SOON after a deranged man killed 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, last year, a Muslim imam and the president of a Muslim organization in Ottawa met US Ambassador David Jacobson to express their regrets. It's noble to embrace others, especially in their time of grief. Regretfully, no such condolence calls were made to other victims of terror. In India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Egypt, Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza and some other places thousands of innocent people have been killed, injured or displaced by outside powers or by terrorists. There's no evidence of similar visits to diplomats from these countries to express sympathy. The visit to the US Embassy led to the two Muslim organizations inviting the US ambassador to talk at a mosque on "Strengthening Bridges and Working Together for a Better Future." It's a good topic, but hollow in the light of reality. The US backed Turkey when the USSR pressed it after the World War II to cede it territory. The US pushed the Soviet Union hard to withdraw troops from Iran after World War II. The US nudged Israel, Britain and France to leave after they had invaded Egypt in 1956. The US warned India not to attack West Pakistan after it defeated Pakistan in 1971 and turned East Pakistan into Bangladesh. When the Serbs killed Muslims in the former Yugoslavia the US bombed them to prevent further massacres. The US liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupiers. US arms and training helped the Afghans to defeat Soviet forces, which had occupied their country. It helped oust Muammar Ghaddafi in Libya. On the other side, US interferes in Muslim countries, as in Latin America, to change regimes that safeguard their people's interests. The US and the UK joined to oust Iran's elected Premier Mohammed Mossadegh and restore the hated Shah to the peacock throne. US policies have caused or facilitated the death, injuries, starvation or permanent displacement of millions of Muslims, mostly in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Economic sanctions imposed by the UN and the US caused widespread starvation and deaths in Iraq. Then came the US invasion. The US insisted that Iraq had accumulated weapons of mass destruction. As the UN stated, this was a lie. The irony is that the, US and Israel own destructive weapons and have used them against neighbors and others. The US attack killed 655,000 Iraqis according to the John Hopkins University in Baltimore and Al Mustansiriya University of Baghdad. It displaced 3.5 million to 5 million Iraqis. It also unleashed hatred, which continues to kill innocent people. The Palestinians are also pulverized. Israeli scholars admit that the Israeli militia expelled 700,000 Palestinians in 1948. After the 1967 war Israel expelled 100,000 to 260,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and 80,000 from the Golan Heights. Some one million Palestinians live in Israel. More than 30 laws discriminate against them and doom them to poverty and degradation. Israel controls the West Bank tightly with 550,000 illegal settlers enjoying privileges while the Palestinians are controlled, arrested and detained without charge, deprived of access to their lands by the vicious checkpoints and the apartheid wall and are denied fundamental rights. Israel controls Gaza tightly making 80 percent of Gazans dependent on UN even for food. The Palestinian human rights organization BADIL estimated that at the end of 2011 at least 7.4 million Palestinians were displaced. Israel tramples on the Palestinians and cows its neighbors because of unlimited US economic, military and diplomatic support. The US has given Israel more than $140 billion. Israel gets about $3 billion in direct US aid every year including $8.5 million in military aid every day even though Israel has stockpiled nuclear weapons and is amassing more. The war in Afghanistan stemmed from 9/11, 2001. The US stated that it was under attack and asked NATO partners to join in attacking Afghanistan to topple the Taliban. Several countries did. So did the Afghan Northern Alliance. The Karzai government praises and criticizes the Allies alternately. Allied forces are training Afghan forces. But Afghan troops also kill Americans, calling them enemies. Afghan civilians support the Taliban in some areas, fight them in others. Nobody knows how Afghanistan will fare when the Allied combat troops withdraw in 2014. Pakistan's decision to align with the US in that war is now destabilizing the country. Its army is fighting tribesmen in the tribal belt where the government has no authority. Thousands of troops and North Waziris have been killed and wounded and the war continues. US drone attacks on Al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan started in 2004. So far more than 3,000 innocent people have been killed. In March 2013 UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson said that the drone attacks violate Pakistan's sovereignty. Pakistan says 80 percent of the drone victims are civilians. A PEW Survey in 21 countries shows that confidence in US foreign policy has fallen sharply in Europe, China, Russia, Japan, Mexico and other countries. In Muslim countries it is down to 15 percent in 2012 from 25 percent in 2009. Drone attacks are opposed in every country except the US and India. In Pakistan 74 percent of the people consider the US an enemy. The invitation to the US ambassador seemed particularly surprising because Canadian ministers, leaders, human rights activists, Aboriginal elders or Muslim diplomats had not been so honored. Some Muslim leaders and imams sat grim-faced at the function. Other Muslim leaders and imams did not attend. I bowed my head, thought of the Holocaust, the Palestinians and Gazans, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Iraqis, Afghans, Cambodia, the Iranians being squeezed, Rwanda, Mossadegh, Abu Ghraib, Sabra and Shatila, My Lai, Salvadore Allende, the Shias and Christians being killed and other victims of man's brutality to man. I prayed for a more just, sane and humane world. — Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, Order of Ontario and the Queen's Diamond and Golden Jubilee Medals
