The Bubble Burst: Replacing Tyranny with Tyranny

Through a dozen pictures that have circulated the globe faster than the plague American citizens’ delusional perception of the invasion of Iraq as being perpetrated in the name of freedom, democracy and marketed as bringing people refuge from tyranny to an entire nation has burst. The occupier’s true intentions have manifested themselves through the visible tip of an enormous iceberg still submerged below the surface. False pretenses have given way to sickening realities. The bubble Americans have been brainwashed into living under has exploded, popped by appalling images of torture and dehumanization.

The false perception ingrained into our easily controlled minds of noble intentions in lands far removed from our shores is imploding with each new revelation, with each new atrocity and war crime committed by those wearing boots made in the USA. As hard as it is for us to want to acknowledge, America and its military pandemic does not spawn goodness or honor in Iraq. It does not espouse virtue or fraternity with the Iraqi people. It is but the greatest tool for Empire building and corporate domination. It is the ultimate instrument a handful at the top exploit to achieve their sinister goals. Enslavement and subjugation of Arabs are its purpose; possession of strategic and natural resources for future wars its goal.

American foreign policy is not what millions of hypnotized sheeple have been made to believe. Its malevolence is only surpassed by its temerity, unleashing wave after wave of misery onto billions worldwide. What we are witnessing in Iraq today is the consequence of allowing our leaders free reign to decimate the lands and people of Earth for decades. Iraq is the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Latin America all rolled into one. It is black America, indigenous America and Palestine. It just so happens that the focus of the world’s media has shifted the cameras onto the Fertile Crescent. American foreign policy is the ultimate “evildoer”; the Bush administration and the neocons that control it the rotting carcass sending pestilence spewing into our collective air.

Let us cut through the all-encompassing fog of bovine fecal matter and come out of the grand illusion that our military is serving noble deeds by ridding the world of evil, fulfilling our calling that Bush has received from his god. On the contrary, our military is the essence of evil itself, resurrected to engender misery and destruction, occupying once sovereign lands, murdering and maiming thousands, making homeless thousands more and planting the seeds of unfettered hatred in the minds of millions.

The natural consequences of an occupying army are the perceived aura of superiority and omnipotence that is spawned in the minds of its soldiers. This can be seen by an oppressive occupation that has devastated an entire society, resulting in countless casualties through the continued rapes, humiliations, deaths, injuries and exploitation of a population. Occupying armies and its soldiers devastate people, thinking themselves invincible and beyond reproach. They become gods onto themselves, free to pillage, destroy, humiliate, rape and torture, knowing that they are the rulers and the makers of laws, thinking themselves untouchable to the consequences of their war crimes. It is history, and it is one more virus in the human condition.

The farce of our military bringing happiness, freedom and democracy to millions is being eroded by each new act of barbarism being committed. To believe in the nobleness of America’s occupation of a nation is to be trapped in the quicksand of propaganda. It is to be trapped in a corral of manipulation knee deep in lies, its festering aroma of decrepit fictions penetrating every cell comprising our minds. Freedom, democracy and respite from tyranny are not being brought into Iraq, they are being taken away, slowly eroded by a few at the top who have created this most nefarious of messes.

What we are seeing today is the beginning of the occupier’s monstrosity, a barbaric recording of a most ignoble history that in the weeks ahead will shame an entire nation back to reality. A pile of sand will soon become a mountain of disgrace. If pictures tell a thousand words, the ones slowly trickling into our conscious will undoubtedly collect for posterity the systemic abuse of Iraqis at the hands of American soldiers. An avalanche of evidence is headed our way, and Americans better be prepared for the coming onslaught. The bubble of goodness and altruism has popped. It is time to smell the air of reality the winds of carnage have brought forth.

America in the eyes of the peoples of the globe will never be the same. The hypocrisy of our illusion is giving way to the animosity of a seething world.

Crimes against humanity are being committed in our name, draped in the American flag, smearing a once great defender of human rights in the unconscionable sewage of the worst evils lingering in the human condition. The stars and stripes has been replaced with the bombs and bullets; the red, white and blue of the Founding Fathers has been transformed into the blood soaked, flesh stained, rubble laden, hate engendering, skull and bone creating symbol of oppression. A once great symbol of hope has become a purveyor of worldwide anger, no longer respected and no longer welcome.

