- There are a few special moments now and then in world
affairs that lift your spirit.
-
- One of these came with the fall of Romania's Ceausescu,
former chum of Richard Nixon, known appropriately to his own countrymen
as "the Dracula." His fall was, for me, the most poignant symbol
of totalitarianism's collapse in Eastern Europe. When Romanian revolutionaries
waved their national flag with its center torn out, I made a small copy
and posted it on my office bulletin board.
-
- Another such moment came with a speech at the United
Nations just over a year ago by France's Dominique de Villepin. Behind
the scenes, the U.S. had been using powerful dirty tactics to exert pressure
on every member of the Security Council to approve and legitimize its threatened
invasion of Iraq - a loan forgiven here, another called there, a project
promised, a project withdrawn, and the Secretary General's office bugged.
It did not seem possible the pressure could be resisted. But M. de Villepin
spoke eloquently for the great majority of the world's people opposed to
an illegal war. So when Bush started blowing up civilians in Baghdad, he
was uncomfortably alone (Tony Blair counting for little either at home
or abroad), and his acts were seen for what they were, a violent tantrum
by America's neocons, serving no worthy purpose and loaded with unpredictable
consequences.
-
- Now we have the Spanish election and newly-elected Prime
Minister Zapatero's words about the Iraq invasion, words like "lies"
and "stupid" that are inspiring for their honesty and directness.
Truth in world affairs is rare, and Zapatero's comes after three solid
years of numbing, depressingly-obvious dishonesty from Bush.
-
- Zapatero has made the very reasonable demand, if Spanish
troops are to remain in Iraq, that the United Nations must assume responsibility
there. This is not only reasonable, it would serve the best interests of
all involved in the mess the United States has made of the country - all,
that is, but the madmen who created the mess.
-
- Those Americans now busy building heated, Olympic-sized
swimming pools with the proceeds of new defense contracts and their political
allies of convenience, evangelical illiterates who hold that a fifteen-billion
year old universe was created six thousand years ago - two pillars of Bush
support - will now start their voodoo imprecations about Spain's giving
in to terror. Democratic nominee Kerry, almost pathetically, has joined
the mumbo jumbo, asking Spain's new government "to reconsider [its]
decision [to withdraw troops] to send a message that terrorists cannot
win by their acts of terror."
-
- Nothing could be less accurate or demonstrate more backward
logic. The appalling act of terror in Madrid rather has focused Spain on
the simple, irreducible truth that the key place to fight terror is in
your own country and its policies towards the world. It has brought Spain's
people back to where they were before the previous government betrayed
their interests to Bush.
-
- What do I mean by "in your own country"? Few
Americans recall that the nineteen men responsible for 9/11 entered their
country on American visas. Little stealth was involved. A twentieth man
with a visa was stopped by a single alert INS man suspicious of his frightening
manner.
-
- Americans forget that their 30-billion-dollar-a-year-plus
intelligence apparatus failed to detect what these men were up to, even
though there was some awareness of their presence. The failure is thrown
into strong relief by the discovery that a large group of Israeli spies
in the United States were on to the nineteen conspirators, and these Israeli
spies should themselves have aroused American interest.
-
- Americans seem unaware that such simple measures as re-inforced
cockpit doors and/or upgraded security inspection at airports would have
made 9/11 impossible. Saying this is not hindsight on my part. After years
of new threats from Western Asia and after America's hurling a whole fleet
of cruise missiles at Afghanistan, these changes were modest precautions
advocated at the time. A quibbling, petty Republican Congress bears no
small responsibility for the terrorists' success on 9/11.
-
- No, for America's right wing, a pound of cure always
is worth more than an ounce of prevention, especially where the cure involves
blowing people up abroad. Chests swelled like bull walruses in mating season,
they relish a demonstration of America's capacity for destruction, and,
when you combine that with an exciting new opportunity for local defense
contractors, it makes an irresistible legislative package. I recall a comedy
skit by the late John Candy with Toronto's Second City before his success
in films in which he and another comedian played backwoods types watching
explosions and exchanging comments like, "That blowed up real good!"
"Yeah, real good!" The skit brutally sums up the response to
9/11.
-
- You don't learn a lot by blowing people up. After killing
thousands of people and destroying the livelihoods of millions of others,
what has Bush learned about the perpetrators of 9/11? Not much. To this
day, there is no proof that bin Laden was even involved in 9/11. His guilt
has been assumed and repeated, over and over, in the American press to
the point where it is taken for granted by the public. I don't deny the
possibility or even the likelihood, I just remind readers that we genuinely
do not know more than two years on.
-
- As for Saddam Hussein's dealings with 9/11 terrorists,
we know to a certainty he never had any. His secular outlook on the world
was utterly incompatible with religious fundamentalists like bin Laden.
They hated each other, just as the Muslim clerics of Iran's revolution
and the secular Shah hated each other. Bush and his grotesque band of armchair
killers know this as well as I do, yet they have lied countless times suggesting
otherwise.
-
- So I am heartened by Zapatero's step onto the world scene
speaking truth. I know the silk-suited Christian warriors in the White
House will do everything they can to discredit him, because his words starkly
reveal the nakedness of their emperor. He can be sure the CIA will pour
resources into Spain's opposition party. No niceties about democracy will
hold them back, any more than they did in Haiti.
-
- As for the man who would be emperor, voters in the great
American democracy get the splendid choice between Bush and a more polite
"me too."
|