On May 27, Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain secretly entered Syria and met with commanders of the Free Syrian Army, who are fighting forces loyal to “President” Bashar al Assad for control of the country.
He was the first U.S. senator to travel to Syria since civil war erupted there in 2011. And after he left, he told CNN that he was more convinced that the United States must become more involved in the country’s conflict.
Earlier this year, on March 21, House Foreign Affairs ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (D-NY) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) introduced the “Free Syria Act of 2013,” calling on the Obama administration to arm the Syrian rebels.
Not so fast, says Dr. James J. Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute. A Washington, D.C.-based organization, it serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community.
In a June 1 column entitled, “Stop the Madness,” Zogby lays out the essential truths about this increasingly confusing self-slaughter:
“What began as a popular revolt against a brutal and ossified dictatorship, Syria has now degenerated into a bloody battlefield pitting sects and their regional allies against each other in a ‘dance unto death.’
“On the one side, is the Ba’ath regime, supported by Russia, Iran, Hizbullah, and elements in the Iraqi government.
“Arrayed against them are a host of Syrians (some of whom have defected from the armed forces and others who have formed militias receiving arms and support from a number of Arab states and Turkey) and a cast of thousands of foreign Sunni fighters (some of whom have affiliated with al Qaeda) who have entered Syria to wage war on behalf of their brethren.”
And then Zogby warns:
“This deadly zero-sum game is both dangerous and fatally flawed, because in reality this is a war that no one can win, and the consequences of continuing it will only make the situation worse.”
The neocons of the George W. Bush administration plunged the United States into an unprovoked war against Iraq in 2003. After Baghdad quickly fell, Americans cheered, thinking the war was over and the troops would soon return home.
They didn’t count on Iraq’s descending into massive inter-religious strife, with Shia Muslims (who comprise 65% of the population) squaring off against Sunni ones (who make up 35%).
Suddenly, American soldiers found themselves fighting a two-front war in the same country: Fighting an Iraqi insurgency to throw them out, while trying to suppress growing sectarian warfare between Sunnis and Shia.
Once again, Americans are being urged to plunge headfirst into a conflict they know nothing about–and in which they have absolutely no stake.
It’s all very reminiscent of events in the 1966 epic film, “Khartoum,” starring Charlton Heston as British General Charles George Gordon.
In 1884, the British Government sends Gordon, a real-life hero of the Victorian era, to evacuate the Sudanese city of Khartoum. Mohammed Achmed, a previously anonymous Sudanese, has proclaimed himself “The Madhi” (The Expected One) and raised the cry of jihad.
The Madhi (played by Laurence Oliver) intends to drive all foreigners (of which the English are the largest group) out of Sudan, and exterminate all those Muslims who did not practice his “pure” version os Islam.
Movie poster for “Khartoum”
Gordon arrives in Khartoum to find he’s not fighting a rag-tag army of peasants. Instead, the Madhi is a highly intelligent military strategist.
And Gordon, an evangelical Christian, also underestimates the Madhi’s religious fanaticism: “I seem to have suffered from the delusion that I had a monopoly on God.”
A surprised Gordon finds himself and 30,000 Sudanese trapped in Khartoum when the Madhi’s forces suddenly appear. He sends off messengers and telegrams to the British Government, begging for a military relief force.
But the British Government wants nothing to do with the Sudan. It had sent Gordon there as a sop to British public opion that “something” had to be done to quell the Madhist uprising.
The siege continues and tightens.
In Britain, the public hails Gordon as a Christian hero and demands that the Government send a relilef expedition to save him. Prime Minister William Gladstone finally sends a token force–which arrives in Khartoum two days after the city has fallen to the Madhi’s forces.
Gordon, standing at the top of a staircase and coolly facing down his dervish enemies, is speared to death.
When the news reaches England, Britons mourn–and then demand vengeance for the death of their hero.
The Government, which had sought to wash its hands of the poor, militarily unimportant Sudan, suddenly has to send an army to avenge Gordon.
As the narrator of “Khartoum” intones at the close of the film: “For 15 years, the British paid the price with shame and war.”
Americans have been fighting in the Middle East since 2001–first in Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda, and then in Iraq, to pursue George W. Bush’s vendetta against Saddam Hussein.
The United States faces a crumbling infastructure, record high unemployment and trillions of dollars in debt. It’s time for Americans to clean up their own house before worrying about the messes in other nations–especially those wholly alien to American values.
