Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan on fire after the export of US 'Liberal Democracy'
You can identify differently to the ruling elite, have a different skin color or religion, but you must bow to the West and the confines of its ideology, for if you step outside of that, you will experience what a racist, orientalist, at heart really thinks about you and just how brutally he is willing to express his hatred.
The ongoing chaos in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan today are the direct result of the US export of its experiment at creating a one world order, in which all nations would be forced to bow to the liberal hegemonic endeavors of the West. As the Unipolar order falls, the consequences of US imperialism continue unaddressed.
On August 29, 2022, the Iraqi capital again erupted with violence as militia forces loyal to popular cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, opened fire on Iraqi security forces inside the Baghdad ‘green zone’ area. Again the streets of Baghdad turned into war zones, after over 19 years since the illegal US invasion of Iraq, which eventually led to the destruction of the Iraqi State, a brutal occupation, civil war and Washington’s exercise in “nation-building”.
In the advent of the post-Cold War era, the United States emerged as the dominant, unrivaled, world power. Washington used this profound power to pursue a policy which is popularly defined as “Liberal Hegemony”, whereby the US and its Western allies would work to assert their cultural, political and philosophical dominance over the rest of the world, by force where necessary. The aspect to Western imperialism that is often unexplored is what has been done to assert the idea of Western supremacy and to infect populations throughout the Global south, with the idea that their own cultures and histories are inferior to the advancements made in the West.
Under the current stage of Western supremacist thinking, the physical appearance of “the other” is not of primary importance. You can look or identify any way you choose, in fact, diversity of appearance or identity is what they love, this makes it easier for them to argue that they are fair and just, however, diversity of thought is intolerable to the West. This is the most dangerous aspect of the West’s quest, since around 1990, to pursue a foreign policy agenda of “Liberal hegemony”, a strive to make the world in the US’s image.
Most would not take much time to think about why the West refers to itself as the “free world”, nobody really questions that language at all, let alone believe it to be rooted in orientalism and racist ideology. US Presidents, whether they be Republican or Democrat, will espouse the same rhetoric regarding their view that Western liberal democracy is sacred, that it is the only way for people to be free, to have liberty and safety. Now here comes the most important question, if the West’s ideological, political, cultural and economic practices are the most just and represent the answers to the world's problems, then why can they not be mirrored onto the rest of the world and work? There are two answers to this question; the first answer is that the West is correct, which would imply that nations with different histories and cultures are inferior and must change in order to become like the West; the second answer is that they are wrong and their model does not work even for themselves.
The assumption that the West has the answer, that it is the most enlightened, implies that there is something intrinsically wrong with the nations which make up the Global South, on a cultural and/or racial level. It is clear that all the political elites and those politicians that occupy the highest posts in Western capitalist societies are in agreement on the issue of Western superiority, so then, how is it that they view the rest of the world? They view them as savages, unenlightened and inferior on an ideological level. People that resemble these savages, in their view, can be changed in order to follow the ways of the West, to answer to its system, but they must be stripped away from an identity which contradicts the West. Many will then adopt the mentality of looking at those who have the same appearance as the group, defining those who look a certain way as inferior due to the skin, the hair, the preferred identification, or accent, but at the core of all of these issues, racists, misogynists etc. have always argued that on an intellectual level is where the deepest differences lay.
Now, back to Iraq. The current Iraqi political system only exists because of the US invasion, the brutality and the subsequent nation-building exercise performed in Iraq. The people of Iraq today live in a worse predicament than they did under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial rule, the corruption is out of hand, violence could break out at any moment and there is no sense that the country will be able to live in any state of stability at this time. The US, when it entered Iraq, destroyed everything of the Iraqi State that had preceded their bloody conquest. This invasion was achieved through turning Iraq into the inferior, stirring up racist hatred against them and then instilling the idea in the minds of Westerners that the invasion was about “civilizing” Iraq. In order to “civilize”, the West's answer is that you must bring Liberal Democracy, but when they found resistance to their quest to be the “liberators” they changed their ideas. The West adopted the mindset that the people of Iraq were just too culturally inferior for a carbon copy of the Liberal Democracy of the US, so funneled money to warlords, created a confessional system to make their experiment succeed - much like the French did in Lebanon - hoping for a somewhat stable outcome, where they would have an ally that comes as an end result, or at least an Iraq that will not threaten regional outcomes.
The destruction of Libya in 2011, a nation which is also, like Iraq, witnessing violence again, is another testament to the failure of the Western supremacist system in action. In Afghanistan, the “kindness” and “morals” of the West shows through too. After failing to hold in place the US-puppet regime installed in Kabul, the petty nature of Washington’s ghouls [a demon-like being or monstrous humanoid] shines through. Not only did the US set Afghanistan up for disaster, it also withholds much needed funds that the suffering Afghans need to survive. To add insult to injury, the US Biden administration first froze the sovereign funds of Afghanistan, then attempted to potentially allocate billions - out of the total of 7.1 billion - in funds, for the family members of 9/11 victims, a crime that Afghanistan had nothing to do with.
Is it simply a mistake that Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are suffering the way they do today? No. The West wants those who did not confirm, to bow to it, or be crushed. You can identify differently to the ruling elite, have a different skin color or religion, but you must bow to the West and the confines of its ideology, for if you step outside of that, you will experience what a racist, orientalist, at heart really thinks about you and just how brutally he is willing to express his hatred. Nations of the Global South succeeding threatens the entire basis for the current Western model; which makes the Western white supremacist, his liberalism and his capitalist system very upset. The problem never was with the Global South and that the nations which make it up having inferior cultures and beliefs, it was that the ruling elites of the West are wrong and themselves uncivilized, in addition to being out of touch with the workers which make their system operate, whether they be the workers in the West or the Global South.