We Must Fight Evil

Our nation is faced with a great decision; do we continue to go along with what the current government is doing in the world or do we take a stand for what is right and just for all of humanity. The United States no longer has a balancing world power to call its nemesis. The USSR has dissolved into numerous nations, and China, thought large and potentially strong, does not have the capability to counter our country’s military. In other words, the US can do as it pleases and does not have to answer to anyone in the world. This is a dangerous situation for world peace.

Our illegal invasion of Iraq, the criminalizing of the Muslim religion and the vile treatment of minorities once again, is a clear indication that our leaders have lost touch with their constituents and with the rest of the world. It is preposterous and disheartening to think that our congressmen and Senators did nothing to stop our government from committing such a blatant crime. To unilaterally invade another country without provocation, and to murder its citizens and pollute their environment with depleted uranium was indeed a crime against humanity. For most Americans it is probably very difficult to see themselves from a different perspective but if one could see our country from say, a Latin American or Middle Eastern perspective, one could easily draw a parallel between the way the American government is functioning now and the way that Nazi Germany operated during its campaign in Poland. Washington keeps throwing out terms like “preemptive war”, “links to Alquaeda”, “weapons of mass destruction”, “yellow cake” and after a while it seems to be sinking in with the general public. The American people largely support the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, even now that there are some cracks emerging in the repetitious, incorrect story that President Bush told the nation. This is largely due to the fact that the corporate media has been very supportive of the government’s actions.

The president recently went on the air to try to defend his decision to go to war with the country of Iraq. He is finding it more and more difficult to give the same old story of imminent threats from Iraq and the infamous 45-minute time span, which Washington claimed it would take for Saddam Hussein to launch an attack on the US with a weapon of mass destruction. Well, there were no Weapons of mass destruction found. Even if President Bush claims that we must keep looking for these phantom weapons, any rational person can see that if the experts whose job it was to find these weapons could not locate them, why should we doubt their findings? After all, even the CIA has repudiated any claims to an imminent danger posed by Iraq immediately before the war. In fact, there are many reports of political extortion and pressuring by members of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to find any scrap of evidence to go to war. These same people have been implicated in efforts to silence any dissenting voices that offered evidence to counter the official warlike stance.

Empires have come and gone and one thing they all had in common is that in their waning years their social structure was dissolving. The people lost their moral guidance and had become intoxicated by their continued success. The American empire seems to have reached its pinnacle of power and world domination. From here on it is downhill. But why does it have to end in the same fashion as other empires? Why can’t we use our power and prestige to help other, less fortunate nations? Our current policy of supporting corrupt, abusive and murderous governments such as the State of Israel, Colombia, Egypt and others, and then claiming the moral high ground while invading a nation without U.N. support is clearly paving the way towards a Karmic end that is sure to come and will affect the entire world. We cannot expect to continue abusing the less fortunate people of the world ad infinitum and not expect them to strike back. The American Indians, the Afro-Americans, the Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Latin Americans were not strong enough to resist our combined strength but just like in any historical situation, there will always come a stronger foe or ally. It us up to us to make sure that our legacy lasts a long time. It is up to us to make sure that everything those great leaders like Martin Luther King, Cesar E. Chavez, Abraham Lincoln, Cochise and many others become part of the human fabric. We must take responsibility for our government’s actions because it represents us and must do our bidding. Only in this fashion can we assure ourselves a long prosperous future. By giving our fellow men a helping hand, instead of imposing higher tariffs or dropping bombs on their children can we assure a peaceful and prosperous future for the world.