Enough Talk About Uzbekistan And Calling Her An ‘Oppressive’ State Already, This Is All About Making Propaganda In Setting Up For A War With Russia

In light of the recent incident in New York with Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, Americans are now paying attention to Uzbekistan:

The terrorist attack in New York on Tuesday was carried out by a young man from Central Asia, a former backyard of the Soviet Union known for poverty, isolation and repressive governments — all elements in breeding some of the most militant Islamist activity in the world.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Islamist insurgencies have erupted throughout the region, most notably in the Caucasus and the suspect’s native Uzbekistan. While those insurgencies have been mostly suppressed, often with unflinching brutality, analysts have grown increasingly concerned about Islamist radicalism spreading out of the region as young men leave in search of work.

This is particularly true, analysts say, of Uzbekistan, where a blend of repressive politics and economic failure has generated a steady outflow of both migrants and militants. Many of the immigrants have come to the United States — nearly 60,000 as of 2013, the American Community Survey said, with about half of them going to New York City.

Under a new president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbekistan has recently eased its iron grip over its citizens. Mirziyoyev has offered to help the American authorities investigate the attack, and in a statement offered condolences. “This merciless and very cruel crime cannot have any justification,” he said.

Central Asians account for a significant portion of the foreign fighters who joined the Islamic State militant group in Syria, making their common language of Russian second only to Arabic in the group’s propaganda and communications. The International Crisis Group, a research organization, has estimated that 2,000 to 4,000 Central Asians have joined the Islamic State and other Islamist groups.

While there is no saying, for now, what may have motivated Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect who is thought to have driven the truck that plowed through a bike lane in Manhattan on Tuesday, killing eight people, Central Asia’s troubled politics and economics form a part, at least, of the back story.

The expanse of desert and mountains north of Afghanistan has a total population of about 60 million. Uzbekistan, with around 32 million people, is by far the most populous, and has a long history with Islamist militancy.

A spiral of repression and radicalization that has spawned three major Islamist groups began soon after the Soviet breakup, as an Islamic revival filled the vacuum left by Communism.

Proselytizing by Saudi-financed groups advocated a particularly austere form of Islam, and a renewed interest in Islam in much of the former Soviet space, sped things along.

“Of course, when one ideology falls, another one takes over,” Shahida Tulaganova, a former producer with BBC from Uzbekistan, and a close observer of Islamist movements in the region, said in a telephone interview.

Alarmed, the country’s president at the time, Islam Karimov, a former Soviet apparatchik, cracked down, introducing government-sanctioned mosques that were tightly controlled and banning all others. Under his nearly three-decade rule, rights groups say, thousands were imprisoned for worshiping at unsanctioned mosques.

Not surprisingly, underground religious groups formed. Members of the most prominent organization, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, were driven out of the country in the late 1990s and were active in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years, though many of its members have now joined the Islamic State’s organization in Afghanistan.

In one notorious instance, supporters of a group known as Akramia — named after its founder, Akram Yuldashev — were rounded up after an uprising and street protest in the Uzbek city of Andijan in 2005.

The crackdown and mass arrests that swept the country were so alarming that the United States was prompted to close an air base in Uzbekistan that had supported operations in Afghanistan. The Uzbek government announced in 2016 that Yuldashev had died in prison five years earlier, from tuberculosis.

Akramia was not clearly militant in nature, so its dismantling drove home the message that Uzbeks drawn to religion not sanctioned by the state would have to leave the country.

That in turn has helped create a large diaspora of labor migrants who represent an attractive pool of potential recruits for militant groups in other countries, particularly Russia. Recruitment videos in Uzbek and Russian play up the heroic adventure of fighting jihad in Syria, drawing an attractive contrast to the drudgery of migrant labor.

