SPEAKING FREELY The post-terror terrorism of war
By Mahboob A Khawaja
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
"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 honorable, 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, 1936.
The United States government issued another alert on the possible terrorist attack. CNN moderator Philip Dodd, a former CIA terrorist expert, could not explain what the alert meant. It was
vague, he conceded, and a precautionary measure. It's delivery was intended so that if in the case of a real al-Qaeda attack, the American masses would not blame the US State Department.
America is enriched with a history bogus alerts: Yellow Alerts, Red Alerts and many unspecified not known to anybody but the government. The truth is that all these alerts are in line with a policy in place for more than a decade that gives the means to subdue conscientious American people into deciding not to travel to Arab-Muslim countries, and also to create a sense that terrorism is embedded in the Islamic culture and people. This perpetuated fallacy has its own history and owes it ultimate merits to the US war economy. When nations and leaders have absolute power, they think in one way, not with sense of rationality but with arrogance and complete disregard to the interests of the mankind.
The truth stands on its own that al-Qaeda and its splinter groups were established by the CIA to fight against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan alongside other jihadi groups to defeat the spread of communism to Middle East oil-enriched region. These groups have no global vitality or worthwhile operational capacity except on paper and except when the US authorities need them to justify its warmongering in the region. Often, these dying entities are financed and equipped by the CIA to remain afloat.
War is life to American economy and its official psyche, or else America could become dysfunctional. As the Ramadhan month of fasting ends, Muslims across the globe have public gatherings, feasts and special Eid Prayers. Such occasions could well be interpreted by the US policy makers as al-Qaeda affiliate events and rallies.
The American masses do not know prevalent reality except for what they see on their television screens. Mainstream news media camouflage the truth and misinform ordinary folks about the real challenges of life - increased domestic violence against common citizens, governmental spying and surveillance networks against law-abiding citizens, and the varied political indoctrinations that split the United States of America, and more. An escape from reality serves the best interest of the ruling elite - the Men of Kings sitting in the White House and in 10 Downing Street - all managers and dream warriors of wars from their fantasy lives and drawing rooms.
Paul Craig Roberts offers a penetrating insight to the problem:
If a majority of Americans were like the readers of this site, truth could prevail over special interests. Reality would inform social, political, and economic life, and American prospects would be good. But when a majority are hostile to facts and truths that do not support their biases and serve their interests, there is a disconnect from reality, which is the situation in America today. ... Hope or no hope, truth is becoming harder to come by. ... Truth-tellers are inconvenient.
Major General Antonio Taguba was given the assignment of conducting the official inquiry into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. Instead of covering up the incidents as he was expected to do for his third star, he produced a professional and truthful report. It was Taguba's career that was terminated, not the careers of those responsible for the illegal torture of prisoners. Gen Taguba was instructed to resign by Gen Richard Cody, the Vice-Chief of Staff of the Army. When told that he was going to be investigated, Taguba said, "I'd been in the Army 32 years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia." [1]
Western warlords
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. None of these nations had the capability to threaten the US military supremacy or its Europeans allies. Poverty-stricken people and the US AID recipient nations cannot threaten the Master. So then, why this War on Terrorism?
The War on Terror, or Terrorism of Wars, has wide range of unspecified agendas for long time to come, to:
Occupy the Arab heartland and to offer extended strategic and political supremacy to Israel in the Middle East.
Control and manage the oil and gas resources of the Arab Middle East.
Inject fear and powerful hegemonic influence of the Western culture and varied civilizations.
Divide and rule the Arab and Muslims people from distance powerhouses.
Create new markets for the dollar and to block trade-business entry of China into the exclusive American Middle East market.
Entice ignorant Arab population with false imagery of freedom, liberty and social justice and make the mindless rulers fearful of the US-Europe influence in their future-making.
Distract attention from the decadent Western cultures and civilizations as Huntington warned them of its crumbling and immediate implication for the future,
Dismantle the socio-economic and political infrastructures of the Arab-Muslim world, encouraging internal strife and sectarian bloodsheds and making them subservient to the US-European military and economic subjugation ...
... And so many other short- and long-term implications.
A "war of religion" is unfolding" observed Michel Chossudovsky, [2] with a view to justifying a global military crusade. In the inner consciousness of many Americans, the "holy crusade" against Muslims is justified. While President Barack Obama may uphold freedom of religion, the US inquisitorial social order has institutionalized patterns of discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia directed against Muslims.
