Blog

Masood N. Khan M.D.

A simple theorem:

“The most needed will always be the most valuable and therefore the most important”

Wondering how this is related to the topic? Once upon a time there used to be two super powers in the world. The Soviet Union and the United States. One has failed and disintegrated, the other is facing grave problems at moral, social and economic fronts. It is immaterial to explore in detail the causes of failure of Soviet Union. The very fact that it failed and disintegrated is proof enough that it was not doing good for mankind. Yet, in a nutshell Soviet Union, formed after a successful revolution, was supposed to eliminate all traces of repression and institute an open democracy but unfortunately became as repressive as Czars and adopted a secretive style of government. The communist philosophy of equal distribution of wealth deprived people of economic opportunities and consequently the spirit of competitiveness, whereby, they became more a liability than a source of energy for the state. In 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev tried to resolve these problems with reforms called Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring). However it was too little, too late. These movements aided less the reversal of decline than the decline itself. In his farewell address he had to declare that his reforms could not save the Union because “the old system collapsed before the new system could begin working”. The world witnessed the collapse of a mighty system and learned once again that freedom of human beings is an indispensable commodity for the success of any system.¹

After the fall of Soviet Union, the world was left with the solitary super power of the USA. It belonged to so called “Civilized World” the term coined so conceitedly by the western leaders to denote the regions of Europe and North America to the exclusion of the rest of the world. The floor is open for debate as to how civilized is the civilized world.

Amnesty international in one of its reports says “Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or a child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or disappeared at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not the USA shares the blame.”

William Blum in his famous book ‘Rogue State’ writes that “for more than 70 years USA in an effort to dominate the world claimed that it was indispensable for its safety. Just buy our weapons, let our military and our corporations roam freely across your land and give us veto power over who your leaders should be, we will protect you.”

Unworthily such protection came at a terrible cost to humanity. To point out some of the major bloodsheds in the history for which the US is directly responsible, we can begin with bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that resulted within the first two to four months of the bombings, 90,000-166,000 and 60,000-80,000 deaths respectively with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day.

In Vietnam war, estimates of the number of deaths of servicemen and civilians vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million of which 58,220 were US servicemen.

In Korean war, according to the data from the U.S. Department of Defense, the United States suffered 33,686 battle deaths, along with 2,830 non-battle deaths and 8,176 missing in action. South Korea reported some 373,599 civilian and 137,899 military deaths.

In recent times in Iraq war, according to Wikkileaks Classified Logs there were 109,032 deaths including 66,081 civilian deaths and about 4000 US troops killed. The estimates from various sources range from 110,600 to 10,33000 deaths.”

The decade-long War in Afghanistan (2001-present) has caused the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians directly from insurgent and foreign military action, as well as the deaths of possibly tens of thousands of Afghan civilians indirectly as a consequence of displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, and crime resulting from the war.8 These are just few examples where the US was directly responsible, not mentioned are many proxy wars and military and intelligence support given to ruthless dictators around the world causing countless deaths, disappearances and torture of people.

As to how safe this superpower has been to its own citizens, here’s a timeline of some of the worst deadly shootings and mass murders in the U.S. last year: 

1. January 10, 2012: Three teenagers were shot dead in an ambush in Philadelphia, CBS reported at the time. The 30-year-old suspect opened fire on four teens in a car, killing three and injuring one.

2. February 21, 2012: Jeong Soo Paek burst into a spa his family owned in Norcross, near Atlanta, Ga. He killed four relatives before turning the gun on himself. Police speculated that financial problems motivated the shooting.

3. February 27, 2012: A 17-year-old student, T.J. Lane, confessed to going into his Chardon, Ohio high school cafeteria and shooting students at random. Three students died and two were hospitalized. Lane said he stole the gun from a relative who had obtained it legally.

