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May
19, 2003
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
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of the Day
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15, 2003
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de Rooij
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Guthrie
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May
19, 2003
The Cage of Occupation
Liberty
For All is Terrorism's Demise
by LINDA S. HEARD
As a natural rebel who thought that childhood,
with its restrictions, was an ailment which had to be endured
in order to enjoy the real art of independent living, I strongly
empathize with those poor souls subsisting under the yoke of
occupation.
'Occupation' is a word, which trips off
the tongue with ease but how many of us actually stop for a few
moments so as to put ourselves in the place of a Palestinian
or an Iraqi? Most of us in the West live reasonably well ordered
existences whereby we breakfast, travel to the workplace, and
enjoy the evenings and weekends with family and friends, and
vacation in salubrious spots of our choosing.
Imagine that 'breakfast' and 'lunch'
consisted of a piece of bread washed down with a cup of sugary
tea because you couldn't afford anything more. Dinner is perhaps
a loaf with cheese and olives. You didn't have any work, either
because you were subject to travel restrictions, curfews, checkpoints,
etc., or there was no work for you to go to.
You might like to run away but there
is nowhere to run. The borders are closed. And even if they were
opened, there is no country, willing to take you. Your only entertainment
is mulling over grievances with friends in a café, each
more miserable than the other.
Imagine that every time you stepped out
of the door you were faced with a foreign army in full military
get-up, tanks, armored personnel carriers while attack helicopters
circled overhead from time to time.
How would you feel if upon every occasion
you wanted to visit your sister in the next town, you had to
queue for hours in your car and be strip-searched, often made
to stand with your hands on your head up against a wall, or to
kneel on the ground at the whim of the occupiers?
Imagine if someone were to insult you
or molest your wife, you had to bite your lip for fear of losing
your life.
Besides the fact that your mother and
sister could be afraid to go out after so many reports of rape
or that your father felt unable to leave the house because of
armed looters, which is the case in Iraq, wouldn't you feel a
gnawing humiliation to see the enemy's nationalistic graffiti
scrawled on the walls of your town hall and worse, its flag being
hoisted in your town square? Wouldn't it hurt you to witness
your children deprived of an education because either the schools
were closed or lawlessness was rife?
Perhaps, worst of all, take a look at
your own son, daughter, niece or nephew and imagine that while
they did their homework or were in the midst of watching their
favorite cartoon, your home was turned into a blazing inferno,
and the little ones were stripped of most of their flesh, or
without arms or legs. Imagine that you tried to take that child,
screaming in pain, to the nearest hospital but that could offer
neither pain-killing drugs nor a needed operation because there
was no electricity and no water even to wash away the blood.
How angry would you be? How desperate?
Occupation is reducing adults to children,
nay beasts locked up in cages. In time, even lions or bears go
mad, especially if the cage is small enough and without any form
of mental stimulation. They pace up and down or tear their claws
on the bars. An occupied people, on the other hand, invariably
turn to protest marches and violence, it is then that we conveniently
call them 'terrorists'.
Most of us can't or don't want to imagine
any of the above. Our lives are too far removed from the ordinary
people of Palestine or Iraq. They speak a different language,
some of them dress differently, they eat different food and,
what's more, they are thousands of miles away.
We stuff them in little boxes in our
minds labeled 'Islamists', or 'Arabs' or 'backward third world
nationals'. In reality, the Palestinians and the Iraqis are the
most educated of all Arabs and for decades their brightest and
best have worked overseas as teachers, professors, scientists
and doctors.
A saying goes: Palestinians write, Lebanese
publish and Iraqis read.
We are all children of the creator, and
we should surely think 'there but for the grace of God go I'
when we see a people struggling against poverty and suffering
under the oppression of a foreign power. But, sadly, few of us
see it that way.
Western leaders dehumanize individuals,
who legitimately fight against the occupation of their country,
even though theirs is a right enshrined in the United Nations
Charter. It doesn't matter who they are or what they have done,
they are all 'terrorists', cowardly terrorists. They are to be
hunted down, vilified, despised and eradicated from the face
of the earth. How convenient for the occupying powers!
We all sympathize with the victims of
what is called terrorism. We can all share in the pain of their
families and friends who ask: 'Why?' 'Why did this happen to
my son, my brother, my sister?' 'What kind of monstrous barbarians
did this?'
But the fact is, we don't really want
to know. We just want the terrorists destroyed. We want our revenge.
This is because we have been taught that terrorists are sub-human
psychopaths who enjoy murder for murder's sake and who want nothing
more out of life than an escalator to death.
Not only are the terrorists downgraded
into lesser mortals, their cause is rendered non legitimate and/or
completely ignored.
The causes of terrorists are often valid,
it is the heartless way they promote those causes which is wrong.
But however bloody their actions, this still should not invalidate
the genuine injustices faced by their compatriots.
We've seen how this worked earlier this
week when three suicide bombers attacked Israeli towns within
48 hours, giving Ariel Sharon the perfect pretext for not flying
to Washington to discuss the 'Roadmap'. As the West Bank and
Gaza are entirely closed up, our media concentrates on the victims
of terrorism, not on the victims of occupation.
