Manuel Valenzuela: Grave & Gathering Dangers (II)

The great campaign to rid the world of evil bogeymen rages on, its indoctrinating message espousing America’s moral crusade reverberating strongly inside the dens where the pack of wolves in the Bush administration dwell. Foaming at the mouth as their war without end continues unabated, they wait patiently for the next prey to fall into their trap. The warmongers lie in ambush, ready to devastate yet another “third world nation” incapable of defending itself.

The war machine waits patiently, eager to blitzkrieg all that lies in front of its vast and deadly array of instruments of death. For it knows that back home, nestled between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, located between Canada and Mexico, is a completely dominated, manipulated and subservient citizenry whose primitive fears have been released through a meticulous psychological campaign of disquieting propaganda and ingrained insecurity. As a result, Americans have been made blind to the atrocities and illegalities done in their name that is enraging a sleeping giant, a hornet’s nest beginning to swirl with anger and hatred with each beat of the Bush administration’s drums of war.

The American people’s ignorance in the face of a growing reality that their lives have been made less safe as a result of the Bush administration’s warmongering ventures cannot be underestimated. War crimes, illegal wars, contempt for international law and incessant crimes against humanity have been a staple of the Bush regime since it spawned from the cesspool of rotting waste back in November of 2000. Even on American shores the regime has clandestinely eviscerated civil liberties, freedoms along with the Bill of Rights, slowly transforming the nation into a police state devoid of its once-shining principles.

Yet in spite of all that has transpired, in spite of all that has become, the American people remain oblivious to their worsening plight. Only brainwashed ignorance can be charged as the culprit in the silent acceptance of the people to an illegitimate administration’s actions that has made their security the opposite of what Bush promised. With the continuing escalation of conflict by an administration possessing a bottomless appetite for blood and conquest, it is assured that winds of karmic repercussions will soon bring forth thunderous storms of retribution and hatred to American shores. The war on terror, like all actions spawning equal and opposite reactions, will inevitably boomerang back to that nation whose love for war and violence is unsurpassed in scope.

The capture of Saddam Hussein has not made the United States safer. The “imminent” capture or death of Osama bin Laden will not make the United States safer. This pragmatic truth and not its fabricated fiction must be understood. The “war on terror,” flawed fallacy that it is, has unleashed many more enemies than it has extinguished. It has become nothing more than a gravely contagious American- created virus spreading hatred and resentment among the people of Muslim faith – even as Islam’s numbers continue to swell worldwide – whose belief that Bush’s Iraq war is but the latest incarnation of western Crusades of yesteryear is inspiring aspirations of jihad in thousands of poor, uneducated and disillusioned Muslims, many who see the United States as the evil responsible for their continued spiral down the abyss of indigence and hopelessness.

Like Saddam, bin Laden has been made impotent, a distant shadow of his former self, his fame and corporate media buildup much more dangerous than the man himself. His image is reviled or loved. His reputation, however, has grown exponentially throughout the Muslim world with each new American atrocity or killing, every act of humiliation onto a subjugated Iraqi and Afghani people. More and more, he is seen as a Saladin-like warrior fighting the American crusaders with a stated goal of kicking US forces out of the Middle East. To many, he is mujahadin, the ultimate Holy Warrior.

Dead or alive, bin Laden has become bigger than human flesh walking the Hindu Kush mountain range. He is now a movement that has grown exponentially thanks in large part to the continued resentment, revenge and animosity-making escapade called the “war on terror.” This assembly-line marketing mechanism has enabled Bush to create more “so-called terrorists” than American jobs. And it has engendered the continued insecurity of US citizens and those western interests supportive of the Bush push for blood. Australia, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and other nations in the grossly exaggerated “coalition of the willing” have thus endangered their own citizens to boomerang retribution and karmic breezes.

