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Osama bin Laden
In November 2002, Time had on its cover a hazy of the Al Queda commandant with the question, ‘Why can't we find him?’ His trail went cold in December 2001, when his voice was last overheard somewhere in the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan. American forces were insufficient in numbers at first, to start a large-scale search mission to find the man that Bush had promised to capture. The elusive Pimpernel vanished so completely, that official channels in Washington repeatedly declared him killed and over with. Nevertheless, periodically his messages are still aired on the al-Jazeera television station in Qatar, which confirms, that he's not only alive, but also still operational. In turn, almost half of all Americans remain at the same level of anxiety about possible new terrorist attacks.
Since 09-11, the United-States has been living in a chronic state of heightened alertness and helplessness, prompted by a poorly defined danger that could strike at any time again in any form and without warning. Geoffrey Cowley and Claudia Kalb wrote an article, ‘Anxiety and your brain’. Fear for Al Queda can impair the immune system. Fear interrupts sleep and it exacerbates everything from acne to ulcers. Psychiatrist Carole Lieberman told the writers, ‘The psychological state of fear affects us biologically. People who are anxious drink and eat more. They have more accidents. They are more likely to get colds or suffer heart attacks.’ Stephen Maren, neuroscientist at the University of Michigan adds, ‘A brain system is designed to keep us from getting eaten. Now it is eating away at us.’
‘Fear is a paradox. Its is a response so fundamental to survival, that we share it with rodents, fishes and fruit flies,’ wrote Cowley and Kalb. ‘Yet fear and anxiety can shackle us, diminish our lives, can even kill us.’ It has been established that during the month following 09-11, heart patients in Manhattan suffered more than twice the usual rate of life threatening heart arrhythmias. Stress hormones can also harm the brain by severing connections among neurons. Stress produces a wide range of bodily symptoms like headaches, insomnia, back pain, neck pain and disorientation. (Newsweek, March 3, 2003). Such is the state of affairs in America two years after 09-11. Hypertension roams around us minds. And Bush and his cohorts are further fuelling the already frantic feelings and emotions by constantly harping on the dangers of more attacks.
In the mean time hunting bin Laden continues. us authorities have put him in places like Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The White House, in an effort to demonstrate that Bush is still eager to catch him, had Condoleezza Rice stress to the media, that the president starts every single day with intelligence information on the War on Terrorism. Asked about it at a press conference, Bush himself tried to poke fun at the situation by offhandedly replying, ‘We haven't heard from him lately.’ Yet, signals from Al Queda operatives that are listened into on a daily basis had his collaborators saying: ‘Our enemies will be killed just as you kill and you will be bombed just as you bomb. Expect more that will further distress you.’ Besides the Wash- | |
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ington gang of four, who are specifically named as the enemies of Al Queda, other us allies have also been threatened in Al Quada communications.
However, us intelligence sources believe bin Laden holes up in Pakistan's treacherous border zone, among the three million residents of Peshawar. The present search and destroy mission for bin Laden is being led by the cia. A staff of more than one thousand specialists work full time on trying to find their man. They work from a base in Virginia. Fifty cia officers are focusing 24 hours a day on hunting down this one Saudi fugitive. This particular office, reported Time, is named after a child of the first cia officer who organized the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The name remains secret to protect that child from Al Queda retaliation, says the cia, as if bin Laden would be crazy enough to target that child. With a cruise missile, as Bush would do. Or with an Apache attack helicopter as Sharon would do.
Furthermore: the cia created what is called ‘a red cell’, consisting of twelve guys, who supposedly learned to think like bin Laden en come up with bin Laden ways what his next scheme will be for an attack on America. One wonders which bright minds are teaching these professional undercover assassins. In addition, the cia sent dozens of agents into regions where he might be hiding. Agents try to blend in with the local population to spy, to gather information en throw thousands of dollars around in the search for suitable traitors locating their man. So far: nothing has come of it.
