The Swedish writer Margareta Zetterström has noted that war is becoming an entirely acceptable feature of her country’s foreign policy. It is a development that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, when the Swedish people lived ”in the certain knowledge that war and occupation are the worst things that can befall a country.… But how distant that time seems today,” she writes. ”We have been gradually indoctrinated in acceptance of war.”

The indoctrination process that has prepared the way for Swedish war-making in Libya and other places continues unabated. A typical example is an opinion piece by Aleksander Gabelic, chairman of the United Nations Association of Sweden, who attempts to construct a moral basis for Sweden’s collaboration in the USA/NATO war against Libya.

There is nothing new in Gabelic’s incitement to war, which is based on the notion of “humanitarian intervention”; but for precisely that reason it is useful as a representative expression of the arguments that are constantly presented to promote war. His line of reasoning, in particular everything of importance that is omitted, illustrates the pathological relationship between Sweden and the United States. That in turn is a consequence of the cult of America which has been built up over many, many years and now permeates Swedish society, not least within politics, the military and the media.

Those and related issues provide the framework for an analysis in a PDF document that can be downloaded via the following link:

Warring for Peace in the Service of USA/NATO
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22 June 2011