One of the prominent reasons for violence in postmodern era has been a clash of ideologies which are often violated by the adherents of the same idea often because of the incompleteness or hollowness in the understanding of the idea by the masses or the idea itself. If we try to understand the crisis in Syria through our lens of ideas chances are you would create a bias towards the other side. In my further attempt I am going to put forward the so-called ideas and how the ideas are voilated in to hypocrysy by the followers itself.
The tensions escalated in to the three year civil war when there were reports of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the form of chemical being used to kill large number of people. There were strong reactions from Western countries like the U.S.A, UK, Israel and most of the N.A.T.O member nations. While Russia, Iran and China kept mostly mum and were of the opinion of not interfering in to the sovereignty of Syria. The hypocrisy on both the sides is very eminent and one can often refer to history to break this cognitive dissonance caused by such a propaganda. If you objectively consider the claims made by President Obama backing for an intervention or the so-called systematic bombing it would be evident that he is only pursuing the polices of the previous administration called the Bush doctrine which called on preemptive attack on countries possessing reasonable threat to the American citizens. Though this is in clear violation of the United Nations security council it is illogical to consider Syria is in any way threat to the U.S and its people. It would be a suicidal idea for a dictator to even think of attempting an attack on the U.S who posses an armed force bigger than the next five nations financially as well as technologically. The second claim from the President is a claim based on morality. He claims the U.S has been the anchor of global security for past seven decades and therfore have to take a stand against crimes on humanity. lets dig deep in to that claim. When it comes to chemical warfare The U.S air force between the year 1961-1971 sprayed 20 million gallons of concentrated arsenic-based and dioxin-laden herbicides (Agent orange) on 6 million acres of crops and trees, besides using vast quantities of the "super tear gas" CS and a vast amount of napam and phosphorus bombs on south Vietnam. What has been more troubling is the recently unclassified documents is substantial evidence of the U.S secret services direct or indirect involvement in toppling democratically elected governments in Chile, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Iran, El Salvador and many more. The main accused have left paper trails which have lead to high officials from the President Nixon's, Carter, Regan and Bush 1 administrations. There have been claims and extradition request from the countries mentioned above who claim the U.S government of harboring perpetrator accused of inflicting crimes on humanities which the U.S.G continues to ignore. I think president Obama should focus on this type of American exceptionalism when it come to International laws thereby having a credible background to dictate the morality of the world.
As I said earlier most of the crisis in the middle east have a root of origin from the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Israeli settlement in the British Mandate Philistine is an illegal occupation by force which still persecutes the indigenous people. We all understand the horrors of Nazi persecution of the Jewish people which resulted in the gravest crimes against humanities in the 20th century. Any one who denies the Holocaust is indeed an illiterate in the subject of History and also lacks the empathy towards our collective understanding of human suffering. While there is no logical reason to determine as to why the land of Philistine was decided for the Jewish diaspora post World war 2 it all becomes clear when fundamental religious ideology is added to the whole picture. The major dissonance is if, the state of Israel is a democratic state governed by a secular constitution then why is the minority indigenous population being persecuted in such a way? and If not why does the U.S who claim to be a global anchor supporting democracy and freedom doesn't find this disturbing? the most ironic part is the political grouping of Israel who are the descendents of Holocaust victims being consciously ok with the bombing of Gaza with white phosphorus shells.
Perhaps the major crime against humanity has been greed and hatred which result in to violence. And there has been no other empire to have impacted the globe in such a way, the way British empire has through its might in force. We can find the central racist ideas of imperialism which was prominent in the literally works of the Victorian era like the "white man's burden" by Rudyard Kipling or "the heart of darkness" by Joseph Conrad where ideas of racial supremity was used as instruments in dehumanizing colonial subjects which in turn served useful to the propaganda of control and conquer. It is true that the losses incurred by the empire during the world war 2 ( which in turn resulted in to a loss of colonial property) resulted in to its lesser influence in to the power structure of the world. Though it has been a humble ally of the U.S in the war on terror. It has also been an ally in providing chemical weapons to the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq (1st gulf-war) in corporation of the U.S and West Germany. If that doesn't fill your appetite for hypocrisy there have also been recent allegations of British companies involved in supplying the poisonous gas to the Al-Assad regime.
No comments:
Post a Comment