Common Sense for the Twenty-First Century

War Mania

56 War Mania September 23, 2002 I just don’t understand; when someone commits a singular murder, they are liable to receive the death penalty, and when our head of state plots the killing of countless civilians, we are supposed to recognize him as a statesman. Indeed, organized crime is much more selective in its murders than our own government. Even organized crime generally plots the killing of one person at a time. Organized crime has rarely supported indiscriminate killing. Where is the moral compass here? Certainly not in government. We are pleased that the Catholic Bishops of the United States have sent a letter to President Bush opposing any new war in Iraq. And congratulations on the three great ads placed in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times this week by Americans Against the War in Iraq, Not in Our Name and the Office of the Americas. Congratulations to Medea Benjamin and Diane Wilson for communicating with “War” Secretary Rumsfeld and trying to bring some rationality to his false, deceptive and murderous banter as he spoke to the House Armed Services Committee. Friends, the “War” Secretary told lawmakers that Iraq poses the greatest threat to global stability. The statement is absolutely false. He forgot to mention the threat of his own country to global stability. The war mania of Bush and Rumsfeld will manufacture a million new terrorists. This is what happens when people are unjustly oppressed. Take the case of Israel and Palestine. One side has an air force, one side has one of the strongest military forces in the world, one side has military bulldozers and has used all of these weapons against a people with no such armaments. The Palestinians began with street demonstrations and then continued with sling shots and now they are tragically engaged in suicide bombings. 57 This behavior is entirely predicable as people see their teenagers shot, as they have their homes destroyed because of the alleged crimes of their children. Instead of getting the message of history, our mindless leaders are imitating a failed policy. Instead of learning from the contemporary disasters in Israel, Palestine and Afghanistan, we plan to repeat them on an ever-larger scale. Frankly, I don’t think the planet is sustainable under our current militarists. The administration tells us that war will liberate the Iraqi people. No, bombing Baghdad, a city of five million people, will not liberate them. It will kill them. And what is the motivation of the Bush people? One of this weeks three great national ads stated the following: • War will take our minds off the bad economy • War will distract us from the health care meltdown, the raids on Social Security, the assaults on the environment, the corporate scandals and the destruction of our civil liberties and unfortunately war frequently leads to the reelection of incumbents. We must stop the war with Iraq before it starts. Historians will not forget the ineptitude and deceit of Rumsfeld who could state that Iraq looms as the world’s gravest danger. In case you don’t know it, Mr. Rumsfeld, Iraq is in ashes. It has been devastated by eleven years of endless bombing and a murderous embargo on its most vulnerable people. The real threat is from our chemical, biological and nuclear weapons not from Iraq. Everyone knows that if Iraq fired one such weapon it would be eliminated from the face of the earth. What Mr. Rumsfeld has done here is insult the intelligence of every U.S. citizen. There is not one shred of truth in the statements he made to the Armed Services Committee. And to add insult to injury we have to observe the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle assure his cooperation with the Bush administration. Let it not be said that the people in the United States did nothing when their government declared war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. ...