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     Volume 4 Issue 21 | November 12, 2004 |


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Chintito

59,054,087
Bushmen

pay no
heed

CHINTITO

Post nine-eleven, George W(armonger) was a man mortified and grossly offended (read 'gussa') by the biggest attack on American soil since the World War II. The coordinated terrorist strike on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in the financial district of New York City on 11 September 2001 killed more than three thousand civilians.

Publicly Bush and company put the blame squarely on al-Qaeda led by a former Saudi citizen, who the US gladly sponsored barely two decades back. Behind the scene they allowed 142 Saudis including 24 members of the bin Laden family to fly out of the USA after September 13 in six private jets and two dozen commercial planes. (Ref. documentary US movie Fahrenheit 9/11 by Academy Award winning filmmaker Michael Moore, available in CD/DVD)

Eric Lichtblau reported in The New York Times: Top White House officials personally approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the US in the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks when most of the flights were grounded.

Flashback: In 1979 Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union, then a super power. Saudi Arabian multimillionaire Osama bin Laden considered unpardonable the Soviet invasion on a Muslim land. He provided funds, logistics and supplies to give leadership to a resistance; recruited military volunteers from Arab nations, and was wholeheartedly supported by the United States. It was only towards the end of the war in 1988 that bin Laden established al-Qaeda, Arabic for 'the Base'. By whose open support then was al-Qaeda created?

Having seen the back of the defeated and withdrawing Soviet forces, American 'hero' Osama returned to Saudi Arabia the following year. When within a year Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait, the US responded by jumping with an international coalition into the Persian Gulf War.

In order to counter Iraq, Saudi Arabia allowed the US to station troops near Makkah

and Medina, two of Islam's holiest sites into which even today non-Muslims are not allowed. This military move made Osama very angry on the Saudi monarchy and in 1992 he left Saudi Arabia for Sudan to continue his remonstration. Two years later, the Saudi government revoked his citizenship and froze his assets in Saudi Arabia. So where does this 45-year old man, elevated to international leadership by selfish US policy (use him when it suits you, oppose him when not), for years presumably living in caves, still get his funds from? Does he sign a cheque book?

Flash more back: Early on the morning of 7 December 1941 the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour was attacked by Japanese submarines and carrier-based planes, as were nearby military airfields. Eight American battleships and thirteen other naval vessels were sunk or badly damaged, almost two hundred American aircrafts were destroyed, and approximately three thousand naval and military personnel were killed or wounded.

In a paradoxical turn of history and growth in commercial enterprise today there are Japanese troops in Iraq as part of the US-led coalition forces. The attackers of Pearl Harbour and those attacked would have been shell-shocked.

Between Pearl Harbour and now, over the past over sixty years, the Americans have gotten used to the contrary. They take their war to every other country, much to the hilarity (not related to Clinton) of 59,054,087 American voters (2004 US presidential elections) so that the shores of US of A are alive and kicking with children playing in the sandy beaches, while the grownups either lay back under the shade of umbrellas or jostle for stocks and other mortal gains in business districts and thriving localities. Only this half never pauses to ponder that there are children just as adorable in Afghanistan, as innocent in Iraq, that the women there are also lovingly addressed as equivalent of Mom and Momma.

In Y2K George W Bush became the president of the United States by a margin of only 537 votes in decisive Florida, where his brother Republican Jeb (not translated from Hindi/Urdu 'pocket') Bush was the Governor, in an electorate of around hundred and fifty million; that too after counting, recounting and recounting until they lost count.

Many believe it was haughty of Bush to consider that negligible margin a mandate (?) to go and bomb every country where he believed lived a former-friend-turned-enemy of the USA. History tells us that list also includes Saddam.

Many major leaders and countries of the world opposed and washed their hands off Bush's war move without a UN sanction. But you do not have to listen to any one if you are the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful armed forces in the world. The rest of the world prays for humanity from a US president. That should be the gift of the American people to the rest of the world.

