Osama Has Won
Hatred of the US is Now Universal
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
08/06/06 "Counterpunch" -- -- Anyone who even attempts
to defend the killing of the children in Qana by
Israeli air strikes is criminally insane. There can be
no justification for slaughtering children, in any
circumstances, anywhere.
You feel revulsion when you see photographs of Israeli
kids writing hate slogans on artillery shells that are
going to be fired at Arab kids. In fact real human
beings feel more than revulsion when seeing
photographs of brainwashed hatred in the young: they
experience utter despair because these kids are
deliberately being taught to hate other who are
different from them.
This isn't new, this insistence that young minds
should automatically accept, embrace and expand on
hideous loathing displayed by a previous generation.
In Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, for example,
school text books on history and world affairs are
bizarre in their one-sided portrayal of each other as
terminally evil. Hatred in India and Pakistan is
imbued from infancy, and there is little can be done
in maturity to alter this attitude which is
irrevocably instilled in other than a few highly
intelligent free spirits who can rise above mindless
racist bigotry.
It's exactly the same in Northern Ireland, of course,
lest anyone imagine I espouse the notion that
pea-brained hatred, to the point of desire to murder
people because they are different, is the prerogative
of non-Western peoples. Many Protestants and Catholics
in Ulster behave like any other ignorant bloodthirsty
thugs. Irrational hatred exists in lots of other
regions and countries. Just look around.
And Palestinian children hate, too. They hate Israelis
because their grandparents had their lands stolen and
occupied by a foreign power which has ignored
countless UN resolutions to obey the law. It is only
because of unremitting US support that Israel has been
able to defy the entire world and trample over the
basics of natural justice. These Palestinian children
hate Israel because it is a brutal and bigoted
occupying power that denies decency and human dignity
to a race of people who differ from them in looks,
religion and customs. In other parts of the world this
is called racism.
Israel is supported root and branch by the President
and Congress of United States of America. They
unconditionally endorse the actions, no matter how
barbaric or bizarre, of a racist, nuclear-armed
country that willfully ignores UN resolutions and
assassinates people as a matter of national policy. In
the course of providing support Condoleezza Rice
declared that "An immediate ceasefire [in Lebanon]
without political conditions does not make sense",
which gave the Israelis the green light to kill the
Qana kids.
Rice declared last year that "Israel has no greater
friend and no stronger supporter than the United
States of America . . . . The United States and Israel
share much in common. We both affirm the innate
freedom and dignity of every human life, not as prizes
that people confer to one another, but as divine gifts
of the Almighty."
If Rice and Bush so greatly respect the dignity of
human life they would have ordered Israel to cease its
murderous onslaught on civilians. They could have done
it in a nanosecond, make no mistake. But they chose to
encourage Israel in its killing spree.
Groveling at the feet of Israel is not just unseemly
and pathetic, it is directly contrary to the ideals
that Bush and Rice profess to hold. Israel is
nuclear-armed, yet there has never been a peep of
criticism from a US administration that claims to be
gravely disturbed by the spread of nuclear weapons.
Israel flouts international rules and should be held
responsible for its flagrant violations of
international trust and order, yet its very scorn for
the UN is warmly endorsed by its patron and paymaster.
Its deliberate murder of four UN officers and refusal
to permit an independent inquiry into the atrocity
demonstrate its utter contempt for the world at large.
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, the
repulsive Dan Gillerman said " . . . we grieve the
deaths of those civilians and children. But it is
very, very important to stress that they may have been
hit by an Israeli bomb, but they are victims of the
Hezbollah. If Hezbollah wasn't there, this would never
have happened." His suggestion that the children might
have been kept in Qana by force was the product of a
diseased mind.
Which brings us to the gallant Israeli pilot who sent
the MK-84 guided bomb smashing down on Qana to kill
dozens of children.
The United States gives Israel about three billion
dollars a year and provides bombs, airplanes,
bulldozers and other weapons with which to crush and
punish Arabs. There is but one caveat on the flow of
cash: three quarters of it must be spent with US
weapons' manufacturers. The US taxpayer funds Boeing
and the rest of the death-merchants in one of the most
blatant scams perpetrated against a long-suffering US
public.
Washington provided the bomb that killed the children
in Qana and bears responsibility for their deaths.
Final responsibility rests with the brave airman
dareman who flew his aluminum death tube high in the
sky, free and easy, in no danger whatever from enemy
aircraft or ground fire, then smashed three dozen kids
to bits with his US-supplied bomb from his US-supplied
airplane.
What does he think, now, this airman? Is he proud of
himself? Is he the toast of his squadron? "Hey
Gideon: what a hit you were", chuckle chuckle. Has he
children himself? Does he look fondly at his kids at
night when he sees them sleeping? Does he think of the
kids he killed, blown to shreds by his US bomb from
his US airplane? Will this man ever be able to sleep
again?
