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Posted January 3, 2003
Regarding "How the War Party Sold the 1991 Bombing of Iraq to US" by Mitchel Cohen:
It is a relief to read that at least some Americans have their eyes open, but only a very weak minority and that's a big problem considering the actual empowerment of your nation over the world.
In the interest of a balanced view, I read your article on the little Kuwaiti girl and the invasion of Kuwait. I noted some errors, and I have included them below.
Having just spent 105 days in the desert in Kuwait, I recommend that you visit the country and see for yourself the damage and destruction the Iraqi army dealt the then, and now once again, beautiful Kuwait City. I saw for myself the "Wall of Death" where Iraqi soldiers lined up Kuwaiti Air Force Officers and Enlisted men and summarily executed them. I spoke with Kuwaiti Air Force Officers that were there and taken prisoner.
The Kuwaiti government hasn't made up the names of the dead and missing. There are plenty of Kuwaitis that remember the people that are now reported dead and missing.
Mitchel Cohen replies:
So, where are the errors in my article that you say you corrected?
Very good article. It is good that there are organizations like yours. As a former Republican – Bush turns my stomach every time he opens his mouth – I welcome such unbiased reporting.
Case Not Made
As a Staff Sergeant in the Army, I am deeply troubled by the inability of the antiwar movement to make a case against using force to end the suffering of the Iraqi people and to stabilize the region. I have read many opinions and listened to those who disagree our Governments position (which is in direct support of U.N. Resolutions and the terms of the cease-fire agreement the Iraqi leadership signed at the end of the Gulf War), but where are the "realistic" goals for achieving a peaceful settlement? I have been studying this conflict through dozens of sources since August 2nd, 1990, and my conclusion is that a peaceful solutions lies within the deeds of Saddam Hussein. Those who blame the Bush Administration for this crisis or claim he is mishandling it are clearly "very liberal" and subjective in their view. Many even blame UN sanctions against Iraq as the cause of the human suffering there (i.e., Sean Penn). How do we rationalize with an irrational person? What law do the Lawless abide by? This conflict has been going on for over 12 years, at the expense of the Iraqi people and I think it is time to end this standoff once and for all. It's obvious that our policy of containment hasn't worked and we need to stop beating a dead horse.
I need solutions, not "Hollywood" endings. Let's be realistic and understand that their is a time for peace and a time for war. War has been brought to our homeland and we have paid a steep price in blood and money for our complacent attitude. Terrorism use to be something that happened to soldier's stationed overseas and civilians of other countries. Now we are the victims. Do we continue to be the punching bag for these rogue states and Terror groups that can reach any part of the earth? How many more Americans must die before we get it. We are at war and fighting for our very survival. It's time to wake up!
Regarding "Hindu Fascists' Dream Of Killing India's Pluralism Can Still Be Defeated" by Dr. Shaik Ubaid:
The history of India does not begin with the departure of the British colonialists in 1947 and the partition of this ancient land as a result of their Divide and Rule policy. It is getting tiresome to be bombarded by the biased and malicious propaganda by Islamists regurgitated by the Western media either through naïveté, political expediency and / or to create mischief. Since the NATO intervention in Kosovo it has become a standard ploy among Moslem propagandists from lands they had once invaded (India, Serbia, Philippines, Nigeria etc.).
Antiwar.com, get this into your head! Pakistan and Bangladesh are parts of India that were given over by the British colonialists to the Moslems (an earlier and more vicious set of invaders) as a reward for collaborating with them to counter the Indian independence movement. What the British did was no different than what the apartheid regime in South Africa did 40 years later by arming and propping up the murderous Zulu tribals against Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.
Since they got their reward for betraying the Indian independence movement, Pakistan has tried to protect their ill - begotten gains by mischief-making: getting free weapons from the US in the name of fighting Communism but in reality using them against India, acting as a conduit for drug-runners and terrorists from Afghanistan, the criminal BCCI bank that was caught red handed in 1991 as the facilitator of Islamic crime rings operating in the West, engaging in nuclear proliferation with China, North Korea in the '80s with the connivance of the Reagan administration! Since 9-11 everyone knows of Pakistan's more recent role in organizing the Taliban and organizing terrorism everywhere. It is ironic that due to their shortsighted policy, the Bush administration has had to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's duplicitous acts since then.
