A thousand years later, Pope John Paul II apologized for his predecessor’s transgressions as he tried to bring his Church back to its original message of peace and love.

Before the ink of that Papal apology has dried, George Bush is embarking on his own fiery crusade against Saddam. Were it only Saddam, the President would have had more than the 30 states he listed as supporting him. Those states that include Eritrea and Macedonia (little wonder he did not count the penguins in the South Pole) number Turkey among them — a country that flatly rejected him and his offers. With all the technology available to him that allows him to address every living creature on this planet, including the penguins in the South Pole, Bush has failed miserably to convince anyone of the need to cut off your nose to spite your face.

The logic of killing hundreds of thousands to get rid of one man is the logic of the megalomaniacs and the demented. Oddly enough, that is Saddam’s own logic: In culling his population and keeping them hungry, diseased or at war, he managed to stay in power. Now they have to face the eight-ton bombs so Bush can remove Saddam.

Bush’s transgression becomes more macabre when we consider that the nose he is trying to get rid of is set in someone else’s face. Baghdad was the seat of the Caliphate for 700 years; the Iraqis are the unfortunate Arabs who suffered the murderous dictator for twenty years; and Iraq belongs to us all who claim to be Arabs. Saddam is the creature of President Bush’s father, if not American policy altogether; yet the price to remove him is to be paid by the innocent, who are guinea pigs for new American armaments. The 12 years that Saddam was allowed to chew on his Cuban cigar and strut like a rooster with a headache while firing off rifles he did not manufacture are the responsibility of America. After the liberation of Kuwait, the Shia and the Kurds rose in answer to Bush Sr.’s call only to be left to the murderous machine of Saddam. What makes Bush’s offer this time round any more trustworthy? At that time the Kurds, by virtue of being non-Arabs, were also granted a safe haven. The Arabs of the south were not afforded the same protection. It does not need much investigation to see that the American policy is basically anti-Arab. Hence the deeply felt mistrust of American policy and the universal opposition to the war. We simply don’t trust America and we do not buy Bush’s waxing poetic about justice and liberty. It might be logical that not every Bush is like another, but we are certain that there are no more burning bushes around.

To compound the problem, linking the Middle East problem with the Iraqi one as Bush did last week was nothing short of cynical. We know that this is not Bush’s sincere conviction nor is it his desire to see peace reign in the area. He simply did it to help his friend Blair. The Israelis bulldozed a US citizen who protested for peace and Bush’s people did not even protest in diplomatic terms. Chirac’s sane advice of “do not amputate before trying at least laceration and stitches” gained him the status of enemy number two in the USA — second only to Bin Laden.

As for Blair, one need only recall Gertrude Bell, who worked with the British mandate in Iraq early last century. She sat late at night drawing the border between Iraq and Kuwait and wrote to her father. “Now I know how God felt creating the world,” she wrote.

Perhaps Blair knows who Gerty is, although I doubt it; but I am certain that no one in the Administration does.

Our area is a time loaded with history — not only ours, but that of other nations. Also, our part of the world is a place where superpowers went miserably wrong before. But instead of counseling his friend on such matters, Blair went out of his way to lie through the teeth. What a shame such a magnificent career should come to this miserable end. Blair was right in his speech to the Commons when he identified America’s post-Sept. 11 psychological status, which he claimed the Europeans had not understood. But he himself failed when he aided them in launching a war merely to exorcise the demons of that day. Think how many new demons are being unleashed as one goes down?

No one on earth would be happier to see Saddam go than the Iraqis themselves. While the Kuwaitis suffered him once, the Iraqis suffer him daily. America, on the other hand, has enough technology to read my sentences before I even type them; won the Cold War without firing a shot; and has managed throughout its history to make even its deadliest enemies dream of emulating its freedoms and its lifestyle. Why, then, is this giant willing to lose France and Germany as allies, alienate a new ally in Russia, make Bin Laden giggle in his beard with unrestrained joy, and expose all those who would love to help it revenge Sept. 11 and heal its wounds? It is not for foreigners to provide the answers to these questions. That is the job of the American voter. Let us hope that, by the time they have a chance to do so, it will not be too late.

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