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War is War, not Peace- President Obama
Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
“It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.”
Chris Floyd (“Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire” ICH, 04/2009)
“The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved
with good intentions. The men who have most injured and
oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it,
were according to their standards and their conscience, good men;
what was bad in them, who wrought moral evil and cruelty,
treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions,
in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their
opinions.”
(Robert Briffault, Professor at Cambridge University (The Making of
Humanity, London, 1918)
Dr Ali Shariati, the visionary Muslim scholar once noted: “when people live in darkness, they loose sense of direction.” For long, America floats in darkness without purpose and sense of direction until its political bankruptcy has become a fact of life. Like the actors, its leaders pretend to be an invincible superpower always keen to make peace, not war. Most contemporary politicians do read Machiavelli’s Prince to perform at the global stage. President Obama on the election night 2008 spoke of “remaking America” but while accepting the controversial Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo argued not for much needed peacemaking to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather he defended the Bushism of waging aggressive wars against the poor and destitute nations, out of the scope of the US animosity radar. Let us say that to kill millions of innocent human beings just to prove that America can and will institutionalize insanity, not reason in an age of reason. President Bush and his neoconservatives warmongers invested heavily to make America morally, politically and financially bankrupt by waging the bogus wars on terrorism. There was a strategy in No Strategy after the 9/11 events to demonstrate to the fearful American masses that something forceful was being done to protect the US security interests. The ultimate aims of the wars on terrorism were to create more terrorism and to destabilize those nations having reservoirs of untapped oil and gas resources and to crop up new markets for the American corporations to sell more arms and weapons. If President Obama is true to his words on political change (“Yes we can”), why would he continue to follow the Bush war agenda? Chris Floyd (“Darkness Renewed: Terror as a tool of Empire”, ICH, 04/2009), provides an explicit answer to human curiosity:
“But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.”
To spotlight the cruelty of the on-going wars for fun, Gordon Duff (“The Baggage of America Extremism: No Enemy, No Negotiation, Only the Dead are Real”, ICH, December 16, 2009), outlines the dilemma: “We had become addicted to the "black and white" version of Bushitism to the extent that we, as a nation, have given up thought entirely. We know we can't win. Do we expect an army of angels to come down from heaven, the ones Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld dreamed of, or are we going to start acting like a world leader again.”
America has a history of self-engineered wars. But the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan made America bankrupt in global political standing and credibility, crippling its much acclaimed superpower status and role in global affairs when its in-house corruption dismantled the financial institutions, the hub of American dream of world leadership. The move of time and history for change that cannot be stopped, the evolution of the change process seem to have phased-out America to become artifacts of the junk history, and to phase-in new emerging nations of financial trust and productivity to assume the new role of global leadership replacing the US, what President Obama is most afraid of. It is not the Audacity of Hope but consequential dictate of history when nations and leaders violate the Laws of God, and challenge the limits of reason, they end-up in self defeat and destruction. If diplomacy was the foremost choice to search for feasible political accommodation, President Obama did not bother to use it; instead he continued the Bush dictum of insanity in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms,” Obama claimed in Nobel Peace Prize Speech. “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is recognition of history.” History offers a learning role that you could not comprehend it. History shall judge you Mr Obama by your actions, not claims. With escalating war efforts and additional troops to kill more innocent civilians and disturb the Afghan graveyards, you have kept the insane momentum to airlift more men and material to Afghanistan and that does not signal peacemaking at all. After the American failure in Iraq, You want to conquer Afghanistan and Pakistan to maintain the Bush contracted gas and oil pipelines that sound against the Nature of Things and it is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
President Obama claimed optimism to brining change to America- “Yes we can” but ended-up encompassing the same old sadistic strategy to become war President, not a peace President. Yes, he changed the image of America, first time a colored President of visible minorities is elected to make a new beginning in American political affairs. A dot representing the Audacity of Hope on the ever large social and political white screen to enter the White House complex. One fundamental factor is often ignored by American scholars that none of these guys waging the wars from their drawing rooms ever fought on a real war front, they simply know how to talk, but war is not about talking, it is killing others and nothing else. C.E.M Joad, the celebrated author (Guide to Modern Wickedness, 1936), noted pointedly: “War is like a forest fire, once it is started, none can set bounds to the resulting conflagration …as when one throws a stone in a pond ripples spread out in all directions… so in war the professed war aims are submerged in the waves of fear and ferocity by which the minds of the belligerents are swept and in which, presently reason and humanity are engulfed.”