Dr. Shaik Ubaid, the author of the Islamic propaganda piece carried by Antiwar.com, is revealing the typical Moslem ungratefulness to the privileges extended to him by the Indian government and Society. Where did he and all of his fellow Indian-Moslem doctors get their basic medical training, who funded it? The answer is the Indian government and it is very likely that as a minority (12 % and growing due to higher birthrate) he probably got his scholarship in preference over better qualified Hindu students!
The Indian pluralism that Dr. Ubaid mentions did not come about as any explicit or implied contract with the Moslem minority – but out of the idealism (some would say misplaced) of the leaders of the Indian independence movement who the Moslems had betrayed. Where was the Indian pluralism that Dr. Ubaid pines for when the Moslems occupied India for 1000 years? The follies of the current Hindu revivalism that he insidiously equates and denigrates using the code-word fascism (no doubt to get the West's righteous blood up) is insignificant compared to the horrors Moslems have perpetrated on non-Moslems over the centuries in the name of their religion that sanctions killing of nonbelievers.
Can Dr. Ubaid quote any parallel example of rights for minorities in any Moslem majority country – including Pakistan? Unlike the killing and counter-killings in Gujarat early this year that he rightly deplores there would never be any religious war in Pakistan anymore! At the instigation of their fanatic separatist leaders like Zinnah, who they now worship, in 1947 the Moslems massacred nearly half a million Hindus in order to drive them out of western India – while the perfidious British who instigated their separatism as a counter to the Indian independence movement stood by.
Dr. Ubaid, when you talk about the persecution of the Moslem Kosovars by the Serbs you are trying to take advantage of the West's reinterpretation of established history according to current expediency (read oil). The Moslems were there in Kosova as a result of brutal Ottoman invasion and occupation of a Christian land. The same is true why there are Moslems in the Indian subcontinent. Unlike the earlier waves of migrants from barren Central Asia into the fertile Indian plains the Moslems came to India from Arabia and Afghanistan as invading genocidal maniacs, intolerant religious persecutors and plunged India, the intellectual and spiritual leader of all Asia, into 1000 years of darkness. No Moslem masterpiece of art and architecture including the Taj Mahal can absolve them of their crimes against humanity for which there can never be any statute of limitation.
There is much propaganda put out by the Indian Moslems about how poorly the upper caste Hindus of India treat the lower caste Indians. How many low-caste people have been killed by the upper caste Hindus and how many Indians have been massacred by the Islamic invaders and occupiers? What can be more discriminatory than kill different peoples and steal their lands even if in the name of a religion! The other line of argument put out by the apologists of British and Moslem occupiers of India has been that India has always been a land invaded and occupied. This is more bald propaganda – the Aryan horsemen that came from Central Asia over 3 thousand years ago did not bow to an alien religion or culture – unlike the converted Moslems of India who still do to a non-universal alien Arabian creed.
The expulsion of Moslems from Christian Spain, which they had occupied with violence for 7 centuries, gave rise to the modern world (discovery of the Americas and all that followed). Not just Kashmir but Pakistan as well is occupied Hindu land. After 200 years of occupation the British were driven out of India. Why should not the original inhabitants of India expect the earlier set of invaders, and their descendants to vacate India as well?
How long will Islam be allowed to portray itself as a liberal peace-loving religion in spite of overwhelming evidence pointing to the contrary? How long will the average consumer in the West find appeasement with Islamic maliciousness acceptable so long as it did not affect them directly and kept the oil flowing? How long can Pakistan hide behind the coattails of the Bush administration's failing policies to get Osama?
And how long will the liberals in the West (Antiwar.com) fall for pernicious misleading propaganda put out by the likes of Dr. Ubaid – descendants and beneficiaries of mass-murderers like the Moslem invaders of India?
Dr. Shaik Ubaid replies:
The Hindutva-fascists are a hypocritical lot. They praise Hitler on one hand and then make alliances with Jewish terrorist organizations like Kahane Chai and Kach. Similarly, while they kill Christian missionaries in India, they take pleasure when Evangelical-fanatics attack Islam. Mr. Gupta even uses the same spelling of Muslims (Moslems) that many neo-conservative zealots do. So it is not surprising that he tries the same propaganda – "Islam is the problem all over the world."