In Iraq, Shiite leaders are calling for
a Jihad against the occupying Western powers who promised democracy
and delivered anarchy instead. We hear the word 'Jihad', immediately
think of 9-11, and suddenly 65 per cent of the Iraqi population
become 'terrorists' in our eyes.
The only 'crime' of the Chechens is to
want their own state, but they too are now considered by Russia
and much of the world as 'terrorists'. We can say the same of
the people in Aceh and of Eta, the Basque movement, which seek
their own autonomy.
When Lebanon's Hizbollah, meaning 'Party
of God', drove the Israelis out of southern Lebanon, again its
members became 'terrorists' and joined the White House blacklist.
It doesn't matter that Hizbollah, in fact, gives alms to the
poor, provides education and medical care to those in need and,
often free housing to the homeless, it is still considered by
Washington as a terrorist organization.
The truth is Hizbollah has never carried
out 'terrorist' activities outside of its region of interest.
Once the Palestinians get their state, the Israelis pull out
of the Shiba Farms, and a peace agreement is drawn up between
Israel and Syria, Hizbollah would relinquish its weapons and
become a political party like any other.
What this means, of course, is that disenfranchised,
dispossessed and oppressed peoples have little or no recourse
to self-determination after the breakdown of diplomacy. These
groups are not possessed of military might. They don't have sophisticated
weaponry, or bunker busting bombs and F16s. They don't have long-range
missiles, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines or weapons of
mass destruction.
States with advanced killing machines,
pilots who drop bombs scrawled with childish messages of death,
are not called terrorist states even when their victims are women
and children, as was often the case in Afghanistan and Iraq and
is daily the case in Palestine. America calls itself a 'liberator'.
Israel calls its bloody handiwork 'self-defense'. Indonesia and
Russia claim that they are fighting terrorism.
If we attempt to think laterally for
just a moment, we can see that the peoples of Palestine, Iraq,
Aceh and Chechniya are the real victims and those countries,
which seek to deprive those people of the basic human right of
'freedom' are states which use terror to enforce their will.
Why is it that an individual who blows
himself up along with others is called a 'coward' while a pilot,
who drops his murderous payload from the safety of 30,000 feet
is designated a ' brave hero'? I'll tell you why. The pilot is
considered 'one of us'.
There is a moral equivalence here but
we can't see this because we have been indoctrinated to believe
that anything perpetrated by our own government is right and
just, while anyone who opposes our leaders is intrinsically 'bad'.
For all our superficial veneer, we are
still tribal. We care only about our village, our town, our city,
our country, and our football or baseball team. We wave our flags
with vigor, wear our own flag pins with pride and boast about
our own way of life even though few of us have tasted any other
or even traveled beyond our own borders. We neglect to reflect
upon the fact that we are products of an accident of birth.
We forget that the Master Builder of
the Universe created a world without borders, without passports.
We forget that we live on one planet in the same one constellation.
We forget that we flourish under the rays of the same sun, breathe
the same oxygen and share the same hopes and dreams.
We cannot excuse the killing of another
human being and we cannot justify it but if we were really honest
and impartial, killing is killing whoever does it. Whatever the
method used, the result is the same people hurt, maimed
or murdered.
Even if we use the flawed argument that
the end justifies the means, when it comes to Iraq the motive
for the invasion was the eradication of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. Thus far, there aren't any. So what does this make
us, if not citizens of states which used 'shock and awe' to further
their own agendas?
We can't even say with all honesty that
we improved the lot of the Iraqi people, many of which now say
that they were better off under Saddam Hussein when at least
they enjoyed the basic essentials of life, even if being a dissident
exacted harsh penalties.
As things stand, there is infighting
among the Arabs and the Kurds of northern Iraq, the Shiite leaders
of the south and in Baghdad are calling for an Islamic state,
the Pentagon is still backing Ahmed Chalabi, an embezzler sentenced
to hard labor in Jordan, while the Christian minority wonders
whether the future of Iraq will be bleak, forcing their women
to wear the chador, and the bars and cinemas to close. Crime
has increased 20-fold and in Baghdad alone 240 civilians have
been killed, many by trigger-happy teenage U.S. soldiers. Should
we be proud of such chaos, elicited by our illegal invasion?
The only people who will benefit from
the occupation of Iraq are members of Iraqi opposition groups
who are positioned to grab power in a vacuum, those in the U.S.
administration with links to multi-nationals already handed lucrative
reconstruction contracts, and eventually oil companies.
Israel, too, stands to benefit with an
oil pipeline from Mosul to Haifa and the absence of a major foe
in the region, gives the Israeli leadership extra clout when
negotiating with the Palestinians. Iraqi Jews are already demanding
recompense for property confiscated when they quit Iraq post
1948.
The ordinary American and British people
have little to gain from the crazed adventurism of their governments.
Taxpayers will be subsidizing the occupation, perhaps for years
to come. They have already paid billions for bombs and missiles.
