September 2, 2002- Promises, Promises

Ever since President Bush was sworn in back in January, 2001, we have had lots and lots and lots of promises out of him. This is nothing unusual, every politician does this, it is part of that whole scene, to make promises. Whether these promises are kept or not is usually another thing entirely. One o the more famous examples of this occurred with the current President's father, President George H.W. Bush. Remember when he was running for President in 1988, he went on and on about how he was not going to raise taxes, even going so far as to tell us all to "read my lips, no new taxes", a term that became sort of a rallying cry for his candidacy. Along about 1991, that term came back to haunt the President as he insisted that he had to raise taxes in order to make ends meet in the fiscal budget. That was an example of how a politician did not keep a promise. America is littered with these types of examples on every level, local, state and federal politics alike. Promises are made, and promises are broken every day in American politics. The current President is not above this, and anyone could figure this out. He has made promises to reform corporate America and we still see Mr. Businessman getting away with everything. But one of the biggest promises he made came in the wake of our instant war that started almost a year ago. In the midst of all of his steely resolve to get those that were deemed responsible for these atrocities (which has not happened much, but that is another column for another time). There was great concern brought up by the muslim communities of America and abroad. They were very worried that this war would become not a war against terrorists, but a war against Islam itself, since that was the smokescreen that the fuckers that perpetrated the acts of last September 11th hid behind to justify their actions. Since bin Laden and his boys kept going on and on and on about how they did what they did in the names of Allah and Islam and Mohammed and shit, it was pretty easy for the shocked and angered Americans to look at the ensuing war as one against islam itself. This was not good for the Islamic community as a whole. They did not want it to look like America was striking back against Islam rather than striking back against terrorism. These concerns were brought directly to President Bush himself. Since the Muslim-American community was a huge supporter of Bush in his race against Gore in 2000, The President listened to what they had to say. He seemed genuinely concerned about having the American military actions viewed that way. He felt very strongly about it actually. So he promised the Islamic people and the populace in general that America was embarking on was not a war against Allah or islam, but a war against ruthless terrorists. Again and again during the first part of the war, Bush went all over the place saying this same thing over and over again. He made in eminently clear that America was not opposed to Islam itself, rather to those that perverted it into something that it was not meant to be, etc. This helped rally the Islamic-American community behind the war effort. Bush kept telling them this same thing even as the bombs dropped in Afghanistan and all sorts of innocent Islamic citizens were killed just because they were near the terrorists. Bush kept saying this when the film was shown from Camp X-Ray in Cuba of the Islamic prisoners being held in sensory deprivation and all that. He said it for awhile during the war, and then after a few months, he quietly stopped saying it. We have not heard any of this rhetoric as the new war drums have been beaten. The ones that portend war against Iraq. While this all has been going on, there has been no talk of how the war is one against terror, not against Islam. Oh, the America people have been told that the government is sure that Saddam Hussein is up to his ears in the terrorist scene. The are certain that he is making biological weaponry in bunkers deep underneath the desert. As such, that alone would make his an accessory to terrorism, say the Military men. But now, they are going even farther with this shit to try and drum up support for the war. Lately, we have heard all about how Saddam has ties to the Al-Queda dudes that planned the attacks last year. He is supposedly offering them safe havens and all this shit. Concrete proof of this is not available, due to the wartime restrictions on release of classified information, says the Pentagon. We are just supposed to take their word that this is so. That would be possible, except for one flaw in that logic. There are two factions of Islam, the Sunni Muslims and the Shi'ite Muslims. I have written about this before, how these two factions do not like each other and consider one another to be heretics to Islam and all that shit. Ther ear ewars fought over tghis all throughout the Muslim world, the most famous being the wars that pitted iran against Iraq. One of these countries is predominantly one sect, and the other is the other sect, I don't remember which is which exactly. So that is why they have fought several wars over the years. Saddam's Islam is different that Ayatollah Khomeini's Islam was and they two countries fought over that. This same fight is repeated with other Islamic societies throughout the Muslim world. This schism presents itself in the current line up of terror too. The islam that bin Laden and his pals adhere to is the type of Islam that Iran adheres to, which is not the Islam that Saddam adheres to. So bin Laden has had no contact with Saddam at all during his career of evil. These tow have gone separate ways due to the religious difference. So if bin Laden's Islam is the one that caused the attacks last year, that should be the only sect of Islam that America is gunning for in this war right? It sure does not look that way. Anyone that knows the islamic world is fully aware of the schism that exists in it and how that schism keeps the Islamic world from being truly united over anything, and that includes the USA. The fact that Saddam had anything to do with the events of last September 11th, or that he even had any clue that it was going to happen is ludicrous. Bush is just using the fact that Iraq is a Muslim country to try and tie them to terrorism. Sure, Saddam is an evil dude, but he is evil in a way other than the one that America is supposedly fighting against. The America people ar unaware of any of this, because the Government controlled media is not reporting things this way. Rather, they are being compliant lackeys and spitting out whatever war propaganda that the Government wants them too. The problem is not the American people that cannot understand this problem fully, but rather the Islamic peoples of the world that do.

