Impeach Bush

I think the time has come when Americans should consider impeaching George W. Bush.

He let 9/11 happen. He started a war with Iraq justifying it using faulty intelligence. More Americans in Iraq have been killed since the war "ended" than were killed in the war itself, and democracy in Iraq seems further away, not nearer. He has made enemies of former allies. He has authorized torture of suspects around the world in violation of international and American law.

Only with an independent investigation can these charges be proven, and impeachment is the right way for such an independent investigation to take place.

Tom Trottier

 

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A Nixon quotation updated / Another own goal

President Nixon once said "if you've got them by the balls, hearts and minds will follow". The expression is a coarse one but in those days it was intended only figuratively to indicate that if opponents were under pressure they would fall in with your wishes and do whatever you required of them.

Given the evidently widespread and systematic sexual abuse and torture of detainees in Iraq (and most probably Afghanistan and Guantanemo) by the US military it appears that the old adage should be updated to "if you've got them by the balls, hearts and minds won't follow". In this way the conditional clause accurately describes the 'shocking' literal / factual truth about current US interrogation techniques, as witnessed by the small amount of photographic and video evidence so far released. The main clause then explains the consequences, namely that such abuse and torture will only strengthen Iraqi resistance to and worldwide revulsion at US aggression, not weaken it.

I would think that Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of America famed for his noble vision of equality and human rights, must be turning in his grave as a result of the current vicious decadence of US troops. Osama Bin Laden, however, must believe he is already in heaven since the moral bankruptcy and total incompetence of the Bush regime has so strengthened his hand.

Phil Hong

 

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An Open Letter to President George Bush

A UN report issued on 5/11/04 states that, in the last ten days, over 131 residential buildings in the Gaza Strip have been demolished or damaged beyond repair by the Israeli Occupation Forces. The recent demolitions have left over 1,100 Palestinians homeless; this brings the total number of people to have lost their homes in the Gaza Strip to 17,594. The deliberate and wanton practice by the Israeli army of destroying homes and civilian property is a grave violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, notably of Articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes a war crime. You cannot expect that the US will be taken seriously in the world arena as long as you apply different standards for the people of the Middle East based on religion. You cannot hold Israelis to one set of standards which are different from those expected from Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians or Iraqis.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War clearly states that "collective penalties are prohibited... Reprisal against protected persons and their properties are prohibited." Article 53 of the same Convention states that "any destruction by the Occupying Power... is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations." Why then do you continue to ignore and much worse support Israel's daily violations of dignity and human rights of the Palestinian people? Where has your sense of morality gone?

The recent actions by the US army in Iraq will be seen as a continuation of US policy in Palestine. We are losing any positive influence that we might have held in the world today. This administration has lost credibility not only in the Arab world but in the rest of the world for the bully way it has treated the Middle East with, raping it for its oil and serving a foreign nation's political agenda. By recently giving Mr. Sharon the green light to reinforce his brutal ethnic cleansing policies (of which you are well aware), without ever consulting the Palestinian people (indeed, who cares? They're only Arabs, and Muslims to boot), you have recklessly destroyed decades of reasonably successful US mediation, thereby officially supporting Israel's Apartheid regime, its continued land theft, arbitrary house demolitions, terrorization and massacre of Palestinians. This unconscionable decision went against the advice given to you by veteran experts in the matter (not those in your administration).

What will you do to restore justice for the Palestinians? It is high time you dissociated our country from Israel's self-serving political agenda of ethnic cleansing, and stopped funding and supplying this racist regime with our hard-earned tax dollars and state-of-the-art American-made weaponry. That's immoral!

Sincerely,

Selma Hermez

 

 

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Israel threatens Iran and Iran threatens back

Things seem to be getting worse and worse. Two days ago, Israel threatened Syria with military action, yesterday the US implemented sanctions on Syria. Yesterday Israel threatened Iran with military action and Iran is responding. This is becoming very serious. What is happening is exactly what Israel wants. A war in the whole Middle East that would result in America having to stand against all Arab nations! That was never the kind of relations we had with the United States, but we are all (including America) being driven into that situation by Israel!