Strange, that further billions, even trillions are required for
reconstruction, the U.S. and Britain are going around with their
begging bowls, asking those countries which did not support the
war, such as France, Germany and Russia, to dig deep into their
pockets.
George Bush recently said that his War
on Terrorism is working, but following the suicide bombings in
Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia and Israel, we can see that this
is simply not true.
Just a few days ago, I saw an Iraqi man
talking on an Arabic network. He said that he was not willing
to live under occupation and he would sacrifice his own life
and the life of his son to rid his land of the occupier and at
that, he held up a fresh-faced lad of around six years old as
if to prove his point.
Was he a would-be terrorist before the
occupation of Iraq? No. He was just an ordinary civil servant
going about the business of looking after himself and his family.
This is when the realization finally
hit me that 'terrorism' is a cry from the heart. A plea to the
world that it should listen to the legitimate concerns of those
in pain. It's a brutal message that death is preferable to life
without hope, life without liberty, and life without dignity.
No young child when asked what they want
to be when they grow up says: "Terrorism sounds like an
interesting career path. Short maybe but rewarding." Terrorism
is the career of the no-hoper.
What if there was no more occupation?
What if everyone on earth enjoyed the basics of security, shelter,
clean water, electricity and adequate food? What if we decided
to think of ourselves as citizens of one world and removed the
barriers in our minds, which keep us from understanding and even
befriending people of different colors and creeds?
What if we decided to celebrate our differences
instead of our commonalities? What if we truly followed the dictates
of our religions, which entreat us to 'do as you would be done
by' or to 'treat our neighbors as ourselves'? Would there still
be those who would strap on belts packed with explosives? I think
not. Militant groups would soon lose their support bases and
society would spit them out like a cancer from the face of the
earth.
The way that the powers have chosen to
fight terrorism is inherently wrong. Al Queda is made up of independent
groups with similar ideologies, or so the experts tell us. Its
members are scattered all over the world, even in the U.S. and
Britain. They are trained to hide in the shadows only to emerge
to carry out their heinous deeds. Their only sustenance is their
cause. How can we hope to eradicate such nameless, faceless individuals
by the use of force when death itself is their beloved friend?
Terrorism is not the disease. Terrorism
is a symptom of a disease variously called injustice, oppression
and inequality. The way to combat terrorism is to cut the terrorists
off from their causes. Without their cause they could not exist.
They would find nobody willing to offer them shelter and nobody
would supply them with weapons or funds. If they persisted they
would simply be criminals and criminals can usually be caught
with relative ease. Put out a million dollar reward for a criminal
and he will be offered up. Do the same for a terrorist and those
who protect him will go on doing so because they share the same
pain, the same cause.
The way of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon
is engendering more hatred and more anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.
The world is becoming an ever more dangerous place. They have
both lost the plot. After 55 years of bondage, the Palestinians
deserve their liberty, their longed-for state. After suffering
decades of Saddam Hussein and his vicious regime, as well as
three major wars, the Iraqis deserve to find their own route
to happiness. Those who stand in their way are inviting terrorism,
providing the very soil in which terrorism flourishes.
I am reminded of the old parable, which
relates an argument between the sun and the wind. The wind says
that he can force a man to remove his greatcoat before the sun.
The wind whips up a gale, but the man only pulls his coat ever
more tightly around him. When the sun begins to shine, he removes
it himself.
If we want to have a world worth leaving
to our offspring, then we need to remove our own prejudices,
strive to be free of indoctrination and to recognize government
propaganda for what it is. We need to look inside ourselves to
consolidate our own sense of morality, of right and wrong, and
we need to ensure that the coming generations of leaders will
be not only strong but also wise and compassionate, instead of
egotistical, avaricious and self-interested.
There has to be another way. Let's hope
we find it soon before George Bush's prediction that terrorists
will manufacture a dirty bomb will be self-fulfilling. Nuclear
materials have already been stolen from Iraqi facilities, so
that day could be soon upon us. We must act now.
The U.S. must get out of Iraq as soon
as it can establish an interim representative government made
up of Iraqis and law and order on the streets.
Israel must develop the political will
to work towards a Palestinian state and to forge peace with its
Arab neighbors.
Indonesia should allow the people of
Aceh their own autonomy without delay in the same way as the
East Timorese received theirs, and Russia should pull out of
Chechniya once and for all.
Like an alcoholic, who first has to face
the fact that he has a drinking problem, before he can be cured,
we have to realize that some Western powers are behaving like
rogue states on the principle of 'might is right'. As we need
two hands to clap, so the West needs to recognize its own complicity
in terrorism, and its responsibility to put it to bed.
Our powerful Western nations must make
the first moves. We must put things right and offer an olive
branch to those we have deemed as our foes. Some of you may call
this appeasement because this is what we have been taught to
think. I call it the only way and the right way in the struggle
against terrorism in our time.
Like the lion of Daniel, our nations
must be strong but they should also have an inner core of sweetness.
If we allow ourselves to become devoid of humanity, then our
Western civilisation will implode on its own.
Today's
Features
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
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