Because to the Islamic people, what Bush is doing looks far different. To them, it looks like he is indeed declaring a war on Islam. Because they know that the bin Laden boys are far different in the Islamic world that Saddam's dudes. They see that the war started a year ago against that one faction, and that now the American war machine is gearing up to take on the other sect of Islam, the one that had nothing to do with last September 11th. In their eyes, this looks like Bush has gone back on his promise and indeed made this a war against Islam itself. This is why the other Arab countries are so reluctant to support America against Iraq. It is not a matter of them liking Saddam, all of them hate his fuckin' ass because he brings so much negative publicity to Islam with his ways. No matter what sect of Islam they belong to, the other Arab leaders have no love for Saddam at all. Their problems have to do with the Mullahs and other assorted Islamic Holy men. These are the dudes that turn their sermons at Friday prayer services into political speeches. The ones that give the vast majority of Muslims their only glimpses of the world. The ones that the masses look up to for guidance. These are the dudes that are so worrisome for the Arab governments. For they are the ones that are going to tell the masses that the American war is indeed one against Islam itself. They will rant and rave and rail about how it started against one sect and has spread to the other. They will use this as an excuse to call for Islamic unity, a total bullshit excuse, for each sect will blame the other for bringing the infidel attacks on the religion. But at first they will stow that talk and make the Islamic masses believe that America is waging Holy War against Allah. The masses are going to come out of the mosques on Friday and go to the various governments of their countries and ask why they are letting this happen. The governments will not have an answer for them. This will further inflame the Holy Men and they will go on at the mosques about it all. This will stir the masses up something awful. The Arab governments don't need that because most of them are rather unstable as it is, and they have a tenuous control over the populace at best. Many of them are fighting against the Holy establishment that wants to establish a theocratic state (one that is run by a religion, in this case Islam) inn the society. There are many Islamic zealots that swear that the only way to get Islam back in the right track is to have every Islamic country be a theocratic state. That way the corrupting influences of the infidels and the West could be purged from Islamic society and the Islamic people could go back to governing themselves like they did before the White man showed up and raped and pillaged the land for his monetary gain. As time goes on and there is more and more of a disproportion of wealth in Islamic societies and more and more of the people are ending up on the short end of this, that sort of philosophy starts to sound better and better to more and more people.If Bush goes ahead and has America start a unilateral war against Iraq, that will make the people that preach that philosophy look like fuckin' geniuses to the populace of every Islamic country. That could lead to some very dangerous de stabilization of the entire Muslim world politically. The secular governments in every Islamic country that has one could very well be bounced out and replaced with a theocratic state. That would speel disaster for a large part of the world. In most every islamic country that has gone to a theocracy, there has been almost total isolation from the outside world and a decline in the average living conditions. The only thing that has kept the secular governments in power in the Islamic world is the fact that they have been able to produce a higher and better standard of living for their people. But if those people were made to think that the price for that higher standard of living was the pollution of Islamic society by the West, who were nothing more than infidels out to destroy Islam totally so that they can take over and make themselves money, then the people might not be so receptive to a secular government anymore. They would be willing to accept the lower standards of living that a theocracy would give them in return for being able to go on and not have their culture destroyed by America. This is what Bush risks by going to war against Iraq. He risks making it look like the Holy men were right all along and all that America wants to do is to wipe Islam off of the face of the earth using the attacks of last year as a mere pretext to do what they have wanted to do all along. This is exactly what most of the Islamic world will think if and when Bush declares war on Iraq.. So if Bush goes back on his promise in the eyes of the Muslims, he will have to kiss their support for anything that he does goodbye, for his actions will start a chain of events that will devastate the Islamic world. His actions could very well alter the entire geo- political makeup of the entire world. Rather than stopping terrorism, they could just spread it around so much that it will become worse than ever. Then they'd use more warlike tactics against it and further the idea that America is fighting to destroy Islam itself. These are the stakes if Bush breaks his promise. They are much higher than the stakes for a politician usually are when it comes to the issue of promise breaking. Much more than a political career is at stake here, the entire future of the world and civilization itself is. This is what the Muslims tried to tell Bush at the start of the war when he made his promise. If he is foolish enough to break that promise, I wonder if he could handle what he'd unleash.