Thanks to Bush’s “war on terror,” a catchy marketing slogan that has entrenched itself like a tapeworm inside American society that has slithered itself through the veins of the citizenry into our collective brain, numbing us to the preposterous illusion that this war with no end can possibly be won, we have been made less safe, not more. Victory cannot be achieved through the spillage of blood, the maiming of bodies or the destruction of houses or lives. It will not come as a result of battling the effects of terrorism. As it exists, the war on terror will only continue as an eye for an eye turns us all blind.

Al-Qaeda has transformed itself from a centralized organization in the backwater caves of Afghanistan to a franchised movement whose branches now extend to dozens of countries and hundreds of cities, including inside the United States. The McAl-Qaedazation of terrorism has exploded thanks to Bush. Fear and insecurity are being served, and for Bush to not have realized this would happen with his invasion of Iraq is asinine. The evil that has been perpetrated by the Bush administration has awakened the passions and frustrations of Arab men willing to fight the Evil Empire’s colonizing and imperial aspirations. The lasting memory of the “war on terror” will be this distressing reality.

The Pentagon and the White House, in conjunction with corporate media, has built up the Al-Qaeda threat both in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraqi resistance, comprised almost exclusively by nationalist and revenge-seeking Iraqis, is being labeled a war being waged by outside terrorists. The association with Al-Qaeda is being strongly hinted at. When less than three percent of arrests in Iraq have been found to be foreign, the unending statements by the US government that Al-Qaeda is responsible for the growing guerilla war against the occupiers is sheer lies and manipulation. It is propaganda used in order to justify and propagate Bush’s war on terror. As usual with the Bush administration, realities are altered, lies are justified and fictions are filtered into our consciousness.

Without evildoers, terrorists and bogeymen the war on terror cannot breathe. It cannot grow the wings it needs to fly. Thus, in Iraq, freedom fighters, patriots, resistors of occupation and seekers of liberty are falsely labeled terrorists and Al-Qaeda by Bush and his cronies. This is done to manipulate American citizens into believing the “war on terror” is working, that Bush is leading us to the promised land of unfettered victory. All “terrorists” are fighting “us” in Mesopotamia we are told; we are taking the fight to them so that they will not bring it to us. Lies and deceptions, pure fascist propaganda. The word “terrorist” must be allowed to fester in the national psyche, it must linger in the minds of voters who will soon be reminded that Bush is our Moses, Alexander the Great and George Washington, combined.

As Iraq continues its downward slide towards chaos, civil war and possible Balkanization (for more on this please see my February 16 column, The Coming Iraq Debacle), the propaganda that the US is fighting Al-Qeada will continue to be disseminated by Bush and corporate media. In fact, while the hornet’s nest of resistance fighters grows inside Iraq, conducting a classic resistance to occupation, outside its borders, throughout the Middle East, a much more dangerous swarm gathers energy, slowly encircling the region with the anger of a colony that has through American arrogance, exploitation and interference been disturbed.

While Bush drooled in pleasure at the thought of invading and conquering powerless Iraq and its many wells of devil’s excrement, much more grave and gathering dangers loomed on the horizon. Iraq was no threat to the United States. No imminent danger was present; forty-five minute attacks and unmanned drones were but illusions, as were WMD fables. There was no smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. Saddam was made a poster-child for evil, for the next stage in the “war on terror”. Associations were made with Al-Qeada, intimations created with 9/11. In the end, the worst foreign policy blunder turned quagmire in US history was but a neoconartist flirtation with fantasy and empire building. Today, American soldiers fight and die not for freedom and democracy but for the ineptitude and ignorance of the worst president in living memory.

Bush’s sojourn into Mesopotamia ignored and diverted away resources from the much more grave and gathering dangers found in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, nations controlled by a dictator and a despotic but Bush-friendly monarchy, respectively. In Pakistan, a country that presented the world with greater dangers than a disemboweled Iraq, nuclear technology and secrets were passed to Iran, North Korea and other states seeking the ultimate American deterrent.