Israel is the only country that needs to conflict in order to achieve its crazy zionist ideals. Israel has all the intention of making this a nuclear war. Sharon has intimated that on several occasions. In fact, when he was minister of Defense, Begin found him so dangerous that he removed his right to nuclear trigger. Well, now he has that right again and I am sure that he would not hesitate to use it. Sharon also said that if Israel is to go down, it will take everybody down with it. I find this situation quite scary.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=5/12/2004&Cat=2&Num=022

Cherifa Sirry

 

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Hate, War, and Abuse

Dear Editor and Readers,

I am an American. I was in the military during the Vietnam days, but avoided active duty when I started to wake up to what was really going on. Before then I thought and acted like my "gung ho" friends. I suspected something was wrong when I listened to our Marine Instructors gleefully describing how much fun it was to burn farmers with White Phosphorous, which they proudly announced was better than Napalm because it burns slower and sticks to the skin better. I realized that these people were sadistic and lost to evil and had no business representing the United States. I also learned, through my "friends" that there was a strong neo-conservative underground in this country that has Nazi leanings - in thought but not name, because the name had been discredited. This group remains alive and functioning between administrations when their henchmen are voted out of office. Nixon, Kissenger, and so many of that ilk, including many in the current Bush administration, were/are the sometimes unwitting representatives. I say unwitting because many, I believe, do not realize where the ideologies and strategies really come from -- these are incubated and "marketed" like other products to those who can be convinced to buy. Hatred has always been in the marketplace worldwide, and what I am writing here is only to confirm that we are no exception. The weak and stupid buy in bulk. It is ridiculous to think the abuse of prisoners was isolated or instigated as anything but official policy. This mentality operates on the principle of "deniability" (remember Oli North?). The abuse is not the present concern within the power circles, it is the pictures that are the concern. But I also do not think this is uncharacteristic of militaries everywhere, some much less concerned about being held to account than ours. The only defense against this sort of thing is a free, independent press. The greatest atrocity of all, in my opinion, has been the control and persecution of independent news. This is how the US is kept stupid and unaware. It is the first thing we must correct, so I applaud the independent media for withstanding the other war that has been waged against legitimate information. No one view will be correct in a free information society, but together they will give each of us the means to decide intelligently for ourselves. That is what tyrants everywhere fear the most.

Still, I think there are some big differences between the US and many other countries. One is that we are generally fat, comfortable, uninformed, and very trusting of our own institutions. The marketing of hate often works, and many people back hate-born policies in their ignorance, even though they personally can at times be the kindest of people. My own mother is a victim of this hate-mongering ideology and is constantly confused between her own instincts, which are good, and the garbage thoughts she has adopted from the likes of Rush Limbaugh. This older generation, who's reign of power is drawing to a close, were a group that had largely lost their trust in moral or political ideals as a result of WWI and the depression. Going into WWII, Mortimer Adler, a famous psychologist, described this generation as essentially bereft of overt values and disillusioned beyond endorsing any kind of idealism; religious, moral, or political. The ethic was "everyone for themselves" and "look after number one." Yet he also said that hidden behind these acquired beliefs was indeed a sense of good -- rarely admitted except when really challenged. This syndrome can be seen in many of the Humphry Bogart movies of the time, like the character he played in "Casablanca" (despite the movie's overtly political agenda). This mentality matured in America. Its benefits peaked in our famous entrepreneurial spirit, then began to decline into a modern senescence that has allowed sophisticated and consolidated economic greed to take over. The individual has almost disappeared. Remember this original spirit won WWII, despite Adler's predictions, and became highly productive. But individual spirit gave way to corporate greed, syndication, and an organized assault on the public as the target and ultimately the victim of consumerism. Marketing shifted emphasis from better products to better lies. Marketing gone wild ultimately ruins products by creating unnatural demand, usually for inferior products. War is one of those inferior products, successfully and purposefully marketed by a war underground to an unwitting public.

This leads to another difference, and some hope. When the news does indeed reach America (it has been largely censored, but now some of the media are beginning to open their eyes) the underlying instinctive morality of most people will emerge. They will throw out the thugs, neo-Nazis, and power/war mongers that have unfortunately taken over the "Conservative" movement. Even Pat Buchannan sees this happening and he is now distancing his Christian radicalism from it. What has happened to bring about this current war on humanity, aside from the loss of the "balance of powers," is, I believe, that the military/industrial ambitions that Eisenhouer warned about had combined with a globally exploitative economic program (born of the "Chicago boys:" see Greg Palast's book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"), and both had united with the Christian Right in the most dangerous and wicked coalition of modern times, which rose through the Republican Party. Buchanan sees this coalition as damaging his religious ideology and isolationism. This is evidence that the evil triumvirate may be starting to crumble. Separating the military complex from the world-dominating economic plan ("globalization" most notably advanced and assisted by the military in the form of Reaganomics, but also infecting Democratic administrations and as well) will be more difficult. Readers are correct who identify greed as the root cause, with oil energy resources key to it all, but it is so pervasive and systemic at this point that even those who believe in and justify war in the Middle East are largely not aware of the root of their own justifications. The mind does this.