As the world turns so does the once-positive perception of America as a beacon of freedom and defender of human rights. The tangled web we weave continues to entrap us, spawning karmic energies of revenge, slowly eating us from the inside out. America is reaping what it has sowed, planting the seeds of oppression and harvesting the bountiful crop of worldwide hatred. Anger against the United States continues to boil, the cauldron continues to burn and images of mutilated American soldiers/mercenaries/citizens burning and hanging will continue to be born.

The photos now shaming an entire nation are but a microcosm of the massive monolith of crimes against humanity systematically being perpetrated by American forces in Iraq and hidden by those wearing stars and bars. For every photo taken thousands of war crimes go unnoticed. For every recorded act of dehumanization thousands get lost in time.

We must ask ourselves why Iraqis’ hatred has only grown over the course of the last year. We must try to see through their eyes, stretching our capacity to understand and empathize with a people who have been occupied, humiliated, dehumanized, tortured, oppressed, maimed and murdered.

Over the course of a year American forces have lost the battle for the hearts and minds. Now the battle is against bombs and bullets, hatred and revenge. How can it be possible that over the course of a year an entire population has turned against the “liberators” and “defenders of freedom and democracy”? How is it possible that American forces have in one year accomplished what Saddam could not do in decades? Rebellions and insurrections are growing, revolution and outright hostility expand, calls for jihad and for freedom from occupation can be heard in the warm desert air, emanating from mosques and minarets.

What Saddam and Osama could not achieve in a lifetime America has created in a year. The unification of the Arab world is taking place. George the Lesser is, after all, the uniter he claimed to be.

The revolution to displace a tyranny has begun.

From the beginning of the invasion Iraqis were seen by American forces as subhuman. The British have said it, the Iraqis have lived it and the world now knows it. Over 10,000 Iraqis have died, many more injured and maimed. The occupying power does not even care to keep count. From the beginning innocent citizens have been murdered in cold blood, from checkpoints to streets to houses, American forces have killed with impunity, shooting indiscriminately, bombing without remorse.

Trigger happy soldiers are living out their favorite video game, spilling real blood and maiming living appendages. The fantasy of digital malice has morphed into the distorted reality of human malevolence, and real people with real lives, dreams and thoughts are dying.

Heavy-handedness has been the hallmark of the occupiers. Entire towns have been enveloped by razor sharp wire; bulldozers demolish homes, crops and lives; soldiers barge into homes, ransacking lives and possessions; thousands of innocent men are incarcerated, taken away from their families; the scores of innocents killed get no justice; entire cities are bombed without regard for human life; ambulances are shot and destroyed; hospitals are commandeered and mosques targeted; snipers murder anyone passing through the crosshairs; soldiers shoot wounded insurgents; young boys celebrating a burned convoy are shot and killed; women are raped and beaten; prisoners are tortured and humiliated; an entire population is oppressed and dehumanized, left to rot away its eroding existence.

Of course when your army is trained using the Zio-nazi handbook for occupation to expect anything less is to underestimate the Israeli treatment of the people living inside its indigent concentration camps.

Iraqis are seen, like their Palestinian brothers, as subhuman, treated like animals, dehumanized and humiliated, oppressed and left in the squalor of their exploitation. The actions of the occupiers are evidence to this belief. Protecting the oil ministry but not the relics of history or culture during the initial invasion should have been the first signal that America cared nothing for ordinary Iraqis. An invading army without an understanding of culture, history or the world was unleashed onto the cities and streets of Iraq. Arrogant, ignorant and out of touch with the many peoples of the world, American soldiers have in the course of the last year destroyed the minimal good will that once existed towards America in Iraq. Unaware of how the rest of the world thinks, the military’s actions have only exacerbated Iraqi, Arab and world anger.

If leaders of a nation represent and espouse the beliefs, qualities, intellect and principles of their people, then the debacle in Iraq was to be expected, for those under the rule of the Commander in Chief are but extensions of the President. Could we hope for anything more when George the Lesser is but an incurious, immoral, unscrupulous, selfish, uncultured, arrogant, unworldly and apathetic creature of dubious intellect and weak mental strength?

