Armenian Defeat is Our Defeat

Modern warfare has changed forever and no one has noticed

Nov 20, 2020

*Content Warning* genocide, ethnic cleansing, suicide bombing, drones, war trauma

Screenshot: Israeli drone used by Azerbaijan **in 2016**

This month Azerbaijan used drones they bought from both Turkey and Israel to kill thousands of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh which Armenians call Artsakh. The Turks trained them in how to use the drones as well as sending mercenaries to help the fight, some of whom were actual ISIS members. (This is not even the first time Azerbaijan used such drones against the Armenians either, they first used Israeli drones in 2016 against the Armenians. This is also not the first time ISIS has been involved in violence against Armenians, they destroyed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in 2014.)

The Armenians used drones as well but those were locally made and unable to match the advanced technological warfare of Azerbaijan (which Azerbaijan can only afford because of their Caspian Sea oil money). Devastated by their losses, the Armenians have now surrendered and are giving up that disputed territory to the Azerbaijanis.

No one is calling this a war crime.

Very few are even bothering to talk about it.

Very few are talking about the genuine threat of ethnic cleansing in the region after this Russian brokered “peace deal”.

No one realizes, except astute world leaders, that this conflict, the public silence around it, and its current “resolution”, has changed modern warfare forever.

Rich countries don’t need to send troops into battlefields now. They don’t even need expensive war planes and fighter pilots. All they need to do is buy drones and train technicians in how to use them and they will kill all the poor people on the earth without ever risking any of their precious rich necks.

You do realize that Obama used drones on brown people in the Global South, right? You do realize that under Obama, US cops were militarized to the point of having drones? You do realize that Dallas Police used a drone to kill a black man in July 2016, when Obama was still president?

According to most news reports, the people of the US just put Obama’s Vice President, Joe Biden, in power.

Do you know that some of the drones the Azerbaijanis bought were called “Kamikaze” drones? Those are designed to not only kill, but to lock onto their target and fall on their target, exploding on impact, causing devastating violence. No one’s pointing out the cultural appropriation of Japanese history or the brutality inherent in such casual use of this “Kamikaze” nomenclature. A machine cannot commit suicide the way Japanese pilots gave up their lives in their suicide attacks. But these drones are literally being called “suicide bombers”. No one seems to note the irony of that either, considering the west’s decades long “War on Terror” and the trauma of Japan’s allyship with the Germans in WWII.

After the devastation of the “Kamikaze” drones, the Armenians are setting fire to their own houses and fleeing their homes.

Considering the genocide they’ve already suffered (and I know most people only know of the Armenian genocide in the 20th century but this persecution has actually been going on for longer than that) I can only imagine what their feelings are right now. They knew what to do because this has happened so many times before. They moved quickly to burn their own houses down.

But what happened to the reaction of this social justice movement? I thought we all cared about the Armenian genocide? Just last year so many people were sharing articles, glad that the US Congress finally recognized that the genocide even happened. So why is everyone silent right now, when a war crime has been committed against the Armenians with direct help from their historical oppressors, the Turks?

Oh.

Oh, I see. Last year Donald Trump was the undisputed president of the USA and Congress only recognized the Armenian genocide as a rebuke to his actions in withdrawing from Syria (thus allowing the Turks to cross the border into that country which harmed the Kurds and Rojava). That’s why everyone in the social justice movement said they cared about the Armenian genocide. Not because they actually cared about the Armenians or Rojava or Kurds or Syria, but because Trump did something they didn’t like so everyone went into a frenzy. Orange Man Bad.

Now that Trump has seemingly lost the 2020 election (according to what the mainstream media is breathing down our necks) there’s no need to worry about Armenia or Syria or Rojava or the Kurds ever again. They can all go to hell. It’s all becoming clear now.

This is how US imperialism and western supremacy kills even its own. You do realize that the Armenians are white, right? They are Eastern Europeans from the Caucasus mountain region. White. Christian too.

If no one gives a damn even about White European Christians now that Trump is on his way out of power, they don’t need to give a damn about anyone else, right? Certainly not any Black or brown people, for sure. And definitely not anyone non-Christian. Orange Man go bye-bye now so we go sleepytime.

So long, Armenians. It was nice appropriating your struggle in the Orange Man Bad Resistance but the social justice movement doesn’t need you anymore. Have a nice genocide when the Neo-Ottoman empire comes for the rest of you. I guess we’ll see some of you when you show up as refugees (from the 21st century genocide that we don’t bother to recognize until another Donald Trump comes along). Or we might not see you as refugees, on account of not recognizing your genocide and therefore not granting asylum. Either way, the social justice movement in the USA really doesn’t care.

Or…the social justice movement could care about this issue right now and resist imperialism wherever it lies. We can support the Armenians, support Indigenous peoples fighting to live in peace on their lands, support all peoples struggling against imperialism, support all refugees fleeing from war. We could resist imperialism and shut down empire wherever it is.

I suggest doing that. That’s a much better idea.