The Beam in the Eye of America

“They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.” –Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

“A person who is guided by God will never be misguided by anyone and a person who is misguided by God can never be guided by anyone... I bear witness that there is no God but Allah alone, Who has no partner.”--Osama bin Laden

Ending terrorism is the noblest of missions, undertaken by people throughout the ages who have willingly given up riches for poverty and subjected themselves to beatings, imprisonment and execution at the hands of the terrorists in power - people like Jesus, Buddha, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Pat Tillman. But for every genuine seeker of truth and justice, there are hundreds of false prophets who, afflicted with certainty in their extremism, cannot question themselves or their own actions, no matter how horrible they may be.

Essentially what has happened since the first air campaign in the first Gulf War has been a genocide against the Iraqi people, in a combined effort between the US government and its former ally, Saddam Hussein. Thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed directly by coalition forces in the first Gulf War. After Saddam was driven out of Kuwait, and Iraqi soldiers bombed as they were fleeing in what is now known as the Highway of Death, George H.W. Bush urged Shia to rise up against Saddam, promised them support, then stood by while Saddam slaughtered tens of thousands of them. Tens of thousands more Iraqis died in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm as a result of water, food, and medical shortages. The US and UK-led economic sanctions, carried out by the UN against Iraq from the end of the first Gulf War have led to suffering and death on an enormous scale, as a result of putting the welfare of the Iraqi people into the hands of a dictator who would have had to voluntarily give up his wealth to save his country. Like most rich men, he was unwilling to compromise his own power for the benefit of the many.

By 1998 we knew Hussein was disarmed by 90-95%, according to UNSCOM chief Scott Ritter. A recent CIA report shows that Saddam did not produce WMDs since the early 1990s. We also know that in the days following 9/11, Rumsfeld wanted to find a way to attack Iraq. The Bush administration used selective intelligence, blocked out any reasoning, and used intelligence they knew to be false to lead us into war. In fact, blocking out evidence and the refusal to question wild assumptions, even if the evidence proves otherwise, has been a defining characteristic of this administration.

Three thousand civilians died on 9/11. Since then, the US government has caused the equivalent of five 9/11s, one in Afghanistan, where more than 3000 civilians have died as a direct result of US action, and three in Iraq, where no less than 13,000 civilians have been killed by our tax dollars. Obviously, the terrorism of young Saudi extremists on 9/11 and terroristic response of the US government in Afghanistan, as well as what the US government has done in Iraq does absolutely nothing but sew the seeds of more destruction.

Young Americans, mostly white, mostly Christian, from one-horse towns like Smithtown, NY or Wellsville, KS, are being forced to carry out demoralizing acts of violence by being placed in situations where they have no idea who the enemy is, by being very deliberately ordered to drop MOABs on weddings and mosques and in residential neighborhoods. Young Muslims don’t see what they are doing as terrorism either – they are being led by criminals like Osama bin Laden into believing that they are fighting a Holy War against Christian Crusaders. George Bush hasn’t given them much reason to believe otherwise, calling the war on terrorism just that - a “crusade”.

Fire cannot extinguish fire, as terrorism cannot extinguish terrorism. Terrorism, which can be described as a mixture of fear and violence inflicted on a population, can only effectively be quelled through its opposite: couragous non-violence. Everyone wants the same thing in life – to live happily in peace. Most humans live in peace most of the time, but every human being and every government on earth has the potential to be infected with the disease of fear and violence. Delusions and fear always preclude violence, as the 9/11 hijackers thought, under a single-minded and unwavering, resolute psychosis that they’d become martyrs with a special place in heaven. A delusion must be in place to hold up sustained and enormous acts of violence, as massive, meaningless violence is contrary to human nature. To prevent this from happening, there must be courageous truth-telling in the face of war. Truth is the opposite of fear. It is impossible to defeat the US government or al Qaeda at their own violent game. The War on Terror can only be won by Americans when every American sees the potential for terrorism within his government, within his society and within himself, and only when he is willing to give up his life to cure himself, his society and his government of the of fear, ignorance and violence that plagues it. I can’t end Islamic extremist terrorism until I end terrorism in my own government. I can’t end terrorism in the American Government until I end the potential for terrorism in the American People. I can’t end the potential for terrorism in the American people until I control fear and anger in myself.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye. -- Luke 6:41-42