Miss Rice extended a conversation to Tony Alien-Mills of the London Sunday Times commemorating 09-11. ‘The sad truth is,’ said the former PoliSci professor from California, ‘we know what happens when dangerous tyrants are left to their own devices and left unchallenged. We know what happens when international institutions don't act. We have a history with that. It is never good: a lot of innocent people end up suffering and dying.’ Then she fantasized and said, ‘We know when evil people have the means to attack you and are determined to do it. The next target wouldn't have to be New York or Washington; it could indeed be London or Berlin. I think that is what President Bush and prime-minister Blair both see.’
Alien-Mills added that Rice's disgust with Saddam was palpable when she spoke these words. What the interviewer forgot to point out was that she intentionally linked bin Laden and Saddam, as if she knew that they were partners in crime anyway. Saddam had nothing to do at all with 09-11. Even the cia acknowledged that much. Why should Miss Rice be allowed to mislead the public from her White House office? And why did the interviewer overlooked the misrepresentation?
For Al Queda, the Islamic holy war is directed foremost towards Jews and crusaders, with America's presence in Saudi Arabia on top of the list. Iraq comes second and Palestine third. This indicates even further, that 09-11 most likely never was an Al Queda operation, as Bush & Co wanted the world to believe. Saudi Arabia is bin Laden's first real stop. As long as us troops remain in the land where the holy city of Mecca is situated, humanity can look forward to many more years of shock- | |
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ing acts of terror. Even if the Iraqi question will be settled by an American Blitz Krieg, the Pentagon would be wise beyond expectation, when it quickly withdrew all us military personnel from the desert kingdom. Perhaps this will happen after a regime change in Baghdad. That would leave the Palestinian occupied territories and the war with Israel on top of the agenda of all Islamic freedom fighters and resistance groups.
Israel receives yearly 3 billion dollars from Washington. This is the largest aid package provided to any country. Sharon is asking Washington for 2003 4 billion in extra military assistance, 8 billion in commercial loan guarantees, resulting in a total aid package of 15 billion dollars. Will the Bush government has the nerve to ask the dismantlement of some 150 illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank in return? The White House not only equips the Israeli army with the latest armaments in the us arsenal, but also arms and finances the constant murderous incursions into Palestinian territory. Israeli actions amount loud and clear to first class war crimes. Since 1967, Israel has been permanently sabotaging dozens of un resolutions on peace, disarmament, the evacuation of illegally held Palestinian territories or other resolutions unanimously condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Western press meetings always mention that Iraq has violated a dozen un resolutions since 1991. And how about Sharon? Israel has violated all un resolutions since 1967. Why does Washington not demand compliance from Israel? You know why. The Jewish lobby in the United-States will not allow it.
Finally, 09-11 America was attacked for the first time in several centuries. Americans immediately considered themselves at war. Those four planes were the starting shot for the war on terrorism, just as Pearl Harbor initiated the us entry into World War II. It must be recalled, however, that forty years later, it was proven that Washington provoked Japan to strike at Hawaii. It gave Franklin Roosevelt the alibi he was looking for to declare war on the Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. History will tell who really initiated 09-11, presenting justification to the United-States on a silver platter to start a war on terrorism, primarily aimed at another Axis of Evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
‘It is a shadowy war,’ General Colin Powell, Secretary of State, told The New York Times. ‘It's a war that won't just be fought by great armies clashing on a field somewhere. It's going to be won, sometimes with armies clashing, but more often, it will be in the silent world of law enforcement, and intelligence exchanges and ferreting bad people where they are doing their evil deeds. It may be a war of diplomacy as we get friends who rally to the campaign, to make sure they stay with it. It may be a war of politics, where you make sure people understand in other countries that if you want to be part of this great coalition, it may cost you politically, but we are expecting you to do that...’.