Bush Jr. has not forgotten the decades old attack on a US harbour. During his first term, marking the 60th anniversary of the Pearl Harbour attack on 7 December 2001 from the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, the US president said: 'The attack on Pearl Harbour was plotted in secrecy, waged without mercy. Out of that surprise attack grew a steadfast resolve that made America freedom's defender, and that missionour great callingcontinues to this hour as the brave men and women of our military fight the forces of terror in Afghanistan and around the world.'

So the US under Bush would attack.

As apparent eye-shy (read 'chokkhu lajja') Bush and his parrot Bliar invented WMD as personified by do-moor-er phool Osama and in the form of Saddam's rusted armaments. They have WMD, we will find the WMD, it is a matter of time, maybe the WMD have been hidden, etc. have now fizzled out to they (B&B) were misinformed by their intelligence. Not that intelligent then, are they? Are not the lies of an elected politician a felony that the learned voters in the West never forgive? That was the West that was; now it is learned by less than half.

The war in Afghanistan is typical of US invasions, which are originally justified by the need to crush a dangerous enemy, (read 'in search of Osama') but in the end result in more civilian deaths than combatant deaths, serving to repress and pacify the whole population, says one analyst.

From The Economist: 'SOME 100,000 soulsperhaps even moremay have perished in Iraq as a result of the American-led invasion. So, at any rate, says a respected British medical journal, the Lancet. If only half that figure is the true one, it is shocking.…'

Victory to humankind, there has been massive and some of the biggest ever anti-War protests against Bush and Bliar from London to Johannesburg, from Jakarta to Lagos, even in America as recent as 7 November 2004 ; pleading for the lives of the innocent citizens of the bombarded countries. But more than half of America shut off their ears. For now their sandy beaches, the jumbo umbrellas, the rise of their stocks are all that matter. The rest of the world! Where is that?

As the 2004 US elections drew near, much of the world were open about their hatred for Bush's foreign policy that maims and kills innocent and uninvolved men, women and children in another economically strategic country; they openly opted for the Democratic alternative.

But half of the Americans who voted thought: If the rest of the world were against Bush getting re-elected, this son of a gun must be doing something damn right for us.

Reporting on the 'US election disaster', London's Daily Mirror front-paged on 4 November a photo of Bush with the caption, 'How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?'

Many of the accused, self-claimed PhD holder and MENSA member inclusive, actually claimed (How dumb?) by writing to the paper that they were not dumb and did the right thing.

The following are some of the reactions to that Mirror story from the better half of America:

THANKS for acknowledging that half of American did not vote for "Dubya" and we are in deep mourning for the fate of our country. - Marion & Tom Tunney, Cranbury, New Jersey

YOUR cover says it all. I'm ashamed to bear the surname of George Bush. - Donnie Bush, Dayton, Ohio

I WAS stunned to see that Ohio, the state that suffered the most staggering job losses as a result of Bush, actually went to the Republicans. Please do remind your readers that not all Americans feel the way that Mr. Bush does. (Name not given)

I am trying to get an internship in the UK and as a result of the Bush administration's crazy anti-Europe stance I fear many Europeans will view all Americans as closed-minded, war-crazed individuals. Hopefully in the near future America will get a responsible leader that recognises that we are not alone in this world and that many problems in this world do not have an American solution. - Jen, Michigan

WE are saddened in heart and mind and scared about the damage that Bush can do in the next four years, above the damage he has already done. - Ilene Coman, Connecticut

IF you are one of the 45 million without health insurance, a simple ear infection costs upwards of $150 to treat. I am horrified that over 59 million people voted to re-elect the moron-in-chief. But don't worry, Britons, those people won't be visiting your country anytime soon. Nine of 10 of them can't find Britain on a map. - Brooklyn, New York

***

For the better half of America and many of us, the world will hopefully be a better place after another four years what with Bush finally out of the White House; unless of course he manages to change the constitution to get a third term. The outcome of the 2004 US elections has convinced me and half of USA that in the US anything and everything is possible.

 

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2004