Opinion Editorials, February 2012

Drowning in War:  

President Obama leads War Chariots against Iran

By Mahboob A Khawaja

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, February 13, 2012
 
 
 “Having been indoctrinated by the propaganda of those whose militarism and warist agenda requires acceptance of the mythology of the "good war" and the "noble warrior," the uninitiated and unaffected most civilians and many non warrior members of the military fail to realize this truth, that all war is barbarism in which cruelty and brutal atrocity is the norm rather than the exception. During World War II, for example, often cited and celebrated as the "good war," over 50 million civilians were murdered by both Axis and Allied Nations. The American servicemen in the Wikileaks video who so nonchalantly "engaged the target" slaughtering some 12 human beings are no different from the pilots and bombardiers from the "greatest generation" who with equal nonchalance, incinerated millions of civilians during the terror bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. Despite the moral depravity of their actions, these individuals were not born killers. Rather they were created to do our bidding………

Camillo "Mac" Bica, Professor New York University (“Atrocity and War” OpEdNews: 04/28/2010)

***

If President Obama thought war is noble and heroic to contest the presidential re-elections, he is an affront to human rationality. Wickedness and righteousness cannot be combined in one human character and policy manifestation. He appears to have opted to the dark side of human THINKING and is being manipulated by ex-military Generals and the sadistic enterprises of Washington-based Zionist controlled industrial—military-political complexes. They all perceive the mankind as subservient as something like numbers and digits to be toyed to their absolute economic and political dictates. If he continues to beat the war drums against Iran, surely, he does not have the sense of time and history to live and face the consequences. He is not a skilled leader but a dream warrior. Obama and Pharaoh must have shared the same thinking and priorities. But could their ultimate destinies be the same?

W'Lawpsh (“And Its Name Is Treason!”-Dissident Voice: 11/24/2011) wonders: If war is a crime what is its name? The Constitution of the United States of America calls it “Treason.”
Yet, because of the American intransigence and aggressive mindset, the world is already plagued with the horrible consequences of American orchestrated two bogus wars on terrorism or terrorism of wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan onward to Pakistan, killing millions of human beings and devastating wide areas of human habitats across the globe. More wars and more rhetoric of aggression are constantly emerging from the hallways of the Obama’s administration as if humanity had already not suffered enough by the acts of atrocities of the few psychopath and egomaniac leaders. At issue is the obsessed ignorance and wickedness ingrained in the human nature to engage in the deceit of triumphalism. The psyche depicts lack of contemplation of the human being – the embodiment of material and soul with a given mission in life, the self and mankind living coherently in the environment.

If George Bush was “a pathological liar” according to David Corn (“Is the President a Pathological Liar- Bush unhealthy relationship with reality.” LA Weekly: 12/5/2003), then Obama following his footprints of global warmongering seems no different either. The indigenouous animalistic craze for blood and killing passion is taking the US and its feebleminded all seasons conveniently available coalition of the few ex-colonial Europeans and Israel to raise the level of unfounded unilateral tensions and mindless aggression against Iran. Warmongering against Iran is an exclusive domain of myth-making by the belligerent parties. If Iran develops the nuclear capability so what, would the sky fall upon America and Israel or the waters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf dry out? There are 23 or more states including Israel possessing the nuclear weapons and collaborating fear of the unknown devoid of any unilateral action as a common status-quo. Nobody can rationalize how can or will Iran threaten anybody? Or would the oil supplies that worry and challenge the American superpower intransigence? Should the global community initiate an intellectual, moral and social embargo on the US Government if an economic or political one cannot be considered at this time in the history making process? The ideal repercussion could have been if China, Japan and Saudi Arabia had the courage to demand immediate payment to their IOU trade notes signed by the US Government. Or perhaps a PR communication boycott by the concerned American masses with the Obama Presidency at a time when he is gearing up for re-election and would need high number game standing for public accountability.  May be some of the leading global business organizations could stop taking American goods and services for a while. This should be an effective measure to stop Obama’s sadistic policy behavior. What about the thinking hubs of the American socio-political spectrum to constrain Obama’s re-election campaign? In its 200 years of history, America has fought more than 220 wars across the globe and according to Luke Hiken - an American attorney (“How Should Americans Respond to Leaders Who Are War Criminals?” Dissident Voice: 06/29/2011)
 
“The list goes on and on and only gets worse as each week passes. The tally of our savagery throughout the world numbers in the hundreds of thousands each year, and yet the only casualties we read about refer to “American lives lost” – and, even those number in the thousands. All the government has to do is characterize its victims as terrorists, or anti-U.S., and the public sits back and condones the killing.” Luke Hiken enlists the developmental stages of the US warmongering:
 
