Trump’s comments about killing millions of Afghans expose the immorality of western foreign policy

The ‘enemy’ is always an abstract concept and so who really cares if millions of civilians get slaughtered in the process of war?

Apocalyptic-grade stupidity comes easily to Donald Trump, but his latest words about the ongoing war in Afghanistan were as monumentally macabre as they were moronic. In comments filmed in the Oval Office during a meeting with Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan on Monday, the commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces suggested that the near two decades long conflict could be resolved with a Muslim holocaust.

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan could be “wiped off the face of the Earth”, Trump blustered. He first said that killing 10 million people out of a population of just under 35 million would take 10 days, and then a week.

Given that there are currently, at most, 200,000 Taliban-led fighters involved in the insurgency in Afghanistan, this would mean at least nine and a half million innocent men, women, and children being killed if Trump went down this “route”, as he called his genocidal strategy for victory.

Trump qualified his plan by saying that he was far more interested in extricating himself from the conflict, but even that claim rings very hollow. The longest war in America’s history started with a US invasion in 2001 when a neocon administration wanted to be seen to be doing something following the horrific 9/11 attacks.

This desire for continual offensive action persists, with Trump’s closest military advisers outlining compelling reasons for keeping the war in Afghanistan going indefinitely. Never mind that the so-called War on Terror, a catch-all conflict enabler, has claimed millions of lives, and led directly to an inordinately sharp rise in terrorism. It is a perfect vehicle for the most ruthless type of speculator.

Afghanistan – as with Iraq, Palestine and Yemen – is a place where the west’s military-industrial complex can derive massive profits from a state of permanent conflict. Those involved in arms sales and testing make billions of dollars, not just through supplying conventional armies, but also the related security industry that is now one of the biggest businesses in the world.

The Israeli war machine is one of the best funded in the world because many foreign-policy hawks consider the never-ending and wholly asymmetrical combat against Palestine to be eminently desirable. The latest western tech assists with illegal landgrabs and occupation, and then it is turned on Palestinian civilians and their property at the first sign of resistance. The Palestinian arsenal ranges from outdated ordnance to slings – the Israelis are confident that they will always win their eternal war.

As well as selling arms to Israel, Britain has a particularly cynical record in Afghanistan. Since joining the US-led alliance fighting the Taliban it has managed to portray the war there as somehow noble and important too, without ever really explaining why.

The Afghan theatre was where Prince Harry, the erstwhile feckless royal playboy, was filmed and pictured in a PR exercise that tried to turn him into the “Warrior Prince”. Others who have boasted about their days making mincemeat of Afghan tribesmen using high-tech weapons systems include politician Johnny Mercer. The Conservative MP has actually suggested that the kind of qualities displayed by combatants should provide lessons in how to deliver Brexit.

Such asinine Trumpian “logic” ignores the cold facts of just how obscene so many of these War on Terror conflicts have become. While the propagandists focus on homegrown “heroes”, the deaths of millions of indigenous citizens are barely mentioned. Not a single one of the 927 children killed in the Afghanistan fighting in 2018 alone has a name as far as these types are concerned. The United Nations figures put the civilian casualties in Afghanistan at 32,000 dead and 60,000 wounded over the past decade.

Numbers for the Iraq War are just as terrifying, as are those in Yemen, where BAE Systems, Britain’s largest arms dealer, is actively supporting one of the most destructive wars in recent history. There are some 6000 BAE Systems employees in Saudi Arabia servicing billions of pounds worth of aircraft and munitions being used to bomb Yemenis. Alleged crimes against humanity have seen schools and hospitals destroyed, as starvation and cholera epidemics add to the worsening catastrophe.

The fact that wounded British service personnel now competing in Prince Harry’s Invictus Games – a sporting contest designed to help rehabilitate them into civilian life – are now sponsored by BAE Systems is yet another sign of how warped the situation is. A company that produces some of the most effective killing machines known to mankind – from drones to artillery pieces and torpedoes – is quite literally using a victims’ charity to try to justify its deadly work.

Trump’s idle claims about his military capability are equally callous. They underpin a colonial-style approach to conflict that persists in the 21st century. Death by superior fire power will come swiftly to those who get in the way of a country that can spend trillions on a distant war, while failing to fund adequate healthcare for its own population.

There are always unlimited funds for wars prosecuted by the west, and establishment types will continue to view them as adventures, just as the troops of empires did in centuries past. The “enemy”, meanwhile, is almost an abstract concept, and who really cares if it involves millions of civilians who can be easily slaughtered? Trump certainly doesn’t, and this is one of the primary reasons why international conflicts grind on indefinitely in a manner which is as outdated as it is monstrously immoral.