Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.
[Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826]
American people create abundant wealth. So, they are
prosperous and happy. It is only because they are economically freer than many
nations on earth. In consequence, that makes them politically freer. What makes
all that possible is their declaration of independence, constitution, bill of
rights, and their independent courts, which promptly ensure the continuance of
rule of law, which in turn help a free media to exist, and it is this
combination that guarantees personal freedoms to American people: to do
whatever they like to do, of course, under the state and federal laws. Despite
their state’s encroachments on their freedoms especially after 9/11, they are
free to pursue economic, political, social, intellectual, philosophical, moral,
spiritual, aesthetic enterprises, or whatever they like to seek.
In sum, it is their love for personal freedom that
characterizes and distinguishes them from other people. In that they are
unique. That should make them enviable to all other nations that lack this
ultra-care for personal freedom. But this does not form the gist of America . It is
something else.
Let me narrate a personal experience to elaborate on that
point.
In Washington
D.C.
All these documents have been placed in a building of
highest grandeur in a way so that natural light is available therein. In order
to protect (or to prolong) the life of these documents, artificial light has
been avoided. Flash photography is not allowed either. That’s fantastic! But that’s
American also! These documents are worth a museum, and they have rightly been
archived. I don’t know if these documents are available in another building
located a few miles away from the National Archives, i.e. White House. I don’t
know if George W. Bush, Jr. has ever read them. I don’t know, either, if any
congressman or senator has ever gone through them and understood them well.
What I do know is that American government and especially its foreign policy
has entirely drifted from what those documents signify and what they stand for.
Also, in the same building are displayed many a quote of the
American founding fathers and other notables which belie what America means
today to the world outside America .
Not only in the National Archives, but in other places such as Jefferson
Memorial all the quotes expose the reality of the present-day America . Here
it needs not to go into the details of those quotes, since the principle of
personal freedom is sufficient to make the point. Practically, this principle
manifests itself in a negative assertion, rather than in a positive one as it
appears to be. It may be worded thus: ‘You are free to do whatever you like
until and unless you don’t encroach on my freedoms.’ That’s really an
achievement of American society and government! I am all praise for that.
However, it’s not the whole story. You talk to American
people what’s going on in Iraq ,
Afghanistan ,
Pakistan ;
in the first instance, they are just oblivious of it. Or at best, they will
offer a personal apology: ‘Oh that’s what I can do! I’m sorry for that!’ That
doesn’t help much to dispel the impression that more or less American society
is like an island in a world deeply involved in many such conflicts for which
the responsibility rests on the American government. My argument focuses on
that blatant contradiction.
No doubt, we can retreat to a hermitage, and live there in
peace we wish to be in. But we can never be in such a retreat after harming
others. May be we are forgiven once or twice. In case we continue harming other
people, and presume that we will be safe in our retreat, that’s our
forgetfulness, to use a euphemism. We need to know we are going to be chased,
and paid in the same coin. In other words, if we think that rule A is only
valid for us, and for other people there is another rule B, we are living in a
contradiction. We know well we cannot live long in a contradiction. Someone is
going to explode that contradiction. We are in the midst of that explosion.
So, the sort of a principled foreign policy of American
government towards other people that “you are not free to do whatever you like
whether you encroach on my freedoms or not’ contradicts its sort of a
principled internal policy towards its own people that ‘you are free to do
whatever you like until and unless you don’t encroach on my freedoms.’ The
point of argument rests on the understanding that just like American people,
every people on earth need a constitution that ensures them their inalienable
personal freedoms, independent courts that take care of rule of law for them,
and a constitutional democratic government to represent them. Sure, it’s no
privilege of American people only. Naturally, it’s no privilege of American
government to deprive other people of these necessities. Or for that matter, no
nation or people can be allowed this privilege such as former Soviet
Union tried its hand on against which American government fought
both the cold and hot wars so passionately to secure freedom and human rights
for the people in distress.
In this regard, no excuses, pretexts or expediencies can
make for any allowance. It needs to be realized that 9/11 belongs to a class of
effects; it’s no part of the list of causes. Moreover, whatever the war against
terror requires never means abandoning the principles. How come that Pakistani
people do not need a constitutional government, independent judiciary, rule of
law only because their government has made their country a frontline ally of US government
in the war against terror. Only because a dictator, who has trashed the
Constitution, sent all the superior court judges home to keep himself in power,
and made the country a fiefdom of the elites of Pakistan, pleases the US
government, Pakistani people should have nothing of the sorts.
This is just outrageous: Kill one people to save others and
for nothing. The saner Americans must realize that they are not going to win
this war against terrorism. Beyond envy, religious fanaticism, historical
animosity against US, there is something very real underneath it. It is that
blatant contradiction. It needs to be addressed urgently, and until and unless
it is addressed to with an open mind and heart, nothing is going to make any
difference.
It is for both American people and government to realize
that though American people create abundant wealth, but of course they are not
going to create this wealth continuously if this is going to be spent on such
useless wars. It may go on for another ten, twenty or at most fifty years that
such wealth is available to American government, but in the end, as has been
happening in history, such wars will drain all the resources and energies of
the American people. This is how empires meet their fall. Wars and such
whimsical wars without addressing the core issues resemble death wish.
That’s the issue. In order to survive both as an epitome and
an emblem of personal freedom for all the people on this earth, American people
need to rejuvenate their government with the fountainhead of Charters of
Freedom. They need to go back to the basics. They need to rediscover those
principles contained in the documents which have been archived. They need a
refresher in their founding fathers’ teachings. They need to let there be
equally valid principles for all the people on this earth. They need to make
their government to win hearts of the people, not the heads of their
government. That’s the only way to save America
[This article was completed on August 4, 2008, while I was staying in the USA.]
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