Most of the conscientiously responsible Western scholars are getting increasingly aware, not to identify their interests with the minority ruling elite of the United States and Britain and the prospects of the ‘war crimes’ against their role in continued death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Professor John Esposito (Georgetown University, and author of Unholy War and What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam), makes a candid observation: “in many parts of the Muslim world the war against global terrorism has come to be viewed as a war against Islam and Muslims. The image of America has become that of a neo-imperial power that has sought to redraw the map of the Middle East and the Muslim world, influenced by an unholy alliance of neoconservatives and the militant Christian right.” The wars have gone terribly wrong and the end is fast approaching, sheer madness in thinking and strategic decision making to create new Mai Lia of Vietnam in Iraq and Afghanistan. Near their defeat, the Nazis resorted to mass killings across Europe, and so did the Soviet Union prior to defeat and surrender to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Daily massacres of the innocent civilians throughout Iraq and the stage drama could rest on any given conclusive note to the pages of history. Katrina was the first installment in a series of warnings to come for those who would listen and learn from the history. Not so, to the neo-conservative dominated US administration that failed to achieve its objectives in conquering Iraq and Afghanistan, just to ensure smooth oil supplies and global military and economic supremacy.
Humanity, once again, appears to have been pushed back to the shameful annals of the Christian Dark Ages. In search of new animosity, few utopian scholars wanted to distract the humanity after the end of the Cold War to keep the liberal democracy working and ensure electoral voters active participation. In early 90’s, Samuel Huntington reinvented and re-ignited the old cliché – ” a clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam – a new age of confrontation between the predominantly technologically advanced culture of the West and the subdued interdependent societal religious culture of the Muslim world. The powerful mass media and the official policy makers throughout the West, fuel the insane imagery that the Arabs and Muslims are “fundamentalists” and “terrorists.” After the collapse of the ideological wars between the Communism and the Capitalism, the world political arena was free and conveniently available for a new ideology of ” a clash of civilizations” to seal the closing chapters of the Cold War. Huntington was courageous and frank to admit ” we need animosity” to survive and shield the decaying human culture of the Western civilization. Most Western leaders politically aligned with the ruling elite, would refute that ” a clash of civilizations” is the underpinning framework of the official policy and the ” War on Terrorism”, denying the premise of unilateral wars against Iraq And Afghanistan. The mass media would allude ‘smart bomb’ theory hitting the terrorist targets but in reality, more than 250,000 people confirmed civilians have reportedly been killed by the Allied bombings in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. Deceptive claim as it is that there was a war between the US and Iraq. It was a media entertainment soap opera and above all, a unilateral act of aggression against a fellow member state, forbidden under the UN Charter. According to Kofi Annan, the UN General Secretary, it is an “illegal war” to occupy Iraq. French and German leaders resented and resisted politically and morally, but could not dare to challenge the US and Britain through any means of military force to stop the futuristic bloodbath in a country that had no quarrel nor posed any threat to the US or Britain. When facts are ridiculed, ignorant advisors construct dogmas to boast the defeated psyche of the leaders. That is where today, President Bush and PM Blair find their respective standing. History points out countless wicked people and nations that transgress the limits of the Laws of the God, and never acknowledge if there was anything wrong with their THINKING and BEHAVIOR until they experience the consequential end. The Al-Qura’an reveals that Pharaoh claimed, “handful of people have annoyed us, whereas, we are the most powerful people on guard to defend our values.” Moses and the followers crossed safely the Red Sea but God punished Pharaoh and his armies as they vanished in the Sea. Does it explain well as a role model, how the egoistic tyrants and transgressors meet their end in this world?
