AMMONNEWS -By Abdulillah - AdialEwig Stevenson II an American politician and statesmanonce said “A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.” Too bad George W. Bush and his neoconservative cabal, along with Tony Blair, a hanger on who could not take his nations own interest over his own personal interest, did not see it that way.

Warned many times that attacking and destroying Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein and having no strategy with which to hold such a large country with many differing and competing parties and peoples together would be a fool’s folly. Sure enough that is exactly with these imbeciles did.

Fast forward to NATO forces led by the US and British air power destroying Libya to topple one man again with no strategy to hold it together, followed by one blunder after another and we get what we have today…broken dysfunctional former countries with no rule of law to be found and ruled by anyone with a gun and a warped ideology.

But are they only to blame? No I don’t think so. We the Arabs were willing partners to thiscabal of idiots. We knew better! This was our neighborhood and we of all people knew that these “adventures” would bring dire consequences to our region and worse make us dependent on these idiots later for more aide and military support.

We allowed the western military establishment to define our region as one that needed pacification, religious reformation and democratization by military means. We allowed them to define our region and our religious identity as ones that are hostile to the world as a whole.

We knew and know that when civil and central control over areas where freedoms and any form of descent is crushedwithout mercy by tyrants who have ruled so long, that once those tyrants are removed with no plan for succession or civil law in place we would have chaos.

But did we voice our opinions vociferously? No we cowered in fear of alienating these idiots instead of insisting that only a slow methodological approach to these matters would be successful. Did we council or did we threaten to expose this idiocy to the world. No we sheepishly agreed to what we knew was wrong; moreover some of us even participated in this tragedy. Have we learned? I am not sure, but I am sure of this, we have to live with the consequences of this stupidity.

We have to live with thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, widows and orphaned children; they are piling up at our doors step. Meanwhile as chaos engulfs the region and thugs began to fill the vacuum and rule under the banner of a distorted religious identity or under any banner that will give them legitimacy, we are left to clean up the mess. Have we learned to speak up? No we don’t want to upset our benefactors. I am not even sure we understand the meaning of this weird friendship.

What exactly do these benefactors really want from us? Do they want us to love seeing our region fall into chaos? Do they want us to reform our faiths to meet whatever they fancy it should be? Was it us who invaded or was it them? It’s time we start to speak up I think. It’s time we straighten our house on our own without too much help from them until we get a straight answer as to what they actually want in our region. Let’s stop accepting lip service as well. Friends do not leave friends high and dry when things get tough or when fairness and equality are at stake. They don’t say one thing and do another with those who have enmity towards us or our region. They surely do not leave it to our adversaries to speak to their joint session of congress to define our region and faith.

Yes we will be called anti-Semites as if we are not Semitic peoples. How laughable and naïve is this foolish statement. Moreover; the region that brought all the Abrahamic faiths to the world is allowed to be depicted as backward religious ideologues, when none of that existed until western forces moved in. But will we speak our minds? No we will just sheepishly move along as if nothing can be done or even said. Let’s stop this nonsense right away. We know best what our region needs and we can correct it. Let’s learn to define ourselves. Let’s send the best of us, our most knowledgeable of our history and our faiths who can vociferously speak and teach them the actual truth. Let’s teach them who we are instead of them defining who we are. And for God sake let’s fix our house while we do it.

Let’s get rid of the cancer that is dividing us. Let’s stop believing everything written on the internet about our region and faiths as if it was the ultimate truth. My lord we actually have third generation so called Muslims from the west coming to our region to teach us what our faith actually means when they themselves have little clue. But what’s even worse is how we have stopped teaching our children who seems to have learned to believe that everything written on social media and on the internet by these idiots is truthful.

One wants to ask why this is happening, well I have theory; it is not hard to hypothesize. Devoid of freedoms for a long time, devoid of chances to debate each other openly about issues that concern our region and devoid of compassionate leadership, anyone will grasp at straws. They will believe anyone who tells them anything, because they themselves don’t know how to develop their own thoughts. Leave a vacuum and anyone can step in and takeover. Lock up their minds for so long and they will rebel even to the worst form of leadership, just to be able to say that they are free to do as they wish.

My fellow brothers and sisters, we need to stop this now. We need to speak against those who want to harm our region and those who only want chaos to prevail so they can aggrandize themselves. We need to expose and defeat those amongst us who believe that killing indiscriminately in the name of our faith, not with only guns and bullets, but with knowledge and understanding and steadfastness in unity. But mostly we need to be able to speak up to those who actually want to be our friends and tell them what we feel is in our best interest. We cannot sit ideally allowing the uneducated of us or those who want us harm to define us. We allowed others to make our bed, even though we knew the covers would not suffice during the cold winters and we slept in them anyway.
God Bless Jordan and its People