US-Inspired Arab Spring Turns Into Migrant Autumn in Europe

The migrant crisis in Europe is happening due to the failed US foreign policy over the past few years. It was Washington that started the bloody wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, with the aim of establishing their hegemony in the Middle East and central Asia, author for online news center World Socialist Web Site wrote.

The shocking images of a three-year-old Syrian child, Alan Kurdi, whose body was found on a Turkish beach, recently took the world by storm. He was one of the 12 migrants who drowned while desperately trying to swim to Greece. His mother and 5-year-old brother were also among the dead.

The only surviving member of the family — their father — said he would return with their bodies to Syria, where he hopes to die and be buried with them.

Many are to blame for their deaths, the World Socialist Web Site wrote. The Canadian authority who ignored a request by the boy's aunt, who lives in British Columbia, to provide Alan’s family with refugee status, is one example.

Then there are the EU countries trying to stem the tide of refugees by building fences, “establishing concentration camps” and sending Special Forces to the borders so that the “Fortress of Europe” is not in any way penetrated by families seeking refuge, World Socialist.

In turn, American politicians and the media deliberately ignore the central role Washington is playing in the tragedy unfolding on Europe’s borders. For example, in the editorial column of the Washington Post there was an opinion that expressed that Europe can hardly cope with the problem on its own as the roots of the crisis are in Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya and Syria.

A similar idea was also in the New York Times, which cited the causes of the crisis as “the war in Syria and Iraq and the chaos in Libya.”

But what are the real causes of the crisis in these countries? What led to the disaster? According to the World Socialist, the answer is “guilty silence.”

The influx of these refugees in Europe is a result of the criminal policy of aggressive wars and intervention for regime change organized by the imperialist regime of the United States with the help of its allies from Western Europe.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US ruling elite decided it was free to exploit the might of the US Army. With the help of its military, Washington began establishing its hegemony in its key areas of interest, particularly in regions rich in energy resources: the Middle East and Central Asia.

Now the world is witnessing the consequence of such a policy, in the shape of desperate refugees trying to enter Europe. Protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq covered up by the pretense of fighting a “war on terror” and the shameful lies about the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” have only led to the destruction of entire societies and the killing of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

The “predatory intervention” in Libya and Syria was justified by the “defense of human rights and democracy,” the author of World Socialist recalls. The rise of Islamic State and the bloody civil wars in Iraq and Syria are the direct product of the destruction of Iraq by the Americans, but no one was called accountable for these crimes.

American politicians such as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and others who started the war in Iraq, were left punished.

The US Congress collaborates with these politicians by approving this policy of war which the media then uses to “smuggle” the war, based on lies, into the consciousness of the American public. Together they are all responsible for what is happening on Europe’s borders which is not only a tragedy, but an atrocious war crime, the author of the World Socialist Web Site concluded.