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Final delusions of a dying savage.
Abid Ullah Jan
Many Empires, beginning perhaps with Sumer and continuing with Egypt,
Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain, the UK and USSR, have come and gone.
Interestingly, however, life transcends revolutions and collapse and
continues on - by design - run by a set of unchangeable, inviolable
principles and some immutable rules that govern the Universe. There are no
exceptions and those who have kicked and fought, attempting to create their
own set of principles have failed and been destroyed. Enter now the Empire
of the United States of American - a perfect global dictatorship in full
operation.
Under the new global dictatorship, truth has become “hate speech” and
exposing the facts “anti-Americanism.” The post-September 11 world makes it
almost impossible to speak for justice, civilization and freedom in terms
that do not accrue to the American perceptions. The US has given itself an
internationalised identity with authority and hegemony to adjudicate the
relative values of freedom, justice and peace. Anyone who disputes its
hierarchy and methods, exposes its injustices, elucidates what its latest
missions have hidden, to pronounce what it has silenced or rendered
unpronounceable, is a terrorist or sponsor of terrorism. It is interesting
to note that Empires, at the peak of their authority, have always deluded
themselves into believing that they will rule forever, and they have always
imposed their ideas, ideals, and values on the rest of the world. A cool
analysis reveals that the US is afflicted with the following delusions:
- Critics of American policies are traitors and terrorists,
representing the evil. - Nothing would change the US policy.
- The US military might is an ultimate key to solving all
problems. - Islamic opposition can either be silenced by sub-dictators
or eradicated under the ruse of combating terrorism. - An increased propaganda would help US combat
anti-Americanism.
1-Countless editorials and political statements from the US are adding to the
vocabulary of good and evil, each use of which is plainly designed not to
edify but to inflame the reader’s indignant passion as a member of the
righteous “West,” and what they need to do with “evil.” The self-appointed
combatants in the American war against its haters, despoilers, destroyers,
give scant attention to complex histories that defy such reductiveness and
have seeped from one territory into another, in the process overriding the
boundaries that are supposed to separate us all into “good” and “evil” armed
camps.
Such labels mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of
the unclear US objectives, the spectre of terrorism and counter-terrorism
that won’t be pigeonholed or strapped down as easily as all that. How
finally delusional and fatal are these labels of civilisational superiority?
At some level, in the near future, primitive passions and sophisticated
know-how would converge in ways that would give the lie to a fortified
boundary not only between “good” and “evil” but also between past and
present, us and them, to say nothing of the very concepts of Islam and the
West about which there is unending disagreement and debate.
The US approach to draw lines in the sand, to undertake crusades, to oppose
our “evil” with its “good,” to extirpate terrorism and to endlessly attack
and end nations entirely, doesn’t make the supposed spectre any easier to
haunt; rather, it speaks to how much simpler it is to make bellicose
statements for the purpose of mobilizing collective passions in favour of
deploying troops and silencing critics anywhere in the world than to
reflect, examine, and sort out what it is the US dealing with in reality and
somehow put a graceful face on the inevitable fall from the super power
status.
2-Instead, Bush and Powell repeatedly declare: “we won’t let terrorism dictate
our policy.” It simply means, the US policy would never change because the
changes the “terrorists” look forward to are the same that are repeatedly
stressed by the intellectuals in their treatises; writers in their columns
and books; common people in their street protests; and laymen in their
burning of American flags. It’s all the same. Every one demands the US
change its interventionist approach and careless attitude towards the plight
of the oppressed in his own style. Declaring that the US policy would not
change simply amounts to saying, it would continue state terrorism and
support Israel’s as well.
The most pressing demands are: withdrawal of the US troops from Saudi
Arabia; establishment of an independent Palestinian state with liberation of
Al Aqsa from Jewish occupation, lifting embargo on Iraq, and resolving the
issues of Kashmir and Chechnya on the principles of justice and fairness.
The fact is, Israel’s continued occupation and the US support of its
terrorism could lead to the final world war in the near future. It is
foolish to keep denying it. With a just resolution of the Palestinian issue,
the issue of American troops in Arabia and sanctions on Iraq would dissolve
because they are in place only to protect Israel. Everyone knows Iraq does
not have any nukes and if it had bio-chemical weapons it would only use them
if threatened by Israel’s nukes.