Powell is not the first us general who may be a military strategist, but who has no clue as to how the rest of the world views issues of war and peace and how far away peoples feel about joining another ‘great coalition’ led by the United States
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What the general calls ‘bad people’ are often genuine nationalists, like the Turks, or heroic freedom fighters, like the plo, who cannot be bought or bribed by American dollars or be misled into a basically imperialist partnership. They resent us overlordship and Washington's criminal ways to saddle peoples and nations with crooks, gangsters and murderers, willing to play the colonialist game to the detriment of the interests of the people they supposedly serve. All Washington aims at in Baghdad is placing Iraq under a pro-American puppet, as is the case in most Gulf states, and thus securing the Iraqi supply of energy to the us.
One outstanding example of the down right criminal us foreign policy is Indonesia, a nation I covered for half a century. In 1965, President Sukarno was betrayed and replaced through a cia coup. With silent agreement in Washington, a million Indonesians were slaughtered in the aftermath of regime change. Washington assisted by building on a far away Indonesian island a concentration camp for over 100.000 innocent people. After twelve years, these prisoners were gradually released from Buru island. But, following Hitler's example of issuing yellow stars for Jews to wear, Suharto had tapol (ex political prisoner) printed into their identification papers, to prevent them from ever working again. Notorious Paul Wolfowitz, second in command at the Bush Pentagon, can tell Americans all about it. He has been ambassador to Indonesia, where he gained quite a reputation for collaborating with fascist generals and war criminals. Suharto, who plainly committed high treason, was a cia general who was kept in place for 32 years by an evil Axis of the us, and other wealthy nations, including Holland and Japan. They financed and armed them to terrorize Indonesians. That is the true character of a regime change made in usA.
The entire concept of ‘war’, in the case of a superpower, attacking with super bombers, super aircraft carriers, super blockbusters, super elite guards, resembles an elephant charging a mosquito. The Bush instant reaction to 09-11 to declare war was a gross misnomer from the start. It only served to demonstrate that the present us commander in chief did not know what he was doing. How could he? He came into his job from Texas and the beyond. The junior Bush presidency reminds us of the movie, in which the pilot is killed, and a stewardess has to land the plane on instruction of the control tower.
Americans do not deserve any better after allowing a dumbbell to grab the White House illegally. Perhaps after the present flip flopper has disappeared following the 2004 election, the us public might by that time have woken up to the reality that presidential elections are a dead serious business. May be they will have finally learnt to trust the number one job in the world to an expert in the business and not to a spoiled Papa's boy from Texas. A man, who in four years squanders us goodwill and longtime alliances down the drain. This Bush ruined partnerships, which were patiently constructed over decennia. Foremost he has played havoc with America's universal reputation.
When Powell was interviewed by the Times, he did not seem to realize, that even Washington's traditional allies were getting fed up with us racketeering in foreign affairs. ‘Renting’ warlords in Afghanistan for many millions of dollars might be stan- | |
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dard practice for the White House or at Foggy Bottom in winning wars, but a lot of people in this world, including some of America's closest allies, are not prepared to join in that kind of rat race. Bribing friends to join and threatening allies, if they refuse to become partners in crime, are practices that most modern advanced nations abandoned in the 20th century.
A case in point was the shameless and highly embarrassing us efforts to buy Turkey's support in exchange for a package of 26 billion dollars in order to invade Iraq from Turkish soil. The White House and idiot Bush must have been fully aware of the fact that over 90 percent of the Turkish people were against us soldiers using their land as a staging ground against fellow Muslims. What kind of friend or ally of Turkey is Bush anyway? Why place the Turkish government in an untenable position to force them into making a choice between national honor and dirty dollars? Of course, junior would not know from Adam how genuine democratic decisions are being made. Coming from a circle of shifty crooks in the oil business, Bush uses the customary arm-twisting of us petroleum barons accustomed to have his way. But in the end, he will meet his Waterloo, since his insane actions will only cause thousands and thousands of additional Muslim freedom fighters to join the ranks of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, or their heirs.
