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November , 2002 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info |
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Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
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Between Chechnya &
Palestine Our world is growing increasingly bizarre and grotesque. The surrealism
that once pervaded the world of arts has apparently entered the world of
reality to influence political leaders and thinkers, journalists and
newspapers, mixing reality with myth and truth with falsehood. In the confusing rush of events all around, we are at a loss to
distinguish the oppressor from the oppressed, aggressor from the
aggrieved. Colors and shades are intermingled. Judgments are muddled.
Thus, a defender of his motherland, honor and property is labeled a
terrorist while the thieves who stole the land, destroyed innocent
people’s houses and murdered their children are being called victims.
Dispossessed and oppressed Palestinians or Chechens are called criminals
according to the prevailing international law that passes judgments in
favor of the strong, neglecting the basic rights of the weak. Did anyone ask the dead Chechens in the Moscow theater what drove them
to so desperate an act? Can we read the answer in their eyes that will see
no more or on their tongues that are now forever mute? Who will tell us
the story of Chechen women’s toilsome journeys from their distant
hamlets and villages to the heart of Russia and explain to us a plight
that made them leave their dear ones and the warmth of their homes and
approach their enemy? People may ask: Did those men and women go crazy with no reason at all?
Were the Palestinians and Chechens born with some rare genetic imbalance?
Or are they driven to madness by their intolerably oppressive
circumstances? How can we arrive at the truth amidst the maze of falsehoods? How can
we distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed? Let us seek the
help of figures because figures do not lie. In the world of facts
intertwined with unreality, figures are the only dependable source of
information. How many Palestinians and Chechens were killed and what were the number
of Israelis and Russians killed? How many Palestinian and Chechen homes
and farms were destroyed and how many Israeli and Russian homes and farms?
How many Palestinians or Chechens are being held prisoners in Israeli or
Russian jails and what are the numbers of Israeli or Russian hostages
being held by Palestinians or Chechens? The figures show that the dead Chechens at the Moscow theater were not
terrorists but ordinary people whose sons were unjustly killed, jailed or
tortured and their homes and farms destroyed. They had no option but to
leave their land, go to Moscow and cry to the world of the unbridled
Russian repression and to protest on the international stage the way they
did in order to draw the attention of fair-minded people of the world. The arrogance of the imperialists and the greed of the colonialists
dominated the world during the past two centuries. They left behind their
colonies devastated, keeping the people poor and backward. The 21st
century will be marked by the revolt of the oppressed. The century will be
known for the revolution of the poor. The victims of the past and present
centuries will anoint the future of the world with their blood. They will
soak the future world in the blood of the oppressors. Let the usurpers
take note! (Reem Al-Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.)
Democrats got it wrong, say
analysts WASHINGTON, 8 November — As a result of the overwhelming Republican
victory in Tuesday’s elections, many have expressed concern that the
president will now have a freer hand on foreign policy. Jim Zogby,
president of the Arab American Institute, does not agree. “Bush already
had a free hand, as the Democrats were unable to block him on any issue,
and they provided no meaningful challenge on civil rights issues, nor on
the war with Iraq,” Zogby, a Democrat, told journalists yesterday. Paul Wellstone was losing in the polls, said Zogby, until he decided to
oppose the war. Then his support started to swell. “It was a message the
other Democrats missed. (Soon-to-be-ex Senate Majority Leader Tom) Daschle
surrendered to the president months ago and never understood that he, and
his party, needed to be in opposition. The Democrats got it wrong, and
that’s their mistake.” Zogby said the Democrats allowed the Republicans to define the national
agenda. “The Republican’s agenda was to get any issues off the front
page that could hurt the Republicans: Enron, the economy, etc., and to
focus on the war on terrorism and Baghdad. “Democrats should have said, by threatening to attack Iraq, you put
us at risk, and they didn’t. Politics is the art of knowing what is
possible,” he said. The Bush administration has shown itself to be ‘media masterful,’