As a result of this, the world has been made less safe as we get closer to the trigger that will bring nuclear winter. Dictator Pervez Musharaf of Pakistan has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts that if successful could threaten civilization itself. The nation is riddled with Muslim fundamentalism much as the American south is sprinkled with the Christian kind. Both are ignorant, extreme and dangerous. When nuclear silos and ballistic missiles litter the landscape, a most tenuous atmosphere and threat exists, one that presents dangers much greater than Iraq’s decrepit and disloyal armed forces. Who controls the proverbial red button is of great significance. Because of the Bush blunder, today many warnings of smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds exist. Why then did Bush instead invade Iraq, diverting troops and resources to a nation that was boxed in and contained?

In Saudi Arabia, the Bush-protected crony Saud monarchy, whose business and personal relationships with the Bushies go back decades, continues to subjugate its people, many who live in indigence while the few princes and their families live in a state of extreme lavishness. More so-called “terrorists” have sprung from Saudi Arabia than from any other nation. There is indication and reports that some in the royal family have in the past helped finance these entities, making 9/11 and events like it state-sponsored acts of war, yet Bush decided to invade Iraq instead. When family ties and money flows are seeped in cronyism, however, even the deprivers of freedom and hinderers of democracy are spared the wrath of American military might.

For Bush, though, pulpit orations of bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East, in a new spirit of enlightenment for the region, only applies to Iraq and to the millions of Americans who believe such mirages spewing out the mouth of the war president. The hypocrisy and bait and switch president is up to his old tricks, as he gleefully forgets to inform the public of his family’s connections with the Saud, their virtual feudal estate and their repression of freedom and grip on liberty. He also neglects to tell us about continued US support for Pervez Musharaf, a dictator who gained control in a coup and whose very survival hinges on US support for him.

Two rogue states, one supplying nuclear technology, the other a breeding ground for “terrorists,” both left to continue and further repressive and damaging policies that create indigence, ignorance, hopelessness, and, in the end, warriors and jihadists.

The roots of terror are allowed to flourish while the branches are trimmed. This is the “war on terror.” This is why it is and will continue to be a self-defeating instrument of karmic ramifications, breeding hatred and animosity that in the end will fail, no matter how long the battle is waged and how much cannon fodder and treasure is injected into it.

If the roots are not pulled out, if the causes are not understood and restored to health the “war on terror” will be perpetual, the fear will not cease and the cosmic energy of action and reaction will tear us all to shreds. The so-called “war on terror” begins in the slums, in the shantytowns and in those rotting cesspools of dehumanizing experience. It begins with understanding a human’s plight, of empathizing with the conditions that lead to despair and eventual violence. The “war on terror” is a war on poverty, inequality and injustice, of fighting for human rights, peace and nonviolence. It is a war against oppressors and exploiters, those subjugators of lost opportunity and abilities lost.

It is in the understanding of what creates so much hatred, resentment and animosity that leads a human to such extremes. The “war on terror” is realizing that American and western arrogance, exploitation and humiliation of peoples has done tremendous damage, both past and present, and that a responsibility exists to right what has been made wrong. It is stopping the American appetite for carnage, terror and indifference to the plight of those millions it sacrifices to appease its enormously unquenchable thirst for exploitable land and man. This is the “war on terror,” this is what needs to be done to declare victory.

Instead, the military industrial complex (MIC) has furthered its own brand of terror through its usurpation of foreign policy and its allocation of the largest military budget the world has ever seen. It has used the lingering effects of 9/11 to foster within the Pentagon a Department of War, of Greed and of Perpetual Terror. It concocted an illegal and unmoral war with Iraq, has made Saddam and bin Laden poster boys for the exploitation of fear and war among the populace and has used these mechanisms to allocate onto itself a budget of $400 billion dollars, not including the more than $120 billion it has already spent in Iraq. It is using the so-called “war on terror” to attain perpetual profit in times of perpetual war. The last thing the MIC wants is for the “war on terror” to dissipate from the minds of American citizens. It exists through the maiming and killing of humans, through the spillage of blood and the destruction of society, after all.

