actually helped to create and indeed initiate a new cycle of Serbian atrocities in reprisal to a relentless U.S. led NATO bombing.

In Syria, the so called humanitarian impulse centred on the Assad regime for strategic and political reasons, while the well-being civilian population of Syria was used to promote it one way or the other. anti-Assad regime forces were provided assistance and every encouragement by the U.S. and the UK; among these anti-Assad forces were supporters of groups such as al Qaeda and those that now pledge fanatical allegiance to IS.

The question must be asked: how can the new mission to Iraq, particularly one spearheaded by the U.S. and backed by regimes like Saudi Arabia (who routinely funds Jihadist terrorist groups) be based on any notion of universal humanitarian values?

The human rights abuses and atrocities of Western allies over the past 50 years have washed the ground with the blood of their faceless victims over and over again. Islamic State do not have anything approaching a unique monopoly over human rights abuses, terror or fanaticism — they are certainly not an unprecedented human evil.

This new rush to war is not an intervention designed to fulfil any specified humanitarian objectives and outcomes. Where are the safe zones, where is UNHCR, where are the troops and diplomacy designed to defend, protect and negotiate for the safety of civilians?

Such a mission would surely be very different to what we are seeing now.

The primary U.S. led mission in Iraq appears only to be a major bombing campaign against IS in support of strategic interests, with no clear statement of its expected timeframe or even a secondary option.

If war is really only the process of translating diplomacy into killing and death and Afghanistan, Libya and Syria are any indicators of what we are about to see unfold as we folly back to Iraq without as much as a second thought — the very worst is still to come.