Letters to the Editor, September 11, 2003

They should try something new ... like LOVE your enemy. The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend. For Christ' Sake be good to the Palestinian people ... give them all the settlements ... build them Universities ... let them return to their homes in Israel.

Charles R. Brucks, Jr.

WW2 Veteran USNavy

Dear Editor:

The piece by Rich Maurice "History and the Great Lie" is a must read. Congratulations to Rich for exposing the depths of the deceptive US Foreign Policy.

I would even go a bit deeper. Having lived in the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship was a lesson in the depth of the deceptive US Foreign policy. As Rich says, it does not matter whether it is the Republicans or the Democrats who are the incumbents in the White House, because the real problem is US Foreign policy which Americans have been lulled into following. It has nothing to do with justice and peace. It goes deeper than the two Great World Wars. It is evident in 1898, when the US government of the day perpetrated a deception by usurping the victory of the Filipino people against the Spaniards. The US shamelessly staged a mock battle in Manila Bay and took over the Philippines. Why? Because the Philippines was strategically located for US designs, even in those days! The take over of Hawaii happened during this period, so did Cuba! It even tried to take over Vietnam. And this is no different than what the US is doing to Iraq, also through deception and lies. The so-called "Road map to peace" in the Middle East is yet another deception, so is it any wonder it has failed?

Until, and unless Americans begin to look seriously at their Foreign policy, and change it completely, their Governments which they 'democratically' elect will continue from folly to folly in the world. When Americans understand how deceptive their Foreign policy is, then they will finally understand the expression they keep uttering, "why do they hate us?"

Sincerely

Jack Lakavich, Kelowna,BC Canada

Editor,

There seems to be 2 taboo subjects in America today.

9/11, I find it very strange that since 9/11 there has been no real public discourse. Normally after something major happens, we would have had federal investigations left and right. All serious investigative reporters would have been questioning everything and would have gone looking themselves if they couldn't find out what they wanted to know. Oh, we talk about what happened and the results, but not, where should we go from there, causes and effects. All I see is the Executive branch stonewalling any serious investigation, or withholding what may or may not be pertinent information. The mainstream media has been singularly closed mouth too. Where are the Woodward and Bernstein's? Now, I know there is plenty online, but the people of the US, either have their head in the sand, suffer from ADD, or are just keeping quiet, because they are being told to do that!

Israel, this has been the biggest taboo, for 55 years. We need to have a serious discussion about Israel. Talk about Israel and you are anti-Semitic, I beg your pardon, but the Arabs are Semitic, as far as I know most Israeli's are European and they discriminate against the Semitic Jews, so who is anti-Semitic here? But, what bothers me is you can not talk about the Israel government and its policies, without that label. We can talk about the Europeans any which way you want, who can forget the way our government high officials characterized them earlier this year, but we won't hear that about Israel. Why not? We are Americans and we are supposed to be able to talk about anything. When honest discourse is squelched about a country that is always in the middle of one problem or another and our tax dollars keep their head above water, then there should be debate. I don't like my tax dollars going to any country I'm not allowed to talk openly about!

What I'd like to know is how many other people feel this way? I've never been prejudiced, I just don't like the idea that on one hand I'm anti- American and on the other, anti-Semitic, only because I want to have an open and honest discussion about 2 taboo subjects.

Judi Rubinstein, Ca

It is a day of shame for the Arab League

It is a day of shame for the Arab League. It has gone through phony rituals of discussions and mock delays, but finally allowed the US ‘appointed Iraqi foreign minister’ to take Iraq’s seat in the Arab League meeting.

It amounts to a collective acceptance and acquiescence of the US invasion of Iraq and the rape of a fellow Arab and Muslim country, by an aggressor superpower, on the instigation of Zionist American cabal of neo-coms and fully egged on by successive Israeli Prime Ministers, with a long drawn list of further so-called axis Muslim countries in the Middle East, for the US colonisation.

The tame show of abject surrender to the US dictates puts one billion Muslims at shame. The leaders at the helm of affairs of the Arab League countries, are so divided among themselves, and so dependant on the US largess to prop them up, that any decision other than surrender of all their sovereignty and freedom to the rapacious US and Israeli aggressor, should hardly! come as a surprise to the rest of the world. It is their utter show of spineless subservience that spawns and nourishes ‘Islamic terrorism’ in the first place.

However, this should give some food for thought to the US operators, that however much support they may get from the nominal rulers of Arab countries, they will have to contend with the real movers and shakers of Arab and Muslim destiny, that will always remain out of their traps and trappings.

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI, India

Was It Really Worth It, Mrs. Albright?

THE PRICE

By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

What moved those kamikaze Muslims to embark, some many months ago on the training that they knew would culminate in their deaths as well of those (they must have hoped) of thousands upon thousands of innocent people? Was it the Koran plus a tape from Osama bin Laden? The dream of a world in which all men wear untrimmed beards and women have to stay at home or go outside only when enveloped in blue tents? I doubt it. If I had to cite what steeled their resolve the list would surely include the exchange on CBS in 1996 between [Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright and then US ambassador to the United Nations and Lesley Stahl. Albright was maintaining that sanctions had yielded important concessions from Saddam Hussein.

Stahl: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think

the price is worth it."

They read that exchange in the Middle East. It was infamous all over the Arab world. I'll bet the September 11 kamikazes knew it well enough, just as they could tell you the crimes wrought against the Palestinians. So would it be unfair today to take Madeleine Albright down to the ruins of the Trade Towers, remind her of that exchange, and point out that the price turned out also to include that awful mortuary. Was that price worth it too, Mrs. Albright?

Well, the typists and messenger boys and back-office staffs throughout the Trade Center didn't know that history. There's a lot of other relevant history they probably didn't know but which those men on the attack planes did. How could those people in the Towers have known, when US political and journalistic culture is a conspiracy to perpetuate their ignorance? Those people on the Towers were innocent portions of the price that Albright insisted, in just one of its applications, as being worth it. It would honor their memory to insist that in future our press offers a better accounting of how America's wars for Freedom are fought and what the actual price might include. CP

SOURCE : www.counterpunch.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).