The basis of Hindutva-fascist propaganda is that Indian Muslims and Christians are "foreigners" and a treacherous lot who should be exterminated. This dangerous hatred is being taught in Indian schools, as pointed out By Kair Friese in his op-ed titled, "Hijacking India's History" that appeared in the New York Times of 30th December.
India was the name of a geographical area – the subcontinent of South Asia. As in Europe, this geographical area is home to a multitude of people belonging to diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. The original inhabitants of India were dark skinned Dravidians, the creators of one of the oldest civilizations of the world – the Indus Valley civilization. Around 1500 BC Aryans invaded India through Iran and Afghanistan. They not only destroyed the Dravidian civilization but also imposed on it their religion (that later came to be known as Hinduism) along with the longest running apartheid system – the caste system. The dark skinned Dravidians (Dalits) have since been treated as untouchables – worse than animals.
When Buddhism and Jainism, both indigenous Indian religions started to spread widely in India by attracting the "lower-caste" majority, there was a violent backlash against them by the racist Hindu "higher-castes" particularly the Brahmins. Buddhism that had become the religion of the Indian majority was wiped out from India. The present day Hindutva-fascists plan a similar "Final solution" for Muslims and Christians.
Hindutva-fascists do not tire in their racist attempts to make Muslims feel guilty and inferior and to make them content with living as beggars of leftovers rather than equal citizens. Indian Muslims will never agree to live under such apartheid!
Indian Muslims are proud of their glorious history and Islam's magnificent contribution to India. India exists today because of Muslims. Even the Aryan invaders could not unite India into a single country. It remained a land divided amongst and ruled by a multitude of dynasties, where the lower-castes, the poor and the women had no rights. It was the Turkish-Afghan Muslims who united India by force into one country. This geopolitical unity was later further strengthened by (Muslim) Moguls and then the British. Before the advent of Muslim rule, India was in decline politically, socially, morally and economically. It was the Muslims who gave India its golden age. It is not to deny that some of the Muslim emperors were tyrants and rascals but overall, it was a great time for India.
Mr. Gupta lies that the British rewarded Muslims. To the contrary, the British were wary of Muslims because it was from the Muslims that they had conquered India. In fact the British systematically promoted the higher-caste Hindus as a counter balance to Muslims. Savarkar and other Hindutva leaders sabotaged the Indian independence movement by helping British rulers. As for Indian Muslims being traitors, suffice to point out that since India and Pakistan's independence, less than 1 percent of Indians caught spying for Pakistan were Muslims and 98% were Hindus.
Now let me take on the myth that Muslims divided India. It was the Hindutva-fascists who gave the two-nation theory of Hindu and Muslim incompatibility – Savarker in the 1930s and Bhai Permanand even earlier. Jinnah an ardent nationalist, later became convinced that the high-caste dominated Hindu movements would never allow religious minorities to prosper in India and after leaving the Hindu dominated Congress party and joining the Muslim League, he demanded Pakistan for Muslim majority areas. So the blame for the division of Indian subcontinent lies fairly at the feet of Hindu fanaticism and Brahmin racism.
Gupta shamelessly repeats the stereotype of Muslims taking over India because of higher birth rates. Five national census have shown that this is a lie. As for Muslims getting preferential treatment in education and jobs, nothing can be farther from the truth. While Muslims constitute 15% of the population, they represent less than 2% of Indian university students and their representation in higher paying jobs is even less. This is the reason that Indian Muslim professionals are so successful in the West, because for them to have survived this systematic discrimination, they had to be the best in their fields.
As for his attacks on Islam, I only pity him because as Islam continues to win new converts in Europe, USA and even India, Mr. Gupta's insane frustration is only going to get worse. It will be in the interest of his mental health that he studies the factors behind such conversions. I also invite him to study the glorious history of Islamic tolerance in medieval Spain. Hindutva-fascists dream of repeating the Spanish Inquisition in India. Spain, that was the world center of learning under Muslims, soon went into a fast decline after the Muslims and Jews were expelled from it. A true Indian patriot would not wish the same fate for India.
