I listened a few days ago to Paul Bremer, US civil administrator in Iraq, as he protested vigorously about Iran’s alleged involvement in anti-occupation activities in Iraq.
He warned Iran “not to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs.”
This, coming from a man whose country, the United States, has just overrun and conquered Iraq and has more than 100,000 troops stationed there.
Truly that is the pot calling the kettle black.
The brazenness of the man is breathtaking. But it has become a normal state of affairs for US officials to behave with such arrogance and to call things by different names in order to make the unacceptable acceptable and the contemptible noble.
The Americans, and their lapdogs of assorted nationalities, are merely experiencing the normal resistance of a conquered people to the power occupying their country in order to regain their freedom.
Freedom is a quality much prized by the Americans, but apparently not to be enjoyed by others.
Bremer is reflecting the growing awareness by US colonization forces that the clock cannot be turned back and the 18th and 19th centuries are gone for good. The world no longer tolerates overt imperialism and rejects outright colonization.
The awesome white man is no longer held in awe.
His technological superiority is no longer that great and his alleged moral superiority has been exposed through long and bitter experience as a sham.
Take for example the poor suckers, oohps! the US soldiers whose task it is to conquer and pacify Iraq and whoever else the powers that be in Washington think should feel the force of “Freedom and Liberty”.
These men and women fight and die in obedience to a government that refuses to exempt them from paying income tax while engaged in battle overseas, but that passes tax reduction laws which further increase the already engorged bank accounts of rich Americans.
Rich Americans who refuse to serve in the army, by the way.
So as you see the charred bodies of US soldiers being pulled from burning APCs in Iraq, remember that, thanks to Bush, Warren Buffet pays less taxes proportionately than his own secretary and certainly less than any US serviceman or woman.
Ain’t democracy great?
As for the mighty legions of the British Empire, we now have an explanation for the attack which killed six and wounded seven in Basra. Apparently, the Iraqis’ delicate Muslim sensibilities were in a twist due to the Brits using (wait for it) — dogs in searching their homes.
So the Iraqis have no problem with their country being overrun by Western thugs, it is hounds that drive them crazy.
These stories are all for the people in the UK who are amusingly called constituents by British politicians like Tony Blair.
Apparently they will believe anything.
Arab News Opinion 29 June 2003