ZGram - 8/29/2002 - "Reese: War on Sanity"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 29, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Again, Charley Reese says it best because he keeps it simple.

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War On Sanity

Studs Terkel, the old Chicago writer, has it dead right. Mr. Bush's 
war on terrorism is really a war on sanity. In all my years of 
observing the political scene, I've never heard so much nonsense from 
so many important people.

It is a policy based on the Big Lie and therefore is bound to fail.

The truth is this: The terrorist attacks against the United States 
are a direct result of our one-sided support of Israel's oppression 
of the Palestinians. That's it, pure and simple.

Bush, however, does not have the moral fortitude to admit that. 
Therefore, he had to concoct a Big Lie to explain the attack. Oh, he 
said, they hate us because we are free. This is absurd on its face. 
Why would Arabs or anybody else care one way or another whether we 
were free or enslaved? It's no skin off their noses either way. The 
rest of the world does not wake up in the morning worrying about the 
American people. They have their own lives to live.

But, as a consequence of the Big Lie, Bush is doing absolutely 
nothing to end terrorism. Terrorism, like all human action, proceeds 
from a cause for a purpose. If you want to end it, you have to remove 
the cause. Instead, Bush is imitating the Israelis and thinks that 
killing people, jailing people, deporting people and threatening 
people will solve the problem. Those tactics have not worked for the 
Israelis, and they will not work for us.

To be able to kill your way out of a terrorism problem assumes that 
there is a finite number of terrorists. There is not; the ranks are 
constantly being refilled. Does anyone think that if someone kills 
members of our family, we're going to love the killer? If someone 
destroys our home and our possessions, we're going to like that 
person? Every time we inflict death, wounds and destruction on 
people, we recruit more enemies.

Nothing is more insane than the idea being floated by some advocates 
of war with Iraq that invading American soldiers will be cheered and 
showered with candy and flowers by the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein 
only kills his political enemies; we have killed hundreds of 
thousands of innocent Iraqis and heaped misery on millions more. Our 
crimes against the Iraqi people far outnumber those of Saddam. By our 
brutal and callous actions, we have made Saddam a lesser evil.

War with Iraq will not be like the war in Afghanistan. It will be 
like the battle in Mogadishu made famous by the movie "Black Hawk 
Down." To take out Saddam, American soldiers are going to have a 
fight street by street, house by house. We'll see how much stomach 
for war America's armchair generals have when the bodies start coming 
home, not by tens or twelves, but by the hundreds.

Another example of insanity is the belief that we can have a surgical 
war inside Iraq and that the rest of the Middle East will remain 
intact. For one thing, the Israelis will very likely inject 
themselves into the war and use it as an excuse to expel the 
Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. This has long been Ariel 
Sharon's dream, and the temptation will be more than he can resist. 
This will be a monstrous crime against humanity and very likely will 
cause the entire Middle East to explode.

Unfortunately, our president is a naive man - and in foreign affairs 
an ignorant man - who has fallen under the influence of the Israeli 
government. The big pushers for war with Iraq are the usual suspects 
- Americans with a long record of pretending to speak about America's 
interests when in fact they are pushing an Israeli agenda.

You can be sure that Israeli intelligence is telling Bush all kinds 
of fairy tales about Saddam's capabilities and evil intentions and 
how imperative it is to go to war soon. Bush let the cat out of the 
bag when he said the other day, "I will make my decision based on 
intelligence, from our people and from our allies." By that, he means 
Israel, because the British, the French, the Germans and the Russians 
are damn sure not telling him to attack Iraq.

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=A9 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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