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Point Abid
Ullah Jan
The Real Anti-Americans
Like
the present day Germans, who hate even to talk about Hitler and
his associates, the time is not far away when Americans will feel
embarrassed to discuss their present day most "patriotic"
Americans as their worst enemies, responsible for a disgraceful
fall of the most successful nation ever existed.
Americans with their simple hearts do not realize that those,
who make them look for anti-Americans among people of other faiths,
are the real anti-Americans. The Americans watch and read them
on daily basis. They defied because they are not Al-Qaeda members.
They do bomb American interests and can never be "suicide
bombers." Their words, ideas and influence, however, are
so powerful that they have mesmerized most of the nation and have
taken their fellows in policy-making circles to the unimaginable
extreme. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are forcing America to
use its might against itself.
There extremist tendency, wrapped in the cover of tolerance, is
leading these anti-Americans to present wrong side of the picture.
The most obvious and most recent example of this phenomenon of
digging a grave for the American nation is the New York Times,
May 14, 2003 issue. Its editorial, "Death in Riyadh"
regurgitates contrived reasons for "terrorist attack"
on the US as follows: 1. "lifestyles" which the American
have "back home"; 2. "means of maintaining cultural
preferences," such as "free mixing of the sexes and
the availability of alcohol and uncensored movies," 3. symbols
of "the modern Western culture," which "Islamic
fundamentalists despise"; and 4. "the population of
unemployed, angry, disenfranchised young people."
According to The New York Times "terrorist" want "intense
publicity." Ignoring the 24,000 lives - according to the
most conservative estimates - the US has taken in Afghanistan
and Iraq in the past eighteen months, the New York Times considers
that "terrorists" are making "a political point
by … murderous attack." And concludes the editorial
with a pro-Israel comment: "But it is the best current chance
for a way out, toward a future in which suicide attacks on innocent
civilians will be understood by Muslims around the world not as
a form of political protest, but as utter insanity."
In the same issue, Maureen Dowd's apparent attack on the establishment's
false assumptions in her column "Osama's Offspring,"
is actually encouraging a wrong solution by drawing wrong conclusion.
Bush Administration has not wrongly assumed that Al-Qaeda is finished.
It is a miscalculation. The wrong assumption is that it is only
Al-Qaeda vs. US. Quoting Dick Cheney - "the only way to deal
with this threat ultimately is to destroy it" - she concludes:
"So destroy it." (1)
Bush has also shown great interests in "newer, smaller nuclear
bombs" (2) to carryout the mission of completely annihilating
the enemy. In fact, the real anti-Americans are giving wrong reasons
for violent action against the US. Similarly, they are giving
wrong signals to the administration that destruction is the only
option it can exercise.
Wrong assumptions and solutions keep them entangled in their little
world. In turn, they have forced the administration to control
the world like a police state. As a result, "terrorism"
stays and they keep looking for the source of terror in wrong
places.
Terror actually lies in the hearts of the oppressors, not in the
shacks of the oppressed. Victims do not carry it out. It is both
a state of mind and tool of the oppressors who use it as a weapon
and justify their crimes against humanity under different pretexts.
Their hearts and minds, however, do not accept such justifications.
Punishment from nature follows them. They live in constant fear
of a reaction to their inhuman deeds. A blip of reaction generates
far more fear in their heart than their thunderbolts of aggression
and the resultant "shock and awe."
There is no way to completely protect perpetrators of systematic
aggression from retaliatory acts of the weak victims. Even one
person, determined to die for his nation's woes at the hands of
US and its Allies, can easily cause immense damage - whether that
be shooting a single American GI in Kabul or Baghdad, or bombing
marine barracks in any occupied land. Exercising brute military
force can never protect any nation from the consequences of its
crimes against humanity.
What is unfathomable to real anti-Americans, bent on destroying
the US as we know it, is the depth of pain and agony of direct
and indirect American oppression. The real anti-Americans are
those, who make the rest of Americans misunderstand the pain of
Muslim masses, which is directly proportional to the amount of
terror in the hearts of world mastering demi-gods sitting in Washington.
Their hearts are abode of terror long before the US suffers an
attack on its vital interests. The post-retaliatory-attacks-feeling
is only that of an unrepentant shock.
This pain would remain, no matter how the real anti-Americans
may try to hide it behind the rhetoric of false assumptions, such
as: this is wrath of the fundamentalists who want to overturn
the international modernisation, or who hate Western freedom and
democracy. The more they brush aside the real causes of pain in
Muslim societies, the more hegemonic designs would be implemented
by Washington and terror will swell in the hearts of their leadership.
Chances of retaliatory attacks by non-state actors would not diminish
and, in Washington's terminology, "potential threat of terrorism"
would prevail.
The real anti-Americans argue that the central point is not whether
point of view of the oppressed is true or false, right or wrong.
To them what is relevant is that these "allegations"
form a political basis for terrorist actions and subsequently
serve to justify it. It is natural that as long as genuine grievances
of masses would be considered as "allegations," some
of the non-state actors will continue to violently refuse to accept
an order that perpetrates inequalities and injustices.
Partly because the real anti-Americans have confused phenomenon
of "terrorism," and partly because there are no legal
ways to respond to the modern ways of American domination - a
kind of colonialism that is far more dangerous and abusive than
colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries has taken grip of almost
all Muslim countries. The victims often find themselves in breach
of "international law" when they attempt to break the
chains of domination. The check onslaught of the real anti-Americans,
the silent majority of simple hear American need to:
1. read between the lines of real anti-Americans, listen to perspective
of the oppressed and respond to the insane suggestion coming from
the sources called mainstream media;
2. convince American leadership to let other nations live a life
of their own choice; stop interference in the internal and external
affairs and stop sponsoring oppressive and puppet regimes, such
as Musharraf, Mubarak, Karzai, etc.,
3. instead of polarising Muslim societies by encouraging a "war
within Islam," help victim states to constructively engage
the non-state actors through dialogue - no solution is possible
without listening to all as equal human beings.
4. Understand and address "terrorist's" message notwithstanding
that one does not agree with it. This exercise is relevant for
the purpose of acknowledging the political dimension of "terrorist"
acts. This approach does not necessarily favour "terrorist."
By acknowledging "terrorist" messages and looking into
their grievances, real terrorists can be exposed and condemned
by a greater number of States.
5. Recognize that we cannot condemn and approve "terrorism"
of the same kind in two difference places. Occupations by Israel
and US need as much condemnation, if not physical punishment,
as occupation of Kuwait by Iraq. Similarly, forces fighting US
occupation in 21st century need to be looked at in the perspective
of full support extended to forces engaged against Soviet occupation
in the 20th century.
Unless silent majority of the Americans is willing to see problems
of the suffering humanity in the fully or semi-occupied Muslim
states through their own eyes, or view their own behavior through
the eyes of their critics, even if the critics are also "terrorists,"
they may never gain the understanding needed to address the fear
generated by real anti-Americans in the heart of their leadership
and the steady erosion of claims to civilized life that the continued
injustice by their governments is causing.
End
Notes:
Dowd,
Maureen: "Al-Qaeda's offspring," New York Times, May
14, 2003.
2 Richter, Paul: "Bush Is Seeking Newer, Smaller Nuclear
Bombs," Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2003
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