Unfortunately, the US is not even ready to hear why it is hated. A ten
million dollars cheque was returned as an eye opener to the Saudi Prince for
his faint criticism of the US policies in the Middle East. The final
delusions forces the US to remain defiant and claim: “Mere changes in policy
won’t placate the terrorists - it’s America itself that the terrorists envy
and hate - our freedom, our power, our prosperity.” Ignoring the real causes
of terrorism would leave the US with failed diplomacy, ruined economy, and a
shattered myth of its might after its failed efforts to bring nameless
“terrorists” and impoverished but determined nations to heel.
3-Like all the previous empires, the US delusion that its military might is a
key to resolve any problem is contradicted by the most basic principle of
nature: Man has a mind and he has a will and, though it can be temporality
thwarted, it cannot be killed. There are examples throughout history to
substantiate this principle. Though a despot may have occupied the seat of
power in Rome or Moscow, and though he may have imposed his absolute will
and reign on his subjects, they too had a mind, and a desire for freedom
that no amount of force could kill. If Israel could not suppress the
Palestinians in the last 50 years with the full-scale assistance of the US,
how could the US do so in all the Muslim countries with the assistance of a
few allies and handpicked dictators? To avoid the imminent downfall, the US
has to respect aspiration of freedom and independence of the Muslims around
the world. For us freedom and independence are not “certain evil” or
questionable goods. They must be considered as sacred duties as the
“civilised” US owe to the independence and nationality of its allies and
Israel.
4-The grand misconception that the Muslims opposing the US policies are a
“fundamentalist minority,” has finally become one of the main delusions of
the US. It is believed that the simmering rage in Muslim societies would be
controlled by forcing a few dictators to use their armies, nurtured at the
cost of almost 80% of the national resources, against the minority of
“extremists.” It is claimed that the “religious extremists” are only 15% of
the population and that the middle class, the upper middle class and the
upper class are pro-America. In the case of Pakistan, for instance, the
“upper” and upper middle classes are about 10-15% of the population, about
equal in numbers to the presumed “15% religious extremists.” It leaves about
70% of the masses that the dictators claim to be trying to win over.
Irrespective of such statistics, at least, 60% of the population believes
the US policies are anti-Islam. The difference is that everyone does take to
the streets to protest and burn American flags.
Muslims in the West, unfortunately, have either been brainwashed or have no
option but to prove their loyalty to avoid any backlash from the western
fundamentalists. Muslims are now an integral presence in Western society.
There are more than seven million Muslims in North America and more than
double that number in Europe. How can one imagine Muslims sitting in the US
or Europe criticising the US policies as unjust when there are demands to
crackdown on al-Jazeera and western analysts like Noam Chomsky and Robert
Fisk are labelled as traitors? No wonder many of them are trying “valiantly”
to distance themselves from the issues related to Islam.
5-As far the renewed focus on propaganda is concerned, no amount of
misinformation can ever erase a single incident of Israeli or American
atrocities from our memories. No matter how much BBC or CNN may twist the
facts, the images of Judo-American terrorism would remain as fresh in our
memories as the images of the falling Towers would remain in the US memory.
The time when propaganda could make a difference has long passed. Now, the
Quran holding images of Bush and Quran quoting statements of Blair are not
enough to erase their guilt of starving 500,000 Iraqi babies to death and
sponsoring Israeli terrorism to the end. A person born in Islam and dying
for Islam would certainly understand Islam far better than Toney Blair who
is trying to find the Quranic verses that suit his message.
We usually do not quote Quran to those who do not believe in it, but to the
Islam-teaching Tony Blair and Bush must remember that Jihad against
aggression and occupation of the Arab lands is as valid as it was against
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Quran instructs for tolerance and peace
but also grants permission to fight: “Permission (to fight) is given to
those upon whom war is made because they are oppressed, and most surely
Allah is well able to assist them,”(Chapter 22, verse 39). Clear orders
for fight against oppression are there in 2:190-191, 2:216, 4:74-76,
9:29-30, 9:123, 22:39, and 61:4.
No amount of propaganda can ever prove that Palestinians, Kashmiris,
Chechens, Egyptians and Algerians are not oppressed, or that the war on
Afghanistan was not pre-planned to neutralise the Islamic threat. If no
moral cause can justify terrorism against the US, so can no circuitous
argument justify counter terrorism by the US or continued occupation and
terrorism by the Israeli government. Why should Palestinians be pushed into
unending cycles of futile negotiations if there can be no negotiations with
other terrorists and aggressors? If time for negotiations can run out within
days for the Taliban and punishment of Iraqi aggression can continue beyond
eleven years, why should not time run out for Israel or why should it not
get punished for its congenital terrorism. These and other such question
would go down unanswered with perhaps the last savage Empire of human
history.
[This message has been edited by Admin (edited October 25, 2001).]