29 Oct, 2006

When will the American people finally tire of being lied to?

Imtiaz Muqbil

Originally Published: 29 Oct 2006

Before reading any further, please log onto this website: www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/.

And note the words:

“Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

“Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

“Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

“Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

“Somehow this is tolerated.

“Somehow nobody is accountable for this.”

This is no “jihadi” website. Nor is it me flying off the handle again. This is Kevin Tillman exploding in anger about what his brother, the American football icon Pat Tillman, died for in Afghanistan.

Amidst intense soul-searching in the United States, the outcome of the 11/7 mid-term elections will decide the future of both the US and the world at large.

There are growing and irrefutable signs that the American people have had enough of being lied to by “incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals” and are finally shaking off their slumber.

But there are still millions of voters who support these “criminals” and believe their canards. Truly, the for-us-or-against-us philosophy has become a deeply entrenched local and global issue, and the “criminals” will use all their political, economic and corporate power to worsen the situation — as long as they can find a ready supply of somebody else’s children to die on their behalf.

Not since Hitler have so many in the so-called “civilised world” been so cunningly hoodwinked by so few. Having made a complete mess of the situation in Iraq, they now want to do even more unthinkable things, like attacking Iran.

If they are to go down, they plan to make sure they take everyone else down with them.

The only downside of becoming rich, strong and powerful is that one tends to become too full of oneself, in the process becoming both arrogant and stupid.

Does acquiring power means never having to say you’re sorry, never backing down, never admitting mistakes, and always finding somebody else to blame in order to avoid losing face or being called losers?

Remember the presidential choice of that word, “crusade”, immediately after 9/11? Was that really an inadvertent blooper? Or is that what this is all about?

If not, why aren’t there more Christian groups seeking to set things right?

What is the Christian world at large doing to dissuade their religiously inclined brethren in the United States from voting the crusaders back into power? Or is it secretly supporting them in their quest?

Since 9/11, the Islamic world has been in the dock, ceaselessly and intensely being harangued to distance itself from its fanatics and fundamentalists, to prove that it is in fact a religion of peace.

After the elections on 11/7, the Christian world will become equally accountable.

As the “criminals” in Washington DC rely heavily on the voting bloc support of the fundamentalist and essentially ill-informed Christians in the deep US hinterland, are those Christians going to live up to their own ideals as followers of a religion of humility, compassion, forgiveness and mercy?

So far, there has been little evidence of anyone turning the other cheek.

Here is a quote from an October 18 commentary in Religion News Service, headlined: “Easy Marks for a White House Con” [http://rns.c.topica.com/maafhhAabt63Bb3W6o6caehobE/]

“We now have it on fairly good authority that the Bush team, led by Karl Rove, exploited the gullibility of Christian evangelicals to further Republican political ambitions while privately scorning them as “nuts” or “ridiculous” or “boorish” or worse.

“It must be hard for experienced con artists to feel anything but contempt for the suckers, or the marks as they’re known on the street. Indeed, even onlookers feel little sympathy for marks, many of whom, maybe most, get scammed because they’re promised something they shouldn’t have in the first place.”

In fact, the Christians appear to have a pretty nonchalant attitude towards the assault taking place in the very town where Christ was born.

Check out another non-jihadi website: www.openbethlehem.org/assets/images/powerpoint/Annexation_of_Rachel’s_Tomb.pps

How Christianity can allow this to happen is really beyond belief.

Even the Jews are waking up to the damage done by the hard-core fanatics in their ranks.

On October 23, a report in the Financial Times said the Jewish financier George Soros is “said by friends to be considering giving his support to a new initiative for an influential alternative that would lobby for US engagement and a negotiated two-state settlement” in Palestine.

Said the report, “Organisers deny they intend to rival the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), one of Washington’s most effective (pro-Israel) lobby groups, and say some of their number include Aipac supporters. But with sufficient funding, its outlook could be seen as a counterweight to Aipac, which strongly backed the unilateralist course set by former prime minister Ariel Sharon.”

Want to know more about Jews getting fed up with their own home-grown lunatics? Check out: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

As I have done unwaveringly over the years, I am merely “staying the course” in maintaining that accountability is a two-way street, that “freedom and democracy” needs to be universally applied and that the principles of nonviolence will eventually triumph.

As of last week, however, more lies were being spewed out with Bush claiming that if Iraq became a failed state, extremists could gain access to oil wealth and use it as a base from which to try to establish a “radical empire from Spain to Indonesia”.

Which is worse? That such sweeping banalities continue to be uttered at the highest level of power, or believed by the ill-informed masses?

The future of relations between the monotheistic religions, and indeed the prospects of a Clash of Civilizations, are the real issues at stake on 11/7. It’s time for the real Judeo-Christian tradition to rise to the occasion.