My personal campaign against the Bush administration, the cabal that pressed for war against Iraq, and a US right wing that was complicit in this war is a foregone conclusion, and is something that should come from any citizen who supports his fellow citizens and humanity itself. But the biggest portion of my anger, frustration and disappointment with the human spirit involves Muslims themselves and the American liberal media, and their failure to prevent the war or demand justice for its victims. We should assume that a criminal commits a crime, which is what the Likudniks and the pro-imperialist Americans did when they managed George W Bush and his administration, but what should we assume about the family of the victim? If they are unable to prevent the crime, or take revenge for their fallen martyrs, then asking for justice is the least that should happen. The Arabs and Muslims did not try to prevent the crime against the people of Iraq (and I am not saying against the criminal regime of Saddam Hussein); then, they were unable to stop it after it began. Today, they remain unable to resort to the international war crimes tribunal to ask that the criminals stand trial. This position of impotence transcends the abstract issue of justice. It encourages any party that seeks to occupy their countries openly, or dominate them covertly. I found the war against the Taliban to be justified after the terror of 11 September 2001. However, the invading troops did not kill the terrorists from al-Qaida, or arrest them, because they needed them to stay around, to justify the war on terror, and the invasion of Iraq; the occupation became the terror that was the original target for elimination. At the least, my disappointment with the Arabs and Muslims was not great, because I did not expect them to awaken from their slumber. If Palestine, Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque didn't wake them, then Tora Bora and the Swat valley won't either. What really shook me, and my long-standing convictions, was the stance taken by the liberal American media, and particularly the New York Times and Washington Post, which are both liberal, and each represents a school of journalism. The name of the former is always linked in my mind with the Pentagon Papers of 1971, while the name of the latter is linked to the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s. The two newspapers supported the war on Iraq implicitly, if not overtly, for reasons that were, and remain, connected to Israel and to oil. I do not believe the New York Times deceived its correspondent Judith Miller and the lying Iraqi dissidents; rather, it gave them the opportunity to create a climate supportive of war. This was the stance of the liberal Washington Post in everything, except when it had to do with Israel. Some of its opinion writers are among the vilest Likudniks and enemies of all United States interests. Today, the two newspapers continue to take the same position. The documents published by Wikileaks, which are another decisive piece of evidence of war crimes, have been met with only criticism and selective analysis in the two newspapers. Perhaps they believe that the documents are a condemnation of their collusion in the war, and have chosen to enter a state of denial, for obvious reasons. The new documents prove what we knew about the killing of civilians, including women and children, and the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. However, the newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers and went to court to continue their publication, has chosen to run some information about some of the documents. It published an article on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange that portrays him as a wanted criminal, obsessed with his personal security, while his colleagues disguise themselves. Meanwhile, Amnesty International and Journalists without Borders attack him because he revealed the names of those who collaborated with American forces, which puts their lives in danger (as I said yesterday, this is a lie, since 70,000 documents about Afghanistan published this summer did not lead to the death of a single collaborator). The editorial in the Washington Post quoted the New York Times as saying that the documents did not reveal anything new. Murder, torture and other crimes were covered up at the time, and the two newspapers chose to focus on the role of Iran in helping armed elements in Iraq, without saying that the occupation was the reason why Iran returned to Iraq, after Saddam Hussein dealt it a huge defeat in the war between the two countries. The Washington Post said in its editorial that “Wikileaks documents confirm in general the earlier press coverage,” and its opinions also affirm that the liberal press did not do its job in revealing the manipulation of reasons for war against Iraq, to prevent the White House from waging the war in a crime that has taken the lives of 4,500 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Perhaps the Arabs and Muslims should be excused, because they are losers to begin with; as for the liberal American press, it had no excuse in 2003, or now. [email protected]