Eventually, America and the rest of the world will collide head-on over the American method to impose its will on others. Increasingly nations are unwilling to bend to us blackmail and more and more governments demonstrate they are not for sale, and are ready to face us blackmail head-on. Even America's genuine friends are turning away, since high-handed fuzzy political games are no longer being accepted, neither by erstwhile allies like France and Germany. Powell mistakenly assumed he could quickly form another ‘grand coalition’ to fight a second war in Iraq under the banner of wiping out terrorism. Initially, it did look as if everyone would fall into line following the catastrophe in Manhattan. But gradually, unfavorable winds blew from various directions. Sobering reminders of 250.000 dead Japanese in 1945 brought 09-11 back into a clearer perspective.
It was soon recalled, that the us had also introduced chemical warfare in Southeast Asia in the 60's. Vietnamese doctors estimate today, that apart from the tens of thousands of deaths 40 years ago, even today 70.000 Vietnamese still suffer from various illnesses resulting from the us spraying that country with millions of tons of Agent Orange (The New York Times, Philip Boffey, September 8, 1998). Bush and his buddy Blair keep harping on the fact that the monster, Saddam Hussein, gassed some of his own people. The biggest attack occurred in March 1988 in Halabja, where 6,800 Kurds were gassed and killed.
George Bush, who is probably unaware of America's war crimes track record anyway, continuously coughs up particularly cynical justifications for regime change in Baghdad by referring to Saddam's killing fields. After analyzing thousands of us government documents, The New York Times reported (January 17, 2003) that Washington deliberately blamed Iran for the Halabja massacre, while knowing full well that Saddam had
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used chemical weapons provided by the us and uk. Even the State Department instructed its diplomats to blame Iran and not Iraq, being aware that the us and its allies had supplied Iraq with the means to conduct chemical warfare. Washington sided with Baghdad, since Saddam was looked upon as a lesser evil while the government in Teheran was seen as representing a more dangerous zealous brand of politicized Islam.
‘Sealed by National Security Decision Directive 114 in 1983, the tilt toward Iraq included billions of dollars in loan guarantees and other credits,’ reported The New York Times. ‘Sensing correctly that it had carte blanche, the Saddam regime escalated its resort to gas warfare, graduating to ever more lethal agents. Because of the strong Western animus against Iran, few paid heed. Then came Halabja.’ Iran rushed western journalists to the stricken town and Ted Koppel showed the horrifying scenes of thousands of gassed people on his program Nightline.
In response for having been caught red handed as a solid partner of Saddam, the Pentagon quickly concocted stories showing how Iran had first attacked Iraq and had committed similar crimes against humanity. Documents show, that the State Department again issued instructions to diplomats not to discuss Halabja overseas at all. Today, the gang of four is mentioning Halabja almost daily to underline the need for regime change in Baghdad. In the words of the Times, ‘Those figures who engineered the building up Iraq, so that it could invade Kuwait and get away with it, are back in power in the second Bush Administration. They have yet to account for encouraging Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs by giving the regime a de facto green light on chemical weapons use and for turning a blind eye to Iraq's worst atrocities, and then lying about it.’ (January 17, 2003).
In 2003, Bush junior is trying to improve his father's record in these matters. The son said in his inaugural address to the nation in 2001, ‘An angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.’ He was referring not to his plans to gather another storm around Iraq, but to the books of Job and Ezekiel. At the same time, his religious feelings hardly seem to stand in the way of his blatant lying. Neither do his religious convictions prevent him or his team from using every economic and financial trick in the American super-power arsenals book to force his will on the United Nations. Thereby compelling the Security Council to agree to his intentions, this, amongst others, is to bring his father's former tormentor in Baghdad to book. Be it dead or alive.
In the mean time, it is more than clear, that if junior is mad enough to go it alone against Iraq, terrorist dangers for Americans will sharply increase. The cia had already warned in October 2002, that it must be expected that Saddam will adopt terrorist actions against any invaders. The cia held it plausible that Iraq might well order weapons of mass destruction against us and uk troops. Or, as Nicholas Kristof wrote in the Herald Tribune, ‘It seems a bad idea to sacrifice the lives of allied soldiers - along with billions of dollars - in a way that may add to Americans' vulnerability.’
