Opinion Editorials, December 2011

American Duplicity and Emerging New Arab Middle East

By Mahboob A Khawaja

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, December 20, 2011

Discard cynicism and wickedness but be conscious that some contemporary politicians and monsters of history are often the two sides of the same picture enriched with perversion and treacherous escape from the facts of real life.  They exhibit individualistic absolutism and despotic intents to gain irrational favors. This week, Newt Gingrich, the former US Speaker and if the political number game is relevant, the leading Republican candidate for the 2012 US Presidential Election, made extremely irresponsible remarks while talking to a Jewish cable TV host. Again on Saturday, the night of December 10, in the ABC televised election debate from Des Moines, Iowa State, Gingrich and four others candidates except Ron Paul (Senator from Texas) reiterated the falsified and deliberately misleading facts of the human history that Palestinians are “an invented people” and they should not be allowed to reclaim Palestine as they continue to make “murderous attacks against Israel.” They allege that “West Bank or other parts of the occupied territories are part of Israel.” All of these candidates are well briefed by the Jewish lobbyists / US official interests. Gingrich claims to be a historian to assert that “Palestinians” are no different than any other Arabs. It seems that some of these Republican candidates may have defied the record of history, honest logic and previous American active engagements in addressing the true aspirations of the people of Palestine who have been deprived of their promised national freedom and establishment of an Independent State of Palestine existing side by side with Israel. Gingrich and others cannot pretend to be ignorant but certainly to appease the powerful Washington political lobbyists and Jewish financiers support, they are using ignorance as an excuse to disregard and challenge the American history, official policies and global commitments.

American duplicity and political intransigence have lost the strategic direction and rational sense of glory and triumph in honoring its peacemaking commitments to the Arab Middle East. The new emerging Arab world and its politics is changing fast as the new talented and informed people of new generation take over the responsibilities and demonstrate determination and imagination for a new value-based and free of foreign influence Arab world. In the progressive struggle for change, freedom and co-existence, America and Israeli both have lost the opportunities to be partner in the peace making process and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine to balance the disequilibrium in which Israel presently exists. It is becoming more obvious that by challenging the voices of REASON and implying denial of the rights of the Palestinian people, the embittered America and Israel could enjoin a terrible sense of helplessness and isolation and nothing could save them from the consequences of their own triviality, ignorance and wickedness.

At the end of the 2010, none of the global political thinkers and experts imagined that traditional Arab societies will come out vigorously and organized to break the walls of “FEAR” and unite themselves like any other knowledgeable and proactive people using courage and political imagination for ANEW beginning - ANEW FUTURE - unknown to the present Arabian landscape but in-waiting for a credible future. Discarding the virtual reality, it is happening and well in progress across the authoritarian Arabian Peninsula. Quite intuitively and instinctively, people’s inspired revolutions have surpassed the human imagination to facilitate a different and more promising landscape across the Arab Middle East.