All of these are trends and conditions I see with some disgust. The atrocities of prison abuse and militant retaliation are mere artifacts of the underlying causes for hatred. One of the oldest sayings is that "When hatred enters the mind, intelligence leaves." Evil begets evil. I am both a scientist and a spiritualist to whatever capacity I have. To me it is amazing that people can't see the illogic of retribution. To see something that is judged to be bad, and then to conclude that one must do that same thing instead of its opposite, makes no sense. We are programmed to mimic. We mimic parents and as children learn quickly by copying. But as adults we should, through experience, have more established principles. We should be able to rely on principles at times of emotional stress and challenge. The proper response to conditions that one thinks are not right is to speak and act only to represent and thereby establish conditions that are right. If the US claims any moral ascendancy it must demonstrate it in policy and deed. The same is true for other countries. First we must divorce ourselves from dependency on greedy corporations, greedy religions, and greedy war machines. We should instead be greedy only for understanding.

It is a fallacy to think that peace comes from the end or interruption of war. War requires practice. So does Peace. Peace may require more training and practice than war. But we train only for war, then return the tortured and sick minds that war creates back to society and say "live now in peace." It is asking too much of most people to think they will be able to figure out on their own how to become sane after the atrocities they have experienced. Our most important duty now is to counsel and heal those who have been affected by these wars. They have been made crazy, and in that condition they can breed only more craziness. This is true on both sides, at all levels.

I am familiar with the reputation of Eastern fatalism. "It is written." "Destiny rules everything." There is a sense where this is true. Events will work to their own conclusion once the strong programs of pre-established human belief have been provoked enough to become active. However, I also believe in "miracles." Miracles of the kind that each of us can perform. These are miracles of perception - the ability to create a total "shift in consciousness" from seeing fear and evil to seeing love, brotherhood, and understanding. The ego makes this shift seem very fearful. It tells us not to dare try it, or we will be exposed and vulnerable. The ego is wrong. Love does not have to be blind. All who have sought and achieved this change in awareness have been healed and have benefited. It requires only the willingness to ask for it and the willingness to have it happen. Our own minds can do this for us, without strenuous effort. To be the councilor that war-damaged survivors require, all you need to do is to remind people that this is always true - you can be healed by forgiveness of self and others; by devotion to love. No delay or process is needed -- do it now.

Finally, I want to say that comparing who's atrocities are greater is part of the sick mind we have acquired from war. All atrocities are equal. All acts of kindness are equal. It is only true that hate and love, or atrocity and kindness are unequal. The comparison of who's hatred is greater, or which act of love is greater, is part of the illusion. There is only one choice and one comparison. We are either teaching love or its absence. I realize this may seem to "simplistic" to some. Surely public, intentional beheading is worse than degrading a prisoner (some say). Surely insulting one's deeply held religion is worse than beheading or suicide or anything that can happen to the body (others say). Surely Hitler's genocide is worse than American or Israeli occupation (some say). Surely murder, where we can identify the cause, is worse than starvation, where the cause may be more hidden. All these comparisons fail at some point. They compare one illusion to another. What can be accurately distinguished is when people genuinely try to help each other and when they instead try to do harm for their own benefit. The false justifications - the lies - give away the difference.

There is also a difference, I think, between individual crimes and State or organization sponsored crimes. The former are human failings that have existed in societies everywhere and will always exist. They are what civil laws are for. The latter are collective ideologies which are much harder to address because they are not discredited by punishment. Punishing an ideology can make it stronger. To redress its evils, its basic beliefs must be exposed and discredited in the public marketplace. It was Ghandi's insight of non-violent resistance, the purpose of which is to expose the false ideas of the oppressor. I believe that is happening now with the Bush "war on terror" or terrible war, whichever it is. Instead of allowing terrorism to discredit itself, by building better societies in the face of which terror reveals its true nature, he has legitimized terror by attacking it and employing it. He has earned his reputation as the "Village Idiot President" by not understanding basic principles of giving and receiving. But worse he, Blair, and Sharon have sustained and increased terrorism by giving it the ideal breeding conditions. Even without basic human compassion, mathematics alone can make the point. We are creating far more terrorists than we are killing. So killing is not the answer, healing is.

To all the Arab readers - Salam. To all the Western readers - Peace. Let's unite and together expel the tyrants and terrorists who try, unsuccessfully, to rule us. But lets use love as our only weapon. There is no greater truth in human history than the fact that love is the most powerful weapon of all, for those with the bravery to use it.

Yours,

John Jay Boulder, Colorado

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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).