World Peace or Pax Americana by Mir Adnan Aziz

President John F Kennedy made a commencement address at the American University in Washington. The day was June 10, 1963. Later, US intelligence reports had the Soviet Communist Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, term it the best speech ever by a US president. The speech had a profound effect on world opinion as it reflected a total commitment to a future of hope and the possibility of real world peace.

An excerpt from that famous address has President Kennedy describing the road to world peace as: ' I have therefore chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth - world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.
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In today's world, the search for a tragically missing four year old, Madeleine McCann, creates worldwide media frenzy and the recent Tibet unrest attracts immediate undivided global attention and condemnation. Mind numbing though is the global acceptance of thousands of human fatalities in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya and Gaza. These barbaric horrors are callously described as collateral damage; a hateful euphemism invented to justify killing of the defenseless.

In this 'strategy of annihilation', out of a total Iraqi population of about 27 million, more than 700,000 have been killed, millions wounded or maimed and 4.5 million have become refugees. In more just times this could have well been termed a holocaust - a genocide. The capital cost of the Iraq war to date is in the $500 billion bracket and as some economists suggest, might end up in the $5 trillion one. Oil, at $36 a barrel before the Iraq war, has been traded at a record high of $111 this month.

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The current American claims of standing up to 'evil' religious groups in the name of universal values are extremely bitter and deeply ironical. It was precisely their earlier disregard of democracy in the Middle East and South Asia which helped give rise to a layer of apparently 'radical' Islam. This was the logical result of elevation of its own powerful interests over the needs and desires of local people everywhere. What we have today is not a World War between a principled America and 'psychotic' groups from another civilization. It is rather the messy bloody residue of their decades of meddling the world over.

Initially justified by false claims about WMDs in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as a 'decisive ideological struggle' of our time. This oracle though is impossible to fathom logically. The perpetually shifting cross hairs are focusing on Pakistan too. With a constantly increasing shriller pitch our tribal areas are being referred to as the most dangerous place on earth. This has been accompanied by a constant litany to do more, meaning thereby, to annihilate our own to rid America of its phantasmal demons.

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