Well today is the great debate in congress -- can you believe we are even discussing a resolution to give the president/ I mean resident Bush the power to declare and wage war on another country with only the perceived threat of danger. This attitude of a perceived threat that must be dealt with pre-emptively is a dangerous precedent that will be an example for the future of the world. This attitude as an example has spread and is being practiced by Our Attorney General Ashcroft as he is pre-emptively rounding up and detaining US citizens guilty of the possibility of creating a terrorist cell. He must have seen the movie "Minority Reports" where Tom Cruise cruised around arresting people that were going to commit crimes in the future. That was the ultimate pre-emptive movie and planted the seed in the minds of the US citizens a way of dealing with fear and perceived and often fabricated threats.

I sit here and listen to the speeches of the pros and cons for voting on one of the three resolutions before the house and I can't help but feeling concerned that this is an enormously important time in the history of the world. The knot in my stomach is telling me that this scenario, this nightmare is continuing but my heart speaks of the grand illusion of it all. I know I stand practically alone in my thinking that this is all a hoax, a fantasy, a make believe war but the facts continue to tell me that this is so. I reach this conclusion from the simple study of history. Who dies in these mini wars, and who suffers, and what is the change in the power structure in the attacked country?

The Gulf War told us that the people who died were the gun point conscripts of Hussein's enemies. 250,000 men from the Kurds and the Shiites were target practice for our new weapons of mass destruction on our evening news. These were Saddam's Indians, his opponents that were in the way of developing oil fields in the Shiites region in the south and the forced labor camps of the Kurds in the North. These are the people that continue suffer under the daily US bombings and US sanctions. Hussein's power was increased because of this war and continues to grow with US support - through the sanctions and bombing Basra the capital city in the Shiite region. The US is not bombing Baghdad we are bombing Basra, the sanctions are not effecting Baghdad.

Now after all this suffering, Bush is telling the world that Saddam is a threat to the people of Iraq, to the people in the region, to the people in the US. Then why are we killing the Iraqi people, threatening to ignite a war in teh region and placing the US people on the hit list of millions of angered Muslims. I am not alone in seeing that Bush is also a threat to our world.

Afghanistan - as in Iraq, the US created and sponsored tyrannous regimes and then made them our enemy, only to have the indigenous people of the region die, suffer and live in oppression. The Taliban were overrun and they surrendered. Few of them died. Those that died and continue to die in the War On Terror are the conscripts and the illusioned supporters of Jihad, not the Taliban. When the Taliban surrendered they were let go on a handshake. When the conscripts and others surrendered they were brutally massacred and some were sent off to cages in Guantanamo Cuba.

In Iraq when Hussein's Republican Guard surrenders to the US armed forces they will be let go on a handshake. Saddam will relinquish power to a surrogate from the ruling Ba'ath party. The real Saddam will shrink from view like the other tyrants so demonized by our media to live out his life unnoticed and comforted that he played an important role in the world's history. The war will be swift and decisive. It will be a triumph for the powers that be and a great dagger will be thrust into the heart of peace. The Iraq war will be the launching pad for the real war the US will be fighting - the war with the world. If this fuse is a dud then Bush will try another country, another tyrant and we will do this all over again. Kaddafy? The return of Bin Laden? No. Korea? China? Wherever the next threat comes from rest assured that it will come until the US that Bush envisions rules the world and the new economic and political order of Globalization prevails.

E_mail:  the Tribal Messenger

###

TOP