Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja

Activist Post

In situations of adversity and crises, leaders represent optimism and hope for change, not egoistic agenda and confusion. Peace requires new thinking and new visions that American President and Israeli PM do not have except the war agenda. Would peace and security grow out of nowhere?

Threatening rhetoric of pre-emptive war strikes on Iran’s nuclear centers and the nuisance of individualistic political indoctrination do not articulate rational and responsible opportunities for rational and intelligent leaders to engage in peaceful dialogue or conflict resolution.

Obama appeared confused instead of pragmatic and visionary. His face and body language did not seem to correspond to his movements of lips and the air he was breathing at the AIPAC stage. There is no scarcity of proactive Jewish intellectuals and scholars in Israel and America enriched with political imagination and strong sense of interests of the global humanity. There are people who love peace and harmony with the Arabs and Palestinians, and likewise, American thinkers and political visionaries who could do a better job than Netanyahu and Obama’s warrior mindsets.

In a knowledge-driven global culture of enhanced human communications and proactive visions for sustainable futuristic co-existence between Man and the encompassed Universe of divergent civilizations, we. the educators and learners, are to exercise rational capacity of thoughts, universal ideals and continuous intelligent foresight to change and adaptability to the future-making. This requires intelligent commitment to principles of international peace and security for all, non-aggression in the working of global system, protection of life and a balanced ecological culture of co-existence within the encompassed Universe-Man and the Humanity.

As the presidential elections are dominating the 2012 political culture across the United States, the world is nervously watching when and where the insanity would hit next. It is predictably unpredictable curiosity of the unknown impulse; otherwise, the news media and war-profiteering lobbyists would go bankrupt. Today, Obama spoke to the politically influential AIPAC Israeli lobby in Washington. Global peace, humanity and security of the Middle East region are the net causality of Obama’s egomaniac rhetoric. War of words and hasty and conveniently arrived personalized hypothesis of the few sadistic intellects on complex global issues are draining out the time and opportunities for dialogue and positive thinking.

The Iran war hysteria is heightened with immense fear-mongering, as was the case of the false Iraqi WMD hysteria and the continued bogus Wars of Terrorism were planned and launched against Iraq and Afghanistan. What did the present or the former US political leadership achieve out of the insanity of the Wars?

Throughout the decade-long Iraq war, the Pentagon and the European-hired mercenaries refused to count the civilian causalities in Iraq, but impartial observations put the civilian figures killed, tortured to death including Abu Ghraib, Fluodga, Baghdad and across the land of the ancient in the range of three millions lives destroyed. These were nothing short of genocidal acts against people and humanity who had neither threatened nor had the ability to harm the US-European national sovereignty or countries. Would those responsible — George Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tony Blair and so many others be brought to justice as was the case at Nuremberg trials and Japan after the WW2?

The Western democracy appears too complacent in its own search for relevance. Huntington (‘the Clash of the Civilizations’) had the sense to speak of the decadent nature of the Western culture and civilization looking for change but standing firm in its self–engineered animosity against Muslims and Islam. And it’s the policy bubble and behavioral hysteria that continues to govern the mind and priorities of the Western foreign policy makers. The institutionalized animosity propagated to poison the minds and perceptions of the ordinary Western people as if the Arabs-Muslims were born in the eye of the storm or as readily standing armies –“jihadist” against the Crusaders.

After 9/11, the US, Canada and Western Europeans invested billions and billions in devising the legal precepts — laws on terrorism, and empowering the intelligence agencies-CIA-FBI, Canadian apparatus, British and others to become Think-Tanks for foreign policy making and systematic surveillance on the public. The undemocratic secretive powers of the security agencies have alarmed the masses across North America and Western Europe leading to opposition and strong rejection of the War on Terrorism and further enslaving of humanity.

Redefined NATO gets new life to cover its past failure in dealing with the USSR and to wage unchartered wars in the region of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya with drone attacks, hired private mercenaries from Eastern Europe and Muslim nations. Plus, the CIA’s secret 100 or so offshore investigative centers in many former Eastern European-Middle Eastern Arab outlets are the framework of global terrorism planned and executed by the superpowers.

Colin Wilson (A Criminal History of Mankind) offers a rational context to the self-perpetuated decline of the Roman Empire as they were egomaniac leaders and full of the sensation of power, behaved like children and attempted at civilization to collapse into chaos, ruins and dark ages:

The Romans were slipping into violence by a process of self-justification, and once a nation or an individual has started down this particular slope, it is impossible to apply breaks the Roman people were too unimaginative and short sighted to realize that, once murder has been justified on grounds of expediency, it can become a habit, then a disease.

There is a continuing evolution of the war thinking and conflict-making and conflict-keeping against Iran within the aegis of the current Obama presidency, more so now into the re-election agenda of the incumbent President. The international community is entrenched in this sickening dilemma of the few cancerous puppies unable to see the monstrous culpability and fallibility of few sadistic minds.

Noam Chomsky (“What are Iran’s intentions?” ICH: 03/3/2012) offers a rational context to the US media-led highly charged agenda and forthcoming American presidential election hysterical paradigm:





Brave - The Browser Built for Privacy As tensions flare between Iran and the West …………Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. In the Arab world, Iran is disliked but seen as a threat only by a very small minority. Rather, Israel and the U.S. are regarded as the pre-eminent threat………….There is little credible discussion of just what constitutes the Iranian threat, though we do have an authoritative answer, provided by U.S. military and intelligence. Their presentations to Congress make it clear that Iran doesn’t pose a military threat…………… The understanding of serious Israeli and U.S. analysts is expressed clearly by 30-year CIA veteran Bruce Riedel, who said in January, ‘If I was an Iranian national security planner, I would want nuclear weapons” as a deterrent.’

“These are the times that try men’s souls”, noted Thomas Paine. In situations of great adversity and crises, leaders should represent optimism and hope for change, not egoistical agendas, confusion, and hate.

President Eisenhower in his farewell address (January 17, 1961), to the American people must have sensed the decadent futuristic moral, intellectual and political culture in the US governance to warn his countrymen:

“Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications in international affairs.