US Administrations have been blighted since 9/11 by a deadly cocktail of arrogance and ignorance, with a twist of the strong desire for revenge.
But before you take aim and fire, you have to know your enemy, and the scattergun policies of the Bush and now the Obama regimes have served only to create hatred and mistrust against the US in areas where it was never present.
In fact, far from driving the likes of al Qaida into oblivion, this strategy turned the USA into al Qaida’s finest recruiting officer.
Like their intelligence agencies, these US Administrations have chosen only to listen to those who give them information they want to hear even if that information is a long distance from reality.
As a result, a deluded Iraqi man called “Curveball” conned US intelligence and in turn President George W Bush over the existence of WMD. It was all Bush and his neo-cons needed and wanted to hear to justify their illegal invasion of Iraq, assuring the world they would find Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was a blatant lie.
It mattered not that the real experts, like former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and former U.N. Assistant Secretary General Hans Von Sponek, said WMD simply no longer existed. It mattered not, it seems, that up to a million paid the blood price for this arrogance and ignorance. It matters not that today Iraq is still in turmoil.
With the same reckless abandon, the USA has been sucked in to a war in Afghanistan from which is cannot retreat or make progress, never mind peace. Bush told us the invasion of Afghanistan was all about getting Osama bin Laden and liberating Afghan women — neither of which has been achieved.
And now, the Middle East is on fire with a Peoples’ Revolution that is busy eliminating all the dictators supported and installed by the USA.
All of this could have been avoided if only the White House had listened … listened to their own people in the growing anti-war movement; listened to ordinary peace activists who mobilized in their tens of millions around the world marching against wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; listened to the tens of millions across the Muslim world about the injustices against the Palestinian people.
Instead, the US Administrations of Bush and Obama chose to listen to a few extremists and fanatics who think they can achieve whatever they want by pointing the barrel of a gun made in America. Might is not right, nor does it guarantee a victory.
And once the chains of fear and oppression break, ordinary people will seize their freedom from those who stole it with their bare hands.
Tahrir Square in Egypt has been turned into the democratic capital of the Arab world, and not one of the leaders of the revolution is armed with anything more than hopes and desires for a better future free from tyranny.
For God’s sake Mr. President, listen to the people before it is too late.
And here’s another friendly piece of advice — there is a cauldron boiling so fiercely in the region, and if you don’t do something about it, the seismic and heroic events unfolding today in Tahrir Square will begin to look more like a convention of Tupperware agents by comparison.
Pakistan is on the brink and so is Afghanistan. Uzbekistan is not far behind, either. Where there is injustice, there can never be peace, and as long as Americans are seen to blindly trample on cultures, customs, and laws in that region with blind arrogance, it will come back to bite them in a big way.
When a young Tunisian man called Tarek al-Tayyib Muhammad ibn Bouazizi turned himself in to a human torch in December, he also ignited a flame which has now become the Arab Peoples’ Revolution.
History has shown that it is always seemingly small, insignificant events which trigger revolutions.
So I am asking the White House to pay special attention to the incident involving Raymond Davis, allegedly a US diplomat, who is now residing in Pakistan custody suspected of killing three Pakistanis in Lahore last week.
Already US lawmakers are banging on about the Vienna Conventions only because they now appear to need it so badly.
These are the same Vienna Conventions ignored by America when His Excellency Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeeff, the Ambassador to Pakistan from Afghanistan, was stripped naked, beaten and handed over to US soldiers in January 2002 before being carted off to Guantanamo Bay. These are the same Vienna Conventions which were trampled on when Dr Aafia Siddiqui was shot by US soldiers at point blank range in a police cell in Afghanistan then kidnapped and renditioned to America in July 2008.
It was nearly a full four weeks before she was given any consular access — yet US Ambassador Anne Patterson stood in Islamabad and lied and lied about the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui claiming her rights were not violated.
The sad thing is Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton have probably never heard of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Why would they bother with minor detail when they’ve got full-scale wars to wage? Their advisers, at the very least, need to read her story — the real one. Her story is vital because she epitomizes all the injustices of the War on Terror and she is now becoming a rallying point for all Pakistani people. Don’t believe the propaganda that she’s the poster girl of the Islamists — please stop falling for these stupid lines.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is another Tarek al-Tayyib Muhammad ibn Bouazizi. I am telling you this in good faith because it is something your best friends, paid informers, stooges and ill-informed intelligence agencies won’t tell you.
Sometimes correcting the smaller issues — though they are by no means small to families and friends involved — will help you with much larger events.
The time has come for America to show humility — return Dr. Siddiqui to her home in Karachi where she can be reunited with her children. And then — and only then — start concerning yourself with Raymond Davis and his activities.
If he is guilty of anything, put faith in Pakistan’s judiciary and let him stand trial in the country where his alleged crime was committed. The US has to start respecting other country’s laws instead of making up their own as they go along to cover up and protect American-made blunders and mistakes.
