WHY?  The ignored Thirteenth Solution.

By Tony van Renterghem

Submitted Oct. 11, 2004. Posted Nov. 17, 2004

NBC’s Tom Brokaw has recently given us twelve solutions on how to improve National Security and better protect us from acts of terrorism.  To my amazement, however, he never asked the most obvious question, so let’s follow a fictional version of Tom to a fruit vendor, here on a streets of  Baghdad and have him ask it:

Question 1: “Sir, why do you think there are all these acts of  terrorism?” 

(After all, how can one  prevent future incidents from happening if one  doesn’t know why they’re happening? )

Answer 1:  “Because we hate you.” 

Question 2: (taken aback): “Gee whiz...I didn’t know, I mean...  I know we’re not all that popular... but “hate,” that’s a big word... Why?”   

Answer 2:  “Because you’re here!”

Question 3:  “ But, why?  We’re here to help you... to bring you American freedom and democracy... we got rid of your evil Saddam Hussein!?”

Answer 3:  “One question at a time, please!  First, we never invited you. Okay?  Two: how can you bring us democracy, you’re not a democracy yourself, you’re a republic ruled by rich corporations, weapons- and drug dealers?  All you want is a monopoly over our oil...privatize and steal our businesses...”

Question 4:  “Wow..  we did bring you freedom, freedom from Saddam‘s dictatorship and his Baath Socialism?  Didn’t we?”

Answer 4:  “Sure, freedom to be bombed with “Shock and Awe,” “The Mother of All Bombs” and “Daisy Cutters”... freedom for them tear our children’s bodies to shreds, buried alive under the rubble of what once were our homes,  freedom for our women and daughters to be felt up and molested at your check points, or mauled, raped and shot when you kick in our doors for your midnight searches...”

Question 5: “Oh,  come on!  That’s cheap anti-American propaganda...we did  get rid of that killer Saddam Hussein, his sons and...”

Answer 5:  “ That stooge set up by Papa Bush to sell out our oil to the Texas boys?  And what did that cost our nation?  How many thousands did you kill, wound and maim to be able to brag about that achievement; poisoning our land with your depleted uranium, turning it into your Killing Fields, while making it the Golden Goose of  your War Profiteers and of your Military Industrial Complex!  And you prattle about Baath Socialism as though it were the Devil;  it gave us the medical care and hospitals which you now have destroyed; it gave our women freedom and equality; it gave us good schools, education and freedom from archaic fundamentalist oppression.  And then you invaded to bring us “American Democracy and Freedom”?

Look around you, where is our Freedom now?  Look around, what happened to our schools, our hospitals, our sewers, our commerce, our electricity,  the gold from our banks, the treasures of our musea?  You leave us graveyards, everywhere.  Where are our sons, our daughters; where have they gone? Where is our pride, our honor?  Where are our sons?  In Abu Ghraib, with a leash around their neck? Or out in the rubble, heads hooded, rocket grenades in hand,  human bombs ready for death, all trying to somehow regain the pride, honor and peace we once knew!  And you wonder why we  hate you?  You stupid or something?”

Question 6: “Our time is almost up, but,  tell me in less than thirty seconds, in a few short words, How can we make you stop hating us ?”

Answer 6: “I have better things to do, just go ask my wife .“ (walks off inside)  

Camera man (off -stage voice): “Incoming!... Helicopter...incoming!” (as they both dive for cover)

Scene two

(The women  are trying to put tourniquets on the unconscious fruit vendor who has been hit and has lost both feet.  The cameraman tries to get his shot, with the Reporter in the foreground.)

Reporter.: (re-adjusting his hair and tie) “Boy, that was a close one!” (hands a Mars bar to a kid with a half- bandaged, bloody face, making sure the brand name Mars shows for the camera, then directs the mike to the women) “Madam, your husband just told me that you might tell in a few words...

Question 7: What can be done to make your people stop hating us?”

