| by Mahboob A. Khawaja
“Lies of the Iraq War” the 10th anniversary of the Iraq’s genocide approximately 3 million human beings massacred and human habitats destroyed under the false pretext of WMD. This week, the global news media hurriedly doing the damage control of its complacent image and showing the belated facts of the bogus “War on Terror.” The facts were facts in March 2003, when George Bush, the Congress and Tony Blair planned aggression against the innocent people of Iraq, the Western news media served as a weapon to launch the cruel war. Now it wants to distance itself and perhaps repair the self-inflicted and well sponsored atrocities carried out against the mankind.
( April 1, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Western warriors with small wisdom and big thinking are looking for an escape route from the facts of life. “Lies of the Iraq War” would simply reaffirm, not change human perceptions and forcefully depict on screen how cruel they are like the Russian Ivan the Terrible who roasted innocent people and burnt alive citizens to entertain the psycho pathetic mindset. Likewise, George Bush and his neo-conservative accomplice and Tony Blair - the leaders who claim to lead some of the top most Western democracies. Leaders and their public institutions failed miserably to offer fiction instead of facts. They lied and deceived the people and perpetuated heinous crimes against the mankind. The then German Foreign Minister and Chair of the UN Security Council session made it clear, he knew the facts that Colin Powell was lying to the world. No one is remorseful for the loss of millions and destructions of the life and habitats in Iraq. They simply attribute all reasoning to the “intelligence failure” without any accountability of those who were in power and architect of the Iraq war. The Western nations under NATO waging the bogus “War on Terrorism” used the mass media as a weapon to misinform and deceive the public of a possible threat to their life and security. There exists a wide gulf between the aspirations of the masses in the Western nations and thinking of the few warmongering leaders they have in the ruling elite. People want peace not celebration of bogus wars on the innocent humanity.
Tom Engelhardt (“The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.” Information Clearing House: 3.28.2013), co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of many publications including The United States of Fear offers a penetrating insight to the US war culture:
It’s true that, last week, few in Congress cared to discuss, no less memorialize, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Nonetheless, two anniversaries of American disasters and crimes abroad -- the “mission accomplished” debacle of 2003 and the 45th anniversary of the My Lai massacre -- were at least noted in passing in our world. …..Or what about celebrating the 12th anniversary of Congress’s Authorization for Use of Military Force, the joint resolution that a panicked and cowed body passed on September 14, 2001? It wasn’t a declaration of war -- there was no one to declare war on -- but an open-ended grant to the president of the unfettered power to use “all necessary and appropriate force” in what would become a never-ending (and still expanding) “Global War on Terror.
Still, in our post-9/11 world, there are so many other anniversaries from hell whose silver linings don’t get noticed. Take this April. It will be the ninth anniversary of the widespread release of the now infamous photos of torture, abuse, and humiliation from Abu Ghraib. In case you’ve forgotten, that was Saddam Hussein’s old prison where the U.S. military taught the fallen Iraqi dictator a trick or two about the destruction of human beings. Shouldn’t there be an anniversary of some note there? I mean, how many cultures have turned dog collars (and the dogs that go with them), thumbs-up signs over dead bodies, and a mockery of the crucified Christ into screensavers?
Wars and aggressions kill people and do not produce peace and harmony but resentment and degeneration. History illustrates when a nation or its leaders challenge the limits of the Laws of God and approach near the end of their lifespan, insanity takes-over common sense and they tend to ignore warnings and reject all voices of reason. Most of the conscientiously responsible Western scholars and political intellectuals are getting increasingly concerned, not to identify their interests with the minority ruling elite of the United States and Britain as these war criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair and their role in large scale massacres of the civilians and using uranium powered missile for destruction of human habitats in Fulljah, Iraq, and killings of civilians by drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University - a distinguish scholar of Western-Islamic civilizations (author of Unholy War and What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam), makes a candid observation: “in many parts of the Muslim world the war against global terrorism has come to be viewed as a war against Islam and Muslims. The image of America has become that of a neo-imperial power that has sought to redraw the map of the Middle East and the Muslim world, influenced by an unholy alliance of neoconservatives and the militant Christian right.”
Once again, humanity appears to have been pushed back to the shameful annals of the European Dark Ages. In search of new animosity, few utopian scholars wanted to distract the humanity after the end of the Cold War to keep the liberal democracy working and ensure electoral voters active participation. In early 90’s, Samuel Huntington reinvented and re-ignited the old cliché - “a clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam - a new age of confrontation between the predominantly technologically advanced culture of the West and the subdued interdependent societal religious culture of the Muslim world. The powerful mass media and the official policy makers throughout the West, fuel the insane imagery that the Arabs and Muslims are “fundamentalists” and “terrorists.” Every day, the corporate run media outlets organize massive propaganda campaign alleging Al-Qaeda involvement virtually in all conflict situations across the Middle East, West Africa and Asia and elsewhere. The facts remain unchallenged that al-Qaeda was planned and created by the CIA and they know well it does not exist anymore as an active body of political activists pursuing any strategic goals against the Western highly sophisticated war machines, be it in Afghanistan, Pakistan or other locations.
Analyzing the contemporary global affairs, the image of a single most World Power is fixed and unquestionable, be it fair or foul. The net outcome shows the manufactured imagery of Muslims as the alleged terrorists and the sole inheritor of the 21st century political ideology. With massive corporate sponsorships and the Western mass media collaborative alliances, Islamic civilization is the only targeted client of this emerging business. What about the Arabs and Muslims, have they done anything to challenge the absurdity of the so called “war on terrorism” and to safeguard their political interests and human survivability?
