Global War On Terrorism Is Killing Mankind: Why Soldiers Commit Suicide?
By Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja
Countercurrents.org
We should be saddened but not shocked when we see the broken men and women return from battles overseas. We should be angry with those who send them to suffer and die in unnecessary wars. We should be angry with those who send them to kill so many people overseas for no purpose whatsoever. We should be afraid of the consequences of such a foolish and dangerous foreign policy. We should demand an end to the abuse of military members and a return to a foreign policy that promotes peace and prosperity instead of war and poverty.
(Congressman Ron Paul comments when Daniel Somers wrote the last letter: “The Death of Daniel Somers.” Information Clearing House, 6/24/ 2013).
War is darkness – man killing man- overshadowing human consciousness of the self and the spirit – fighting soldiers driven to political indoctrination of “ennobling enmity” and wired to instigated emotional madness, forced to animalistic behavior and end-up losing the balanced material and spiritual manifestation of the nature of human originality. War means planned deaths and destruction of all that is holistic and progressively imagined by the human emancipation for the larger good of the mankind. Global war on terrorism is outcome of the few dreadful mindsets of those who are universally hated and feared by the global community. The contemporary politicians lack the realization of the hard facts of logic and moral foresight. The sensation of political power removes fear and accountability and the warlords get embolden to commit unchallenged cruelty and crimes against the people just to comfort their sadistic ego and to claim success at the cost of ruthlessness and barbarity spearheading human degeneration and continued viciousness across all spectrums of human affairs. Throughout history, warmongering sucked-out all the positive human thinking, talents and abilities to progress and peaceful co-existence. Who will know better than the Europeans fighting the Two World Wars with invincible armies and killing more than 20 million people just to safeguard superior ethnicity, flags and borders? American-led global war on terrorism and all those allied to this sinister scheme of things are overwhelmingly occupied in anti-human cruelty against themselves and others in a global context. The problem rests with those politicians who set policy agenda and make major decision lacking knowledge and practical understanding of short and long terms consequences of their own thinking and actions. To contemporary ego maniacs like George Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and now Obama and the historic Ivan the Terrible of Russia, torture and killings bring psychological satisfaction and enjoyable acts of sadistic pleasure to a favorite perversion. Common masses are duped to believe by the affiliated news media's propaganda that war is a necessity to protect the national interest and security without any rational choice. After more than a decade, the war on terrorism appears unstoppable and unending. Its real victims and causalities are the ordinary people – the present and future generations entangled in a cruel web of ripple effects and undefined rationality of the war. Those combat soldiers who were pushed to such animalistic behaviors on the front-line – man killing man without any enmity and reason, are the real victims of the few insane politicians.
North American and West European combat forces and societal thinking reflect ambiguous and varied stonewalls erected by the war machine industries as if people are not the victims and that in an advanced technological age, machines fight machines in
This week, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBC reported the suicidal deaths of 4 Canadian soldiers – the veterans of Afghanistan War. It is a painful story telling to common folks explains the CBC television news reporting on 12/4/2013, that some 42 Canadian war veterans have taken their lives since 2011 to 2012 and a total of 129 since the armed forces were sent to
Human consciousness enjoins a synchronized balanced of material and spiritual life but killing others is an affront to continuity of the self within the interwoven compound of human life. Overwhelming materialistic powers, advanced technology and rigid expert determination often stall approaches to understand the reality of human life composed of material and spiritual balance and the imperatives of freedom of critical thought and Divine knowledge to articulate a better future. Life is not an invention of human mind or machines but God is the creator of all living things: Life, Time, Universe and Earth and its sustainable supporting system - immensity of factors constituting the scope of self-realization of human life. Could the reality of life and death be realized by human thinking, instruments and approaches? During the 2011
Daniel Somers (“War Criminals Bush and Blair Claim Another Victim -
"I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This": A Soldier's Last Words.” Information Clearing House: 6/24/2013), an American war veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom 2004-2005 and then again 2006-2007, was 30 years old and suffered greatly from PTSD and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel Somers wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life.
