The World Waits

Before 9/11, Israel was the most hated country in the world. This is understandable considering Israel's longstanding brutal occupation of Palestine which followed its 1948 ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians. West Bank Palestinians now live in apartheid conditions in which rabid Jewish "settlers" pillage and murder at will. No wonder, as stated in The 9/11 Commission Report, p.147, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, based his hated of America on our biased support of Israel. Osama bin Laden also listed US sponsorship of the Israeli occupation as one of his three reasons for anti-US hatred leading to 9/11. The other two reasons, US troops in Saudi Arabia and the deadly sanctions imposed on Iraq, no longer exist. Yet after 9/11, America engendered more anti-US hatred by effectively morphing into Israel: invading, trashing, and occupying Muslim lands. Now it is the US which is the most hated country in the world. Like Israel, we bomb innocent civilians thus creating more terrorists in the process.

A July 29, 2008 Rand report noted that our so-called War on Terror has been a failure. "Al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history and the group's attacks since then have spanned an increasingly broader range of targets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa..." The Rand Study found that most terrorist groups end by joining the political process or by being eliminated through police and intelligence efforts, not by military force. Surely the Bush administration has been dominated by war-mongering neocons, and thus it has often been said that the American people are good, it is just our government which is bad. Now the world is hoping that the election of Barack Obama will bring about change consistent with true American values. The US plans to withdraw from Iraq, and there is now talk of negotiations towards peace with the Taliban. However, it must be recognized that not only must US/foreign troops be removed from Iraq and Afghanistan, more important is ending the root cause of anti-American hatred and terrorism, namely the Israeli occupation. Barack Obama has promised that Israeli/Arab peace will be a major goal from the start of his administration. The world waits.