THE HOUR OF DECISION
THE HOUR OF DECISION
The doom that I foretold is now coming to pass; the attack on Iraq is now rapidly expanding into a conflagration that will engulf the entire Middle East, and possibly, sovereign nations in Asia, and will now probably be documented by historians as World War Three.
The window of opportunity to forestall this dire future and the catastrophe that threatens Western civilizations is closing fast; the time for gradualism and vacillation is long past.
The presence of Allied Forces has emboldened Israel to respond out of all proportion to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers.
The act of naked aggression of the Bush Administration against the Iraqi people has very strengthened the extremist organizations in the region, Hamas and Hezbollah, to the point where Hamas has won the Palestinian Elections and Hezbollah has garnered a significant number of seats in the Lebanese Parliament, not to mention the victory of the hardliner in the Iranian Presidential Elections, in physics or in international relations, aggression and bellicose attitudes will inevitably spawn reactions of similar scope and magnitude.
It is much too late for President Bush to become an advocate of diplomacy; a stance that must seem to friend and foe alike as one constrained by convenience, political expediency and even by necessity, a direct consequence of his palpable inability to achieve victory or attain military objectives in Afghanistan or Iraq – not in any sense a change in direction or philosophy.
And the success of the insurgency against the Allied Forces has completely destroyed the aura of invincibility already somewhat tarnished in Vietnam that hitherto surrounded the soldiers fielded by the USA.
Taken together with the fact, the irreducible fact, that Jews have no rights in law or custom to any land in Palestine; this is a recipe for disaster.
The Bush Administration has had more than enough time to deal with this debacle, if it could; it is obvious, painfully, woefully obvious, that it can not.
It has engaged in innumerable meetings and created committees who have designed new initiatives to deal with the burgeoning insurgency, all have failed; the insurgency continues unabated and seems to growing stronger with each passing day.
The Iraqi government is to review its much-trumpeted security plan for Baghdad, in the light of Saturday's massive explosion in the mainly Shia suburb of Sadr City.
Queues at army checkpoints may have created targets for insurgents
About 66 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in the attack.
Deputy Prime Minister for Security Affairs Salam al-Zobai told the government daily al-Sabah that a comprehensive review would make changes and additions to the plan, "to avoid mistakes and to restrict terrorist operations".
The announcement followed an emergency meeting of the cabinet's security committee in the wake of the Sadr City blast, the most serious challenge so far to the three-week-old security plan.
The plan involves tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and police backed by US forces.
Checkpoints have been set up to search vehicles in many parts of the city, curfews imposed, and raids conducted on suspected insurgent hideouts.
'Ideal targets'
Eyewitnesses said on Monday that all the checkpoints in some areas had been removed overnight.
Many citizens had complained that the bottlenecks they created were providing ideal targets for bombers while failing to curb their activities.
US military officials have admitted that the plan has produced so far only a slight dip in the violence, and nothing like the results that had been hoped for.
The hitherto-unheard of militant Sunni group which claimed responsibility for the Sadr City bombing, Supporters of the Sunni People, made a scathing reference to the security scheme in its communiqué about the attack.
"As for the so-called security plan, it is just an illusion with which you are deceiving yourselves and those around you - and this is the proof," it said.
(BBC News Report)
They have failed because of a fundamental flaw, an inability to admit the very serious mistakes that have been made, a failure to describe the problem accurately.
There was no justification to attack Iraq; and if this were not enough insufficient troops were committed to this operation to get the job done.
It is time for a new era in international relations; it is time for diplomacy and negotiations between nations to be based on the truth.
If Hamas needs to resile from its commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel; the State of Israel needs to admit that it is an interloper in Palestine whose only real claim to sovereignty there is based on its military might.
Israel must admit to the facts of history; that the Diaspora was precipitated by the Roman Empire, that the desire to return to Palestine was driven by the abuses perpetuated on Jews by Europeans atrocities over several centuries which culminated in the Shoah, a term I use advisedly as an alternative to the term Holocaust with its negative connotations.
Americans must come to grips with the fact that the unqualified support for Israel is not because of the rightness of this nation’s position but much more because of the financial support provided by American Jews over the years to members of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
It is time for humanity to see the world as it is; not as they want it to be or that they can force it to be.
The settlement of every important dispute from the beginning of time has never had much to do with the facts at issue; it has very much to do with the relative military strength of the parties to the conflict.
The ‘might is right’ approach has determined which nations and peoples survived – and which did not.
It decided the amount of territory each nation controlled with the sovereignty of some small nations like Tibet still undecided.
But the road has forked; the burgeoning scientific and technological establishments that allow us to create weapons of mass destruction, and, the inability to confine this information to the favored few nations of the world preclude the continued application of the ‘might is right’ doctrine, though few of us will admit this, it has become completely anachronistic.
This is an hour of great peril; and, great opportunity.
