‘Eight decades following, the crusade extends to the struggle against Han chauvinism and hegemonism as well as the global war on terror…’
THIS was piracy-legally and morally. It was not the first nor the last act of piracy which the Nazi government has committed against the American flag in this war. Attack has followed attack.”
The American Chief Executive was referring to the German submarine’s torpedo attack on the US Destroyer Greer on the morning of September 4, 1941. This September 11,1941 public address by Franklin D. Roosevelt would later be followed by his “Shoot-on-sight” speech. One take-away from the 9-11-41 speech: “The important truth is that these acts of international lawlessness are a manifestation of a design which has been made clear to the American people for a long time. It is the Nazi design to abolish the freedom of the seas, and to acquire absolute control and domination of the seas for themselves.” [http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/7-2-188/188-29.html]
Thus, for the hundreds of millions of citizens of the Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone of Asean in our 21st century, who is the fascist-terrorist wannabe superpower bent on selfishly acquiring absolute control of the West Philippine Sea/Southeast Asian Sea?
It has always been a crusade: “God grant that all of our liberties and our rights and our concepts, that our belief in democracy and our belief in the freedoms we enjoy may be preserved without our entering into actual warfare. But if it cannot be done otherwise than by actual conflict, if all the prayers of millions of our people should prove futile in the face of the Satanic onslaught inspired by the Devil and conducted by his outstanding agent on this earth, Adolf Hitler, then we shall be ready to accept our responsibility and do our duty as God may give us the light to see it and the courage to perform it.” [US Senator from Kentucky Alben W. Barkley, “God Grant That We May Not Be Compelled To Unsheath Our Sword,” Delivered before the Iowa State Bankers Association, Des Moines, Iowa, September 9, 1941]
Eight decades following, the crusade extends to the struggle against Han chauvinism and hegemonism as well as the global war on terror: The Armed Forces of the Philippines said it is taking seriously all reports of possible terrorism-related activities after Japan’s Foreign Ministry last September 13 issued an alert cautioning its citizens in Southeast Asia (particularly in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar) against possible terror attacks. [https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1153497] The nexus between jihadism and expansionism became more visible: Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen had told CGTN television “China is a big country with a huge economy and capacity — I think they can play a very big role in the rebuilding, rehabilitation, reconstruction of Afghanistan.” [Reuters, August 20, 2021] Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told La Repubblica of the “rich copper mines in the country, which, thanks to the Chinese, can be put back into operation and modernized. In addition, China is our pass to markets all over the world.” [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/2/afghanistan-taliban-to-rely-on-chinese-money-spokesperson-says]
Axis of Evil. The original United Nations was mustered on New Year’s Day of 1942 when representatives of the United States of America, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Poland, Union of South Africa, Yugoslavia pledged their governments to continue fighting together against the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, confident that “complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands.” Joining the first 26 nations “in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism” from 1942 to 1945 were: Mexico, Philippines, Ethiopia, Iraq, Brazil, Bolivia, Iran, Colombia, Liberia, France, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon. [https://www.unsecretariat.net/sections/history-united-nations-charter/1942-declaration-united-nations/index.html]
Six decades hence, the successors of the Fascist International would goad USA: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning–huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger.” [https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911addresstothenation.htm]
“In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims, begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon, rallied a great coalition, captured, arrested and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan’s terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation and freed a country from brutal oppression…Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay…America and Afghanistan are now allies against terror.” [President G.W. Bush, 2002 State of the Union Address; https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/sou012902.htm]
So what happened, President Biden? You, too, UN, have you forgotten? “Leila Zerrougui, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, wished 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai and the two other girls who were shot and wounded a ‘swift and full recovery,’ as she denounced the attack for which the group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility.” [https://news.un.org/en/story/2012/10/423152-un-official-condemns-taliban-attack-schoolgirls-pakistan]
And in the current year of the Metal Ox, the attendees to the 09 September 2021 Global Parliamentary Summit on Countering Terrorism heard first-hand from victims of terrorism, Ms. Nadia Ghulam Dastgir from Afghanistan and Mr. Abdi Yusuf Hassan, a Member of the National Assembly of Kenya. In this first such Summit held in partnership between the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the UN, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism Vladimir Voronkov reminded Earthlings of “the need to urgently address the complex legacies of Da’esh crimes in Iraq and Syria” and “the need for concerted action to address the rise in terrorist attacks on the basis of xenophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance, or in the name of religion or belief.” [https://www.un.org/counterterrorism/node/18599]
Hitlerism-terrorism now aggravated by the Wuhan Outbreak as the new abnormal.
