Global Crises: Mankind Needs Peace not Terrorism
Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.
Today’s cold
blooded massacre of French journalists of satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” in Paris underlines the imperative of critical
thought towards understanding the global affairs. Emerging crises are not being
understood rationally and consequently large segments of humanity are in
chains. Leaders around the world are quick to condemn the cruelty of the few
against many innocents caught in the firing. But the same leaders fail to take
initiatives to use dialogue and peaceful resolution of current one-sided aggressive
wars. No matter where on planet, the daily killings of the innocents in France, Iraq,
Syria, Palestine, The US or elsewhere, it demands
fair and objective-oriented analysis to come to grip with the prevalent facts
of human affairs. The global humanity longs for peace, not for terrorism. But
many egoistic leaders deliberately override the facts to pursue strategic
agendas to run down the mankind under false pretexts of Islamic terrorism.
Those who take up arms in the Arab Middle East continuing war theater are often
doing it as a reactionary challenge to the imposed tyranny of more than decade-old
bogus war on terrorism. Despite having advanced knowledge and technology, wide
range of systematic human surveillance and curtailment of freedom and
violations of human rights, crises are not managed by informed leaders and
national security apparatus across the globe. The ordinary citizens are
targeted and victimized beside the whims of leadership presence in staged news
media appearances. There is gulf between knowing from the problematic media
screen and understanding the pivotal issues deserving rational rethinking and
policy changes. Undoubtedly “Je Suis- Charlie.” There is pain and feelings of
anti killings across the globe. The human unity of ultimate aim must assume top
priority.
Chris
Hedges (“A
Society Of Captives”
Truthdig: 12/07/2014) is a reputable international scholar and journalist previously
spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent and reported from more than
50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public
Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times. He explains the
disorientation approach of the security apparatus:
Police and national intelligence
and security agencies, which carry out wholesale surveillance against the
population and serve as the corporate elite’s brutal enforcers, are omnipotent
by intention. They are designed to impart fear, even terror, to keep the
population under control. And until the courts and the legislative bodies give
us back our rights—which they have no intention of doing—things will only get
worse for the poor and the rest of us. We live in a post-constitutional era…. Hannah Arendt warned that once any segment of the population is denied rights, the
rule of law is destroyed. When laws do not apply equally to all they are
treated as “rights and privileges.” …Elites who feel increasingly threatened by
the wider population do not “resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of
legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police,” Arendt writes. This is
what is taking place now. The corporate state and its organs of internal
security are illegitimate. We are a society of captives.
Towards
Understanding the Critical Issues facing the Mankind:
According to the
media reports, the President of the Muslim Organization of France has condemned
the killings of the journalists and others in Paris. So do many religious leaders in Paris and elsewhere in Western Europe.
The killings were not part of any Islamic issues supported by any religious
decree. If the killers shouted ‘God is Great- Allah-O-Akbar’, it does not prove
that attackers were Muslims unless the investigation provides the evidence.
Such phrases have been imitated before by non-Muslims too. Why do some media
analysts jump to conclusion and blame game when essential facts of a crisis are
unknown? When unusual crises whether state sponsored terrorism or individual
terrorism make its presence, the situation requires careful thought and intellectual
comprehension to avoid hasty reaction. The global warriors - some of the
leading Western leaders do not seem to learn the lessons from the contemporary
history. Consequently, the War on Islam and Muslims - the bogus war on terrorism continues with multiple belligerent reactions.
There is an overwhelming Western media obsession to link the blame of some of
the crises to Islam and Muslims around the world. Irrational as it seems when
another person commits a crime, the identity would not include religious or
ethnic cliché. Should rational people make irrational assumptions and undermine
the societal harmony and co-existence because an individual is at the center of
some ugly or false accusations? Are we
not supposed to know the facts before we could draw extreme conclusion about
some faith, ethnicity or group of minority living in a society? Truth-telling and critical rational analysis
of the prevalent political imperatives of global political affairs must
penetrate to open-up the thinking of the closed global leadership mindset. Across the Arab Middle East the only known
conflict was between Israel
and Palestine
and to search for a peaceful settlement of the existence of State of Israel and
establishment of an independent State of Palestine. But the US-led war on
terrorism is a gateway to many emerging conflicts in the Arab Middle East and
elsewhere in the world. The voices of
reason and human conscience must speak out loud and clear. With unstoppable
cycle of political killings, sectarian massacres and daily bloodbaths happening
across the Arab world - Syria, Iraq,
Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and Yemen, and spill-over impacts to other oil producing
Arab nations - and reactionary militancy against the authoritarian rule and
dismantling of the socio-economic infrastructures. Could the global affairs change
if the leaders imagine political change and pursue it for peaceful
co-existence?
John Horgan (“Countering Students' Fatalism Toward War” The Chronicle Review,
V. 55, Issue 31: 4/10/2009) is a
science journalist and director of the Center for Science Writings at the
Stevens Institute of Technology. Horgan points out the issues involved in man
and human nature and optimism that societal change is real in the course of
history:
History offers many other examples
of warlike societies that rapidly became peaceful. Vikings were the scourge of Europe during the Middle Ages, but their Scandinavian
descendants are among the most peaceful people on earth. Similarly, Germany and Japan, which just 70 years ago were
the world's most militaristic, aggressive nations, have embraced pacifism,
albeit after catastrophic defeats.
