In the twenty-first century, it was the United States that established the tradition of waging war for revenge. Al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks on American cities, when its base of operations was Afghanistan. The US subsequently invaded Afghanistan and dismantled the Taliban regime that hosted Osama bin Laden. OBL’s al-Qaeda killed thousands. The Americans killed tens of thousands in Afghanistan. This was the first war of revenge.
In 2003, the Bush Administration invaded Iraq. Over a decade ago, Saddam had tried to get the elder Bush killed. He was wrongly accused of building weapons of mass destruction. Americans dismantled Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Ba’ath party and the Iraq Army, paving the way for the Iraq civil war, in which hundreds of thousands were killed. This was the second war of revenge.
The story doesn’t end there. Other regional hegemons or aspiring hegemons have their eyes set on their own military targets. On October 7, 2023, Hamas provided Israelis with the pretext to launch their own war of revenge against innocent civilians in Gaza. In their bloodlust, Israel has destroyed the whole Strip, attacking hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure en masse, burying the mutilated dead in mass graves in the process. This is the third war of revenge, and it is ongoing.
The speed with which the Israeli military destroyed Gaza was much faster than the time it took for the realization that what is happening in this small strip of land is inhumane. The collective punishment that the Israelis are inflicting on the people of Gaza is part of their revenge against the Hamas attacks on Israeli cities and towns in October 2023. This war of revenge is designed to appear just like the war of revenge the Americans fought in Afghanistan in the wake of al-Qaeda’s attacks on American cities in September 2001.
There is a clear pattern: a Muslim terrorist or militant group launches an attack in any of the countries in the western political bloc. The population in the western bloc country is infuriated and outraged. The government in the victim country feels the political pressure to go after the militant or terrorist group. Military punishment is meted out, and in the process, a whole country or region, as in the case of Gaza, is completely destroyed with hundreds of thousands of people killed.
There are no voices around the world declaring that the American model of waging wars of revenge is too dangerous a precedent, which, if followed by every militarily powerful country, could unleash a world war. It seems the world slipped into an intellectual slumber after endorsing America’s first war of revenge in Afghanistan.
The Western political bloc, led by the United States, dominates the world militarily and politically. They totally ignore meek appeals to see reason and care for the possible loss of human life. They bring their whole military might to bear on militarily inferior or militarily non-entity “enemies.” They seem to be doing all these things on account of two factors: firstly, the United States still politically dominates the world and from a military point of view, the US has no match around the world. Israel, similarly, has no match in terms of military resources in the Middle Eastern region.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on American cities, Washington had the added advantage of riding a sympathy wave from across the world - Muslim, Europeans and Eastern Asia all came out in support of the United States. There was near consensus, which the United States used to carry out the first war of revenge in Afghanistan. The international consensus that evolved in the wake of 9/11 was stretched to its limits in the subsequent decade.
Voices out of Israel began claiming that the October 7 attack was their 9/11. The Indians had also claimed that militant attacks on the Indian parliament in December 2001 was their 9/11. The Indians did mobilize their military in the wake of the attack on their parliament, but could not dare to start a war of revenge because they were confronted with a nuclear armed, organized military force in the shape of the Pakistani military. For Israelis, their war of revenge has been a cake walk.
In Gaza, there is no organized military and the terrain is ill-suited for guerilla warfare. The result has been genocide. Not a single politically potent, diplomatically relevant and serious voice has so far been raised to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli war of revenge is being waged unopposed at the diplomatic level.
The Muslim world is shamelessly silent. The Europeans and Americans have no qualms supporting the genocide. The Chinese and Russians have done nothing that could make the military path for Israel any difficult. South Africa has lodged a case against Israel for committing genocide at the International Court of Justice, but Israel is all too comfortable ignoring the court’s orders.
Why is it so easy for the Israelis? Maybe the world has not yet come out of the spell that was cast on global opinion in the wake of 9/11. The American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were sustained and supported by a massive propaganda machinery that portrayed the US using 21st century, state-of-the-art military machinery against a loosely organized insurgency in Afghanistan, as justified and heroic. The model of revenge propagated by American public diplomacy was emulated from the Pentagon’s files and projected in their own situation by the Israelis.
There are no voices around the world declaring that the American model of waging wars of revenge is too dangerous a precedent, which, if followed by every militarily powerful country, could unleash a world war. It seems the world slipped into an intellectual slumber after endorsing America’s first war of revenge in Afghanistan.
The world seems to have forgotten and ignored that militarily powerful countries have taken the precedent of international consensus in support of the first war of revenge to be a carte blanche excuse for using their military might against innocent civilians, as part of revenge for crimes that the victim population has not committed. The events surrounding the first war of revenge must be subjected to a deep historical analysis and contextualized in order to distinguish those events from the military madness that other regional hegemons are now displaying after coming face to face with situations which they claim to be their own 9/11s.
The silence over Gaza indicates that there is a large vacuum in world public opinion, which demonstrates that the consumerism and neoliberal economic order that holds sway over societies around the world has transformed the conscience of global public opinion into dead wood. Anti-war protests in American and European universities have so far failed to manifest into potent political reality. However, the protests in American universities provide enough food for thought for Muslim societies and its intellectuals - that the protest over Gaza should not take any conventional anti-American form. There is a very strong anti-war tradition and tendency in American and European societies and these forces should be embraced as political and intellectual allies by civil society and leaders in the Muslim world who want to oppose war, whatever form it might take, or whoever it is waged against.
Wars of revenge must be opposed tooth and nail. As Gaza has clearly shown, wars of revenge can easily turn into a genocide of innocent people. Killing hundreds of thousands of people to ensure military security of your society is sheer madness.
The Gaza war is taking place at a time when the new Cold War is heating up. But the situation in Gaza doesn’t patently impinge on the interests of Russia and China, the two countries which are on the opposite pole of the United States in the new Cold War.
However, we should not expect any major diplomatic or political move from the Muslim world to oppose wars of revenge waged by the Western bloc. Firstly, political and military elites in Muslim societies have made a lucrative business out of the first war of revenge. Ruling elites in Muslim societies consolidated their hold on power structures in their respective countries through the international connections they established as a result of projects that were undertaken as part of supporting the first war of revenge. They attracted economic and military aid from the west, the inventor of this model of wars of revenge.
The second reason we should not expect anything from Muslim societies is that the governments and elites in these societies are themselves involved in military projects which are akin to wars of revenge.
The Gaza war is taking place at a time when the new Cold War is heating up. But the situation in Gaza doesn’t patently impinge on the interests of Russia and China, the two countries which are on the opposite pole of the United States in the new Cold War. Nevertheless, Washington’s habit of launching unilateral military action on the smallest provocation will certainly face limits in the emerging strategic environment of the new Cold War.
China-US relations do have a military dimension, but we should not forget that China is a superpower that behaves rather differently from the United States. Consider this: China has failed to play any decisive role over the Gaza situation because it does not have any security engagements with the Middle Eastern region. The new relations China is forging with Middle Eastern countries are based on economic ties and diplomacy. And therefore, the Chinese don’t have any military footprint in the region. Again, it is Washington which is supporting the third war of revenge in Gaza, with their own display of military might in the nearby waterways.