Twilight of the False Gods

Twilight of the False Gods

John Maxwell

We were right all along. All of us who, four years ago, spoke, wrote and

protested against the criminal attack on Iraq were right.

At the time, the New York Times called us the

world's other super-power – international public opinion – expressed by the millions of us who marched against the war, against the needless sacrifice of human life, human rights, dignity and the arrogant disregard for history, civilisation and all the mechanisms developed to prevent unnecessary conflict; and against the

wanton destruction of life and property. “No blood for oil” we said.

But to George Bush we were simply nuisances. He had a mission to accomplish. Mr Bush told the United Nations that we had better shape up or ship out. The man from Texas was telling the rest of humanity

that we were ignorant weaklings, cowardly namby-pambies who needed some steel in our backbones.

Now, in a desperate effort to regain some credibility, Mr Bush is telling his fellow Americans that they

need to pursue a bloody, ruinous and unwinnable war, an unjust war, to sacrifice even more of their

children, their humanity, their liberty, their peace of mind, their safety and their future welfare for "Victory”

in Iraq.

Strange, when it is remembered that shortly after the war began Mr Bush proclaimed "Mission Accomplished"

Then he was all dressed up in a fighter pilot's gear, the Hero, the Wartime President, the most powerful human being in the history of humanity. Since they say that those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it (Santayana) I occasionally, on occasions such as this, go back to reread what I said before to learn from my mistakes.

Alas, I can't find too many errors on my side or on the part of those millions on my side. Before the war two-thirds of Americans were against it, unless they could be convinced that the US was acting in concert with the rest of the world. A simulacrum of consensus was arranged. Against the wishes of their people, so-called leaders like Blair of Britain and Aznar of Spain lent their support and credibility to Mr Bush's magniloquent delinquency. Aznar is gone, Bush is on the way out, an even lamer duck than his handler.

The attack on Iraq was we were told inter alia, to prevent Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass

destruction against his neighbours and others, to secure for the Iraqi people their rights to their own

oil ( I know, it sounds fantastic but that was said by Paul Wolfowitz) to destroy a terrorist homeland in the Middle East and a host of other unbelievable nonsenses.

Nelson Mandela said "If we are to establish a world governed by law and reason, by the application of justice, we cannot divert from principle on grounds of present day convenience." As I said, a year after 9/11 and six months before the invasion, it was strange that it "has been the United States' administration which has led the

struggle to limit the human rights of Americans and others in America and outside … there are hundreds

of people in lockups round the world, arbitrarily deprived of their human rights because some American

thinks they are suspicious characters. Whether they are 'unlawful combatants or whatever, they are

allowed no legal way out of this American miasma and may have to spend the rest of their lives halfway between life and death, without knowing why they are there. If they are tortured, who knows, who cares?" (Sep.16,2002 'Look on my works, ye mighty …)

Mr Bush had told us that he was working for Freedom and Democracy, spreading Liberty all over the world

and that it was the terrorists who wanted to limit Freedom. In that column I quoted, of all people, Shelley,

urging any friend of Mr Bush to send him a copy of the poem "Ozymandias" in which a ‘traveller’ in the desert

comes upon a huge ruin – two 'vast and trunkless legs' near which

"a shattered visage lies, whose frown and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read…

The poem ends:

"And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of kings; look on my

works, ye mighty, and despair!

‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that

colossal wreck, boundless and bare

‘The lone and level sands stretch far away."

My coda to the poem was to remark that that desert lies conveniently between Washington and Baghdad. Re-reading my columns makes it plain that there has always been a substantial majority against the war, at

least outside the US Mr Bush's essential ally was not the US people, but the US congress and the US press.

"The Congress was panicked last year into giving Bush carte blanche. Then, it was persuaded by the nightmare of a nuclear 9/11, sponsored by Saddam and produced by Bin Laden. Now that both threats have proved to be a figment of somebody's imagination the Congress is still too cowardly to challenge a President who appears to have won, a bloodless (for the US) victory.’

My column continued: 'Except that it seems the blood is just beginning to be spilt. Iraq may be defeated but it refuses to lie down … and it is becoming clearer that the US and Britain will soon either have to put hundreds of thousands more troops in there to restore order, if that is the right word.' (Wizards of Mass Deception 1 June 2003)

And again "But wars, like murders, have consequences. There are, to begin with, lots of corpses about, lots of people bereaved, maimed, shocked into madness, homeless, demented, [ [and some] stimulated beyond conscience for revenge.' Since I wrote those words the number of attacks on US troops has increased by a factor of ten.

