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Global Shame: Aggressors Talking Peacemaking in Iraq and Afghanistan
Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
“If war is a crime what is its name? The Constitution of the United States of America calls it “Treason.” …….So all in all it appears causing unconstitutional war and genocide is a crime; the crime is Treason …..The Judges are the only ones who can achieve prevention without violence. A jurisprudential revolution can prevent war and genocide simply by thinking judicially instead of politically.” (W’Lawpsh, “And Its Name Is Treason!” Dissident Voice: 11/24/2011)
“Just an old fashioned colonial war – the reality of killing and escalation of violence, disguised with the hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught us that, then we are incapable of ever learning anything.” (John Laughland, “The Mask of Altruism Disguising a Colonial War: The Guardian: Aug 2, 2004)
“….Human nature is at least in part wicked and in part foolish, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly? ….Men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. They think on occasion that it is necessary and wise and honourable, for war is not the work of bad men knowing themselves to be wrong, but of good men passionately convinced that they are right.” (C.E. M. Joad. Guide to Modern Wickedness)
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When aggressors pretend to be ignorant not as a reason but as an excuse, they view the world around them as having been incapacitated to THINK in rational terms. Their smart games must be working to the fullest to deceive and distract the mankind from the real world problems of racial and ethnic superiority, nationalism, aggression against the weak and destitute people and political hegemonic control over poor but rich in natural resources, otherwise, how could one fool a large number of nations and their leaders who have assembled in Bonn-Germany for a conference on the future of Afghanistan. This drama appears to have coincided with the Pearl Harbour Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. Is the US belligerent leadership looking to another Pear Harbour for economic patch up work? A decade of American and European spearheaded aggressions and inhuman atrocities and military barbarism in Iraq and Afghanistan have not changed anything except made the ground realities worst for human habitats and survival of the victimized nations. Come to Fluodga and see the streets full of impacts of bombing, left-over uranium weapons flowing through polluted and cancerous drinking water, lands and climate and depleting human conditions – that the UNO could not dare to send an impartial delegate to inspect the US inhumanity against the Iraq resistance. Do you remember Abu Ghraib – visual reality display and sensational tour of the US-British operated values only to be seen in naked and terribly dehumanized men and women and electrocuted bodies standing still in many of the US troops funny and artistic snap shots? To the large segment of living humanity, it portrayed an unthinkable barbarity and crimes against the mankind. Take a breath if you happened to be a realist and see the war on terror headquarter incorporated at Guanatomobay under the US military operation - a joint political venture of Bush and continued by President Obama. During the nine years of warmongering approximately three million civilians have been killed in Iraq and the society - its values and lands, habitats, economy, agriculture and indeed future destroyed by the savagery and cruelty of man against man. Another million or more or less are uprooted in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, thousands and thousands of civilians bombed and massacred and dead disturbed in graveyards. Recall, the first Bonn conference after the invasion in 2001, and now the closing Bonn conference with a difference. What else is new? Imagine, if Hitler had conquered all of the Eastern and Western Europe and then called a conference for a dialogue to make peace with the subdued nations and to bestow them with freedom, liberty and justice. Could there be another rational parallel in human history?
Frank Scott (“Who Are we?” Media Monitors Networks: 11.11.2010) helps us to raise the identity crisis not in perception but in information and values: Who Are We?
“Under assault by a consciousness control system that insists we are doing quite well even when evidence shows we’re on the critical list, we have reason to be confused…..If we, the people of these United States, are ever to be a united nation we have to penetrate the lead curtain of misinformation in which we are imprisoned and begin thinking as a population with a collective destiny which demands collective action. We have a serious social identity crisis and cannot save ourselves by making war against ourselves. But if we want a peaceful world and safe environment, we need to break out of the mental prison in which we’ll remain as long as we are kept separate, and unequal, by the controllers of what goes into our minds under the false label of information.”
Americans and most Europeans are indoctrinated that Islam and Muslims are their enemies and somehow, the 9/11 attacks have come to revisit the superstitious and unthinkable episode. In reality, “terrorism” myth was manufactured by the lobbyist-run Western political leaders and groups whereas, it has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims. The myth is self-engineered by the former neo-conservatives of Bush administration.