It is pathetic that Gupta cites criminal elements and banking scandals to malign Islam. There are more Hindu International criminals and money launderers than Muslims, but it will be absurd to blame religions for such crimes of greed.
His rambling attacks on Pakistan should be defended by Pakistanis. But I will say this much, Hindus are not only allowed to live in peace but are prospering in all fields of life in Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Malaysia and Indonesia and even in the Shaikhdoms of the Persian Gulf. Unlike India there were no government sponsored pogroms of Hindus in these countries. He cites the terrible massacres of 500,000 Hindus during the bloody partition of British India but forgets that double that number of Muslims were killed. He blames Muslims for the Godhra train burning when Muslims condemned it unequivocally even when later reports proved that the train burning was staged by the Hindutva-fascist government to start the Gujarat genocide. Each and every human life is sacred, and we all must condemn killings, hatred, intolerance, bigotry, terrorism and racism no matter who the perpetrators are.
What should be frightening to the world is that proponents of such hateful ideology as Hindutva (Hindu superiority) have access to nuclear weapons, they may one day cause a nuclear war in their drive to annex neighboring countries and create an exclusive Hindu country from Afghanistan to Burma.
The twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history and this century has not started any better. Let us hope that the world does not see an Indian holocaust of 150 million Muslims or a nuclear war in South Asia.
Regarding "Happy New Year?" by Justin Raimondo:
The neocons are terrified of The Forbidden Truth. This is clear from the number of deleted posts and banned posters on threads like this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/629043/posts.
Some of these "neocons" know that it is no longer possible to deny the existence of these "Saudi money trails" to Osama. They figure that we will never connect the dots back to the CIA, which created these channels in the first place. You know about all these Saudi-CIA money trails from all your research on the Balkans, the KLA, and Bosnia!
I have a great deal of respect for your opinions, and never miss a column, but when you stoop to ... ad hominem and straw man attacks against "the conspiracy theorists," in lieu of addressing and refuting or confirming their claims, you drop down a notch or two in my book. You ignore a wide body of accumulated evidence and instead reach for the easiest targets – people you would be inclined to dislike anyway, and hold up arguments that are the least weighty or least significant to those who are seriously addressing the question of "who knew." The Vreeland affair, whatever it really was, is completely a throwaway, but you elevate it to an unwarranted prominence.
It is analogous to one of your critics ridiculing you by claiming that your claim of Mossad foreknowledge is based solely or most crucially on the fact that a few Israeli citizens were seen filming and laughing at the collapsing Trade Center towers. Of course that is not the sum or the real substance of your investigation at all, but if someone else reduced it to that, while also referring to you as a "whacko libertarian conspiracy theorist", it would be equivalent to your approach, and we would rightly see it as unfair – and unconvincing.
It would be far more helpful if you were to bring your considerable skills of analysis and articulation – no sarcasm here – to the real substance of the 'unanswered questions' surrounding Sep. 11, and I assume you know how to find the websites that contain the timelines and the lists of unexplained facts.
Also, I have no idea what "tinfoil Left" is, but I assume it's another one of those convenient "thought-stopping" labels. At the risk of sounding patronizing, I've come to expect and continue to expect better than this.
Regarding "Waning Prospects for Peace in 2003?" by Ron Paul:
Good article. However, not mentioned in your piece nor in the media is the abject failure of Washington to keep its part of the 1994 agreement, namely, to build two 1000-watt light-water atomic reactors of the Westinghouse type for North Korea, a country badly in need of electric power for homes and industry. This failure plus the dangerous anti-North Korea talk coming from the Bush Administration produced the alteration in North Korea's nuclear plans. They badly need power, can't afford to buy oil and we brushed them off, and have now even withdrawn our oil subsidies. Bush continues the US policy of keeping the two Koreas apart, as an excuse to maintain 37,000 troops in that region to threaten any move China may make in the Taiwan Straits.
When is Ron Paul going to run for President? I will support him.
