What else can we say about war? War here, war there! Will war become the new normal in the life of man? The cause of war may differ from country to country and from one community to another, the features are the same: bombardment from land, from the air and sea to over-run and conquer, take hostages and overthrow the old order and install a new one. The consequences are mindless destruction of lives and property, of monuments and displacements from the epicentre of the war zone resulting in large-scale humanitarian crisis.
The United States attack on Iran on 28 February, not only led to the horrendous destruction of properties, but also to the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a number of key members of government. The combined US-Israeli airstrikes hit school children killing dozens of them, unconfirmed report putting the total casualties at 150. Nearly 2,000 targets were hit and in less than five days, 17 Iranian war ships were destroyed. Oil tanker transits plying the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world’s crude oil passes have shrunk by 90 per cent.
The killing of Ayatollah Khamenei is similar to the gruesome death in 2020 of Iran’s foremost General, the highest ranking General and Commander-in-Chief of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Quassem Soleimani. The new commander of the force, Brig.-General Esmail Ghanni vowed to avenge the death of his predecessor. At the prompting of aggrieved Iran, Iraqi Parliament voted to expel the US forces from their territory. Iran itself had fired ballistic missiles at two US bases aimed at two US bases and targeted at the troops there. Iran boiling with rage over the killing of General Soleimani and mistaking the Ukrainian jetliner for a US aircraft shot it down.
The aircraft had 176 persons on board. There were no survivors. After days of denial, the Iranian authorities were later to accept responsibility for the unbelievably bizarre incident. It was Iran’s follow-up on the ballistic missile attack on the US bases in Baghdad. The Iranian High Command was later to state that the bringing down of Ukraine aircraft was an error, mistaking the flight for a hostile plane going in the direction of a sensitive military centre of the Revolutionary Guard and the military was ‘at its highest level of readiness’, The Iran President then, Hassan Roubani blamed the incident on the US ‘threats and bullying’.
As it turned out, there were Iranians and Canadians on the ill-fated flight. There were many who had nothing to do with either the US and her politics, or Iran and its local or international politics. There was a Nigerian engineer working with Boeing and who followed the aircraft on a test run to Iran. Many nationalities were victims.
Donald Trump was president at the time. So, as it was then, so is it now. He is President and he is bullying such that the media has described him as the chief superintendent of police of the world.
The remarks of Hillary Clinton captured on video are trending as they did in 2020 in which she described making Donald Trump president as a ‘historic mistake’. She said, ‘It is not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into war.
Describing Trump like Washington Post as unfit to be president, Hillary Clinton said: ‘His ideas are dangerous. He should not be someone who should get close to the nuclear code…To make Trump president is a historic mistake’.
A former chief of staff in the US State Department, Col. Larry Wilkerson who was also featured in a video at the time said Mr. Trump was pulling wood over the American people’s eyes and certainly the international community’s eyes’. He likened Mr. Trump’s reasons for the attack on Iran and the attendant assassination of General Qassem Soleimani to George Bush’s excuse for the attack on Iraq by the allied forces which culminated in the death of Saddam Hussein in 2003′. We’ve seen this before’, he said. ‘The same everything, the same tactics, same people, same strategy’. He said America kept making the same mistake that it has been making’.
In the present strikes, 12 countries in the ever-so-combustible Middle East have been impacted, either hit directly or through ripple effects. There were flight cancellations in Dubai for example, raising a spectre of hostilities between United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran. Air strikes believed to have come from Iran destroyed parts of Dubai and Riyadh. Turkish President Erdogan swiftly raised alarm that violation of its airspace is unacceptable. ‘Türkiye is closely monitoring the process that began the attacks on Iran’. He fears that if interventions are prolonged, ‘they can cause significant damage to the regional and global stability’, he said in a telephone conversation with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In countries hit directly homes were destroyed and businesses were wrecked.
UN Refugee Agency, (UNHCR) said Hezbollah the dreaded armed militant in Lebanon entered the conflict which drew the ire of Israel that responded with airstrikes. The bombardment has led to displacement in southern Lebanon.
The Nigerian online newspaper, TheNewsGuru quoted the agency’s spokesperson, Babar Baloch as saying: ‘Heavy displacement has been reported across parts of southern Lebanon, the Bekaa and southern suburbs of Beirut.
‘The conservative estimates suggest that nearly 30,000 people were hosted and registered at collective centres. Many more slept in their cars on the side of roads or were still stuck in traffic jams, leaving the south to reach Beirut’, according to the Refugee Agency spokesperson.
