Thirst for the East

It seems like there is no capitalism that lives on without war, without hunger, without exceptions. The world is about to see how the war in Iraq is being repeated in the exact same way, only now in Syria. When Obama announced that the only reason Syria would make them cross the red line with military intervention would be if the government of that country used chemical weapons, he was actually saying that he would attack. But wasn’t that the same pretext that was used to start the war in Iraq? However, to date, no proof of chemical weapons has been found anywhere in Iraq, nor has the person responsible for ordering the armed attack been brought to justice.

But, are there really chemical weapons in Syria or again are we standing before a play — not necessarily a gambit — on the board where they move the geopolitical and geostrategic interests of the world? It is true that now the U.S. has a more complicated case than that of Iraq because among those who want to overthrow the Syrian government are super-adversaries of the Pentagon, such as al-Qaida. The motive is the same, but the anti-Syrian protagonists aren’t exactly allies, or at least not in the eyes of the world.

Oil, gas and/or other resources will continue to be the real and underlying motives underneath the rugs of wars like this one, but I get the impression that the media coverage of the war on TV news channels, newspapers, the radio and Hollywood movies, where there are plenty of weapons and explosions, help to lure the citizens of the world to the bait of justifying wars and maintaining one of the most profitable industries on the planet: arms. “Wars, like cars, are sold by lies; they are marketing operations and the public opinion is the target,” Eduardo Galeano said recently.

As the people of the world, we cannot continue to be accomplices of wars that disintegrate entire nations, that cause profound uprooting, that separate the world so deceptively between good and bad, and that make us take a few steps backward as a civilization. We understand that we are in a democratic world, but we also know that the democracies are not democratic simply because people vote and that citizenship isn’t citizenship just because one has an ID. That is undeniable. But we also know that there are degrees of democracy or democracies that know of tyranny. The flag of democracy and liberty has been used by nations as a pretext for military intervention and to devastate entire villages, without looking at the depth and importance of prior ethnic, cultural and territorial problems.

Syria is torn between Assad, whose government has imposed blood and fire for decades, and al-Qaida, who has also terrorized the population. True. If there are chemical weapons, we will see foaming mouths, cold bodies and thousands of dead people. But if there aren’t any, we will see bombs falling uselessly upon thousands of innocent lives, which will be replaced the next day by warlords. On one side the U.S., NATO, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. On the other side, world peace is at stake once again.