The current wave of fatalism is
all too understandable, given September 11 and its bloody sequelae, not to
mention conflicts roiling the Middle East, Central Africa,
and other troubled regions. ….. My overarching goal in "War and Human
Nature" is to persuade my scientifically oriented students to see war not
as a permanent part of the human condition, stemming from our genes or original
sin, but as a potentially solvable scientific problem. To be sure, war is a
dauntingly complex phenomenon, with political, economic, and social
ramifications……. Peace is a challenge at least as worthy of pursuit as cheap,
clean, renewable sources of energy or cures for AIDS or cancer.
To Face Up
Realism and Work for Global Peace and Not Terror
Leaders create leaders. Likewise
warmongers indulge in violence and threats of bombing other weak nations to undermine
the very existence of human existence as was the case during the Two World Wars
and the current unending bogus War on Terrorism. Everywhere mankind is being
oppressed, exploited by the few and systematically victimized under various slogans
of freedom, rule of law, democracy and human rights. One wonders, how much more
bloodshed is needed to gather momentum for priority in resolving the man-made
conflicts and ushering a new era of peaceful co-existence? One must resist the
temptation to become indoctrinated by grim prophesies of spearheading freedom, rule
of law, democracy and protection of
human rights by egoistic leaders waiting to launch next election campaigns. West
Europeans have critical issues of social, economic and human emancipation. The EU
is a framework but often of competing national interests overlapping the
collective interests and resolve of the purpose ingrained in the EU mission and
role. The pride and prejudice of European nationalism and sketchy borders fought for many generations and engulfed
the good part of mankind with similar institutions and unending trends of
military invasions, terrorism against the poor and weak Asian-African and
Muslim nations. They need to uplift their thinking capacity from superficial
imagination to realism corresponding to the 21st century
knowledge-based age and its imperatives. Do they still long for historical
flaws to view them as politically superior and ethnically top notch people and races
of the world? Time is critical for
self-reflection and finding out ways and means to critical thinking and be able
to have unity of purpose and proactive leadership to deal with complex
political crises and consequential catastrophic humanitarian problems. Reason
reveals itself in the unity of the heart and mind. Wickedness and righteousness
cannot be combined in one leadership characteristics.
The unwarranted madness witnessed
today in the heart of Paris
and brutal killings of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and security personnel need
not be defined in political motivation and images. Change in global affairs is
possible and attainable if people of reason long for peace and not for
terrorism. There is no justification for the US-led war in Iraq and Syria. The crusades against Muslims
and unwanted military interventions in the Arab Middle East must be stopped.
Every beginning has its end. The global humanity longs for peace and
co-existence and war is not its agenda item. It is possible through
transformational leadership if educated and intelligent people of the new
generation come to assume the power and leadership role. Falsehood and truth
are not the same. With certain imperatives of cultural- religious norms,
Western journalists need not to carve sensitive cartoons of others to invest in
hatred and animosity. More so, of religious beliefs and personalities. Perhaps
the Charlie Hbedo did that in the past. But a rational person would not react
to known falsification of some religious entities. There should be
rapprochement to respect and understand the religious differences without
agreeing or disagreeing.
Why should few West European
leaders and President Obama have free hand to launch bombing campaign and kill
the innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria? What privilege do these
figures enjoin to engage in military invasions and commit massacres in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Iraq, Syria day in
and day out? Ironically, while Paris
makes vigil remembrance of the victims, nobody ever thinks of thousands and
thousands of innocent civilians killed daily by the US-British bombing in
Iraq-Syrian war theater. Were they simple collateral damage or equally precious
human beings deserving global solidarity against the military intervention? Is this sadistic war meant to bring peace and order
to the region? Its aims are to occupy the Arab people and their oil resources
and nothing else. When would this
planned and continuing cruelty come to an end? Is there a sense of superiority
and indifference to the interests of the global mankind? In its 2014 Global Thinkers statistics,
Foreign Policy (“A World
Disrupted: The global Thinkers of 2014”) pinpoints that “something big requires a team rather than
an individual….” To enhance global peace and to undo the war
on terrorism, there is an urgent need for teamwork by all concerned not just
the few self- addicted warmongers who have consciously undermined the vital
interests of the mankind. The teamwork if
undertaken with unbiased mind and without pre-conceived notions could usher
sustainable change and a new beginning between those who claim to be at peace
and somewhat superior than the ordinary folks and those who are fighting
reactionary wars of freedom against insanity and catastrophic devastation of
the human habitats. Under ‘Advocates’, the Foreign Policy notes:
“The global thinkers herald causes often wrongly
considered inconsequential or verboten. They support forgotten victims of
sexual violence, protect civilian targeted in internecine violence, count
casualties in the fog of war, and demand legal protection for world’s most
vulnerable migrants. Often these men and women, scholars, activists and
religious leader among them- do this work on their own peril and pay the price
landing in court or in prison in some of the world’s most repressive countries.
For all of them, however, the risk is worth the possible rewards.”
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