Another Kodak moment
brought to you by BushCheneyCorp
There's only one real reason why Americans don't want to see images like those above, which are before-and-after pictures of 49-year-old American engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr., who was captured and beheaded in Saudi Arabia by members of al-Qaeda after the Saudi government refused to give in to the captors' demands. ("After" pictures "courtesy" of drudgereport.com, which is a dependable source of shit like this.)
Oh, Americans will come up with other, bullshit reasons they don't want to see such pictures, such as, "It's disrespectful to the dead," or "It's disrespectful to the family of the dead," or even that it's just too gross to look at. Admittedly, the images that we've been seeing these past few months, courtesy of the foreign policy of the Bush regime, aren't pleasant.
But that's not the main reason that we Americans don't want to see them.
We don't want to see them because we don't want to know the unpleasant consequences of the actions that our government is taking in our name.
We want to believe that if we don't see it, then somehow we're not responsible for it.
But we are responsible for it. For starters, we didn't make a collective peep when George W. Bush and his Republican henchpeople stole the presidential election of 2000. Still basking in our Clinton-era prosperity, our immediate little universes weren't shaken -- we could still drive our SUVs, could still get our super-sized meals at the drive-throughs and could still watch our dozens of channels of television -- so we didn't do shit while our democracy was seriously subverted right before our very eyes. A stolen presidential election was, in our estimation, not such a big deal. That's politics for you! And it doesn't matter who's in office -- all politicians are alike anyway! That seemed to be the collective "wisdom" of late 2000 and early 2001.
Now, the chickens are coming home to roost -- with their heads cut off.
Let me make it clear for the Limbaugh-lovers that I oppose beheading. Unlike the right wing, I oppose murder. I oppose the killing of another human being except in clear cases of self-defense and in clear cases of the defense of others, that is, in those rare cases in which others most likely will be killed imminently without intervention. (The death penalty does not meet these criteria, which is why I oppose it.)
I watched the video of 26-year-old American businessman Nicholas Berg's beheading in Iraq last month. The video is, to put it mildly, disturbing.
But unless we step outside of the black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us, we're-good-and-they're-evil, eye-for-an-eye thinking in which the members of the neo-Nazi Bush regime consistently encourage us to engage, we are going to see more and more images like those above.
See, in March 2003 the United States invaded, and now occupies, the sovereign nation of Iraq, although Iraq did not do anything to the United States or to any of the United States' allies or even to any of its (Iraq's) neighbors to warrant the United States' invasion. And the Bush regime's lies to the world that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat turned out to be -- well, lies.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that millions of Muslims would be pretty fucking pissed off, then, that thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed since March 2003 and that the United States occupies Iraq based upon the lies that the Bush regime told the world before the invasion. And it would be understandable for Muslims living outside of Iraq to wonder if their nation were next to be "liberated" by the United States for their nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and/or other fabrications of the Bush regime.
And you don't have to be a neurosurgeon to see that if any of these pissed-off Muslims want to retaliate against the United States' wholly unprovoked attack on and unjustified occupation of a Muslim nation, they don't have nearly the range of options that the United States military has when it wishes to retaliate (thanks to the U.S. taxpayers, whose billions of tax dollars aren't going to the things that they and their children need, but are going to "defense," which actually is not defense at all, but which is offense, and which, coinky-dinkily, just so happens to make BushCheneyCorp's war-profiteering subsidiaries, like Dick Cheney's Halliburton, billions of dollars richer).
Muslims can't make retaliatory air strikes on the U.S. military when they're pissed off. They have to resort to smaller, more personal-appearing, often (if not usually) uglier-looking tactics -- unlike the larger, more impersonal-appearing, more sanitary-appearing killings that the U.S. military can pull off with its weapons of mass destruction. (Similarly, somehow if a poor black man holds someone up for $25 at gunpoint, this seems much worse to the average American than does an impeccably dressed rich white white-collar criminal who steals millions of dollars without a gun.)
So we don't like the Muslims' retaliatory tactics, such as hostage-taking, car bombings, suicide bombings and decapitations.
But what other tactics are available to them?
I know, I know, to even entertain questions such as that is considered by most Bushwhacked and Ashcrofted Americans to be weak at best and treasonous at worst. But if we don't start entertaining such questions, we are only going to see more pissed-off Muslims and more dead Americans.
But I don't see us entertaining such questions anytime soon. Which makes me think that, as sanctimonious and patriotic as they claim to be, most Americans actually are quite OK with the murder of Americans, as long as it's not them or any of their loved ones.
I mean, if they want to respond to the murder of fellow Americans only in ways that will virtually guarantee more murders of Americans, what other conclusion can I possibly draw?
It isn't weak to try to understand the minds of the millions of Muslims who hate the United States right now. It certainly isn't treasonous.
It's smart. It would make us Americans stronger. And because it would result in significantly fewer American deaths, it's even patriotic. (I'm talking, of course, about the true kind of patriotism, not the shitty substitute for patriotism that we've seen since Sept. 11, 2001. [Hint: You can't fucking buy patriotism at Wal-Mart and display it on your truck or SUV.])
