Letter from America

'Reelection'-obsessed President Bush is not interested in justice!

Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed writes from Princeton
President George W. Bush never talks about justice, because "justice" is the call of the weak and the oppressed, such as the hapless Palestinians. Instead, Mr. Bush talks about "freedom, democracy, and law and order." These are the clarion calls of the strong and the mighty, such as the US and Israel. The only time "justice" enters Mr. Bush's vocabulary is when he seeks retribution, such as when he talks of the need to bring "these assassins and thugs" to "justice".

Last week, Mr. Bush had multiple opportunities to strike a blow for justice. Not unexpectedly, he sided solidly with tyranny. Mr. Bush heaped profuse praise on mass murderer Sharon for planning to withdraw from the Israeli-occupied Gaza, which all Israeli Prime Ministers in the last ten years have contemplated doing IN THEIR OWN INTEREST! Breaking with the existing international laws, something he is very good at, Mr. Bush added that it was perfectly all right for Israel to build a wall inside Palestinian territory (West Bank), not to withdraw from all the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies in the West Bank, and not to allow the Palestinians who were driven out of their homes by Israel to return to their homes. So, Mr. Bush praises a thief (Israel) for returning stolen property (Gaza), tells the thief that he can keep a part of the bigger loot (West Bank) it had stolen and disfigure it, and is under no obligation to let the legal occupants of the house the thief had expelled return to their own house! In Bush's Orwellian world, (assuming Mr. Bush has heard of George Orwell and "1984") the occupiers "have the right" to occupation and the victims are "terrorists" for resisting occupation! This is Mr. Bush's concept of justice! And he feels secure in the knowledge that as the all-mighty, his words are law, and that there will be no ill-consequences for his blatant travesty of justice!

Pathetically, a couple of days before Sharon's visit, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak went all the way to Crawford, Texas to pay respect to Mr. Bush, no doubt beseeching the President that whatever he and Sharon decide to do the Palestinians is all right with him as long as Bush does not cut off America's two and a half billion dollar annual dole to Egypt. Couple of days after Sharon's departure came Jordan's little monarch Abdullah, no doubt to give Sharon and Bush a free hand over the Palestinians in exchange for Mr. Bush's promise not to tamper with Jordan's free trade agreement with America. Sandwiched between the visits by the two Muslim dictators came the mass murderer Sharon to dictate to Bush what Israel's and America's policy was going to be. Mr. Bush complied, and gave Sharon everything he wanted and then some. Therefore, while Egypt sells its soul for two and a half billion dollars, Israel not only extorts ten billion annually from America, it keeps its soul intact and buys America's soul from a President too willing to sell it for the sake of his personal "reelection."

Just before Sharon leaves, he informs Bush, "By the way, I am going to murder the new head of Hamas, (Dr. Abdel Aziz) Rantisii by firing a missile at him from an American Apache helicopter, just as I had murdered the previous Hamas head (wheelchair-confined Sheikh Ahmed) Yassin a month earlier." Bush must have applauded Sharon's crime, because when Sharon carried out Rantisii's murder, the Bush White House put out a statement that began, "Hamas is a terrorist organisation…" By endorsing the multifaceted crimes of the terrorist Sharon, Mr. Bush has become an accessory to terrorism himself. Let us not ignore the other visitor to the White House last week: British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the unilateral Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank (and presumably in the murder of Dr. Rantisii as well) Mr. Blair saw an "opportunity" for the Palestinians! Privately, the British agree that if it ever comes down to a choice between the Iraq coalition partner Mr. Blair and the "reelection" partner Sharon, Mr. Bush will, without hesitation, discard Mr. Blair…

Before dissecting the fallacies in the Bush-Sharon logic, let us focus on the facts: Israel illegally occupies the Palestinian lands of the West Bank and Gaza, continuously steals and builds Jewish settlements on the Palestinian lands with American money contravening all existing international laws, as occupiers control every aspect of Palestinian life, restricts the movement of the Palestinians, inflicts illegal collective punishment on the population through mass closures, curfews and by blowing up Palestinian apartments and houses. Israeli violation of international law, and the atrocities Israel perpetrates on the Palestinians are limitless. What is the Bush-Sharon excuse for the Israeli murder of the Palestinians? "The Palestinians are not doing enough to protect the Israelis," they say. When has it become the duty of the occupied to protect the occupiers? Are the Iraqis responsible for the protection of the American occupiers? Even after taking a beating in Iraq, Mr. Bush "the war President" still does not get it: Occupation and peace do not go hand in hand. Regardless of whether the theatre is Israel or Iraq, occupation elicits violent resistance. Without consulting the Palestinians, and defying international law Bush-Sharon agreed that Israel should annex parts of the West Bank it now occupies, and they expect the Palestinians to accept it. If Mexico retakes its former territory of Texas (now a US state), will the Americans accept Mexican annexation of part of current US territory?

Why should it be any different with the Palestinians?

Mr. Bush may be "incurious" about everything else, but the words "reelection" and "second term" instantly pique his interest. ("Reelection" does not strictly apply to Mr. Bush, who was not elected, but anointed President by the Republican judges of the US Supreme Court and who received 600,000 LESS votes than Al Gore in the Presidential election of 2000.)

Ever since taking office, even in the days following 9/11, Mr. Bush had focused on raising funds to fatten his "reelection" war chest. Mr. Bush's public appearances have been choreographed to maximise his "reelection" chances. Mr. Bush's "reelection" brain trusts, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, make sure that Mr. Bush is not associated with any bad news. When close to a hundred American soldiers died in Iraq in the last two weeks, Mr. Bush hid in his Crawford, Texas ranch! It was only after newspapers blasted the "silent" President, that he reluctantly held a press conference to justify his failing Iraq policy. As expected, he bombed, because the unpackaged and unhinged Mr. Bush is not a pretty sight.

God knows what more peril Mr. Bush will place America in in order to win a second term. Because Sharon knows that a "reelection"-obsessed Bush will bend over backwards not to offend him before the November US presidential election for fear of the electoral wrath of the Zionists, Sharon will probably murder the democratically elected leader of the Palestinians, Yassir Arafat, before November, and Bush will applaud Sharon's state-sponsored terrorism. Mr. Bush's pandering to the terrorist Sharon and the terrorist state of Israel for personal gains will have devastating consequences for America's short and long term future. In the short term, Mr. Bush's endorsement of Sharon's terrorism will lead directly to the death of many more American soldiers and civilians in Iraq. In the long term, the evil-spewing Bush-Sharon axis will help swell the ranks of those who want to do America harm. Cunningly for Israel and catastrophically for America, Sharon is using Bush to blur the distinction between an American and an Israeli. Sadly, from personal experience the writer knows that Mr. Bush does not represent the overwhelming majority of the decent and fair-minded American people. Mr. Bush and his Zionist cohorts do not represent America's best values; they represent America's worst. And historically, a noble and a decent nation that had a bright future had always aligned itself with the forces of justice.