THE headline in the well-respected American magazine stated 'Obama likely won't defeat ISIS'. The tone of the whole article was about America's campaign to beat Islamic State.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This in the same week that a British study has found that the US, Britain and Australia had blundered when they took part in that invasion of Iraq a few years back as the Coalition of the Willing.
Here we have a wonderfully modern world, where people can and do regularly travel to other countries, when we have excellent communications and send satellites to strange stars, where we can learn what is going on in other countries - and yet we are still finding reasons to go to war.
What have the troubles in the Middle East got to do with the US? Or Australia? Yet the Australian Air Force is involved and millions of people are fleeing across the Mediterranean seeking a safer and better life in Europe.
It's now 70 years since the end of WWII, when there was a brave move to create the United Nations and the biggest economies on the winning side created the UN Security Council, giving it, we thought, the powers to stop senseless wars. But something happened and the permanent members of the Security Council were given the power of veto, which means that Russia, the US or China could wreck any imaginative effort to stop these silly wars.We have sent satellites to distant stars, yet we allow warlords to capture, terrorise and kill using the most modern of weapons. We, that Coalition of the Willing, used our vastly superior forces and equipment to invade Iraq when we had no reason to do so and we have never been punished for doing so.
Surely we don't need statesmen in parliament to realise we need a logical stance on maintaining peace. On the other hand the permanent members of the Security Council are also the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, but if we really wanted to live in a less volatile world, all we need is an international body with enough power and wisdom to take some action.It's what we call 'democracy' and it can work. And those who have been elected to run our country for the next three years should consider this part of their duties as a member of our parliament.
They might hold committee meetings about lots of domestic matters, which surely will be important, but they should all accept that they are also part of the decision making for the rest of the world, and that should include pushing their fellow parliamentarians into taking up some of the really big international issues as well.
This should include an international inquiry into forcing the United Nations and the Security Council into action, and to stop these senseless wars, even if they do make huge profits from the arms industries.