We can start by considering the reasons that al-Qaeda gave for killing Johnson. I'm not asking you to agree with the reasons that al-Qaeda gave for killing Johnson. I'm asking you to do what the Bush regime does not want you to do, which is to think and to inform yourself, such as informing yourself of the reasons that al-Qaeda gave for killing Johnson.
The Associated Press quoted an al-Qaeda statement regarding Johnson's slaying as saying that Johnson "got his fair treatment" because Johnson, the AP notes, "worked on Apache attack helicopter systems for Lockheed Martin."
"Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles," AP quoted al-Qaeda's statement as saying. AP also quoted the statement as saying, "To the Americans and whoever is their ally in the infidel and criminal world and their allies in the war against Islam, this action is punishment to them and a lesson for them to know that whoever steps foot in our country, this decisive action will be his fate."
The message is clear: Fundamentalist Muslims don't want Americans in their lands calling the shots. It's understandable that they don't want Americans in their lands who assist in the killing of Muslims, either directly, such as military personnel, or indirectly, such as engineers for Apache attack helicopters. No more than Americans want foreign Muslims in the United States calling the shots and/or assisting in the killing, directly or indirectly, of Americans.
The fundamentalist Muslims, it seems to me, just want Americans to leave the Muslim nations the fuck alone, just as Americans want fundamentalist Muslims to leave the United States alone.
While I disagree with the fundamentalist Muslim terrorists' methods, at the same time I don't know what other options are available to them, except to let the Bush regime have every last drop of their oil so that freedom-lovin' Americans can continue to drive their U.S.-flag-emblazoned Hummers. And I suspect that they don't see that as a viable option.
If all of this is too fucking difficult for my fellow Americans to understand, then I am ashamed and embarrassed to be an American.
So anyway, what is "President" Bush's response to Johnson's murder? What did Bush say today that will help prevent the future murders of Americans?
The AP quotes Bush as saying that Johnson's murder "shows the evil nature of the enemy we face." They aren't frustrated and angry that the New Roman Empire -- which, like the Old Roman Empire, is militarily overextended and rotting from within -- is shitting and pissing all over Muslim pride (two words: Abu Ghraib). They are "evil." And they aren't fellow human beings. They are "the enemy."
"Evil." "Enemy."
Words that will only perpetuate the back-and-forth fear, hatred and bloodshed, a la the Israelis and Palestinians. ("You have heard that they were told, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But what I tell you is this: Do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other also." What America-hating, Muslim-loving, liberal pansy said that? That would be Jesus Christ, in Matthew 5, which apparently is missing from "Christian" George W. Bush's Bible.)
"Evil." "Enemy." Not healing words (not even mitigating words), not wise words, not the words of a competent, responsible leader, but words that can serve only to stoke the flames of hatred, which will result in more violence and in more death.
This is a man who does not want peace, but who wants perpetual war and bloodshed, because it is perpetual war and bloodshed that will keep him and his fellow plutocrats -- his frat buds and his campaign contributors -- rolling in billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars. And it is perpetual war and bloodshed -- with its attendant perpetual hatred and fear -- that will keep these plutocrats in power so that they can continue to bilk the U.S. taxpayers of billions of dollars for their fabricated wars.
If someone tells you that he wants peace, ignore his words and examine his actions, and take note of what his actions produce. Then you will know whether or not he desires peace.
But hey, if we don't have peace, we have "President" Bush's Reaganesque "optimism," don't we?
"They're trying to get us to retreat from the world," the AP quoted Bush as saying today of the Muslim terrorists. "America will not retreat. America will not be intimidated by these kinds of extremist thugs. May God bless Paul Johnson."
Johnson doesn't need God's blessing as much as he needed a competent president who probably would have prevented his murder in the first place by practicing a sane, nonbelligerent foreign policy. Our "president," on the other hand, likes to taunt terrorists to "bring it on."
And why shouldn't he? He is the most-protected American on the planet, is he not? It's not his head that we'll ever see hacked off and held up in the air for the camera, is it? No, from the Vietnam War to the present, George W. Bush's precious rich white ass has always been quite safe.
Yup. As it was for Ronald Reagan, it's quite easy for George W. Bush to be an optimist.
The Condoleezza Rices of the world, who speak several languages and have an alphabet following their names, want you to think that all of this is way too complex for your little brain to figure out.
But it's actually quite simple when you clear away the "experts'" bullshit:
If the United States swallows its imperial pride and minds its own fucking business -- if, say, the United States tends to its own serious, neglected internal problems (such as public schools that are falling apart and students who can't afford a college education because of skyrocketing tuition, millions of people who have no access to healthcare, millions of people who are unemployed or underemployed, the extreme strain that the millions of aging baby boomers are going to put on our already-strained systems as they continue to age, our record federal budget deficit, etc.) rather than trying to "liberate" other nations; if the United States stops trying to overthrow or otherwise undermine democratically elected foreign governments that refuse to kiss its ass; if the United States stops stealing other nations' natural resources and exploiting their human resources; if the United States just stops it fucking global meddling in general -- then far fewer people throughout the world will hate the United States, and consequently, the number of terrorist acts on Americans and on the United States' allies will decline.
Duh.
8:35:21 PM 
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