| by Mahboob A. Khawaja
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. Football games, porn, and shopping malls are one thing. Survival of human life is another. Washington, that is, “representative government,” consists only of a few powerful vested interests. These private interests, not the American people, control the US government. That is why nothing that the US government does benefits the American people. (Paul Craig Roberts (“The Next War on Washington’s Agenda.” OpenEdnews: 01/12/2012)
International Governance Lacks Moral and Intellectual Leadership
( October 17, 2014, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The UNO originated from the belief and commitment to avert futuristic wars by men of new ideas pursuing peaceful means, diplomacy and accountability to the global mankind. How sad and cynical it looks to view the succeeding generations entrapped again into the same mindset of warmongering and power politics as were the sadistic leaders before. The UNO and its major organs responsible for global peace and security have proven to be ceremonial debating clubs and acting contrary to the essence and purposes of the Charter. The global humanity feels tormenting pains and wants to foresee systematic change and development of a new global organization responsible to the global community, not the abstract Nation States. Like the past, once again few Western egoistic leaders have manipulated the time and opportunities to dictate and undermine the interests of the mankind. The global humanity is the net object of all their deliberations but without any meaningful role in challenging the few global warlords. America and few Europeans find freehand to go anywhere and bomb the humanity at will. This is what exactly happening in Iraq-Syria war theatre of the few. The ISIL is picked up for bombing and to match the domestic political agenda and the Badr Shia group and others alike are ignored to appease Iran and its backdoor US alliance against the Sunnis.
The contemporary history speaks loud and clear that the United States has an undeniable torrid history of creating and supporting terrorist groups throughout the global political theatre. The CIA helped to evolve and train Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the same appears to be true of the ISIS, now called ISIL fighting in Iraq and Syria. On the face of it, the US policy makers claim to oppose the ISIL unleashed terrorism and beheading of the few American and European prisoners and Islamic extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy to support military interventions in the Arab world. If diplomacy was the norm to settle political conflicts, why is the US policy makers not engaged in political dialogue with the ISIL?
The 21st century global politics have not produced any new leaders with vision and integrity to imagine the universal phenomenon of peaceful change and futuristic developments. There are no global organizations managed by people of moral and intellectual vision and courage to serve the interests of the global community. Man is a moral and intellectual being articulating happiness and progress horizontally in peace-time, but when fear of the unknown, hatred and animosity attempt to govern the human consciousness, degeneration replaces human progress. America used to be a leader of change and new strategies to envisage global friendship, co-existence and harmony of the mankind. This week, morally stressful and intellectually exhausted President Obama in his final White House term of office, spoke at the UN Assembly and the Security Council on global affairs and focused on threat of ISIL movement across the war torn Arab world. George Bush and Obama have infested the Arab culture with sectarian violence and military interventions. Both had no vision for peaceful resolution of the problems which they engineered to occupy and control the oil-exporting Arab countries. In crisis and unusual nation and global emergencies, leaders offer intellectual security to nation and people across the globe, not so by the in-between drawing-room President. Morally and intellectually conscientious American masses if they were waiting for swift actions to restore confidence in the administration, it re-ignited many critical issues being untouched by President. Obama at the UNO gathering as to political accountability and how to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. America faces multi-dimensional problems of its own failed foreign policy and to clarify its delusional status-quo in global political affairs.