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Bush remains unmoved by worldwide opposition to his possible use of force against Iraq. David Sanger reported in the Times, that the president was speaking early in March 2003 as if he had already deposed the Iraqi leader. Bush' aides let it be known, that ‘in the mind of their boss, the old debate whether Saddam will disarm is over.’ Bush is hardly the first world leader hanging on to false beliefs that cannot be modified by reasoning or a clear demonstration of facts. Persistent and systematic delusions are characteristic of a psychotic state of mind, which seems an accurate description of President Bush' current condition of mental health. Who is going to send him to a shrink?
Thousands of Americans want to oust Bush. us Congressmen have received one million e-mails urging them to sack Bush and stop the war. In the mean time, in the 180-year-old hall of the Oxford Union a British student describes the Bush doctrine and the United States as ‘a super rogue state’. ‘Is America a monster?’ asked Alan Cowell in a headline in the Herald Tribune (March 1, 2003). Or, as British Labour legislator phrased it, ‘The America that we indict today is the illegitimate America of George Bush.’ These citations about Big Brother across the Atlantic had never been heard of in good old England. One hundred years ago, the uk was the sole global superpower. Great-Britain ruled territories from Canada to Australia. America was in those days a financial and cultural dependency of London. This was much resented in Washington by Americans who were emerging from their rebellion against London. Now it is America's turn to rule the waves of the oceans of the world. If Lord Black of Crossharbor, the owner of the Daily Telegraph of London, already poses the question, ‘Is it in Britain's national interest to be America's principal ally?’ we know that times are changing once more.
While the nitwit from Crawford must have been aware that the tide in the world was massively turning against his crazy adventures, Bush stuck to his asinine slogan, that those who were not for him had to be against him. He continued to demand total allegiance from his friends and allies, Tony Blair being foremost among them. Bush ignored the overwhelming public opinion within their own nations and for better or worse demanded that they support him whether they agreed or not. Prime ministers Berlusconi (Italy) and Aznar (Spain) were urged to disregard monumental opposition within their own countries to the war. Eighty percent of Italians and eighty percent of Spaniards were against war with Iraq. The urgent plea from Bush to Berlusconi and Aznar was to flatly defy their democratic majorities and support him instead. This only further underlined what kind of democrat this ringleader from Texas really is. Do we Europeans need an ally or super-power protector like the United States? Hasn't the time arrived, for Europe to cease dancing to Washington's tunes and stand on two feet? At the end of the day, Western Europe has much more in common with Eastern Europe and Russia. The future of Western European peninsula lies in the East as far as Kamchatka and not with the New World.
When historic events like 09-11 are eventually seen in retro- | |
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spect and will be properly decoded, people will have more information and thereby gain a more accurate view of what actually happened. Much of the first traumatic shock effect will dissipate opening the way to a much calmer reflection over the coming half century. The United-States has bombed and killed people everywhere and has never received a single explosive in return. Whoever was responsible for 09-11, presented America with an urgent wake-up call. Instead, Washington continued in its old ways and could only think of one standard reply, throw more blockbusters, as they did on Afghanistan.
At the time of this writing, illegal pre-war us-uk bombardments are being stepped up against Iraq. America is a deeply disturbed nation, ignorant of its own misconceptions about the rest of the world. They are blind to America's massive crimes perpetrated against humanity everywhere since World War II. Americans appear to be unable to understand that the emotional life of nations differs on all continents. They are mistakenly convinced their way of life is best suited for all mankind. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that God has bestowed it upon them to convert the earth into one big Disney Yankee Park.
What happened these first months of 2003 is truly comparable to Harry Truman having to decide in 1945 whether to end World War II by nuking Japan. The decision to attack Iraq as second stage in the War on Terrorism falls into the same category as the dilemma jfk found himself in during the Cuban missile crisis. Bush seems ready to take the mother of all presidential gambles by following Paul Wolfowitz' dictum, ‘that America should end all states that sponsor terrorism.’ Not only is junior Bush unfit and ill equipped to make such a fateful decision but he is also surrounded by saber-rattling advisors, who seem intent on encouraging him to make a fool of himself. Even former White House advisors, Generals Wesley Clark, Norman Schwarzkopf and Brent Scowcroft, and including Henry Kissinger have all made it abundantly clear, that they are against considering Iraq a legitimate target in the War on Terrorism. The son of their former boss does.