1) Drones attacks on civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. 2) The ongoing murder of civilians in Iraq. 3) Support for U.S.-installed authoritarian rulers in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. 4) Indiscriminate bombing in Libya designed to kill one of the few dictators we don’t embrace in the Middle East. 5) Declaring Iran Air Lines to be a “terrorist group” and threatening to prosecute anyone who flies on that airline for “Patriot Act” violations. 6) Support for Israel’s illegal blockade and opposition to a peace flotilla to the concentration camp known as Gaza. 7) U.S. complicity with the Mexican government in killing over 25,000 drug dealers and their supporters 8) Interventions and destabilization of South and Central America, designed to overthrow governments that won’t comply with U.S. economic and political agenda demands.  9) The use of the CIA, FBI and their affiliates in international clandestine operations, including assassinations and disappearances.”
Paul Craig Roberts (“What do We Stand For?” ICH: 18/02/2008) crystallized the proper context to the American legacy:
“Americans traditionally thought of their country as a "city upon a hill," a "light unto the world." Today only the deluded think that. Polls show that the rest of the world regards the U.S. and Israel as the two greatest threats to peace. This is not surprising. In the words of Arthur Silber:
"The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for…………… “The killing and occupation continue even though we now know that the invasions were based on lies and fabricated "evidence." The entire world knows this. Yet Americans continue to act as if the gratuitous invasions, the gratuitous killing, and the gratuitous destruction are justified. There is no end of it in sight.”
 
Bush disguised his “crusade “ against Islam and the Arab people and claimed he was paving ways for human rights, liberty and justice in the primitive Arab world by attacking Iraq. The real issue was occupation of Iraq’s oil resources and protection of the dollars as reserve currency in oil trade. President Obama came into office to take America out of the scourge of the terrorism of wars and return peace and normalcy to the exhausted American sense of rationality. But instead deformed into another self-centered egomaniac leader matching the ambitions of his predecessor - known psychopath George Bush. Obama appears to have failed to learn useful lesson from the contemporary history.
 
Every beginning hast an end.  America appears to be led by the wrong people with wrong THINKING and doing the wrong things. The national image and its accompanying baggage of acclaimed features and so called values conform to the historical record of those leaders and nations that claimed materialist powers and got engaged ruthlessly to run down the rest of mankind devastating life and habitats aimlessly for fun, for pissing on them and enjoying killing the fellow human beings for economic and political agendas. In their given span of time, they were tactful to use clichés of being civilized and challenged and threatened anyone who dared to reason the unreason with their monstrous acts of aggression. They were destined to meet the same consequential end about which they never imagined and often mocked about that it could happen to them in their life time. The life and Planet exist not because of any abstract notion of the modern State and its laws but by the order and will of God. From earth to heavens, all things exist and operate according to the command of God and obey His pre-destined course of action. Those who challenged the order of the Nature of Things became dust and artifacts in worldwide museums. They ended up in bringing the wrath of God by violating the Laws of the Nature and got destroyed by natural causes such as earthquakes, flooding, storms, sound blasts and other natural causes befitting to their wickedness and drudgery against the mankind. What happened to the kingdom of Pharaoh? What fate did Hitler encountered claiming to be waging war of 1000 years? Where did the Roman Empire ended up? How did the British and Spanish Empires were lost without a trace? What about the most recent USSR dismantlement? What is next for still infancy-the US Empire? The mankind suffers without any lapse of time as do the victims of nuclear catastrophic accidents and bombing.
 
The consequential outcomes leave imprints for ages to come on human psychology, social, economic, political spheres and above all on the functional system of the planets- history reveals the facts which cannot be erased from the minds of the living humanity.  
 
“Will Iran Be Attacked?” (paulcraigroberts.org: 02/8/2012) worrisome question pondered by Paul Craig Roberts - one of the leading 21st century American intellectuals:

”Washington has made tremendous preparations for a military assault on Iran. There is speculation that Washington has called off its two longest running wars--Iraq and Afghanistan--in order to deploy forces against Iran. Two of Washington’s fleets have been assigned to the Persian Gulf along with NATO warships. Missiles have been spread amongst Washington’s Oil Emirate and Middle Eastern puppet states. US troops have been deployed in Israel and Kuwait. Washington has presented Israel a gift from the hard-pressed American taxpayers of an expensive missile defense system, money spent for Israel when millions of unassisted Americans have lost their homes. As no one expects Iran to attack Israel, except in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iran, the purpose of the missile defense system is to protect Israel from an Iranian response to Israeli aggression against Iran.”
 
