By Abdu Rafiu
What else can we say about war? War here, war there! Will war become the new normal in the life of man? The cause of war may differ from country to country and from one community to another, the features are the same: bombardment from land, from the air and sea to over-run and conquer, take hostages and overthrow the old order and install a new one.
The consequences are mindless destruction of lives and property, of monuments and displacements from the epicentre of the war zone resulting in large-scale humanitarian crisis. The United States attack on Iran on February 28, not only led to the horrendous destruction of properties, but also to the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a number of key members of government. The combined U.S.-Israeli airstrikes hit school children killing dozens of them, unconfirmed report putting the total casualties at 150. Nearly 2,000 targets were hit and in less than five days, 17 Iranian war ships were destroyed. Oil tanker transits plying the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world’s crude oil passes have shrunk by 90 per cent.
The killing of Ayatollah Khamenei is similar to the gruesome death in 2020 and of Iran’s foremost General, the highest ranking General and Commander-in-Chief of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Quassem Soleimani. The new commander of the force, Brig.-General Esmail Ghanni vowed to avenge the death of his predecessor. At the prompting of aggrieved Iran, Iraqi Parliament voted to expel the U.S. forces from their territory. Iran itself had fired ballistic missiles aimed at two U.S. bases and targeted at the troops there.
Iran boiling with rage over the killing of General Soleimani and mistaking the Ukrainian jetliner for a U.S. aircraft shot it down. The aircraft had 176 persons on board. There were no survivors. After days of denial, the Iranian authorities were later to accept responsibility for the unbelievably bizarre incident. It was Iran’s follow-up on the ballistic missile attack on the U.S. bases in Bagdad. The Iranian High Command was later to state that the bringing down of Ukraine aircraft was an error, mistaking the flight for a hostile plane going in the direction of a sensitive military centre of the Revolutionary Guard and the military was “at its highest level of readiness.” The Iran President then, Hassan Roubani blamed the incident on the U.S. “threats and bullying.”
As it turned out there were Iranians and Canadians on the ill-fated flight. There were many who had nothing to do with either the U.S. and her politics, or Iran and its local or international politics. There was a Nigerian engineer working with Boeing and who followed the aircraft on a test run to Iran. Many nationalities were victims.
Mr. Donald Trump was president at the time. So, as it was then, so is it now. He is President and he is bullying such that the media has described him as the chief superintendent of police of the world. The remarks of Hillary Clinton captured on video are trending as they did in 2020 in which she described making Donald Trump president as a “historic mistake.” She said, “It is not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into war.
Describing Mr. Trump like Washington Post as unfit to be president, Hillary Clinton said: “His ideas are dangerous. He should not be someone who should get close to the nuclear code…To make Trump president is a historic mistake.” A former chief of staff in the U.S. State Department, Col. Larry Wilkerson who was also featured in a video at the time said Mr. Trump was pulling wood over the American people’s eyes and certainly the international community’s eyes.” He likened Mr. Trump’s reasons for the attack on Iran and the attendant assassination of General Qassem Soleimani to Mr. George Bush’s excuse for the attack on Iraq by the allied forces which culminated in the death of Hussein Saddamin 2003.”We’ve seen this before”, he said. “The same everything, the same tactics, same people, same strategy.” He said America kept making the same mistake that it has been made.”
In the present strikes, 12 countries in the ever-so-combustible Middle East have been impacted, either hit directly or through ripple effects.There were flight cancellations in Dubai for example, raising a spectre of hostilities between United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran.Air strikes believed to have come from Iran destroyed parts of Dubai and Riyadh.
Turkish President Erdogan swiftly raised alarm that violation of its airspace is unacceptable. “Türkiye is closely monitoring the process that began the attacks on Iran.”
He fears that if interventions are prolonged, “they can cause significant damage to the regional and global stability,” he said in a telephone conversation with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In countries hit directly, homes were destroyed and businesses were wrecked. UN Refugee Agency, (UNHCR) said Hezbollah the dreaded armed militant in Lebanon entered the conflict which drew the ire of Israel that responded with airstrikes. The bombardment has led to displacement in southern Lebanon. The Nigerian online newspaper, TheNewsGuru quoted the agency’s spokesperson, Babar Baloch as saying:
“Heavy displacement has been reported across parts of southern Lebanon, the Bekaa and southern suburbs of Beirut.
“The conservative estimates suggest that nearly 30,000 people were hosted and registered at collective centres. Many more slept in their cars on the side of roads or were still stuck in traffic jams, leaving the south to reach Beirut,” according to the Refugee Agency spokesperson.
These are the consequences of war. What has caused this U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is ostensibly to stop the Iranian nuclear power development thought be a threat to the United States and Israel. Trump considers Iran leaders not rational enough to have such an arsenal in their possession. It is worse that it would ultimately be in the hands of a supreme leader who is not subject to any control of any authority within the country. The ding-dong has been on for years.
The previous U.S. Administrations took steps to negotiate the development with Iran on how far it could go. Trump said there is secret production of nuclear weapons hidden underground. There are fears also that Iran is making rapid progress technologically, at a speed that sends cold shivers down the spine of those charged with monitoring the advancement. Israel believes Iran is determined to exterminate the Americans and erase the state of Israel from the world map. It is also believed that Iran exports terrorists around the world.