Jeff gates (“Mindset Warfare” Dissident Voice, 12/8/2010) points out how America is overwhelmingly operating with a confused mindset and unable to correct its global hegemonic perceptions and consequential mistakes:
“The source of this threat is difficult to see because the weaponry deployed is the shared mindset with which we’ve been seduced to do our seeing. At the risk of over-simplification, the mindset is this: money is smarter than people. Just let money to do what money does best and stand aside.”
When the European businessmen explored new world markets for diminishing resources and their armed forces invaded and occupied the vast Islamic world, there were no television, internet, video cameras and stone throwing public and voices of reason to call them foreign mercenaries, aggressors and terrorists. The colonization scheme of things was not outcome of the Western democratic values to spread freedom, liberty and justice but ferocity of violence and killings of millions and millions of human lives for the Empires to be built on colored bloodbaths. The European crusaders crossed the channels and unknown time zones to subjugate the much divided Muslim people as part of their superior nationalism perception and values that Muslims were inferior to the European race and could be used as subjects without human identity and raw material to build the new Empires. Many centuries past, if there was a UNO, it would not have dared to call the European intruders as terrorists because it would have been their own organization as Muslims lived in slavery and denial of basic human rights and identity. They were classified as “subjects of conquered race.” In an information age, knowledge–driven global culture of reason, ignorance is no longer a requisite to learn from the living history.
History speaks of the Al-Andalusia Arab civilization as the longest advanced civilization lasting for eight centuries in Europe. The European Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution were the inspired outcomes of the Islamic intellectual and scientific contributions to the Western Europe. When the Arabs lived with Islam, the earth felt their weight and importance and often they had moral and intellectual superiority over others. They seem to have lost the imperatives of Islamic values when opted for oil-producing superficial prosperity, exclusive materialism and political authoritarianism by negating Islam and leadership accountability as a system of governance. The blood suckers absolute rulers killing the people striving for freedom and human dignity have become a disgrace to Muslims and Islam. Now, the Europeans identify themselves as civilized people but the effective date for the claim remains a mystery. The previous Empires knew their geography and limits, but the newly articulated American Empire in its infancy, is challenging to the limits of the Laws of God and appears obsessed with “fear” of being replaced by the new emerging economically productive nations of Asia such as China, Japan and India and combination of others. President George W. Bush invoked the “War on Terrorism” as a dictum of power, not reason and wisdom, to camouflage the prospective future with acts of barbarity and to dispel the notion of accountability in global affairs. Historically, people and nations pursuing this path of behavior have ended up in self-delusional and self-destruction.
The 9/11 attacks in the US were carried out by some individuals and were not inspired or supported by the religion of Islam or Muslims. Muslims and Islam have no animosity towards the Western civilizations as they live under its continued influential impacts. Some hourly paid intellectuals turned guardian of the approved truth, allege that Islam breeds terrorism. The Western news media poisoned the public thinking and perceptions of ‘radical Islam’ with enhanced ‘fear’ of terrorism as if Arabs and Muslims were born in the eye of the storm and terrorism was an exclusive domain of the Islamic religious precepts.
Gwynne Dyer, the London based prominent writer (The International Terrorist Conspiracy”) points out that “Terrorism is a political technique, not an ideology and any group willing to use violence in pursuit of its political goals may resort to it.” He explains that “there are left-wing terrorists and right-wing terrorists; national terrorist and international terrorist; Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and atheist terrorists. In theory, you could have a “war against terrorism”, but it would involve trying to kill everybody who uses this technique anywhere in the world. The United States is not trying to do that, so it is not fighting a “war against terror.” In reality, what the United States leadership is doing is fighting its own articulated war against the people and nations who had no animosity, nor did any perceive capability to threaten the US as a global power.
