Re: If Bush had half a diplomatic bone in his body he would have least gotten Turkey. They're in NATO. And Germany should have be easy too. Even Japan or Mexico.
You forgot Canada... Bush didn't even win over Canada! His Judeofascist advisers figured the US could make do without allies --apart from Israel and the Blairs & Howards... How wrong they were --their hubris will cost them/you dearly. Sure, the US is powerful, yet, not THAT powerful... Does the US have some special weapon that no other country has? Nukes? Other countries do have nukes. Stealth fighters? Any Yugoslav hillbilly can shoot them down... Spacecraft perhaps? Oh, I see! the US has entered a secret alliance with some ALIEN superpower, eh? If things turn really nasty (SARS), Americans will all be able to relocate on Mars? If so, go ahead... otherwise, you'd better think twice before snafuing the Middle East.
Exclusive: You Are a Strange One, Mr. Bush
Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji, noraaalkheriji@arabnews.com
The US president has closed his eyes and blocked his ears to all the voices rising in a chorus against the war on Iraq. Governments worldwide, and even the majority of people in his own nation, don't back this unjustified war, despite George W. Bush's promises that it would be short and with no resistance. In just days he will bring back the spoils of war, guaranteed by control of Iraqi oil fields, causing the American economy to boom and bringing contracts for the biggest US companies to rebuild what the Americans themselves have destroyed.
It is a war planned for by Bush's administration and inspired by Israel, which aims to realize its dream of an Israeli [sphere of influence] extending from the Nile to the Euphrates River; never mind that the plan has been altered to stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile River instead. Bush declared war without the agreement of the UN, which thereby lost its identity and stature among its members.
I would not be adding anything new if I said that our Arab governments have helped to realize Bush's dream and the dream of Israel of destroying any Arab power that could conceivably threaten the so-called peace of Israel some day. We did it by opening our lands, seas, canals and skies to his armies and military apparatus to strike Iraq from all directions.
These countries don't realize that they can't outrun the American noose forever. Their turn is coming. Occupation, whether peaceful or through war, aimed at taking over the oil wealth and natural and strategic wealth, is coming to all countries of the region. Though this may be an official secret - the advances in media and intelligence make it plain and evident for anyone who wants to see the truth.
The Bush administration was honest in the final hours before the war when it announced that it would attack Iraq, even if the Iraqi president were to leave the country with his children and go into exile at the time that Bush had specified! As for oil, it is provided free or at the lowest prices, to the instruments of destruction, to fill the shortage caused by the halting of Iraqi oil. It was supplied either to the neighboring countries, which secretly support the American policy, or to prevent any effect on the global economy, particularly the American economy. Oh! How distant is that time 30 years ago, when the Arabs were more united and stronger in their stand, to stop pumping oil in support of their fellow Arabs fighting a war against Israel.
You are a strange person, Mr. Bush. You issued orders to the world to kick out the Iraqi diplomats, as though you were the United Nations (an organization that has lost its unity as a result of your despotic decisions and your arrogance toward its secretary-general and weak members, whose votes or silence you buy). You made that call as though you had erased the state of Iraq from the map of the world. This will not happen. Even if you win the war and occupy Iraq, it will not last because the Iraqi people will resist.
Mr. Bush, you looked strange when you called those who defend their land, whether they are soldiers or ordinary citizens, enemies... and the jihad and martyrdom operations they carried out against enemy soldiers, terrorism. Has your conceit and arrogance taken you as far as turning the meaning of words upside down? It's really no wonder considering that this is a state that annihilated most of the original inhabitants of its land - the Red Indians!
You are strange, Mr. Bush. Your soldiers' arrogance reached new heights when they lowered the Iraqi flag and raised the American one instead, on one of the buildings in the town of Umm Qasr. You know exactly what is meant by this action. It is truly an official indication that this is occupation!
You are a strange one, Mr. Bush. You allow yourself the possession and development of weapons of mass destruction and forbid them to anyone else, except of course the big nations and Israel. If as you allege Iraq threatens its neighbors, well then Israel threatens its neighbors, kills their children, occupies their lands and skies whenever it wishes, and occupies them.
As for your allegation that Iraq threatens US security, what about you? You threaten the whole world. You use, kill and experiment on the weaker nations with your advanced weapons as you did in Afghanistan and now in Iraq. We don't rule out that if this war lasts much longer you will probably use chemical or nuclear weapons as well as others, against the people and soldiers of Iraq. In fact you have already been using an internationally banned weapon, the cluster bomb, in this war.