If democracy is the norm, then facts speak clearly that the 99% of the US masses differ and reject the policies of the minority 1 % exploitative elite and its political agendas and practices. The informed people of the United States are soft-hearted and clear conscience and keen to see an immediate end to the on-going bogus wars on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan and a non-violent and non-belligerent futuristic American policy and peaceful resolution of the Palestine problem and normalization of relations between America-Israel and the larger Arab world. American duplicity and Israeli self-absolutism is inherently flawed and its consequences have cornered them in dead-ended isolation irrespective of the global changing landscape. There are increasing number of Jewish scholars, intellectuals and political activists in North America and Europe calling for the rights of the Palestinian people, formation of an independent State of Palestine and normalization of relations with the Arab world. But Israel and the US policies do not appear to be standing for peace and reconciliation through peaceful means expect intransigence and belligerency and rejection of the voices of public reasoning. The current circumstances trigger dark clout over their intents and policy behaviors to resolve the Palestine problem and the establishment of an independent State of Palestine. World is changing as it should be but not the policy impulse of the US and Israel. Effective leaders and stable nations opt for change when faced with facts not fictions of life and gear toward rational changes as the principle of adaptability to be successful in carving a sustainable future. Change and adaptability to the future-making are rational factors and choices to envisage human rights, dignity and peace. The Arab political world and its inherent manifestations are changing fast to capitalize a new age of hope and optimism for a value-oriented and open system of governance to be shaped by the events of the 2011. There appears to be remarkable glimpses of societal endeavors to establish institutionalized strategies for change and new political system of governance replacing the Western supported and kept authoritarianism for their own greed and exploitation. Come to see new Tunis and Morocco, how nicely both have conducted the change phenomena and organized the new institutions for political parties and peaceful elections to facilitate a new beginning mush denied to the people for ages. It supports the belief that the traditional Arab societies were fully competent, knowledgeable and capable to manage their affairs without the authoritarian regimes and without the brutalities of the few sadistic and corrupt egomaniac dictators. Without reverting to the practices of the time lost and ruthlessness of the past darkness, the people are enthusiastic and active to create a new world of change, peace and democratic governance without any external intervention.

Most of the Arab rulers forfeiting phenomenon of change denied Islam its place in public life and preferred perpetual ignorance with all the stolen wealth to impose the neo-colonial system of governance of the few. Syed Qutb (Milestones), the respected Islamic thinker and scholar once warned, "Jahilliya" (ignorance) is a movement and has its own culture, plan and force, and it wants to destroy you within but do not follow the influence of ignorance - "Jahilliya" age. Despite immense resourcefulness, time and opportunities, the contemporary Arab regimes failed to make a difference on any major fronts of life. The oil discovery was a scheme of enslavement and moral and intellectual deprivation for the traditional Arab societies. The imported scheme of “modernity” and oil-pumped prosperity have not changed the Arab time capsule - being irrelevant, incompetent and floating on its won completely out of touch with the challenging needs of the 21st century and legitimate aspirations of the Arab masses for freedom and people’s based system of governance.  

Discard cynicism and wickedness but be conscious that some contemporary politicians or monsters of history are often the two sides of the same picture enriched with perversion and treacherous escape from the facts of real life.  They exhibit individualistic absolutism and despotic intents to gain irrational favors. This week, Newt Gingrich, the former US Speaker and if the political number game is relevant, the leading Republican candidate for the 2012 US Presidential Election, made extremely irresponsible remarks while talking to a Jewish cable TV host. Again on Saturday, the night of December 10, in the ABC televised election debate from Des Moines, Iowa State, Gingrich and four others candidates except Ron Paul (Senator from Texas) reiterated the falsified and deliberately misleading facts of the human history that Palestinians are “an invented people” and they should not be allowed to reclaim Palestine as they continue to make “murderous attacks against Israel.” They allege that “West Bank or other parts of the occupied territories are part of Israel.” All of these candidates are well briefed by the Jewish lobbyists / US official interests. Gingrich claims to be a historian to assert that “Palestinians” are no different than any other Arabs. It seems that some of these Republican candidates may have defied the record of history, honest logic and previous American active engagements in addressing the true aspirations of the people of Palestine who have been deprived of their promised national freedom and establishment of an Independent State of Palestine existing side by side with Israel. Gingrich and others cannot pretend to be ignorant but certainly to appease the powerful Washington political lobbyists and Jewish financiers support, they are using ignorance as an excuse to disregard and challenge the American history, official policies and global commitments.