The US is neither the peoples’ friends nor their master, but the influence it has brought to bear in the Muslim world in recent years has been extremely negative.
This influence has wrecked US foreign policy in the Middle East and will destroy its goals — and we still do not know what they really are — especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Time for humility. Time to listen to the people — and while you’ve been meddling in everyone else’s backyard start looking at your own: there’s a great deal of unrest in the USA with rising unemployment, rising home repossessions, lack of health care and more than 50 million relying on food stamps to survive.
Perhaps it’s time to call a halt to your foreign adventures and attend to more pressing issues at home where the American Dream is turning in to a nightmare for millions.
Al qaeda, and others before them hated the Buddhist, hated the Hindus, hated the infidels, hated the Arab tribes’ right to free practice of worship… It did not take a US response to an act of war to propagate hate in the islamic world. In the islamic world there continues to be hate for women’s empowerment, continues to be hate for the free idol worship of minorities, the free right to human conscience… and it is not a new thing. The day Mohamed demolished the idols at Mecca, the islamic world became intolerant.
No doubt the US made mistakes. The Afghan people supported the enemies of the US (who were foreign occupiers of that nation). The Pakistani people support the talibanization of pakistan, though be a different name. And of course this is not all the people, it is enough of the people. Pakistan, and its people, gives refuge to Bin Laden. An attack on American soil that killed 3000 people is an act of war. It is not an act of simple criminal injustice prompting an eye for an eye. An act of war prompt an attack to obtain submission. As any nation, attacked by a group getting support from the people of another nation, has the right to decimate its enemy when attacked, so does the US. Unlike the Turks who killed 1 million armenians, unlike the pakistanis who killed 3 million Bengali / Hindus, unlike Hussein who killed 1 million Iraqis, the US attack on Afghanistan is justified in any rational sense. I agree that the US attack on Iraq is not.
But Alqaeda and other islamic hate groups care not who is attacked, how many civilians are harmed, what policies of supporting human freedoms the US supports, what high ideal the Buddhist statues represent, the validity of Hindus religious idolatry…. People who hate use history as an excuse to hate.
Islamists will continue to attack the Hindu, the christian, the jew, the buddhist, the atheist, the animist, and the fellow islamist who happens to be in the wrong subgroup. This despite the greatest efforts of those groups to appease them.
People who care, use history as an opportunity to care. It is time for the “moderate” islamists to care for the minorities in Iran, in Saudi, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya, in Turkey…. Of course that has nothing to do with being an islamist, it has entirely to do with being a good human.
Blame America for what you want, Some times you will be right, sometimes wrong. But take responsibility for your own affairs of state (the islamic ones) and then establish a state of affairs that proves to the world that islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. The old American adage: show me.
First separate extract the ignorance in your claims, before you ask the ‘Islamic World’ to show you a model of peace and tolerance.
‘Al Qaeda, and others before them hated the Buddhist, hated the Hindus, hated the infidels, hated the Arab tribes’ right to free practice of worship… It did not take a US response to an act of war to propagate hate in the islamic world. In the islamic world there continues to be hate for women’s empowerment, continues to be hate for the free idol worship of minorities, the free right to human conscience… and it is not a new thing. The day Mohamed demolished the idols at Mecca, the islamic world became intolerant.’
What is your point; the same can be said for Christians and Hindus in the past and present.
‘No doubt the US made mistakes. The Afghan people supported the enemies of the US (who were foreign occupiers of that nation). The Pakistani people support the talibanization of pakistan, though be a different name. And of course this is not all the people, it is enough of the people. Pakistan, and its people, gives refuge to Bin Laden. An attack on American soil that killed 3000 people is an act of war. It is not an act of simple criminal injustice prompting an eye for an eye. An act of war prompt an attack to obtain submission. As any nation, attacked by a group getting support from the people of another nation, has the right to decimate its enemy when attacked, so does the US. Unlike the Turks who killed 1 million armenians, unlike the pakistanis who killed 3 million Bengali / Hindus, unlike Hussein who killed 1 million Iraqis, the US attack on Afghanistan is justified in any rational sense. I agree that the US attack on Iraq is not.’
The US made mistakes? Is that supposed to be satirical? The US does not make any mistakes; every facet of their directives is calculated and callously executed. The extent of their ‘mistakes’ is unparallel, and unequivocal, so don’t use some conventional banter to abdicate the severity of American foreign policy.
Afghani’s supported which foreign occupiers? The Taliban and Al Qaeda are not synonymous, the Taliban are indigenous people that are of a distinct ethnicity. The only support they enjoyed were from the US and Pakistan.
Did you live in Afghanistan, while the Taliban reigned supreme? Do you comprehend the difference between dissent and apathy? Spare us your dogma and research the facts from your ivory tower.
