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DECEMBER 14, 2003 – When Slobodan
Milosevic was caught, the whole nation - and world - celebrated.
A horrible tyrant had been stopped from further brutalizing his
people.
Now, another brutal tyrant has been
caught and will be brought to justice, but for much of the world and
half of the nation, it is not the joyous moment it should be.
For the entire last minute of President
Bush's four-minute speech to the nation about Saddam's capture, he
took the opportunity to repeatedly echo a lie which he has been
telling for months, that this was a battle in the "War on Terror."
He said it again and again today, even though, as he has had to
admit previously, there is no evidence whatsoever Saddam had
anything to do with 9/11.
The launch of America into Iraq was
justified by using this false War on Terror claim, and this both
angered and divided the nation and world.
A secondary justification was given that
Saddam had committed crimes against humanity. But today when
talking about where Saddam would be tried, the administration said
he would be tried in Iraq because this is just an Iraqi matter -
Saddam's crimes were all against Iraq.
If it was just an Iraqi matter, then it
wasn't part of the War on Terror and it wasn't something America had
a right to be involved with.
This is the sort of constant lying and
constant shifting of inadequate justifications that has made this
moment as bitter for the world and many Americans as it is sweet.
Yes, the corporate press is in usual
right-wing propaganda mode. CBS declared, "Nations who once
criticized the President now praise him." Yes, they were
lying. They quoted the French President saying Saddam's
capture was a good thing - he in no way was praising the President.
But President Bush's game of making
criticism of the war in Iraq a personal attack against him, and any
success a personal victory for him and the Republican Party of
America, is once again taken up by the press in full steam.
Chirac says it's good Saddam is captured, they lie and pretend that
means they are saying Bush was right to do what he did.
Another network (several actually)
called it a victory in the "War on Terror." Again, the lie of
President Bush and his wing of the Republican Party taken up and
reported, despite all evidence showing it is a lie.
This should be a celebrated moment.
A man who brutalized his own people is no longer in power. But
the unfortunate reality that many Americans and other people around
the world are having to grapple with is that the capture of one weak
dictator who never attacked any but his neighbors will only give a
boost to another much more powerful dictator who has stated he will
attack without provocation anyone he doesn't like the looks of.
What crime did Saddam commit against
America? None, ever. Who did Saddam attack?
Kuwait, and he was pushed out of there for it.
Saddam's real crimes were against his
own people, with things like the horrible, "use of chemical weapons
against his own people," that President Bush often talks about in
justifying this war.
Well, it was President Reagan and Vice
President George H. W. Bush who gave Saddam the helicopters he used
to drop those chemicals on his own people.
Yes, lost from the bought-and-sold
mainstream media and the right-wing media is the reality of the
situation. It has taken two wars, over $100 billion, over 450
American lives to undo the mess the Reagan/Bush administration
created by sending our taxpayer money, weapons, and military
training Saddam's way.
Even more - as President Bush wants to
tie the war in Iraq to the War on Terror - the War on Terror is in
reality directly tied to the real War on Terror in that it was at
the same time, during the same Reagan/Bush administration, that
these Bush-brand Republicans were financing, arming, and training
Osama bin Laden as well.
It begins to make sense why the war in
Iraq has been linked with the War on Terror against Osama in
President Bush's mind: his father and President Reagan created
both disasters by financing these two horrible, murderous butchers
for whom now they can find no adjectives horrible and condemning
enough.
Saddam was always the butcher he was.
Osama as well. And, while inconvenient or "untidy" fact that
the rest of the media avoids reporting, President Bush's father and
Ronald Reagan, aware of what butchers these men were, still chose to
finance them, arm them, and train them.
And so today, even as we can celebrate
that it only took two wars, over $100 billion, and over 400 American
lives to undo part of the mess President Bush's father created, we
still have the reality that the other part, the actual War on
Terror, is still raging full force, has cost us over 3,000 lives,
already made us fight a war in Afghanistan, and will continue to
cost us billions and lead to the deaths on numerous more people
worldwide.
The mainstream press is telling us we
have accomplished something great today. They are telling you
President Bush is a hero. Creating messes and then coming in
and cleaning them up is not what heroes do, it is what con artists
and scammers do.
We are thankful today that a part of the
worldwide mess President Bush's father helped to create - with our
taxpayer money - has been cleaned up a bit, even if we still have
billions and billions more to spend and more lives to lose before it
is truly cleaned up.
But don't tell me President Bush is a
hero.
And don't tell me this shows this
President can make our nation safer while he follows his father's
footsteps by funding butchers and a dictator down in Colombia.
$400 million a year of our money he is once again sending to
horrible people to do horrible things to their own people while
fighting a civil war that has been going on for decades.
The
lesson of 9/11 is not
that we weren't killing enough people around the world, it was that
if we finance butchers and dictators and are involved with killing
around the world, it will come back to haunt us.
The lesson of World War II and of the
Napoleonic Wars were that leaders who create enemies so that they
can protect you from them are leaders you need to fear.
Napoleon didn't attack Poland, according to his claims, as an
aggressor. He did it to protect his nation against Russian
invasion. Hitler was saving his nation from one thing after
another, be it the Jews or the Russians.
So on this day, when the American media
and President Bush gush and repeat the lies they have been echoing
for a year now, and claim this is a great victory that bolsters the
President and that no good person should be unhappy, they are simply
celebrating Napoleon's or Hitler's conquer of Poland.
And for those of us who felt a knot in
our stomach when we heard that the horrible, brutal butcher Saddam
was caught, and felt bad for not feeling pure joy, just remember:
did you feel this way when Milosevic was caught? Did you feel
this way when the USSR crumbled?
Today, a horrible butcher was caught
like a gutless weasel, hiding in a hole with no courage to make a
stand. And the reason many of us here in America and around
the world feel a knot in our stomachs rather than joy is because we
see there is half of America for whom this event will give one more
excuse to hide like little weasels, terrified into their holes by
the War on Terror, lacking the courage to take a stand against their
dishonest, divisive President in the name of honesty, decency, and,
indeed, their nation.
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