Regarding "A Religion of Peace?" by Justin Raimondo:
Thanks to Mr. Raimondo for another stunning bulls eye. I am always impressed by his fearlessness and integrity and – given the direction in which this country is heading – have lately wondered when he will be silenced. If that happens, the U.S. will have truly pronounced its own, final death sentence.
Stop making apologies for Islam. If Antiwar.com wants to get credibility with the critical mass and be effective in its goal of preventing international conflicts, it must first decide if it is against war at all costs or against evil. Instead of attacking every instance of propaganda / violence only superficially (Raimondo), Antiwar.com should start examining historical wrongs and persistent predatory patterns as the root cause of injustice and violence.
There are crimes (invasions, genocide) against humanity that are so horrible that there cannot be any statute of limitations in prosecuting them. Moslems are now suffering at the hands of Sharon's bullies, but have not the Arabs themselves caused enormous suffering to peoples ranging from Spain in the West to the Philippines in the East by their invasions, sanctioned by Islam?
...Only the rise of the West after the Moslems were thrown out of Spain made it possible to put the genie of Moslem aggressive spirit into the bottle. However, decolonization, oil wealth and the recent pandering of certain Islamic states and fundamentalists by the Superpower(s) for immediate gain (e.g. arming the mullahs to throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan, turning a blind eye to Saudi funding of fundamentalist madrassahs) has revived Islamic aggression.
Instead of just taking doctrinaire potshots at the Wall Street Journal right-wingers who ridicule Islam's current effort to portray itself as a "religion of peace," Raimondo should also write about the violent beginnings of Islam and how violence has became an accepted way for Moslems to deal with their own as well as the nonbelievers.
I don't know what all the fuss is over the realisation that faith and belief are not very reasonable, provable assertions, as Justin Raimondo pointed out in his excellent article, "A Religion of Peace?" For what is Faith but the substance of evidence not seen. (Book of Hebrews 11:1)
Has atheism reinvented the wheel? Guess what? Not even God can objectify His own existence according to reasonable, empirical standards of proof, so why should Man beholden to a higher standard(?) of so-called Objective Reason demand that Faith be justified by unimpeachable knowledge, if even God has no such double-blind standard for Himself? Or does He?
God must rely upon faith in Himself as evidence of His own Supremacy, (God is defined as the Supreme Being, after all) believe it or not! Consider this Thought Experiment: God asks Himself a question, "How do I know I'm really God?" God plays the role of the devil's advocate, in a sense, by purporting doubt about Himself speculating a kind of "divine hypothesis" that the possibility may exist that there is the real Supreme Being who is hidden (for some unknowable reason?) and who only "allows" him to "assume" he is God but in fact this "hidden Supreme Being" is the true Creator.
It's a conjecture so to speak and the resolution of affirmation and/or refutation cannot be reasonably addressed in the empirical sense because Divinity (it's supernatural, right?) has no reasonable, objective limitations to qualify any meaningful, useful categorization. The Proof of the Supreme Absolute* is separate and transcendent of rational, reasonable knowledge. (Book of Isaiah 55:8,9)
Did God answer the question in this Thought Experiment? Does He know He is God because he doesn't know of any besides Himself? Isaiah 44:8b "Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." I guess He believes He has. But I say, only His hairdresser knows for sure!
*The idea that God's existence can be rationally proved rests upon such arguments as (a) that a First Cause is necessary, (b) that evidences of design in nature indicate a Designing Intelligence, and (c) that the very idea of God as a Perfect Being demands his existence: that is, a Perfect Being that existed in idea but not in reality would be less than perfect – a contradiction. These so-called proofs were severely handled by the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), and most modern theologians hold that divine existence is affirmed by faith rather than demonstrated by logic. (The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, Volume III)
~ David d'Apollonia, Montreal, Quebec
First of all I would like to say that I enjoy your insights into the world of politics and economics. You are definitely a sincere and dedicated critic of injustice and unethical behavior which pervades mainstream society as it teeters on the edge of the abyss.
I am writing you to respond to your statement that religion is irrational by nature and creates as much violence in the world as does the secular. I think that you might be falling into a semantic trap that most materialist, who take a similar position as yours, fall into. Noam Chomsky takes a similar position also (good man).
