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CounterPunch
March 13,
2003
When Logics Die
Rage Against
the Regime!
by WILLIAM A. COOK
I went for a walk around Lake Gregory this past
Sunday afternoon searching for peace, the freedom that comes
with peace of mind. The sun's heat spread through the cobalt
blue sky over this lake that sits five thousand feet up in the
San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, while sparklets
of light glistened on the lake's surface that nibbled slowly
at the shore ... a glorious day in mid March here in the mountains.
I went to the lake to find peace, this
being the week the president gave one of his rare prime time
press conferences, the only opportunity we, the public, get to
see him perform. It's also the week America goes to war. I went
to the lake to find peace of mind, the ultimate state that comes
with freedom, the state of being that is the primary goal of
all religions, the end mystics dream of achieving and eastern
faiths call Nirvana. I went to the lake to find the freedom Dubya
claims others want to take from me, the freedom promised in the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights: freedom to believe as my
conscience dictates, freedom to accept the beliefs of others
most especially those who differ with me, freedom to pursue my
talents and respect the right of others to pursue theirs, freedom
to live a healthful life, to speak freely, to learn, and to seek
just protection before the law. I went to find freedom; I found
none. I found no peace of mind.
As I walked around the lake, I could
not help but think that this was Sunday, the day God rested from
His labors. Three faiths worship that God of Abraham including
90% of Americans, some are Jews, some  Christians, and some Muslims.
In a few years more Americans will declare the Koran their book
of faith than those who declare the Torah. With all these people
worshiping the same God, why do we have such division in this
country? As I walked the path around the lake, it occurred to
me that it's the leaders who cause the problems. Consider Jerry
Falwell, Pat Robinson, Hal Lindsey, Dale Evans, Frederick Graham
and his father Billy (to name a few), who deride the prophet
Mohammad and declare the Muslim faith to be one of violence.
Consider also how they use the Jews to bring about their belief
in the Book of Revelation, needing the Jews to establish themselves
in Israel if the Second Coming is to happen. Consider how they
call upon the Christians of the world to unite to fulfill God's
master plan even if it means a nuclear holocaust. These are the
weapons of mass destruction! Minds filled with the certitude
that only belief in myth can allow.
And Sunday is the day Christians set aside to worship that God.
This Christian God, this Jesus, asked His followers to "turn
the other cheek," to perform the spiritual and corporal
works of mercy, in short to care for all God's creatures. Yet
this Sunday as I walked about the lake watching children toss
their fishing lines out from shore, as others played "T"
ball in the park, as young lovers cooed by the side of the lake,
as the old and infirm watched from their bench above the path,
I heard the whistle of the missiles slam into Baghdad and saw
the mothers grasp their children to their breasts as they fled
in horror at the searing flames and saw the walls of their homes
shatter before their eyes. I saw this born-again Christian president
order American boys and girls to "take up the cross"
in defense of their homeland: to defend America against those
who have inflicted no harm on America; who have in 12 years not
molested any nation; who have claimed they possess no WMD and
no nuclear capability verified by international inspectors to
be the case; who occupy no other people's lands; who have been
subjugated to eleven years of deprivation by a coalition of nations
that deprive them of basic medical, sanitation, health and economic
necessities; who live in daily fear of American and British war
planes that arbitrarily destroy their defenses and kill innocent
civilians; and who are surrounded by the greatest massed force
of destruction ever assembled in the history of humankind.
This president claims that he will bring
freedom to the Iraqi people, not America's gift of freedom, but
God's! This president will liberate the Iraqi people even as
he slaughters an estimated 500,000 innocents, a liberation of
questionable value one suspects. This president will bring democracy
to Iraq whether they want it or not, a gift that Americans don't
even enjoy when he is president by selection of five judges!
This president will decide the conscience of the American people
since he disregards their voice both at the voting booth and
in the streets. This president elevated Iraq to the stage of
enemy number one by claiming it had connections with the terrorists
that caused 9/11, a contention proved to be a lie. This president
claimed that Iraq had biological weapons of mass destruction,
but failed to tell the American people that his own father sold
Saddam those weapons illegally and surreptitiously. This president
claimed that Saddam gassed his own people, the Kurds, and Iranians
against international law and the Geneva Conventions, but failed
to tell the American people that the government at the time,
the Reagan/Bush government, not only did not object to this action
but provided the means to do it. This president claimed that
Saddam did not comply with Resolution 1441 when he submitted
a 12,000 page report, but failed to tell the American people
that his administration removed 8,000 pages from that document,
pages that contained sensitive material including the names of
American, British, and German firms that supplied Saddam with
the chemicals and equipment needed to produce WMD. This president
claimed that Iraq was in a position to acquire nuclear arms within
a few months, a potential threat to America, but failed to tell
the American people that he would disregard other nations that
possessed or would soon possess nuclear arms including two nations
of the three that he called the "Axis of evil," Iran
and North Korea.
