The last two victories

By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

American victories proliferated recently; and every time an American president declares victory, millions of civilians in remote countries pay the price with their lives. These victories started after 9/11 by invading Afghanistan. About ten years of rivers of blood, Afghani civilians are still being killed daily by warplanes and drones, and life has become hell for the people of that beautiful country: drug trafficking is on the rise and corruption is widespread.

Killing civilians has crossed the borders to Pakistan where thousands pay the price of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom of speech’, ‘women empowerment’ and other slogans imported from Washington and its media circles in order to create a perception completely separated from the suffering of Afghani and Pakistani civilians who have been sinking under a deluge of killing, displacement, shelling, violence and war.

The lies repeated by George Bush to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, importing uranium and supporting al-Qaeda led to his special ‘victory’ despite the killing of a million Iraqi civilians and the destruction inflicted by the American war machine against this people in support of ‘Israel’s security’.

Events have proved that all those claims have been false and that only one fact was true. The fact was expressed by Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense - known for sanctioning torture and setting up the disgraceful Guantanamo prison camp – that the plan for invading Iraq had been on the shelf since the 1970s; and all they did was to remove the dust and update it and make compatible with the instincts of the extremists of Likud and Kadima who have been ruling Israel since they assassinated their prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and who subscribe to the policy of subjugating the peoples of region: Arabs, Turks, Iranians and Afghanis, by military force alone and who publicly reject dialogue and peace.

American victories over Muslims then spilled out to Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, where they sowed inner fighting, siege and destruction. Work is afoot to deprive two Arab counties, Egypt and Sudan, of their historical rights in the water of the Nile; while in Palestine, Israelis are killing Palestinians, destroying their houses and even killing those who dare ride the sea to give them humanitarian assistance.

In the last two episodes of its victories, the United States focused on two major powers: Iran and Helen Thomas.

The whole world, particularly the United States, knows that Israel is the only country in the Middle East in possession of a military nuclear program, because it funded the program and provided Israel with uranium, reactors, heavy water and expertise. Despite the fact that they have been calling on Iran for years to agree to uranium swap with another country, the bizarre reaction of the United States to the agreement reached between Iran, Brazil and Turkey on fuel swap was to step up sanctions against Iran and to spend months of hard work trying to persuade Russia and China in order to secure tougher sanctions which harm the lives of Iranian civilians, despite verbal assurances that these sanctions are not targeting at the Iranian people.

There is no doubt that the sanctions against Iran target its people in the same way they targeted Iraqi civilians and in the same way they target the innocent civilians of Gaza.

Iranian religious authorities stressed more than once that Iran believes that nuclear weapons should be banned universally, and that all countries have the right to possess peaceful nuclear energy. The US president had written a letter to Turkey and Brazil asking them to mediate with Iran for the exchange of high enrichment uranium. That is why everybody was surprised when the Security Council was asked to approve the fourth patch of sanctions against Iran.

Israel ‘expressed doubts’ concerning the agreement, minutes after it was signed and insisted on sanctions against Iran which left little room for the American state department and administration but to persevere in their efforts to convince China and Russia to endorse the sanctions. For Israel, this is important partly as a means of diverting attention from the bloody crime it committed against the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza and murdering a number of human rights activists on board.

The fate of Helen Thomas was not irrelevant to the Iran nuclear file. Did not she ask President Obama: “which, in your opinion, is the Middle-Eastern state in possession of nuclear heads?” That question was the beginning of the end of the most prominent journalist working at the White House since the Kennedy administration, and who was known for her courageous stances and sharp questions.

All that Helen Thomas did was to call for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and a restoration of this people’s rights. She did not fire, in cold blood – like the Israeli soldiers – at the heads or chests of human rights activists carrying food and medicine to the victims of the blockade on Gaza!!

The State Department spokesman immediately considered her statements ‘disgraceful’; ‘free’ publications stopped receiving her articles and she was isolated in an incident befitting the Stalinist regime in Soviet Russia. Where is, then, the ‘democracy’ and the ‘freedom of speech’ if this is the punishment for anyone daring to express a purely political opinion?

There are not many people in the United States who have the courage of a woman approaching ninety, like Helen Thomas, who spent a lifetime expressing her convictions, but was faced, under the rule of the Zionist McCarthyism dominating the corridors of power in Washington, with the inquisitions held by the Zionist lobby with its legendary financial capacities capable of buying consciences and blackmailing politicians and journalists.

The victories achieved by the United States by imposing more sanctions against another Muslim country, which it is boasting now, will be accounted for, one day, before millions of people against whom it is inflicting disasters and tragedies only to please fanatic extremists armed with racist hatred who do not know the meaning of moral values and have no respect for human life.