- I wasn't intending to write this. It has come about
by default.
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- The past week's developments of the Four-Day Oil
War 2 in Iraq demand that I address what is about to very quickly become
the first immense war crime against its civilian population. This is the
coming destruction of Basra, once known as "The Venice of the Mid-East."
An ancient city is soon to be reduced to the rubble of WW2 Dresden, under
eerily similar circumstances.
-
- The British soldiers attempting to "secure"
Basra have for all essential purposes been abandoned by the US, whose overstretched
troops have scurried to the aid of their comrades elsewhere in Iraq. These
British are supposed to be welcomed by the oppressed residents as liberators,
but to date the opposite has been the case. Independent reporters tell
us that even those Iraqis who once fervently hoped for relief from Hussein's
regime have come 180 degrees about to declare hostility to these new oppressors.
-
- If this city won't capitulate willingly, then it
must serve as an example to the remaining defiant cities and towns. Expect
a massive bombing campaign to begin, perhaps evolving into a firestorm,
as technobarbarism comes to the aid of the Brits.
-
- Let's look at a bit of history and put all this into
a larger perspective: Basra was once the premiere deep sea port on the
Gulf at the time of the Roman Empire. Look at a modern map and you'll
wonder how could it be, as the city's now set amid canals and wetlands.
Well, two thousand years ago Iraq's forests were ravaged for firewood,
building materials, and masts for sailing vessels. Afterward the topsoil
was gradually eroded by a process known as "sheet erosion," where
it's washed into creeks and rivers, making their way to the sea, and deposited
along the way.
-
- As it passed the seaport, the deposited soil gradually
filled in the area and created a delta. Humans coped with the new situation,
and created canals and waterways to carry on as best they could. Now fast
forward to today, where an incredibly complex tangle of religious beliefs
and social passions are about to confront the simplistic delusions of G
W Bush's drive to secure twenty more years of oil.
-
- As I wrote above, this essay came about through the
default of the Bush junta's self-delusion to the simplicity of this Zionist-inspired
"regime change." These players repeated their mantras of "Weapons
of Mass Destruction, regime change, and liberation of the oppressed"
to the point of mind-numbing madness, fell victim to these lies, and now
believe them to be true. This would be fine were they alone committed
to this insanity, but this was subverted into sacrificing the hapless military
of both nations to these self-condemned leaders' madness. Incidentally,
the last time I checked, the US alone possessed enough nuclear weapons
to destroy all life on the planet at least five thousand times over. Definitely
a weapon of mass destruction.
-
- If an army cannot win over another people (especially
unlikely in that people's native land), then the only way to win is to
destroy the enemy. It's all too familiar: recall the US officer who said
with a perfectly straight face when asked why he and his troops utterly
leveled a village of some three hundred Vietnamese, "We had to destroy
the village to save it." Indeed.
-
- Do you still believe this mentality is the right
one for the task? You do if your name is G W Bush and you believe your
job is to establish The New American Century. One has only to look at
his track record: set aside his personal behaviours, his dismal schooling,
his sleazy citizen soldier gambit, his insider selling of Harken Energy,
his embedding with Enron, his deviant KKKristianity: what did he leave
as his legacy as governor of Texas? Today that state is 49th lowest of
the fifty in education, highest in executions of prisoners (many with very
dubious convictions), and the less said of his treatment of women and minorities
the better. His personal history created his present realities. Why expect
anything different now that he's been appointed Resident?
-
- A few brave souls have begun websites advocating
his impeachment, and one sees BUSH KNEW and IMPEACH BUSH bumper stickers
beginning to appear. But can anyone with a realistic view of present politics
believe there will be a meaningful self-correction in November 2004? Let
us assume the junta does not set aside the Election, citing War (It won't
be over, you know.), and the Democrats return. How many remember that
Gore's family money was made in Occidental Petroleum, the very company
whose pipelines in South American are under attack by insurgents? Would
he have done anything differently had he been elected?
-
- No matter who is elected, the immense pressures of
"the military-industrial complex" will immediately bear down
on the unfortunate soul, followed by the crush of Zionism's intransigent
chicken-hawks. Look at the domestic markets: the Dow-Jones and S&P
are still at least fifteen months from the parallel bottom of 1929-1933.
And what then? We will still have to Reconstruct, whatever form that
may take. The history of the United States does not offer hope that a
truly liberating change is probable: matters will evolve as The Powers
That Be deem best, even if they aren't.
-
- Remember your high school biology (If you were so
fortunate as to have had such a course!)? Among the dictums taught as
Cosmic Truth was that "Phylogeny recapitulates Ontogeny." This
can be seen in the progression of the human embryo from dividing original
cell to the complex creature finally birthed. But it became what it did
precisely because it was genetically programmed to do so. Its history
became its realization.
-
- The United States is a nation born of racism, militarism,
and corporatism. A heady genetic code by any measure, but not one that
this writer would bet on to create a participatory democracy. Momento mori.
God help us all.
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