- You know, this new-fangled word used to describe Americans
of extremist stripes, "neo-con"? What's it mean, anyway? Like,
we know that 'neo' by itself means kinda sorta 'new version', 'regenerated',
... something to that effect. Okay then: let's look at 'con' by itself.
And, Bingo! Seems like that's all we had to do, break that screwy word
at the hyphen, to get to the bottom of it.
-
- Easy. Just had to look up 'con' in the dictionary. The
first dictionary I referred to, an American one at that, told me it meant
confidence-trick. So-o. Then that's what 'con' means, as in con-man or
con-artist. And jeepers, don't that make sense! After all, haven't these
con-men mounted an invasion and killed and maimed tens of thousands of
innocents for the sake of colonial conquest, an extension to empire, control
of the world's most critical oil reserves, and the elimination of Israel's
most implacable foe? Sure they did - you can bet on it!
-
- A small but growing segment of Americans have come to
know of the truth. But for the most part, the majority of Americans are
slumbering in the mistaken daydream that their commander-in-chief is waging
a 'just' war against 'evil' people and that it was all done for the grand
cause of prising away WMD from reckless and wicked hands. And playing in
White House press-briefings now, the con that a carefully chosen puppet
government constitutes ... a democracy! The con-men, whose high-placed
agents in multinational corporations directly and indirectly control the
media, have pulled the wool over most citizens' eyes and have them believing
in the ... 'con'.
-
- Now 'con' also has another meaning. And rather than implying
that a neo-con is some huckster or shyster, this other meaning gives a
different perspective ... like, a whole new angle: For 'con' in common
parlance means convict. As in someone who has been convicted and sent to
a penitentiary for a crime. A jailbird, then.
-
- This meaning too makes eminent sense for Bush-Cheney
and their gang of power-drunk warlords. For how about those (unreported
in the U.S.A.) incidents of American armed forces maiming and murdering
Afghan children? Or of American troops shooting at ambulances evacuating
the war-wounded in Iraq? Or of Americans dropping their daisy-cutter bombs
in civilian areas in Afghanistan? Or of Americans sadistically torturing
and giving frightful beatings to their Afghani and Iraqi prisoners-of-war?
No question about it, mate, these are crimes. And war-crimes at that. All
illegal under the various articles of the Geneva Conventions. In any sane
world, the perpetrators, i.e. many members of the Bush-Cheney cabinet,
including the leaders, would be guests of the U.N. at the Hague. The infamous
torture memo would only be one of the articles of evidence. And on the
sheer scale of the atrocities, most of the indictees would be on the fast-track
to becoming ... con-victs. (Is it any wonder that the U.S.A. is the only
country vociferously to oppose the creation of the ICC?)
-
- Getting tired of looking at dictionaries, I thought I'd
try a history book. I did not find 'con' but I did find ... conquistadores!
Let's see: The conquistadores were those Spanish invaders who in the 15th
and 16th centuries conquered and colonized what we know as Latin America
and the Caribbean Islands. They rationalized their occupation of foreign
lands by claiming that they were there to give the Lord's gift of 'religion'
to the 'savages'. And isn't what we are hearing now from the Americans
the same thing? Their occupation, too, is for their oh-so-noble cause of
imparting their gift of a secular religion to the natives. Americans call
it 'Capitalism'.
-
- But the real reason the conquistadores exploited Latin
America was of course for plunderñspecifically, gold. And this time
around it is again mostly for gold, only of another shade. I mean 'black
gold'. Eerie similarities, these! And it doesn't even end there. For the
conquistadores indiscriminately mass-murdered the original inhabitants
and committed untold atrocities in the West Indian islands, sparing neither
children nor the elderly, using sword and spear to maim and murder. The
only difference is that the Americans are much more efficient at mass-murder,
maiming, and mayhem, what with their rich and variegated arsenal of arms
and weaponry. Though with their government's indirect control of the media
('embed' is an American euphemism for auto-censored), American war-crimes
are barely reported to the taxpayers and underwriters of said war-crimes.
Most of the civilized world has heard of the Fallujah massacre, the bombing
of the wedding party, and the brutal torture-and-beating routines that
have caused the death of at least two victims. Yep, we have con-quistadores
despoiling our world once again.
-
- So there we have it: these American 'neo-cons' are accomplished
con-artists who would be war-crimes convicts in any rational world but
are the new imperialist conquistadores in this one. Neo-Con, QED.
-
- - Kersasp D. Shekhdar is a Zarathushtrian ('Zoroastrian')
Mazdayasni by birth and is a non-practising monotheist. By rational orientation
he may be termed a Russellian humanist.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Kersasp D. Shekhdar. All Rights
Reserved http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/080604Shekhdar/080604shekhdar.html
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