This is a golden opportunity for Americans to apply in precept the values that they have hitherto subscribed to in concept; they need to extend to the Iraqi people the value of simple justice, usher in a whole new world and defuse the burgeoning conflict in the Middle East.
If there were no weapons of mass destruction held by the Saddam Hussein Government; if they had no ties to Al Qaeda; if this government was not a patron of terrorist organizations; then there was no justification for the attack on Iraq and military might was illegally used to depose a duly constituted head of government, and, it would be obvious, in this situation, what was the right thing to do.
The right thing to do is return Saddam Hussein to power, withdraw all Allied forces and pay reparations to the Iraqi people.
But do Americans have the moral character to the right thing, it is certain the Bush Administration does not; it is certain the Congress does not; it up to ordinary men and women to take responsibility for the destiny of this nation.
It is up to ordinary men and women to take urgent action to avoid the catastrophe that will occur if this sad and tragic drift towards destruction continues.
I have been ignored as I attempted to sound the warning about the situation in American schools.
I have been ignored as I attempted to warn the American people about the dangers of reelecting President Bush.
I have been ignored as I sounded the tocsin about the real and present danger in the attack on Iraq.
I have no hook except that I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; I have no platitudes or empty promises to communicate; I cannot declare that progress will be easy, because this requires changes, fundamental changes in the cultural character, human beings must become adept in applying positive reinforcements in their relations with the other.
Reading anything I write but seem disquieting to a great degree, in a social milieu in which lying is congenital, but these ideas should have the greatest attraction because they will produce function.
The policies and pronouncements that sustain popularity cannot create function, only the illusion of function and it is time that the American people realize that what they want to hear, what comforts them can only create illusions never function.
Many States run lotteries, in Florida the prize was five million dollars, except that it was not; most winners after taxes would receive half that amount, in small things and big things everything is a lie.
There are many choices to be made as we confront this peril, the most important of those choices seems to be, do we prefer the lie that consoles and comforts us, or, the hard and unpalatable truth that would save us from destruction?
World War Three is one which the USA will not win, it will not win militarily; it will not win economically because during the war oil will become the weapon that will destroy this petroleum dependent economy, it is a war moreover which is an unjust war, a war in which the USA is on the side of might – not right.
It is time for American to practice the values they have paid lip service to for three hundred years or risk that this great Republic will perish.
William E. Virtue
Copyright Retained
Memphis, TN
(901)332-3800
The doom that I foretold is now coming to pass; the attack on Iraq is now rapidly expanding into a conflagration that will engulf the entire Middle East, and possibly, sovereign nations in Asia, and will now probably be documented by historians as World War Three.
The window of opportunity to forestall this dire future and the catastrophe that threatens Western civilizations is closing fast; the time for gradualism and vacillation is long past.
The presence of Allied Forces has emboldened Israel to respond out of all proportion to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers.
The act of naked aggression of the Bush Administration against the Iraqi people has very strengthened the extremist organizations in the region, Hamas and Hezbollah, to the point where Hamas has won the Palestinian Elections and Hezbollah has garnered a significant number of seats in the Lebanese Parliament, not to mention the victory of the hardliner in the Iranian Presidential Elections, in physics or in international relations, aggression and bellicose attitudes will inevitably spawn reactions of similar scope and magnitude.
It is much too late for President Bush to become an advocate of diplomacy; a stance that must seem to friend and foe alike as one constrained by convenience, political expediency and even by necessity, a direct consequence of his palpable inability to achieve victory or attain military objectives in Afghanistan or Iraq – not in any sense a change in direction or philosophy.
And the success of the insurgency against the Allied Forces has completely destroyed the aura of invincibility already somewhat tarnished in Vietnam that hitherto surrounded the soldiers fielded by the USA.
Taken together with the fact, the irreducible fact, that Jews have no rights in law or custom to any land in Palestine; this is a recipe for disaster.
The Bush Administration has had more than enough time to deal with this debacle, if it could; it is obvious, painfully, woefully obvious, that it can not.
It has engaged in innumerable meetings and created committees who have designed new initiatives to deal with the burgeoning insurgency, all have failed; the insurgency continues unabated and seems to growing stronger with each passing day.
The Iraqi government is to review its much-trumpeted security plan for Baghdad, in the light of Saturday's massive explosion in the mainly Shia suburb of Sadr City.
Queues at army checkpoints may have created targets for insurgents
About 66 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in the attack.
Deputy Prime Minister for Security Affairs Salam al-Zobai told the government daily al-Sabah that a comprehensive review would make changes and additions to the plan, "to avoid mistakes and to restrict terrorist operations".
The announcement followed an emergency meeting of the cabinet's security committee in the wake of the Sadr City blast, the most serious challenge so far to the three-week-old security plan.
The plan involves tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and police backed by US forces.