The continued American led bogus War on Terrorism has wide ranging impacts on the America political and intellectual psyche. The Washington-based war culture has incapacitated the US policy makers to think rationally and act responsibly in global affairs. Strange as is, President did not explain why every day 18-25 US war veterans commit suicides? (“Why Do Soldiers Commit Suicide and Global Warlords.” Uncommon Thought Journal: 4/14/2014). Moral and intellectual darkness is renewed under the leadership of the Commander in-Chief of the US armed forces. Do the leaders care to protect the precious human life? Most contemporary politicians are not responsible leaders but stage actors pretending to be representing the national interests. They learn to excite the emotions of the electorates to win elections but fail to act as responsible leaders. They view the humanity just in numbers, not an object of precious life and value in the larger universal context. Most often, these people are disconnected with the annals of normal human thinking and affairs, suspicious and paranoid and they see success to be achieved at the cost of ruthlessness, hatred, degeneration and viciousness – all part of their inborn value system, making politics as a dreadful game of egomaniac mind, deceptions and strategic priorities. This requires intelligent commitment to principles of international peace and security for all, non-aggression in the working of global systems, protection of life and a balanced ecological culture of co-existence within the encompassed Universe -Man and the Humanity. America, a leading industrialized power is indifferent to these pertinent factors of life.
One Humanity is Capable to Challenge the Ferocity of Wars
All wars perpetuate violence, fear and vindictiveness against mankind and are aimed at destruction of civilizations and dehumanization of succeeding generations. Bruce Gambrill Foster (“The Scourge Of War: The Shameless Marketing of Violence” Information Clearing House: 9/14/1014) observes: “The connection between combating the violence of organized crime, for example, and war is easily bridged. In both, blood is spilled…. If even our simplest joys are couched in terms of conflict, death and domination, what hope is there to distinguish and abhor and eventually end the true villainy of armed conflict, the scourge of war?” The global mankind is the net victim of the catastrophic madness of the few warlords. Did Obama learn anything from the past to change anything because of the knowledge, history and facts of life to know his weaknesses and strengths of vision and to change and reform his mind and behavior when facts warrant a change, be it in policy making or global interactive behavior? After all listening and learning are critical factors for the changing role of the 21st century political leadership and so is the flexibility mechanism to be built-in for effective leadership. But there are no intelligent and proactive leaders with a vision of the future to see the imperative of One Humanity except naïve and self-geared egomaniac full of the sensation of power using triviality and viciousness to torture and kill the mankind and destroy ecological habitats. But contrary to the brutal perceptions and actions of the US-former Europeans imperialists, the international community is informed, mature, and enjoys the moral and intellectual capacity to know and understand the facts of life and to challenge the politically imperiled insensitivity to universal accord and Unity of the mankind against brutality of the Terrorism of Wars that unites them with a common fate more than divides them by any token of adversity and separate national identities.
Progressively evolving is a new information-age plausible global culture of Thinking of One Humanity and a new proactive civilization of strong bonds and affinity of people to people cultural communications – global citizenry participation in social, economic and political Thinking and Globalization – man in one part of the world feels, thinks and acts-reacts to what happens to any man in another remote corners of the globe. Mankind is neither blind, nor inept, it defines its own purpose, meaning and identity for peace and harmony that the established institutions of governance – be it in America or Europe or elsewhere miserably failed to recognize or value their importance in global political affairs. Given the inherent systematic deficiencies and moral and intellectual corruption in the US – European – worldwide political governance and policy formulation toward the international community, the global community is actively organized and morally and intellectually powerful to oppose all the belligerent nightmares planned and orchestrated by the US and its allies in the Arabian political theatre. The US and its allies are using media as a weapon to instill fear of the ISIL.
