Sabre-rattling has begun. USA and her shoulder-to-shoulder friend Britain have begun the now well-known drill of former gunboat policy, which might be termed as a gunboat piracy. The first victim of the most powerful country on the Earth is to be no other than a member of the so-called evil axis, Iraq.
It is a sorry example of a super power brow beating a weaker nation. Does USA have the moral grounds to do it? Not at all. The alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq’s possession, if any, are nothing compared to USA and Israel themselves. If these weapons are to be eliminated from the Middle East, then why not from Israel as well? These questions are asked sometimes mutely, the other times with some voice. Who will listen to these weak voices from the weaker masses of our Global Village community?
Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair want to punish those countries who do not agree with them on their hegemonous designs by claiming they are saving Western Civilisation against the barbarians. What is Western Civilization? And more accurately what is civilization? Is Perversion, Sodomy, marriages between the same sex, putting the old father and mother in a nursing home is the civilisation these gentlemen are alluding ? If so, please keep your civilisation to yourself. Please do not thrust it into our throats.
There was a time when a mighty nation was doing every thing in her arsenal to ‘civilise’ the people of China and India, who had their civilisation when this mighty nation was mired in snow and mud and was a primitive nation. Then the same nation subjugated Ireland where Christianity came when this mighty nation was still pagan. The same nation had a Prime Minister, who was keen to keep the civilised world safe against the brutal Nazis during the Second World War, while holding vast tract of land, which, according to him were uncivilised.
USA has always put itself as the champion of democracy. It has given misery, disease and death to the people who’d this land for 22,000 years. It captured territories from Mexico with some pretext and has been involved in clandestine operations all over the world. It has not learned its lesson from Vietnam. It is true that its allies are the despotic kings and the power-hungry generals. At times some people are “Mujahideens” and the same people become “terrorists” when they are not required. Sometimes it is angry at non-democratic countries and sometimes it turns its guns towards democratically elected governments. What a paradox.
