Global Peace and Security: World Leaders Betray the Canons of Truth, Wisdom and Humanity
Mahboob Khawaja, PhD.
Crisis demands change. Given the scale and breadth of the crises we face, the changes necessary are fundamental, for this much catastrophe rushing towards one point cannot be from a plethora of sources. Rather, a basic wrong choice magnified across time has brought us to that point. Some will argue that it is capitalism, others that humans are innately bad. I suspect that neither of those are the source. Rather, I suspect that the core lies in the splitting of humans from the natural world. Phrased differently, the belief that humans are separate from the rest of the Earth and her denizens. This disjunction conceptually placed humans above all other life on the planet, and above the Earth herself. This created the logical opportunity that other humans might be designated than less than human. Across virtually all human groups women were (and are) designated as less human than men, and various distinctions of race, culture, caste, and class, orders that some humans are worth more than others, which certainly leads to exploitation and atrocity.
Yes, capitalism is a huge problem; however, the role that it seems to play in the broader scheme of things is to provide a mechanism of control and ownership, magnifying and accelerating our subjugation of each other and the world that is our only home.
These are my opinions and not Dr. Khawaja’s, though I think that in spirit we are asking the same questions and attempting to change the same systems towards harmony and health.
Mahboob Khawaja, PhD.
Today’s Political World at a Glance
Global politics is overwhelmingly becoming robotic when question of safeguard of the mankind comes up. Global political leaders are fast becoming actors on stage – issuing abstract statements of outrage and phony sense of grief when thousands and millions of human lives are constantly bombarded by the weapons they manufacture and sell to crush the human soul and to support the war economies. The UNO and its Secretary General and the UN Security Council – all are just debating clubs engaged in time killing exercises to deceive the mankind and to betray the ideals of the Charter to “safeguard the humanity from the scourge of wars.” Many top UN officials are paid employees with no sense of accountability to the global community. The reality of man-made catastrophic conflicts enhanced by national interests and war-led economies are ingrained in the war racketeering plans across the globe. The 21st century knowledge-based informed mankind is the net victim of the global political monsters. Millions of human beings are forcibly displaced, evicted by plans and charcoaled by forbidden chemical weapons across the Middle East yet; most global leaders do nothing to prevent the aggressive catastrophes except statements of fake ‘outrage’ reaction as if others were inhuman casualties. We are witnessing abnormal political culture of human bloodbath as being normal.
The global community – a divided and dispersed mankind is unable to challenge the war racketeers and global hangmen who claim to be political leaders. They are egoistic professionals with big mouth without wisdom and full of self-engineered false democratic clichés, contradictions, distortions and misrepresentation of the rights of common citizens in modern democracies. These are frightening trends for the present and future generations to survive. Most of the economically influential actors occupy the political platforms – either through backdoor conspiracies or entrenched political intrigues. They profess to be intelligent and outspoken for the rights of the people but in reality are offensive to truth and listening to voices of reason and honesty. How do we call for a balancing act in a world terribly imbalanced by nationalism, political and economic ideologies of supremacy and shallow imaginations and practices of human equality, human rights, peace and harmony amongst all the diverse segments of the living humanity?
We cannot abandon the search for a better and more rational world of systematic mechanism to protect the peace and security of the mankind on this One Planet. We, the People, We the Humanity and conscientious thinkers and scholars must wake-up to the immense sophisticated and technologically advanced challenges to disconnect us from the Nature of Things and to dehumanize us by global scenarios of ethnicities, nationalism, state borders and cultural superiorities and ruling class distinctions. William Godwin (Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Modern Moral and Happiness, 1793), said it right:
Men of genius must rise up….to analyse the machine of society to demonstrate how the parts are connected together… and point out the defects and remedy. It is thus only that important reforms can be produced…He who is a friend to general happiness will neglect no chance of producing in his pupil or his child, one of the long-looked for saviours of the human race.
Do We the People Realize We Are One Humanity on One Earth?
We are One Humanity on One Planet and we have a right to be here in peace and harmony, not in endless conflicts. We are not collaborators to kill mankind, destroy human environments and natural habitats. We will live contrary to our nature if we cannot embrace peaceful co-existence, identity and responsibility for being the chief guardians of a living planet in a living Universe. We, humanity, lives on a balanced Planet – Earth, located at a measured distance from the Sun and Moon and other stars. God created the Universe and blessed it with all the necessary functions and provisions for sustaining life. Do you realize if there was no water, no oxygen or hydrogen and other gases, or sun light to support all living creations – life on Earth would never have existed?