Truth is one and indivisible. The US and its allies invaded Iraq and Afghanistan to occupy and exploit the oil and gas resources and the “war on terror” has crossed over the borders into Pakistan. From its inception, the War on Terrorism was an encroachment of Pakistan and dismantling of its nuclear capabilities. America professed friendship when it desperately needed Pakistan’s help, now turned out to be a bitter enemy because it could not conquer the people and lands of an ally – a friend. American commanders stationed in Afghanistan talk blood and more wars against Pakistan simply because they allege some unknown groups challenging their might of power. Facts on the ground speak a different language that the US led aggression has been defeated and these commanders must create more data to enhance Obama’s Presidential re-election candidacy in 2012. Every beginning has its end, often unknown to the aggressors. The US and British military run political leadership failed in courage, imagination and consequences of their actions. A handful of fighters called mujahideen have entangled them effectively and to defeat them on all major fronts of military encounters. Do the Americans and British leaders know who to exit Iraq and Afghanistan peacefully? Not under the circumstances but their WRONG THINKING, the self-defeating plans and failure of ingenuity is outpouring ruthless adventures into neighboring Pakistan. They are paranoid and vengeful for their own faults and deadly miscalculations in a global theatre of which they had neither knowledge about nor understanding of the people and their reactionary animosity and prevalent culture. Even for face saving, they want to put a different mask, not just on the self- savagery but assuming perceptive ignorance of the allies and on all of them to become silent spectators and watch the seamless clothes of the walking king. The mankind wants answer and accountability done to the aggressors. It is not a question of peacemaking and keeping afloat few thugs placed by the US but why the large numbers of humanity were destroyed and those who are responsible must be charged with crimes against humanity and punished.
Caroline Myss, “Dark Times Require Transcendant Responses.” OpenEdNews: 3/21/2010) takes us on a moral and spiritual discovery of the American landscape and points out, what has been lost in the course of terrible confrontational history must be recovered through self- evaluation and self- realization:
“All the great learnings that develop a person's moral conscience, inner skills, capacity for discernment, to appreciate the arts, to refine themselves as a human being-- are gone. These are the thinking arts. Technology is the money art. We've removed the thinking, refinement arts. We've replaced them with superstitious, evangelical crap-- ... racist, filled with fear. with superstars…….Always in the history of humanity there has been horribleness-- nightmares and waking up, nightmares and waking up……..We have to find a higher way of looking at this or you're going to be consumed by the negativity. I have learned to see things through grace, because I have to. At the end of the day... you can't reason with a crisis, a catastrophy or disease...”
Would the American and British political leaders learn any lessons from the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? While the rest of the so called Islamic world was complacent and coward, an International War Tribunal in Malaysia concluded the public proceedings and unanimously charged Tony Blair and George W. Bush as guilty of crimes against the humanity in Iraq. Would the masses in Europe and America pursue the guilty verdicts and asked the officials concerned to arrest these sadistic criminals? John Laughland (“The Mask of Altruism Disguising a Colonial War: The Guardian: Aug 2, 2004), offers a real world perspective: “Just an old fashioned colonial war – the reality of killing and escalation of violence, disguised with the hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught us that, then we are incapable of ever learning anything.” Every beginning has its end. It is just that most transgressors do not know about it when they cross over the limits of the Laws of God. The Roman, Austro-Hungarian and British Empires collapsed after they violated the limits. Nazis claimed to run the world for thousands of years, but ended up in just 12 years after killing millions of human beings throughout the Western hemisphere. Fascism met resistance at its early stages. The beginning envisions the end. The USSR was defeated, the day it raided the destitute people of Afghanistan and disturbed the dead in graveyards with continuous bombing. The American and British surrendered the day international community learned about the Guantanomo Bay prisoners and photos of the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. Since March 2003, an estimated three million civilians have been killed by the American-British war in Iraq. After the facts, the American and British apologists would put up the explanations that the soldiers had social and mental disorders. The US media reports indicate that approximately 19 of their troops commit suicide every day on the war fronts.
