Towards Understanding Global Peace
| by Mahboob A. Khawaja
( April 17, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Global political affairs are a complex discipline and often require serious, critical and impartial mindset to see the man-made problems truthfully, objectively, rationally and dispassionately. The 21st century of hope for Peace is fast turning into a fraught history of highly sophisticated wars both on Earth and in Space poised to destroy the mankind. Previous wars of centuries were aimed at annihilation of political and economic enemies but the 21st century conflicts are ready-made recipes not only to eliminate the mankind but also the environment in which human beings survive and the planet Earth that sustains life. Given the strategic know-how and the scientific-technological developments, it is an established fact that any futuristic global warfare could end the very existence of man and humanity on this planet. The Weapons of Mass Destruction that the US, West Europeans and Russian have positioned on the planet and in space are a ready-made menace to the survival of mankind. With massive news media propaganda campaigns and falsification of the facts of human life, common folks and even the intelligent ones do not seem to have the rational understanding of the wars and their consequential impacts on human life and the greater universe. One would have imagined that more knowledgeable people become, more rational world will emerge in the coming ages of rational thinking. Not so, we continued to be occupied with false images and misleading rationale of the global conflicts. Like always, few cynical and mentally unbalanced people plan and wage wars against others, not imagining the dreadful end results of their intrigues and conspiracies against life, human rights and dignity and futuristic possibilities for survival on the planet.
Those who plan and wage wars are not innocent belligerent or without knowledge. They know well what they are engaged in and its consequences. Those who go to farfetched lands to kill the innocent people, divide and massacre men, women and children, fully understand what they are doing. Perhaps, common people are misled by the warmongers enabling them to sustain their war agendas under false political perceptions and imagery as is the case in the US. The undeniable TV imagery - the massacres of innocent Afghan women and children, bombing of the civilian population and the US spy drone attacks targeting innocent civilians in north western Pakistan are fast becoming media entertainment and soap opera to the American audience and of the US scheme of militarization of the culture. During the first week of April, 11 innocent Afghan children and two women were bombed by the US led NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan. BBC showed their tarnished bodies but nowhere in the US any news media broadcast this horrible crime against the humanity. In his article Professor Camillo "Mac" Bica, School of Visual Arts, New York City and an activist of Peace and Justice (“Atrocity and War”, OpenedNews, 4/28/2010) offers a penetrating insight:
“…war is not accessible through the understanding, rationally, intellectually, by watching a film or by reading a book. To "know" war, you have to experience it, live it, feel it in your gut the anxiety, fear, frustration, boredom, hopelessness, despair, anger, rage, etc. In truth, warriors exist in a world totally incomprehensible to those who have never had the misfortune of experiencing the horrors of the battlefield.”
Some scholars argue that wars are planned in a cycle of chauvinistic historical events – every now and then wars are repeated - the “worst time in human history.” Paul Buchheit author of America Wars: Illusions and Realities believes that War or Revolution happen in Every 75 Years. It's Time Again. (Common Dream, 6/11/2012). He thinks of various developmental cycles including the revolution against inequality, French Revolution, time of Great Depression, WW2, and now after: “nearly 75 years after we started World War 2 production, we again feel the agony of a wealth gap expanding, like grotesquely stretched muscle, to intolerable limits. If history repeats itself, we will be part of another revolution of long-subjugated people. Indeed, it has already begun, in Europe and Canada and with the Occupy Movement. The face of plutocracy has changed, but not the consequences. Just before the French Revolution, Paris and London were dismal places for the masses, with islands of unimaginable splendor for aristocrats, who, like the multi-millionaires of today, found it hard to relate to the commoners.”
To Chris Hedges - a global scholar of rational thinking and author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (“How to Think”, Common Dreams, 7/9/2012), visualize basic problems with Human Thinking, the delusional concept of war by the masses:
Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification…. The psychoanalyst John Steiner calls this phenomenon “turning a blind eye.” He notes that often we have access to adequate knowledge but because it is unpleasant and disconcerting we choose unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, to ignore it….. At night you could hear gunfire. But they were the last to “know.” And we are equally self-deluded. The physical evidence of national decay—the crumbling infrastructures, the abandoned factories and other workplaces, the rows of gutted warehouses, the closure of libraries, schools, fire stations and post offices—that we physically see, is, in fact, unseen. The rapid and terrifying deterioration of the ecosystem, evidenced in soaring temperatures, droughts, floods, crop destruction, freak storms, melting ice caps and rising sea levels, are met blankly with Steiner’s “blind eye…… The Shakespearean scholar Harold Goddard wrote: “The imagination is not a faculty for the creation of illusion; it is the faculty by which alone man apprehends reality. The ‘illusion’ turns out to be truth.” “Let faith oust fact,” Starbuck says in “Moby-Dick.”…..“It is only our absurd ‘scientific’ prejudice that reality must be physical and rational that blinds us to the truth,”
Strangely enough, warmongers hire war propagandists to classify wars as “noble”, “good”, necessity of the ruling nobility and to protect the flag, borders and national interests. George Bush claimed being “Man of God” who started the day with the Bible, to orchestrate the bogus war on terrorism. These are cynical notions implied to enforce the monstrous viewpoints of the few warlords in every age. There is no quality criterion except falsification of information and facts of human life.
