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Shameful how often we resort to violence to solve conflicts
Home News Tribune Online 11/5/06
HASSAN
MAHMOUD
Be Counted
Two estimated identical numbers of 650,000 are a disturbing
coincidence. One represents those Iraqis killed due to our unjustified
invasion of their country (besides the loss of lives of more than 2,800
of our soldiers). The other represents the displaced Lebanese population
who cannot return to their homes after the Israeli invasion and Israel's
littering South Lebanon with 1 million unexploded bomblets, which are
stuck in the branches of trees and on rooftops, mixed in with rubble and
spread in fields, roads and schoolyards, and so far have killed and
maimed many people, mostly children.
Israel also used Geneva Convention-banned phosphorous bombs with more
devastating effect. This mayhem was inflicted on Arab and Muslim peoples
whose minds and hearts along with those of their fellow Muslims, a
population of 1.2 billion, we are trying to win over in order to isolate
and expunge the extremists among them who might harm us and damage our
interests. The Iraqi fatality number was produced by researchers from
the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in the
British Medical Journal "The Lancet." The Lebanese victims number was an
official estimate by the United Nations. Regardless of skepticism by
some of these figures, the damage is already done by the widespread
publication, which feeds the perception of the world that America and
Israel inflicted carnage and atrocities on innocent peoples who never
attacked either.
When we abhor Saddam Hussein's criminal gassing of the Kurds we
should remember that he borrowed a page from Winston Churchill's book
when, as a British war minister, he ordered the gassing of the same
Kurds when they rebelled against the British rule in 1921.
The extremist evangelicals and the neoconservative war mongers
dismiss this destruction of innocent lives as the result of the
so-called clash of civilizations and that the opposite side is bent on
destroying our values. This false argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Let's just examine the 20th century wars' history. The two world wars
killed 100 million people and were a clash within one civilization; our
own western civilization. Our presumed civilized leaders didn't try to
avoid those wars. They were competing among themselves to grab as much
land and resources in Europe and in the foreign colonies.
One flagrant example of their hypocrisy was the start of World War
II. England and France declared that they would go to war against
Germany to protect Czechoslovakia and Poland from falling under the
tyranny of the Nazis. They, deceptively, dragged us into that
destructive war, exploiting our affinity for freedom and democracy.
So, what were the results of that Holocaust? The victorious Allies
signed the Yalta agreement, which put both Czechoslovakia and Poland,
along with the entirety of Eastern Europe, under Josef Stalin's yoke
(instead of Hitler's), which Churchill later lamented with crocodile
tears. He and the French were happy that we helped them preserve their
empires, which subjugated their inhabitants and caused massacres of
millions in Algeria, Indochina, India and Kenya.
That treaty also emboldened the Soviets, precipitated the Cold War,
which in turn led to the Korean and the Vietnam wars and the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan — the kernel of the creation of the Taliban and
al-Qaida and the present misbegotten quagmire in Iraq. It was a domino
effect of the West's own making, different from the one perceived by the
old Cold War strategists.
It is puzzling that, with the tremendous advancement of our
civilization, we haven't been able to find a formula to solve conflicts
without resorting to wars and violence. Some people believe that our
morals are inspired by the teachings of the Bible. But the war lovers
rely on the verses of the Bible that suit their purposes.
They take their inspiration from the book of Samuel: "Thus saith the
Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid
wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt, now go and smite
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but
slay both man and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and
ass." That's actually what happens in the modern wars, when bombs are
dropped from the sky indiscriminately, killing everybody. Sadly, they
ignore the noblest text in Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."
"Be Counted" columnist Hassan Mahmoud is a resident of Westfield. "Be
Counted" columnists are members of the public. Their opinions do not
represent those of the Home News Tribune.
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