There was a study in April, 2024 that showed the IDF attacks between 7th October and 22nd November of 2023 on hospitals, schools and water infrastructure in Gaza were not “random.” The IDF response to the 7th October terrorist attack was absolute. Revenge on a people. Sympathy for the Israeli government concluded, “there needed to be a response.” The Palestinians, most of them youth, were decided as guilty. It had been stated on numerous occasions, because decades earlier they had elected Hamas. There had been no elections since. The Hamas regime needed to go, if the people won’t do it. They will be killed for it.
The terrorist killers of the October attacks, had come from Gaza. Any in that region, thus are ‘understood’ to be guilty, responsible or at least should be killed and punished for the deeds of their familiars. After the September, 2001 attacks on the United States, those responsible had come from the Middle East, mostly Saudi Arabia. This in turn led to the invasion of Iraq, none of the terrorists had come from Iraq, it was in the Middle East. Therefore the response was, understood, justified. Iraq should be punished, the regime of Saddam Hussein to be toppled.
In the wake of the 2001 attacks, the sentiment was that, “they” deserved it. The collective “they” being Muslims, the near Orientals. The brown folk from a particular region. It was the return of the Crusades, a clash of Civilisations. Despite a history of harmony and co-existence, the fundamentalist view was that there is no co-existence. Only revenge, hatred and the imperial ambitions of theology and ideology. Convert or die, Deus Vault!, Jihad! Democracy or Die, etc
The 2023 attacks invoked a similar self-righteous need for revenge. Those who had attacked that October, like those who had attacked in September in 2001, did it with a sense of self-righteousness. Vengeance. Hatred. They had either been wronged, suffered injustice or were motivated by witnessing such. The innocent to be avenged, their innocent. In turn, they would kill the innocent of another group.
“Anyone who tries to destroy our villages and cities, then we are going to destroy their villages and cities. Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy. Anyone who kills our civilians, then we are going to kill their civilians. “ – Osama Bin Laden, 24th November 2002.
“The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.” – Donald Trump, 3rd December, 2015.
The US attacks on Iraq were not limited to military or government facilities. The people of Iraq were punished. The dictator Hussein was captured, then executed. Chaos and carnage savaged the nation. It has still not recovered. The region has since experienced instability, terrorism, war and a decline in the quality of life for those there. It is unhealthy and dangerous for the people in the region, more so than what they had suffered beneath the dictatorship of Hussein. Such is regime change.
Numerous media outlets have reported that around 377,000 Gazans have “disappeared,” since 7th October, 2023. Likely dead. The victims of a policy that is genocide. A widespread punishment of the people in the region. The call for regime change or that the innocent are killed because Hamas are using them as shields, or unintentionally during the fighting, has been countless times proven false. It continues on as an intentional mass murder campaign. The goal is regime change, to remove Hamas. It’s also collective punishment and the intentional removal, replacement and expulsion of the people from the region. Extermination included.
After spending his first few decades as the pariah mastermind of much the world’s terrorism, the self proclaimed anti-colonist Qaddafi of Libya transformed himself into a senior statesman. Mellowing to a degree in the late 1990s and into the 2000s, he no longer had ambitions of possessing weapons of mass destruction or supporting revolutionaries, AKA terrorists. Instead, along with his sons he was looking to transform Libya into a modern and more liberal nation. He was a tyrant, a rapist, torturer and oppressor. What followed was terrifying for Libya. Qaddafi was regime changed in the aftermath of the Arab spring in 2011.
Libya fell into carnage. Slavery and mass rapes savaged the nation. Life beneath the tyrant seemingly far more beneficial than the war and misery of modern Libya. War lords and murder pirates directly and indirectly supported by the Western nations rule with unstable injustice. Thousands have died since.
Then there is carnage inflicted on Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen or Syria and the many other victims of foreign policy as it is expressed by the exceptional nations. The victims of war and policy are insignificant and never considered by the executioners of such policies. The victims are not even counted properly. It will take decades to calculate just how many are actually dead. Unmarked graves, lost bones in the desert and the refugees who have fled, make it hard for those who count the dead to ever know. The missing are grieved all the same.
The US along with it’s ally, Israel have attacked Iran. For the US, it’s claimed, the goal was to destroy the regimes ability to produce nuclear WMD’s. For the nuclear WMD armed Israel the goal seems to be regime change. The claim that Iran has been or is, producing “nukes” comes from the same unreliable sources. Them being those who use their claims to justify their attacks. For them and the powerless, that is enough to validate attacks on Iran and turn them into the present pariah nation. The population of Iran, to suffer.
From his book, Night of Power – The Betrayal of the Middle East, Robert Fisk shares a testimony from an official in the Anglo-US Iraq Survey Group, tasked with finding Iraq’s WMD’s,
“We used to go to the interrogation rooms at Abu Ghrahib and ask for a particular prisoner. After about forty minutes, the Americans brought in this hooded guy, shuffling along, shackled hand and foot. He had a big beard. We asked where he received his education. He repeatedly said: ‘Mosul’. Then he said he’d left school at fourteen – remember, this guy is supposed to be a missile scientist. We said; ‘We know you’ve got a PhD and went to the Sorbonne – we’d like you to help us with information about Saddam’s missile project.’ But I said to myself: “This guy doesn’t know anything about fucking missiles.” Then it turned out he had a different name from the man we’d asked for – he’d been picked up on the road four months earlier – he didn’t know why…It was a complete farce. The incompetence of the US military was astounding, criminal.”
Executions of officials and suspects continued under these conditions. The prior regime of Saddam Hussein had been a vile example of might is right. For the people of Iraq, the might was all the more reckless and violent in the decades that followed.
That is the nature of the evidence raised against Iran now. The validity and credibility comes from power itself. No evidence is needed. The enemy exists to validate power. Those, them, they, the different, the oriental are viewed as or, treated like they are not human beings. It is an exceptional outlook, chauvinism of the mighty. There is no opposition that can argue with any reason, expose the hypocrisy or seek a rationale. It’s religion, a belief in their absolute might, that is what makes them right. The Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found long ago, they keep getting elected time and time again.