explained Zogby. “Carl Rove, a White House strategist, is a political
genius at message management. The problem is that the Democrats fell into
this by letting him determine, and manage, the message. “We have a 48 percent president, who is acting like an 80 percent
president, which are the ratings he got after 9/11. But the Democrats are
letting him get away with it. Look at the mastery of how the Harvey Pitt
scandal was handled. He resigned on the day of elections because they knew
it would be buried by election news.” Regarding the Arab American community, Zogby said it was a constructive
year. “Seventy percent of our candidates won.” “We actually fared well this year, despite the setback of 9/11, and
dealing with the crisis that impacted our community. “As a result of the Nov. 5 elections, we have a governor, a senator
and four members of Congress, and of legislators around the country. We
did very well in local elections.” Asked if he thought the war on terrorism would affect the Arab American
candidates, Zogby said no. “We had two or three examples where Arab
American ethnicity was used as an issue, and I’m pleased to say it was
slammed down hard in every case. The fact is that this year, as opposed to
1996, we found that Arab baiting does not work.” Zogby disagreed with commentators that say the anti-terrorist campaign
overshadowed all else, and is interconnected with the war on Iraq. “All
Bush got in these elections was breathing space. “The State Department,
the uniformed military, our allies, and the Arab world — there are too
many unanswered questions, including how will you conduct this war and
have it make sense. “The American people don’t want a war on Iraq, and it is our job to
prove this,” he said. “You can read the results of yesterday’s elections two ways. People
are afraid, and the Democrats did nothing to help put Homeland Security in
place,” Janet McElligott, political consultant, and former staffer to
the Bush Sr. White House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
told Arab News. Fear was an overriding consideration, she said. “The sniper in
Washington DC — just days before the elections — drove Sept. 11 home
again. Initially, don’t forget, people were afraid that the sniper would
turn out to be another terrorist attack.” The president was successful because while out on the campaign trail,
McElligott said, he focused relentlessly on Homeland Security and foreign
security issues. “He didn’t talk about the economy because he knew he
couldn’t win on it.” McElligott said there was no overriding theme in this cycle of
elections, except for the war on terrorism, and the Democrats failed
because they did not force the economy to the forefront. “This president made it look, for those back in the home states, as
though he was their friend. What this does for Bush is that it gives him a
Congress full of people who owe him,” said McElligott.
Why the Democrats lost the
election JEDDAH, 8 November — THE DAY after the US midterm elections this week
was a dark one for Democrats: President Bush and his Republican candidates
swept the elections, regaining control of the Senate, adding seats to
their majority in the House of Representatives and winning a few key
governorships in New England (Massachusetts and New Hampshire). No matter that the Democrats had won the governorships of Michigan and
Pennsylvania, key industrial states, the losses in the Senate were
humiliating enough. My take on the whole debacle is that the Democrats
have been scared ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, frozen in time, too
afraid to speak up for what they believe in. The Democrats have been too
scared to speak up against Bush’s tax cuts that are supposed last for
the next 10 years, despite a stock market that virtually collapsed post
Sept. 11th, and the fact that huge federal and state budget deficits
beggar the question of where Bush and his allies are going to get the
money needed to pump-prime the economy, let alone finance a costly
invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were also too scared to speak up and vote against giving
President George Bush Jr. the power to go to war with Iraq whenever he
sees fit to do so. Where were Dick Gephardt, Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton
and Joe Lieberman when the House and Senate gave Bush the green light to
assault Iraq? They voted for the resolutions, too afraid of being tagged
unpatriotic if they stood up for what they really believed in. In America today, it’s considered unpatriotic to be against
aggressive American action abroad, no matter how uncalled for it is. Bush
has cleverly managed to divert most Americans’ attention away from the
crumbling economy (more than 1.7 million jobs lost so far according to
conservative Patrick Buchanan), and the mounting corporate scandals by
playing on Americans’ fears of further terror attacks post Sept. 11.
