Mulla Omar was the bad guy in Bush’s minds. (He has not remained that bad now, as America is willing to negotiate with him, even allowing him to be the “part of the democratic process”.) He had given safe haven to Osama Ben Laden’s men. So his regime that had brought more peace to Afghanistan than any previous regime would have to be changed. The change cost at least 70000 innocent lives. The new regime has failed to bring peace in its own country and in the neighbouring country that has equally suffered at the hands of America. There are hardly any hopes that peace will return to the region in near future. The forced regime change brought by America and its peace-loving has only brought death and disaster.
Saddam Hussein was a good guy when he heard the call of Washington to wage war against Khomeini’s Iran. He soon became a bad guy who amassed weapons of mass destruction. He needed to go. And Bush did not only change the regime but got him hanged. The cost: more than 1 million deaths. And today’s Iraq is surely much more dangerous than it was in Saddam’s days. Daily killings in sectarian violence do not attract much media attention only because they are occurring in a country where an American supported government is sitting.
Now Bashar Assad has become the villain of peace. He alone is held responsible for all the deaths that have occurred in Syria including those of his army (which number more than half) and the civilians in combat roles that the rebels employed with the money of their Western and Arab backers. There is again a talk of the change of regime. Commentators from across the world, especially from the West and the Middle East, want the end of Assad hoping that it will end the bloodshed there because they have been made to believe that rebels are fighting a just war against a ruler who is killing his own people. They seem to have forgotten a history that is still thundering. They believe that American strikes or larger action will bring peace to Syria. I wish they were right!