Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja

The global mankind is witnessing again live horror stories, daily bloodshed and misinformation re-enacting compulsion of evil and temptation of political domination by the few warlords to revisit Iraq’s decade-old sufferings of the common people and the ripple effects of the US-Britain aggression against Iraq. Piety and wickedness cannot be combined in one leadership character. Undoubtedly, global mankind is conscientious of how few warmongers had exercised individualistic absolutism to invade Iraq in 2003 under false pretext of Weapons of Mass Destruction-WMD. The aim was a regime change to occupy and control the precious oil resources of Iraq. When the ISIS fighters are reportedly approaching the strategic oil sites and Baghdad, the US leadership arranged to evacuate 5,000 oil contractors stationed in Iraq after the Bush-led occupation of Iraq. All the new oil executives (probably including the Bush family) in Iraq were given legal immunity from prosecution by an executive order of George Bush. Analyzing the moral and psychological factors operating below the threshold of political consciousness, American leadership failed miserably to separate rationality of implied political power from wisdom.

The 21st century knowledge-based informed global humanity would like to see America to demonstrate adaptation to the prevalent world of reason and not its absence in facing the challenging global affairs. Evil is deprivation of good. According to the findings of the Dutch Peace Group Pax’s Report (The Guardian: 6/19/2014), the US military used depleted uranium weapons on Iraqi civilians during the 2003 war. The Iraq decade long bloodbath planned and carried out by the US and British troops should have been source of remorse and certainly not another entanglement in Iraq’s bloody saga. The tyrant occupiers who tortured millions of innocent people are today’s news media experts on Iraq. America needs to see the mirror to ensure its own political survival and future. God is living and sees all that is happening in the splendid Universe. The foreign mortal minds failed to understand that Noah, Abraham and many divinely inspired culture and civilizations originated from Iraq. Baghdad and Iraq as a whole is the cradle of many known civilizations. There was no logical ground to destroy it. How could anybody deny the facts of history? Even wild beasts kill other animals just for food but do not commit large scale massacres and do not set up rape camps and build torture cells. The informed mankind knows what went on at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and numerous prison sites in Afghanistan. These are the hallmarks of the American and British “mission accomplished.” Were these institutions set-up to enhance human rights, dignity and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan? Tyranny is a prelude to transgression. All tyrants hold power not wisdom dear to their minds. In a country claiming freedom, human dignity, liberty and democracy as the core values, were the few neocon tyrants more powerful than the informed and conscientious people of America to become submissive to their lies and deceptions against the mankind?

Tyranny Begins where Reason Ends

“An invasion would tear the country apart, explode sectarian tensions, and plunge the region into chaos” recalls William Rivers Pitt (“They Belong in Prison, Not on TV” Information Clearing House: 6/21/2014), Senior Editor of Truthout and author of several publications ("War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know,") points out how the warmongers staged the political drama to falsify the facts:

Neither I nor the world knew at that time that George W. Bush and Tony Blair had decided four months earlier that the deal was going down no matter what. Neither I nor the world knew at that time that a decision had been made one month earlier to ensure that "intelligence and facts" would be "fixed around the policy" of invasion. ….Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Condoleeza Rice, and of course, George W. Bush, piled the sandbags high and deep around a decision that had already been made. We know they have these weapons, we know where they are, we don't want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud, plastic sheeting and duct tape, 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11. Save for 23 bold souls, a craven Senate caved to the pressure and delivered the Iraq War Resolution to the Bush administration, and in late March of 2003, the skies over Baghdad glowed orange as the city was turned into a bowl of molten fire.

Those who plan and wage wars, know what they are engaged in, they are not innocent belligerents without knowledge. Those who go to farfetched lands to bomb the innocent people, divide and massacre men, women and children, fully understand what they are doing. Perhaps, common folks in America and Europe are misled by the warmongers enabling them to sustain their war agendas under false political perceptions of security threats and misleading media-generated imagery of the Islamic militancy. In his article Professor Camillo “Mac” Bica, School of Visual Arts, New York City and an activist of Peace and Justice (“Atrocity and War”, 4/28/2010), offers a useful insight to understand the nature and scope of the war:

“…war is not accessible through the understanding, rationally, intellectually, by watching a film or by reading a book. To “know” war, you have to experience it, live it, feel it in your gut the anxiety, fear, frustration, boredom, hopelessness, despair, anger, rage, etc. In truth, warriors exist in a world totally incomprehensible to those who have never had the misfortune of experiencing the horrors of the battlefield.”