What Bush and his fellow hawks surrounding him don’t realize is that
unwarranted US aggression abroad is just breeding more hatred for America
and Americans, a hatred that will endanger Americans for decades to come. The recent deadly missile attack on the Yemeni Al-Qaeda leader Abu Ali
and five supporters in the Yemen was quickly claimed as being the work of
the Central Intelligence Agency. It is strange that the CIA was so quick
to claim responsibility, but when viewed in context of the general
unabashed bragging practiced by most Bush administration officials, it’s
not that surprising. Just this past Wednesday morning I watched the
hawkish Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz actually burst out
loud laughing when a CNN reporter asked him about the missile attack in
Yemen. The obvious pleasure Wolfowitz felt at having dispatched an Al-Qaeda
operative to the great beyond, was without question. My suggestion to the
Bush administration: Gloat all you want in private, but when you’re on
CNN International, for Pete’s sake, show some decorum! Although the Bush administration has failed miserably in making any
connection whatsoever between the thuggish regime of Saddam Hussein and
the Al-Qaeda group, Americans have been badgered and scared into believing
that regime change in Iraq is of utmost importance to future American
security. No matter that Saddam was just as thuggish and brutal before he
invaded Kuwait in 1990, no matter that the US and Britain turned a blind
eye to that fact in the 1980s and were then the major arms suppliers to
Iraq. Despite the best efforts of Bush warmongers, there is a vocal
minority of decent Americans who are vocally opposed to invading Iraq, and
they represent some of the best values of America in my opinion. What we fear here from abroad is that the overwhelming success of
Republican candidates at the polls this week will send Bush the wrong
message that it is OK to invade Iraq and otherwise bully the rest of the
world into submission using America’s power and military might. While I
do support using America’s power when absolutely necessary, such as the
US bombing of Afghanistan earlier this year to overthrow the Taleban
regime, I do not think Iraq fits the bill of being absolutely necessary.
Yes Saddam is a dictator, and yes he does oppress Iraqis, but I think
regime change would be much more acceptable if it came from the Iraqi
opposition (with covert US help) or other Arab countries, rather than from
the US alone.
A wake-up call
It was understandable that in the wake of the World Trade Center
attacks, Democrat politicians stood side by side with President Bush’s
Republicans in a united front against international terrorism. Fourteen
months on from that traumatic moment in US history, the Democrat position
is no longer acceptable. Beaten soundly at the midterm elections and now the minority party in
both Houses of Congress, the Democrats are reviewing their political
strategy. It must be hoped that with the announced departure of Richard
Gephardt, as minority leader in the House of Representatives, the new
leadership will look seriously at what may at first seem a controversial
agenda — that of actively opposing a warmongering president who is
pulling out every nationalistic stop to head his country, the Middle East
and the wider world toward a disaster of unimaginable magnitude. The
Democrat problem was that once they had rallied round the president and
the flag a year ago, it was hard for them to stand back and produce
constructive criticism. They feared the charge of being unpatriotic and of
undermining the White House drive to crush the unseen terrorist enemy. A
minority of Americans entertains considerable doubts about the saber
rattling jingoism of the Bush White House, but few politicians among the
Democrats, has been brave enough to stand up and echo these reservations.
Certainly the Democrat Party as a whole rarely raised its voice to
question the administration. Democrats have so far failed significantly to highlight the hugely
questionable linkage between international terrorism and Saddam
Hussain’s Iraq, whose alleged weapons of mass destruction are being used
as an excuse to prepare the extremely dangerous commitment of the US
military to a Middle East invasion. When countries go to war, truth is always the first casualty. Only a
brave man will attempt to swim against the tide of patriotism that wells
up, even though in normal times, his arguments and questions might be
considered admissible and reasonable. The United States is already at war with international terrorism and is
poised on the brink of war with Iraq. Republican hawks in Congress, as
well as the Bush administration, need to be forced by a determined
political opposition, to account for their policies and justify their
intentions. The Republicans won the midterm elections on the back of war
fever. The domestic agenda to cut taxes and rein in spending was always an
irrelevance. In their heart of hearts, most voters must have realized that
the immense sums necessary to prosecute a Middle East war, let alone a
global campaign against terrorism, are going to require more, not less
government spending. That expenditure will either have to be paid for by
issuing new debt or by higher, not lower taxes. Neither solution is going
to do much to ease the gathering US recession. The Democrats therefore owe it to the American people to let go the
coattails of the jingoistic White House and take an independent stand to
challenge Bush’s warmongering policies. Party bosses may calculate with
standard political cynicism that they have little to lose between now and
the presidential elections. If Bush comes unstuck, they will have put
clear blue water between themselves and the administration. If he does
not, they are unlikely to be in a worse position than they are now. Nevertheless, however self-serving such a radical realignment of
Democrat policy may be, the party owes it to the US electorate to make
sure that the Bush administration is forced to account for itself, every
step of the way along its belligerent path. What can no longer be allowed
to happen is that the Bush White House should lead the country
sleep-walking into a deadly and possibly catastrophic war. With their
election defeat the Democrats have received a wake-up call. In their
response to that electoral disaster, they in their turn can give a wake-up
call to the American people.
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