It is therefore vitally important for the MIC that the illusion of enemies is created and maintained. The impression and façade of maniacal bogeymen, evildoers and terrorists lurking throughout the world, eager to destroy our freedoms and democracy, hating our precious way of life and hell bent on murdering us all must never cease to exist. As long as we fear the lies that are told to us the MIC will grow in power and wealth. Its assembly lines of fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, missiles and machine guns will continue to build instruments of death, suffering and destruction. Never mind that to fight the so-called “war on terror,” where enemy nation states are non-existent and armies obsolete, heavy weaponry and the MIC’s normal array of products are useless apparatuses gathering dust.

The “war on terror” is not the Cold War, yet there is no money and wealth fighting bogeymen hiding in caves and mountains, mobile creatures living in cities and valleys, hiding among the population like ghosts of mujahadin past. The Soviets will tell you this exact same thing. Their humiliating lesson was learned the hard way on the rugged terrain of Afghanistan. With a Cold War budget, fighting a war of primitive necessity, the MIC is gorging on our tax money, pilfering the treasury and robbing us of valuable education, healthcare and other social programs.

The creation of more and more warriors in the Middle East is exactly what Bush and the MIC have in mind. This assures Bush of maintaining his proud stance as a war president and the MIC of perpetual profit and power. This is the reality of the “war on terror,” not much more than a carefully designed lie, exploiting the painful reminders of 9/11, that is enriching the MIC and the legions of cronies sitting pretty at the highest levels of government. To them, the “war on terror” is a boom.

In reality, the war of error is a farce, a profiteering conduit for the Bush crony capitalists espousing debauched democracy throughout the world. It is a phrase and an idea that helps drive the economy and crash civil rights. It is power and control, the means towards directing us like cattle to follow and obey what those running the fear engine have in store for us. The negative energies have swept into our world, altering our reality, morphing a different dimension of human civilization. The winds of war are upon us, searing in intensity and colliding with endeavors to change what has been wrought into our conscious.

Grave and gathering dangers percolate, penetrating our porous society and transforming innocence lost into fury regained. A riled hornet’s nest has been meddled with, releasing pent up anger and hatred into the air. The winds of war are upon us, reincarnated once more to envelope us with fear, emotion, destruction and death. The symptom of our disease has returned, back from its temporary grave, afflicting humanity as it has from the genesis of humankind all through our violent and malevolent history.

The few have once again condemned the many, making of us enemies and hated brothers blindly following the dictates of the dividers. Westerners and Arabs, Christians and Muslims, split apart by ideology and ruthlessly ignorant leaders, unaware of the seeds they sow or the wind they blow. Humanity has reached the climax of the nuclear ticker, proliferation now means decimation. We no longer fight with stones and axes, arrows or spears. The many must finally wake up to the evils of the few and realize that enemies are artificial, war is the game of the powerful and fear of each other is exactly that which gives warmongers the limbs that command us to destroy our sisters and brothers. There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.

A riled hornet’s nest of hatred is abuzz, the new Soviets and communists, the new evil bad guys wishing us harm. Enemies must always exist, the good and chivalrous American empire must battle evil, wherever it may appear, in whatever form it takes, under any term it creates. Terrorists, the new communists, Nazis and Indians, now reconditioned into our minds as the next evil, the next threat to want us dead. Without knowing we hate, without understanding we follow. Bogeymen abound, ready to attack anywhere from Smallville, Kansas to New York, New York. Fear and consume, fear and produce, fear and obey. Give up your freedoms; give up your free thinking mind. After all, war is peace and peace is war.

A riled hornet’s nest of hatred is upon us, the winds of war melt our flaming flesh. The war on terror is perpetual, prepare to fear until your death.

Manuel Valenzuela 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

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