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“Patriotic”
Americans and the Dogs of War
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American
pro-war supporters cheer a speech during a rally in Chicago. |
The
muggers in Washington seem to have their narrow minds fixed on
taking America into a bottomless spin of darkness, trying to con the
world into its own stupid trance of a war that would bring freedom
and democracy. They planned it all wrong. This is not the second
Gulf War. Iraqi troops, with no parallel to the air force of their
counterparts, are not euphorically capitulating to the criminal
military forces of invasion. Neither are Iraqi civilians, who have
been successfully resisting the “boys” that should go back home.
Hitler invented the “protective” war and Bush and his gang are
going to the same twilight of history with their “preemptive”
audacity.
Bush’s
folly is deflating Americans and American interests to the lowest.
Following Muslims and Arabs in their creative moral resistance, a
boycotting campaign of American products and brand names is growing
in both Germany and France, along with many parts of the world.
American foreign policy of hammer and sweet poison has never
witnessed such daring opposition. The Russian administration
promised to veto any Security Council resolution (in retrospect, of
course) that would legitimize the war on Iraq after the military
operation is finished – just like what happened in Kosovo.
Bush’s picture is to join Hitler, Milosevic, and even Saddam in
the world gallery of war criminals – even though he is making the
latter, the mass murderer, a hero of anti-imperialism.
Medieval
history is reincarnated in modern America. |
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And
domestically, freedom of speech, the ultimate gem that crowns
American political culture, has been hijacked. With all the control
and pressure put on anti-war intellectuals, speakers, and
protestors, medieval history is reincarnated in modern America. Even
the difference between CNN International and CNN in
America is more than striking: no honest reporting of the deaths,
nor the anti-war protests that shake the world. Even the pictures on
civilian “casualties” are given little to no attention. Only the
barren of bringing democracy, by force of course, and prosperity, by
destruction and annihilation, is to be heard. For an outsider,
through the New York Times, for example, the lack of anti-war
literature and opinion makes it seem as if every American is eagerly
beating the drums for a holy war.
Patriotic
Americans and all… Now and forever.
With
the media blackout in America, the American public is unaware of the
other side of the war. What did CNN, ABC or CBS
say about the losses? The war has become nothing but what statements
of White House and Pentagon Spokesmen – along with some footage
from Baghdad – make out of it. American corporate media have
willingly adopted state-directed pseudo-patriotism in their sinister
propaganda. With the Pentagon manipulating the news on the war,
after ordering some 300 reporters to leave Baghdad right before the
war started and their “security review” over the news, one way
information is a given.
The
same way the American public stopped the war in Vietnam, the same
way they rightfully sided with the African National Congress (ANC)
against Apartheid, they can stop this atrocity. With the Iraqi
resistance showing uncompromising defiance to the invasion forces,
prolonging the goals of the inexcusable incursion, there can be some
hope of stopping this war.
Other
than the demonstrations taking place in the US and all over the
world, there is a strong campaign of circulating alternative news.
The hacking of the Aljazeera website, the closing down of some
American websites such as YellowTimes.Org, all show the fear of such
counter-force in unmasking the hawks and their crimes. I hereby ask
for the start of a massive campaign to circulate pictures of the war
in America and Britain. The war is the time to start, to fight the
hawks’ empire exactly where they fear: freedom of expression and
an independent conscience.
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Tarek
A. Ghanem is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo,
Egypt. He is specialized in comparative politics and is currently
assistant to the English section in Al-Siyassa Al-Dawliya
(International Politics), a quarterly journal published by Al-Ahram
Foundation, Cairo, Egypt.
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