2003 – An Acrimonious Year

I have a very shadowy memory about the last time I wept, it was a little over three and a half decades ago when my late mother at an early age of her life was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer and soon after left me and my brothers go through our teen age years without that tender and compassionate motherly love that we so desperately needed, that was then.

This time around I wept on Sunday morning December 13, 2003 when I turned my television screen on only to find out that Saddam Hussein escapade is literally over. I never liked Saddam Hussein, I didn’t believe him when he claimed that he was able to burn Israel to ashes, I didn’t cheer for his scud missiles when they were falling on empty buildings in Israel with half of them falling in the Mediterranean sea and missing their intended target, and I didn’t think that he was the kind of leader that will be able to restore the long lost Arab world honor & dignity.

So why was I weeping?

I probably was going through the cumulative effect of the year’s sum total of events and the tears were merely the net culmination of the unexpected raucous outcome. I guess I’m also so sad because America, the land of the free & the home of the brave, in not so distant past was touting itself as the country that promotes the need for more kindness and more gentleness in addition to what already existed in it in large supplies. Contrast that with what was happening with America of today 2003 to be precise!, it seems to be turning into overly choleric country, falling in love with the mistaken notion of unilateralism, flexing all of its brawn even when the threat seems to be very minimal or even nonexistent, top that with setting forth one rule of engagement consisting of an all purpose one size fit all blustering locutions.

The new America wants to be known with the slogan of "whatever America wants America gets". Never mind what the rest of the world think about America, if it become necessary to be confrontational, so be it, if pre-emption is deemed to be appropriate; like the case with Iraq, nothing is going to stop it, America invades and occupies and let the international communities whine all they want. The standard that is set by America is the template that ought to be followed & everything else is irrelevant. If in the process America’s closest allies become alienated, so be it, if America was going to be perceived as an out of control pariah country, let it be.

The correctness of America against the perceived asserted rights of other countries run in a diametrically opposite directions. The war on terrorism becomes the war on tyrannies, stamping out terrorist cells worldwide become invading and occupying sovereign countries. Transgression is called liberation, threatening, saber rattling, do it America’s way or no way is called an invitation to join the coalition of the willing. I’ll not be surprised that by the end of this never ending long campaign of this war on terror, semantics will have to be redefined & I will need to take a refreshing course to learn about all of the new inverted semantics. By an large, I’m really sad because of the unipolar/ism box that America managed to squeeze itself in it. What did really happen to all the fancy talk about globalizations, about how no country can live any more in isolation of the rest of the world, about the interdependence, and about the world becoming a small village? How can America expect any cooperation from major industrially advanced world countries! When all it has been doing through out the year is aggravating them and reciprocating their good well overtures with extra ordinary machinations of its own?

There is only one way for my sadness to go away for good, it can easily happen if America recognizes that it can not go on treating its former allies the way it has been treating them throughout the year, it must reconcile at a minimum with the permanent members of the security council, it must realize that vengeance & violence, will escalate & breed more violence. Similarly, America must not forget what happened to it on September 11, 2001 but at the same time, America must not be held hostage forever over the terrorist attacks.

Let 2004 be the year that America will move on, rejoin the world nations that were alienated, reintroduce its long forgotten love slogans. Let America never cease to be the: Intrinsically kind, gentle country, the magnet land for freedom seekers of all nationalities. This home of the brave shall always be the totem my family and I pride our selves with its stalwart foundation.