- More and more, President Bush's rhetoric
sounds like the crazed videotapes
of Osama bin Laden...
-
-
- So now Osama bin Laden is Hitler. And Saddam Hussein
is Hitler. And George Bush is fighting the Nazis. Not since Menachem Begin
fantasised to President Reagan that he felt he was attacking Hitler in
Berlin - his Israeli army was actually besieging Beirut, killing thousands
of civilians, "Hitler" being the pathetic Arafat - have we had
to listen to claptrap like this. But the fact that we Europeans had to
do so in the Bundestag on Thursday - and, for the most part, in respectful
silence - was extraordinary.
-
- I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist who, tired of the
wearying invocation of the Second World War to justify yet more Israeli
brutality, began an article with the words: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler
is dead." Must we, forever, live under the shadow of a war that was
fought and won before most of us were born? Do we have to live forever
with living, diminutive politicians playing Churchill (Thatcher and, of
course, Blair) or Roosevelt? "He's a dictator who gassed his own people,"
Mr Bush reminded us for the two thousandth time, omitting as always to
mention that the Kurds whom Saddam viciously gassed were fighting for Iran
and that the United States, at the time, was on Saddam's side.
-
- But there is a much more serious side to this. Mr Bush
is hoping to corner the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, into a new policy
of threatening Iran. He wants the Russians to lean on the northern bit
of the "axis of evil", the infantile phrase which he still trots
out to the masses. More and more, indeed, Mr Bush's rhetoric sounds like
the crazed videotapes of Mr bin Laden. And still he tries to lie about
the motives for the crimes against humanity of 11 September. Yet again,
in the Bundestag, he insisted that the West's enemies hated "justice
and democracy", even though most of America's Muslim enemies wouldn't
know what democracy was.
-
- In the United States, the Bush administration is busy
terrorising Americans. There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise
apartment blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts - note
how carefully the ruthless Palestinian war against Israeli colonisation
of the West Bank is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war
on terror" - and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words
of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, over the past three days, you'll find
they've issued more threats against Americans than Mr bin Laden.
-
- But let's get back to the point. The growing evidence
that Israel's policies are America's policies in the Middle East - or,
more accurately, vice versa - is now being played out for real in statements
from Congress and on American television. First, we have the chairman of
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee announcing that Hizbollah - the
Lebanese guerrilla force that drove Israel's demoralised army out of Lebanon
in the year 2000 - is planning attacks in the US. After that, we had an
American television network "revealing" that Hizbollah, Hamas
and al- Qa'ida - Mr bin Laden's organisation - have held a secret meeting
in Lebanon to plot attacks on the US.
-
- American journalists insist on quoting "sources"
but there was, of course, no sourcing for this balderdash, which is now
repeated ad nauseam in the American media. Then take the "Syrian Accountability
Act" that was introduced into the US Senate by Israel's friends on18
April. This includes the falsity uttered earlier by Israel's Foreign Minister,
Shimon Peres, that Iranian Revolutionary Guards "operate freely"
on the southern Lebanese border. Now there haven't been Iranian Revolutionary
Guards in Lebanon - let alone the south of the country - for 18 years.
So why is this lie repeated yet again?
-
- Iran is under threat. Lebanon is under threat. Syria
is under threat - its "terrorism" status has been heightened
by the State Department - and so is Iraq. But Ariel Sharon, the Israeli
Prime Minister held personally responsible by Israel's own enquiry for
the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinians in Beirut in 1982,
is - according to Mr Bush - "a man of peace". How much further
can this go? A long way, I fear.
-
- The anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East
is palpable. Arab newspaper editorials don't come near to expressing public
opinion. In Damascus, Majida Tabbaa has become famous as the lady who threw
the US Consul Roberto Powers out of her husband's downtown restaurant on
7 April . "I went over to him," she said, "and told him,
'Mr Roberto, tell your George Bush that all of you are not welcome - please
get out'." Across the Arab world, boycotts of American goods have
begun in earnest.
-
- How much longer can this go on? America praises Pakistani
President Musharraf for his support in the "war on terror", but
remains silent when he arranges a dictatorial "referendum" to
keep him in power. America's enemies, remember, hate the US for its "democracy".
So is General Musharraf going to feel the heat? Forget it. My guess is
that Pakistan's importance in the famous "war on terror" - or
"war for civilisation" as, we should remember, it was originally
called - is far more important. If Pakistan and India go to war, I'll wager
a lot that Washington will come down for undemocratic Pakistan against
democratic India.
-
- Across the former Soviet southern Muslim republics, America
is building air bases, helping to pursue the "war on terror"
against any violent Muslim Islamist groups that dare to challenge the local
dictators. Please do not believe that this is about oil. Do not for a moment
think that these oil and gas-rich lands have any economic importance for
the oil-fuelled Bush administration. Nor the pipelines that could run from
northern Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast if only that pesky Afghan loya
jirga could elect a government that would give concessions to Unocal, the
oddly named concession whose former boss just happens to be a chief Bush
"adviser" to Afghanistan.
-
- Now here's pause for thought. Abdelrahman al-Rashed writes
in the international Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that if anyone had said
prior to 11 September that Arabs were plotting a vast scheme to murder
thousands of Americans in the US, no one would have believed them. "We
would have charged that this was an attempt to incite the American people
against Arabs and Muslims," he wrote. And rightly so.
-
- But Arabs did commit the crimes against humanity of 11
September. And many Arabs greatly fear that we have yet to see the encore
from the same organisation. In the meantime, Mr Bush goes on to do exactly
what his enemies want; to provoke Muslims and Arabs, to praise their enemies
and demonise their countries, to bomb and starve Iraq and give uncritical
support to Israel and maintain his support for the dictators of the Middle
East.
-
- Each morning now, I awake beside the Mediterranean in
Beirut with a feeling of great foreboding. There is a firestorm coming.
And we are blissfully ignoring its arrival; indeed, we are provoking it.
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- http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=298681
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