“The propaganda on YouTube is amazing,” said Tulaganova, the former television producer. “I wonder why nobody takes it down.” (source)

Is has not even been a week, and I am sick of hearing about Saifullo Saipov and the “terrorist connection” to Uzbekistan already. As we have pointed out, this entire situation will lead to nothing good and is most likely being used as a lever by which to manipulate the public into supporting military and political actions that are objectively immoral. There are too many signs that the entire attack was at the very least allowed to happen, and this is in particular bolstered by the recent news coming out of Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan is a landlocked nation in central Asia with a very ancient and rich history. It was the northeasternmost point of Alexander the Great’s Empire, and it is said he took a wife of Uzbek or Afghani origin. During antiquity, Uzbekistan was one of the major crossing grounds for the Silk Road from Beijing to Rome. After the Islamic expansion, Uzbekistan was the northeasternmost point of the Islamic Caliphate and produced many great Muslim thinkers, including Imam Bukhari from the city of Bukhoro, who wrote Sahih Bukhari, one of the most widely used and reliable collections of Islamic Sacred Tradition. The praises heaped upon the city of Cordoba, Spain as the “jewel of the West” was matched by its rival of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, called the “jewel of the East,” and is still one of the great cultural heritage sites in the world. Uzbekistan, being that between she and her neighbor of Turkmenistan is considered the ethnic homeland of the Turkic peoples, it was from there that the Turkish people migrated Westward to Anatolia, converting to Islam and forming what would become the nation of Turkey, and those who headed east ended their travels at the island today called Japan.

The Kaylan Mosque, one of the many famous places in Samarkand, one of the oldest cities in Uzbekistan and possibly the world, dating back to well before the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of her in 329 BC.

While Uzbekistan is majority Muslim, the government has for the past century maintained and enforced a policy of strict secularism, putting down and keeping Islamic revivalist movements suppressed with the help of Russia, as during the Soviet period Uzbekistan was a member of the USSR. Uzbekistan was also home to one of the largest Jewish diaspora communities from Bukhoro (called Bukharian Jews), and while most have emigrated to Israel or New York, they still retain a distinctive take of Judaism apart from the dominant ashkenazim culture of Israel. Uzbekistan, owing to its history as a land of many peoples and a crossing point between East, West, North (to Siberia) and South (to India), is a land of great geopolitical significance, and one which empires today fight over just as in the past. Given the coming prospects of a third world war and the interconnectivity as well as aggressive position that the US in particular has taken with rise to the formation of conteporary alliances, one can be certain that “no stone will be left unturned” in the attempts to set up a situation for a military victory, and that includes even nations that for the most part, most people do not know or care about such as Uzbekistan.

To understand the Uzbek situation, one needs to look at it from the perspective of the four major historical and political players in the area: Russia, Iran, Israel, and the USA

Russian Perspective

Uzbekistan was a part of the former USSR and has been under Russian influence for centuries, beginning with the start of the expansion eastward over the Urals and into Siberia started by Orthodox missionaries to the Muslims in the 16th century and continuing since then. While Uzbekistan is a majority Muslim, the nation’s language and culture have been strongly influenced by Russian Slavic culture as well as the irreligious nature of the USSR, making the nation for the most part Muslim in name but not in practice and open to engaging in non-Islamic practices (such as the consumption of alcohol).

Russia is facing a multitude of problems that threaten the very existence of the nation and her people. Owing to the highly destructive effects of communism that have become an entrenched part of Russian society even after the fall of the former USSR, Russia is a nation that outside of raw materials exports and arms exports lacks a solid economic infrastructure of any kind. Poverty is widespread, and with the added ravages of alcoholism and drug abuse the family unit in Russia barely exists. Divorce is almost as common as it is in the USA, and the average woman in Russia will have around 11 to 12 abortions in her lifetime (the only nation higher is Serbia, running between 12 to 14) yet only have one, maybe two children, resulting in a net population loss. HIV/AIDS, drug resistant tuberculosis, and other illnesses are widespread. This in addition to the fact that Russia has a large territory to maintain means that she needs to maintain a strong army, and given her weakened state, she has taken to recruiting large numbers of people to fill her military’s ranks from Central Asia, including Uzbekistan.

Sergei Shoigu, general of the Russian Army. The son of a Tuvan father and Russian mother, Putin’s appointment of him was not merely his military skills. Shoigu is an encapsulated representation of the long-term geopolitical strategy of Russia in that owing to the refusal of the Russian people to reproduce, she must draw on the Central Asian Republics and mix with but not be consumed by them.

In order for Russia to survive, recover, and grow, she needs for the moment to maintain her territory without losing her identity, and the way to do this is to permit for the existence of Islam as a cultural force yet suppress any attempts at revivialism and doing so by working with the Muslims who subscribe to an enculturated yet non-religious view of Islam. Such an example of this was with the Baktensky conflict in 1999, where Russian military forces worked closely with government of neighboring Kyrgyzstan to crush an Islamic rebellion in the nation. To this she wants peace with these nations and to build strong military and economic ties, especially in raw materials such as petroleum, rare earth minerals, and transportation due to the geographic location. To this she will hope to keep Uzbekistan close to her and away from her other historical ally of Turkey and to a far lesser extent, Iran.

