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archived: 22 - 28 May, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: May 23, 2005 SLOUCHING TOWARDS JERUSALEM Over the past two weeks, you would have to be either illiterate or living on the dark side of the moon to fail to see the rapid disintegration of George Bush’s foreign policy. That said, few Americans paid any attention to foreign events, for they were transfixed by: the debate over the controversial nomination of John Bolton, the future of Social Security - but not as we have known it - and the survival or not of that great American tradition, the filibuster, as Bill Frist maneuvers to destroy the last sanctuary of rational debate in Congress. Two weeks ago, Newsweek published the story about US interrogators at Guantanamo who flushed a copy of the Qu’ran down the toilet to threaten a prisoner. This report of Qu’ran abuse lit the blue touch-paper and hundreds of thousands of Muslims hit the streets across the globe in places as diverse as Pakistan, Yemen, the Gaza Strip and Afghanistan to denounce American Islamophobia which has become the modern equivalent to the fascist Anti-Semitism of Hitler and Mussolini. Ironically, George Bush’s closest ally in the Muslim world is President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, who has an unfortunate reputation as a hard man. According to many reliable reports, President Karimov is seen to be very much like his ally in America and not at all squeamish when it comes to torture. You will recall that during the war in Afghanistan, America built key military bases in Uzbekistan which are poised to play a prominent role in the forthcoming hostilities with Iran. Recently, the people of Uzbekistan took to the streets to protest the incarceration of Islamic prisoners. Reports vary, but hundreds were killed in the ensuing riots with some experts estimating that 745 were left dead, a figure that makes Tiananmen Square look like a benign picnic. These Uzbek riots occurred shortly after Newsweek published the story of Qu’ran abuse, but we were asked to believe that they were local in origin and unrelated to the public outrage registered in nearby Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, thousands protested the reports of American desecration of the Qu’ran. Unruly throngs of demonstrators protested after reports surfaced that at least two prisoners held in Afghanistan had been killed by their American interrogators. With the reports of Qu’ran abuse and US soldiers torturing and killing Afghanis in their local prisons, President Hamid Karzai, himself a survivor of over one dozen assassination attempts, hit the trail to Washington seeking a confrontation with the president where he could at least hammer his fist on the desk in the Oval Office to demand a more balanced policy from George Bush. Karzai got his job through cronyism in the oil industry, so you can bet that he will be calling all of his old associates to put pressure on the Bush White House to make some fundamental changes that will appease the roiling mobs and gangs of assassins circling and coiling around his palace in Kabul. In Iraq, the insurgency continues unabated, while Sunnis are now demanding more power in the interim government. They were outraged at the publication of a new roll of film of Saddam Hussein taken unawares in his prison cell. In retaliation to this latest series of American insults, bombs are now exploding throughout Iraq with over 70 injured and three dead yesterday alone. At the same time, Muktada al-Sadr, who led the Mahdi Army in militant protests last year, is positioning himself for a greater share of political influence in Baghdad, where he will vie with Ahmad Chalabi to become the political power broker for the Shias. To make matters worse, Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, the head of Iraq’s Christian community, denounced the work of American evangelicals who are seen to be bribing and enticing the most impoverished Muslims with money and flashy cars in vain attempts to cajole them into converting to charismatic Christianity. Against this backdrop of political machinations, mass demonstrations, religious crisis, massive bungling, mushrooming torture and the calculated murder of prisoners in US-occupied Afghanistan, Laura Bush slouched toward Jerusalem, more or less in her guise as a tourist and Ambassador-at-Large for the Bush White House. You might well ask; Why on earth did the First Lady chose this precise moment to tour Jerusalem? The reply does not inspire confidence in the Bush White House, for the First Lady was dispatched to Jerusalem ostensibly to build confidence among Muslims for what they deem to be the loathsome policies of her deeply despised husband. Unsurprisingly, on the streets of Jerusalem, the First Lady became the target of several groups of hate-filled hecklers which is a polite word for those who indulge in spiteful repudiation, insult and profane intimidation. To the shock of the White House, Laura Bush was heckled by both Jews and Muslims alike. On Temple Mount, she visited the Wailing Wall and left a note (possibly a prayer that the heckling would cease) in a gesture that she and other people of her peculiar religious persuasion deem to be the equivalent of an email to god. From there, she donned a headscarf and entered the Dome of the Rock, one of the three holiest mosques in Islam. Surrounded by a deep retinue of heavily armed and uniformed Israeli security guards as well as her own phalanx of Secret Service agents, the First Lady became the target of vicious remonstrations and hate speeches. If the truth be told, the security of the First Lady was clearly and eminently in danger on Temple Mount, and she should never have been allowed to make this ill-conceived visit to either the Wailing Wall or the Dome of the Rock. It has been yet another a public relations disaster for the Bush White House. Just two weeks ago, George Bush attended the VE Day celebrations in Moscow. The next day, he appeared at the huge rally in Tblisi, Georgia, where he narrowly escaped with his life when an assassin lobbed a grenade that fortunately failed to detonate. This concatenation of incidents from Tblisi to Temple Mount cross cut with rippling countercurrents and riptides from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and elsewhere in between, represents a rising tide of anti-Americanism that is the direct result of the foreign policy of George Bush. Last week, the American public was given a glimpse of international public opinion in the spectacle of a tongue-lashing of the smug and smarmy Chairman of a Senate Committee delivered by an independent member of the British Parliament, George Galloway. Senator Norm Coleman (R-Wisconsin) had released documents amounting to a libelous accusation that Galloway had taken bribes from Saddam Hussein. These documents had been reported in the UK last year, and Galloway had taken the newspaper to court. Galloway won, but that did not inhibit Coleman from unleashing the discredited documents on the US public in an attempt to smear Galloway. Even though Galloway had been expelled from the Labour Party in 2003, he trounced his opponent in Bethnal Green, London, to win election in his own right as the sole member of the Respect Party just two weeks ago. George Galloway is no saint. He is a populist firebrand, but his performance before Coleman’s Senate Investigations Committee placed an articulate critic of the Iraq War in front of US network cameras for the first time since the presidential campaign allowed precisely one ninety minute debate between Bush and Kerry on foreign policy last September. In the aftermath, Galloway has soared to international prominence. With both Bush and Laura now dodging the barbed taunts and exploding grenades of foreigners, when will the American people wake up to realize that the international reputation of their constitutional democracy – such as it was – has been devastated by the minds of this deeply devout couple of neoconservatives from Midland, Texas? __________
Scott Ritter, In the belly
of the beast
Afghan prisoners were
'tortured to death' by American guards
Robert Fisk: Afghanistan
is on the brink of another disaster: "This is a secret war," the
Special Forces man told me. "And this is a dirty war. You don't know
what is happening." And of course, we are not supposed to know. In a
"war against terror", journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely
on the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much
about human rights.
Afghan leader heads for
Bush showdown
Multiple bombings rock
Iraq
Patriarch denounces U.S.
evangelicals in Iraq: The head of Iraq's largest Christian community
denounced American evangelical missionaries in his country on Thursday
for what he said were attempts to convert poor Muslims by flashing money
and smart cars.
UN joins Karzai in calling
for Bagram abuse inquiry
Arab and Jewish hecklers
target Laura Bush on visit
Georgia plays down Bush
grenade threat __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