Most 'religious' people are practical atheist anyway, just doing what they believe is required of them socially.
I am a Catholic Worker, living in western Massachusetts. I am also a Vietnam era vet, father of three children, a carpenter, and have no particular political affiliation. Catholic workers do not proselytize (although this may appear to be the very thing I'm about to do), do not pass judgment on any individual because of religious belief, sexual orientation, nationality, class or ethic background. We only respond to people's immediate needs, that is, those who are depressed, homeless, hungry, in trouble with Federal, State and local authorities and those who are politically oppressed. We try to follow the spiritual insights of our founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, that is, to live as simply as possible. We do not consider our activities and response to human needs as either rational or irrational impulses. They, for us, originate in a sphere of non-rational behavior, that is, that which originates in the mystery of being.
Otherwise we end up with rational behavior as good, irrational as bad as good and evil and dualism ad infinitum, what's the point – remember the Age of Reason, that great historical drive by shooting and it's mischievous child colonialism gone amuck?
In our community, our kitchen, our everyday routines, we are confronted with the faces of death, loneliness, despair, fear – the hallmarks of the truly non-loved. Why hallmarks? It is in meeting with these human beings that we encounter our own contingency, weaknesses and despair! We would be better off if we all admitted that at heart we're all beggars on this bus. I can't, for some 'reason,' imagine my own annihilation.
In these times, the way we ignore the plight of humanity, one realizes that the only true democracy afforded to the lowly as well as the high minded, is the democracy of the dust, the other side of the rational and irrational argument and world we live in.
I hope your not saying to yourself: Oh no! Please don't do it! No not a prayer!
Bumper Stickers, Yah!
I liked Nicholas D.'s idea of bumper stickers! The wife would kill me if I put it on the car, but I'd be happy to slap it across my pack, as I walk about a mile and a half after parking it would get lots of attention, especially as I pass by Portland State University.
Commendation
I would just like to say that I must commend you for a good job on your web site, Antiwar.com. I myself don't like war and I think that the US (and some other countries) act like belligerent bullies. Everyone in my school is blinded by pride; "Oh no, we're on the good side" is the general opinion of the ignorant masses, who are so well deceived by Mr. Bush and will forever remain in a drunken stupor unless we take action to reawaken them. I want to be politically active in changing the United States' "foreign policy," if that's what they want to call it. When I finally achieve my goal I will denounce my US citizenship (I get to choose whether I want to be a British citizen or an American citizen).
I am also an economical nihilist; I believe that all debts owed by previous colonies held under European colonies should be decreed void. I am but 14 years of age, but I believe that anyone can influence the world if they want.
Regarding Managing Editor Eric Garris's reply to Edward M.'s letter of December 12:
[Eric Garris wrote:]
"I am a Republican, and I consider myself a patriot. I think that labeling all opponents as 'anti-American' indicates an inability to actually debate the issues."
Say what?! This is precisely why our movement has failed! The self-proclaimed leaders do not debate issues. In their misguided sense of self righteousness they project themselves as thin-skinned whiners whose only sense of debate is: they are right, the world is wrong. Look at what your site does:
- Edits letters to the editors completely out of context while printing replies from contributing authors verbatim.
- Endorses a nonobjective view of current events.
- Again and again blames Israel for the worlds problems; if you're anti-Semitic, at least have the balls to admit it.
Your attitude of the world is the same as those who preach war: my way or the highway.
How ironic that you choose to employ the same tactics.
The Backtalk editor replies:
We've edited and posted thousands of letters, and have received few – probably about a dozen – complaints. Also, we've moved towards less and less editing of letters. Deleted passages are indicated by ellipses, and, as you see, many letters are now posted with only necessary grammatical edits.
Distorted News Coverage
I have heard innumerable times about the 10,000 US/British bombing sorties on Iraq; our corporate monopolized press has at no time to my knowledge published or reported any of these. I am fed up with the distorted news coverage the US provides! How can we ensure that the peace movement in the United States is accurately reported including the legions of people involved? It is very clear what the illegitimate Bush administration is trying to do to obtain monopoly of the oil and the mandate of reelection. We live in such a contrived artificial place in history!
~ Lynne S., Michigan