Israel

One would not expect Israel to have such a significant presence in Uzbekistan, but owing to the large Jewish diaspora in that nation for centuries as well as during the soviet period, Israel continues and maintains strong ties with that nation.  Since Israel’s foreign policy has been based on a”zero-sum” approach since her inception, that all deals are made understanding that either Israel is benefiting off the loss of their neighbor, or their neighbor is benefiting at the loss of Israel, Israel’s approach to Uzbekistan will be to use her either for personal economic benefit, to attack her enemy of neighboring Iran, or both.

Due to Israel’s small size, what she lacks in manpower and size she compensates for with the service industry, and in particular with advanced arms exports and technological espionage. Israel is most famous  in Uzbekistan in recent times for providing real-time intelligence on all internet traffic in the nation, and then reporting back “anti-government” or “unpatriotic,” or “dissident” speech to the government so they can arrest and torture those who made such statements:

When Mamur Azimov, a human rights lawyer, tried to assist the wife of Nabizhon Zhurabaev who had been arrested on suspicion of trying to overthrow the government of Uzbekistan, he approached Talib Yakubov, an Uzbek human rights activist living in Paris. They communicated via Skype. However, at some point the Uzbeki Internal Security service, the SNB, summoned Azimov and Zhurabaev’s wife, telling them to desist from making these calls. When Zhurabaev was brought to court, the prosecution played recordings from all of May 2013, even though the official investigation only commenced on the 30th of that month.

Why should this story and many others like it hold any interest for us? Well, it has an Israeli angle, and according to a new report by the human rights group Privacy International, it’s not the usual story we like to tell ourselves about the wonders of Israeli high-tech.

In preparing their report, this group looked into how governments in Central Asia managed to install advanced monitoring and surveillance systems that tracked human rights activists, journalists and other citizens within and outside their countries. The group’s investigators interviewed dozens of political activists and journalists, who related that their Internet communications had been tracked by governments in the region. One of the key findings was that the Israeli companies NICE Systems and Verint were key players in supplying the technology that enabled the security organizations, heirs to the KGB after the demise of the Soviet Union to spy on their citizens.

“Central Asian governments installed advanced surveillance systems that included centers that could monitor all communications within the country,” reads the report. “These systems were set up thanks to foreign companies who provided the equipment and services that enable these regimes to spy on their people. The biggest players are multinationals with offices in Israel – NICE Systems and Verint.”

The report covered Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, all of which have been associated in the past with troublesome human rights records. Kazakhstan had a place of honor in the Human Rights Watch report in 2014: “The bad human rights situation there deteriorated even more in 2013.” The report notes that freedom of expression and religion, suppression of protest and torture are rife. The same report cites the situation in Uzbekistan as “shocking.” (source)

Because Israel has been continually preoccupied with destroying Iran, Israel wants to build on her historical relationship with Uzbekistan in order that they do not question her policy goals towards Iran, and at the very least will provide verbal support and not interference in any actions she may take against Iran. Since Israel also regards Russia as an enemy due to her close relationship with the USA, Israel’s position in Uzbekistan will to keep that nation close to her to serve as a buffer against any possible Russian disagreement with her policy objectives, such as with Russia’s support of Asad in Syria.

Iran/Turkey

While Iran and Turkey are historical rivals, they also share a common history and alliance with each other. Since the Uzbek people and culture are a mixture of Turkic and Persian, and given how the nation has been under the control of both and that in modern times there is a growing alliance between Turkey and Iran that we have written about, they will seek to use their religious and cultural ties to bring Uzbekistan back into their sphere of influence through and alliance of blood and heritage. They will promote Islamic revivalism in so far as bringing the people from a state of apathy and nominative cultural practice about Islam to a religious practice, but they want to do so in the context of bringing them into a pan-Turkic union as part of what Turkey desires, as we have made clear, a rebirth of the Ottoman Empire.