Checkpoints have been set up to search vehicles in many parts of the city, curfews imposed, and raids conducted on suspected insurgent hideouts.
'Ideal targets'
Eyewitnesses said on Monday that all the checkpoints in some areas had been removed overnight.
Many citizens had complained that the bottlenecks they created were providing ideal targets for bombers while failing to curb their activities.
US military officials have admitted that the plan has produced so far only a slight dip in the violence, and nothing like the results that had been hoped for.
The hitherto-unheard of militant Sunni group which claimed responsibility for the Sadr City bombing, Supporters of the Sunni People, made a scathing reference to the security scheme in its communiqué about the attack.
"As for the so-called security plan, it is just an illusion with which you are deceiving yourselves and those around you - and this is the proof," it said.
(BBC News Report)
They have failed because of a fundamental flaw, an inability to admit the very serious mistakes that have been made, a failure to describe the problem accurately.
There was no justification to attack Iraq; and if this were not enough insufficient troops were committed to this operation to get the job done.
It is time for a new era in international relations; it is time for diplomacy and negotiations between nations to be based on the truth.
If Hamas needs to resile from its commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel; the State of Israel needs to admit that it is an interloper in Palestine whose only real claim to sovereignty there is based on its military might.
Israel must admit to the facts of history; that the Diaspora was precipitated by the Roman Empire, that the desire to return to Palestine was driven by the abuses perpetuated on Jews by Europeans atrocities over several centuries which culminated in the Shoah, a term I use advisedly as an alternative to the term Holocaust with its negative connotations.
Americans must come to grips with the fact that the unqualified support for Israel is not because of the rightness of this nation’s position but much more because of the financial support provided by American Jews over the years to members of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
It is time for humanity to see the world as it is; not as they want it to be or that they can force it to be.
The settlement of every important dispute from the beginning of time has never had much to do with the facts at issue; it has very much to do with the relative military strength of the parties to the conflict.
The ‘might is right’ approach has determined which nations and peoples survived – and which did not.
It decided the amount of territory each nation controlled with the sovereignty of some small nations like Tibet still undecided.
But the road has forked; the burgeoning scientific and technological establishments that allow us to create weapons of mass destruction, and, the inability to confine this information to the favored few nations of the world preclude the continued application of the ‘might is right’ doctrine, though few of us will admit this, it has become completely anachronistic.
This is an hour of great peril; and, great opportunity.
This is a golden opportunity for Americans to apply in precept the values that they have hitherto subscribed to in concept; they need to extend to the Iraqi people the value of simple justice, usher in a whole new world and defuse the burgeoning conflict in the Middle East.
If there were no weapons of mass destruction held by the Saddam Hussein Government; if they had no ties to Al Qaeda; if this government was not a patron of terrorist organizations; then there was no justification for the attack on Iraq and military might was illegally used to depose a duly constituted head of government, and, it would be obvious, in this situation, what was the right thing to do.
The right thing to do is return Saddam Hussein to power, withdraw all Allied forces and pay reparations to the Iraqi people.
But do Americans have the moral character to the right thing, it is certain the Bush Administration does not; it is certain the Congress does not; it up to ordinary men and women to take responsibility for the destiny of this nation.
It is up to ordinary men and women to take urgent action to avoid the catastrophe that will occur if this sad and tragic drift towards destruction continues.
I have been ignored as I attempted to sound the warning about the situation in American schools.
I have been ignored as I attempted to warn the American people about the dangers of reelecting President Bush.
I have been ignored as I sounded the tocsin about the real and present danger in the attack on Iraq.
I have no hook except that I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; I have no platitudes or empty promises to communicate; I cannot declare that progress will be easy, because this requires changes, fundamental changes in the cultural character, human beings must become adept in applying positive reinforcements in their relations with the other.
Reading anything I write but seem disquieting to a great degree, in a social milieu in which lying is congenital, but these ideas should have the greatest attraction because they will produce function.
The policies and pronouncements that sustain popularity cannot create function, only the illusion of function and it is time that the American people realize that what they want to hear, what comforts them can only create illusions never function.
Many States run lotteries, in Florida the prize was five million dollars, except that it was not; most winners after taxes would receive half that amount, in small things and big things everything is a lie.
There are many choices to be made as we confront this peril, the most important of those choices seems to be, do we prefer the lie that consoles and comforts us, or, the hard and unpalatable truth that would save us from destruction?
World War Three is one which the USA will not win, it will not win militarily; it will not win economically because during the war oil will become the weapon that will destroy this petroleum dependent economy, it is a war moreover which is an unjust war, a war in which the USA is on the side of might – not right.
It is time for American to practice the values they have paid lip service to for three hundred years or risk that this great Republic will perish.
William E. Virtue
Copyright Retained
Memphis, TN
(901)332-3800
posted by voiceofpeace at 12:30 PM
0 comments