Paul Buchheit (“War or Revolution happen in Every 75 Years. It's Time Again” 06/11/2012) reminds us: “In our 'civilized' times people aren't being run down by noblemen or forced to eat grass. The aristocracy has learned a lot about suppressing crowds in 225 years. But they need to fear the growing revolution. They need to fear, as Dickens put it, "the remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them."
Chris Hedges - author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (“How to Think”, Common Dreams, 7/9/2012) gives context to the global dilemma:
And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.
Professor Camillo "Mac" Bica, School of Visual Arts, New York City and an activist of Peace and Justice (“Atrocity and War”, OpenedNews, 4/28/2010) makes it known in bold words:
“…..while I do not justify nor excuse the actions of these individuals, neither do I seek scapegoats in order to absolve myself of culpability and responsibility as a citizen of a democracy in whose name and with whose tax dollars these atrocities are committed. Consequently, if there is to be condemnation and punishment, let it begin with those whose incompetence and desire for wealth and power make war inevitable and unnecessary; whose apathy allows the slaughter to continue; and whose blind allegiance, misguided patriotism, or utopian idealism hamper their ability to understand and appreciate the true reality and nature of war and its tragic and profound effects upon the warrior. We must see through the mythology, the lies and the deceptions, and understand that all who become tainted by war are victims. Consequently, we must recognize as well, that their culpability must be mitigated and that we all share responsibility and blame for the inevitable atrocities of war.”
More than a decade earlier, George Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan under a false pretext of combating “terrorism.” The only known terrorism of wars that the US and its hired former colonial Europeans are leading against the innocent people of Iraq, Afghanistan and the tribal belts of Pakistan. None of the perpetrators of these wars of aggression are held accountable by the humanity except of the few – George W. Bush and Tony Blair indicted for war crimes in Iraq by an International Tribunal in Malaysia but not punished. Nobody seems to be pursuing any rational course of plan to enhance global peace and understanding amongst different cultures and civilizations or the need to stop the bogus Wars on Terrorism and help the humanity to return to normal setting of co-existence. To shield his broken pledges for change- “Yes We Can” and to uplift the US public morale after his re-election, President Obama wants troops withdrawal from Afghanistan with honor and dignity. Killing of the fellow human beings and genocidal acts in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot offer any dignity to the warmongers. The US led NATO forces are killing the civilians without any stoppage and rethinking. The US and some Europeans are living in a state of paranoid thinking, and fail to see the prevalent realities and reactions of the global masses against their warmongering. The Western world is terribly naïve in its approach to warmongering against the poor, deprived and divided mankind in other parts of the developing world. History has a role to teaching and learning which is denied by the global war strategists. All wars are the outcome of anti-human thinking and cruelty and none can or will bring peace and security to the mankind. After the Two WW, the Europeans have learned it in a hard way but American political minds are trying to escape the prevalent truth. Those who try to overrun the humanity, do get overtrumped by their vicious plans. Hitler and Mussolini experienced it and so did the former USSR and so many other tyrannical empires. Every beginning has its end. This is the Law of God that no worldly materialistic or political power can change or challenge. All wars intrinsically lead to self-defeat and self-destruction. Those nations or a people claiming to be most powerful on the visual screen is not a reality but a delusional imagery – falsification of truth carved up by the political propagandists and hired media agents of influence. The historical record clearly demonstrates that whenever great powers went haunting the large segments of the mankind in farfetched lands, it is usually the end game of their role-play in global affairs. America and its allied Europeans live in constant FEAR that soon they will be replaced by others - the natural course of history.
The global community is informed, mature and vigilant, and no single nation can dare to use weapons of mass destruction unilaterally and defy the dire consequences of self annihilation and destruction. American leadership knows it well too. So what is this all fuss about? What is this nonsense of nuclear weapons development in Iran? Imagine, if the Shah, the absolute king of Iran was alive and buying the weapons from the US, would America move to strangle Iran? No, certainly NOT. The dead Shah was a fraternal friend during the time of seven America Presidents. Isn’t this another myth of the continued bogus War on Terrorism raged on the false pretext of the WMD in Iraq? Paul Craig Roberts (“the Next War on Washington’s Agenda.” PaulCraigRoberts.org 01/12/2012), has offered a rational context to the current problem:
“We, as Americans, need to ask ourselves what all this is about? Why is our government so provocative toward Islam, Russia, China, Iran? What purpose, whose purpose is being served? Certainly not ours ... Where do we go from here? If not to nuclear destruction, Americans must wake up.”
(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012)
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