This president claimed that Saddam was a vicious dictator who
used torture, oppression o f women, and the jailing of dissidents
to stay in power, but failed to tell the American people that
his own father let Saddam stay in power because he was a known
quantity and any replacement would not necessarily follow America's
orders. Nor did he tell the American people that he would authorize
torture if done by another nation for America, or that he would
incarcerate people without access to lawyers, trial, or jury,
indeed, without even a charge of criminal conduct. And, finally,
this president claimed that Iraq must be taken down by force
because it defied the 17 UN resolutions that called upon it to
disarm and respond to human rights violations, an action that
if not taken would result in making the UN irrelevant, but he
failed to tell the American people that America supports the
state of Israel that has defied 155 UNGA and UNSC resolutions
since 1948 and 69 UNSC resolutions (28 vetoed by the US) since
the 1967 war, a defiance that far overshadows the 17 resolutions
Iraq has defied. How irrelevant can the UN be if this is the
criterion? What power does the UN possess to enforce its resolutions?
Only the moral will of its members. It has no army; it has only
the willing acceptance of the rights of all humans to life, liberty,
respect, and dignity as determined by its member states. Thus
when the most powerful member state disregards the moral stand
of that bodies membership, when it resorts to bribes and coercion
to have its way, it denies the only strength the UN can bring
to bare on wayward nations. The claim of UN irrelevancy is specious,
indeed, each and every contention made by this president has
been shown to be demonstratively false. When logics die, leaders
lie!
Patriotic platitudes, vapid values, and
incongruous ideals cascade from our leaders mouths like waters
over the cliffs of Niagara. Witness the recent babbling of Blair,
Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice as they resort to condemnation
of Iraq for defying the 17 resolutions passed by the UN, defiance
that castrates the authority of the UN and cries for resolution
by force regardless of the effectiveness of inspections or the
will of the world community. Witness their despair that Iraq,
after eleven years, will ever succumb to the will of the nations
that passed these resolutions. Witness their declamations that
the security of the US and the UK depends on immediate action
against the treacherous dictator who gassed his own people 15
years ago (without objection by the US or the UK) and carried
forth this same warfare against the Iranians with full approval
of the US and the UK, indeed to the supplying of the materials.
Witness their lamentations over those citizens who would object
to a war that would instill "shock and awe" in this
terrible enemy even as it liberates an estimated half million
Iraqis by slaughtering them, saving them from continued oppression
by Saddam. Witness their invoking the twin absolutes of freedom
and democracy that will be the offspring of this war even as
they prepare to occupy a foreign nation-state and force their
will on its people, thus making moot the meaning of freedom and
democracy. When logics die, what hypocrisy!
I have waited anxiously for a reporter
to question these men and this woman about their resolve to hold
Iraq to the authority of the UN resolutions. Why Iraq only? Why
now? Why not other countries? Why not Israel and Palestine, for
example, since most world leaders and the majority of the people
in the nations around the world seem to find the Israeli/Palestinian
crisis of greater consequence to peace in the mid-east? Do we
not raise the specter of Israeli occupation and aggression against
the Palestinians before the world body because we will be condemned
as anti-Semitic? Do we not raise the issue of the Palestinian
people resorting to suicide bombers because it casts condemnation
on the members of the UN for allowing this crisis to continue
for over fifty years? When will we invoke the authority of the
UN to make both the Israelis and the Palestinians meet the demands
of the international community and international law? When will
we declare the hypocrisy of our stance before the world that
the US and the UK believe wholeheartedly in the ideals of the
world body and its authority in matters of international conflict?
When logics die, leaders lie..
Lies, deceit, hypocrisy couched in euphemisms as evidence, security
concerns, and ideals beneficial to the international community
about the imminent threat posed by Iraq dominate the mainstream
media effectively hiding the reality of the savagery being waged
in Israel and Palestine. Beyond the lies uttered without shame
by Blair and Powell justifying war, are those lies of omission
that force Iraq to prominence now to hide the administration's
acceptance of Sharon's war against the Palestinians. Why blanket
the truth? Why not speak straightforwardly to the American people?
This administration has capitulated to Sharon's demands even
as he cloaks his actions in Bush's own terms, "defense against
terrorists." As Sharon has told the Knesset, "Don't
worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people
control America, and the Americans know it." Why hide the
truth? Tell it like it is: a war against Iraq can bury what is
happening in Israel; a war against Iraq will bury the new Sharon
coalition that depends on 13 members who are adamantly opposed
to the creation of a Palestinian state; a war against Iraq will
hide the request by Israel to have the US cover 15 billion in
loans and grants to bail out their floundering economy even as
the US states fall deeper and deeper into the ditch of debt.
When logics die, leaders lie!
