By Dr. Elias Akleh

The whole US was shocked when armed with automatic assault weapons 20 years old Adam Lanza murdered 20 first grade students in Newtown, Connecticut, yet very few, if any, Americans get shocked when their presidents murder thousands of similar children of other nations but call them heroes and defenders of freedom and democracy.

I was not chocked but heart broken when I heard of Lanza’s crime. Such crime is more common in the American culture than one would think of. Following the daily news one can find many reports of murder in every American state. They range from family violence against wives and children, gangs drive-by shooting, and school/university mass murder among others.

Such mass murder, especially in schools and universities, has become an increasingly common trend in the US. Newtown massacre is considered the nation’s second-worst school shooting. Few months earlier in April 2012 seven students were murdered in Oikos University in Oakland, California. In 2007 33 students were murdered at Virginian Tech University at Blacksburg, Virginia. In October 2006 6 students were murdered and 5 injured at West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In March 2005 8 students were murdered in Red Lake Senior High School in Red Lake, Minnesota. In April 1999, 15 students were murdered in Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado. In March 1998, 5 students were murdered at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. In August 1966, 16 students were murdered and 31 injured at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas. These are just examples of school/university mass murder among a long list, not mentioning the many other mass murders that took place in movie theaters, shopping malls, and other common places.

These crimes are reflections of the brutality of the American culture that had started with the discovery of the American continent with the mass genocides of the hundreds of millions of the Native American Indians and continues until our present day. The US is a war mongering culture that has been involved in continuous wars and genocides along its entire history. The American military budget exceeds all military budgets of all other countries combined. For 2013 alone the American administration had allotted a total of $560 Billions for the military. American presidents are war presidents as President George Bush, the son, kept on boasting: “I am a war president.”

After the Newtown massacre Americans; news media and politicians, focused on wrong solutions to this social sick phenomenon. Some called for weapons ban laws while others called for more arms for the people to defend themselves against such deranged criminals. Laws for arms control have been in place for a long time but could not stop violence. Many politicians, including governors and senators joined the National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO and president Wayne LaPierre’s insane call for arming school teachers and posting armed guards in every school and maybe every movie theater and shopping malls, stating that: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

They all ignored the fact that this is solely an American cultural sickness. Many other countries have mentally sick people and weapons in the hands of their citizens. Yet none of them have school mass murder like the US. Americans are inflicted with a superiority complex. Like Zionist Israelis Americans believe they are better than the rest of the world, that they alone are better fit to lead this world, that they have the right to control natural resources of other countries, and that their ways are the ideals that should be spread all over the world even through brutal military intervention if needs be. America was founded on militaristic brutality. Its economy is built on military industry. A violent culture is needed to drive this military industry and to wage brutal wars against other cultures.

Violence is a learned behavior. Superiority, ethnicity, discrimination, segregation, division, and hatred of other groups are indoctrinated into the psyche of the new generations through indirect means of education, advertising and media. American history is so distorted and elitist. Social values are materialistic, egotistic, and militaristic. Violence, sadism and brutality are glorified in the movies and video games industries. American movies and TV shows have moved from innocent entertainment to violent criminality; murder, war, and sadistic stories. Violence, torture, murder and blood scenes are common and glorified in most of the movies. Gruesome violence, torture and murder in American movies, such as the eight academy awards winning movie “Inglourious Basterds”, are depicted as acceptable and glorified behaviors. Even cartoons and children movies contain violent scenes. The actors of such violent movies are glorified, honored and rewarded in order to become a role model for the very impressionable young generations. Almost all video games are in one way or another violent and militaristic. They give the players the impressions that killing others are fun and are safe without any negative consequences. Hollywood movies and TV shows have become effective brainwashing methods to teach impressionable young Americans that violence, drugs, and sexual deviations are acceptable and exciting behaviors.

In their response to the Newtown massacre the whole American media outlets, and President Obama himself, had expressed their shock and heart-broken feelings for those “beautiful little kids. They had their entire lives ahead of them..” as expressed by Obama, while pretending to wipe a shadow tear in the corner of his eye. The media is so hypocrite because they had never sympathized with the beautiful little kids of other countries murdered by American soldiers. Obama does not care about any child except, maybe, his own. He, like previous American presidents, had authorized the military to bomb the children of other countries while studying in their own schools, playing in their own backyards, or while asleep in the arms of their mothers.

Throughout American history, American presidents had murdered hundreds of thousands of children all over the world; in South American Latin countries, in Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East, and in Africa. The list of these murdered children is so long that we can not mention it here. Looking at the previous two decades only we can remember the 500 thousand Iraqi children who died due to the 1991 American imposed sanctions against Iraq, whom Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, considered their death a price worth to pay. In 2003 unjustified American invasion of Iraq hundreds of thousands of undocumented Iraqi children were killed and maimed by American bombs and soldiers. Once of the gruesome mass murder was the 2004 attack on Fallujah where American soldiers used phosphorus, napalm and depleted uranium bombs to wipe off the town and to incinerate in the event thousands of citizens including children and women. The murder is still going on to this day where daily American sponsored terrorist explosions murder many Iraqi citizens.

For the last 11 years the American forces had invaded and occupied Afghanistan and have been murdering Afghani children. This murder was expanded to hit Pakistani children in the border town. In the American AfPak theatre the President authorized targeted drone strikes that had killed hundreds of innocent children. The use of drone strikes has also been conducted in other countries such as Yemen and Sudan, each incident is considered an act of war under the international law.

In proxy wars the American administrations had armed and supported all Israeli wars against its Arab neighbors. The US had supported Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon that destroyed much of that country and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese children. This invited the retaliation of Lebanese freedom fighters, who bombed the American embassy in 1983 killing 63 Americans. The US had also supported Israel’s 2006 bombing of South Lebanon providing Israel with heavy bombs and cluster bombs that killed hundreds of Lebanese children.

The US had also supplied Israel with the phosphorus bombs that were used against Palestinians of Gaza Strip during the 2008/2009 Israeli aggression, murdering hundreds of children while in their sleep, and incinerating civilians sheltered in schools. The US one more time supported Israel’s 2012 attack on Gaza Strip when hundreds of civilians including at least 18 children were killed.

The American open proxy war against Syria supporting and arming terrorist militia groups is causing the death of thousands of Syrian children.

I wonder what is the difference between the deranged Adam Lanza, who murdered 20 children out of mental sickness, and any sane American president, like President Obama, who authors the murder of hundreds of thousands of children in other countries with conscious determination and pre-meditations out of power hunger and greed for the natural resources of their countries! Such a president is called a hero, a war president, defender of liberty and freedom, and a democracy advocate, while Adam is called deranged, mad, inhuman, crazy and mentally sick. The president gets a noble peace prize while the mentally sick gets a bullet in the head. Such presidents are actually blood thirsty savages worse than a mentally sick murderer.

President Obama stated “If there is even one step we can take to save another child … then surely we have an obligation to try.” President Obama, try the following! Rather than wasting billions of dollars on weapons to murder children of other nations and to destroy their countries inciting global hatred and terrorism against America, spend this money wisely on health and education for your own people, in helping developing nations build their economy and their educational systems in order to gain their trust, their love, and access to their natural resources through fair trade rather than through war and murder of their children.

Isn’t time for the US to become the leader in humanity than the leader in brutality? Isn’t time to evolve into real humans?

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By Dr. Elias Akleh