Who can argue with REASON against the pro-Israeli American political institutions, people and leaders-they are well paid to say things that Israel want to hear and to guarantee the strategic superiority of Israel, no matter what the world thinks about all of them. Their duplicity in thoughts and actions is not just plain falsehood and cruelty to the prevalent facts of human life but challenges to the US official stance in a global theatre. Could the dummy and ignorant Arabian authoritarian rulers of many sheikhdoms stand up and challenge the American protagonists of wars and / or encounter the Israelis in face to face dialogue and make logical discourse that the international community could grasp some hard facts of the Middle Eastern tragedies?  Imagine, last September 2010, President Obama made an international declaration at the UN General Assembly that he hoped to see a new member State of Palestine sitting in at the UN body by next year.  Gingrich is an informed former Speaker of the US Congress, he is not that stupid to utter illogical words and nonsensical overtures at a time when he would need to be cautious and responsible to appear as a candidate of reason and responsibility. What is missing in this ball game and political drama across the global media screens?  One fact outweighs all other factors of expediency that the Arab nations do not have any educated and intellectually competent and politically credible leaders to come out in front at a global stage and REASON the UNREASON. Arab authoritarian rulers lack leadership vision and characteristics. Imagine, if Hosni Mubarak, Ghaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and Saleh Abdullah – the known killers would have been the spokesperson of the Arab nations, would they have addressed any of the issues logically or created more feuds? You cannot buy intellect, leadership traits and visions with oil revenues. Those still maintaining ruthless governance in the Arab world must change and make room for educated and intelligent people of the new generation to assume roles and responsibilities of policy making and leadership if they want to see any global resolution to the problems with Israel and America. Both of these actors need a morally and intellectually competent challenging leadership to come to terms with peacemaking. Israelis follow knowledge-based and energetic and often provocative claims to their interests and standing in the Middle East. The world pays attention to those who know how to communicate the ideas and issues logically and effectively. Arab rulers have wasted time and energies on futile projects negating the Islamic values and spirit of leadership. What if there were people-run and open-ended system of political governance and 21st century educated and proactive and intelligent people of new generation making the policies and representing the Arab political governance at a global theatre?  Would Gingrich or others alike not THINK millions time before they dare to open up their lips for making misleading statements on Palestine and its indigenous people who have been living there for centuries?

During the 2009 - 2010, the Obama administration took new initiatives to explore the possibilities of peace between Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) without a formal plan and clear agenda. It was unusual and strange peace adventure. Previously, Bush administration had claimed a media famed “road map for peace”- a map turned out to be without a road and prospects for peace, hastily agreed upon by the Arab rulers who had no imagination of peace. If the parties were serious this time, they should have clarified the peace agenda for result-oriented pursuit. A rational agenda for peace would set the goal to end the Israeli occupation since 1967, stop the Jewish settlements on occupied land, allow planned return of displaced Palestinian refugees to their homeland, security for the two states (Israel and Palestine), and the establishment of an independent State of Palestine. The global politics is changing and most powerful ones determine the fate of the weak nations and deprived people. The Arab states 19 or so lack visionary leadership, unity of purpose and proactive leadership strength to make a difference in competitive global affairs. The Israeli leaders represent their unchanged national interest to hold a position of political strength with continued US support but the Arab rulers live in the past and seem to be indifferent to listening and learning of new leadership traits for the 21st century innovative politics and to engage educated and intelligent people in political discourse and decision making. Israelis and Palestinian live in mutual distrust, continued violence and perpetuated insecurity and “fear” of the unknown and without peace.

Morally fractured, intellectually lost and practically egomaniac Arab rulers try to uplift the face and image that they can manage the governmental affairs. Islam was a system of living and governance but they defied its truth and preferred secularism and Western propelled plan of transitory economic modernization. Israelis are proactive and enjoin an organized political system of governance to serve the people. No matter which political party comes into power, their strategic goals, priorities and defined agenda against the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states remains in tact - undertaking of powerful display of force, perpetual animosity and war games.  The Arab ruling elite operate from a position of extreme political weakness and so decadent in moral and political standing and intellectually disoriented that they have lost sense of direction and real world values and priorities for their very survival and sustainability. They lack vision for the future and are unable to deal with the present.  Jeff Gates (“How Israel wages Game Theory Warfare” 8/20/2000) offers stimulating analysis of the Israeli warfare strategies in the Middle East that most often the Arab elite and the ruling dumb dictators have no clue about:

