Anachronistic, post Christian West: Even liberals re-embrace Old Testament manifest destiny that is the guiding force behind America's worst behavior

From:
Who benefits from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan?
(Occidental Observer) -- by Tom Sunic --

Instead of raising the question “who benefits from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq,” one might just as well ask the question: Who was the instigator of these two wars? The latter question does not sound very specific and provides a treasure trove for various conspiracy theoreticians. Wild speculations about the true motives of these wars are of no interest for us despite the fact that some of these conspiratorial allegations may be true. What we wish to find out is how these two wars were justified from the standpoint of international law and how they were legitimized by public discourse.

By the way, conspiracy theories, often ascribed to proverbial right-wingers, are not only the hallmark of right-wingers. The ruling class in the West does not shun using different types of conspiratorial vocabulary whose prime purpose is to demonize and criminalize the political foe. In addition, the liberal system resorts frequently to conspiracy theories in order to justify its military interventions. Months before the invasion of Iraq, many American politicians, including the media had in all seriousness ranted about the “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” It soon turned out that the Iraqis had no such weapons, which was later conceded by the very same politicians...

It is important to analyze how the liberal politicians and their warmongers manipulate public discourse. On the one hand we are bombarded by a litany of horrific labels, such as “war on terror”, “Islamo-fascism”, and “Al Qaeda terrorists”; on the other, we must daily stay tuned to their sentimental utterings such as the “fight for human rights,” “multicultural tolerance”, or “freedom for Afghan women.” The German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not sound credible at all when she recently rendered homage to fallen German soldiers and the enduring commitment of German troops in Afghanistan, “which serves the interest of our country.” The entire address by Chancellor Merkel was teeming with theatrical verbiage, better known in Germany as “cemented language” (Betonsprache), once commonly used in former communist East Germany.

Regardless of the hyper-moralistic lexicon used by the Western ruling class, empirical evidence regarding the true motives for the US commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan is very sparse if not completely absent.

A Balance Sheet

The beneficiaries of these two wars were, at least at the beginning of the hostilities, US neoconservatives and the state of Israel. But it is wrong to blame them only. To understand the deep-seated motives of U.S. foreign policy, one has to delve into American political theology — the conviction of many American politicians of their country’s divine chosenness. The architects and beneficiaries of these wars are motivated by secular political consequences, but the root causes of these wars have a theological dimension. These two cannot be separated. Uri Avnery, an Israeli leftist writer, remarked some time ago that “Israel is a small America, the USA is a huge Israel.”

Sure, it goes without saying that an Israeli journalist, but also many left-leaning Jewish American scholars, such as Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein can easily get away with such an anti-Israeli rhetoric. Its is questionable what type of grammar, let alone language structure a non-Jewish intellectual, or some “right-winger” would need to use in order to express the same judgments.

Over one hundred years US politicians and their advisors have tapped into the Old Testament in quest of their notion of the political. Many American politicians have adopted their political conceptualization from the ancient Hebrew thought. One hundred and fifty years ago it was the ante bellum secessionist South which became the symbol of absolute evil; later, at the beginning of the 20th century, the symbol of the absolute evil became the “bad German” and shortly afterwards the proverbial “Nazi.” During the Cold War it was temporarily the role of Communists in the Soviet Union to play the bad guys. As there are today no more Communists, no more Fascists, no more Southern Segregationists, some substitute had to be urgently looked for. So for many American Bible do-gooders the Ersatz was to be found among the so-called Islamo-fascists, or Islamic terrorists.

Soon this new category of absolute evil expanded to include the Palestinian Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah and “rogue states”, like Iraq, Syria and Iran. Geopolitically, these states, including Israel, are of no importance to America’s security whatsoever. But America's metaphysical ties to Israel make many American politicians perceive Israeli's enemies as their own.
It is wrong, therefore, to solely blame the Israelis and US neoconservatives, or for that matter the Jews for these two wars. They were or may still be the beneficiaries, but much of the popular support for this “make-the-world-safe-for-democracy” political theology comes from the millions of Christian-Zionists.

Their spirit of chosenness has had its offshoot in a secular ideology of human rights, taken now for granted as something humane and indispensable by the entire world. Yet it is in the name of human rights that the worst mass crimes are often committed. It is in the name of “human rights” that many non-conformist intellectuals can be easily shut up. When a self-proclaimed democrat talks about human rights, one should raise a critical question: “What happens then to those who do not fit into the category of humans or democrats?” Logically, they must be tagged as beasts and animals and therefore, cannot be re-educated, but must be physically wiped out or shut down. Let us try to picture what was crossing the mind of young American pilots who flew over Cologne and Hamburg in the summer of 1943. They had no remorse firebombing these cities below. They viewed the creatures down below as the embodiment of the absolute evil, as the most dangerous beasts that needed to be exterminated for good.

Christian-Zionists bear some of the responsibility for these two wars. Their self-serving idea of some special divine election does not lead to better understanding among different nations and different races, but to endless and futile wars...MORE...LINK