As I have said before, the rate at which events are accelerating and intensifying in our world today is terrifying. As part of the effects of the forces of these times sweeping through everywhere is an unprecedented awakening engendered by awesome power pressure of the Light. The denseness in which sensitivity of man is entrapped even prevents him from being aware of the power pressure and the attendant awakening on the one hand and the acceleration and intensification of events on the other. There is obtuseness and there is cognitive impairment.
It is hard for the modern man to recognise that we are in different times. Being different, our ways and attitude must correspondingly be reset. The old must pass away, giving way for the new. War can easily be started, but it is not always easy to predict its end—when and how it will end. The Russia-Ukraine war is still raging characterised by mindless destruction and remorseless killings which are even done with glee, without the slightest thought of consequences.
The frightening state of the world has been brought about by the often-mentioned aberrant conduct of mankind. How does anyone hope to pass with the inconsiderate destruction of property and lives being inflicted in the Middle East, in Ukraine and our own land where remorseless killings, kidnapping and banditry go on, hardly abating.
Since the behaviour of man has not changed a jot to the extent of being filled with utter disgust for the aberrations, respite may not be foreseen in the horizon. If anything, the situation will be worse. And proliferation of weapons will go out of control. For, most countries would consider it in their best self-interest to also acquire sophisticated weapons to protect and defend themselves. For, it would be foolish to ignore what countries with unscrupulous leaders have in their armoury. Such carelessness could avenge itself most bitterly!
Killings do have consequences beyond our imagining, indeed beyond what is conceivable to us mankind. How is anyone to explain, how much worse justify the shooting down of a commercial aircraft with 176 persons on board, even if it were carrying only Americans? How does one explain terrorists carting away into captivity over 200 schoolchildren and communities sacked and dwellings of unarmed citizens set ablaze as in Nigeria.
The aberrant conduct alienates mankind from the Most High Creator and His help. The scenario can be likened to the predicament of a man who is flung off a conveyor belt.
Provided he makes efforts to regain his balance he will continue to be thrown off the conveyor belt and may suffer harm to the extent of breaking his arm, leg or back, depending on the degree of the fall and the attendant impact—that is unless he behaves himself on that belt; unless he cooperates with the conveyor belt by learning and adjusting to its rules, he will always find himself unable to use it beneficially. The conveyor belt will not be stopped on account of any person who ought to sit balanced on it and in cooperation with it, but chooses to disregard its rules. And pleading is not the answer. Ignorance of what is required, that is of the law, as lawyers would say, is not an excuse.
We are familiar with the workings of a conveyor belt at airports and belts in mills or plants. However, a majority of us do not recognise this in mechanisms of life and we elect not to do so. Otherwise, how can we see our world as one without rules except those drawn up by us which in the majority of cases do not accord with the conveyor belt-rule of life? The conveyor belt rules are permanent. They are points of reference, the yardstick by which all other rules must be judged. They are accessible, they are simple.
In contrast, the rules we fashion are impermanent; they are subject to changes and amendments. They are inaccessible to everybody and complex, products of limited understanding. The rules are made for a world of which they are not its makers, and there is the assumption that its Maker has no need to draw up rules on how He expects His work to function. He is accorded less wisdom than the auto-maker who prints manuals to guide his automobiles.
There must be a standard against which all happenings are gauged, a standard that is universal and accessible, that is beyond the reach of political and economic changes, revolutions, upheavals, earthquakes or drought; it is absolute standard for all times.
That the world is divided on what is right and who was wrong even if unequally, is proof that the world has not come to the recognition of that standard, and where it may have been recognised, certainly by an insignificant handful, it has not been met. The standard has existed in all ages—eternally. It is the Truth itself.
Truth comes only from Above. Thus standards, virtues come only from Above. They cannot go from below up. They cannot emanate from mankind. Human beings can only receive virtues, recognise them and adapt them as their standards. They cannot receive standards with their brains but their being, the true being, the true being within them, the ability they carry deep within them, ability that goes beyond the confines of this world, Man himself, the animating core! Any wonder we are struck by deep and refreshing wisdom from unexpected quarters, even from farm hands that never saw the walls of any college.
The point being made is that since many a man has neglected to grapple with the Truth, he has deviated from It, and is lacking in virtues. Consequently, he is brutalised and unfeeling. So, he goes to war! He resorts to killings, kidnapping and banditry. Since his misconduct even when expressed is attached to him, he burdened by the seeds of continual misbehaviour—wrong concepts, pronouncements and actions.
With our brains, we arrange, put together and elucidate what is discovered. What is discovered is already in existence. It is only uncovered. We may use the brains, the hind brain to receive, and the frontal brain, the seat of the intellect to arrange, say through manufacturing, fashioning to facilitate our lives in what we call technologies.
But technologies in themselves do not make man nor do they improve his character or quality of his worth. Thus, technology without character leads to destruction, to boastfulness, a feeling of might being right! This is the state of our world today! The whole world is standing in a new epoch , epoch of knowledge and one through the power of the Holy Spirit and its Messenger, The Great Comet, judgment is being released, in which cycles are closing, the end going back to the beginning!
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