America First & the Dilemma of Justice

Feb 6

Morning reflection
When politics is reduced to a marketing slogan, truth becomes a line item open to discounts, and justice pays a cost that never appears on the receipt.

Evening reflection
As the day ends, the question grows heavier and refuses to sleep: can a vision that builds its strength by denying the rights of others ever produce a peace that is truly livable?

In the vocabulary of "America First," the world is no longer a shared moral space, but a marketplace of deals governed by the logic of quick profit. The Middle East, through this lens, becomes a board of negotiations where maps of influence are traded at the expense of maps of justice.

Normalization is promoted as an achievement, while Palestinian rights are pushed to the margins of the conversation. Sanctions, meanwhile, tighten around societies more than they weaken regimes, generating widespread pain without meaningful change.

Names change—secretaries, ambassadors, advisers—but the spirit remains the same: firm alliances with power, fragile commitments to international law. A policy that bets almost entirely on deterrence, while ignoring the fact that deterrence without justice does not create stability; it merely postpones the explosion.

Philosophically, this is security without safety. It expands the circle of "order" through force, yet narrows the horizon of solutions. A system built on the denial of the other lacks its most basic ethical condition. Delayed justice is not neutrality; it is a slow accumulation of violence. Every settlement imposed without rights stores up fragility that exposes itself at the first real test.

Confusing peace with silence is one of the most dangerous forms of political deception. Silence may resemble calm, but it does not prevent the storm. A peace that refuses to recognize rights quickly turns into a strained truce— one sustained by fear rather than trust.

In this way, "America First" revives an old question in new clothing: is power measured by the ability to impose reality, or by the ability to build a just system that endures?

History— not slogans— will deliver the answer.

English

Osama Shakman

Forty years in the sky were not merely a profession, but a long meditation on the meaning of existence. Borders drawn on maps dissolve, and the world becomes a single, living whole, where everything seems small except the human being.

In that altitude, I learned to observe and to understand before I judge, to see turbulence as part of a greater order not immediately visible to the eye. The sky was my first teacher: its vastness teaches humility, and its silence awakens the art of listening.

Today, I exchange the cockpit for the pen—not to recount a professional biography nor to stand on a political platform, but to open a window for reflection. What I write is not borrowed theory, but thoughts born of lived experience—of long flight hours and quiet moments between takeoff and landing.

This space is simply a free ground for thought, where words are kept from noise and the human story is honored, however simple it may seem. For every life, no matter how fleeting, carries a meaning worth telling and a voice worth hearing.

Welcome to a new journey—one measured not in miles, but in depth of thought and breadth of vision.

٤٠ عاما في السماء، عمر من المراقبة

أربعون عامًا في السماء لم تكن مجرد مهنة، بل تأمّلًا طويلًا في معنى الوجود. تتلاشى الحدود التي رسمناها على الخرائط، ويغدو العالم كتلةً واحدة نابضة بالحياة، حيث يصغر كل شيء إلا الإنسان.

في ذلك العلوّ تعلّمت أن أراقب وأفهم قبل أن أحكم، وأن أرى الاضطراب جزءًا من نظامٍ أكبر لا تدركه العين لأول وهلة. كانت السماء معلمي الأول: اتساعها يعلّم التواضع، وصمتها يوقظ الإصغاء.

واليوم أستبدل قمرة القيادة بالقلم، لا لأروي سيرةً مهنية ولا لأعتلي منبرًا سياسيًا، بل لأفتح نافذةً للتأمل. ما أكتبه ليس نظرياتٍ مستعارة، بل أفكار وُلدت من التجربة، من ساعات الطيران الطويلة ولحظات التأمل بين الإقلاع والهبوط.

هذا الفضاء مساحةٌ حرة للفكر، تُصان فيها الكلمة من الضجيج، ويُحتفى بالقصة الإنسانية مهما بدت بسيطة. فكل حياة، وإن بدت عابرة، تحمل معنى يستحق أن يُروى وصوتًا يستحق أن يُصغى إليه.

مرحبًا بكم في رحلةٍ لا تُقاس بالأميال، بل بعمق الفكرة واتساع الرؤية.

America First & the Dilemma of Justice

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