Such an alliance necessarily is against Russia and also favorable towards two of Turkey’s long-standing allies since the 15th century and, in the words of some, also blood-ties going back centuries, and these nations are Germany and Japan. As we have warned, this is part of the Turco-Aryan union of “Eurasia” that is tied to the revival of national socialism and the usage of advanced technology, genetic experiments, and biomechanics to attempt to create an “ubermensch” that will rule over the “untermenschen” of the world’s peoples. This is likewise tied to the manufactured “refugee crisis” and the rise of nationalism worldwide.

It is of note that Iran and Turkey have been building strong economic ties with each other, the UAE and other Gulf Arab state to the worry of Saudi Arabia. Likewise they have recently been making friendly economic gestures to Uzbekistan, and since economics precedes politics, we are seeing the beginning attempts at forming a Turkic union.

USA

American foreign policy of the last century has been based around two points- get crude oil and destroy Russia. The former is because, using an analogy I have drawn on before, America is addicted to a cheap supply of crude oil in order to sustain her empire, and she will prostitute herself to or enter into war with any nation in order to ensure that she gets this. The latter is because owing to their relative sizes in expanse and population as well as self-perception and attitude towards the world, there is little philosophical difference between the USA and Russia in terms of nationalism.

A video of a truck stop prostitute- sometimes called a “lot lizard”- attempting to ply her trade. What you see here is in a popular setting similar to that which the USA does with other nations, except on a larger scale. We approach other nations and will prostitute ourselves in order to gain access to a cheap supply of crude oil and rare earth minerals, except in recent years, when the demands of the USA have not been heeded, “revolutions” tend to happen or “attacks” that require “intervention.”

The USA knows well that Russia is suffering from many internal problems and has sought to expand her power by capitalizing on this decline not by creating problems, but simply by creating the conditions to perpetuate and sometimes exacerbate already existing problems. This is the philosophy behind the Jamestown Institute’s Decline of Russia project, which gives the public position on this particular aspect of American foreign policy:

As Russia heads into 2017, the anniversary of two revolutions, it faces a situation in which groups lumped together under the rubric of the Russian nation as well as people and regions considered homogeneous across its 11 time zones are becoming ever more assertive, even as the Kremlin becomes ever more centralist and restrictive. That creates a new kind of scissors’ crisis, one that opens the way to a revolutionary situation. In that situation, the center cannot hope to keep all the powers it now has without slipping ever further behind the rest of the world; and the regions are thus a revolutionary force. They can transform Russia without changing its borders if the center is clever, but disintegration is likely if the center is not. As such, regionalism is set to replace the role of nationalism in the next Russian revolution and to tear that country apart in a more complicated and likely violent way—the result of Putin’s mistaken approach to the three challenges his country now faces. (source)

Due to the fact that Uzbekistan is centrally located near Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan, she makes an ideal location to serve as both a control point for crude oil from central Asia as well as a place to interfere in territory with long historical ties to Russia. Given America’s alliance with Israel, it also provides as mentioned earlier a base of operations from which to launch attacks against Iran.

To make matters even more interesting, Uzbekistan has been a US ally and was even one of a select few nations (such as Poland) who hosted CIA “black sites” where suspected terrorists were tortured. American broadcasting for many years was streamed with permission into Uzbekistan, although in recent years the government rescinded permission at the same time it began to cultivate deeper military and economic ties with Russia.

While we have often cited this slide from Bernard Connolly’s 2009 talk about the EU and its desire to use terrorism as a foreign policy level, make no mistake, this also applies equally to the USA. It is a reflection of Operation Gladio, which as we have discussed here at Shoebat.com was the intentional funding of National Socialist movements beginning immediately after the defeat of National Socialist Germany as a “hedge” against the former Soviet Union.

The “refugee crisis,” the destabilization of the Middle East, and all of the justifications that lead up to it were not mere policy “blunders” in an absolute sense, but these were engineered demolitions of the current political order so that a new one might be built in its place, and all for the pursuit of money and power. It is for this reason that the famed American General Smedley Butler wrote in his must-read essay, War Is A Racket during the early 20th century, that many of the wars fought today are not done out of a genuine need to engage in a real conflict, but solely to indulge the avarice of men for money and power.

