United States Out of Iraq – Nursi Shows the Way (Robert MiRANDA)

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United States Out of Iraq – Nursi Shows the Way

 

President Barack Obama recently stated that he will withdraw combat forces within 18 months from Iraq. “Let me say this as plainly as I can,” he said. “By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

 

Yet in the same speech before marines and military leadership, he said the vast majority of those involved in the pullout will not leave this year. Obama also said tens of thousands of U.S. personnel will remain behind to train and advise Iraqis.

 

So is the United States in or out of Iraq?

 

It’s clear the United States is not going to just leave Iraq. The idea that the Americans are just going to surrender Iraq like they did with Vietnam is out of the question. The only way the United States is going to leave Iraq is declaring that Iraq will not be an American colony in the Middle East.

 

Indeed, civil society has been dealt a serious blow, and the human family has taken a great step backwards into barbarity over the past eight years. The law of the jungle advanced by former president George W. Bush in which brute power and force makes right over the Divinely-revealed values of brotherhood, human dignity, morality, and peace must be eradicated from the face of the Earth.

 

As Obama begins his era of war, it is with great passion I ask that the President of the United States read the thoughts of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi with respect to war.

 

The thoughts of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi provide us the understanding of the implications of war and the path to peace. Said Nursi did not write about war and peace from an ivory tower. He was a man who experienced personally the horrors of two World Wars—winning medals of honor for his service in the First World War, and commanding militia forces in the Caucasus defending his homeland. He proved his religious faith by dictating Qur’anic commentary to a scribe in the midst of battle.

 

Said Nursi points the way for Iraq. Obama ought to see that it is not for the United States to prolong its occupation. This only continues destruction and death. The United States should take steps to restore spirituality in Iraq. Islam must be allowed to move Iraq away from death.

 

Even though believers can learn important lessons from the brutal realities of war, a person who is devoted to God cannot blind himself to war’s evil causes and ugly effects. Nursi’s views hold true to confirm the old adage that “Those who refuse to learn from the errors of history are condemned to repeat them.”

 

Commenting on the verse in Surat al-Falaq (Qur’an 113:4) on the mischief of those who blow on knots, Nursi relates the passage to the self-serving propaganda of and diplomatic machinations of war-mongering politicians and the news media they control.

 

Wars show the true face of politics, the limitations of military power, and the transient nature of human life. All-powerful God is more powerful than the deceptions with which men surround themselves and is able to enlighten and change the hearts of leaders and rulers.

 

Unfortunately, it appears that Obama has not learned the lessons of war, and he is responding with continuing the neo-conservative agenda which is filled with egotism, pitiless cruelty, and fear, all of which paved the way for human duplicity in the form of “envy, rivalry and clashes” for the next war.

 

Robert MiRANDA, 04.03.2009, Yeni Asya