As far back as we know, governments have always strived to attain unlimited authority and size. Their expansion and abuse of authority is usually based on certain notions like “We know better”, “People are stupid”, “This for the people’s own good”, “Serious dangers posed by enemies” and “Public safety”. Our founders were very well aware of these threats from big and powerful government. After all, most of the disasters and suppression of masses in human history is caused by governments. So, they built this nation on very unique and novel principles. These were, certain inalienable rights enjoyed by “all human beings”, Government of, by and for “We the people” and very limited and specifically enumerated authority exercised by government.
In early days, Americans were weary of government and did not let it expand, for the most part. Result was a success and economic growth, unparalleled in human history. United States became the largest and richest economy in human history within two hundred years. Unfortunately, the strong and ever growing hold of corporate media, two party duopoly on political system, along with the competition strangling legislation and regulations, sponsored by rich and powerful corporate lobbies, gradually convinced us that we are better off, taken care by government, rather than by ourselves.
There have been several seriously damaging consequences to this greatest nation on Earth, since the grip of corporate owned political system and media started strangulating it. Starting from World War I we started getting involved in big wars and other nation’s problems. After World War II the than police of the world, United Kingdom essentially went broke. So, our big government leaders offered their “leadership to the world” to fill that perceived gap in “global leadership”. This new so called “global leadership” came with lots of huge hazards. Its basic requirement was to challenge the sovereignty of other countries.
With us interfering into the affairs of almost every country in world, and trying to dictate them their policies, and even culture, lots of hostilities were being created. Cold war was one of those. As big of the evil Socialism and Communism were, we took the solemn responsibility to fight them globally. Along with other big hazards, it started an extremely dangerous and expensive arms race. On one hand, to make this race financially sustainable, and support the ever growing military and arsenal both Soviet and U.S. governments had to slit the throats of their citizens with heaviest possible taxation.
Beside this the ever growing military power, ever increasing sophistication of defense technology in both countries, and ever rising piles of weapons of mass destruction in both countries, scared most of the other countries, too. U.S. and Soviet Union already had their presence as spies, and proliferation into political parties and media, in most countries of world. Their ever increasing fire power just added to the threat, felt by most countries. While some governments were complacent due to the bribes, aid and support provided by these two countries, most citizens remained threatened.
The result was that the arms race did not remain confined to these two countries. The two countries also had serious interest in funding there ever growing defense industry. So, they had to sell these arms to other countries. Hence, the world was divided into two blocks, Western and Eastern. Soviet and U.S. sponsored politicians and media pundits ignited and blew air on regional conflicts. Pakistan, the Western ally and India, the soviet ally must fight for their survival. Soviet sponsored Arabs and U.S. sponsored Israel must remain engaged in an unending conflict, and so on so forth. Pakistan and Israel must keep buying arms from their Western allies and India and Arab countries must remain loyal customers of Soviet arms.
It did not stop here. The chain of events led, a number of countries, to realize that just buying arms from allies may not be sufficient for their national security needs. So, many of them started to build massive arms manufacturing industries of their own. This included many western countries like U.K. France, Germany, and others like China, India and Pakistan. The next obvious step in this ever expanding race for arms was the globalization of race for WMDs.
So, many Western countries, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel joined the club. A really worse part of this whole story was that some of these countries were poor, developing or even under-developed. They kept diverting scarce resources to defense, in many cases from starving populations. People in many countries blamed Soviet Union and U.S. for this huge waste of resources. After the fall of soviet Union while we thought that we are now the sole super power of the world, the world started looking at us the single most dangerous threat to their security and sovereignty.
Islam is the newest and latest religion among the three major monotheistic dominant religions of the world. It is about six hundred years behind in evolutionary cycle of religions. From cultural evolution’s point of view Muslims are literally where Christians and Jews were about six to seven hundred years ago. Our interventionist policies are mostly aimed at suddenly giving Muslims this enormous leap of six to seven hundred years and force them to contemporary Western world. Obviously Muslims are far from ready for this. Imagine, if you told Christians or Jews about six or seven hundred years ago that girls should be allowed to go out in bikinis, sex must be free, gays need to be allowed to marry, abortion has to be legal, no restrictions on alcohol consumption, and stop listening to priest and church and make your own laws. Even we are still struggling with these issues.
This is where the terrorism is coming from, and this what perpetuating it. We think terrorists are a big threat to our way of life. We have been a huge threat to their way of life, for a very long time. About 7000 U.S military personnel and over three thousand U.S. civilians are killed, so far, in this war on terror. Total number of U.S. casualties is over 66,000. In spite of its dismal performance, VA has already diagnosed over 200,000 Americans with PTSD. Total U.S. cost, so far over three trillion dollars and is projected to rise to 5.5 trillion in future. This is in addition to up to two million civilian deaths, in war on terror, worldwide. Over three thousand civilians killed in drone attacks on Pakistan, about ten thousand Pakistanis died in terrorism related violence and about ten million Pakistanis displaced due to terrorism related violence. Can you blame them for blaming us? Is it really worth to make more enemies at this cost?
Losses Shop