Politicians across North America and Western Europe contend to be optimistic about future-making and contributing to human civility, peace and tranquility in the society. There is a wide gulf between what these self- centered politicians claim and do. West Europeans are increasingly becoming active participants and captive of the US planned cruelties against the mankind. Foul is fair, fair is foul.
Luke Hiken (“How Should Americans Respond to Leaders Who Are War Criminals?” Dissident Voice: 06/29/2011), an American attorney spells out the context:
 
“Throughout history, oppressed people have been overwhelmed and immobilized by the seeming indestructibility of the military establishment in power. Whether it be a Hitler, an Attila, or the powerful Ozymandias of old, the mighty call upon the weak to “look on my works … and despair.” But whether these tyrants are defeated by their enemies, or, like an uncontrolled forest fire that burns itself out as a result of its own self-destructing flames, all such empires fade and fall. The hubris and inhumanity of our leaders and owners result in their own annihilation – the only question is how many will have died while they wreaked their havoc on the people and resources of the planet.”
Eric Blair (“5 Wars That America Must End for Peace and Freedom to Prevail.” Activist Post: 02/7/2012) offers valuable insights to the fraudulent and systematic entanglement of the American global warfare:

”I've gotten to the point where I cringe whenever I hear the word 'war'.  Even when it's used to seemingly combat something noble sounding such as the war on poverty or the war on hunger.  It's become apparent that all wars cause damage no matter if it's a figurative war or an actual war………War creates an enemy that must be extinguished by government force.  The more broadly defined the enemy is, the bigger the government's role becomes in eradicating it.  And when the government wages war against anything, it's a cycle that's nearly impossible to stop.  The government creates new agencies, and staffs them with union jobs that depend on never actually winning the wars, but rather only perpetuating them.

When poverty rates climb, there's a crew of government workers secretly high-fiving that their job is safe.  When marijuana legalization measures fail, the police and prison unions celebrate.  When America is attacked, the weapons manufacturers rejoice.  When all Americans are considered terror suspects, surveillance industry stocks soar.  And we pay for it all in treasure and freedom.”
Phil Rockstroh - Poet, lyricist and philosopher (“A Journey To The End Of Empire” Dissident Voice: 02/01/2012) warns about the coming of dark ages and moral and intellectual annihilation to human values, political imagination and working of the governance to the accountability factor:
It is Always Darkest Right Before it Goes Completely Black.
There is no reality-based argument denying this………..But the raging soul of the world will not be assaulted without consequence. Mind and body are intertwined and inseparable from nature, and, when nature responds to our assaults, her replies are known to humankind as the stuff of mythic tragedy and natural catastrophe.
Resultantly, the tattered remnants of the neoliberal imagination (embodied in lofty but content-devoid Obama speechifying and the clown car demolition derby of Republican politics) spends its days in a broken tower of the mind, insulated from this reality: The exponentially increasing consequences (e.g., economic collapse, perpetual war, ecocide) created by the excesses of the present paradigm will shake those insular towers to theirs foundations, and, will inevitably caused the structures to totter and collapse. We have been “sexton slave” to this destructive order long enough; its lodestar is a death star.
Of course, this behavior defies logic, is in breach of the law, and is an affront to any workable code of ethics–as well as stands in defiance to the laws of nature, including the force of gravity. ………Paradoxically, while the forces of nature are impersonal, the dilemma feels very personal. Therefore, on this journey to the end of empire, when impersonal elements are in play, one can become alienated from the dehumanizing trajectory of the times. Likewise, as exemplified by the U.S. political system, what process is more impersonal than the process of decay? Apropos, the air is permeated with a reek of putrefaction. “That’s just the way it is” might be one of the most soul-defying phrases in the human lexicon.”
Professor Camillo "Mac" Bica (“Atrocity and War” OpEdNews: 04/28/2010) of the New York University provides rational perspectives on the indoctrinated atrocities and aftermaths of the US led contemporary wars:
“Having been indoctrinated by the propaganda of those whose militarism and warist agenda requires acceptance of the mythology of the "good war" and the "noble warrior," the uninitiated and unaffected most civilians and many non warrior members of the military fail to realize this truth, that all war is barbarism in which cruelty and brutal atrocity is the norm rather than the exception. During World War II, for example, often cited and celebrated as the "good war," over 50 million civilians were murdered by both Axis and Allied Nations. The American servicemen in the Wikileaks video who so nonchalantly "engaged the target" slaughtering some 12 human beings are no different from the pilots and bombardiers from the "greatest generation" who with equal nonchalance, incinerated millions of civilians during the terror bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. Despite the moral depravity of their actions, these individuals were not born killers. Rather they were created to do our bidding………
 
With the recent release of the video at Wikileaks that graphically documents, with less than Xbox clarity and sophistication, an alleged incident of atrocity prosecuted by American troops, all morally sensitive human beings, regardless of their political ideology or position on the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the wars in Pakistan, Yemen, etc., are understandably outraged and righteously appalled by such barbarism. …….. For the warriors, the mythology has long since crumbled quickly replaced by the reality of death and destruction”
 
