The balance sheet for 2014 and the prospects for 2015 provide us with a complex panorama of negative and positive outcomes. In most cases the advances, are not earth-shattering but open possibilities for further progress. The negative developments, however, have greater and more threatening systemic outcomes.
Militarily, the U.S. is entering 2015 with its hands full.
1. The U.S. war in Afghanistan is supposed to have ended after 13 years on December 31, 2014, but it’s still going on and thousands of American troops are continuing the fight.
2. The U.S. war against Iraq ended officially December 31, 2011, but it has now metamorphosed into Washington’s air war against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. There are increasing hints U.S. ground troops may be sent in this year. (3,000 American military advisers are already there and 1,500 allied troops are expected soon.)
Tragedies like the one in Peshawar are litmus tests for any nation- either bringing out the best, or exposing the bare bones. Pakistan’s response is curiously similar to the U.S response to 9/11. The fact that the U.S.’s counter-terror strategy accounts for the genesis of a much more brutal TTP and ISIS is lost to us.
Historic outcomes of pivotal events often dangled on threads of various possibilities. As they were outnumbered by more than two to one, an early morning fog enabled America’s future first President, George Washington with his command, to escape death or capture by British troops on Long Island, New York in 1776. As the last of 9000 men to board one of the transport boats, it’s unlikely Washington would have safely made the East River crossing without the fog’s appearance. Subsequent U.S.
Despite being disproven as a strategy for reducing crime, the broken windows policing theory is still utilized in New York and throughout in the United States to crack down on disorder and nonviolent crime. To think that harsh enforcement of this type of “crime” would prevent serious crime like homicide and assault is patently absurd on its face.
In 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left than that) government and proceeded to rule with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979 the military regime passed an amnesty law blocking the prosecution of its members for torture and other crimes. The amnesty still holds.1
Twenty five years ago, before dawn on December 20, 1989, U.S. forces descended on Panama City and unleashed one of the most violent, destructive terror attacks of the century. U.S. soldiers killed more people than were killed on 9/11. They systematically burned apartment buildings and shot people indiscriminately in the streets. Dead bodies were piled on top of each other; many were burned before identification.
The attack on the Peshawar school is a tragedy that sends senses reeling, an enormity that confounds the senses. It does not help however, to dismiss the people who committed this foul atrocity as ‘inhuman’, or to say they were not really Muslims. It is a convenient fiction that implies a most frustrating unwillingness and inability to understand how human beings are dehumanized and desensitized so they commit such dastardly acts under the moral cover of a perverted religiosity.
2014 marks the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, fighters, and foreigners. The situation has reached a new low as the myth of the Afghan state continues. Thirteen years into America’s longest war, the international community argues that Afghanistan is growing stronger, despite nearly all indicators suggesting otherwise. Most recently, the central government failed (again) to conduct fair and organized elections or demonstrate their sovereignty. Instead, John Kerry flew into the country and arranged new national leadership. The cameras rolled and a unity government was declared.
On 15 November 2014, Mr Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, was in Canberra addressing the Australian Parliament.
He was flaunting his aggressive macho/militaristic credentials. His speech included the following words.
