Horror in the Shopping Centre: Bitter fruit of Kenyan policy

September 22, 2013 at 5:04 pm (apologists and collaborators, Champagne Charlie, conspiracy theories, islamism, reactionay "anti-imperialism", relativism, satire, Stop The War, SWP, terror)

Editorial from Stupid Wanker, paper of the Stupid Wankers Party (UK):

Horror in Kenya: Bitter fruit of Kenyan (and US and British and Israeli) policy

The full horror of the attacks in Kenya was breaking as Stupid Wanker went to press. Very many innocent people had been killed or injured.

Nobody knew for sure on Saturday who was responsible. If it was people from Somalia it will be because they believe, wrongly, that it is the only way to respond to the horrors they have suffered from the Kenyan and other governments. The tragic scenes in the Westgate shopping centre are the bitter fruits of policies pursued by the Kenyan state, backed all the way by the US, Britain, Israel and NATO.

Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta spoke of terrorist outrages today. Yet the state he heads has been responsible for burying men, women and children under piles of rubble. He sent hundreds of soldiers to attack Somali civilians night after night. They killed hundreds of civilians and innocent members of al-Shabaab -‘collateral damage’ in the war against so-called “terror.”

Two years ago Kenya, with US and NATO backing, attacked Somalia. Children, hospital patients, old people—all these and more had as little warning that they were to be attacked as did those who died in Kenya this week. Kenyatta, backed by David Cameron, launched these attacks on the people of Somalia. His father headed a brutal one-party state in Kenya, based upon corruption, brute force and appeals to ethnic loyalty.

In Israel the US supports Benjamin Netenyahu, a war criminal. Israel has murdered thousands of Palestinians. Faced with the might of the US, some people can become so desperate that they try to fight back against this military giant with the limited weapons they have to hand.

They do not have Cruise missiles—so they take to attacking an Israeli-owned Kenyan shopping centre instead. It is not a method that can break US, Israeli or or Kenyan power. Some ruling class Kenyans would have suffered from the attack. But many more innocent civilians were killed. Saturday’s raid was born of desperation at the supreme arrogance and contempt of the rulers of the most powerful capitalist state on Earth.

In 1998 the US responded to a bomb attack on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by blowing up the only medicine factory in the desperately poor country of Sudan, and by bombing Afghanistan. It will be looking for similar revenge now. That will drive more people to hate the US.

It is the responsibility of everyone who is revolted at the lethal world order the US and its allies sit at the top of to offer a way forward. It needs to be based on the mass collective power of ordinary people across the world, and targeted precisely at our rulers.
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H/t: Socialist Worker