Humility to compromise for solutions, conscience to admit to failure

May 12, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Today as we reflect on the past one and half years of this COVID-19 pandemic. We are still puzzled about the new normal and the end result. As soon as the thoughts come that life can return to some normalcy, something happens in another part of the world that causes chain reactions in many countries and we regress. The people who we have elected to make policies and decisions for us are having nightmares in finding solutions to this evolving upheaval.
This novel COVID–19 pandemic is the biggest challenge that has confronted the world. It has certainly established the limitations and vulnerability of human beings. One asks the question, is this an act of God for all the transgressions that have taken place for the past centuries? Let us look around the world and see the destruction, which was created by men’s greed for power, by some arrogant and hasty politicians. Let’s examine the realities of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Burma, China, the Balkans, Kashmir and Palestine, just to name a few. Poor innocent civilians are led to immeasurable sufferings for reasons even the oppressors cannot understand.
We have seen in the Biblical scriptures how the Lord of the heavens and the earth humbled great nations, when they transgressed and overstepped their boundaries. The time has come for the leaders of the world to do some introspection and return to dialogue and compromise to settle international issues. On the contrary, we see the countries that are least affected in this crisis are those that did not participate in those unjust wars that have plagued the nations aforementioned.
Recently, I read a disheartening story, which involved a decorated American soldier in Iraq. Robert Bales a former sniper and spree killer of the United States Army who murdered 16 Afghan civilians in Panjwayi, Kandahar, Afghanistan, on March 11, 2012 – an event known as the Kandahar massacre.
In his reports, he said that they were instructed to check a small flat house; they kicked down the door and killed the occupants by gunshot wounds to their heads and thereafter setting the bodies alight. They had not found anything harmful in that house. That soldier disclosed that he is so traumatised by the event that he almost lost his mind. He said that he has never seen so many frightened faces, until today, they are still staring at him. My question is do we really think that almighty God will give us a good and happy life when we transgress all boundaries? Never my friends!

Respectfully,
Nazar Mohamed