There are no educated, conscientious or publicly chosen leaders in the Arab- Muslim world except the recent President Morsi of Egypt and political leaders in Tunisia. The authoritarian ruling elite are the outcome of neo-colonialism. There are no Muslim institutions to provide honest analyses on the global political affairs or reflect on the possible remedies. Throughout the Arab-Muslim world, there is not a single established university teaching global peace, security and conflict management - the institutions dealing with the present and envisioning the future that the Western nations are built upon for change and development. Leaderless Muslim masses appear desperate to look for a visionary and intelligent leader to offer some consolence and intellectual security. Not so, in the Arabs or Muslim countries, leaders live in palaces, not with people. All the leaders are pre-screened by the CIA and the World Bank before taking a shape and form to move into a palace. Accordingly, Saddam Hussein, Shah of Iran, General Musharaf, Zardari and Karzai fit into that facilitated image and governance.
The neo-colonial rulers have helped the Colonial Masters to make the Muslim masses helpless victim of their warmongering and inhuman atrocities being carried out at Gutanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib Prison, and Massacre at Fullajah, Haditah, Bughdad, Kandhar, South-North Waziristan-Pakistan and elsewhere. There is no Sultan Salahuddin Ayoubi that the European would fear for centuries to come, there are no Sultan Babyar and Sheikh Izzuddin to give blowing defeats to Halaqu Khan - the Mongol warlord, and no Allama Iqbal or Ali Shariati to awake the sleeping folks and guide the believers to success.
If there were educated and intelligent leaders in the Muslim world, one could reason the unreason. But the oil exporting Arab leaders operate from a position of political weakness, not strength to play any useful role in international politics. They have built palaces over moving sand, not institutions to educate and protect the interest of the Muslim Ummah. Imagine the dichotomy of the living history, the Christian Crusaders came, ransacked and killed 170, 000 Muslims just in one day to occupy Jerusalem. Despite assurances of peace and religious sanctity, the Crusaders moved horses in blood-flown streets to capture Jerusalem. When Sultan Salahuddin Ayoubi reconquered Jerusalem, the visionary leader allowed and escorted all the Christian Crusaders to safety with human dignity, honor and material wealth. History shall describe a corporate world run by greed and animalistic savagery, preoccupied to influence and control the destinies of the living human beings under the guise of economic feasibility and market interests.
Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard, 1997), former Security Advisor to President Carter, makes an historical reference: “American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives describe American priorities as the economic subjugation of the Soviet Union and the control of Central Asia and the Middle East.” With the continued wars of aggressions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the international institutions overwhelmingly controlled and managed by the Western Powers have become irrelevant to the 21st century needs of the global humanity. Across the Western world, masses vigorously oppose the on-going deadly wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In wars people are killed, leaders are not. None of the Western leaders have ever fought a war on the real front. Simply put, there are politicians lacking reason and honesty of purpose, and are engaged in time killing discussions. The continued wars serve the interest of the corporate establishments and the Western economies. The image of deliberately dismantled system of global governance is meant to appease the economically influential and politically smart Western elite. Hitler and Mussolini were Europeans, not Arabs or Muslims, and they did not rule alone on their own, as there were millions to cheer them up and support their leadership egos with galvanized news media alignment of the time, and their personal ideologies as law and order of the day. At the initial stages of the 21st century, the replica is exactly the same from the pages of history, only the names and titles have been changed and adjusted – a small minority of ‘sick puppies’ are determined to occupy the oil and gas resources and to wipe out the Arabs and Islamic civilization under the guise of terrorism.
Changing the names of Hitler and Mussolini, now historian and prosecutors responsible for conducting the war crimes will mention Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair and many more. Britain knows what it lost, cannot regain in colonial history, but the American empire has yet to learn the hard lessons. It is more fearful that soon it could be replaced by China in combination of another economically viable power or group of nations from the emerging rival economies of Asia. Professor John Esposito (Unholy War and What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam). provides us the History Lessons in a rational context:
“An important lesson of history is that rulers and nations do rise and fall. Unforeseen circumstances can bring up unanticipated change. Few expected the breakup of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe to occur when they did ……now is the time for those in all walks of life (political, economic, military, media and academic) who wish to see a new order not to be silenced but to speak out, organize, vote and be willing when necessary to make sacrifices in promoting a new global order.”
On the 10th anniversary of the Iraqi genocide, there were no statements issued by the Obama administration or apologies by British politicians. Even the BBC broadcast simply offered visual facts and commentaries but no remorse for the dreadful crimes against the living mankind. Tom Ingelhardt (“The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You.” Information Clearing House: 3.28.2013), sums up the paradox of contemporary global affairs - how the history will judge the warmongers by their actions or claims:
“We should already know more than enough to be horrified by the state of our American world. It should disturb us deeply that a government of, by, and for the war-makers, intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, privatizing mercenary corporations, surveillers, torturers, and assassins is thriving in Washington. As for the people -- that’s us -- in these last years, we largely weren’t there, even as the very idea of a government of, by, and for us bit the dust, and our leaders felt increasingly unconstrained when committing acts of shame in our name. So perhaps the last overlooked anniversary of these years might be the 12th anniversary of American cowardice. You can choose the exact date yourself; anytime this fall will do. At that moment, Americans should feel free to celebrate a time when, for our “safety,” and in a state of anger and paralyzing fear, we gave up the democratic ghost.”
“Among the many truths in that still-to-be-written secret history of our American world would be this: we the people have no idea just how, in these years, we’ve hurt ourselves.”
(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012)
