A Crusader in King Abdullah's Court
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Bush: "God Bless Israel"
Arabs: "God Bless Bush"
Mohamed Khodr
"Past experience provides little basis for confidence that reason can prevail in an atmosphere of mounting war fever. In a contest between a hawk and dove the hawk has a great advantage, not because it is a better bird but because it is a bigger bird with lethal talons and a highly developed will to use them."
William Fulbright: "On the Arrogance of Power" (The Late Senator and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations)
21/01/08 "ICH" -- -- The Dying of Gaza As the World Turns Away: No Light, Heat, or Bread
Barely weeks after the failure of the Annapolis meeting Bush headed to the Middle East for his first visit in seven years. His purpose: Enlisting Arab support, although never needed, to attack Israel's neo-existential threat---Iran, regardless of the fact that Iran neither has nuclear weapons nor will it commit suicide by attacking Israel or American interests in the Gulf. When it comes to Israel's or America's preemptive wars and occupations of Arab land, facts, international laws, and human rights are irrelevant as expressed by George H. W. Bush, the father of Bush Jr. who considers himself the divinely guided crusader for Israel and MidEast peace:
"I will never apologize for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are".
Arriving in Israel under the pretense of energizing the peace "process" Bush and Olmert's discussion concentrated on attacking Iran, **** the Palestinians. Despite Bush's feigned statements that occupation must end and that "outposts" must be dismantled, Ehud Olmert publicly dressed down the American President by saying that settlements will continue to be built.
During Bush's visit to Israel dozens of Palestinians were murdered and injured by the Israeli military. Bush did not utter a word on the loss of Palestinian lives. On the contrary, Bush visited the Holocaust memorial and was moved by the persecution of the Jews in Europe who today are the persecutors of the Palestinians. He wrote in the guest book;
"God bless Israel, George Bush". It's hard to imagine that God blesses Israel's inhumanity against the Palestinians or Bush's savagery in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Bush, thankfully you will leave office in one year after inflaming the world for decades to come. Your only contributions to this planet are Global Warming and Global Warring.
With insensitivity and callousness to the daily harassment Palestinians undergo as they navigate hundreds of military checkpoints, Bush joked about his unimpeded drive through a checkpoint in full sight of the "Apartheid Wall" by saying:
"You'll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped. I'm not so exactly sure that's what happens to the average person". The man who touts freedom was blind to the lack of freedom of movement of the occupied Palestinians on their own land.
Gaza has been under siege for over a year for daring to democratically elect Hamas, a resistance movement founded with Israel's aid and blessing that legitimately fights to expel Israel's brutal occupation from their land. This overcrowded strip of 1.5 million people has become the world's largest prison suffering from a massive humanitarian crisis courtesy of Israel's democracy.
Gaza today is under a total blockade of fuel, without electricity, heat, bread, clean water, medicines, and overflowing sewage in the streets. The only light that brightens Gaza's night sky is exploding Israeli bombs and shells. Israel is also blocking all U.N. humanitarian goods from entering Gaza which includes baby formula; such collective punishment of an entire population is illegal under International Law; but thanks to America, Israel has always been above the law, both divine and human.
John Dugard, U.N. Human Rights rapporteur in the Occupied Territories, called Israel's military offensive in Gaza a "war crime" and called for the punishment of the responsible parties. John Holmes, undersecretary general of the U.N. for Humanitarian Affairs condemned the "collective punishment of the people of Gaza". Holmes expressed his grave concern on Israel's sealing of border crossings because "they are the lifeline for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and other goods to Gaza."
The World Bank, the International Red Cross, and many international organizations and human rights groups are warning of a humanitarian catastrophe.
While the world, the U.N., and the Arab leaders are expressing "concern" and "condemnation", Israel rests assured that as long as it has American in its grip, the voices of the world cannot save a single Palestinian child from an Israeli sniper's bullet
Many Israelis and Jews around the world have made the analogy that Israeli tactics against the Palestinians are akin to Nazi tactics
Bush Arrives in the Gulf: Home to America's Rulers, Oil and Military Bases
After blessing Israel Bush headed to the awaiting arms, lavish receptions, and extraordinarily expensive gifts from his aides, the Gulf oil rulers who oversee and safeguard America's oil and military bases. From Kuwait, to Bahrain, the Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, Bush was dined, praised, danced for, and toured the crass wealth of a region awash in petrodollars. (Bush skipped Qatar probably to avoid an interview with Aljazeera)
The oil rulers welcomed Bush with pandering honor, more reflective of their inferiority complex as servants than as rulers. They embraced the very man whose hands are soaked with the blood of millions of Muslims, who described his war on terror as a war against "Islamofascism", who called the genocidal Sharon a "man of peace", who usurped all U.N. Resolutions and previous U..S policy by adopting Israel's demands that its borders are not the pre-1967 borders, that the illegal settlements are fait accompli, and that Palestinians have no right of return, the man who supported with money, arms, and fuel, Israel's all out devastation of Lebanon in 2006, yet, King Abdullah, the Protector of the Two Holy Mosques, presented Bush with the highest order of the Kingdom, the Order of the King Abdul Aziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia.
