The comments of President Trump where he stated in the presence of the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran khan that he could finish the war in Afghanistan in a week – but he didn’t want to kill 10 million people – raises important questions, because for liberal-capitalist America, the answer is obviously not zero.
To Madeline Albright who was Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, the death of five hundred thousand Iraqi children under the age of five was a price worth paying for securing US primacy in the middle east.[1] To President Obama, the death of over a million Syrians was a price worth paying to secure al-Assad’s regime,[2] and for five successive US presidents, the three and a half million killed in Vietnam was also a price worth paying to contain communism.
When we view the rest of US history from its very inception to the present, the uncountable casualties of US foreign policy have always been a price worth paying to each criminal administration.
It would be wrong to limit this discussion to the US. To the French in Algeria, the murder of over 1.5 million during the Algerian war of independence was also a price worth paying. To the Belgians, the slaughter of ten million during their colonisation of the Congo was also a price worth paying and for the British, in addition to the millions killed in the forging of their empire, the 3.5 million killed by the man-made famine in Bengal was also a price worth paying for its strategic interests.
This attitude is the defining feature of capitalism. The primary motive for any action is profit, and any other considerations come a very distant second. any calls by western nations to higher values are simply a smokescreen to hide their true intentions – which are generally the appropriation of the resources of the target nation to feed the resource-hungry industries of the capitalist classes. The comments of Trump highlight the fact that in essence there is no right or wrong in capitalism, it’s simply what is considered appropriate at the time after all the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons has occurred – especially against nations that lacked the ability to reciprocate.
Islam on the other hand, does not hold the generation of profit as the primary – or in fact any motive – when dealing with other nations and colonialism, the obliteration of weaker nations and the wholesale ransacking of their resources’ is unknown in its long history. Rather, Islam gives human life an intrinsic sanctity that can only be violated in circumstances ordained by the Creator – rather than the whims of profit-hungry corporations and their client administrations.
[1] “Is the Price Worth It?” The Crippling Effects of U.N. Sanctions in Iraq
[2] Obama Syria Policies Scuttled Regime Change
