<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.600" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN class=GramE><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly.
</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><FONT face=Arial size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">All rights reserved
<BR><BR></SPAN></FONT><B><FONT face=Arial color=black FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Who
is in charge? <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></B></P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 12pt"><FONT face=Arial color=black size=2
FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">A
tiny, unelected group, supported by powerful, unrepresentative minorities,
writes <B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Edward Said</SPAN></B> The Bush
administration's relentless unilateral march towards war is profoundly
disturbing for many reasons, but so far as American citizens are concerned the
whole grotesque show is a tremendous failure in democracy. An immensely wealthy
and powerful republic has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals, all of
them unelected and therefore unresponsive to public pressure, and simply turned
on its head. <SPAN class=GramE>It is no exaggeration to say that this war is the
most unpopular in modern history. </SPAN>Before the war has begun there have
been more people protesting it in this country alone than was the case at the
height of the anti- Vietnam war demonstrations during the 60s and 70s. Note also
that those rallies took place after the war had been going on for several years:
this one has yet to begin, even though a large number of overtly aggressive and
belligerent steps have already been taken by the US and its loyal puppy, the UK
government of the increasingly ridiculous Tony Blair. <BR><BR>I have been
criticised recently for my anti-war position by illiterates who claim that what
I say is an implied defence of Saddam Hussein and his appalling regime. <SPAN
class=GramE>To my Kuwaiti critics, do I need to remind them that I publicly
opposed Ba'athi Iraq during the only visit I made to Kuwait in 1985, when in an
open conversation with the then Minister of Education Hassan Al-Ibrahim I
accused him and his regime of aiding and abetting Arab fascism in their
financial support of Saddam Hussein? I was told then that Kuwait was proud to
have committed billions of dollars to Saddam's war against "the Persians", as
they were then contemptuously called, and that it was a more important struggle
than someone like me could comprehend. I remember clearly warning those Kuwaiti
acolytes of Saddam Hussein about him and his ill will against Kuwait, but to no
avail. </SPAN>I have been a public opponent of the Iraqi regime since it came to
power in the 70s: I never visited the place, never was fooled by its claims to
secularism and modernisation (even when many of my contemporaries either worked
for or celebrated Iraq as the main gun in the Arab arsenal against Zionism, a
stupid idea, I thought), never concealed my contempt for its methods of rule and
fascist behaviour. <SPAN class=GramE>And now when I speak my mind about the
ridiculous posturing of certain members of the Iraqi opposition as hapless
strutting tools of US imperialism, I am told that I know nothing about life
without democracy (about which more later), and am therefore unable to
appreciate their nobility of soul. </SPAN>Little notice is taken of the fact
that barely a week after extolling President Bush's commitment to democracy
Professor Makiya is now denouncing the US and its plans for a post-Saddam
military-Ba'athi government in Iraq. When individuals get in the habit of
switching the gods whom they worship politically there's no end to the number of
changes they make before they finally come to rest in utter disgrace and well
deserved oblivion. <BR><BR><SPAN class=GramE>But to return to the US and its
current actions. </SPAN>In all my encounters and travels I have yet to meet a
person who is for the war. Even worse, most Americans now feel that this
mobilisation has already gone too far to stop, and that we are on the verge of a
disaster for the country. Consider first of all that the Democratic Party, with
few exceptions, has simply gone over to the president's side in a gutless
display of false patriotism. Wherever you look in the Congress there are the
tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the
military-industrial complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who
share hostility to the Arab world, unbridled support for extremist Zionism, and
an insensate conviction that they are on the side of the angels. Every one of
the 500 congressional districts in this country has a defence industry in it, so
that war has been turned into a matter of jobs, not of security. But, one might
well ask, how does running an unbelievably expensive war remedy, for instance,
economic recession, the almost certain bankruptcy of the social security system,
a mounting national debt, and a massive failure in public education?
