The world has gotten a look into the abyss, and doesn’t like what it saw staring back.
As Iran’s General Qassem Suleimani was arriving on a mission of peace — having been invited to Iraq to help mediate relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia — he was brutally ambushed by an American drone on his way from the Baghdad Airport. A leader of Iraq’s own anti-ISIS militias was killed in the same blast.
The Trump administration’s flurry of lies was so brazen as to be a deliberate challenge to the world. “We done it and we’re glad. Whatcha gonna do about it?” The U.S. threatened Iran with nuclear devastation if Iran struck back. People around the world were glued to their TV sets as the official commentators droned on. World War III breaking out was a real possibility. Even if Iran were “turned into a parking lot,” Iran made clear that it would go down shooting and an increasingly fragile imperial economy would go down with it.
The world pushed back.
Congress complained that — as much as Suleimani deserved to die for all the American blood he allegedly had on his hands — they should have been invited to the party first. But Europe refused to praise Trump for murdering a foreign leader, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was “disappointed.” The Iraqi government promptly demanded that the U.S. remove all its forces from the country, and the U.S. is now saying “Hell no, we won’t go!”
Most importantly, the American people — once again characterized as slack-jawed yahoos who would rally around their president in a frenzy of patriotic fervor — did not play their assigned role. According to an ABC/Ipsos poll 56% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the assassination while 43% approved, and 52% thought that killing Suleimani made the U.S. less safe, as opposed to 25% thinking they were more safe. Even 52% of Republicans are concerned about the possibility of entering into another war in the Middle East.
The Iranians did shoot back, hitting two U.S. bases in Iraq with missiles. Despite Trump having threatened to hit 52 Iranian targets if Iran lifted a finger, the U.S. held its fire and settled for hitting the Iranians with some more sanctions.
The media are now working to re-frame the entire affair as some elaborate kabuki dance, nothing to see here, kid, move along. Indeed, the American people did not fill the streets in protest. The Europeans are shaken but not stirred. Israel is remarkably quiet (Iran had announced that the Israeli city of Haifa was in its cross-hairs). Everyone pretends that things have returned to normal. But everyone knows this is only the calm before the next storm.
Underneath all the choreography, the world is undergoing a significant tectonic shift. Yes, centrifugal forces towards breaking free from U.S. hegemony have been in irrevocable motion for some time, but this latest quake did much more than just rattle the china cabinet.
Trump has ripped the bloody mask away from not only himself, but from the whole New World Order as well. The U.S. is forced to rule by naked power alone. As they say, Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day, but ruling by naked power alone without the veneer of legitimacy is the beginning of the end of the Empire, when in the words of Roger Waters, we have “wrested technology’s sword from the hand of the war lords.”
The Green Party stands with the people of the Middle East.
Speaking for the Green Party of Florida (GPFL), party Co-Chair Robin Harris says:
“We strongly condemn the assassination of General Suleimani by the United States. It was outright murder. Trump’s claim that this attack was done to protect American lives is a heinous lie! Its only purpose was to shore up the oligarchs and imperialists.
“As a Black woman who observes daily genocide and the militant occupation of our neighborhoods, I stand in solidarity with the people of Iran and Iraq. We applaud the efforts of Black Alliance for Peace, Code Pink, and every other organization fighting for peace and justice. Finally, we demand the withdrawal of troops in all countries that the United States has an illegal presence in.”
LeBeau Kpadenou, GPFL Co-Chair, adds:
“We reject attempts to lay all this at the feet of Donald Trump, or at the feet of the Republican Party alone. Not when the supposedly peace-loving Democrats fully backed increasing last year’s U.S. military budget by $22 billion more than had been asked for.
“This only emphasizes the need for an independent socialist party. We are the party that calls on the U.S. to withdraw from the Middle East. We are the party that demands respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of all nations.
“And we join with all the people of the world in saying, let there be peace upon this earth.”
