Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD

A "war of religion" is unfolding, with a view to justifying a global military crusade. In the inner consciousness of many Americans, the "holy crusade" against Muslims is justified. While President Obama may uphold freedom of religion, the US inquisitorial social order has institutionalized patterns of discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia directed against Muslims.' - (Michel Chossudovsky, 'America's Holy Crusade against the Muslim World', Global Research, 8/30/2010).

Does the US war strategy require other nations to follow the American policy lead of war against all - the terrorism of war instigated by the Clash of Civilizations theory? Stephen Lendman ('America's Permanent War Agenda' 3/01/2010), an American political intellectual and a man of universal conscience puts the history in one nutshell:

"America glorifies wars in the name of peace, what historian Charles Beard (1874 - 1948) called "perpetual war for perpetual peace" in describing the Roosevelt and Truman administrations' foreign policies - what concerned the Federation of American Scientists when it catalogued about 200 post-1945 conflicts in which America was, and still is, the aggressor"

Many contemporary politicians having small wisdom coupled with big common sense information could lead or mislead the masses. People are always the end recipient of the political dramas and onslaughts. Samuel Huntington ('The Clash of Civilizations' 1993, and subsequently, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1995), argued many things to many minds. It was a time fraught with political tragedies and unthinkable changes after the demise of the former USSR from the global theater of ideological confrontations. It happened out of the nowhere sending shock waves to the Western political mythologists and self-made experts who would become irrelevant in their mastery of pretensions to pursue the ideological warfare between the USSR and USA.

Islam and China were at the epic center of the Huntington's theory of the Clash of Civilizations. To many Western mythologists, it was a blessing in disguise to substantiate the continuity of their expertise with changed notions of militancy against Muslims and Islam as the next bloc of forces maintaining the 'bloody borders.' Americana and European policy makers denied its existence but used its mythology and substantial framework to wage a new war according to George Bush 'crusade' against Islam. Huntington's thoughts and warning were critical to the foreign policy makers operating under the influence of Western strategic priorities. There were visible political scenarios of clash of civilizations between the West and China-Islam axis, but the War on Terrorism served the purpose of all cherished policy objectives lasting more than a decade. The Western economies desperately needed new markets to dump their obsolete military hardware and know-how for expansion of businesses. But critical of all were the abundance of natural resources available across the Middle East to grab for future political hegemony and military control over these nations. Divided as they were, the Arab tribal clan-based rulers and other people of interest in the Muslim world made subservient to the American- West European political interests, were readily available to bring a Western dream of power and manipulation into reality.

From centuries of European colonization to the so called freedom time span after the WW2, Arabs and other Muslim societies had neither educated and intelligent leadership nor institutions to analyze the global affairs objectively and to develop a policy of mutual interests and strategic equilibrium in relations with the former Masters of the Western world. They were naive and coward then, and they are proven dummy and stupid to this day. They willingly followed the George Bush dictum of military threats unless they should fully submit to the American doctrine of War on Terror. The US bogus War on Terror used the false pretext of the 9/11 attacks to pursue its pre-planned wars against the Muslim world.

Michael Meacher ('This War on Terrorism is Bogus.' Guardian, UK: 9/6/2003), British MP and Environment Minister in PM Tony Blair cabinet from May 1997 to June 2003 explain that the 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) written by the neo-conservatives in September 2000 before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis.

John J. Mearsheimer ('Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq war: realism versus neo-conservatism: Open Democracy: 5/18/2005), Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001) ponders into reasoning of the neo-conservatives belief that the US must show its power to manipulate the world:

Neo-conservative theory 'the Bush doctrine' is essentially Wilsonianism with teeth. The theory has an idealist strand and a power strand: Wilsonianism provides the idealism, an emphasis on military power provides the teeth……The key to understanding why the neo-conservatives think that military force is such a remarkably effective instrument for running the world is that they believe that international politics operate according to 'bandwagoning' logic. Specifically, they believe that if a powerful country like the United States is willing to threaten or attack its adversaries, then virtually all of the states in the system ' friends and foes alike ' will quickly understand that the United States means business and that if they cross mighty Uncle Sam, they will pay a severe price. In essence, the rest of the world will fear the United States, which will cause any state that is even thinking about challenging Washington to throw up its hands and jump on the American bandwagon.

The War on Terror had wide range of unspecified agendas for long time to come:

• to occupy the Arab heartland and to offer extended strategic and political supremacy to Israel in the Middle East,
• to control and manage the oil and gas resources of the Arab Middle East,
• to inject fear and powerful hegemonic influence of the Western culture and varied civilizations,
• to divide and rule the Arab and Muslims people from distance powerhouses,
• to create new markets for the dollar and to block trade-business entry of China into the exclusive American Middle East market,
• to entice ignorant Arab population with false imagery of freedom, liberty and social justice and make the mindless rulers fearful of the US-Europe influence in their future-making,
• to distract attention from the decadent Western cultures and civilizations as Huntington warned them of its crumbling and immediate implication for the future,
• To dismantle the socio-economic and political infrastructures of the Arab-Muslim world, encouraging internal strife and sectarian bloodsheds and making them subservient to the US-European military and economic subjugation.
• And so many other short-long terms implications