While America claims to have been in a “war on terror” since 2001, the fact is that terrorism has only increased around the world, and with it the expansion of American military intervention in other nations to a seemingly ever broadening sphere of influence. As we have noted, this terrorism is also being committed by people who have publicly acknowledged ties to military intelligence, industry, and financial supporters. While people rightly are enraged about the threat of Islamic terrorism, and it is indeed a consistent and long-standing threat, the fact is that terrorism in Islam has been used by governments throughout history for political gain by exploiting the theologically-rooted, inherent violence in order to justify an expansion of power. If anything, American business and financial interests have profited handsomely over the last two decades by offering “solutions” to Islamic terrorism. Given the geographic distance between America and Uzbekistan, American foreign policy goals, her alliance with Israel, and her goals with regard to Russia, if there is any nation who stands to benefit from supporting Islamic terrorism for political gain in this particular situation it is the USA.

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So what is to be said of the situation with Sayfullo Saipov? There is still much that we do not know and probably will never fully know. However, based on what one can piece together from what has happened, we can say there are more questions than answers, and that with each answer given comes a new series of questions, and to this when the question of American and Israeli foreign policy interests are added in combination with the fact that the USA has a long history of staging or allowing attacks to happen in order to justify long-term policy goals, and the fact that the attacker used a paintball gun and a B-B gun in his attack, one cannot help but look at the situation and suspect that this is far more than just a Muslim who was inspired by Islamic theology.

What will be of particular interest is to watch the course of American outreach and diplomacy towards Central Asia, and in particular Uzbekistan over the next year, as what happens there will give a greater indication as to whether or not this attack was staged or permitted or not. Indeed, Uzbekistan reached out the USA almost immediately after the attack and pledged full support to do what it could working with the USA:

Uzbekistan’s leader, in a condolence letter sent to President Trump, promised to assist the US in investigating the Manhattan attack, reportedly perpetrated by an Uzbek native. Tashkent will deploy all its resources to investigate “the terrorist act.”

Uzbekistan on its part is ready to use all its resources and means to assist in investigation of this terrorist act,” Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev wrote in a letter to US President Donald Trump Wednesday. Mirziyoyev also offered his condolences to relatives of those, who were killed in the vehicle rampage on Halloween night.

“A ruthless and an extremely violent crime” cannot be justified, the Uzbek leader said, adding that Tashkent condemns any form of extremism.Multiple media outlets identified the suspect as a 29-year-old man of Uzbek origins who reportedly came to the US in 2010, gaining legal status. (source)

There is a scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film The Godfather where one character, a singer by the name of Johnny Fontane (and supposed to be a representation of the real-life singer Frank Sinatra) and godson of Vito “the Godfather” Corleone is refused a contract for a role in a major film. Corleone sends his adopted son, Tom, to speak with the film director on behalf of him that Johnny would receive the contract. The director refuses, and in response Corleone has his soldiers kill the director’s prize horse and leave its disembodied head in the director’s bed. The director panics, and calls Corleone back and gives his godson the role in the film.

This scene, which is one among many of the memorable ones from the film, is most likely a representation of what happened with this recent incident in New York. Uzbekistan, once a much closer US ally had become more distant and started to build closer relations with its Russian neighbor. In response, the US “reminded” Uzbekistan of its relationship with them by executing an attack that, incidentally, could  be used to provoke a US military response into Uzbekistan on account of the nation “harboring terrorists,” and to which Uzbekistan responded (at least on the surface, more will have to be seen) by immediately reaching out to the USA.

In the words of Vito Corleone, “I’m gonna make ’em an offer they can’t refuse.”

This leads to a final point, and something that I have been hearing chatter about, which is that some Americans are suggesting that America needs to attack or invade Uzbekistan.

It has been an established fact for almost two decades now (possibly longer) that the confirmed majority of Americans are geographically illterate. Past and recent studies consistently confirm that even on matters of major nations in well-traveled, major areas or which make consistent major news headlines, Americans sadly but consistently fail at knowing ‘where stuff is in the world.’ For example, just last year the New York Times did a story which noted that in spite of all the rhetoric about North Korea, only 36% of people in a random sample could find North Korea on a map. A 2006 study by National Geographic showed that after three years of war in Iraq, only 37% of Americans could identify Iraq on a map.

Invading a nation, regardless of where it is, always is a major deal because people die and lives are changed forever. No military, regardless of any nation, is to be treated as a toy that can be used and moved about, and it is a great scandal in our time that the American military has been used for unjust ends both to the soldiers and to the peoples in the places they have been sent.

