America

If relationships between nations often resemble those between individuals, it's not an accident. Evolution (opportunistic as it is) may have allowed us to use the cognitive skills originally evolved for reasoning only about individuals for reasoning about tribes, nations, and countries as well. That may be why individual relationship concepts such as friendship, trust, betrayal, animosity and helpfulness seem so naturally applicable to relationships between countries. Hence, we can talk about us (i.e., America) wanting revenge from Afghanistan for the hurt that it has caused us through its "cowardly and shameful" acts of bombing our embassies and destroying some of our tallest buildings that took us so long to build. Afghanistan on the other hand seems to be pleading with us not to take revenge. It shows us its poverty, its misery, and scars that it got from earlier conflicts with the late Soviet Union (funny back then we were Afghanistan's friends). It has been complaining for years (just like all the other dark, ugly-looking, small, poor, have-nots) about the rich, mighty, powerful, and great-white America not listening to it. It's been whining (just like a cry baby) about America helping the enemy (Israel) of Afghanistan's friends (Arab countries including Palestine) who has unjustly occupied the land belonging to Palestine. Israel in turn reminds us about the past wounds it still nurses from things so horrible that they cannot even be spoken of by anybody having a shred of civilization (they must only be referred by the name “Holocost”). Surely, those unspeakable crimes of the past grant it the perpetual monopoly on victimhood till eternity. Like a victim of childhood abuse it demands its right to abuse others now that it's powerful and all grown up. "Where were you when I was being violated by that ruthless animal Germany? Where were you when I was almost killed by your friends?" it tells us. Shame on you for telling me to behave now.

Being good Christians we listen and we understand that that's how things must be if the end of the world script is to unfold as the good Book says it must. And who are we to judge others anyways. Didn't Jesus say, "judge not others lest yea be judged?" (and believe me we definitely don't wanna be judged). Even though the treatment of Palestinians seems so unfair to our human eyes it must not be really so. He makes things appear different than they really are. Lord indeed works in very mysterious ways. If we could just suspend our judgment and allow Him to work His magic and proceed with His Devine script He will be able to show us the final act heralding the era of peace for all. Only if the stupid Palestine were to stop crying so loudly and its moronic, ignorant, heathen friends such as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan were to stop resisting the inevitable. Morons indeed, what the heck do they have to gain out of it anyways? We can understand Arabs siding with other Arabs but what's up with these wanna-be Arabs? That part of the world is a strange place indeed. Maybe that's why the Lord has made America so powerful at this historic time. So that we can ensure that our Lord's script unfolds as it is supposed to and no moron screws it up for the rest of the humanity.

But this time the heathens have gone too far. They have directly attacked our very body. This must not go unpunished. If it does then it'll be open season against us. Everybody with a scratch will be showing up to get revenge. We can almost hear them in the background murmuring, "I think the bully is down. It's time to get revenge for all the humiliations, for all the jabs, for all the kicks, for all the brownies stolen and for all the lunch money taken by force." We must stand up for ourselves because it's a jungle out there. Old mother England, all weak and wrinkly still wants to protect us but she can't do much regardless of how reinvigorated she feels with the new Asian immigrant blood. France and Germany are pledging to do everything they can to help us but we know that they would be more than happy to take our place if something unforsaken were to happen to us. There is a bunch of other smaller kids who've helped us from time to time (and God know we've helped them back many times more) but they only hang out with us because we are rich and powerful. They'll switch their loyalties to the next bully before we can say, "help us." There are no teachers, no police and no courts to go to in this jungle called world. That doesn’t mean that the have-nots and up and coming, naive, bleeding-heart liberal wannabees such as Canada and those Gorgeous Scandinavian sisters (some friends they are) have not been trying to get together to get back at us. They have been thinking up of all sorts of crazy schemes such as League of Nations, United Nations, World Court (can you imagine!). But alongwith the other things, the Lord has blessed America with abundance of wisdom as well. We could see where all this nonsense would eventually lead to. So we made sure that so that none of these "institutions" interfere with us. We can veto any resolutions that we don't like by UN's only committee that can stop things by force. And take this, the World Court can only make judgments if we ask it to judge us (as if that's going to happen in a million years!).

We are not saying that we are without our faults, we have made some mistakes in the past. For example, back in 1998 we allowed Afghanistan to escape with light corporal punishment. We thought we should give the poor kid a chance to learn to behave. Look at how those ungrateful bastards paid us for our kindness? We won't make that mistake again. This time we'll make sure that Afghanistan is never able to hurt anyone ever again. There is still a lot of evil left in the world but Lord willing we will rid the world from evil.

Dr. Afzal Upal is a well known cognitive scientist and former Professor of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. Currently, he works as a scientific consultant in Washington DC. He has previously been published on Chowk. His previous articles including "Akbar Mai" and "Beyond Regional Thinking."