“I really have been trying to hang on, for more than a decade now. Each day has been a testament to the extent to which I cared, suffering unspeakable horror as quietly as possible so that you could feel as though I was still here for you. In truth, I was nothing more than a prop, filling space so that my absence would not be noted. In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time………The simple truth is this: during my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity……….To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing cover up is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me….. And for what? Bush's religious lunacy? Cheney's ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for……. My body has become nothing but a cage, a source of pain and constant problems. The illness I have has caused me pain that not even the strongest medicines could dull, and there is no cure. All day, every day a screaming agony in every nerve ending in my body. It is nothing short of torture. My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. Simple things that everyone else takes for granted are nearly impossible for me. I can not laugh or cry…….Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing. I know how to kill, and I know how to do it so that there is no pain whatsoever. It was quick, and I did not suffer. And above all, now I am free. I feel no more pain. I have no more nightmares or flashbacks or hallucinations.”
American politicians no longer enjoy moral and intellectual leadership but claim it and act like surrogated mothers to the war-lobbyists and pundits of the major military-industrial complex.
Daniel Somers letter tells us all: “My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. ….. I can not laugh or cry…….Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. This is what brought me to my actual final mission.” The war-torn human consciousness needs spiritual and moral enhancement support to come out of the self-inflicted tragic and inhuman experience of killing other human beings. Politicians and society that drives soldiers to the madness of war fronts to kill others and get killed have no sense of moral responsibility to facilitation of remedial human help to console and motivate the entrenched life - the wounded inner soul of the combat soldiers. Pills alone do not remove spiritual stagnation but scholars of the Divine religious knowledge and wisdom could help the fractured human soul and body in moment of self- endured crisis for survival and sustainable future-making. All experiences are immediate and individual. Others see the prevalent reality differently with overwhelming societal and political expediency. Nazism and Fascism did not grow out of the nowhere but to a large extent were supported and propagated by the then European and North American academia, news media, businesses and politicians. During the WW2, helpless common people, Jews and Gypsies were targeted by the extremists and global warlords and now Muslims are seen as the eye of the storm. The political warriors and the military-industrial complex have not learnt anything from the pages of living history.
All beginnings have an end. Throughout history warlords were subject to time and place, not for ever. Hitler and Mussolini were democratically elected but drove the humanity to terrible consequences of their own insanity. The contemporary warlords need to see the mirror and the urgency of a Navigational Change, if they have the moral and intellectual capacity to THINK and ACT and to spare the mankind from further catastrophic tragedies. Can
With 17 trillion dollars in budgetary deficit, approximately three millions Iraqi civilians massacred by the US led bogus wars on terrorism, 20,000 or more American killed and many times more wounded, and almost one million Afghan civilians killed and displaced, and millions of wounded American and disabled veterans causality of the two bogus wars on Muslims are surviving on mere food stamps and neglected drug addicted corridors; continued daily US drone attacks on innocent Pakistani civilians, 18-25 US war veterans daily committing suicides, insane politicians acting in egoistic behaviors, leaders without lead in the society point-out to more dreadful things to happen to America - it could soon be replaced by another morally and economically competent nation or group of small nations in global politics. Strangely enough in a knowledge-based age, American politicians are not mindful of this historical and unstoppable phenomenon of change. The living Universe and American politics appear to be set on a direct clash course.
“We should already know more than enough to be horrified by the state of our American world. It should disturb us deeply that a government of, by, and for the war-makers, intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, privatizing mercenary corporations, surveillers, torturers, and assassins is thriving in Washington. As for the people — that's us — in these last years, we largely weren't there, even as the very idea of a government of, by, and for us bit the dust, and our leaders felt increasingly unconstrained when committing acts of shame in our name. So perhaps the last overlooked anniversary of these years might be the 12th anniversary of American cowardice. You can choose the exact date yourself; anytime this fall will do. At that moment, Americans should feel free to celebrate a time when, for our “safety,” and in a state of anger and paralyzing fear, we gave up the democratic ghost.”
“Among the many truths in that still-to-be-written secret history of our American world would be this: we the people have no idea just how, in these years, we've hurt ourselves.”
(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 the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing
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