C H A P T E R THREE
WHY DO YOU HATE US SO MUCH?
Because we are “there”?
You are right,
of course.
We are “there”, and have been for some time.
When your brother-in-hate,
Saddam Hussain, invaded Kuwait, simply because he could, we were there
to fight back his forces and to help protect a small country from a bully.
After he was routed, we stayed in your homeland, may I say at the behest
of
its rulers, to pre-empt any further attacks by the Butcher of Baghdad,
and to help keep the peace.
We didn’t stay to colonize,
or to impose our lifestyle -we have countries of our own - but to lend
some stability in a difficult time.
When your brothers
in
Kuwait were being attacked,
we were there.
Where were you?
And in Bosnia,
when your fellow Muslims, your brothers, were being systematically
decimated by another
Butcher, we sent our young men and
women, at risk to themselves, to help,
and in so
doing, managed to halt a massacre and start a process of peace,
which continues to this day.
When your fellow
Muslims
in Bosnia were under
attack, we were there.
You were never seen.
In Kosovo, when
that same Butcher massacred thousands of your fellow Muslims, and forced
them, old,
young, and infirm, to flee their homeland, we were there to feed and clothe
them, give
them shelter and medical care, and even refuge. It was a monumental
task.
But we were there. You
were nowhere to be found.
You only slithered
out of your cave when it was all over, to condemn the very people from
so many
countries who were instrumental in putting an end to the barbarism of the
Butcher of Bosnia.
(Strange that there are always a lot of butchers in lands
with no meat, which
cannot feed their people).
Yes, we were
there, and
I’ll tell you, we will always be there as long as people suffer at the
hands of self-imposed tyrants whose only weapon is terror,
because they
have neither the foresight nor the intellect to manage the very lands they
usurp.
We will be there
as long as people are oppressed,
and hungry or in need of care and
shelter and
a little hope. For
a long time we have been where you now are, in Afghanistan, feeding and clothing
the
starving
population, and we will continue to help as long as we are needed.
Which,
since your days are
numbered, may not be too long now.
We were there,
we are
there, and as long as a woman or child is hungry or sick, we will
continue to be
there. With pride.
Whether you are there
or not.
Of course, in
your convoluted
thinking, we are only there to steal your oil. Isn’t that one of your mantra?
The same oil that, for
a very long time, was under
the ground you sat on. We
located it, accessed it
and refined it. We were welcome then. And now we buy it
from you. Of
course, oil is very important to
our economy, but it may become less so as time
goes on and
we find new areas of energy. And we will.
Unlike you, we educate
our people, and one of
them will find an answer to alternate energy.
It might even be solar,
and then what will you do?
We have a lot
of sunshine,too, and it would be a difficult product for you to export.
But we have many other
resources, like agriculture, which feeds us, while you have ruined yours.
So will you feed your
people oil, and have them quench their thirst with it?
The same oil
that fuels our economy also fuels the economies of your more enlightened
neighbours
in the region. Wise men, they have used that revenue
to expand and build
and better the lives of their people.
Up to and including your
own father, Bin Laden, who has built an impressive and powerful empire
through judicious use of the assets made available through oil revenues.
That’s where your money came from, after all.
We don’t have
to steal your oil. We are hard-
working people and can afford to buy
it.
But I forgot,
it’s our
capitalist system.
The system you’re always
ranting about.
The same
system that you avail yourself of, and
have done for many years. I
mean, you have
a great deal of money to throw around, so you use the international stock
markets to increase your dividends, and, of course, international banks
to keep it in and often hide it in.
You buy and
sell arms
and other weapons of destruction on theinternational
market,
since you
are unable to produce them yourself, and finance your terror
network through capitalist channels, you know, the mail, the internet,
the good old-fashioned telephone!
As for you,
Osama bin Laden, you inherited a
fortune from your
extremely rich and powerful
family,
which made its money through
legitimate use of the
capitalist system. But
while they were
designing and creating and constructing great buildings, you
were focused on demolishing
them.
Of course, in
so doing, you took the name of a
proud and powerful family, Bin Laden,
and dishonored
it to the point where it is now forever associated with Evil, Terror and
Ignominy.
Small wonder
they disown
you! And
our modern gadgets,
that you would have your followers
believe are the devil’s tools, what
of them? Your fellows-in crime, the Taliban, the Muslim Mafia, hate them
so much that they have stripped them totally from their people.
But you yourselves
do
not seem to be subject to
that same rule of "law". It
appears that every time
we catch a glimpse of you, there is a rifle in one
hand,
(made overseas,
since your people are incapable of producing them); there is almost always
a cell phone in the other hand, which doubtless requires batteries since
where you live, electricity is not a given.
We know you communicate
on the
internet, and posture and preen for the television cameras like
a bad actor in a second-rate
Hollywood movie. Could it be that:
“All animals
are equal,
But
some are more equal than others”?* |
Your
reasoning is at best
convoluted and, at worst,
full of the rankest hypocrisy.
But then, it always is.
And the monsters
you send
out to wreak havoc in your name don’t travel by donkey. They fly first
class in
planes. They stay in hotels which are increasingly full of the latest technological
gadgetry.
They watch TV in the
room, and sometimes eat microwaved food. They rent cars, visit
malls, wear watches, and so on and so on.
Of course, in
their hands
they can be the devil’s
tools, and very often are.
And how do you
communicate with them? How do they know when to blow up a building
to kill innocent
people?Do
you send out messages
via camel?
Or do you avail
yourself of some of our Western “gadgets” that
you so despise?
Inanimate objects have
no agenda for good or evil, only those who use them.
As you do.
So it must be our culture.
Our depraved society,
replete with scantily-clad women and men who lust after them.
This, from the
region that brought the world the seduction of
the Belly-dancer, and
the even
more erotic Dance
of the Seven Veils!
And could it
be that you
force your beautiful
women into the
horror of the burqa because
your
men have so little self-control that the slightest square inch of
a woman’s flesh would send them
into a paroxysm of lust?
It is strange
then, that so many of our clubs and casinos have a healthy clientele
from your part
of
the world; so much so that many could not survive without them.
But enough said.
Your hypocrisy is overwhelming.
End of story.
So that only leaves Palestine.
Of course it does.
That beautiful region
torn apart by mistakes of the past and those of today. Where blood is still
shed, and innocent people still die while the world seems helpless to intervene,
and mistrust runs deep.
Tell me, when did you
learn about Palestine?
It must have been fairly
recently, since you have neither mentioned it nor shown any interest in
it until now.
Could it be
that you would
use such a tragic
situation to inflame your people?
That you would take advantage
of the pain and suffering of that benighted land to further
your own agenda, rather than theirs?
Of course it could!
And it is a tragedy.
But, even as
you sit in your cave surrounded by
your sycophants, there are many men
and women
of good character and faith on both sides of the issue, who struggle on
a daily, weekly and monthly basis to try to bring some sanity to a supremely
difficult situation.
All
men of good will would
pray each night that
peace will prevail.
You, obviously, are not
one of them.
And if you did, would
anyone listen?
* Orwell
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