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12 January 2015
By Mahboob
A. Khawaja, PhD.
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.
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?
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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