In an information age, knowledge driven global culture of dialogue and diplomacy, America and Britain and their conveniently bribed allies went to promote freedom, human rights and democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan but ended-up as nations engaged in fighting the war of aggression against the people and faiths, not threatening anybody’s security or integrity. They are the same who rushed to set –up the UN at the end of the WW2, an institutionalized cover-up to hide the future ambitions of arrogance and ignorance to the consequences of the wars. The planet Earth is not created nor built by the nation states claiming membership at the UN. The comprehensive system of life and resources on the planet Earth is God-given gift to mankind, and its violation and exploitation will be checked by God as it happened to many in the past only to be found as artifacts in museums and history books. History offers a learning role but nations and people denying the role of history ultimately cannot escape the wrath of history. Winning the wars was not part of the American aims and strategies but killing and destabilizing the poor nation was, and it has achieved that aim. All actions have reactions. The consequences are yet to come. Gordon Duff (The Baggage of America Extremism…” 12/2009) picks up the argument:
“Eight years of bizarre "Christian Zionism," a military run by religious fanatics and a government of drugstore cowboys and phony evangelists was unprepared to guide a superpower toward policies of responsible world leadership. Now, President Obama is afraid to stop "driving over a cliff" simply because nobody wants to tell the American people the truth, how stupid and useless we have actually become, and how idiotic our policies have been. It is assumed that so many Americans are mentally defective, addicted to imaginary vaccine plots and secret UN invasions, that acting like a responsible and intelligent world leader would not seem "credible."
There is something fundamentally wrong with the American thought process on the War on Terrorism. American people would need to see and understand the real world affairs that their leaders and government are terrorizing the humanity with no other reason except to assume political domination and control the natural resources of the helpless nations under the false pretext of “terrorism”, and simply to manage the fast growing and financially strong Arabian herd. David Perez (“Imagine”, Information Clearing House, 02/2009), attempts to set out the humanistic concerns:
“Imagine being in a room of maimed, deformed and tortured Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians, accompanied by widows and orphans mourning because their entire family has been exterminated. I imagine this roomful of walking dead sitting around while my friends and I discuss how “realistic” we in the U.S. must be with our electoral politics, how our expectations need to “practical,” how peace is just so damn “complicated.” …. imagine these victims looking at us with blank, scarred faces as we congratulate ourselves for selecting a new President who talks about “our God-given right to lead,” about our duty to spread U.S.-style democracy throughout the globe, and how we are now just so “proud to be American.”
For centuries, British and other European powers enjoined a history of colonizing the Muslims by force and killing millions and millions on this planet to enlarge the scope of their empires. Exploiting the natural resources and colonizing the poor and helpless by cruel wars were not the choices of the liberal democracy at that juncture of living history. Nobody calls them terrorists as they now claim to be civilized defying the facts of history. America could have learnt from the despotic Europeans who fought and killed millions in the two world wars before settling in at the EU tables to define the religious unity and common interests. Those who engineered the wars are in graveyards, unable to be questionable. Surely, they knew how to escape the dictate of history and now the future European generations are pretending to be civilized after being in the dark ages for centuries. Recently, the 111 years old last remaining WW1 British soldier made it clear before dying (BBC, 10/2009), “we don’t know why we fought and killed other fellow human beings. Wars do not seem to solve any problem.” One wonders, why human beings fight with their fellow human beings. The ferocity of modern wars and killings others makes us think as if we are governed by draconian leaders, not living in the age of 21st century – an age of reason and enlightenment and freedom and human rights. Edward Glover (War, Sadism and Pacifism) noted: “human beings fight because they are afraid, afraid that worse will happen to them if they do not… to pugnacity and hatred, we must add fear.”
If you question the protagonists of the Terrorism of Wars as to the purpose of the War on Terrorism, there is no single legitimate rationale to this day. Buhsitism and his comrades wanted to show some reaction that they have the power to march armies of men and women to distant locations even if just to give meaning and purpose to insanity. C.E.M Joad (Guide to Modern Wickedness, 1936), wanted to offer another angle on the warmongering: “Capitalism provides for it in advance by establishing Fascist regimes, Fascism being the method by which, in the last phase of capitalism, the dominant capitalist class reduces its own working class to such a state of dupery and subjection that they are willing to fight without question for the interests of their masters.”
