It is a shame the Yuletide greeting “peace and goodwill to all men” is precisely that. A year-round blessing of that nature would be most welcome. However, this year, it seems as though the notion is being knocked out of the global village. True, Mr. and Mrs. Smith may offer Christmas cheer to Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but on the national and international levels, peace and goodwill are the stuff of fairy tales.
Sadly, we are on a collision course. While the Eastern power, China, is quietly building itself into a replacement for the Soviet Union, South America is locked in unnecessary financial and other battles, Africa shows few signs of eradicating poverty, the West and the Muslim World are tearing each other apart.
Australasia and Greenland do still seem like a comparatively safe bet, if you can cope with being a terror target and global warming respectively.
The week before Christmas 2003, some 120 weeks after 9/11, it seems as though we have learned nothing.
Despite the West’s efforts to counter terrorism, the threat is ever present, with governments declaring states-of-emergency on a regular basis, sending panic waves around their people. There is still a lack of complete cooperation between the various capitals, with the trust issue still a factor. Poor extradition agreements, the need to be seen to be doing something and the willingness to blame Al-Qa’ida for every sneeze and hiccup are among the factors damaging the counter-terrorism fight.
While Washington has had some impressive hits, with Iran and Libya seemingly complying on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues and of course the shaving of Saddam by Telly Savalas, the world is not a safer place.
Much of the blame for this lies with Islamic countries. While politics, economics and sociology are often all about talk and little to do with action, the war against terrorism cannot be one of lip service.
Rounding up a group of teenagers, trying them in the most undemocratic of fashions and sentencing them to life imprisonment does not mean you are seriously tackling the terrorists.
Saudis arrested in Yemen and Yemenis arrested in Saudi Arabia seems more about tit-for-tat diplomacy than a real crack down on militants, especially when the governments refuse to extradite the alleged terrorists to the third-party nations that have been directly hit by terror atrocities in and just off the Arabian peninsula.
Am I anti-Muslim? No. Am I anti-Western? Also not. However there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed by both sides, because this war, often silent, but ever-present, is killing humanity’s chances of survival. The Armageddon some take seriously and others mock is seemingly around the corner.
The United Nations is a joke, incapable of real pressure on terrorist nations, NATO is yet another toothless tiger, while the United States cannot and must not take on the entire world like John Wayne in some black-and-white western. This time, the dirty bombs are real, the missing nukes could be anywhere, the enriched uranium is in the hands of the wrong people.
True, McDonalds is an empire, as are the other American ‘success’ stories. True, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for hating the United States in its current form.
True, there are many who are bastardizing Islam for the purposes of evil. True, in Western eyes there is something wrong with societies that treat women on a different footing from men (we should know, since we still do it).
But there is too much at stake to allow this bilateral hatred, racism and xenophobia to go on for much longer.
Nations such as France and Germany must use their foot-in-the-door-in-both-camps to try to encourage rapprochement. These nations all too often put pride ahead of the greater good of humanity.
Teachers, parents, communal and religious educators must put love of humankind ahead of lessons on molecular biology, linguistics and even biblical eye-for-an-eye philosophy.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, please spread that peace and goodwill, before Greenland really does become the last, if warming, refuge.
(For those of you that care for biblical prophecy, the item you have just read contains 666 words.)