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One of the unstated goals of imperial warfare is to make hapless civilians pay a price for having the temerity to be born in a targeted nation.
Prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq, for example, the Western oligarchies imposed sanctions which destroyed water treatment infrastructures and killed about 700,000 children, and about 1 million other innocent Iraqis. These consequences were all planned and projected. There was nothing accidental about the mass killings. It was simply imperial punishment for living in Iraq. Part of the calculus for such barbarity is that imperialists hope that such punishments will demoralize local populations, and possibly make tem reject their leaders. It falls under the euphemistic categories of "destabilization" and "collateral damage". More accurately, it is targeted mass murder.
Why did the Western oligarchies choose to destroy Iraq and its people? It had nothing to do with Weapons of Mass Destruction, or terrorism, or any other of the creative lies perpetrated by cooked intelligence reports and public relations agencies. More accurately, CIA asset Saddam Hussein had decided to stop using the US dollar for foreign trade. Once Iraqi oil fields were under U.S control, oil sales were switched back to the dollar. Multitudes of innocent people were slaughtered -- and continue to be slaughtered-- for the US dollar, oil, and oligarch profits. Whereas Iraq under Hussein was free of Wahhabism, and other assorted Western-supported terrorists, now it is a hotbed for terrorism, and innocent Iraqis are still paying for their temerity.
Libya, like Iraq, was also a well-developed nation. Under Gaddafi, it had become the most prosperous nation in Africa, but innocent Libyans are still paying the price for having been born there. Hillary Clinton's recently-disclosed e-mail records demonstrate that Libya had decided to create an international reserve currency based on Libya's gold dinar. Consequently, NATO planes provided air-cover for its al Qaeda proxies, Muammar Gaddafi was murdered, and now Libya too is a hotbed for terrorists, including the liver-eating ISIS variety. The country has been successfully "destabilized".
These are common imperial tactics, all masked by the duplicitous oligarchies. Ukraine is being destroyed and destabilized in a similar fashion, and to serve hidden imperial agendas, as is Syria.
Syrians are lucky though. The Syrian army, Russia, Iran, and affiliated forces such as Hezbollah are successfully defeating the Western terrorist proxies, including al-Nusra Front and ISIS.
All of this mass death and destruction points to huge geo-political shifts, as it shines a light on the forces of justice and freedom and opposing forces of death and destruction.
Russia and its allies represent stability, international justice and freedom, while the Western oligarchies represent the opposite.
The "Saker", a self-described military analyst, decodes the differences in the following chart:
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