{"id":48876,"date":"2014-10-20T13:14:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T12:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=48876"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:37","slug":"with-us-led-air-strikes-on-isis-intensifying-its-a-good-time-to-be-a-shareholder-in-the-merchants-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/with-us-led-air-strikes-on-isis-intensifying-its-a-good-time-to-be-a-shareholder-in-the-merchants-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"With US-led Air Strikes on Isis Intensifying, It\u2019s a Good Time to Be a Shareholder in the Merchants of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month American warships fired $65.8m worth of Tomahawk missiles within just 24 hours of each other.<\/em><\/p>\n

So who is winning the war? Isis? Us? The Kurds (remember them?) The Syrians? The Iraqis? Do we even remember the war? Not at all. We must tell the truth. So let us now praise famous weapons and the manufacturers that begat them.<\/p>\n

Share prices are soaring in America<\/a> for those who produce the coalition bombs and missiles and drones and aircraft participating in this latest war which \u2013 for all who are involved (except for the recipients of the bombs and missiles and those they are fighting) \u2013 is Hollywood from start to finish.<\/p>\n

Shares in Lockheed Martin \u2013 maker of the \u201cAll for One and One for All\u201d Hellfire missiles \u2013 are up 9.3 per cent in the past three months. Raytheon \u2013 which has a big Israeli arm \u2013 has gone up 3.8 per cent. Northrop Grumman shares swooped up the same 3.8 per cent. And General Dynamics shares have risen 4.3 per cent. Lockheed Martin \u2013 which really does steal Alexandre Dumas\u2019 Three Musketeers quotation on its publicity material \u2013 makes the rockets carried by the Reaper drones, famous for destroying wedding parties over Afghanistan and Pakistan, and by Iraqi aircraft.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t be downhearted. The profits go on soaring. When the Americans decided to extend their bombing into Syria in September \u2013 to attack President Assad\u2019s enemies scarcely a year after they first proposed to bomb President Assad himself \u2013 Raytheon was awarded a $251m (\u00a3156m) contract to supply the US navy with more Tomahawk cruise missiles. Agence France-Presse, which does the job that Reuters used to do when it was a real news agency, informed us that on 23 September, American warships fired 47 Tomahawk missiles<\/a>. Each one costs about $1.4m. And if we spent as promiscuously on Ebola cures, believe me, there would be no more Ebola.<\/p>\n

Let us leave out here the political cost of this conflict. After all, the war against Isis is breeding Isis. For every dead Isis member, we are creating three of four more. And if Isis really is the \u201capocalyptic\u201d, \u201cevil\u201d, \u201cend-of-the-world\u201d institution we have been told it is \u2013 my words come from the Pentagon and our politicians, of course \u2013 then every increase in profits for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics is creating yet more Isis fighters. So every drone or F\/A-18 fighter-bomber we send is the carrier of a virus, every missile an Ebola germ for the future of the world. Think about that.<\/p>\n

Let me give you a real-time quotation from reporter Dan De Luce\u2019s dispatch on arms sales for the French news agency. \u201cThe war promises to generate more business not just from US government contracts but other countries in a growing coalition, including European and Arab states\u2026 Apart from fighter jets, the air campaign [sic] is expected to boost the appetite for aerial refuelling tankers, surveillance aircraft such as the U-2 and P-8 spy planes, and robotic [sic again, folks] drones\u2026 Private security contractors, which profited heavily from the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, also are optimistic the conflict will produce new contracts to advise Iraqi troops.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is obviously outrageous. The same murderous bunch of gunmen we sent to Iraq are going to be let loose to teach our \u201callies\u201d in Syria \u2013 \u201cmoderate\u201d secular militias, of course \u2013 the same vicious tactics they used against civilians in Iraq. And the same missiles are going to be used \u2013 at huge profit, naturally \u2013 on the peoples of the Middle East,\u00a0 Isis or not. Which is why De Luce\u2019s report is perhaps the most important of the whole war in the region.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always argued that the civilian victims of these weapons manufacturers should sue these conglomerate giants every time their niece or grandfather is killed. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinians used to keep the bits and fragments of US-made missiles that killed their innocent relatives, with the idea that one day they might be able to take the companies to court. Lebanese civilians did the same. But they were given \u201ccompensation\u201d \u2013 with whose blessing, I wonder? \u2013 and persuaded not to pursue the idea, and so the armaments manufacturers, made so palpable in George Bernard Shaw\u2019s Major Barbara, got away with it. There are many lawyers in New York ready to take up these cases \u2013 I\u2019ve met a few of them in the US \u2013 on a pay-if-you-win basis. But so far, no takers. It\u2019s time there were. Why should the merchants of death get away with it?<\/p>\n

In the meanwhile, the Pentagon can keep pushing the bills through. \u201cIt\u2019s awfully hard to say no when you\u2019re at war,\u201d a guy with \u201clinks\u201d to the weapons industry said last week. You bet it is. He says, by the way, that BAE Systems is doing pretty well out of the current crisis. Think about that. And pray, of course, for the 200,000 dead in the Syrian war.<\/p>\n

Where is Napoleon III when the world needs him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have always nursed the suspicion that readers are far better educated than the journos they read in their papers. Here\u2019s further proof from Irish reader John Hanamy of Limerick whose letter arrived in my mail bag in Beirut last week with the following stunning comparison between Italy after the Napoleonic wars of 1815-1848 and the Middle East after the Cold War.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll quote him directly \u2013 and readers will have to reach for their Italian histories if they wish to destroy this theory. \u201cAustria controls Italy but does not rule directly,\u201d Hanamy writes. \u201cUS controls most Arab states but not directly. When Italian nationalists attempted to form a government in an Italian state, Austria or its client states would intervene to crush it.\u00a0 1820-1821 (Arab Spring?) \u2026 When Arab states \u2026 attempt to form a government that represents the population, the US and its allies engineer to crush it. Savoy and Piedmont client states, Naples, Sicily corrupt kingdoms. Egypt and Turkey client states\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Our prescient reader from Limerick concludes that Austrian power was broken by the French under Napoleon III in 1859 and that Italy became a united country in 1861, but that it is \u201ctoo early to say\u201d what will happen in the Middle East because \u201cwe are still decades off the appearance of a power capable of challenging the US\u201d. I don\u2019t know if Mr Hanamy is a pensioner or a mere student of history \u2013 but mark this guy\u2019s name down as a future Middle East Correspondent!<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/h5>\n
America’s bombs are only making Isis stronger, and al-Qaeda has just proven it<\/a><\/h5>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month American warships fired $65.8m worth of Tomahawk missiles within just 24 hours of each other. So who is winning the war? Isis? Us? The Kurds (remember them?) The Syrians? The Iraqis? Do we even remember the war? Not at all. We must tell the truth. So let us now praise famous weapons and the manufacturers that begat them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}