Our murderous foreign policy led to the tragedy of 9/11, and its ramifications continue. The taking of innocent life in Iraq has caused the taking of innocent life in Spain and England. But still, the impenetrable blobs that lodge between the ears of our leaders send messages to their lips to repeat incantations about war on terror, mindless that they are responsible for terror s origin, perpetuation and growth.
Many are suspicious at the timing of the London attacks, not yet realizing that our governments do not need to conspire at killing their own people in order to rationalize killing foreigners. Their policy has been killing foreigners for more than a generation now; that is why we were attacked on 9/11, and why Europe has been attacked since then.
Arrogant support for the American destruction of Iraq, by governments unconcerned about their people’s wishes, is why Madrid and London have suffered terror bombings. Conjecture about which group of fanatics conducted one or another bombing misses the point. The attacks are retaliation, and no amount of frat-boy tough talk by the draft evader in D.C., or whining from the lapdog in London, will do anything but cause more suffering in the west, as retaliation for much greater suffering inflicted on the east.
Political propaganda cannot change reality, nor can language abuse, like, calling what goes on in Palestine a peace process. That’s like watching a woman’s rape and calling it a love process. The theft of Palestine can no longer be rationalized as the fair, humane reaction to a tragedy in Europe. Blatant disregard for the Palestinians has led to suffering, displacement and vicious oppression for those who had nothing to do with any European atrocities. Continued disregard for the role the US and Europe play in perpetuating the degradation of the Palestinian people can only mean further disregard for life and limb in the US and Europe.
The slaughter of innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq only adds to the grievances of people whose hatred for us grows, as our total disregard for their humanity moves them further into extreme groups whose beliefs are based on the same patriarchal scriptures revered by Judeo-Christians. The sanctioned hate speech and hate politics directed towards Islamic and Middle Eastern people will only add fuel to a fire, which threatens to engulf far more than one location. Serious and ever more bloody social breakdown are threatened, and its cause is not terrorism, but the political economics of empire.
The present Karl Rove sideshow will do nothing to stop the occupation in Iraq or the suppression in Palestine. It has given dismal Democrats an opportunity to come out from under their beds and pretend boldness, but that only proves the insignificance of this diversion. Those whose politics are themselves weapons of mass destruction, who support the policies in Iraq and Palestine, are calling for the head of the hustler who advises Bush. They believe that having created murderous chaos in Iraq, we can somehow supervise its un-creation. They may also believe that carriers of the HIV virus must somehow un-create AIDS. But even if Rove’s lynching is successful – unlikely – it will be meaningless as long as Democrats maintain policies which threaten more lives at home, the more lives we take abroad.
The struggle for global domination was supposed to have ended when the Soviet Union succumbed to our ability to spend far more money on weapons. But we were a creditor nation then; now we are the world’s biggest debtors, and the situation is far more dangerous. While Japan, Europe and especially China, prop up the American economy by purchasing our debt, enabling Americans to shop without money, grinding strains have developed in the engine room of our consumptive ship of state, threatening to sink it into the enormous sea of debt on which it floats.
Nonsense about foreign threats is merely further attempts to distort reality. China, and eventually Europe, will overtake the USA, by sheer strength of dollars and consumers. But that is hardly a threat for most Americans, who should rejoice, or at least heave a sigh of relief. The sooner this nation stops trying to run the planet, the sooner it may create solutions to far more serious problems. And terrorism ranks well below several hundred others, especially when we consider that it would vanish, in seconds, once we stopped infesting the Middle East with our ugly and bigoted form of marketing.
It is complete delusion to claim, as one of our regime s manic minions did, that the Iraqi resistance is in its last throes. It could be merely wishful thinking to say it is the Bush administration whose days are numbered. But realization of either delusion or dream may depend on others, more than it does on the U.S.
If we are not able to exercise democratic control over our government, others will have to do it, and in ways that may cause far more pain. The lessons that have not been learned from 9/11, Madrid and London will lead to further suffering if the global and US majorities which have always opposed this policy do not act up, now.
There is hope in the growing demand for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, as well as in calls for impeachment. But we will not end terror or stop the empire simply by impeaching Bush, since his loyal opposition is almost as bad. And even those two desires will need to be joined with a further, most important demand: that policy towards Israel change radically, to not only observe the rights of the Palestinians, but to confront and end the power of the Israeli lobby over the U.S. government. To some, that may seem a tall order, but to those who truly want peace and social justice, it is an absolute necessity.