Could humankind count the blessings of God for maintaining life for millions and billions of years on this planet? All things exist in a mathematical order, whether we recognize it or deny it. So strange, we know all about other material things and scientific – technological developments, but we are ignorant and arrogant regarding our own origin and existence on this living planet. We are born from mother’s tummy – one and the same all over the globe – One Humanity. Yet, we dare to challenge each other with nationalism and ethnic superiorities, and indulge in wars and deaths and destruction of our own beings. Are human beings intelligent enough to embrace our own existence and Purpose of Life? How can we imagine peace and harmony amongst ourselves when we bomb and destroy each other with weapons of mass destruction as if we do not share humanity, but rather creatures without any ability of rational thought?
We, the People of Conscience, can only save ourselves and our world if we are united together with reason and accountability to correct the political fallacies that divide us. We must awaken the minds and souls of 21st century humanity if there is an hope of synthesizing the vitality of peace and human security; awaken the world to the opportunities for political justice, equal rights and participation; to be part of the change phenomenon for a better and more promising world of tomorrow before that possibility escapes us. The voices of reason will echo across the globe if we are committed and united for this idea and human ideals. I strongly believe that knowledge-based wisdom, plans and actions will lead to benevolence and global harmony, peace and justice, and will nullify the malignity and political tyranny from a 21st century mired in competition and greed. When We the People articulate cooperation and understanding in societal diversity, it will replace the impulse and urge for competition and unjust indulgence that leads to the destruction of fellow human beings.
Political Propaganda: War is “Noble” but Truth and Peace are Offensive
Strangely enough, warmongers hire war propagandists to sell wars as “noble”, “good”, a necessity of the ruling nobility in order to protect the flag, borders and national interests. George Bush claimed being “Man of God” who started the day with the Bible, yet orchestrated the bogus war on terrorism. These are cynical strategies employed to enforce the monstrous viewpoints of the few warlords in every age. Professor Camillo “Mac” Bica, School of Visual Arts, New York City and an activist for Peace and Justice (“Atrocity and War”, Truthout), offers a penetrating insight on the inequality criterion and falsification of information and facts of human life (emphases mine):
Having been indoctrinated by the propaganda of those whose militarism and warist agenda requires acceptance of the mythology of the “good war” and the “noble warrior,” the uninitiated and unaffected most civilians and many non warrior members of the military fail to realize this truth, that all war is barbarism in which cruelty and brutal atrocity is the norm rather than the exception.
During World War II, for example, often cited and celebrated as the “good war,” over 50 million civilians were murdered by both Axis and Allied Nations. The American servicemen in the Wikileaks video who so nonchalantly “engaged the target” slaughtering some 12 human beings are no different from the pilots and bombardiers from the “greatest generation” who with equal nonchalance, incinerated millions of civilians during the terror bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc.
Despite the moral depravity of their actions, these individuals were not born killers. Rather they were created to do our bidding, first conscripted or lured into the military with promises of employment, a college education, or U.S. citizenship, then subjected to sophisticated indoctrination techniques of value manipulation, moral desensitization, and psychological conditioning, aimed at destroying/overriding their humanity, their moral aversion to killing, reinforced by the violence and horrors of the battlefield environment.
Blame Games of Distortion and Prejudice Against an Informed Humanity
To be united in global political diversity, We the People must exercise forbearance, canons of rationality and strive for and integrated unity of humanity – the core of human understanding and harmony. Leaders who want to lead must have rational thinking and followers to claim effective leadership. Most contemporary leaders are devoid of REASON as the focal point of policy formulation and decision-making in global human relationships. Often they use blame games and popularity numbers to score fictitious rating in the eyes of the public. Most leaders are infected with this syndrome and sick with egotism, risking us all to remain influential and powerful.
To protect mankind from further dehumanization and annihilation, people with of new ideas are needed to take the initiative for political change – indeed a navigational change is imperative at this critical moment. We need a new UNO with people’s leadership, new global political systems planned and developed by knowledgeable people with integrity who reject Hobbesian “wars of all against all”. We must produce a rational rebuttal to the insanity of war, torture, political tyranny, inept global leadership. We must and offer a new balanced vision of a world enriched with learning, knowledge of rational policy-making and decision-making, human equality, fairness, protection of life and its natural support systems, and equal justice for all the living beings on this planet. The leaders have not learned from the deaths and destruction of two World Wars. The Third World War is already in progress in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and will soon to engulf many self-made tribal Arab kings, princes and authoritarian dictators.
Surely, We the People could create a better and more sustainable world of today and tomorrow. A natural sense of piety and political wickedness cannot co-exist in one human character as most of the world leaders pretend to be. We must THINK and ACT outside the global box of political wickedness and cult of political allegiance controlled by the few and sick political minds of egoistic leadership. Time and history are not going to wait forever us to accept this challenge and grasp the opportunity to make things happen for the best of all mankind. The Divine Revelation (Al-Qur’an) states clearly: “Intelligent people always readily accept advice.”
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.”
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: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012. His forthcoming book is entitled: One Humanity and The Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution
mahboob . <mkoneworld@gmail.com>