Demonstrations are looked at simply as a kind of degraded mob action, while the
most hypocritical lies pass for absolute truth, without criticism and without
objection. <BR><BR>The media has simply become a branch of the war effort. What
has entirely disappeared from television is anything remotely resembling a
consistently dissenting voice. <SPAN class=GramE>Every major channel now employs
retired generals, former CIA agents, terrorism experts and known
neoconservatives as "consultants" who speak a revolting jargon designed to sound
authoritative but in effect supporting everything done by the US, from the UN to
the sands of Arabia. </SPAN>Only one major daily newspaper (in Baltimore) has
published anything about US eavesdropping, telephone tapping and message
interception of the six small countries that are members of the Security Council
and whose votes are undecided. There are no antiwar voices to read or hear in
any of the major medias of this country, no Arabs or Muslims (who have been
consigned en masse to the ranks of the fanatics and terrorists of this world),
no critics of Israel, not on Public Broadcasting, not in <I><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The New York Times</SPAN></I>, the <I><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: italic">New Yorker</SPAN></I>, <I><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: italic">US News</SPAN></I> and <I><SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: italic">World Report</SPAN></I>, CNN and the rest. When these
organisations mention Iraq's flouting of 17 UN resolutions as a pretext for war,
the 64 resolutions flouted by Israel (with US support) are never mentioned.
<SPAN class=GramE>Nor is the enormous human suffering of the Iraqi people during
the past 12 years mentioned. </SPAN>Whatever the dreaded Saddam has done Israel
and Sharon have also done with American support, yet no one says anything about
the latter while fulminating about the former. <SPAN class=GramE>This makes a
total mockery of taunts by Bush and others that the UN should abide by its own
resolutions. </SPAN><BR><BR>The American people have thus been deliberately lied
to, their interests cynically misrepresented and misreported, the real aims and
intentions of this private war of Bush the son and his junta concealed with
complete arrogance. Never mind that Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle, all of them
unelected officials who work for unelected Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, have
for some time openly advocated Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and
the cessation of the Oslo process, have called for war against Iraq (and later
Iran), and the building of more illegal Israeli settlements in their capacity
(during Netanyahu's successful campaign for prime minister in 1996) as private
consultants to him, and that that has become US policy now. <BR><BR>Never mind
that Israel's iniquitous policies against Palestinians, which are reported only
at the ends of articles (when they are reported at all) as so many miscellaneous
civilian deaths, are never compared with Saddam's crimes, which they match or in
some cases exceed, all of them, in the final analysis, paid for by the US
taxpayer without consultation or approval. Over 40,000 Palestinians have been
wounded seriously in the last two years, and about 2,500 killed wantonly by
Israeli soldiers who are instructed to humiliate and punish an entire people
during what has become the longest military occupation in modern history.
<BR><BR>Never mind that not a single critical Arab or Muslim voice has been seen
or heard on the major American media, liberal, moderate, or reactionary, with
any regularity at all since the preparations for war have gone into their final
phase. Consider also that none of the major planners of this war, certainly not
the so-called experts like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, neither of whom has so
much as lived in or come near the Arab world in decades, nor the military and
political people like Powell, Rice, Cheney, or the great god Bush himself, know
anything about the Muslim or Arab worlds beyond what they see through Israeli or
oil company or military lenses, and therefore have no idea what a war of this
magnitude against Iraq will produce for the <SPAN class=GramE>people</SPAN>
actually living there. <BR><BR><SPAN class=GramE>And consider too the sheer,
unadorned hubris of men like Wolfowitz and his assistants. </SPAN>Asked to
testify to a largely somnolent Congress about the war's consequences and costs
they are allowed to escape without giving any concrete answers, which
effectively dismisses the evidence of the army chief of staff who has spoken of
a military occupation force of 400,000 troops for 10 years at a cost of almost a
trillion dollars. <BR><BR>Democracy traduced and betrayed, democracy celebrated
but in fact humiliated and trampled on by a tiny group of men who have simply
taken charge of this republic as if it were nothing more than, what, an Arab
country? <SPAN class=GramE>It is right to ask who is in charge since clearly the
people of the United States are not properly represented by the war this
administration is about to loose on a world already beleaguered by too much
misery and poverty to endure more. And Americans have been badly served by a
media controlled essentially by a tiny group of men who edit out anything that
might cause the government the slightest concern or worry. </SPAN>As for the
demagogues and servile intellectuals who talk about war from the privacy of
their fantasy worlds, who gave them the right to connive in the immiseration of
millions of people whose major crime seems to be that they are Muslims and
Arabs? What American, except for this small unrepresentative group, is seriously
interested in increasing the world's already ample stores of anti-Americanism?
<SPAN class=GramE>Hardly any I would suppose. </SPAN><BR><BR>Jonathan Swift,
thou shouldst be living at this hour. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 12pt"><FONT face=Arial color=black
size=2><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">(Courtsey:
Asiapeace, Stockholm)<BR></SPAN></FONT></P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>