Don’t Kiss The Hand That Slaps You!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
IN that once great democracy known as Britain, local government election time has arrived, when we are asked to vote for representatives who will speak for us over smaller, domestic issues on the home front.
But in the area in which I am standing in London, concerned voters keep asking me about the illegal war in Iraq and whether Bush and Blair will really attack Iran. While the twins of evil curse the anti-war politicians and movements and write them off as irrelevant, it is obvious that global issues are impacting more and more on local issues.
The genuine concerns of voters in Britain are obviously matched by those in America. Why else would an impressive 350,000 US citizens fill the streets of New York last Saturday, with "Don't Attack Iran" being one of their main slogans?
I wonder if the size of the demo has anything to do with the fact that the soaring costs of keeping the illegal war and occupation going are spiraling out of control. Regardless of your politics, we are all paying for the war in Iraq.
In Britain, for instance, it costs more than five million dollars a day to keep British troops in southern Iraq. This figure has been more refined and defined when it comes to US troops, and the American tax payers, as we now know, pay 350,000 dollars a year to keep a single soldier in Iraq. Staggering, isn't it?
Of course we can not put a cost on a soldier's life. Seventy-three US troops were killed in Iraq last month, making the total of dead in excess of 2400 American lives. Over 20,000 have been seriously injured --10,000 so badly that they have been retired out of the military with missing arms, legs, and other horrific injuries, including brain damage. The medical costs for them will continue until the day they die.
Meanwhile, the poisonous White House dwarf Donald Rumsfeld has been exposed from an unlikely source, The Army Times, which conducted a poll showing that 64% of enlisted men think he should tender his resignation immediately. Try finding a more conservative publication than the Army Times or a more compelling reason for stepping down. The New York Times joined in the attack with a story headlined "Criticism of Rumsfeld Widens to Young Officers." It revealed that younger officers are just as sick of Rummy as their elders. One anonymous officer squeaked, "We have not lost a single tactical engagement on the ground in Iraq....The mistakes have all been at the strategic and political levels."
Most of the unrest about Rumsfeld seems to center on his arrogance and ineptitude, the twin-axels of predictable failure, as one scribe wrote recently. To be brutally frank, there isn't one part of the 3-year occupation he hasn't mishandled, mismanaged, or completely bungled. To check out these grim statistics for yourself go visit the website: www.stopwar.org.uk/Statistics.htm; if you have any statistics of your own to add, send them to this email: office@stopwar.org.uk (mention Sister Yvonne Ridley).
I am full of admiration for the Americans who took to the streets of my favorite American city last week, and I only hope the British antiwar movement can match the numbers and enthusiasm this Saturday, May 6, when there will be "Don't Attack Iran" events around the UK, in response to a call for an international day of action. Iran will be at the top of the agenda, because it is quite obvious that the US and Britain is hell-bent on another illegal military adventure in the region. Not content with blowing apart our freedoms and liberties at home, while blowing apart tens of thousands of innocents abroad, the imperialistic war mongers Bush and Blair are set to launch "Shock and Awe 2."
The White House junta has branded Iran "public enemy number one" and called it "the world's most active sponsor of terrorism." Condoleezza Rice says the United Nations credibility is at stake if it doesn't act. Britain's own foreign secretary Jack Straw says, "It is very serious that the Iranian regime has failed fully to cooperate with the United Nations."
Rice added that the US will act with a coalition of "like-minded nations," if the UN doesn't do America's bidding. Sound familiar? These are the same weasel words used to launch the illegal war in Iraq and the brutal war in Afghanistan where the richest country in the world bombed the poorest, dropping million dollar bombs on ten dollar huts. According to the anti-war movement, there is now evidence that British Army officers took part in US war games aimed at preparing for a possible invasion of Iran, despite Straw's saying that such an attack was "inconceivable."
Meanwhile, the Turkish foreign minister has revealed that Turkey has turned down a US offer of a sweetener in the shape of a free nuclear reactor if Turkey will allow the Bush administration to use a Turkish air base for attacking Iran. This is all very reminiscent of the build-up to the Iraq war, and those lily-livered fools in the media, with the exception of a few, have fallen for it again, as if the lies and deceptions used to lay the foundations for the illegal war in Iraq never happened.
One would think that Bush and Blair, the bullies of international politics, have more burning issues on their minds at home, but at home is when they are at their most dangerous. These two paranoid, Christian zealots are in freefall in the popularity ratings with their own people. Another war might just stop the decline and boost their ratings; after 9/11, there's nothing like a war to galvanize popularity. We must rise up and mount global protests to stop every dictator, despot, benign ruler, and faulty, democratically elected leader in his or her tracks. In order to succeed, we need the global Ummah to find the strength to stand up to the oppressors. We all, including Western Muslims, need to make it crystal clear to Bush and Blair that any more of their warmongering will bring politically fatal consequences. Don't kiss the hand that slaps you! Stand up, not only for your own self esteem, but for those millions of brothers and sisters across the world, who are facing the impact and fall-out of another "Shock and Awe." We need to stop the war mongers in their tracks, and we can only do it when we turn out in huge numbers like New Yorkers did last week.
Please allow me to leave you with this thought by that great French philosopher Voltaire: "...So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."
And on that note, until the next time, I say to all of our readers: Asalaam alaikum, and Power to the people --before it is too late!