Does the US war strategy require other nations to follow the American policy lead of war against all - the terrorism of war instigated by the "Clash of Civilizations" theory? Stephen Lendman, an American political intellectual and a man of universal conscience, put the history in a nutshell:
America glorifies wars in the name of peace, what historian Charles Beard (1874-1948) called "perpetual war for perpetual peace" in describing the Roosevelt and Truman administrations' foreign policies - what concerned the Federation of American Scientists when it catalogued about 200 post-1945 conflicts in which America was, and still is, the aggressor. [3]
Michael Meacher, British MP and environment minister in Tony Blair's cabinet from May 1997 to June 2003, explains that the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) written by the neo-conservatives in September 2000 before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. [4]
Humanity continues to be run down by the cancerous ego and cruelty of the few Western warlords. Killing unjustifiably one innocent human being is like killing of the whole of the humanity. The global warlords represent cruel mindset incapable to see the human side of the living conscience. Madness of the perpetuated war on terrorism and its triggered insanity knows no bound across the global spectrum. Animals do not commit massacre of their kind and species, nor set-up rape camps for the war victims, the Western led wars against the humanity have and continue to do so at an unparalleled global scale without being challenged by any global organizations or leaders.
Torture and massacres of innocent civilians are convenient fun games to be defined as "collateral damage" and statistics. Perhaps, they view humanity just in digits and numbers, not as the living entities with social, moral, spiritual and intellectual values and progressive agendas for change and development. Every beginning has its end. It is just that most powerful nations have failed to learn from the living history - a slap to E H Carr's precious thoughts on human history.
Albert Einstein, in the essay "The World as I See It", made it known that he was against military campaigns, killings and destruction of the natural environment:
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
The War on Terrorism is a recipe for more consequential disasters, far more serious and cruel than perceived by the rational mindset at this stage in time and history.
The continued bogus war is a lifeline to the military-industrial complex in Washington and to the weapon manufacturers in the US and in other major European centers. Its dreadful futuristic impacts are not part of the CNN, BBC or the State Department's Yellow-Red alerts. There were no alerts issued when on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeted. There are no alerts how the majority of the humanity will be victimized and terminated by the single act of the few or some sadistic leader. Paul Craig Roberts strikes a cautionary note to the American people:
There is no public uproar over the idea that national defense requires that US citizens lose the protection of law that is granted by the US Constitution. When citizens stand defenseless before their own government, what national defense do they have? The obvious conclusion is that most Americans are indifferent to liberty and are content with tyranny.
Men who are universally feared and hated need not issue yellow-red alerts to frighten the common people. They simply need to see the mirror and to fix their own cruel mindset. There is no glory and no imaginative triumph in acting against the mankind and pursuing a one-sided policy of Terrorism of Wars. All previous so called Great Nations and Great Leaders having invincible armies and weapons fell victims to their own plans of self-destruction. Are the 21st century's superpowers looking toward such an unthinkable end?
American historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and It's Aftermath offered this stern warning to American leaders if the US-led wars continue leading to man's annihilation from this planet:
If trends continue as they have during the last fifteen years, we shall soon reach this point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace. Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on "the cultural traditions" of mankind.
Muslims were not born in the eye of the storm to threaten anybody. They are not the societies breeding terrorism against America, Europe or anybody else. All Arab-Muslim rulers are subservient to the American-Western political-military dictates. Those individuals who were alleged to have attacked America for the 9/11 were the by-products of American warfare sponsorship and CIA indoctrination in the Middle East. The alleged individuals were culprits of the US warmongering, not the representatives of any religion, be it Islam, Christianity or any other culture.
Terrorism originates from the Western imperialism and military aggressions against the poor and helpless. Time and encompassing opportunities warrant new thinking, new leaders and new visions for change. But change and creativity and new visions will not emerge from the obsolete, redundant and failed authoritarianism of a few insane leaders, be it the American leaders, European politicians leaders or Muslim rulers. None have the understanding of the real world peace nor respect for human life and co-existence in a splendid Universe.
To challenge the deafening silence of the US and Europeans for global peace and security, humanity must find the ways and means to look beyond obvious and troublesome horizons dominated by warlords and the continued plague of daily drone attacks on innocent civilians, the cruel massacres of children and women, barbarity against human culture and civilizations, and the destruction of the habitats and the natural environment. The informed and mature global community looks towards those thinkers, educated and honest proactive leaders enriched with coherent unity of moral, spiritual and intellectual visions and abilities to be instrumental to rescue it from the planned encroachment of the few sadistic warlords.
We are one humanity living on one Planet Earth. Anything and everything affects us all. It is time that people of conscience across the globe raise their voices loud and clear. The War on Terrorism-Terrorism of Wars must stop; human life, the habitats and the living Universe must be protected from the cruelty of the few self-centered political maniacs.
Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, points out "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.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
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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