Contrast the demand that Iraq surrender
to UN resolutions with the silence that greets the question,
"Why not Israel?" Israel has defied the UN for 55 years,
Iraq for 12. Israel has invaded and continues to hold illegally
land that belongs to Palestinians, defying UN resolutions for
35 years to return the land; Iraq invaded Kuwait 12 years ago
with CIA collusion and went to war with Iran 15 years ago with
US approval and support. It occupies no foreign land now and
is not considered a threat by its neighbors. Israel has and continues
to defy not only UN resolutions that it abide by the Geneva Conventions
to protect human rights, but spurns all Human Rights Watch Reports
that request investigations into behavior that demeans human
dignity and defies international law; Iraq has been forced to
release control of its northern territories, that occupied principally
by Kurds, and to give up absolute control in the south, a "no
fly zone" controlled by the US and the UK.
Israel has used the "war on terror"
to define the Palestinian people, thus giving them absolute right
to determine who is a criminal and who will die, without trial
by jury, without the right to a lawyer, and without appeal, actions
all in defiance of international law; the Iraqi people are victims
of this same logic that provides for the use of 7 _ times the
destruction visited upon Hiroshima to be visited upon the Iraqi
people to catch one man. Israel has WMD and openly admits this
fact. It also has nuclear weapons and, in the words of one Israeli
Professor, will use them on European capitals as well as against
Iraq if needed to ensure the existence of Israel. It also occupies
and suppresses Palestinians using tanks and bulldozers to destroy
property not belonging to them. They also use the third largest
military force in the world against a people that have no defense
except old rifles, missiles and stones. Iraq has no comparable
WMD, nor does it have nuclear capability; it does not occupy
any territory owned by another nation and hasn't in the past
12 years; its military forces are a third of what they were in
1991and incapable of defending the nation against the might of
the US.
Israel has visited terror of an indescribable
nature on a defenseless people, from refugee camps surrounded
by dozens of tanks, thousands of foot soldiers, Apache helicopters,
F-16 fighter jets, and the latest in state of the art technology
to subdue the defiant few who will use their life as a weapon
in a futile effort to turn the tide. Israel creates these suicide
bombers by using vengeance to impregnate the deprived and the
hopeless. America supports this state run terror with our tax
money and our military hardware thus ensuring that America becomes
a silent victim of Israeli vengeance. Why Iraq? Why now? Why
not line up all who defy UN resolutions and force them to abide
by UN authority after we have forced this on Iraq, including
US defiance of such resolutions? When logics die, leaders lie!
As I walked around the lake on this Sunday before America slips
ineluctably into chaos, I could find no sense of freedom here
in America. I have as much chance of defying Bush as an Iraqi
citizen has of deposing Saddam. I am a victim of a man who can
use my tax dollars to do whatever he wishes, whether that be
to support Sharon's savagery or to inflict devastation on Iraq.
Freedom to speak is no freedom if those in authority defy the
voice of the people. Freedom to representative government is
no freedom if our representatives abdicate their responsibility
under the Constitution. We do not elect another person's conscience
when we enter the voting booth; we must stand against those who
ignore the people even as they march in the streets and declare
their desires before the world. There is no freedom if there
is no democracy, if the voices of the people are overridden by
the corporate voice, the voice of the military/industrial powers,
and the wealthy elite who buy their freedom of speech. There
is no democracy if we force it in name on other nations of the
world because we demand that they "accept God's gift"
regardless of their beliefs and we force America's gift of consumerism
on other nations because it is the way to provide heaven on earth.
Ultimately, the Presidency of a democracy must be the laws of
the land, not a man who willingly twists the laws to his own
end.
I could find no freedom, no peace of
mind as I walked about the lake because the Constitution of the
United States has been stolen by this administration to be used
as a document to control, because it has subverted the freedoms
guaranteed in that document and placed our freedom in the hands
of a religious zealot that by definition does not accept freedom,
because it has preempted freedom by adopting a policy of preemptive
strike based on the belief of evil determined by one fanatical
man sitting illegally in the White House, and because this administration
is oblivious to the plight of the unemployed, the homeless, the
elderly, single mothers, and the sick and the dying. I have lived
through half a century of slaughter, witnessed America defy itself
as it languished in segregation, oppression of women, and governmental
inquisition under McCarthy; I have witnessed it justify non-intrusion
into genocidal savagery, accept without question the need to
carpet bomb whole cities in the cause of peace, and add collateral
damage to the lexicon of euphemisms that give credibility to
slaughter, but I have always lived with the hope that America's
acceptance of a world court, of values inherent in the Nuremberg
trials, of mutual cooperation with other nations would lead to
a 21st century of peace and equanimity throughout the world.
When logics die, cynicism thrives.
William Cook
is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern
California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was just published by
Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
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An Approaching Emergency
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