What has America become? What are we transforming ourselves into? What have we wrought to a people that with each glaring stare at the camera manifest complete and utter anger and hatred toward those now decimating both land and people? You didn’t think throngs of Iraqis celebrating after every American convoy is set ablaze is pure Hollywood orchestration, did you? The hate America has spawned in the Fertile Crescent can be seen throughout Iraq, in every camera angle and with each new passing day. Even the censored reporting by the corporate media cannot in all instances hide this truth.

American representation abroad is anything but altruistic. The sham blurted out by the government and corporate media that our soldiers are fighting for freedom, democracy and an end to evil is the exact opposite of what is transpiring. We are not bringing freedom, we are eviscerating it. We are not bringing democracy to Iraqis, we are spawning Empire. We are not ending evil, we are breeding and harvesting it.

If our calling from the Almighty is to unleash the storms of evil, suffering and hatred onto the world, as Bush seems to think, then only its recurrent floods of cause and effect will we reap. If our calling is to rid the world of evil and to bring freedom to all people then we must eliminate the Bush cabal and the neocon puppet-masters that are helping to seal America’s fate.

America’s bubble has burst. Its citizens are being awakened to the evils done in their name. No longer can one look at the oppressive occupation in Iraq and seriously say that the military is bringing freedom and democracy to Iraqis. No longer can we believe the incessant lies spewing like a geyser of hot bull manure out of the mouth of the Liar in Chief, who claims freedom loving people have been liberated from the torture chambers and the tyranny from the one-time American puppet dictator. We have replaced one form of torture for another. We have replaced one form of dehumanization for another.

Even Saddam, as despicable a tyrant as he was, never committed the dastardly act of forcing collective nakedness and homosexual poses upon Arab men. To commit such a grave sin upon Muslim men, in a part of the world that condemns such actions, is to stoop to levels even the most evil and vile tyrants dare not cross.

The sheer audacity to humiliate an entire Arab and Muslim world through the occupation and oppression of Mesopotamia, and seem to not care about the consequences of those actions is to betray the enormous bubble Americans have been living in for far too long. Concerned only for the well-being of the land stretching from Pacific to Atlantic, apathetic to a much larger globe and quite ignorant to culture, history and the world’s heterogeneous peoples, we have, through our fascination with ourselves, been made incapable of understanding the plight of billions of people who encompass the same planet as us.

Ours is a culture concerned only for the individual, for materialism and the almighty dollar. We have been made blind to realities, deaf to suffering and impotent to knowledge. In the misguided belief in our own omnipotence the crumbling foundations of our society we have spawned.

We are ignorant to the world, its people and its plight. We have no respect for culture, history or other civilizations. We fail to understand the views, beliefs, religions, philosophies and ways of thinking of the many diverse peoples we are forced to share Earth with. In our self-delusional aura of pomposity and superiority we are condemning our future. In our haze of self-aggrandizement the bitter harvest of putrid seeds is being collected, to be replanted and watered, contaminating the soils of America and the energy that lies within.

Iraq and the occupation debacle are the greatest testament to this truth. We are all responsible for the humiliation and devastation our military and leaders have unleashed upon the cradle of civilization. We are the smiling soldiers, we are the thumbs up and proud arrogance; we are the exploiters and the oppressors, the bullets and bombs. Our acquiescence and submission to the crimes against humanity wearing the red, white and blue make us all complicit. The bubble has finally burst. Saddam is what we have become.

The occupation has replaced one tyranny with another. Saddam has been reincarnated, and it wears Uncle Sam’s boots, made in the USA, stomping on Iraqi faces, kicking Iraqi ribcages, smearing Iraqi homes and slowly but surely kicking up a ferocious and oncoming storm of Muslim sand.

From the fall of Baghdad to the siege of Fallujah to the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and everywhere in between, the exponentially growing American mistakes are sinking an entire nation deeper into the quicksand of Mesopotamia. The swamp of resentment is growing, the putrid smells of death rising and the hornet’s nest of jihad expanding. Iraq is not Vietnam, but more and more, it appears to be America’s looming graveyard.

Manuel Valenzuela, 29, is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net
Read Other Articles By Manuel Valenzuela: Manuel Valenzuela Archive

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