The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz (more balanced than
most) noted on July 31 that "The Israel Defense Forces
have killed 97 people in the Gaza Strip since the
fighting began in Lebanon. Most of them were armed,
and the rest were civilians - children, women, men,
the elderly. The large number of fatalities suggests
the IDF is engaged in indiscriminate killing under the
cover of the war in the north."
In Gaza, too, the Israelis pursue their berserk
campaign of ethnic cleansing by murder. There is no
point in trying to disguise it. And the US doesn't
even bother to hide its endorsement of slaughter.
Washington does, however, bother to tell silly little
lies as well as large-scale ones. Here is Rice at her
most fautous: "In the wake of the tragedy [in Qana]
that the people and the government of Lebanon are
dealing with today, I have decided to postpone my
discussions in Beirut".
But Lebanon's Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, had said
"There is no place on this sad morning for any
discussion other than an immediate and unconditional
ceasefire as well as an international investigation
into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now."
So Rice left the region in dudgeon. The Lebanese
wouldn't talk to her, but she couldn't bear to admit
this and had to tell a silly lie to try to overcome
her humiliation. Artistic she is. Cultured most
definitely. But she is devoid of human compassion and
ordinary common sense. She is, there is no kinder word
for it, a booby.
The US approach to world affairs is disastrous. After
9/11 there were demonstrations in some countries in
support of bin Laden's loonies, to be sure, but the
overwhelming feeling was of support for America. There
were enormous and absolutely genuine outpourings of
grief and solidarity. Hardly a country but was one
hundred per cent behind Bush, Washington and the
American people in their time of national grief.
No longer.
America is the most hated nation on earth. In most
countries its president is by far the most despised
international figure. To read the State Department's
Travel Advisories is to realise that for an American
to take a trip overseas is a pretty grim prospect as
there are so many countries to which it is highly
dangerous for a US citizen to venture.
The reason that America is so detested, distrusted and
abominated is that its president and his coterie
decided their policy should be total aggression and
antagonism. Diplomacy, courtesy and negotiation were
for wimps. And thus they played right into the hands
of bin Laden and his tiny number of dedicated weirdo
fanatics.
Washington's immature truculence was at first
considered regrettable but manageable by most
civilised nations. But when the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq were ordered against the flow of
international advice it became apparent that America
had an erratic policy of chauvinistic domination. It
became increasingly and embarrassingly apparent to
America's friends that Bush and his coterie were
determined to engage in an entirely one-sided
gladiatorial contest. Their arena was the world, and
US forces were sent to wage ferocious and bitter war
on pygmy nations that could not possibly retaliate in
any conventional fashion.
The fact that the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq
have become national military disasters does not
disturb the Bush administration. Retaliation for US
adventurism has been unconventional and enormously
damaging, but Bush and his acolytes are comfortable
with self-deception. Their optimism about "progress"
in these chaotic countries is absurd.
The Bush administration belief that everything will be
all right in the end ("We will Prevail") is becoming
even more preposterous day by day. And one of the
reasons the belief is so foolish is that the US has
been even further isolated by its flat refusal to
condemn Israel's atrocities. The US-made bomb that
killed dozens of Arab children in Qana has been an
enormous bonus for bin Laden, if he is still alive.
But even if Bush policy did not play into his personal
hands, it certainly played into the hands of all who
recruit the militants and suicide bombers who are
determined to take revenge on those who give Israel
bombs to kill Arab children.
The peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq consider
themselves occupied by foreign powers and are being
told by influential figures in their countries that
the US and Israel are waging war on Muslims. Moderate
Muslims, such as President Musharraf of Pakistan, who
went out on a very far limb by talking to a Jewish
organization in New York in September last year, have
had the ground cut from beneath their feet by
Washington. Musharraf wants to encourage the Muslim
world to recognize Israel and has tried hard to foster
pan-Islamic tolerance. But after the Qana atrocity he
and other progressive Muslims will find it impossible
to even mention tolerance for Israel. And by
deliberate choice of the Bush administration the US is
inextricably linked with Israel's criminal ferocity.
Osama bin Laden may not be alive, but this is
irrelevant because countless millions of Muslims
regard him as a hero, alive or dead. Their reasoning
is that he has caused a dramatic and continuing amount
of disruption to the western world's economic and
social structure. He has hit us hard. And his ongoing
success in disrupting our lives is helped by the
weaknesses of Bush and his people. Their smugness,
arrogance and casual savagery are some of bin Laden's
most effective weapons.
Osama bin Laden need never do anything again to ensure
permanency and prosperity of his legacy of hatred.
Thanks to the imperious policies of the Bush
administration and its fervent support for Israel the
United States is hated and despised to an almost
unbelievable degree. Osama has won.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political
affairs. He can be reached through his website
www.briancloughley.com
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