Amazingly enough, when Bush ran for the White House, he advocated ‘a humble foreign policy’, and said to Al Gore, that it was not the job of the president of the United States to say, ‘this is the way it has to be.’ If Osama bin Laden was responsible for 09-11, for which nobody ever submitted any proof, the Al Queda chief inadvertently succeeded in letting Bush make a decisive U-turn in foreign affairs. As Simon Jenkins reminded us in the London Times (September 13, 2002), the us president told the United Nations one year after 09-11 that the world organization should get rid of President Saddam Hussein or he, Bush, would do the job himself.
Without presenting any killer evidence against Saddam either, Bush kept defining the Iraqi leader as another time bomb waiting to explode. Jenkins reminded his readers, ‘At first, Mr. Bush promised only to hunt down and punish those responsible for 09-11. Two weeks later, he was at war against every terrorist group of global reach. After Afghanistan and the military debacle at Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda, he did not re- | |
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trench but sought new fields of intervention.’ Indeed, the notorious War on Terror went abstract. After a shaky adventure in Afghanistan, Iraq clearly became the next overriding White House obsession. It must be even questioned whether Kabul was not only a diversionary tactic. Had the march on Baghdad not been the primary goal in the first place of the forces that brought the junior Bush to the White House?
Bush and his comrades at the White House clearly developed persistent and irrational ideas accompanied by a blind compulsion to act. The evil of the 09-11 calamities cried for revenge. Bush and his cohorts developed a full-blown neurosis characterized by the presence of obsessive ideas and crazy actions. The latest blunt arguments coming out Washington against a Russian-French veto in the Security Council against war, were that it was ‘immoral and undemocratic when a majority of nine votes would be cast for an invasion into Iraq, that France and Russia would nevertheless use their veto power.’ The us is using every undemocratic and dictatorial method it can think off, to blackmail instance Turkey, Italy and Spain into supporting the super-power against the will of the overwhelming majority of their electorates, yet the White House shamelessly talks about undemocratic attitudes of China, Russia, France and Germany.
When a retired British general practitioner told the Daily Telegraph (February 17, 2003), ‘I just think Bush is mad,’ Tony Blair should have realized, that he was losing support fast among the public. ‘I think,’ this md continued, ‘that Bush is as mad as Hitler was. And Blair is the equivalent of Rudolf Hess.’ He hoped his Prime Minister would eventually get out of the Bush trap, as Hess tried to flee Nazi Germany. Blair, on the contrary, continued to stress that his us partner in crime was not the simpleton people around the globe take him for. In the mean time, increasing numbers of Blair's fellow-citizens began to question seriously the sanity of the American president and his coconspirators for war.
Norman Mailer felt that eight months into his presidency, Bush's ‘diabolical luck’ occurred on 09-11. The president's popularity wavering at 30 percent soared to well over 90. ‘It was as if our tv sets had come alive. For years, we had been watching maelstrom extravaganzas on the tube and enjoying them. We were insulated. A hundredth part of ourselves could step into the box and live with the fear. Now, suddenly, the horror had shown itself to be real. Gods and demons were invading the us, coming right in off the tv screen.’ The typical Yankee reflex ‘beat everybody’ originated on 09-11 and was fully exploited and enlarged upon by the man from Texas. What if Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein would get together and Iraq would deliver some of its weapons of mass destruction to Al Queda?
‘The inner diktat of George Bush to go to war with Iraq as rapidly as possible now had to face the likelihood that Saddam had come up with an exceptional counter-move. Was he saying in effect, Allow me to string along the inspections, and you are still relatively safe. You may be certain I will not give my very best stuff to Osama bin Laden, so long as we can keep playing this inspection game back and forth. Go to war with
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me, however, and Osama will smile. I may go down in flames, but he and his people will be happy. Be certain, he wants you to go to war with me.’
