President George Bush delivered his latest speech in a bid to rally faltering public faith in his leadership, but there are few reasons for being optimistic; violence in Iraq has continued to escalate, despite many projecting a decline after the January 2005 ‘elections’ held under occupation. Similar projections were made after the capture of Saddam Hussein, and again after the alleged transfer of sovereignty, when the former CIA operative, Iyad Alawi, was put in charge. Now, Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that the resistance may last up to 12 years.
The flow of lucrative oil is constantly disrupted, and the American companies are not doing as well as they should be in ‘reconstructing’ Iraq, with its oil revenue. Add to this is the increasing resistance from the Taliban in Afghanistan, where they have shot down an American helicopter, killing at least 17 US troops.
Eventually, the US may resurrect a ‘free’ Iraq but most probably, it will be chained by a debt-leash; the valuable assets and the major industries of the country were put on sale earlier, by Paul Bremer. Thus, the main parties that will be enjoying ‘free’ Iraq are the US and other western multinationals with the new ruling elites in Iraq inflating their personal bank accounts.
January 2005 election produced a regime that is no more than a monkey for the US organ grinder. Far from being in a position to demand withdrawal of all the foreign troops, the regime is in need of them for its own survival. Indeed, how a country can be proclaimed as sovereign while occupied by foreign forces simply defies common sense.
There are number of issues raised by Bush in his speech, but only the most pertinent ones have been elaborated below.
Terror and Terrorists
Bush addressed the soldiers at Fort Bragg, an institution that he carefully avoided to serve in, like all the other chicken-hawks. He told them that they are fighting a war on “terror”, a diplomatic term for Islam. Even the most gullible ones have now recognised this point after seeing the desecration of the Quran and the Mosques deliberately attacked and desecrated. The US soldiers (‘interrogators’) were trained to offend practicing Muslims. This was seen in the manner which the prisoners, including females and children1, were brutalised in Abu-Ghraib and other US-led prisons. If the Iraqis were going to be ‘free’, they had to learn the ways of ‘civilised’ America. So, they were given practical lessons on how to sodomise and rape, perform bondage, inflict sadistic torture and other unimaginable forms of depravity and brutality.
In line with the basic Hollywood script, the good guys are the cowboys and the bad guys are the “terrorists” because they resist American imperialism. Today the “terrorists” are Muslims; yesterday it was the Native Americans, African-Americans, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Communists; tomorrow it may be the turn of the Chinese and others. It would be far more objective to ascertain the identity of the “terrorists”, by assessing who have managed to terrorise the people of Iraq: the US army or the Iraqi resistance. Who is more likely to deliberately shoot an innocent Iraqi going to the market past a check point?
The reality is that the Iraqi resistance can never match the American firepower; the US is delivering terror en masse. No car bomb can match the casual dropping of daisy cutters, JDAMS, Cluster bombs, Napalm and Cruise missiles. Why not simply ask in the spirit of democracy, the citizens of Fallujah, Ramadi, and Anbar as to who they are terrorised by, instead of arrogantly assuming to speak on behalf of the Iraqi masses?
George Bush referred to Iraq resistance as “hunting down terrorists”. So now they are not even “insurgents” in their own lands! There was no ‘terrorists’, no Musab al-Zarqawi, no car bombs, no kidnappings and no beheadings in Iraq prior to the war. Therefore, what the US is hunting now is its own creation; - these phenomena are the consequence of its action and not the cause!
The “insurgents” became “terrorists”, and then they were referred to as “foreign fighters”, as if the Iraqis are simply spectators in the entire thing. “Foreign fighters” have come from other neighbouring Arab/Muslim countries, constituting less than 1% of the resistance. If those Arab/Muslims from Saudi, Syria, and Jordan are foreigners, what are the Poles, Aussies, Brits, Japs and Italians in Iraq? Are they native or have they been given an Iraqi green-card by Jafari?
Ideology of the ‘Terrorists’ and the State Terrorists
In line with the Hollywood mindset, the explanation given behind the motives of the ‘terrorists’ was simple; they are “ruthless killers” who wants to “remake the Middle East in their own grim image of tyranny and oppression by toppling governments, driving us out of the region….” The image is referring to political Islam. Addressing Political Islam directly creates more difficulties, as some level of justification and elaboration would be required.
Furthermore, if political Islam is so evil, then surely it would be rejected by the people of the Middle East and elsewhere. However, what if the masses want political Islam, and what if they want to remove the existing borders and unify the lands? Should the US not bow down to the dictates of the masses, instead of dictating to the people of that region?
So far the Bush logic is this: it is totalitarian for the Muslims to demand political Islam as a framework, but it is advancing ‘freedom’ by imposing the ideology of the state terrorist (western democracy) with the barrel of a gun. Hence, the Iraqis are ‘free’ when they have been chained to the ideology of the state terrorists! It is the US that epitomises the evil face of totalitarian ideology, in a cloak of freedom and democracy, and it has been busy eliminating all political opponents inside Iraq.
Bush bragged about how the US can tolerate genuine dissent, so why not then open up their mass media, to fully debate with the political wings of the Al-Qaeda and/or the genuine (radical) Islamic movements? Truth is chicken-hawks driven by fanaticism and cowardice, are the ones unable to tolerate any form of dissent; this is why all you get is the obnoxious yanks and Zionists ranting in the one-dimensional channels like Fox TV and CNN. Major US personalities can appear in Arab/Islamic channels but the reverse is very rare!
