Saretta Wool: We Need to Talk

Bullies need to dominate. The United States has become the world bully: a tormenter, an oppressor. We are under the so-called “leadership” of a dictator. Bush has been indicted as a war criminal, for crimes against humanity, for torture and wanton killing, and causing radioactive contamination to civilians and military personnel by the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Tokyo, 2004.

The senior George Bush, James Baker, Richard Cheney, and Colin Powell were charged with crimes against humanity in 1991 by the International War Crimes Tribunal and have yet to be brought to justice.

In the midst of our dysfunctional US military committing atrocities against the people of Iraq, Bush and Company are pushing on desperately to create the same chaos in Haiti and Cuba. They leave blood, death, and destruction in their wake. They create animosity, ill will, and hatred. They intimidate our former friends and allies. They speak doublethink.

Some characteristics of the serial bully as defined by Tim Field. The serial bully is an experienced liar, Jekyll and Hyde nature, excels at deception, charm is used to compensate for lack of empathy, glib and shallow, emotionally untrustworthy, holds deep prejudices, arrogant, untouchable. This describes Bush and PNAC (Project for a New American Century) very accurately. We have mob mentality in the White House: psycho sociological behavior disorder.

It’s time we in the US get out of this mindset that we are the greatest nation in the world. It’s not true. We surely are the most militarized. But if we didn’t have a gun to stick into someone’s face, who would we be? To use force to dominate others is indicative of weakness, not strength. Look at our life here: no affordable health insurance, vast homelessness and poverty, massive debt, war costs we will never be able to pay for, crumbling infrastructure, ignorance, misinformation, repression of the media, obsession with material gain, the world’s biggest polluter, addiction to fossil fuel, and massive depression ahead. We are little more than a Giant War Machine.

Abusers need to be in control. Methods they use to maintain control are threats, intimidation, isolation, emotional, economic, and sexual abuse, and child abuse.

Abusers like to apologize for their behaviors, and appear to be remorseful. They get everyone to give them another chance, or some sympathy. Then they are off and at it again. It’s called the cycle of abuse. Abusers deny that they are abusing. It is those who are being abused who have to call it and put a stop to it.

Americans have been set up for this abuse scenario since right after 9/11. Bush and his PNAC bullies jumped on the opportunity to play on the fears of the American people and they have not let up yet. This is emotionally abusive of the American people. That they have been methodically siphoning off our money, jobs, and national security is financially abusive. Destroying our relationships with the international community and causing us to become the enemy of the world is socially abusive, Bush and Company are abusing the US citizenry. They have stolen our representative government. We have no peace, no democracy, no freedom or rights. This is the goal of an abuser, a bully.

In the late 1970’s Rollo May wrote about violence in Power and Innocence. He said that violence is a symptom. That the disease is powerlessness, injustice, and insignificance. He said that “One particular problem in America at this point in history, is the widespread loss of the sense of individual significance, a loss which is sensed inwardly as impotence.”

The US troops, our children, are expressing that impotence in their inhumane treatment of the Iraqi people. Our young people will have an even greater price to pay than guilt. During Vietnam 58,000 Americans soldiers died. More than 174,000 committed suicide after killing and committing atrocities. The violence now is escalating to a level where many Americans feel completely helpless and powerless and are becoming prey to the tyrant who pretends to care about our country. This is where Bush wants us: mute, blind, deaf.

We must not shirk from our responsibilities as citizens. We Americans have mandates to uphold: The Constitution of the Unites States, (including the amendments) and our Declaration of Independence from which I quote ”That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men (and Women - mine), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

We must create models of the way in which we wish to live. We must look to our wise men and women for support, ideas, and guidance in a direction which will bring peace to our planet, not everlasting war. We must work for this.

We must restore friendships broken by our fascist governors and build alliances amongst the people of the planet who desire peace. We must not languish alone and become more isolated. We must get off our asses and work for this.

And we must do something unexpected such as take back our republic and make America a good place to live. In other words, throw the bums out!

The Brussels Tribunal recently concluded in Belgium has published its findings and I quote the final statement of their report.

“Finally, the Tribunal calls upon the peoples of the world to demand that their governments deny military, political, financial or any other support to the occupying powers; and oppose the illegal implementation by occupation forces or their surrogates of any plans for the wholesale privatization of the Iraqi economy. The Tribunal also expresses its solidarity with the Iraqi people and its support for their attempts at recovering their full sovereignty.”

Saretta Wool is an artist living in Arizona Email: desertspiritwool@earthlink.net

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