In August 2003 Mr Bush told Congress that "the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the War on Terror.' Mr Cheney sagely confided that "In Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror.' Both are still reciting these idiocies.

Just before the midterm elections of 2002 I blasted the US press as Judas Goats, leading their people

into error, and suggested that 'it must occur to journalists that there is a huge split between the Administration's tigerish stance on Iraq and its pussycat behaviour regarding North Korea."

Strange, isn't it, that last month North Korea exploded a nuclear device while the Iraqis are still employing improvised explosive devices. I had pointed out that Saddam was a target of opportunity. 'His Satanic credentials have already been established by President Bush's father, who in an interview with CNN said simply, eloquently, "I hate him" (Sept. 23, 2002 The War of Cheney’s Ear)

I presume that by the time this column is published it will be announced that Saddam is to be executed,

pacifying Bush Father and Bush Son and Cheney and electrifying the American electorate. And, as I said, the week before that column (Sept 16, 2003)"The oppression of the Arab nation, symbolised in the genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people does not only demoralise people; it inflames some others into implacable hatreds and ideas of revenge."

The American people are at last beginning to realise those facts and if they are allowed to have their

way on Tuesday the first act of this farcical tragedy will be seen to be coming to an end. Even the US press,

slavish almost to the last, is beginning to discern some cracks in the armour of their Son of Heaven.

Meanwhile, the reputation of the US has been besmirched fundamentally by the secret prisons, the torture, the unaccountability of the system,the domestic spying, the failure of the Press. France and Germany are no longer perceived as mortal enemies of the US. The Statue of Liberty will not be returned to France.

But other problems remain: Palestine – into which Israel trespasses at will, killing and maiming ad lib;

Haiti, in which France and Canada are co-conspirators in the denial of freedom and dignity to 8 million

people, and Darfur, where oil companies finance the genocidal war against the non-Arabic speaking

minority.

And while the US has spent in Iraq enough money to build a house for every human being and schools and

hospitals for all the children and the sick of the planet, and wasted enough on Halliburton’s thieving

contractors to have stopped the advance of AIDS, the people of Iraq continue to endure their persecution,

contemplating the Good Old Days when they were ruled by Saddam Hussein and their nationa had more PhDs

than anywhere else in the world.

Their intellectuals have fled or been butchered, their women are back where they were a hundred years ago,

and their children continue to die because there is no electricity, or contaminated water, or depleted uranium poisoning them from their mothers' wombs.

Meanwhile, ten days ago in the US, the Attorney General, the Department of Justice and hundreds of

local and federal police forces, arrested more than 10,000 sex offenders and other 'fugitives'. This was

the second occasion this year and the third time in 18 months that such an exercise has been carried out.

If there is an electoral 'insurrection' in the US on Tuesday, Mr Gonzales will certainly have the means

to control it.

Unsustainable Development

It is nice that the Spanish hotels which are now about to take over our public beaches and other public amenities have been generous enough to let us know that they will, when convenient, obey the laws of Jamaica. I knew that the law was not a shackle, but I thought that it was at least, virtual reality.

Up to this week I felt that Mr Patterson had simply returned us to the British colonial era. In reality we are 500 years back in time. But Mr Patterson will be a member of the Spanish charitable trust looking after our welfare. Meanwhile, if anyone is listening, there are serious people who believe that we don’t have much time to prepare for the cataclysm of climate change and global warming.

There seems to be no Jamaican intellectual contribution to the question of what we should be doing to prepare for the disasters to come. No doubt the Spanish hotels will build dykes to protect their property but what about the people of Savanna la mar, Black River and Portmore, for instance.

Then there is the perhaps even more dire prospect for Jamaica that soon there will be no fish in the sea, neither round Jamaica nor anywhere else in the world’s oceans. Not even in Spain, where, incidentally, there won’t be much rain either.

Our greed and stupidity will mean that within fifty years or perhaps even earlier, stuffed snapper will be a taxidermist’s production rather than a culinary treat and our famous conchs will have gone the way of the Pedro Seal and the Scarlet Macaw.

Meanwhile, we shall have lost our water-supply on the north coast to those nice folks from Alcoa, who willdestroy the treasures of the Cockpit Country and poison the aquifer with their red mud. And the hotels will no doubt be importing water from Antarctica or distilling seawater with nuclear energy.

Sometimes I am glad that I am older than 95% of the population of the planet.

Copyright 2006 ©John Maxwell

jankunnu@yahoo.com