4. March 30, 2012: A gunman drove by and opened fire on a crowd of mourners outside a funeral home in Miami, Fla. Two people died and 12 more were injured. The mourners were gathered for the funeral of 21-year-old Marvin Andre, who also died in a shooting.

5. April 2, 2012: One L. Goh opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. He killed seven people and injured at least three more. Goh was a former student at the school and was said to be angry that he was expelled for poor behavior.

6. April 6, 2012: Five African-American men were gunned down in separate incidents in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Police arrested Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, and said that the murders were motivated by racism. Three men died and two were seriously injured.

7. May 29, 2012: Ian Stawicki went to a cafe in Seattle’s University district, shooting and killing four people. He then fled to a parking parking lot and shot another woman before killing himself. He wasn’t thought to have known his victims.

8. July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 24, allegedly broke into a midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 people and injuring roughly 60 more. Later, police revealed that Holmes, a doctoral student in neuroscience, spent $20,000 on ammunition and weapons.

9. August 5, 2012: Seven people died after gunfire broke out at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The gunman, identified by police as Wade Michael Page, also died in the shooting. He was a white supremacist and the shootings were said to be racially motivated.

10. August 13, 2012: Three people including a police officer were killed in shootings near the campus of Texas A&M University. The alleged shooter, Thomas Caffell, was said to be obsessed with video games and was having financial problems.

11. August 24, 2012: Jeffrey Johnson shot a former co-worker and injured nine more people before being shot and killed by police. The shooting occurred near New York’s Empire State Building during rush hour.

12. August 28, 2012: Robert Gladden Jr., 15, allegedly brought a gun to Baltimore’s Perry Hall Hall High High School and shot a fellow student, resulting in a critical injury. The boy’s mom said he had been bullied.

13. August 31, 2012: Ex-Marine Terrell Tyler, 22, opened fire at the Old Bridge, New Jersey supermarket where he worked. He killed two of his coworkers before shooting himself in the head.

14. September 28, 2012: Andrew Engeldinge walked into his former office Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, and “carefully selected” coworkers to execute. He fatally shot five people before turning the gun on himself.

15. October 21, 2012: Radcliffe Haughton, 45, bought a handgun and drove to a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, spa where his estranged wife was working. He killed three people, including his wife, before shooting himself.

16. November 6, 2012: Lawrence Jones, 42, opened fire at Valley Protein, the Fresno, California meat-processing plant where he worked. He killed two people and himself. Two more were seriously injured.

17. December 12, 2012: Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, allegedly stole a rifle from a family friend and went into a Clackamas, Oregon shopping mall with “several fully-loaded magazines” of ammunition. He killed two bystanders before shooting himself.

18. December 14, 2012: A gunman opened fire at a Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. At least 27 people died, including 20 children, according to reports. That story is still developing.

The FBI report on white collar crime states, “Lying, cheating, and stealing, that is, white-collar crime in a nutshell, is now synonymous with the full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals. It is not a victimless crime. A single scam can destroy a company, devastate families by wiping out their life savings, or cost investors billions of dollars”. There are all kinds of established frauds and crimes for which thousands of cases are pending in the court of law.

According to United States Department of Justice report “Criminal Victimization in the United States”, there were overall 191,670 victims of rape or sexual assault reported in 2005. 1 of 6 U.S. women and 1 of 33 U.S. men have experienced an attempted or completed rape. On an average taking 2010 for sample, in one year, the recorded rape cases in US are 84,767.11

The military has been hit hard. As per the survey of the Defense Department, in 2012, there were an estimated 26,000 cases of unwanted sexual contact, which ranged from rape to groping. The findings were a 35% jump from the estimated 19,300 cases in the 2010 report. 

“A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds. More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse. Approximately 80% of children that die from abuse are under the age of 4”. Every year 3.3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving nearly 6 million children (a report can include multiple children). The United States has the worst record in the industrialized nation, losing five children every day due to abuse-related deaths.