Could we as rational human beings, take notice of the continued insanity and help to stop its overwhelming convergence to safeguard the future generations from the scourge of wars? Perhaps the human nature is at least part wicked and in part foolish, not realizing the consequences of actions by the few war lords of the world, CEM Joad wonders, “the pacifist’s question becomes, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly?” C.E.M Joad makes the obvious facts abundantly clear that war diminishes happiness and lowers morality….and that men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. Now as President Obama claimed that it is necessary and wise and honorable. The bigger question may be asked: how can we induce other leaders to perceive their error of perception and judgment and to make them realize the truth that wars are wrong, and those waging the wars are not peacemakers but wicked enemies of the humanity and certainly not suitable to be prized for wars but to be held accountable for the death and destruction of millions of the fellow human beings.
David Perez (“Imagine”, Information Clearing House, February 2009), attempts to recall the forgotten consequences – the untold sufferings and agony of the civilian victim population of the War on Terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how do they reason the unreason in a language of silence: “Imagine these charred visitors with missing limbs bowing their heads and wondering if they should somehow envy us for always finding a way to celebrate and party and bask in our entertainment-soaked culture – even when it comes to our “handsome” President being sworn in at the same time their homes were being incinerated, courtesy of our state-of-the-art weaponry. Perhaps these “unfortunate” sufferers will understand that we can’t prosecute our own war criminals, because, you see, we simply “have to move on.” And maybe they’ll understand that not one U.S. leader has ever – ever – called our bombings and invasions a terrorist act………May be they’ll understand us when we shake our heads and say, “Well, this is just how politics work here. Sure it’s corrupt but, hell, what can we do?”
"I face the world as it is," Obama outlined at the Oslo Nobel Peace Award ceremony (December 10, 2009), refusing to renounce war for his nation or under his leadership, saying that he is obliged to protect and defend the United States. But Obama misled the informed and conscientious global intellect as no nation is threatening the American people or their security. “No matter how justified, war promises human tragedy”, he said. Norman Soloman (Commondreams.Org “Mr President War is not Peace”, Dec 10, 2009), questions the intent and eloquence of Obama’s speech and strikes a warning note:
“War is not peace. It never has been. It never will be…….in the name of pragmatism, Obama spoke of “the world as it is” and threw a cloak of justification over the grisly escalation in Afghanistan by insisting that “war is sometimes necessary” -- but generalities do nothing to mitigate the horrors of war being endured by others.”
If President Obama was serious enough, he could have taken a more critical soul searching at the rationality of these wars and as a newly elected leaders, he enjoyed the obvious capacity to convince the American folks that continued wars are against the American global interests and indeed could searched for a navigational change. Not so, Mr. Obama is under the influence of same kind of war hawks and their instigated dark illusions as was the President Bush. Sooner or later, America will face the most unthinkable - a face- to face table gathering with the Talibans or a signatory to a formal document of defeat - it is crystal clear that America is fighting the wars without any rational purpose. America’s political elite so often remembers Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but neglects his advice: “The chain reaction of evil... wars producing more wars... must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” Perhaps Chris Floyd (“Darkness Renewed: Terror as a tool of Empire”, 04/2009) has more to reflect on the reality of the American led terrorism of wars against the Muslim world:
“The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a "deadly terrorist threat" to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order super villain from central casting….. It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Game board: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world…. In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.”
To question the continued insanity of the American warlords, Mike Prysner (“amazing speech by an Iraq war veteran” December, 25 2009), an Iraqi War veteran has these daring concerns to share with the rest of the humanity:
“Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don't understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it's profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us.” President Obama, please RETHINK about being the War President, you do NEED a navigational change. Otherwise, you will undermine the American history and could end-up in witnessing a military defeat.
(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of many publications including Muslims and the West: Quest for Change and Conflict Resolution; How America Lost the War on Islamic Fundamentalism; and To America and Canada with Reason-Fallacy of Terrorism, October 2009. Comments are welcome).
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