Hawks point U.S. in wrong direction

Published in the Home News Tribune 01/25/05
In his inaugural speech, President Bush was almost silent on the domestic agenda and concentrated instead on fancy slogans about spreading democracy and liberty all over the world. If his vision of liberty and democracy is the same as he implemented by invading Iraq, a secular country that never threatened us, never had ties to al-Qaida, nor possessed weapons of mass destruction since 1991, then we are in for unending wars with the Muslim and Arab countries.

On one page in the New York Times on Jan. 19, there were two heart-wrenching pictures. One showed a bloodied young Iraqi girl sitting in the middle of the road crying after her parents were killed when American soldiers fired on their car. The second was of a British soldier snaring a naked Iraqi detainee in a net and about to punch him in the head.

There also was a list of the names of the latest five of the 1,362 dead American soldiers. Not to mention the 15,000 seriously injured or the $200 billion spent so far on this misadventure.

On the Iraqi side, 100,000 Iraqis have been killed. The country's entire infrastructure, untold numbers of homes, hospitals, schools and museums were destroyed.

It is the same old maxim used during the Vietnam War; destroy the village in order to save it. By destroying Iraq and by blindly supporting Israel in committing its own atrocity in the Palestinian territories, we are not endearing ourselves to the Arab and the Muslim worlds. They are now hearing about the administration's plans to strike Iran, another Muslim country, whether using our own forces or through Israel, our enforcer in the Middle East. They wonder why we want to strike Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, instead of North Korea, which already produced eight nuclear warheads. That is because Israel, which possesses more than 200 nuclear bombs, is leading us down that path.

The Pentagon's Defense Board reported that Washington's problems in Iraq and elsewhere arose not from Muslim's hatred of American freedom but of its policies and the one-sided support for Israel. David Hirst, a columnist in the Guardian of London, said that the neo-conservative hawks, the Likudnik pro-Israel lobby, and the Christian fundamentalists, who want to hasten the second coming of Christ into a strong Israel, drove U.S. policy into invading Iraq. They adopted Sharon's and Netanyahu's views that the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad.

It is remarkable that President Bush told the Washington Times on Jan. 12, ""If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy, read Nathan Sharansky's book, 'The Case for Democracy.' "

Condoleezza Rice quoted the same book in her confirmation hearing. Sharansky is a hawkish Israeli cabinet member who is a staunch supporter of the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

American lives and treasure should not be sacrificed for the whims of the extremists who don't pay their share of these sacrifices.
Hassan Mahmoud

WESTFIELD