Trinicenter.com - Bush Promises Sunday Seven Days A Week

by Ben Roberts

We must now really begin to entertain the thought of equating George Bush with Moses. No. Not Moses the great outstanding leader and deliverer of biblical fame. This Moses:

"The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated some- where up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses bec- ause he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.

Their most faithful disciples were the two cart- horses, Boxer and Clover. Those two had great diffi- culty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments."

This excerpt comes from the classic novel 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell. The time was 1945, but looking at the Bush Administration with which we are now saddled, and the mindset of the American electorate, it could very well be today.

Where do we begin? Oh yeah. Weapons of mass destruction. Bush told us that Iraq possessed WMDs that would annihilate and vaporize us. He even provided 'proof' with grainy pictures of those diabolical sites during an address to the United Nations. Hans Blix countered that the pictures were phony and were of sites that had long been closed down by him and his people. Bush even sent his top Easter Egg Hunt expert David Kay to Iraq in the wake of his Iraqi invasion to locate those WMDs. Kay came back and reported that there were no WMDs. So Blix was right all along. The moral of this paragraph is that you can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but most definitely not a ballistic missile.

Bush sold America on the story that Iraq was hand in glove with terror networks and responsible for the terrible September 11 attack on this country. Every indication to date verifies this to be untrue. Stay tuned for the imminent September 11 Commission report on this matter. But as to Iraq being heavily involved in international terror networks. It is almost a comedy show in observing how Bush and his entourage tries to get out of this. Prior to Saddam Hussein's capture the tale sold to us was that resistance was coming mainly from 'Saddam supporters,' 'Baathists,' 'saboteurs,' and 'dead-enders.' Then Saddam was captured, and we were told that there should be an end to such activity. There was not. So the White House then sold the story that the resistance was being carried out by malcontents and jihadis from neighboring Muslim countries. But then someone got wise and realized that this would not sound good to American ears because it would mean that the conflagration was widening and not being kept in check, as we constantly being told. So now the fighters in Fallujah are 'insurgents.' Despite the fact that these people are primarily Shiites opposed to and victimized by Saddam Hussein, Colin Powell a few days ago referred to this resistance as being primarily 'Saddam supporters,' and 'Baathist extremists.'

To counter the stories spread by Moses let us recall that early in the occupation our army took over a school in Fallujah and made it its headquarters. There was a huge demonstration mostly of the children demanding the building back so that they could go to school. A US troop carrier pulled up and shot dead 13 in the crowd, many of them the demonstrating children. Also, last year citywide elections were slated to take place in Fallujah in an effort to calm tensions. Believe it or not American troops were delighted by this and busying themselves setting up makeshift ballot boxes and polling stations. They were very upbeat about having a hand in introducing the Iraqis to democracy as they knew it. Their enthusiasm was thoroughly shattered when Overlord Paul Bremmer intervened and canceled the elections. Seems odd does it not that in this instance our fighting men want peace and democracy while the civilian administrator and his bosses want no part of it. Now we are hearing a lot about the Muslim cleric Moqtada Al Sadr in regards to the violence in Fallujah. Moses tells us that he is a murderer and a fugitive from justice. The truth is that he is a Shiite leader of some influence in the area. He, his family, and his people were brutalized by Saddam Hussein. Now the perpetrator is our own government. Our army shut down Al Sadr's newspaper some time ago. How is that for democracy? Talk about the Patriot Act going global. So you see Fallujah did not just happen. It was seething for a long time before boiling over. And don't expect for it to simmer down anytime soon, given the fact that our forces have dropped a bomb on a mosque there, and killed in excess of 600 citizens in the town and nearby areas.

To bolster support for his invasion in Iraq, Bush sold an expansive and upbeat story of how the action in Iraq would cause peace and democracy to take root there, break out all over the Muslim region, and finally resolve the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Just a few days ago Bush endorsed Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement from occupied Palestinian territory. Sounds encouraging does it not? Don't buy it for a second. Moses at work again. It guarantees that various Israeli settlements remain on Palestinian land, while denying any right of return for Palestinians. This ensures that the Roadmap is dead on arrival, ensures that the Palestinians will not have a state or anything remotely resembling one, and it will ensure that violence against Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans remain the order of the day. A wise man once said that 'There can be no peace until there is equal rights and justice.'

The Moses routine is by no means limited to George Bush. A few weeks ago Donald Rumsfeld was being taken to task for the escalating American deaths in Iraq. He responded that it was better that the violence against Americans take place there rather than in our cities. How callous. Was that heard by American families who have lost their children, parents, and siblings in Iraq? It is clearly apparent that Rumsfeld has not suffered such a sad misfortune. We also have more than a few Moses types in the media. On the radio show 'To The Point' with Warren Olney, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times, and embedded in Iraq with the US Army, Tony Perry, reported a most odd incident in Fallujah. He informed listeners that US forces had dropped a 500 pound bomb on a mosque in Fallujah and blasted it with a Hellfire missile from a helicopter after it had been used as a staging area by a number of insurgents to launch attacks on US forces. According to him, the mosque itself was undamaged in the attack. What is more, no one died as a result of the attack. How incredible! In another segment of the show that night John Burns of the New York Times, and also embedded with US forces in Fallujah recounted an ordeal of his being captured by insurgent and held at a mosque in Fallujah. In this story he described seeing Iranians traipsing in and out of the mosque. According to him, he knew they were Iranians not because they spoke Farsi or any such thing, but because they looked and were dressed as such. Mind boggling! I can tell a white man from a black man, but can you differentiate an Iraqi from an Iranian on this basis?

Forget about the legions of Moses selling us tales. They have, and always will be around. What concerns me is us in America going about our daily lives. Granted, some of us can see through the tall tales. But a staggering number of us are like the horses Boxer and Clover in Animal Farm who 'had great difficulty in thinking out anything for themselves... they absorbed everything they were told..' Not a good prescription for democracy. Another huge swath of this country knows the truth but would rather look away, absorb what Moses tells them, and pretend everything is fine or will be fine, as in Sugarcandy Mountain. How unfortunate. But ponder this: 'The most dangerous and debilitating lies are not the ones told to us by others, but rather are the ones we tell ourselves.'

Ben Roberts is a newsletter editor, freelance writer and published author.
His book, Jackals of Samarra, was published in January 2001.
Ben can be contacted by email at: grandt730@aol.com