Cowardice

There have been a number of fatal shootings in the US in recent months and two of the latest ones were the killings at the Civic Center (ACA) and the one in which three police officers were killed. The American police described the man who did the shootings at the Civic Center as a coward mainly because he was of Asian descent and the fact that he killed himself. People everywhere should be reminded that America is a nation of cowardice. The US is a nation that has always loved guns, violence and drama. Not only that, Americans also are fond of taking risks and tangling with the fate of others. Such acts often wrought horror and suffering on innocent people. The recklessness of the US in engaging in speculative financial activities across a broad range of sectors has resulted in a global meltdown and countless people have lost their jobs and, in the case of the fatal shootings, their lives as well. It is easy to denounce a dead man as a coward since he can no longer defend his character before the public but the police should ask why a man was forced to kill in the first place. The dead man was from Vietnam and he had just lost his job, and reportedly, he had been constantly ridiculed because of his poor command of English. His story of personal trauma is not an isolated case. Many Asians in the US have stories to tell about their own tribulations in the 'land of opportunity' where the streets were reputedly paved with gold, so to speak. Instead of being the land of freedom and opportunity as promised by popular propaganda, the US turned out to be a place where skin colour and ethnic background determined where you stood in society. People of Anglo-Protestant descent came first, then other Caucasians, then Latinos and blacks and lastly, Asians and others who were physically smaller than all the others. It was a society where the meanest and strongest ruled over the rest. An arrangement that had nothing to do with courage at all. Rather, one would brand it a product of inner cowardice. This situation was not confined to within America itself only. US predatory behaviour towards foreign weak nations especially after WW2 also brought severe suffering to countless innocent people. American weapons dished out death and destruction in the name of 'freedom and democracy'. In some places, the US got defeated in the end, but still, the US got the last laugh. Tons and tons of bombs and explosive devices that were left behind by US forces have continued to inflict casualties on the unwary even today. Only a nation of cowardice could do this. In the classic case of Iraq, the US deviously starved and forced the country to lie down on its back before felling upon it like a hungry tiger. No wonder the streets of Baghdad were spattered with the blood of innocent people. Today, the blood is still not dry. Only a nation of cowardice would do this. And now, the new President wants to do a repeat of it in Kabul. How much blood needs to flow in the streets of Kabul before the

tiger decides to leave is something that can only be answered in the future, perhaps ten or twenty years from now. A brave nation would never want suffering to last that long. The US constantly issues threats and condemnations against other sovereign countries but it dares to do so only because it has the most powerful war machine ever known in history. It does not care that its glaring lack of human morality or national conscience has earned it the disgust and revulsion from other nations. No brave or courageous society would find itself in this situation. Mexico is now suffering from a deadly crime wave because of its proximity to the US, Cuba is suffering because of an unfair and unjustified embargo by the US, Haiti is suffering because it is of no value to the US despite the geographical proximity, and other areas half a world away are suffering because of bad US policies. The Gaza issue is unlikely to see any resolution even when Obama is long gone from the White House. Korea would still be an area of contentious confrontation even when Obama is long gone from the White House. Why, one would ask. It all boils down to a lack of moral courage from the people who could have solved such problems if they had been brave enough. cowardice is the call of the most powerful nation on Earth.