Bush reminded his oil managers that extremists "hate freedom and they hate democracy" ignoring the reality that extremists and the majority of Muslims object to his global warring policies, not to the freedom they desperately seek. Using Bush's logic that extremists hate freedom and democracy it must logically follow that such extremists actually love, not oppose, the undemocratic Arab regimes who deprive their people of basic freedoms. With Chutzpah, Bush told the Arab leaders that Israel, the killer of Gaza, should serve as a role model for their democracy.
Bush left the Gulf after witnessing the expenditure of Petrodollars at work including massive construction projects in the desert that includes building new islands, extravagant hotels, palaces, theme parks, lavish malls, golf courses, even entire cities named after the egotistical dictators; all the while Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir and elsewhere are being killed, ethnically cleansed, hungry, cold, thirsty, without shelter or medicines, or living as refugees by the millions due to American and Israeli weapons of mass destruction. To Arab leaders these Muslims are not as worthy as American treasury bonds.
How shockingly ironic that Arab Gulf nations are awash in oil while Palestinians in Gaza can't find any oil to heat their homes and prevent hypothermia deaths in the young, elderly, and ill patients.
In heartless fashion Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the new Arab peace partner, commenting on Gaza's deprivation oil, fuel, and electricity said: "As far as I'm concerned, all the residents of Gaza can walk and have no fuel for their cars". (Ha'aretz, Jan. 21, 2008)
Is it any wonder that because Arabs have no sense of self respect, honor, or dignity, that the entire world disrespects their faith, lives, and culture. To the world they are barbaric and primitive, hence the trillions of Petrodollars spent on "modernizing" buildings as a substitute for building the intellect. Like everything else they purchase at will these Gulf rulers are attempting to buy their way into western acceptance, not realizing how the west mocks their very existence and wealth. The west was built by intellectual rigor, science, hard work, education, training, and skills. None of these factors exist in the Arab world. If only these sheiks could spend their wealth on developing their people along similar lines rather than facing the daunting decision of where to spend a billion dollars a day.
According to the Institute of International Finance, a global association of banks based in Washington D.C., the Persian Gulf countries earned
$1.5 trillion ($100 for every Muslim man, woman and child) in oil revenue from 2002 to 2006. This overwhelming wealth due to rising oil prices is so vast for these countries to absorb that they're investing hundreds of billions of dollars in creative construction projects at home (such as the $500 Billion Saudi project to build new cities), or investing abroad to save American banks, like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, as well as investing in American real estate, movie and computer companies, hotel corporations like the MGM Mirage and the Four Seasons, or in the purchase of personal toys such as Prince Walid bin Talal's new super jumbo jet, the Airbus 380, which will be the first and largest private jet in the world fully equipped with all the luxurious amenities. The cost--a staggering $300 million for the unfurnished plane.
If only they could invest such wealth in American media companies, the most powerful institution that influences public opinion and foreign policy. Such investments would contribute more to the freedom of Palestinians, Iraqis, and other Muslims than any potential army. Media is king, not Casinos and hotels.
Arab leaders have long ignored, neglected, and oppressed their own people thereby allowing the perfect storm of Islamic ignorance, poverty, frustration, and anger against them and their foreign handlers. In such a vacuum sectarianism between the rulers and the ruled, the haves and have nots, extremism, and terrorism arose. Ignorant clerics manipulated these wayward youth to believe that only violence can restore Islamic glory and the Caliphate. That is an impossibility in a Muslim world devoid of true Islam, where tribalism has replaced allegiance to God, where unity is non-existent, and where education and intellectual development barely exist. Islam began with the intellectual command "READ", today the word is 'GREED".
Ironically through their abandonment of true Islamic principles and the general welfare of Muslims, Arab and Muslim leaders are committing their own violence against Islam.