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NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI VS. OSCAR PISTORIUS
In Entertainment, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 10, 2013 at 12:00 amHe’s the O.J. Simpson of South Africa–a gifted athlete charged with cold-blooded murder.
For Oscar Pistorius, life began as a struggle, on November 22, 1986. Born with fibular hemimelia (congenital absence of the fibula) in both legs, at 11 months old, he was forced to undergo the amputation of both legs below the knee.
But still he persisted to lead an active–even an extraordinary–life. As a child and teenager, he played rugby union, water polo and tennis, and took part in Olympic wrestling.
After a serious rugby knee injury, Pistorius was introduced to running in January, 2004, while undergoing rehabilitation at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre.
Fitted with racing blades, he has been dubbed “Blade Runner” and “the fastest man with no legs.” He took part in the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens and came in third in the 100-metere event.
At the 2012 Summer Olympics, he became the first double leg amputee to participate in the Olympics. He entered the men’s 400-meters and 4 x 400 meters relay races.
Oscar Pistorius
At the 2012 Summer Paralympics, he won gold medals in the men’s 400-metre race and the 4 X 100 metres relay.
And then, having achieved so much against so much adversity, he found himself facing trial for a ghastly crime: The February 14 murder of his 29-year-old girlfriend, model and paralegal Reeva Steenkamp, whom he shot three times through a locked bathroom door.
Reeva Steenkamp
Pistorius claims he thought Steenkamp was a nighttime intruder. The state alleges that he and his girlfriend argued before her death and he intentionally killed her.
The case has been postponed to August 19, 2013.
Throughout South Africa, women believe the odds are high that Pistorius will escape justice for murder owing to his sports celebrity status. And those women may well turn out to be right.
According to one study, South Africa has “the highest rate [of violence against women] ever reported in research anywhere in the world.”
According to statistics, a woman gets raped in South Africa every four minutes. Only 66,196 incidents were reported to police in 2012 and their investigations led to only 4,500 convictions.
In fact, the murder of Pistorius’ girlfriend happened one day before she planned to wear black in a “Black Friday” protest against the country’s disgracefully high number of rapes.
“If data for all violent assaults, rapes and other sexual assaults against women are taken into account, then approximately 200,000 adult women are reported as being attacked in South Africa every year,” said Lerato Moloi of the South African Institute for Race Relations.
The real figure is considerably higher, she said, since most cases never are reported.
The rate of murders of women in South Africa is equally appalling:
If Pistorius wins acquittal because of his status as a celebrity athlete, Niccolo Machiavelli will nce again be proven a relevant prophet for our time.
Niccolo Machiavelli
In The Discourses, his seminal work on how to preserve freedom within a republic, Machiavelli warns: “Well-ordered republics establish punishments and rewards for their citizens, but never set off one against the other.”
Specifically:
“The services of Horatius had been of the highest importance to Rome, for by his bravery he had conquered the Curatii. But the crime of killing his sister was atrocious, and the Romans were so outraged by this murder that he was put upon trial for his life, notwithstanding his recent great services to the state.”
While Rome might seem guilty of ingratitude, writes Machiavelli, “the people were to blame rather for the acquittal of Horatius than for having him tried.
“And the reason for this is, that no well-ordered republic should ever cancel the crimes of its citizens by their merits….
“Having established rewards for good actions and penalties for evil ones, and having rewarded a citizen for good conduct who afterwards commits a wrong, he should be chastised for that without regard to his previous merits.
“And a state that properly observes this principle will long enjoy its liberty, but if otherwise, it will speedily come to ruin.
“For if a citizen who has rendered some eminent service to the state should add to the reputation and influence which he has thereby acquired the confident audacity of being able to commit any wrong without fear of punishment, he will in a little while become so insolent and overbearing as to put an end to all power of the law.”
Americans learned the truth of this after the 1995 acquittal of O.J. Simpson for the slasher-murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and a waiter-eyewitness, Ronald Goldman.
In September, 2007, he led a group of men into a hotel room at the Palace Station casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, and, at gunpoint, seized sports memorabilia which he claimed had been stolen from him.
He was arrested and eventually convicted for criminal conspiracy, armed robbery, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.
On December 5, 2008, Simpson was sentenced to 33 years in prison with the chance of parole in nine years, in 2017.
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