Iraq Needs a Navigational Change

Iraq faces multiple problems of corrupt governance onward to sectarian divides generating hatred and more agonizing daily bloodbath. Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki regime is isolated and discredited by humiliating on-going military defeats by the ISIS groups. President Obama made it clear to see Iraq under a new arrangement of political governance. One of Iraq’s leading Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistaini is reportedly calling for change and an “effective” government to include all the political players. Ayartollah Sistaini’s message is explicit to see Nouri Al-Maliki replaced by another credible leader.

President Obama appears reluctant to commit air strikes in support of a corrupt political regime. If PM Al-Maliki does not leave, the time-space opportunities will workout in favor of the ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to gain major victories supported by the majority of the Sunni population and other Iraqi masses. Entrenched Iraq army leaders point out that President Obama’s clear signal of not allowing the US air strikes to preserve the status quo in Baghdad has “damaged the army’s morale and self-confidence”. The army echelon had hoped to get the American air strikes to halt the marching armies of the ISIS and its allied groups.

Iraq is Victim of Political Lies and Deceptions

When America and British troops attacked Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi Oil Ministry was the foremost targeted place of strategic occupation. Throughout the decade long inhuman killings, foreigners looted the artifacts from ancient museums and destroyed ancient treasures of knowledge and civilizations to undermine the Iraq’s historical contributions to making of the human civilizations. Strangely enough, warmongers hire war propagandists to classify wars as “noble”, “good”, necessity of the ruling nobility and to protect the flag, borders and national interests. George Bush claimed to be a “Man of God” who started the day with reading of the Bible. Nobody ever mentions in America that George Bush and his neocons massacred three million Iraqi civilians. The same bloodbath is well in progress in Afghanistan. Despite public having knowledge and rational thinking, now many corporate owned news media are falsifying the facts that ISIS rebels in Iraq have agenda to challenge the US national security or to encroach on the West European sovereignty. Like the hoax of 2003 Iraq’s WMD, political deception is reborn and goes on unchallenged to support the renewed war psyche. Paul Craig Roberts (“A Culture of Delusion”:paulcraigroberts.org 11/27/2012) captions the prevalent context of the US strategic delusion:

“Americans live in a matrix of lies. They seldom encounter a truthful statement. There is no evidence that Americans can any longer tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Americans fell for all of these lies and more: Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections. Saddam Hussein’s troops seized Kuwaiti babies from incubators and threw them on the floor. Gaddafi fed his troops Viagra to help them rape Libyan women. Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Change–yes we can! The US is “the indispensable country.” …..Israel is America’s most loyal ally.…..
The list is endless. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision. The most successful people in America are liars.”

Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification…. The psychoanalyst John Steiner calls this phenomenon “turning a blind eye.” He notes that often we have access to adequate knowledge but because it is unpleasant and disconcerting we choose unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, to ignore it. The Shakespearean scholar Harold Goddard wrote: “The imagination is not a faculty for the creation of illusion; it is the faculty by which alone man apprehends reality. The ‘illusion’ turns out to be truth.” “Let faith oust fact,” Starbuck says in “Moby-Dick.”…..“It is only our absurd ‘scientific’ prejudice that reality must be physical and rational that blinds us to the truth,”

How to Stop the Raging Bloodshed for Peacemaking?

At times, when rationality fails to unfold logical alternatives, often creative thoughts could make unthinkable breakthroughs to attain the individual and collective aims for the good of the mankind. To undo the sectarian divides and passionate madness for killing, influential Middle East rulers and the US politicians should have focused to peacemaking rather than encouraging either sides to pursue volatile conclusions. American and European protagonist of wars are exhausted and defeated actors on this front. To make peace and usher a new age of co-existence in Iraq, the global community should offer new and innovative political imagination in a chaotic societal situation. There should be a composite group of well known people with moral, spiritual and intellectual credibility to initiate dialogue for peace-making. The Arab culture places high values to moral and spiritual contacts and norms and more so during the coming of the month of Ramadan- month of fasting beginning in a week. A committee of prominent global citizens could be organized under the auspices of the UNO Secretary General’s Good Offices and may include South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky (USA) Rev Jesse Jackson (USA) Paul Craig Roberts (USA), Former President Jimmy Carter, former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, Iraqi Grand Ayotallah Sistaini and one representative from the ISIL. Where mortal minds of the US-European leadership have flunked, these morally and intellectually respectful people could make the difference to start a peaceful dialogue between the combatant parties. Any rational approach to stop the sectarian bloodbath should have a breathing space (like the ‘no man’s land’) - a meeting place of divergent interests to halt the attacks and to prepare a framework of a navigational change. This means, to phase-out the Nouri Al Maliki regime and phase-in a transitory government of national unity including the leadership of the ISIS. Are there anyone listening to voices of reason and thinking of peace and security for the people of Iraq? No government or political leaders seem to be pursuing any rational course of plan and actions to promote global peace and understanding amongst different cultures and civilizations or the need to stop the political belligerency and the bogus Wars on Terrorism and help the humanity to return to normal setting of co-existence. America and its allies could have used it to build new relations for co-existence and for the good of all. The US and some Europeans are living in a state of paranoid thinking, and fail to see the prevalent realities and reactions of the global masses against their warmongering. The Western world is terribly naïve in its approach to warmongering against the poor, deprived and divided mankind in other parts of the world. History has a role to teaching and learning which is denied by the global war strategists. All wars are the outcome of anti-human thinking and cruelty and none can or will usher peace and security to the mankind. William Rivers Pitt (“They Belong in Prison, Not on TV” Information Clearing House: 6/21/2014), appears to be a man of conscience and wants to share his vision and observations to let the world know:

