June 6, 2017 at 12:40 pm
Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi
(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — So-called reputable media outlets like the Washington Post want you to believe that Donald Trump has a large, Russian-owned closet full of unspeakable skeletons (despite having produced very little raw evidence for these assertions to date).
If you want to see real skeletons that will throw the entire neoconservative narrative into disarray, however, look no further than U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May.
In her former post as Home Secretary, fighters from a group known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who thrived in Manchester — and were cultivated and used by the British MI5 for more than 20 years — were allowed to travel without question across Europe in order to battle Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (and then join the insurgency in Syria).
Yet May was the first person to cry foul when one of these so-called “Manchester boys” turned around and bit the innocent civilians living under the hand that has fed them for over 20 years.
For the alt-right and Islamophobic and xenophobic commentators, Muammar Gaddafi was instrumental in keeping a lid on migrants wanting to travel from Africa to Europe, particularly through Italy.
It is for this reason that as a NATO member, Italy was so heavily involved in the bombing campaign against Gaddafi in 2011. However, Italy became involved not because they wanted to overthrow Gaddafi, but because they had a vested interested in the outcome of the conflict. They couldn’t stop NATO and the U.S., and at the same time, they understood all too well what was to come after his downfall and opted to have at least some influence on the operations.
Not surprisingly, since the fall of Gaddafi, over two million Libyan children are out of school, firearms and heavy weaponry have spread like wildfire across the region (including to the terror group Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria), and refugees and migrants have been flowing out of Libya like a commodity. Libya is also now the marketplace of a lucrative slave trade operation.
U.S.-U.K. policy to remove Gaddafi from power has sown the seeds for a rampantly Islamophobic president to take the seat in the White House, and yet Trump’s policies have been largely similar to that of Obama since he took office.
Theresa May knows all this, and yet her solution to this problem is more war — more arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the country responsible for investing heavily in spreading ISIS’ extreme interpretation of Islam. Saudi Arabia is also committing war crimes in Yemen and, not to mention, is one of ISIS’ core sponsors).
Just days ago, the British Home Office announced that it may not publish a terrorist funding report commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron, amid concerns that it focuses too heavily on Saudi Arabia.
Do these people care about terrorist activity or not? Do they care about rooting out the causes of terrorism or not?
Now, there has been yet another terrorist attack in London. Theresa May wants us to believe that those who commit these brutal attacks are evil Muslims who simply hate our values and our “democracy.” Apparently, Britain’s foreign policy strategy has been taken right out of the equation.
But as the Telegraph reported, pro-ISIS social media users have already claimed that the recent London attacks were revenge for the RAF’s “love from Manchester” airstrike, which was a response to the terrorist attacks in Manchester.
Does this justify the attackers’ response of directly targeting innocent civilians? Of course not. But if the RAF sends another strike, this time engraved with the words “with love from London,” and ISIS-inspired individuals retaliate with another attack on British soil – it doesn’t take a genius to see that this back-and-forth tennis match between state-sanctioned murderers and lone fanatics does nothing to enhance Britain’s security.
Further, why is the U.K. even bombing another country illegally, thousands of miles away from its own country, and then crying foul whenever there is retaliation on their own soil?
Even if it did have any legal basis, who would trust these politicians to truly be concerned with eradicating the threat of ISIS while they’re cozying up to Saudi Arabia, a country that directly supports numerous terrorist organizations — including ISIS? As the Independent’s Robert Fisk put it:
“Jeremy Corbyn – not, I have to admit, one of my heroes – got it right. May needs to talk to us about the ‘difficult conversations’ she must have with the Saudis and their Gulf allies, not to Muslim British citizens. But she is too gutless, too cowardly, to deal with the Gulf Arab autocrats to whom she sells weapons, whose principal Arabian dictator, the head-chopper-in-chief, is so worthy of our mourning that May’s predecessor lowered the British flag to half-mast on his death.”
May is right about one thing: “terrorism breeds terrorism.” Yes, May. Your terror in the Middle East and North Africa has bred terrorism. Syria was once ranked the 75th most peaceful country – even following the reign of terror that George W. Bush unleashed in Syria’s neighboring country. Prior to the U.K.’s assault on Libya, Libya had the highest standard of living out of any country in Africa. These two countries have descended into chaos as a result of Western foreign policy, which seeks to serve Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.
Iran – of all countries – is the only country talking any sense on this topic, as it warned Western powers that in order to “uproot terror,” the West should “address the root causes as well as the main financial and ideological sources of extremism and violence, which are clear to everyone.”
If you want to prevent terrorism, stop financing and facilitating the movement of fighters when it suits your hidden foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. If you want to prevent terrorism, stop arming the most radical Islamic nation on earth and helping them commit war crimes in the Arab world’s poorest country.
Most importantly, if you want to stop terrorism, stop engaging in it. The U.S.-led coalition is killing civilians by the thousands in Iraq and Syria. U.S. Air Force whistleblowers have already warned that civilian deaths from the U.S.-led airstrikes in the Middle East are the most effective recruitment tool for groups like ISIS.
Theresa May knows this. Donald Trump knows this. Nearly every media outlet knows this.
Yet nobody has the courage to put an end to this horror. As Fisk explains:
“Because such a policy needs real courage. It’s easier to threaten UK Muslims with ‘embarrassing conversations’ than to threaten our ‘moderate,’ autocratic allies. For that would indeed need courage.
“Courage needs courage, as our Prime Minister might say. But that, Theresa May does not have.”
For full sources: http://theantimedia.org/theresa-may-terrorism-saudi-arabia/