I find the article by Jende Huang in the HNN (1/13/10) shocking, to put it mildly, for many reasons.
His claim that Afghanistan and Iraq were “liberated” goes to the heart of his delusion that he is standing up for “solidarity with the oppressed” and seeking “the spread of Enlightenment values.”
The U.S. invasion of Iraq, to rid the country of one Saddam Hussein and his two sons (a total of three people), has been the cause of over one million Iraqi deaths (AFP 2008 ). The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has left countless dead and maimed. Is this what Huang means by liberation? Where do these deaths of innocent people fit in the context of the Enlightenment values and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that Huang is talking about?
Huang can’t get beyond the simplistic right/left dichotomy. It’s as if there is nothing in the middle. This goes along with his simplistic war/peace dichotomy and his UDHR/cultural relativist dichotomy.
People like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mohandas Gandhi, who move mountains through peaceful means, should be a great example for Huang to learn from. But then perhaps he sees them as people on the left, who advocated peace, and who were cultural relativists?
He talks about liberating the young women in Afghanistan from the Taliban. I wonder if he knows that the women in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Somalia, and many other countries are being treated as badly as the women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. He talks about Saddam Hussein’s abuses. I wonder if he knows that there are many other countries in that region with dictators propped up by the United States who abuse their citizens. I wonder if he thinks we should also attack these countries to “liberate” their women and their citizens. This is the male-chauvinistic, self-righteous, and colonialist attitude of the 21st century advocates of “fundamentalist love” that comes through a machine gun or a bomb. It’s an oxymoronic way of thinking about liberation through killing people on humanitarian grounds.
He asks “Does my desire to see the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq make me an adherent of militarism and a lover of war?” In my opinion, it does. Also, I may be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like Huang is writing this article while dodging bombs and bullets in Iraq or Afghanistan.
As an American and a person who has her roots in the Middle East, I am disturbed to see real human beings (mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, husbands, and wives) killed in countries of this region funded by our tax dollars, cheered on by the likes of Huang, under the guise of defending human rights. I think this is nothing but an example of how humans can lack compassion, empathy, and justify just about anything in a shameless self-righteous rant.
In the Humanist Manifesto III, it says, “Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence. The joining of individuality with interdependence enriches our lives, encourages us to enrich the lives of others, and inspires hope of attaining peace, justice, and opportunity for all.” Clearly humanism and peace are synonymous. How could one be a humanist and advocate militarism and war?
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