We live in a time of great manipulation, for as much information there is to educate oneself there is veritably as much disinformation intentionally propagated in order to sell ideas that are for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many and greater good. Indeed, when speaking of men who desire power at all costs and respect none, we are speaking of those who in the name of profit and a taste of power would destroy the lives of near anybody if it means realizing either of these ends. It appears that the Saipov incident may be one of these cases. More information will present itself in the future. That said, one also must remember the context in which events take place and the potential for long-term consequences.

For the last two decades, America has entered into a series of continual wars and revolutions across the Middle East, and all using some kind of “attack” or perceived threat of an attack to act. In Afghanistan it was 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. In Iraq it was Saddam Hussein’s creating “weapons of mass destruction with yellowcake uranium” despite our alliance with Saddam for years. In Syria it was the “human rights violations” of President Asad. In Yemen it was in pursuit of “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” In Pakistan it was the “threat of Al-Qaeda.” In Libya it was the “oppression” of Muammar Gaddhafi. After all of these incident, it has later been revealed that the reasons given were just lies in order to create a justification for military intervention.

Of all the invasions in the Middle East, Libya is a particularly interesting case because Muammar Gaddhafi had turned Libya from a backwards nations into a burgeoning power in Africa and on the world stage. For all of his negative points, Gaddhafi looked out for the best interest of his people and those of his neighbors, and in this video he famously warned that if he was destroyed, “Europe will turn black” because people from Africa would pour into the continent using Libya as a pathway of transit.

Gaddhafi was absolutely right in his assessment, and as we have continually emphasized on Shoebat.com and provided evidence to support our claims, this was done intentionally. The USA and Germany wanted to bring in a flood of people from Africa and the Middle East because they wanted to destabilize Europe in order to foment another war. There is no “migrant crisis” taking place, and there is no “Muslim invitation,” but there is an open invitation being subsidized by these governments for the purpose of later turning on these same people and slaughtering them as a political sacrifice.

It is concerning to note that signs of this same pattern with Uzbekistan are emerging again. I am not saying there is going to be a US military incursion into Uzbekistan. What I am saying is there is a clear pattern of behavior here, and that given the last two decades, one should take note of this behavior, and the pattern seems to be repeating in the news in a simlar way during the build up to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria:

THE depraved truck massacre in lower Manhattan is the latest in a spate of terror attacks carried out by Uzbek nationals.

In a period 16 months, radicals from Uzbekistan have unleashed four deadly assaults in the West – while countless more have travelled to Syria to fight for Islamic death cults.

And inside the “oppressive” Central Asian country, which borders Afghanistan, homegrown terror group Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014.

But how did this former Soviet country become one of the world’s chief exporters of terrorism?

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbekistan has developed into a hardline Muslim-majority dictatorship with a struggling economy.

From 1991 to 2004, the government imprisoned over 7,000 Uzbeks for “Islamist extremism” under the iron fist of President Islam Karimov, who died last year.

Craig Murray, the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, said torture, kidnapping, murder, rape by the police, financial corruption, religious persecution, censorship and other human rights abuses were rampant in the nation.

He also claimed Karimov’s security forces executed prisoners Muzafar Avazov and Khuzniddin Alimov by boiling them alive in 2002.

And it’s the regime’s “heavy-handed” security approach which has inspired angry young Uzbeks to join ISIS and IMU, reports CNN. (source)

The fact is the majority of Americans have no idea where Uzbekistan is, and yet some are already floating the idea of invading and bombing that nation because some guy who is of Uzbek nationality “attacked America.” This is before even looking at further details of the case, let alone considering greater possible aims for why such an attack happened in the context of contemporary geopolitics.

This is not the time to rush, but to stop, calm down, and think clearly, because when we do not is when innocent people die and for no reason other than somebody wanted to make money or get power without any care for his fellow man what so ever.

What will you do?

Years ago, UNICEF released this video of the smurfs depicting the horrors of war and what it does to people. I am no fan of UNICEF by any means, but it illustrates in a memorable way that which is too easy to forget, which is the horrors of war and ultimately, the temporal penalties of original sin.

Ask yourself, what happened to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East? And for what?

Just as a rock thrown into a pond creates ripples that affect the state of the entire pond, so much more do a man’s actions affect those of his fellow man.

While war is sometimes necessary, the great majority of wars are not, being simply contests for more power from those never satisfied with enough.