Across the Western world, the mainstream news media propaganda campaigns made common folks fearful after the 9/11 attacks in believing that the Clash of Civilizations hypothesis was true and credible. The Arabs and Muslims authoritarian rulers elsewhere had no capacity or leadership to challenge the American political and military hegemony. The Arab and Muslim world was naïve and perplexed unable to THINK rationally or to challenge the West either in moral and intellectual domains and to question the relevance of the War on Terror. Even some of the leading Islamic thinkers failed miserably to understand the consequences of the bogus war on terrorism and to oppose the American policy and practices to attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. To date, the American led wars have killed approximately three millions people in Iraq, close to million in Afghanistan and million more displaced and made refugees in foreign lands, and some 40,000 to 50,000 civilians across Pakistan and continuing drone attacks bring horrifying details of daily killings of innocent children and women in Waziristan tribal belt of Pakistan. Should this deliberate genocide not be the major concern to the mankind?

Michael Meacher ('This War on Terrorism is Bogus.' Guardian, UK: 9/6/2003), British MP and Environment Minister in PM Tony Blair points out the planning of the war strategies and how it will encircle the other Muslim countries:

Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001). The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

Huntington warned of the coming of new age of disharmony is dawning and that the West lacked an 'ennobling animosity'- from an economic perspective, the 'golden age' of low birth rates and aging population as reasoning contributing to Western moral and cultural decadence. But the match-maker political opportunists have come up with many answers to Huntington's concerns and curiosities. Now, there are increasing trend of degeneration - more gay rights claims and marriages are making headways - gay priests and gay politicians - gay parades, women are replacing the work of men from sexual enlightenment to unknown domains of leisure and enjoyment. Secretary Panelta announced that America will strike a balancing act and recruit more women to enhance opportunities in front line military combat operations. But nobody seems to question that by nature women are not made aggressive or to stir animalistic killing skills, their feminism is more an embodiment of love, attractive nature of things and beauty to bless the physical, moral, spiritual and intellectual fabric of human life. Why should they be manipulated against their very Nature? Are women a commodity at the strategic market place to be defined by economic men of interests or military rules of engagement? Nobody talks what able men will do in their spare times and moments of self-reflection if there are no longer attracted to beautiful women. John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman) tells us first hand that Arab Prince love to have the companionship of blond American women. Would America consider this romantic strategy to built-in with its military sale package to the oil exporting Arab rulers? Ironically, none of the leading political thinkers appear to talk now if the Western culture is progressive or more decadent? Huntington must be speechless and wondering what to say next.

The global political affairs are not managed by rational people, with rational thinking, doing the rational practices for the interests of global citizenry. The 1% global elite ' men of king operate the international institutions - the perverted insanity lacking basic understanding of the Human Nature and of the working of the splendid Universe in which we enjoy coherent co-existence. The mankind continues to be run down by the cancerous ego and cruelty of the few Western warlords. Killing unjustifiably one innocent human being is like killing of the whole of the humanity. The global warlords represent cruel mindset incapable to see the human side of the living conscience. Madness of the perpetuated war on terrorism and its triggered insanity knows no bound across the global spectrum. Animals do not commit massacre of their kind and species, nor set-up rape camps for the war victims, the Western led wars against the humanity have and continue to do so at an unparallel global scale without being challenged by any global organizations or leaders. Torture and massacres of innocent civilians are convenient fun games to be defined as 'collateral damage' and a statistic. Perhaps, they view humanity just in digits and numbers, not as the living entities with social, moral, spiritual and intellectual values and progressive agendas for change and development. Every beginning has its end. It is just that most powerful nations have failed to learn from the living history- a slap to EH Carr's precious thoughts of human history. Einstein ('The World as I see it') made it known that he was against military campaigns, killings and destruction of the natural environment: "This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!.'

According to British MP and Minister Michael Meacher ('This War on Terrorism is Bogus.' Guardian, UK: 9/6/2003):

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.

Muslims were not born in the eye of the storm to threaten anybody. They are not the societies breeding terrorism against the West or anybody else. All Arab-Muslim rulers are subservient to the Western political-military dictates. Those individuals who were alleged to have attacked America for the 9/11 were the by-products of American warfare sponsorship and CIA indoctrination. Terrorism originates from the Western imperialism and military aggressions against the poor and helpless people. Time and encompassing opportunities warrant New Thinking, New Leaders and New Visions for change and the future-making. But change and creativity and new visions will not emerge from the obsolete, redundant and failed authoritarianism of the few insane leaders, be it the Western leaders or Muslim rulers.. None have the understanding of neither peace nor respect for human life and co-existence in a splendid Universe. To challenge the deafening silence of the US and Europeans for global peace and security, the humanity must find ways and means to look beyond the obvious and troublesome horizons dominated by the few warlords and continued to be plagued with massacres, barbarity against human culture and civilizations, destruction of the habitats and natural environment as if there were no rational being and people of Reason populating the God-given Universe. The informed and mature global community looks towards those thinkers, educated and honest proactive leaders enriched with coherent unity of moral, spiritual and intellectual visions and abilities to be instrumental to rescue it from the planned encroachment of the few Western warlords.

American historian Harry Elmer Barnes ("Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and It's Aftermath') offered this stern warning to American politicians if the US led wars continue leading to man's annihilation from this planet:

"If trends continue as they have during the last fifteen years, we shall soon reach this point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace. Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J. Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on 'the cultural traditions' of mankind."

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