Are the Western democracies and their superficial surge to protect human rights, freedom and liberty is relevant to the knowledge-based- and well informed societal conscience of the 21st century?  Could Obama continue to fool the people that he is waging a just war against Iran or winning the terrorism of wars against the besieged humanity? Undoubtedly, history tells us that all those claiming to be the role model representing the democratic will of the people were sadistic people of self- aggrandizement and profound treacherous behavior to nobody except the self and their own conscious if they had one. All the necessary factors are interplaying in the emerging rhetoric of wars against Iran as if another Pharaoh is setting the scene to repeat the history. To the intelligent ones and responsible leaders who are conscientious of learning from the lessons of history, the Red Sea still exhibits the reminiscent of the Pharaoh’s drowned and destroyed kingdom and his own well kept mummy continues to be displayed to the curious visitors at the Cairo national museum. Now, the course of history-making is focused in the adjacent Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf connecting the missing dots.
 
Contemporary politics is not a fixed entity but highly complex and demanding test of leader’s ingenuity and challenge to effective leadership. Bush failed miserably to meet the criterion requirements to manage the crisis of 9/11 proportion and to conveniently opt for War o Terrorism. Obama lacked the will and vision to build anew America breaking with the bankrupt past. Leaders lead and those who betray the solid commitments and mislead, end-up in disgrace. History portrays them as Hitler, Mussolini, George Bush, Tony Blair and so many others delusional and entangled in making the process of history. Throughout the recorded history, men of knowledge and wisdom knew well their strengths and weaknesses, and the type of advice and people around them making the governance happen. Indifferent and cruel are those who see the facts of life on a clear dashboard but ignore the alarming singles for change and adaptability – towards a Navigational Change to avoid the self-engineered monstrous consequential developments.  Intelligent are the ones who change their course when facts warrant a change, they demonstrate courageous passion for facts not for fiction and take up the challenge to make a sustainable future happened out of human intellect and  reasoned judgment, that is leadership intelligence and accountability to the people they claim to serve in the 21st century. American politicians and military strategists have faltered many intellectual and moral fault lines as is the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan by THINKING BIG and falling from high and be harmed to become a financially, morally and intellectual bankrupt superpower burdened on human conscience and historic sense of freedom and liberty, and desperately looking for its relevance to the emerging economies and global political challenges. The essence of rationality will presuppose that rational people do think of recourse to change the direction and policy behaviors when realties on the ground warrant such a critical change. Because of the domestic politics and Zionist control of the American thinking hubs, often the American leadership acts like a surrogate mother to protect the Israeli interests by undermining its own global standing and national interests.  Learning from the facts of life and making changes in perceptions, policies and strategic direction is a rational choice to effective leadership. One could propose a workable diagnose to the bewildered American mindset if Obama and Netanyahu could be sent on a space voyage to see the Planet Earth as is from the above and understand its operational existence – Who is governing the universe - what Majestic Power facilitates all that is essential for life and growth;  how the earth rotates against the sun, how the water, seas, mountains stand in obedience to its Creator - the Lord of World- the Creator of life and death, how the universe and human species are connected together and the imperatives of living in co-existence with the rest of mankind. Perhaps, such an exploratory visit to space will help to melt down some of their inborn stupidity, indifference and cruelty to the fellow human beings.   Indeed, leadership adaptability to change in democracy is a mark of intelligence and responsibility.
 
After the recent worldwide revulsion by 99% People’s Occupy Movement against the perpetuated atrocities of the 1% economic and political  authoritarianism,  Western democracy appears set on a collision course with itself when people are not the force of its functional legitimacy and policy making, more so of Obama’s imperial expansion, targeting other nations for the fun of killing, display of materialistic power and delusional military hardware, torturing and bombing innocent civilians and labeling it collateral damage - the Abu Ghraib, Guantamobay - none embodied peace, freedom and justice but treachery to American historical ideals, violence, deaths, and atrocities it claims to diffuse. Obvious facts indicate that many times in recent history people of authority have exercised the authoritarian absolutism to drive the mankind to two Word Wars while preaching gospel in one hand and warmongering and massacres  in another one.  Logic demands facing truth not man-made false values of self appeasement and coronation to power. Would Obama take the cautionary warning and make the much needed Navigational Change and RETHINK of drowning the US in the Red Sea Region as it happened to the Pharaoh. The global community does not wish to see America drowning in its self-geared absurdity of wars but what must humanity do if we THINK of Change?
 
 
 
(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global affairs (global security, peace and conflict resolution) and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Arabia at Crossroads: Arab People Strive for Freedom, Peace and New Leadership. VDM Publishers, Germany, September 2011. Comments are welcome at: kmahboob@yahoo.com)
 

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