Civilisation, according to those dropping the bombs

Civilisations are created by poets, writers, painters, architects, but are destroyed by politicians and their armies. We would do well to remember this truth at a time when an existential civilisational war is taking place almost on our borders, in West Asia.

Make no mistake, the illegal assaults on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran are not just about Greater Israel or oil or uranium enrichment: these are just the cover for new Crusades against the non-Christian, non-Caucasian world, a new religio-colonial imperialism by the USA and Israel, with wink-wink support from most of Europe. Large numbers of Christians in these countries appear to have embraced the spirit of Zionism too.

The sheer temerity and audacity of this is hard to grasp. Here we have two countries, one barely 75 years in existence and the other whose cultural pillars are hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken, presuming to destroy genuine civilisations thousands of years old.

As the Iranian foreign minister reminded Donald Trump: the Persians were inscribing the laws of human rights on the Cyrus Pillar when the Europeans and Americans were still living in caves.

Bloodthirsty Zionists of today are probably not even aware that it was a Persian mathematician who invented algebra in the 9th century CE, that Jews exist today because Persian kings like Xerxes (6th century BCE) and Cyrus (5th century BCE) had ordered that Jews should be allowed to live in peace in their kingdoms and should not be harmed in any way. That today’s Jews should seek to slaughter the descendants of these Persians says all that is needed about true civilisations and barbarians.

The evidence for this attempted civilisational supremacy is mounting by the day. This policy was officially declared by that Cuban immigrant who, like a snake which has lost its bearings, tries to devour its own tail; I speak of Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State.

At the Munich Security Conference in February this year, he unashamedly laid out Trump’s new MAGA Carta, to the accompaniment of a standing ovation by other European leaders.

Rubio expressed nostalgia for the past, when Europe’s “missionaries, pilgrims, soldiers, explorers poured out from its shores to settle new continents”. He called for “a new age of Western dominance”, to reverse the decline of the West since 1945, in effect proclaiming the launch of a new era of neo-colonialism. The USA, he stated, is “fixing” the problem, and in doing so will have no hesitation in rejecting the core elements of the existing international order.

This has been amply demonstrated by the fact that the USA has between 750 and 800 military bases in 80 countries to maintain its hegemony; by the bombing of 41 countries in the last 80 years, and all but one of them (Serbia) are in either Asia or Africa. One expert estimates that these assaults, and the sanctions that have accompanied them, have killed at least 32 million people.

Gaza, Lebanon and Iran are only the latest expressions of this attempted neo-colonialism. Trump has openly boasted that he has taken Venezuelan oil, that he wants Iran’s oil reserves and a share in the toll revenues from Hormuz.

He has shown utter racial contempt for one of the oldest civilisations in the world by killing its leaders, calling them "bastards who belong to the Stone Age". The Israeli defence minister has described Palestinians as “worse than animals” and called for their extermination.

The West Asia genocide by Israel and the USA has been fully, though more quietly, supported by Western Europe and the G7, with the exception of a couple of countries like Spain and Ireland. Their continued trade with Israel hovers at about US$50 billion annually; they have sanctioned Iran and Venezuela but will not dream of sanctioning Israel; they continue to arm the rogue terrorist state to the teeth; they have formed a coalition of 12 European states to open the Straits of Hormuz but will not do so to protect either Gaza or south Lebanon.

Even worse, they will not allow their own citizens to protest against Israel: the UK has arrested thousands of protesters and France has just introduced the YADAN law that criminalises any anti-Israel public protest with a five-year jail term. The West’s war of civilisations is being waged in full earnest.

This is the context in which we should view Iran’s tenacious defence of its sovereignty and its people. Iran is fighting to DECOLONISE the Global South. It has effectively reversed and turned on its head the Western narrative of the southern nations being “barbarians” and “terrorists”: the emerging global perception is that Israel and the USA are the biggest terrorist nations, that it is they who constitute the biggest threat to peace and the world order, that their leaders are declared war criminals. The barbarians have lost this war but, by definition, are too stupid to admit it.

Views are personal. More of the writer's works can be read here

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com