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The chaos and instability created by the US war machine over the last fifteen years, particularly in the Middle East, has reached catastrophic levels. Author and journalist Patrick Cockburn calls the present moment “the age of disintegration.” In Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, millions of people are on the brink of famine thanks to a US-supported bombing campaign led by the richest and most tyrannical country in the region, Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, Israel’s colonial project in Palestine grinds on with the unconditional support of the American taxpayer. Obama recently handed Israel $38 billion in military aid, dooming Palestinians to another decade of suffocating repression, ethnic cleansing, and periodic slaughter.
Fifteen years after 9/11, the United States is still bombing Afghanistan in a war that’s been largely forgotten despite Afghanistan producing the second largest number of refugees in the world. The United States is bombing Iraq again as well. This time the enemy is ISIS, the murderous death cult that rose from the ashes of the 2003 US invasion and occupation, which killed at least a million Iraqis and unleashed sectarian civil wars that have plunged the region into madness.
In 2011, our leaders insisted Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was about to massacre thousands of civilians and only Western intervention could stop him. But a recently released study by the UK Parliament determined that the looming massacre was a myth based on faulty intelligence and that the real motivation behind the intervention was securing Western economic and political interests in the region. Even by these standards, it was an utter failure. Thousands were killed and since then the country has devolved into a lawless haven for extremist groups, including ISIS.
ISIS has also made its way into Syria, where US forces are bombing the group while simultaneously arming and funding an Islamist-dominated insurgency against Russian-backed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Back in Washington, the armchair war hawks are pushing for a confrontation with Russia, just one of the proxy wars that has engulfed Syria since the uprising in 2011.
The broad pattern is clear. Our military adventures since 9/11 have been nothing short of disastrous. Millions of lives have been shattered and an endless stream of refugees is now trapped between borders and drowning at sea.
Throughout its history the United States has continually engaged in both overt and covert warmaking. But unlike the wars of the past, Washington’s incoherent “war on terror” appears endless. So far, the US government has spent a staggering $5 trillion on this war while maintaining some eight hundred military bases that touch every corner of the globe.
Wars are still waged to secure the interests of ruling elites and make the world safe for capitalism. But elite interests are no longer limited to looting resources, crushing democracy, and pacifying resistance. These days more war is an objective, with defense industry giants prospering from both ends of the crisis. There are more refugees today fleeing war and persecution than at any time since World War II. In the process, war profiteers — like BAE Systems, Thales, and Lockheed Martin — have become refugee profiteers as well, lobbying for contracts to militarize western borders, warehouse migrants, and build complex surveillance systems that keep those fleeing their bombs from reaching safety.
But these militarized borders haven’t prevented instability from migrating to the United States — instability follows insecurity and want. In the richest country in the world, over fifteen million children go to bed hungry every night and millions more struggle to get enough to eat, entire communities are poisoned by dirty drinking water, student debt is stunting a generation, the middle class is shrinking, and police look like occupying armies to the millions of poor and working people. And this decaying neoliberal order is fueling a resurgent far right that feeds off of anti-Muslim and anti-refugee hysteria.
On a brighter note, there’s also a resurgent left, which swelled during the campaign of Bernie Sanders, whose demands for economic justice resonated with millions of people. Unfortunately, with a few minor exceptions, Sanders’s foreign policy vision was vague on details and failed to challenge America’s ongoing costly wars that, like Wall Street banks, benefit the billionaire class to the detriment of everyone else. That has to change.
America’s disastrous foreign adventures help drive right-wing extremism domestically and abroad while enriching those at the top. Consider Islamophobia. Islamophobia is about more than just reactionary hate and bigotry; it’s also a tool for legitimizing a US presence in the Middle East. That’s why weapons companies like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon are among its key funders. Meaningful opposition to Islamophobia demands principled rejection of the bipartisan US war machine that profits from it.
It’s crucial that the socialist left offer not only a critical intervention against American militarism, but also a broader vision — for a better country and a better world. First and foremost, the Left needs to take a clear stand against US military interventions. They do not serve humanitarian purposes. The country that is starving Yemen cannot possibly save Syria. It’s also important to acknowledge that while extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda do pose serious threats in the lawless areas they control, fifteen years of war have demonstrated that religious fundamentalism cannot be defeated militarily. Bombing these groups has created nothing but chaos, desperation, and poverty — the conditions in which fundamentalism thrives.
As socialists, our goal should be to reduce and eventually end the presence of US military forces abroad, quit arming and enabling tyrants, end the endless wars, prioritize diplomacy, and turn our bloated defense budget toward meeting people’s basic needs at home and abroad. The stability of the world depends on it.
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