That wealth buys happiness is just as big a lie as suicide bombing brings 72 virgins in heaven. All excessive wealth is built on terrorism, either directly or indirectly. To the most violent come the greatest excess, and excess forever leads to more violence. The greatest empires of mankind have always been the most violent. And I’ve come to the realization that even some of the smartest Americans are ignorant of the way the US government has been conducting itself in order to gain power and accumulate needless wealth. I can understand why somebody who is not very interested in politics believes the Bush administration represents toughness and resolve – the arguments in the popular media leave the disinterested with no other conclusion, but I can’t begin to fathom why intelligent people who follow news can’t see what I’ve seen since 9/11/01, the blatant lies and hypocrisy of the Bush administration, the psychosis of it all. Haven’t these people read Orwell? Don’t they see the language of an entire race of pundits as Orwellian as hell – they take every sin they themselves are guilty of and apply it to some group of people – liberals, Muslims, Democrats, etc – in psychotic Freudian projection. Their cowardly system of debate is set up to expel anyone who challenges it. All language becomes product. All thought becomes profit. And the mass of Americans are left with choices having nothing to do with reality. Any American who believes the Bush administration’s proposal that either Iraqi families have to die or ours do will naturally take his own family’s well-being over the well-beings of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis and vote for George Bush. They feel there is no choice, because they are swayed by fear. Government and big business is indoctrinated in the cancerous philosophy of growth for the sake of growth, and they feed on the instillation unwarranted fears into the hearts of Americans, and offering miracle drugs to cure those manufactured fears. Terror is profitable, always.

How can the forces of violence and fear be stopped by non-violence and courage? In his famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self- purification; and direct action.” The facts are there, I’ve been gathering them for three years, trying to look at current events scientifically and cut through the rhetoric. And because of the unwavering, psychotic belief of war makers al Qaeda and George Bush that God talks to them and tells them to kill, negotiations are impossible. As Bush has said, “No nation can negotiate with terrorists. For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death.” So, I start with myself.

“I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages." – John F Kerry, 1971

We are most definitely caught in a quagmire, much like we were in Vietnam, because we are taking on the insane and impossible task of attempting to mold freedom out of violence. Freedom cannot be forged from violence as a tree cannot be forged from metal. Freedom grows from the ground up, rooted in the soil, in the souls of men. There are patterns which exist in history, and the same characters from the Vietnam conflict are creeping back now. A president from Texas with two daughters and connections to powerful businesses sending young people eastward to fight in a hellish war, the same corporations and talking heads and slogans and an evil Ism we must fear – Brown & Root, Nixon and Bush administration confidant John O’Neill, “stay the course”. And doesn’t it sound like the gods are shouting to us when by a fluke of a goofy screech from a doctor, and the perplexing reaction to it by the media, swaying democratic support to a man now running for president, a man stuck in the bloody crux of the battle between War and Peace 33 years ago, becomes candidate for president, and is right back at the heart of that struggle again. Can John Kerry, the man of conscience, the preppie turned soldier turned protester turned politician break this apocalyptic pattern, or at least slow down the gears of the cruel machinery?

We have a contest between two men, both imperfect as all men are, born with silver spoons in their mouths, but took very different paths in life - between a man who asks questions, and a man who has the inability, the arrogance and the cowardice not to, and resorts quickly to violence based upon his cultivated delusions, between a man who is interested in what’s going on in the world and a man who is so disinterested that, like a bad student, he can barely pronounce the names of the main characters, between a “reality-based” platform and one that creates virtual realities based on its agenda, between a man who has seen the horrors of war and a man who has experienced war only from the outside looking through shades of red white and blue, and has no hesitation enacting wars for profit. But I’m not casting a vote for John Kerry based on his courage in battle, I’m voting for him based on his courage to ask questions of his government, and of himself.