From One Mess to Another [Archives:2005/869/Opinion]

As this world gets smaller day by day and the natural resources become scarcer, while the demand for them grows, one would expect that the nations of the world would take serious note of this. In doing so, the most important consideration that should be on the minds of world leaders is that all efforts should be made to avoid hostility and belligerency, that would especially lead to armed conflict between nations. Prior to the entry of the Third Millennium, the international community saw many significant developments that reflected a genuine effort to enhance international cohesion. Many international summits in the 1990s were held to seek to set out the priorities of the international community collectively and on a domestic basis for the individual states. There were hopes that indeed the international community was seriously seeking to create the common grounds that would be needed to overcome the many problems that have accumulated over the decades that spanned the Cold War Era. Many of the social problems that could become explosive and a threat to world peace were at least brought out in these summits and conferences, some of which set goals with deadlines for addressing them.

We have gone now five years into the Millennium, and regrettably the momentum created by the Nineties seemed to have been halted and the dim hopes of billions of people throughout the world were taken out of the limelight. The entry of the Third Millennium brought with it a sharp reversal of many of the trends that had ignited those hopes. A stark aura of evil had somehow managed to push those dim hopes aside, as new priorities were forced upon the international community like a tornado. The War on Terror took the international stage as the only concern that the international community needs to focus on. All the other concerns were almost shelved or were left to the individual state to deal with. They were left without any effective monitoring and follow-up and of course with little access to the resources that are needed to achieve success in overcoming the awesome problems that had at least been given due recognition a decade ago. Yes, terrorism is a serious issue and there is no justification that innocent human beings anywhere in this planet should become vulnerable to deadly attacks by sadistic mobs, whose members were nurtured in an ugly culture of death and blood and a total disregard for the sanctity of life. However should the world be diverted from the other serious determinants of world peace and stability and solely direct all its attention on what is perhaps probably a rudiment of the other awesome and more widespread social shortcomings that exist in the world? This will neither win the War on Terror, nor give an assurance that the international community is truly serious about the welfare of all the people of the world that are the losers in all the other battles that need to be fought. Furthermore, to deal with the problem of terror from purely a military and security perspective and have international relations become governed by such an outlook, as has been proven so far over the past four years, is not an effective comprehensive approach. There are serious problems in the world, while not as dramatic and sensational, but some of these problems have their own casualties, which go into the thousands and even millions per year. On the other hand, the world is threatened by a serious catastrophe emanating from the degeneration of the environment by man-made pollutants. There are many cities of the world that are subject to serious “pollution storms”, when winds send polluted air in large volumes to certain population centers and render it almost impossible for humans to function properly, while some may suffer illness and possibly death. Serious climactic disorientations are also being realized as the protective layer of ozone in the atmosphere is being gradually eaten away by toxic gases and burned out fuel derivatives. The devastating effects of a fragile ozone layer should never be ignored, because they will not recognize national boundaries, military or economic power, nor does the War on Terror have any bearing on where those effects will likely hit the hardest.

So what shall it be for the world, a misguided international agenda dictated by military and economic might and overseen by proponents of narrow interests that have so far shown no display of care for the welfare of mankind as a whole, as they churn their output for a war machine that has lost the course it was intended for. The result is that more seeds were planted and more fertile grounds were availed for terrorism to unleash its unquenchable thirst for blood. The ugly daily scenes in Iraq are a clear testimony of this reverse direction of the War on Terror, while the London attacks raise important questions as to the origins of terrorism and who really stands to gain from its stay as a sustainable organized enterprise? With this obvious failure to show the real worthiness of this yearning for constant confrontation, comes the insistence that belligerency shall remain the aura that humanity must contend with for some time to come. The right wing neo-con establishment in the United States and their partners in the international Zionist establishment are of the belief that the power they wield entitles them to pursue their preconceived agenda of achieving full control of the world energy sources of fossil fuels. These are not conspiracy theories out of the blues, but are discernible perceptions of the present as fostered by the documents and papers of seminars, conferences and meetings held by elements of the partners in this alliance, jointly or separately over the last three decades. For five years, the United States has increased its military presence in the region where the most abundance of these sources of energy in the world exist. This is not necessarily a coincidental requirement for the War on Terror.

If the belligerency leading to the invasion of Iraq has now proven to be an irresponsible deliberate attempt to mislead the world on a course of undefined objectives, the Alliance continues to insist that the world must concur as well with its bibulous desire to have Iran turned into another messy Iraq, notwithstanding the fact that Iran has been on the whole recognized as member in good standing of the international community. But with Iran, the accommodating forces that were at play in Iraq are not there and the gamble brings with it unpredictable but nevertheless horrific consequences for the bellicose belligerents, the Iranians and the international community. Isn't the world in enough of a mess already?
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