Future must be anew, not the repetition of the past. Future making does not lie with the aggressors nor with the failed international institutions, it is with the will and resolve of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to oust the aggressors and recover their homes and habitats for rebuilding of their lives and human dignity. Mr. Karzai, the self-made president of Afghanistan, claimed that he and the participating members of the Arab-Islamic world represent the Islamic version of the civility and not terrorism. Mr. Karzai or others in attendance, the Arab-Muslim staged actors do not represent the interest and priorities of the Muslim Ummah. The people of the Islamic world see them all as a pan on the global political chessboard being financed, supported and kept in office to steal the future of the people of Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He is viewed as part of the problem, not part of any workable solution. Afghanistan indicates multiple insolvable problems under the present climate of foreign occupation. With crippled economy, growing mistrust of the people, missing public institutions, war torn societal culture engulfed with corruption, Mr. Karzai has to prove if he has a vision and can lead the people out of the foreign bondage, miseries and continued destruction of the infrastructures. One obvious and feasible solution could be if Afghanistan-Pakistan and Talaban could sit together in a conference under some impartial-non-partisan coordination, they might be able to devise solution workable for the future. There is no viable alternative to this complex conflict except direct peace talking and peace-making amongst these three parties. Asking foreign financial aid from the Western nations would not tackle any problems in Afghanistan but endanger its future. If the US and its comrades in arms the UNO, NATO and others were honest and responsible institutions, they should have outlined the priorities for immediate withdrawals of the forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. More importantly, if there were concerned Arab-Muslim leaders, they should set the agenda for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli problem, the making of an independent State of Palestine and the removal of the illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. Apparently, there is no conference scheduled to deal with the real issues facing the global humanity. The states, the main puppet actors in the global political arena can be found existing on legal papers, not in the real world actions, and certainly not in a responsive manner to the concerned international community.
A century earlier C.E, M. Joad (Guide to Modern Wickedness), captioned the human tragedy in these words:
“….Human nature is at least in part wicked and in part foolish, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly? ….Men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. They think on occasion that it is necessary and wise and honourable, for war is not the work of bad men knowing themselves to be wrong, but of good men passionately convinced that they are right.”
After waging a decade old bogus wars of terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, American and some of its hired European allied policy makers and military strategists seem to have exhausted their rational THINKING and miserably failed to understand or differentiate between the myth of power and realities on the ground that they cannot win any wars against Islam and Muslims. Of all the forbidden truth that the Western news media does not exhibit and the political leaders failed to grasp is that the US and its former imperial allies do not have the will nor weapons to fight against God and Islam. If time and history could reawaken their lost conscience and give them an opportunity and a slot for self-reflection and self-consciousness, would they ever learn this compelling reality from the undeniable history of the Nature of things?
This is what happens when millions pay little to no attention what is happening in their country. This comes from millions being dumbed down by the corporate controlled news media for over forty years. While America needs more patriots and less loyalist i believe it is too late. Ignorance, apathy and denial and loyalty to the government instead to our country is causing loss of freedoms and liberty. A little late to learn the difference between a patriot and a loyalist. Our founders knew.
While the planned wars and military aggressions have failed to achieve any strategic goals except causing large scale deaths and environmental destruction of the human habitats, political thinkers and intellectuals and experts in conflict resolution should envision new strategies to avert the futuristic wars. One of such rational approach would be to organize societal dialogues between the Islamic world and the Western nations to assess and to know where we are and what wrongs and brutalities have been done to the mankind, and how best we could come out of the prevalent man-made foolishness and drudgery and deception? America and its European allies are disconnected with the POWER of REASON and priorities of the 21st century surviving mankind. Now, it is up to the new thinkers and intellectuals of the global humanity to work for ANEW vision of the world where these belligerent Western nations have flunked, indeed, the trump card rests with the educated and spiritually enriched visionary and proactive intelligent thinkers and problem-solving experts of the Islamic world to show courage, imagination and take initiatives and to help build a new world of human dignity, rights and justice for the missing global peace and co-existence.
Caroline Myss (“Dark Times Require Transcendant Responses.” OpenEdNews: 3/21/2010) opens a window for self- actualization and a look beyond the obvious:
“At the end of the day, when I am screaming, screaming... like the civil war, the president was from the civil war, we were fighting for emancipation. This time we are fighting for our psychic emancipation. This is a momentous, archetypal return and the same ferocious venom is playing out in the congress and we can't lose the republic……..Bush Cheney were so dangerous to the turning point of this country.
It is because of this war.. policies, expense, deregulation policies-- the procorporate policies of Bush Cheney admin that our country is now broke. We don't have a chance to recover. …Where are we going to go...We are imploding in our own culture.”
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