Analyzing the contemporary affairs, again, the world is being dragged into the Dark Ages – might is right. President Bush after the 9/11 attacks made it abundantly clear, “either you are with us or you are against us.” The draconian formula had no in-between, no choice to take a rational stance, as normally liberal democratic values would facilitate it. The image of a single most World Power is fixed and unquestionable, be it fair or foul. The net outcome shows the manufactured imagery of Muslims as the alleged terrorists and the sole inheritor of the 21st century political ideology. With massive corporate sponsorships and the Western mass media collaborative alliances, Islamic civilization is the only targeted client of this emerging business. What about the Arabs and Muslims, have they done anything to safeguard their political interests and human survivability? Even the most educated ones are indifferent and fearful of the prevalent authoritarian rule in their lands and the dictates of the Western masters to survive. With full awareness of the problem, they live in division, discard and helplessness. There are no Muslim institutions to provide honest analyses or reflect on the possible remedies. Leaderless Muslim masses appear desperate to look for a visionary and intelligent leader to offer some words of consolence and intellectual security. Not so, in the Arabs or Muslim countries, all leaders are pre-screened by the World Bank and CIA before taking a shape and form to move into a palace. Most live in grand palaces, not with people. For long, Saddam Hussein, Shah of Iran and now General Musharaf fit into that facilitated image and governance. According to the author of “Muslim Under Siege”, leaders in Muslim countries are pre-screened and chosen by the West. Everywhere neo-colonial rulers operate the infrastructures and maintain the natural resources across the Muslim world but there are no leaders to organize and unite the Muslim as Ummah-one people, one nation intellectually and politically powerful enough to defend it against the odds. The neo-colonial rulers have helped the Colonial Masters to make the Muslim masses helpless victim of their warmongering and inhuman atrocities being carried out at Gutanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib Prison, and Massacre at Fullajah, Haditah, Bughdad, Kandhar, Kashmir, North Waziristan, Baluchistan and elsewhere. The ruling elite would not allow their national press to discuss such sensitive topics. There are no Sultan Salahuddin that the European would fear for centuries to come, there are no Sultan Babyar and Sheikh Izzuddin to give blowing defeats to Halaqu Khan – the Mongol warlord, and no Allama Iqbal or Ali Shariati to awake the sleeping folks and guide the believers to success. Strangely enough, when Muslims are being butchered, some of the intelligent North American self-appointed Muslim organizational leaders urge fellow Muslims to become “moderate Muslims” as if being a true Muslim was a crime or sin in liberal democracy. Their naive perception or hasty judgment cannot be ridiculed; they have to be dame sure to act like economically feasible species, all the time caring for their own bread and butter, not for God and Islam. The phenomena supposedly outgrows a new creed of American Muslim, easily available at the marketplace. Many strive to pose and evolve happy looking faces and memorable IMAGES, busy in breaking the Ramadhan Fast at the White House Lawn or 10 Downing Street or Awan-e-Sadr in Islamabad, sharing funny jokes about the success of the American-led war in Iraq, trial of Saddam Hussein or the dictates of the New World Order soon to be repromulgated. What they are not allowed to talk is about the killings and massacres of the civilians because they are “moderate Muslims” and follow strict time constraints during the Ramadhan breakfast and prayers, and sensitivities of the New Empire political agenda.
Built on lies and political deception, the on-going wars were suppose to create a new culture of FEAR amongst the American and European common masses, enabling the ruling elite to sustain their grip over the powerhouses for long time to come as did the Nazis, a war of thousand years to dominate the world. Instead, it has backed fire; the leaders are fearful day and night from the masses and unable to cope with the challenging public concerns on the war causalities or to answer rational questions about the outcome of these self-generated conflicts. Ironically, the American and British leaders are fighting wars they cannot win, nor afford to lose in the public eyes. Majority of the well informed masses do not seem to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ugly the outcome of the wars become, the furious will be the media propaganda embodying new strategies to cover up the entrenched leaders. Arundhati Roy said it well: President Bush and Osama Bin Laden are not the acceptable choices to the real world. Both are self-centered and irrelevant. Increasing disclosures of American and British military massacres of the Iraqi civilians, the home-based authorities will forge illegal arrests of young Muslims in North America and Western Europe, alleging connection with non-existing or dead Al-Qaeda group. More and more planned allegations will make news media headlines about the alleged “Terrorist Plan”, purchase of fertilizer commodity and “bomb-making” and what not. The intelligent ones in Washington and London draw the script to enhance economic and political market data. The strategic games are well known, create more problems to dilute and overshadow the massacres in Iraq and distract people’s attention from the known acts of crime against the humanity. War is business and political deception is known and tolerable trait of the new global image-making trade. If there were educated and intelligent leaders in the Muslim world, one could reason the unreason. But the oil exporting Arab leaders operate from a position of political weakness, not strength to play any useful role in international politics. Imagine the dichotomy of the living history, the Christian Crusaders came, ransacked and killed 170, 000 Muslims just in one day to occupy Jerusalem. Despite assurances of peace and religious sanctity, the Crusaders moved horses in blood-flown streets to capture Jerusalem. Salahuddin reconquered Jerusalem, allowed and escorted all the Christian Crusaders to safety with human dignity, honor and material wealth. History shall describe a corporate world run by greed and animalistic savagery, preoccupied to influence and control the destinies of the living human beings under the guise of economic feasibility and market interests.