Who are the “Ruthless Killers” of innocents?
Bush did not hesitate to call the Iraqi resistance acting in self-defence of their lands as “terrorists” and “ruthless killers”, but what are the US forces, when they have initially killed more than 100,000 civilians, largely comprising of women and children, who have done no harm to the US! What about the deliberate killing of 500,000 Iraqi children through applying the criminal economic sanctions over the last decade? To blame the victim for retaliating with ‘violence’ while ignoring the initial violence of the aggressor goes against human nature and the concept of justice!
It is the US with its murdering ideology of democracy and freedom that has killed in millions; annihilated the native populations of American, nuked civilian cities, burned down cities with napalm and incendiary bombs, enslaved millions of Africans. Only 50 years ago, lynching African Americans was a pastime for many Americans. Such cruel examples cannot be found in our history and such crimes would never take place under Political Islam (Khilafa).
Who really exhibits hate?
The Muslims are not xenophobic, even as bombs are dropped on our cities; the masses have not invented equivalent words like “sand niggers”, “rag heads”, “towel heads”. Real hatred is fostered by the constant brain washing and the xenophobic propaganda emitted by the ubiquitous mass media. If international opinions had not changed, one would have seen many Muslims lynched and hanged, just as it was done to the innocent African-Americans for centuries.
Muslims exhibit anger, because they are the ones who are occupied, uprooted and subjected to colonisation for the last two to three hundred years. This sort of emotion is expected being part of human nature, and it is product of a particular circumstance, with time it will diminish. Where as genuine hate is relatively permanent, built through the systematic indoctrination of ideas of racial superiority and nationalism. We have even see a glimpse of that rampant racism, and hatred, in the words uttered by the former US President Richard Nixon2 and his Secretary of State, Kissinger about India and their former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Regional Change
In his naiveté Bush referred to some of the actions taken by dictatorial regimes of Saudi, Egypt and Libya, as evidence of winds of democracy. Libya’s pronouncement to abandon its non-existent nuclear ambitions is propelled by a desire to normalise economic relationships with the West, and nothing to do with democracy. The nominal reforms in Saudi or Egypt are also token gestures, as opposed to implementing real change. In fact, the first place that Saudi, Libya and Egypt should start from is releasing the political prisoners in their jails. Some of these prisoners were kidnapped by the CIA from other countries and deposited in Egypt to extract information by using torture, e.g. Abu Amaar of Italy, amongst many others; the point being, what happened to democracy, rule of law and the sovereignty of Italy? They have proven themselves as liars and hypocrites!
Genuine change will emanate from within. What they are demanding from within is the freedom from US and Israeli occupation. Freedom from the imposed dictatorships, which are now being replaced with a new generation of ‘elected’ dictatorships.
Sacrifice
From a safe distance, Bush praised the sacrifices made by the US soldiers, something which he does not know about as he has never served time in the army, let alone in actual combat. But who are those making the sacrifices, the poor and the destitute of America and in particular from the Afro-American and Hispanic community. They were the same people used as cannon fodder in Vietnam.
Now you would have thought, the US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice would bring such a point to the attention of the white dominated US congress and administration. Which again are busy trying to implement proportional representation in Iraq, but where is the proportional representation of the Afro-American, Hispanic and the oriental community in the US Congress? If anywhere, they are over represented in the prisons.
9/11 Link
As for the link to 9/11, it was mentioned several times in Bush’s speech, in defence of prolonging the occupation, since the original pretext of WMD’s has been proven false, so there wasn’t much scope to disarm Iraq, which was bleeding under economic sanctions. Then Saddam was also caught, as the Baathist regime simply melted away. But everyone knows Iraq was not responsible for 9/11, and the Democratic Party leadership went on to criticise Bush for referring to the incident.
The link to 9/11 may not be there physically, but the link exists on another plane which is the ties of religion, language and culture of the 19 alleged Hijackers with the Arab/Muslim population in Iraq. That is all these Crusaders need. Blood lusts for revenge, along with the greed for Iraq’s oil, made it much more lucrative then say Egypt or Sudan or Syria; the other oil-rich states are totally dependent on US support for their survival, hence already in the US pockets.
Conclusion
As many had noticed, Bush’s speech only confirmed how detached he is from the reality. He stated that the insurgents “failed to stop the transfer of sovereignty” but how does Iraq become sovereign while remaining under occupation. Bush claimed that the “insurgents” failed to break the coalition which consisted of US and UK, with nominal support from countries that have prostituted themselves for a few dollars. He also claimed that “insurgents” wanted to initiate a sectarian war, which could only benefit the US to the detriment of the Iraqi resistance. Likewise he referred to the insurgents failing to prevent a free election which is odd, since the election was held under occupation.
Bush also went on to urge the Americans to protect “the future of the Middle East” from men like bin Laden. Well, why not let the Middle East decide who they want protection from in the spirit of democracy and freedom!
It is the US version of Democracy which is losing its credibility. If anything the US has become more unpopular than ever before. Far from being an example, it is despised not just by the Arab/Muslim masses but the vast majority of the international community, who have also been victims of US aggression in the past.
In contrast, Islam continues to flourish in the heart of the US and it is Political Islam (Khilafa) that will eliminate the real source of terrorism, racism, hateful societies, state terrorism and economic exploitation. Remember, Iraqis, Palestinians, Afghanis and others do want freedom, but, that is freedom from US occupation.
Footnotes