Answer 7: (without looking up) “Easy,...One: Get out of Baghdad...  every single American,  get out of Iraq, get out of  Arabia, stay out, never, ever come back!     Two:  Apologize!   Three: Return the oil to the people of Iraq.    Four: pay us to repair everything you destroyed and let us (not Americans) decide who fixes it.   Five:  return our bank assets and the assets, gold and dollars Saddam stole from us and which you in turn then stole from him!  Oh, and return all our vanished cultural, historical museum treasures!   Six:  Return and re-nationalize the Iraqi corporations and services you privatized and gave to your American entrepreneurs and contractors!  That about sums it up;  maybe we’d then stop hating you, at least sufficiently to stop bothering to kill you on the way out.  Now, you too, get your butt out of my house! (applause from the other women)

The same event as shown on the Evening News:

Reporter: (on the street in Baghdad; into camera) Unlike the terrorist remnants of Saddam’s National Guard,  most of the people here in Baghdad do not want to lose the freedom, the protection, we Americans provide.(he turns around,  cut to silent vendor, nodding his head. Reporter leans forward into frame)

We did bring you freedom, freedom from Saddam‘s dictatorship and his Baath Socialism?  Didn’t we?”  (Camera zooms in on vendor still nodding)

Vendor:...it gave us the medical care and hospitals,  gave our women freedom and equality; it gave us good schools, education and freedom from archaic fundamentalist oppression...(Cut to NY  studio)

Reporter:  Here we were interrupted by an incoming terrorist rocket-propelled grenade (street, as Reporter and crew dive for cover; sound of rocket)

Camera man (off stage voice): ...incoming!” (as both dive for cover)

(Cut back to NY  studio)

Reporter:  This was a typical, awful moment so many in Baghdad go through at the hands of the terrorists. (Cut back to Baghdad interior  with Reporter’s voice over) The vendor was badly wounded, all I could do  (Reporter moves into frame with the child) was help distract and pacify the child with a candy bar. (Cut back to NY  studio)

Reporter:   This incident sadly illustrates how vital it is for our troops to stay and protect the population until the Iraqi forces are fully trained and can take over.

*********

          The above controlled press example may be a satire, but it is frighteningly close to reality. So, why are we  hated?  I learned over the years to always search for the truth; to never underestimate, but to respect and try to understand the dedication and motivation of one’s opponent. It is the  first step toward finding peaceful solutions.  Sadly, critical history no longer seems to be part of the curriculum of most U.S. schools and universities, since even a cursory study would document continuous British and American political, corporate and military intrusions into, and against, the Middle East and its Muslim population.   It is a practice rooted as far back as the Crusades,  revealing a  history of greed, cruelty, control and deceit, culminating in today’s efforts at aggressively monopolizing and exploiting the world’s oil and other resources.

                A major tactical step in trying to achieve such control has been the unilateral, unconditional backing of the State of Israel as an American bridgehead and client state (with atomic capability), as well as establishing Air and Naval bases worldwide, but particularly in the Saudi Kingdom and Gulf Emirates and now Iraq.    These forces back highly unpopular, totalitarian regimes in exchange for cheap, privatized access to the country’s resources, and the use of minimal wage slave labor, child labor, unrestricted work hours and uncontrolled, unsafe work conditions, unhampered by labor unions.  Local police and “Federales” prevent any form of protest and are prepared to shoot to kill. 

                Oddly, our Neo-Cons, Sharon’s Israel, and the Saudis have one other thing in common; all three are presently dominated by ultra-conservative, authoritarian, fundamentalist  religious ideologists.  All three have poor records on women’s-, civil- and GLBT rights. They see themselves as “chosen” by God and tend to oppose social and liberal thinking. They have racist tendencies with the right to impose their own ideologies and neo-con privatization policies, to dominate and exploit others; by force if necessary. They have become international, corporate fascist gangsters who use their form of Manifest Destiny to excuse modern ways of economic slavery, and practice mind control through controlled media.  In the Moslim world secular Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Libya at least, offered better education, social care and far more freedom for women.