To enforce power of reason and ask for accountability of the few Western Warlords, the humanity has reason to be concerned, organized and united to oppose the unilateral barbarity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This underlines an URGENT NEED for global morality and political accountability in world affairs. The solution cannot come from those who are part of the problem but only from a civilized people who know what it means, and have no colonial history and are readily acceptable as genuinely civilized representatives of the humanity. Immanuel Kant (“Perpetual Peace”), 18th century philosopher, must have sensed the threat to international peace and the nature of destructive wars – “standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard, 1997), former Security Advisor to President Carter, makes an historical reference: “American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives describes American priorities as the economic subjugation of the Soviet Union and the control of Central Asia and the Middle East.” With the on-going wars, the international institutions have abandoned the humanity in disarray and hopelessness without any recourse. There is no UN body, no International Red Cross as such, no UN Security Council, no competent Arab League, no genuine OIC to question or investigate why the occupying American and British armed forced are engaged in New Holocaust of the civilian population in Iraq and Afghanistan? Equally, there are no Arab leaders or Muslim armies to offer sense of security to the besieged Arab population victims of the daily massacres. Kofi Annan would be reluctant to cross over the limits and say anything openly to “annoy” President Bush or PM Blair, it could upset his own candidacy as continued Secretary General of the UN failed body. The leaders and the masses appear to be living in different time zones, not being able to cross-over the widening gaps to interact as democratic rights and obligations would dictate under the political system. Listening was meant to be political learning and reasoning, not any more with the neoconservtaive controlled Bush administration. The image of deliberately dismantled system of global governance is meant to appease the economically influential and politically smart Western elite. Hitler and Mussolini were Europeans, not Arabs or Muslims, and they did not rule alone on their own, as there were millions to cheer them up and support their leadership egos with galvanized news media alignment of the time, and their personal ideologies as law and order of the day. At the beginning of the 21st century, the replica is exactly the same from the pages of history, only the names and titles have been changed and adjusted –” a small minority of ‘sick puppies’ are determined to occupy the oil and gas resources and to wipe out the Arabs and Islamic civilization under the guise of terrorism. British knows what they lost, cannot regain in colonial history, but the American empire has yet to learn the hard lessons. It is more fearful that it could be replaced soon by another economically viable power or group of leaders getting together from the backward huts of South America and emerging economic rivals of Asia. Amazingly, under the stress of extreme fear and fatigue, America has lost sense of moral direction, values and the true spirit of its own history. Throughout the Two World Wars, the European madness knew its geography and national boundaries – Europeans enjoyed killing fellow Europeans. But under the American Empire, its dimensions are widely insane and global, exclusively aimed to kill Arabs and destroy the Islamic civilization. Professor John Esposito has summed up the History Lessons in a meaningful context, applicable to the contemporary affairs:
“An important lesson of history is that rulers and nations do rise and fall. Unforeseen circumstances can bring up unanticipated change. Few expected the breakup of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe to occur when they did ……now is the time for those in all walks of life (political, economic, military, media and academic) who wish to see a new order not to be silenced but to speak out, organize, vote and be willing when necessary to make sacrifices in promoting a new global order.”
