US President Donald Trump is not unique in his pursuit of senseless wars. The template is simple and is an all-American invention. When in trouble at home, start foreign wars.
Image: Andrew Caballero Reynolds / AFP
THE war in West Asia, or as pundits prefer, the “Middle East”, can conveniently be dubbed as the foreign policy crisis of the US.
Somehow, as the crisis deepens in Washington, so do the escalatory chants of war heighten. And if, for whatever reason, the crisis lessens, so would the brutality of the war in West Asia attenuate, as would its justification.
This correlation describes the phenomenon of rot. As the putrid decay metastasises throughout the US body politic, even the names describing their departments become unsuited for purpose.
The Department of Defence had to become the Department of War, and similarly, the incumbent Secretary, the Secretary of War. The change abandoned all pretences to global civility, exposing its fangs of imperial ambition or anxiety, if you will, in a world inhabited by other indomitably rising powers.
In this blurred prism of interpretation, friend could be foe, a realisation that has questioned the attribution of the title ‘leader of the free world’ to the United States. In this Netflix-like season of dramatic events, the world is no longer one indivisible construct capable of being led by one leader.
Without a doubt, it cannot be described as free, either, and for reasons that are capable of rational explanation, America, or its current leader, no longer leads it.
Expectedly, as the decibels of war became deafening, so did its corollary, propaganda. For, as war or its mongers admit, without the hastily stitched narratives that must be constantly peddled on television, justifying war becomes extremely difficult.
Deceiving people for the purposes of popularising unjustified wars has got a nice name and a long history. It is called “winning hearts and minds”. Contrived by Gerald Templer, a British General during the Malayan Emergency that lasted for twelve years from 1948, it has since sustained the cavalier attitude of suits on television in god-like games, proselytising on who is an enemy and who is a terrorist.
Often, as the world has learnt from many other conflicts, the instincts of the White House and its advisory occupants are irreconcilably varied with the survival instincts of the Republic. No matter. By now, every US voter should be vaguely familiar with the aphorism that in the US, whoever you vote for, you get John McCain!
The sobering reminder of the hypocrisy that drives an entire nation has painfully played out at the Memorial of the late Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Snr. Every former US President who spoke at the memorial in Chicago sounded humane, considerate, globally accountable and empathetic to the suffering of others.
Sadly, however, among them, there were too many wars during their incumbency to square up with the intellectual solidarity displayed at that moment of mourning and the celebration of the life of a fallen giant.
The problem must reside somewhere in the gilded halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As soon as they reach the top of the stairs, the commanding boldness of the white -lettered admonition cannot be missed. “Leave your umbrella and your humanity at the door”.
On the oval table of the Oval Office, there is a small piece of paper clearly marked Order of Business. They are only two. The first is compulsory. Expand the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) so as to keep the world in constant terror. The second, however, is a multiple-choice buffet. Choose any of the available wars below to achieve Assignment number 1.
To the extent that there has been great effort made for peddling the perception that Iran is just another expendable piece on America’s geopolitical chess board, could there be something else that so much effort seeks to obfuscate? Truth is, this war has exposed a lot of cupboards with a lot of skeletons in them, young and rotting, in a lot of places.
Perhaps, in the rapacious and uncivilised ways of kinetic wars, they may expose the fragility of these cupboards and reveal to all the Palestinians the hidden energy that has been facilitating their genocide for all this time.
Someone, or some immutability of hard fact, will eventually inform the Gang of Eight responsible for the war narrative in the White House and its varied strands, that there is a war taking place in West Asia where the US has committed significant military capability, ballistic munitions and naval assets.
Any distraction, however infinitesimal, may be fatal. Whether it is Cuba or Colombia or Israel’s next theatre of conflict, Turkey, does not matter. Besides, the escalation of war, or war escalators, tends to lead nowhere. Ask both the Vietnam and Afghanistan war veterans!
Ayatollah Sayyid Al Hosseini Khamenei did not conceal his movements nor hide in a fortified bunker, even knowing full well that the fury of the US-Israel joint operation targeted his person, in the name of regime change.
A day before he was assassinated, he dedicated his life to his country in its war against foreign occupation, either directly or by proxy, espousing its right to exist and, like all other sovereignties, determine its scientific, economic and spiritual destiny.
But wait! Is this not the same Ayatollah who issued a fatwa against the development of a nuclear bomb, whose proscription was maintained with irritated reluctance by his compatriots until his death? Why would Operation Epic Fury be directed at the one leader who ensured that no nuclear bomb was developed, the very objective which Donald J. Trump insists is the raison d’ etre of the operation?
Was this not the same Ayatollah who spiritually guided his countrymen and countrywomen during the turbulence of nuclear negotiations with the Collective West, which led to the signing of the JCPOA under President Obama, thereby allowing the IAEA supervision over Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities?
Perhaps the reason for Operation Epic Fury is another layer of deception. For indeed, one of the first policy directives of Donald J. Trump in 2017 was to rescind the JCPOA!
But then again, Trump and his strategy of statecraft represent an epitome of deception. If Trump enters into negotiations with any country, it behoves that country to watch out! It happened to Maduro.
When Trump called Putin, the CIA triangulated the coordinates of the call and bombed his residence in Valdai. It happened to the Iranians in 2025 when all the nuclear scientists who were negotiating with the US were decapitated, as well as a significant number of top generals of the Iranian Defence Forces.
However, in deference to the wiles of war and its unpredictability, there are bound to be casualties, varied and many. Whilst it had become apparent that Ayatollah Khamenei resigned to the fate of supreme sacrifice, his violent demise became the ultimate justification for the resistance by the invigorated patriots of that country.
Mark Rutte is so fond of President Donald Trump that he calls him ‘daddy’. The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and currently the Secretary-General of NATO, is pining for war, seeking as he does, the formal involvement of the NATO alliance so they can attack Iran.
The idea is to invoke Article 5 on the ruse that an attack on any of the US military assets in West Asia is an attack on US sovereignty. The world watches keenly! He may or may not succeed.
Mark Rutte should not be surprised that every other country on earth is on notice. With adequate opportunity for contemplation, he would join hands in prayer for a miracle that should spare the Danish and their colony, Greenland, from the insatiable grasp of an empire or emperor, as the case may be, that has lost its sense of moral rectitude. His persuasive genius of linking things that must be attacked by NATO, shall be desperately sought after.
Trump is not unique in his pursuit of senseless wars. The template is simple and is an all-American invention. When in trouble at home, start foreign wars. Who can doubt his domestic troubles, what with the Epstein class breathing heavy on him to quash this charade once and for all?
The problem is that the Epstein crisis, unlike any scandalous crisis that predated it, is not a whisper or a conspiratorial construct by his political detractors. This is a three-million-page strong scandal, with millions more being erased or discovered, depending on who the eraser or the discoverer works for.
The gods of war have spoken again. In January of 2025, they bombarded Puntland, a breakaway province of the Republic of Somalia. There was the 12-Day War in June of that first year of his second coming. This was followed by an aerial bombardment of targets in Sokoto, Northern Nigeria, on Christmas Day of that year.
2026 saw the killing of one hundred Venezuelans in the course of kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores.
Enter Operation Epic Fury against Iran, the most coveted war by the US neocons and Israel. Even before the war has revealed its worst face, as it is wont, the peripatetic DJT is now looking over the Caribbean.
Cuba is next. But first…!
* Amb. Bheki Gila esq. is a Barrister-at-Law.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.