The first question, of course, is whether the problems happening in those far-off places have any impact on their national lives. If they argue, as they often do, that those wars have an ultimate and injurious impact on the safety of their populace then one is surprised at how easily they toggle allegiance from one country to another and the two-facedness which underlies their actions. Not long ago, we were bombarded by the rhetoric from Russia about wrongness of America going it alone in Syria and violating international law. They told us that America had no right to attack Syria on the pretext that Bashar al-Assad was killing his own citizens. Well, at least partly, they saved the world from another war the results of which could have been catastrophic. Then, in less than a month, they annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea and are now inching towards the region of Luhansk. Now, America is crying fetid and threatening sanctions. Russia keeps scorning at these so-called sanctions, threatening sanctions of their own. In fact, at one time, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said that the sanctions will equally mar the West as they will hurt Russia. It will appear now that the Russians are the warmongers and the West is holding them back. The question is, are they sincere in their efforts to prevent a war? The answer is an emphatic No! This is proven by the fact that while they try to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine on the alleged reason that it is a sovereign country, they are doing the same thing in Iraq. True, they are not calling it an all-out war, but they are still dropping bombs and missiles in that country. One wonders what it will look like if they declare an all-out war. America, the self-acclaimed cognoscente, the policeman of the world, is busy solving problems elsewhere, while in their own country the white folk are shooting blacks at random. Would they solve that problem first!
Enough about America and their woes and aggression, let us turn to their colonialists, the British. The British appear to be somewhat innocent in these issues but the truth is, they are the worst of them. It was the British who told the Palestinian Arabs that if they helped them with men during the World War they will be compensated by being given the Land, the Land being where Israel is located today with Jerusalem as their capital city. The same British told the Jews that if they provided them with the resources they needed, in monetary terms, then after the war they will be given the Land as a home, again, with Jerusalem as their capital city. The truth of the matter therefore is that Britain sold a horse to two different people at the same time, funny they didn’t own the horse in the first place! It is clear therefore that the disputation between Israel and Palestine today is fundamentally caused by Britain. The blood of the four hundred Palestinian children and hundreds of others – women and men – is on the hands of Britain! Yet, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America in condemning Russia for annexing Crimea and edging towards Luhansk.
France on the other hand is a willing collaborator with America. They are also far from being innocent. It is still fresh in the memory of the world that it was France who first sent fighter planes to drop bombs on Libya because, ‘Muammar Gaddafi was killing his own people’. It was revealed later that they were not actually worried about the loss of innocent lives but the disclosure that it was the same Gaddafi who gave fifty million euros to Nicolas Sarkozy to be reelected. So, it is clear that the issue of Libyan civilians being killed was the least of Sarkozy’s reasons for attacking that country. Today, a few years into post-Gaddafi Libya, the chaos is unstoppable. The armed rebels do not know what to do with their guns other than turn on each other. Hundreds of civilians continue to die at the hands of their fellow countrymen without any sign of it stopping anytime soon.
Let us now come to one of the most contentious issue of our time and see how the West will fare under scrutiny; the possession of nuclear weapons. The West is constantly at loggerheads with Iran and North Korea. They claim that Iran wants to develop and use nuclear weapons and as such they should be stopped at all cost. On this, they all agree, forming a strange alliance amongst themselves; America, Britain, France, China and even Russia are all speaking with one voice. One thing they don’t tell us is why it is acceptable for a country like Israel – formed half a century ago – is qualified to have nuclear weapons and not Iran – a country whose civilisation has been established for centuries? They, America, will tell us that Iran is trigger-happy to use such a weapon; but we have seen with our own eyes, in the past month alone, Israel dropping bombs on civilians and killing more than two thousand people. One may wonder who among these two countries is trigger-happy to kill civilians. But more damningly, can you remember which country dropped an atomic bomb on Japan? Yes, you guessed right, America! The truth remains America is the only country to ever have dropped an atomic bomb on human beings. Do they have the moral right to say who should have a nuclear bomb and who should not? I leave the answer to that question to you!
Musa Bah who also writes under the nom de plume Tha Scribbler is an English teacher at Nusrat Senior Secondary School and the author of several books.
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