“Israeli strategists rely on game theory models to ensure the intended response to staged provocations and manipulated crises. With the use of game theory algorithms, those responses become predictable, even foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. The waging of war “by way of deception” is now a mathematical discipline…….. a skilled game theorist could foresee that, in response to a 911-type mass murder, “the mark” (the U.S.) would deploy its military to avenge that attack. With phony intelligence fixed around a preset goal, a game theory algorithm could anticipate that those forces might well be redirected to invade Iraq—not to avenge 911 but to pursue the expansionist goals of Greater Israel…..To provoke that invasion required the displacement of an inconvenient truth (Iraq played no role in 911) …….. Americans were (predictably) provoked by that mass murder. The foreseeable reaction—shock, grief and outrage—made it easier for them to believe that an infamous Iraqi Evil Doer was to blame. The displacement of facts with beliefs lies at heart of how Israel, the world’s leading authority in game theory, induces other nations to wage their wars.

False but Plausible

To displace facts with credible fiction requires a period of “preparing the minds” so that the mark will believe a pre-staged storyline. Thus the essential role of a complicit media to promote: (a) a plausible present danger (Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), (b) a plausible villain (a former ally rebranded as an Evil Doer), and (c) a plausible post-Cold War threat to national security (The Clash of Civilizations and “Islamo-fascism”).” 

Arabs people are ancient, tolerant and enjoy credible history; Americans are new in civilization and rush to hasty conclusions, only to THINK after the facts. Arabs have a history of eight hundred years (longest period in any civilization) of glorious culture and civilization in Al-Andalusia (Spain), not terrorism. European persecuted the Jews for ages, not the Arabs, and American never cared about it, well after the 2nd World War until the Jews established their institutionalized influence and power in politics, mass media and financial domains. People and nation of the world must listen, learn and understand this forgotten reality. Americans have ignored it and they are killing and getting killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arab authoritarianism and its consequential militarization and insanity continued with the complicity of the oil importing Western nations: the media reports indicate some $70 Billion of Ghaddafi’s money is frozen in the US; $20. Billion in UK, some $10 billion in Holland and in Italy, Saudi Arabia keeps 75% of its national income in the US economy, Hosni Mubarak is reported to have $57. Billion or more of assets in the West, the rulers of Kuwait and Qatar have huge some investments in the West - all of this what for? Assumingly, there were many collaborative fraudulent scheme of economic-militarization operational between the insane rulers and the Western nations.   Now, it is time for the Muslim thinkers and planners to take the initiatives and respond to the call of time and human conscience and lead the change process and make positive things happen out of planned ideas and ideals. It is time in history-making to THINK right and act; otherwise there are more wars and destruction on the horizon for the Arab-Muslim world to come. The US needs more hoax of wars to revamp failing of its financial collapse, defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, unpayable $14 trillion borrowed from the future and failed political agenda of wars against the living humanity. Professor Michel Chossudovsky (America's Holy Crusade against the Muslim World, Global Research, 8/30/2010), spells out the scenarios of war mongering: 

 “a transition from "the war on terrorism" to the outright demonization of Muslims. While underscoring the freedom of religion, the Obama administration is "beating the drums" of a broader war against Islam…..   the objective is to instill fear, rouse and harness citizens' unbending support for the next stage of America's "long war….. A "war of religion" is unfolding, with a view to justifying a global military crusade.” 

American duplicity and political intransigence have lost the strategic direction and rational sense of glory and triumph in honoring its peacemaking commitments to the Arab Middle East. The new emerging Arab world and its politics is changing fast as the new talented and informed people of new generation take over the responsibilities and demonstrate determination and imagination for a new value-based and free of foreign influence Arab world. In the progressive struggle for change, freedom and co-existence, America and Israeli both have lost the opportunities to be partner in the peace making process and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine to balance the disequilibrium in which Israel presently exists. It is becoming more obvious that by challenging the voices of REASON and implying denial of the rights of the Palestinian people, the embittered America and Israel could enjoin a terrible sense of helplessness and isolation and nothing could save them from the consequences of their own triviality, ignorance and wickedness.  

