NORTH CAROLINA - One can believe without fear of realistic opposition that people in general are much the same everywhere. Sure, cultures vary, religions and social systems vary, but the fundamental aspects and challenges and even joys of human life remain constant. This is no great epiphany, just simply the result of exposure. That said, feel-good narratives are all over the U.S. media, but most all of it is propaganda to give the largely unexposed public the impression that all is well. It isn’t.

Of late one feel-good narrative has focused on George H.W. Bush, who died. You would think this former one-term President was some kind of Christian saint, or maybe a man of al-Ghazzali’s wisdom and stature in the Muslim world. No way. Bush was in fact the epitome of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant butcher masquerading as some sort of “man of peace” when he was President, and before in other governmental positions.

 He actually was responsible for the butchering of hundreds of thousands of human beings. One notable incident occurred when he butchered many thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were in hasty retreat from Kuwait during the first Gulf War. This was unnecessary carnage. The war had already been won, and anyway it had originally gathered steam because of a false report that Iraqi soldiers were murdering babies in incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals.

Anyway, George H.W. Bush had a fancy funeral in Washington. At the official funeral ceremony his eldest son, George W, Bush spoke. You know, the President who ginned up the so-called “War on Terror” and invaded several countries, most notably Iraq. He is reported to have butchered maybe a couple million Middle Eastern people, most of them Muslims. Like father, you might say, like son.

Now, it has become accepted wisdom, even in the U.S., that the Iraq War was a “mistake” (for a number of obvious reasons only sub-cretins could miss.). Since Bush junior was responsible for this war, inasmuch as he was overwhelmed by bad Neocon and Zionist advice, he has not been particularly popular since he left office. In fact, he has often been ridiculed as a horrible President, and as well widely considered Not Very Bright (NVB).

 But lo and behold, at his Dad’s funeral service, he kind of redeemed himself according to reports as a man of substance and even as a President of substance, even though there was no evidence to support such a reassessment – except, allegedly, for the fact that when he was delivering his eulogy for his father at the funeral service, he choked and cried like a baby. Imagine! History gets revised in mainstream media reports because George W. Bush wept at his father’s funeral, because he showed some emotion publicly.

The problems with and in the U.S. have become too deep and they’ve been around too long, and past errors continue to be compounded by further errors. For example, we just learned that oversight (or fraud) by the Pentagon has resulted in Saudi and U.A.E. warplanes waging war on Yemen while being refueled in midair by U.S. military tanker aircraft for free – or rather on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.

 Who knows if this was intentional, but the Pentagon has also pooh-poohed a halt to funding for the war on Yemen because, and this is a quote, “it would send the wrong message”. I wonder what that message might be that is “wrong”? That halting mass killings is “wrong”?

 And this week we got to hear from General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the U.S., who said that the U.S. military will stay in Afghanistan because if it pulled out it would risk “another 9/11” in the U.S. Frankly, it’s just the opposite: Usama bin Laden’s primary complaint was the presence of the U.S. military in Arabia! But these errors of judgment or fraud and more by past and current U.S. “leaders”, bad as they are, are minor compared to, arguably, the greatest error of all:

The ability to put one’s self in the shoes of other humans and therefore understand why they may have a grievance, rather than assuming they are simply not human or somehow of a sub-species. Let’s be clear: this incapacity is ultimately the death of nations or governments or regimes.

The two most prominent countries which are currently failing are the U.S. and Israel. In Israel, we hear from Gideon Levy, that country’s finest journalist, who says that the far-right Zionists and even a majority of Israelis are completely “at peace” with the Occupation in Palestine. Why is that? Because, Levy says, most Israelis really believe that they are Allah’s “chosen” people. That and the Holocaust have given Jews to imagine they have the “right” to do ANYTHING they want anywhere they want.

 They simply do not care at all about Palestinians and many others, who are considered sub-human, just as the Jews allegedly were by the Nazis. In somewhat the same vein, people like the Bushes and General Dunford and many other “leaders” don’t give a damn about the suffering the U.S. military and U.S .policies have caused worldwide for decades. Why? Because people of different cultures and governments, especially if they don’t succumb to U.S. imperialism or hegemonic demands, are considered lesser human beings, if not sub-humans.

General Dunford is worried about another 9/11 which dropped three tall buildings in New York with some peripheral damage and killed 3,000 plus people …  when the U.S. has laid waste to vast portions of entire countries and killed millions since the end of World War 2? The attack on Fallujah alone in Iraq during the Iraq War leveled thousands of buildings and killed tens of thousands of civilian residents. Is it not clear what I am driving at? Here it is:

Countries with leaders that do what the U.S. and Israelis have been doing, to cite just two nations and there are several others, are literally doomed. They may not be doomed this year or even next or even in five years, but doom remains inevitable. They are doomed sub specie aeternitatis, to use a Latin phrase, “under the gaze of eternity”. They are doomed from the standpoint of what is universally and eternally true.

For example, one truism is that people are much the same everywhere and share the same characteristics, good and bad. And the action by one group or nation against another, as if this is not true, as if one group obviously human is considered sub-human, this is deadly to the group or nation or leaders with such beliefs on offense. History shows this clearly. And one other truism is that it is very difficult, but definitely possible, to be a wise leader, and I hope Iran’s leaders are. Bush junior would have been far better weeping in sorrow for his own and his father’s miserable Presidencies, too.