Never mind the fact that I and so very many others spent so much time and energy for so many years trying to stop all this from happening. Never mind the fact that the perpetrators of this enormous fraud, this smash-and-grab robbery, this looting of the Treasury, this act of first-degree murder on a massive scale, all walked away scot-free to pursue new careers and live lives of comfort. Amazingly enough, that's not the worst part. The worst part is that they're all on my television again, trying to blame President Obama for the circumstances created by their own feckless, murderous decisions.

“Why should America engulf itself in the fresh bloodbaths generated by internal fighting in Iraq?” asks Patrick J. Buchanan (“To Bomb Or Not To Bomb-
Front Groups for the US Government?” Information Clearing House: 6/20/2014), and he is no stranger to the unfolding strategic games of the US political mindset. “U.S. Sees Risk in Iraqi Air strikes,” ran the June 19 headline in the Washington Post, “Military Warns of Dangerous Complications.” Explains Patrick Buchanan:

The American people want no new war…Our foreign policy elites are split half a dozen ways — on whether to bomb or not to bomb, on who our real enemies are in Syria and Iraq, on whose support we should and should not accept, on what our strategic goals are, and what are the prospects for success. Consider the bombing option. Undoubtedly, U.S. air power could blunt an attack on Baghdad. But air power cannot retake Mosul or the Sunni Triangle that Baghdad has lost, or Kirkuk or Kurdistan….And why should we fight to hold Iraq together? Is that a vital interest to which we should commit American lives in perpetuity?

When did it become so? No. Bombing cannot put Iraq together again, but it may tear Iraq further apart….Upon one thing Americans do agree: ISIS and al-Qaida are our enemies. But are bombing ISIS and killing Sunnis the way to destroy ISIS? Or does bombing martyrize and heroize ISIS for the Sunni young? ….In Iraq we are on the side of the Shia regime fighting ISIS. In Syria we are de facto allies of ISIS fighting to overthrow the Shia regime. …This new civil-sectarian-secessionist war in Syria and Iraq looks to last for years. How have we suffered by staying out of it?

American leadership statements typify what can go wrong when political imagination and policies are restricted to egoistic interests and exploitation of Iraq’s oil resources. There is no moral role model in a morally corrupt-moral political administration. Tyranny and transgression do not win the hearts and minds of people. President Obama and his European counterparts and some puppets in the Arab Middle East lack leadership and proactive vision and credibility to foster peace and normalcy in Iraq. It is time and opportunity for the global citizens and community to take initiatives to foment peacemaking, what was unthinkable could be thinkable for the best interests of the people of Iraq. Where individualistic absolutism failed, certainly new creative participatory peacemaking initiatives could pave the way for a rational outcome. All sectarian combatant divides do have some moral and spiritual values. There are precious human lives and living people on both sides of the conflicting time zones that are unable to see each other, be it the gulf of perpetuated ignorance, animosity or greed for power, they could find a meeting place without agreeing or disagreeing, just knowing and listening to understand the voices of Global Reasoning. Otherwise, imposed tyranny is fast dehumanizing the culture of the region. William Rivers Pitt (“They Belong in Prison, Not on TV” Information Clearing House: 6/21/2014), has the courage to extend a staunch warning to all the warmongers:

Let me put it plainly: these people do not belong on my television. They belong in prison, for the crimes of theft, torture and murder. They shattered the lives of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Iraqi civilians. They savaged the American economy paying for it all, and several of them got very rich in the process. They should be in orange jumpsuits and fetters, picking mealworms out of their gruel while shuttered in very small, very grim, very inescapable metal rooms.

I spent the first decade of the 21st century dealing with these blood-sodden bastards. Now, it appears, I will spend a chunk of a second decade watching them run around trying desperately to wash that blood from their hands...and the "news" media, also thoroughly culpable in this ongoing debacle, is all too happy to help them do it. That, too, should be a crime.

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(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012).