Mr. Moderate

One of my major complaints against President George W. Bush is his egregious blurring of the line between “terrorists” and people, groups, and nations who are merely “enemies.” You see, the whole problem for President Bush is that it is very difficult to find some particular activity engaged in by “terrorists” which has not also been engaged in by the United States or its agents at some point in the past half-century. Thus, if we apply the Bush definitions to the United States of America (USA), then the USA is a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

I mention this because, after the recent Hamas takeover in Gaza, it appears that the USA, Israel and its allies are scheming to cut off water, electricity, food, fuel, and everything else supplied to Gaza on the grounds that Gaza is under control of “terrorists.” This of course misses the point: there are 1.4 million men, women, and children trapped in Gaza and the efforts just discussed seemed designed to terrorize them all, or to even kill them all for lack of food, water, health care, and any other “necessities of life.” I know that President Bush has no heart, but what about the rest of the world? Is there nobody out there who will dare to call Bush and Israel “terrorists” for preventing the Palestinian people from surviving this decades-long occupation and seige by Israel? Isn’t this really a Palestinian Holocaust in the making? WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE, WORLD!

Consider what happened when the USA decided to back the corrupt leaders of the Fatah party against the popular but “terrorist” Hamas party:

The U.S. has tried to starve out Hamas with an aid boycott while shoring up the moderate Abbas with money, diplomatic rhetoric and military aid.

Abbas tried to end the impasse when street fighting broke out this year. He formed a partnership with Hamas that dismayed the United States and set back Rice’s efforts to relaunch meaningful cooperation toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Now, of course, Hamas grew tired of Fatah corruption and kicked them out of Gaza, where about 1.4 million people live in extremely-crowded conditions, with no right to leave their own nation. (At least, no right to leave and return; Israel would be glad if they would just leave.)

But Hamas is a “terrorist” group, in spite of it being popularly elected in an election that the USA strongly pressed to have held. So, once again, the USA is using Israeli military power to effect the lyrics from the old Tom Lehrer song:

For might makes right,
And till they’ve seen the light,
They’ve got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
‘Till somebody we like can be elected.

The difficulty here is that Israel has never respected the rights of the 3.4 million Palestinian people who live under its military control. The Israelis have implemented a harsh form of apartheid regarding Palestinian lands. No people, money, goods, or services are allowed in or out without permission from Israel. So, where are the basic human rights of the Palestinian people? Held eternal hostage by the Israeli government. This is a war crime of the first magnitude, and President Bush and the US government are not only complicit in the whole rotten scheme, they are prime movers behind the plan to starve the Palestinian people for daring to elect Hamas to power.

It is well known that the USA supported, and perhaps even fostered, the coup which overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile. It is also well known that the USA sponsored terrorist groups fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. And guess what: many of the same fighters that NATO is now fighting against in Afghanistan are veterans of those same terrorist cells supported long ago by the USA. This is what devalues the label of “terrorist” so much: the same people were “freedom fighters” when the USA was supporting them, but they are now “terrorists” since the USA is against them. You can say essentially the same thing about the Fatah members who were “terrorists” from 1965 to 1993, but who are now “peaceful” allies of the USA, as opposed to Hamas, who are now the “terrorists.” But the Fatah faction is still running its own terrorist army, as recent news reports show:

Fearful that Hamas’ momentum could spread to the West Bank, Fatah went on the offensive there. In the city of Nablus, Fatah men shot dead a Hamas member early Friday, Hamas said, the first to be killed in the West Bank. The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a violent Fatah offshoot, claimed responsibility.

Note that the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades has been behind many of the suicide bombings within Israel over the past decades. That Fatah faction has announced responsibility for numerous terroriist acts, but that isn’t stopping the Bush administration from filling up the Fatah coffers with US dollars.

And again, it is the USA which is responsible for attempts to starve the Palestinian people in retribution for daring to elect Hamas. That is clearly the act of a terrorist government: to attempt to starve out an innocent population through a process of collective punishment which is a war crime according to treaties signed by the USA. So, thanks to the now much broader definition of who is a “terrorist,” now extending to every citizen of the area where some “terrorist” holds sway over the people, we citizens of the USA are now also “terrorists” by Bush’s own definition and the international treaty rules agreed to by the USA.

So, if you are a fellow USA citizen, you are my fellow terrorist! How does that feel to you? I’ll tell you how I feel:

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”