With due appreciation to all its achievements, the US has a dark aspect to its state of the union. With uncontrollable immorality and abuse of freedom at the domestic level, combined with a foreign policy that is driven by a desire to dominate the world by hook or crook, the super power has become a harbinger of ills in the world, not the torch bearer of goodness. The foreign policy of the US is directly or indirectly responsible for the menace of dictators, their crimes against humanity, regional and proxy wars and bloodshed. Eight million people have been compulsively displaced in the world last year alone because of violent conflicts. The privileged position of being the solitary super power and possessing technological superiority, indomitable military power and a wealth of natural resources had provided the US an opportunity to do wonders in bringing up a benevolent change in the world. Instead we see nothing but violence and bloodshed. Add this to racism, religious extremism, an underworld of spies and mafia, human trafficking and merciless pollution of environment, the world seems to be going downhill on a course of self-destruction.

It is no brainer that we actually need a moral super power – a country which can successfully establish within its confines a system of government that is transparent, is sincerely concerned about the well being of humanity and is passionately condoning the good and condemning the evil. When people of other countries happen to visit this moral super power they could see and feel the contentment and peace in its very air even though there may not be glamorous shopping malls and posh hotels full of ugly luxuries. People living there are safe to walk on its roads alone in the middle of night without fear of being robbed or raped. The kindness and compassion is simply overwhelming and the country’s Gross National Happiness is record high. The natural resources are used wisely and gratefully without big corporations destroying the environment and causing pollution to satisfy their capitalist greed. In the international affairs the moral super power would stand for justice and fairness. It would reach out to people who are deprived and oppressed in order to alleviate their pain and suffering. It would never form unjust alliances to safeguard its own political interests and monopolize trade and market to make exuberant profits based upon exploitation and greed with no regard to the planet earth and its inhabitants. It would not divide world into polarized camps supplying them weapons to fight and in the process making ugly profit. This moral super power would be free of religious extremism and bigotry. It would give people their God-given freedom. Freedom to express, practice their faith and enjoy their privacy with a well maintained balance between individual rights and larger good of the society.

I am sure the people of even the most technologically advanced country with abundance of material wealth would have looked to it with envy. The disturbing question of ‘what had they really achieved if human beings were not happy?’ would have pounded their baffled mind. The longing need for such a moral super power established on humble means and simple lifestyle, would have brought it more importance and honour in the world than the most technologically advanced and militarily powerful country could ever have achieved, proving and validating the simple logic in the theorem that ‘ the most needed will always be the most valuable and therefore most important.’

The USA being in an advantageous position as a solitary super power certainly missed this opportunity to everybody’s disappointment. The world was deprived of rampant good that could have spilled over to many countries as a chain reaction to its example. Secondly I feel sorry for Muslims who are so vocal in claiming Islam to be the truly divine message loaded with guidance for the well-being of mankind. They indeed missed this opportunity to their own shame. They had all the ingredients, even if rusty and unused, to be a moral super power in the world despite their wanting scientific knowhow, military might and other worldly riches. They have not only been unworthy of their own faith but have abused it to justify their despicable behavior. They will never be able to convince the world that Islam is good for mankind, them being the examples of its products.

References:

1. Fall of Soviet Union. History.com

2. Human Rights and US Security Assistance: 1996. Amnesty International Washington Office

3. Rogue State: Page 1 (Introduction)

4. Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Wikipedia

5. Vietnam War: Wikipedia

6. Korean War: Wikipedia; 7. Iraq War: Wikipedia

7. Iraq War: Wikipedia

8. Civilian Casualties in the War of Afghanistan 2001 to present: Wikipedia

9. A timeline of Mass Murders in the US This Year (2012): Business Insider (Law and Order)

10. FBI Report on White Collar Crime; 11 & 12. Rape Statistics: Wikipedia

11.  Rape Statistic: Wikipedia

12. National Child Abuse Statistics: WWW childhelp-USA.com