Imagine, if the Arab world had public institutions and Islamic system of people-based governance, there was no scope for the Western oil importing nations and their military forces to intervene, bomb, destroy and subjugate those already living under half of a century of authoritarian oppressions. It is the same story in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Baharian, Yemen and in other parts of the Arab societies - common people are gunned down, their rights and human dignity is purged, the only voices of reason are coming out of the Western thinking people and human organizations, not of the Arab ruling elite. All of the Arab individualistic absolute rulers have institutionalized secretive police apparatus and Rapid Deployment military units to maintain “fear game” and to keep the herd under control by force and torture. This was business as usual for almost sixty years but nobody spoke against it, not even the Western pro-democracy proponents claiming to be optimists and peacemakers. The Arab ruler’s solidarity stems from their own circle of monsters managing the governance - solidarity of the fittest of the few to survive and not to undermine anybody’s harem - palace life. They lived in palaces, not with people to know the true human affairs. None of the despotic rulers had any imagination or vision to build the human strength based valued societies and to see Islam as a changing force of time and progress.

Imagine, what would the history say about the Arab rulers complacent in America’s led bogus War on Terrorism - a crusade against Islam and about their leadership role model for the future generations to come?  Take a moment and have a cool breathe and THINK if you can, of the on-going planned massacres and killings of innocent people, political horrors and physical injuries, intellectual and moral insult to Muslim conscience, and deaths and devastation that these monsters have caused to the traditional and valued culture of the Arab people - how should the world view the Arab people, societies, Islam and their sense of moral values?  Were there no conscientious and intelligent folks, scholars and thinkers to THINK of the navigational change and challenge the absurdity of anti-Islamic authoritarianism? Was there nothing else other than handful of sadistic rulers, oil pumping and militarization as the culture and economy of the Arab people?  What kind of moral, intellectual and cultural image comes out of the traditionally cultured and civilized Arab societies that the global community should believe in?

There are more daunting challenges and opportunities ahead for concerned Arab-Muslim scholars and thinkers to grasp the momentum and try to sort out feasible alternatives and remedies and workable solutions. The role and tasks of the societal planners and managers - people dealing with change and management of development is painfully formidable and progressive over certain period of time. The societal problems are complex and there is no single pill to diagnose the cancerous sickness and disorder institutionalized by the Arab dictators. Professor Fouad Ajami (Arab Predicament) said it right: “the problems of the Arab world are the result of self-inflicted wounds.” If the one track rulers were open to listening and learning (vital traits of effective modern leadership), the current catastrophic wars against the Arab people - firing on demonstrators in streets, funeral processions and worshippers in Masjids, killings of innocent citizens and destruction of the social environment and political horrors could have been avoided.   

It is the future, how to be rebuilt across the oil producing Arab nations. There must a rational concern and immediate thinking on the part of able and competent Muslim thinkers to plan for change and future-building - out of deliberate deaths and destructions in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Tunis, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The losses are too great in human, social, economic and political terms and consequential impacts will go on for ages to come as what was destroyed instantly by the blood thirsty draculian forces, cannot be rebuild overnight. These were the results of decade old indifferences, incompetent and corrupt system of governance - the net outgrowth of the Arab authoritarianism and ruthless dictators. The THINKING people of the Arab hub must search for planned changes and ACTION PLAN - both in short and long terms, and sustainable mechanism of value-based system of governance, encouraging and enlisting politically active and informed educated, intelligent and responsible people of the new and young generation to participate and lead the societies and system of governance for a peaceful and sustainable future.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, an academic with special interests in global peace and security and conflict resolution, and comparative civilizations and author of numerous publications in global affairs. His latest book includes: Arabia at Crossroads: Arab People Strive for Peace, Freedom and New Leadership. VDM Publishers, Germany, September 2011.  Comments are welcome: kmahboob@yahoo.com

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