George Bush is the Pot, Calling the Kettle Black

by James Glaser
December 30, 2004

Can you even imagine the outrage that would spring up in this country if a band of thugs went into a police station in Washington D.C. and slit the throats of a dozen policemen? Well, that happened in Iraq today and it doesn't even make the front page over here, because there are so many other horrors that will top that one.

For instance, CBS News reports that police were lured to a house in Baghdad on the same day as the throat slittings by "an anonymous tip about a rebel hideout." When the police entered a bomb went off killing 29 people and wounding 18. The blast was so huge that six neighboring houses collapsed. The US military said in a statement Wednesday that 1700 to 1800 pounds of explosives appear to have been used.

On Tuesday alone, 54 in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle were killed by ambushes and assassinations, including 31 policemen and a deputy provincial governor. These kinds of attacks are carried out every day, but still Washington tells us that things are getting better over there and yes, Iraq is ready for elections at the end of January.

We know if this type of insurgency was going on in this country, the whole place would turn into chaos and all normal life would stop, but for some reason we believe that the Iraqi people are different than we are and they can live with this type of horror, month after month after month.

Osama bin Laden has put in his 2 cents worth about Iraqi elections and said, "Therefore everyone who participates in this election will be considered infidels." He called for a boycott of the election, because the vote is being held under an interim constitution, "imposed by the American occupation." It is pretty hard to argue with that statement, because it is true. We put in a puppet government and we are going to force Iraq to become a democracy, well not exactly a democracy, but a government that kind of looks like one, but one that we can control.

George Bush denounced Osama bin Laden's call to boycott, saying, "It's the difference between the ability for individuals to express themselves and the willingness of an individual to try to impose his dark vision on the world, on the people of Iraq and elsewhere. It's very important these elections proceed."

Now when George Bush talks to the world like this, saying bin Laden is trying to impose his vision on the world, what the heck do you think most of the world thinks of? George Bush has 150,000 troops in Iraq and by some estimates, Bush's troops have killed over 100.000 Iraqi civilians. Conservative estimates put that number at about 20,000 innocent deaths. But the whole point of having those troops there is so that George Bush can impose his vision on the Iraqi people. The rest of the world knows this and they also know that George is the pot, calling the kettle black. George would like us to believe that after these elections, everything will be just fine and the Iraqi people will live in freedom and security, but that just isn't true. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the insurgency in Iraq, "will not end," as the insurgents are determined to derail the country's democratic transition.

"These insurgents are determined to have no representative government. They want to go back to a tyranny," Powell said. He went on with, "And the insurgency will continue and the insurgency will have to be defeated by coalition forces." (Coalition Forces are our troops)

It seems to me that we spent ten years trying to do the same thing in Vietnam. We spent years training the South Vietnam Army. We gave them the best equipment we had and still we lost, because that army we trained was on the side of the foreign army that was occupying the country (that was us) and the people in Vietnam wanted to end the occupation Over there we killed about one million civilians. We haven't reached that number in Iraq, but every time one of our soldiers kills another Iraqi civilian, another score or more of their loved ones, start to back the insurgency.

We even lose support even when the insurgency kills civilians, because the Iraqi people know that their loved one would not have been killed if the Americans were not there. We are in a lose-lose situation.

So George Bush can tell us that terrorists like Osama bin Laden want to impose their "dark" vision on the world, but his words sound pretty hollow, when we have so many troops in the field trying to impose Bush's vision. George Bush might think his vision is bringing "light" to Iraq, but try telling that to children who have lost their parents to American bombs or the parents, who have lost their child.


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