You look really strange, Mr. Bush, when you warn and threaten everyone you suspect of selling, or in any way giving, military aid to Iraq, when in fact you yourself fight the Iraqis with allies, who provide you with soldiers, weapons, money and whatever you need. It started with your suspicions that Russia was selling Iraq equipment that jams your destructive planes and your warnings to Moscow. Then came your threats to Syria (the warnings, threats and punishments differ in accordance with the strength of the relevant country) for allegedly providing Iraq with night vision goggles to help it repel your attacks. Your weak excuse is that they contravene the sanctions imposed on Iraq.
Isn't your destructive war in contravention of international law - or did you simply want the Iraqis to open their doors so that you could come and destroy their homes and kill them? Isn't it enough that the Arab nations have abandoned Iraq and the joint defense pact, where if any Arab nation was facing aggression, as happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait (when that convention was applied), other Arab countries would come to its rescue?
You are strange, Mr. Bush, for promising that anyone who harms your prisoners, who only number in the tens, will be considered a war criminal, and their being shown on television contravenes the Geneva Convention. Yet if you applied this same law on yourself, you would be first and foremost a war criminal. That is the opinion of most people who burn effigies, and also the opinion of many leaders and officials who don't fear you. They have declared it through the media. What do you say of your inhumane treatment of the prisoners of the Afghan war held in Guantanamo? Or the Iraqi prisoners - both civilians and military officers? You show them in the media and humiliate them, and they number in the thousands. They are imprisoned and humiliated because they are defending their country and trying to drive out the invader, the occupier of their land. How will they be treated when the cameras are off? Or has conceit made you believe that Americans are made of something better than all other humans, as your beloved Israelis do - that they are the chosen ones? Do you think that what applies to others doesn't apply to you?
You are very strange, Mr. Bush. You believed the opposition to the Baghdad regime, who told you that the Iraqi people would welcome you with flowers and warm hugs. You forgot that crises remove differences between brothers and make them stand side by side to defy the invader. One's homeland is precious. You forgot that people will take up arms in defense of themselves and their homeland. They see terror raining down on them from the skies, the devastating bombs and destructive missiles you have dropped on cities without differentiating between military, civilian or educational institutions. You are destroying the history, civilization and antiquities of one of the most advanced countries, which was once a major center of knowledge and learning.
You were really strange, Mr. Bush, when you expected that a single free Iraqi would ever accept the freedom of occupation that you promised, after you had stained that freedom with the blood of their families. Do you expect that the people of Iraq will ever forget the brutal killing of their relatives or the mutilation of some? Will they forget what they have to suffer be it humiliation, degradation or searches of their homes and belongings for resistance to your occupation of their land or the torture and contempt of the prisoners? What food do you bring after you have suppressed it with their subjugation and the destruction of their source of living and the infrastructure on which they depend? What water do you give them to drink when you have polluted it. How painful it was to see the people of Iraq - rich in resources, oil and agriculture, fighting to get a carton of food or a bottle of water.
What we see today in the occupied Iraqi cities is the terror of soldiers as they tear down the doors of homes, then ransack them looking for the mujahedeen among the people of Iraq, who are resisting occupation. These people whom the occupier now calls terrorists. Then we see them captured with roughness and degradation, their hands and feet bound, their bodies searched. We see the occupying forces that wander the streets on foot or on their tanks. It is just as though we were watching what was happening... in the occupied Palestinian territories.
I fear that we will soon be seeing the same in Syria and Iran, who are undoubtedly on the upcoming war and occupation map. In fact the groundwork is being laid for that. The Americans have started provoking these nations by saying that Iran is developing weapons of mass destruction and that Syria is helping the Iraqis in the war. Moreover, the Israeli leaders dared to assert that Iraq has hidden weapons of mass destruction in Syria. This is after the Americans and their allies failed to find them in Iraq, after two weeks of destructive war. They must have some excuse to launch war on Syria - that daring Arab country, which stands up to America and openly declares its sympathy with the Iraqi people in their time of adversity.
Oh Lord! Protect the land of the Muslims from those greedy for its bounties and defeat them as You have defeated tyrants in the past.
Arab News Features 4 April 2003
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