Towards Understanding Global Peacemaking and Not Empire-building
David Swanson (“ISIS, Weapons Makers, Thugs Benefit from This Crime.” Dissident Voice: 9/23/2014), points out how the US weapon manufacturers have increased the cost of weapon sales by 19% and are ultimately the beneficiary of the war against ISIL. The coalition of war led by the US against ISIL is nothing but a paradox of self-contradictory coercive arrangement. The U.S. France, Germany, UK, Saudi Arabia, and Arab Gulf countries aim is to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, which happens to be the goal of ISIL and other groups fighting in Syria. If authoritarian Bashar al-Assad is defeated, then ISIL will be the direct beneficiary, since it is either defeating or absorbing the rest of the Syrian armed opposition. The current sectarian wars do not appeal to any holiest mission. The US is bombing to support its war economy and finds a convenient pretext to kill the Arab people. Iran has few thousands of Badr Shia group carrying out bloody atrocities against Sunnis in Iraq. The ISIL and many other groups are aligned to protect the Sunnis and manage the Caliphate. The coalition of Arab leaders takes comfort and invests in distraction of the real political problems for societal change and systematic legitimacy. None knows the end game and none have the capacity to imagine peacemaking. Soon the new caliphate may stretch unchallenged from Iraq-Syria landscape onward to the Mediterranean. American politicians are used to ignore the imperatives of global peaceful co-existence. Jacob G. Hornberger (“The Sordid Roots of the National Security State.” The Future of Freedom Foundation: 12/29/2013), founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation cite how the American leaders failed to imagine peaceful co-existence with Russia- former Soviet Union:
Peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union was the last thing that U.S. officials wanted. Peaceful coexistence wouldn’t justify the rise of the permanent military establishment, a foreign empire of military bases, a CIA, a NSA, covert operations, spying, foreign interventionism, coups, assassinations, torture, surveillance, spying, and support of foreign dictatorships. By “scaring hell out of the American people,” U.S. officials could induce them to reject the founding principles of their nation and support a communist-like and totalitarian-like governmental structure grafted onto their constitutional system, all in the new name of “national security” and protecting the nation from communists and the Soviet Union.
We are witnessing an historic event and epic of empire-building. Leaders claiming to be democratically elected, think and behave like absolute emperors. President Obama appears to be standing at the crossroads of his career and engaged in time-killing exercises, not an intellectual and proactive person leading to the future-making. Mankind needs morally and intellectually responsible leadership. All absolute rulers and leaders tried to run down the mankind as if it was just a number- a digit- and conscious-less entity. But all of them fell in disgrace destroying their own nations and empires. This author had first-hand opportunities to walk through the historic remains of many so called great nations of their own time span who were playing lord of the world but ended-up being destroyed by their own plans and designs against the Nature of Things. America was enriched with intellectual foresights to safeguard the rest of the mankind. But its contemporary leaders and major institutions seem to defy the logic of co-existing with the global community. For sure, American leaders lack even the essence of Thomas Paine’s historic “Common Sense” to change, but historical change will replace America’s global leadership image with others, more understanding and relevant to the mankind. After eight years of Bush-like warmongering, perpetuated hatred on others and degenerating impacts, history will judge President Obama by his actions, not by claims.
Chris Hedges (writes a regular column for Truthdig.com and was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and author of many books including his most recent book: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle) contributes a realist observation (“The Ghoulish Face of Empire.” Truthdig.com: 6/22/2014), to make the US policy makers understand the untold facts of global politics:
The black-clad fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sweeping a collapsing army and terrified Iraqis before them as they advance toward Baghdad, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East…… The language of violence engenders violence. The language of hate engenders hate. “I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” It is as old as the Bible.
There is no fight left in us. The war is over. We destroyed Iraq as a unified country. It will never be put back together. ….We are not, as we thought when we entered Iraq…. We are something else. Fools and murderers. Blinded by hubris. Faded relics of the Cold War. And now, in the final act of the play, we are crawling away. Our empire is dying……. The disintegration of Iraq is irreversible. At best, the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunnis will carve out antagonistic enclaves. At worst, there will be a protracted civil war. This is what we have bequeathed to Iraq. The spread of our military through the region has inflamed jihadists across the Arab world. The resulting conflicts will continue until we end our occupation of the Middle East. The callous slaughter we deliver is no different from the callous slaughter we receive. Our jihadists—George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Thomas Friedman and Tommy Franks—who assured us that swift and overwhelming force in Iraq would transform the Middle East into an American outpost of progress, are no less demented than the jihadists approaching Baghdad. These two groups of killers mirror each other. This is what we have spawned. And this is what we deserve.
(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 Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012)
