Stop wars disguised as peace missions

(Stijn Swinnen, Unsplash)

This article was written for The European Sting by one of our readers, Mr. Tommaso Merlo. The opinions expressed within reflect only the writer’s views and not necessarily The European Sting’s position on the issue.

European soldiers are still in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, but we only remember them when a bomb explodes, and they return home in coffins. Their dead is in the news just a few hours. We get used to everything, even to useless blood.

A sad routine. A tragedy happens and then politicians begins their usual procession of clichés. They are all dismayed and they express their condolences while waiting for the next explosion. Irritating hypocrisy. The US-led wars of recent decades have solved nothing. They have made the world more insecure, poorer and they are the main cause of mass migration.

A total failure. Instead of solving problems, wars have aggravated them and brought them within the European borders including terrorism. In recent decades, Westerners have destroyed and starved entire regions of the planet, then they have always refused to pay the consequences for it. Irritating hypocrisy and it would be time for Europe to at least face politically years of self-harm wars disguised as peace missions.

If it does not begin to analyze reality and discuss it, nothing can ever change. European hypocrisy is unsustainable. When new wars break out, Europe act in the shadows, as if it is afraid of the consequences of its actions. As if Europe fears hurting public opinion with the truth about the brutality of its military operations. Eu members often argue between them, but military cooperation is one of the most effective.

Europe invests a huge amount of public resources in the production and purchase of armaments and has equipped itself with a very expensive and advanced integrated army. Huge economic interests. Massive impact on the international scenario but information from the war front is scarce and packaged nicely to became digestible to the general public. Even the news of the dead now takes a few hours on the mainstream.

The strategy is always the same, to sell war as essential for our security and a sort of humanitarian intervention to build a better world. Irritating hypocrisy. A new element makes today’s wars disguised as peace missions even more ridiculous. In countries like Iraq and Lebanon, citizens are protesting against corruption and to be able to give their children something to eat.

After decades of useless wars, they want to get back on their feet. Alone. The only way to do it. Years of wars have destroyed their society and economy and they have impoverished them. All promises of the invaders have remained such. War is an illusion. A crazy one. And so Lebanese and Iraqis take to the streets while western soldiers watch them confused with a machine gun in their hands.

As if their big bosses hadn’t warned them that the war has failed again, and those poor people have more important things to think about. Build a decent life. But even those western soldiers are victims of politics moving them as pawns on the international chessboard. From Washington passing through Brussels, they have always told us the joke of military missions abroad for our security, stabilization and even peace. But the result is exactly the opposite.

The explosion of world terrorism and therefore levels of insecurity never recorded before, severe international instability with wars that follow one after another, entire countries reduced to rubble and biblical exodus of desperate people.

A total failure. Yet European politicians does not even mention to stop continuing to throw away billions of public money in missions and armaments that are ruining the world and causing problems that come back against European citizens. If there is a political theme on which the new European Parliament could show signs of life and discontinuity, this is precisely this. After years of jokes to the public opinion, after years of useless deaths and failures, it is time to shed light on this scourge.

The new Europe has the duty to deal politically with the hypocrisy of war disguised as a peace mission.