Nice job, King George! Up With Sharon: Down with International...

Nice job, King George! Up With Sharon: Down with International Law and the U. S. Constitution

George Bush's reputation for illogical expression in the English language moved this week from the merely legendary to that of cosmic proportions in his response to Israel's murder of Hamas leader Sheik Yassin. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler reports today that Mr. Bush is sincerely "troubled" by Mr. Sharon's latest overt act of commissioned murder, at the same time that the 43rd President of the United States reaffirms Israel's "right to self defense." The President does not explain how "the right to self defense" applies to the Jewish State but not to 750,000 Palestinians who had their land forcibly expropriated in 1948. Nor does he articulate any clear reasoning as to how the right of self defense in international law squares with Israel's ongoingly illegal military actions in lands deemed under international law to be illegimately occupied territories. Neither does Mr. Bush ex! plain why Israel continues to enjoy wholesale American political, economic, and military support in her routine employment of extra-judicial killings, incarceration, and torture in flagrant violation of Western legal ideas and methods involving legal arrest, formal indictment, trial, and honest jury conviction for capital crimes. These actions are routinely described by the President, his neo-conservative cadre of war mongers, the idiot-wing of the American Christian Right--and the Israeli lobby and their pals in the American media--as part of an American-Israeli alliance in a "War on Terror." Clearly the American Empire and its Jewish constituency within see murder as terror only when committed by Arabs and Persians against Americans, Brits, and Israelis. Terror in the hands of Mr. Sharon and his American supporters is described, not for what it is, but as a "right of self defense," obviously in application not only to this! week's violent events in Gaza, but to the Israeli Prime Minister's commissioning of the mass murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in 1982 in Lebanon.

Aside from these moral and legal quandaries, Mr. Bush fails to explain how the targeted killing of the leader of Hamas achieves anything other than the exponential increase in hatred for Israel, the United States, and Britain--both in Palestine, as well as in the rest of the Middle East and the world. The outraged mobs in Gaza, whose numbers and angry mood were in televised images worldwide, are obviously the latest mass of humanity ready to sign up as new recruits for Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP, al-Qaeda, and any other organization of similar ilk in the Middle East. Thanks, King George. Americans need all kinds of additional enemies with ideologically motivated ideas of blood revenge on their minds and a willingness to give up their own lives in the process. We need to continue American support for Israel's ongoing theft of property, livelihoods, and lives as well. And when the next round of retaliations takes innocent Amer! ican lives in large numbers, it can be stated publicly again from The West Wing that the Palestinians, Arabs, and Persians hate us only because of our commitment to "freedom and justice." And Mr. Bush's pals in the defense industry, the petroleum consortiums, and the Israeli lobby will then win an entirely new set of contracts and projects necessary for the next round in "The War on Terror." What goes around, certainly comes around. And minus a legitimate attempt at a settlement with the Palestinians and the jettisoning of the folly of preemptive war in the Middle East, the Bush-Sharon-Blair brain-squad will continue to guarantee the continuance of the cycle of violence, with each round reaching new plateaus in blood and body counts in an era where dirty bombs and C-4 gorged backpacks have brought the skills and sophistication of asymmetrical warfare to the highest levels yet attained in history--with more to come.

Palestinians, Arabs, and Persians may take small comfort in one silver lining in a very dark cloud. The same forces employing the Oval Office of the White House for this reckless, murderous direction in foreign policy, are the same ones interested in the incremental robbery of the Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of the average American. Paul Craig Roberts tells us today about the Bush Administration's renewed commitment to the suspension of habeas corpus in the Guantanamo prisoner cases, even as the Bush-Ashcroft Justice Department prides itself in the passage of the USA Patriot Act through a sycophantic, gutless Congress. This latter Act gives the U. S. Federal law enforcement agencies the right to engage in warrantless searches of American homes and businesses for a period of up to 90 days with no demonstration of probable cause, along with new vistas of innovation in electronic surveillance operations subject neither to t! he boundaries of judicial warrant upon probable cause, or even a cursory consultation with the Federal court (the FISA, or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court) designed to protect American citizens from a rogue CIA, NSA, or FBI answerable to no higher law or authority than themselves. And the suspension of habeas corpus would insure that the Bush Administration, or its successor, could detain an individual on suspicion of "terrorism" without the filing of formal charges and the subsequent provision of legal representation, for interminable periods of time. Welcome to Mr. Bush's version of The New World Order.

Perpetual war, the support of the immoral and illegal activities of a dubious ally, the stimulation of the cycle of strike and counterstrike in extra-judicial killings, and the creation of a Central State and National Security apparatus in the United States designed to destroy the Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of the individual designed by America's Founding Fathers, is the legacy of one George W. Bush in keeping with a number of his immediate predecessors. And unless this legacy is deliberately and permanently reversed by a honest coalition of Americans both Left and Right who see the danger for what it is and refuse to sanction its official continuance, it may be underscored that the losses of Arabs and Palestinians in land and lives will be matched by the same level of tragedy in what was once the Old American Republic in the "land of the free and the home of the brave."