Mailer catalogued the irrational fantasies and obsessive suspicions roaming within Bush's mind. America's spiritual architecture was buttressed since World War II by near mythical feelings of security. The 09-11 shock treatment destroyed that basic figment of America's imagination. Suddenly, the number one super-power in the world had become incredibly vulnerable. Now a Texan lives in the White House. He deeply believes in the mad-eyed magic, that Americans can do anything they want to. He also seems irrationally convinced, that the destiny of the world depends on the United-States. Therefore, there is but one way forward in this crisis of security for all Americans, and that is to strive for World Empire. If brute force is required to guarantee Americans total safety in their homes and cities, then America will be ordered to flex its military muscles to the fullest.
Parallel to the War on Terrorism we see developing a War on Non-Cooperation. Already months after 09-11 a us ambassador simply stayed away from a meeting that discussed the comprehensive test ban treaty at the un. Hardly had Hans Blix been nominated chief un weapons inspector, when it was announced, that the cia had received instructions to investigate this former Swedish Foreign Minister hoping his credibility could be undermined. When no wrongdoing of Blix was discovered, deputy us Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz reportedly hit the ceiling.
Next, Washington succeeded in ousting Dr. Robert Watson as chairman of the un's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Watson had tried to convince member states to take global warming seriously. The Exxon Mobil oil company complained in a memorandum to the White House and Watson was given his walking papers. In a report in the Guardian called ‘Diplomacy us style’, it was illustrated how America was pulling away from the rest of the world, dragging existing treaties down as it goes. Why is the us going to such lengths to destroy international cooperation?
The analyst, George Monbiot, wrote, ‘War would enable the us to re-establish its authority in an increasingly wayward Middle East, while asserting control over Iraq's vast oil reserves. Iraq is also daddy's unfinished business: for George junior it is personal. War is popular: the more bellicose president Bush becomes, the higher his ratings rise. It justifies increasing state support for the politically important defense industry.’ It is clear, that the man from Texas is possessed by obsessive rage against tin pot dictators and shadowy scarlet pimpernels like Osama bin Laden, who dare to challenge the almighty us. Nevertheless, his continued standard answer to these nuisances appears to be, bomb them back into the Stone Age.
Junior Bush, the so-called democrat at home has become a tyrant abroad. It was 09-11, that presented him with a license to change the global rulebook. Perhaps, he is not even aware that he is demolishing one by one the world's agreements and treaties. He has no clue anyway what the United Nations stands
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for or what the hard fought principles are that humanity fought for since the creation of the un in 1945 in San Francisco. Since the man descended on the White House he steered America into splendid isolation by setting his own rules. That might work as governor of Texas. It does not work as ceo of the United States.
As Andrew Gumbel noted in the London Independent, ‘There are few signs of self-doubt in the White House. George Bush is the master of his own presidency.’ This Texan amateur is shooting straight from the hip. He is blissfully uninformed about the intricacies of International Law, and has little knowledge of the basic tenets on which the un Charter is based. He simply follows his gut feelings and bluntly warns that if the un keeps dragging its feet, he will go after Saddam alone. Perhaps these are manners and methods he picked up during a short stint in the Texas oil industry, but they do not work in the field of international politics or diplomacy.
Recently, the London Times (February 25, 2003) published a page to allow professor Nicholas Grief, chairman of the School of Finance & Law of Bournemouth University to argue for the possibility that Tony Blair and his mentor George Bush could be guilty of war crimes in preparing an attack on Iraq. Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 describes a crime against peace as including planning, preparation or initiation of war. Article 6 even includes the participation in a common plan or conspiracy or any of the foregoing. Crimes against peace carry individual responsibility. This means that Bush and Blair could be held personally responsible and be charged for these crimes in one of their national courts. The Times report added, ‘The idea that the two men could be entering the same legal territory as the Nazis of Nuremberg does focus the mind.’
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