Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

We have to end the permanent wars

Imperialist hypocrisy Al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta, killing at 70 people.We should do something about it. Al-Asad regime and its allies have been responsible for 93% of the detahs in Syria.  Mr Al-Assad, you can carry on killing, but you shouldn't use chemical weapons. Use other weapons and we will continue looking the other way. After all, although we hate the Russians and the Iranians, we stil prefer you to the 'jihadists' and 'terrorists', you are 'secualr', and you and your wife are 'Western-educated liberals'. Otherwise, you know, that we are resposnible for saving people since time immemorial, and we will not stand by and watch. In fact, we don't want to attack you. Our real objective is Putin and the Russian state. You know, Ukraine, geo-politics, that poisoning thing in Salisbury, etc.

In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies for his country. Yet the civilian deaths we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every year because of land mines? Or collateral damage in a drone strike? “Dropping cluster bombs from the air is not only less repugnant: it is somehow deemed, by Western people at least, to be morally superior,” says British psychologist Jacqueline Rose. “Why dying with your victim should be seen as a greater sin than saving yourself is unclear.” The colonial West had created a two-tier hierarchy that privileged itself at the expense of “the Rest.” The Enlightenment had preached the equality of all human beings, yet Western policy in the developing world had often adopted a double standard so that ...