The Pakistani people do not support the Talibanization of their society; instead they desire a pluralistic system of governance that is not propped up by Western institutions that seek to achieve their seditious objectives. Routine carnage from drone attacks on sovereign soil might leave a bitter taste for US democratic ideals.
Are you implying an act of war is defined by the number of casualties it yields? What submission did the INVASION of Afghanistan and Iraq obtain? That both wars were predicated on baseless facts and conspiracy to achieve a globalist agenda? Are you aware of the casualties the US has inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you analyze facts or except what Fox news spews? The plausibility of 9/11 is not a conspiracy theory bellowed by dancing Arabs; the official record has been torn to shreds by scientists, architects, reporters, authors, politicians, and the citizenry using SCIENTIFIC FACTS not religious idol smashing venom.
‘But Alqaeda and other islamic hate groups care not who is attacked, how many civilians are harmed, what policies of supporting human freedoms the US supports, what high ideal the Buddhist statues represent, the validity of Hindus religious idolatry…. People who hate use history as an excuse to hate.’
Same can be said for every MAJOR RELIGIOUS GROUP throughout history, how are Islamic hate groups unique? Is it because they are the soup du jour of the American/Globalist schema, or because they serve as a scapegoat to further control of people/resources?
‘Islamists will continue to attack the Hindu, the christian, the jew, the buddhist, the atheist, the animist, and the fellow islamist who happens to be in the wrong subgroup. This despite the greatest efforts of those groups to appease them.’
Refer to all of the above-mentioned comments.
‘People who care, use history as an opportunity to care. It is time for the “moderate” islamists to care for the minorities in Iran, in Saudi, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya, in Turkey…. Of course that has nothing to do with being an islamist, it has entirely to do with being a good human.’
Huh?
‘Blame America for what you want, Some times you will be right, sometimes wrong. But take responsibility for your own affairs of state (the islamic ones) and then establish a state of affairs that proves to the world that islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. The old American adage: show me.’
The developing world wants to take responsibility (the Islamic ones) for its affairs, but invasionary wars, a foreign policy that extends its tentacles into the internal matters of SOVEREIGN nations, the resolve to ensure all nations remain bankrupt indebted slaves and the support of dictatorial regimes do not facilitate an environment for states to heed the desires of the people it represents.
Another old American adage: put your money where your mouth is, accurately reflects the sordid state of affairs of American democratic values.
Alex-
What’s my point. Al qaeda is a hate group. always will be a hate group, was born as a hate group and remains one. It does not matter what the US does, the Buddhist do, the Hindus do… they will hate because of their ideology.
Certainly the Nazis were a hate group and still are. Are muslims equal to nazis? if yes, we have nothing to discuss. If no, then how do you establish the difference? Buddhists, Hindus, Animists, Hopi, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Taoists… are not hate groups. In the 150 or so years of communism 100s of millions have died because of their ideology. In the 2000 years of christianity 100s of millions have died because of their ideology. In the 1300 years of islam, perhaps not 100s of millions but 10s of millions have died for their ideology. In the 2500 years of Buddhism there is no where near those numbers. In the 10000 years of Hinduism, there is no where near those numbers. Scientifically, Hinduism and Buddhism are in dogma and practice less lethal to those that disagree than the first three ideologies. Again, If you believe islam and nazi-ism are all the same, fine by me.
The US makes no mistakes. My god, who are you, god, that should know the perfection in the hearts of other men?
Afghans support of outside invaders: islam, the Saudi princes who call themselves Al qaeda, the Pakistani military destablizing the attempts at peace. The Afghan people, like any other people, is a mix of consent and discontent. But, If the Afghans want to talibanize their country again, it is on the back of women’s rights, human rights, humanity … to support the foreign ideology of islamization.
Pakistani islamization: the Pakistani people, like all peoples, are not a homogenous group. There are enough in Pakistan to support the murder of blasphemers – talibanization. There are enough in P to support the use of bombs to establish changes in regime for an islamist state – talibanization. There are enough in P to support the wiping out of minority islamic groups for their lack of sufficient islamization – talibanization. There are enough in P to support the killing of 3 million Hindus and others in the former West Pakistan to suppress a popular vote against their brand of governance – hate runs deep in major and power parts of Pakistani culture. Most of these attitudes existed before the US was using drones, while the US was sending food supplies, while the US was supporting educational institutions…in Pakistan.
“same can be said of..” not true. Unless you believe islam is of the same moral fabric as naziism.
People who care, use history as an opportunity to care. It is time for the “moderate” islamists to care for the minorities in Iran, in Saudi, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya, in Turkey…. Of course that has nothing to do with being an islamist, it has entirely to do with being a good human.
Too hard for you understand, think deeper.
The islamic world wants to take responsibility… Do so. Replace the monarchs, remove the force of islam that suppresses freedom to be an idolator…show me. Put that oil money where your mouth is. The sordid affairs of the islamic world will continue until the secularists rise up and say, shut up imams. Every human has equal rights to deny islam, allah, mohamed, ….