Valenzuela's Veritas

In ominous times truth always finds a way out from darkness into light. Always. Through truth knowledge grows into the power and strength to question the actions of governance. In times that try men's souls it is those who seek enlightenment who are truly free. Given the choice of possessing ignorance or knowledge, even when ignorance would lead to an easier life, I would choose knowledge,thus escaping the life of sheeple, escaping the bondage of not knowing, not caring and not understanding.

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Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic, commentator, Internet essayist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. His essays appear regularly at various alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. He encourages readers to surf the collection of over 100 essays he has written which can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet. He welcomes comments at euromeximan@yahoo.com

Monday, April 12, 2004

Fallujah Crusade and Iraq Escapade

Voices of Iraqis

"We shall knock on the gates of heaven with the skulls of Americans."

“When we get the order for jihad, no foreigner will be safe in Iraq.”

"The people are prepared for martyrdom."

Voices of Reason

"They are not coming to grips with the greater realities of the opposition in Iraq. It's far more widespread than the administration is letting on."
---- Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution attacking the Bush
Administration's estimate of Iraqi resistance.

"There is no point in saying we are going to stay the course if we are on the wrong course…The US forces have got to stop acting like warriors and start acting like peacekeepers."
---- Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook

"When I turn to Aljazeera, I need a few minutes to realise that this is Iraq, not Palestine…For some mysterious and deep-rooted reasons, the Americans think like Israel. They have the same mentality and will be condemned to the same conclusion."
---- Uri Avnery, Israeli journalist and commentator

The problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen [the Nazi expression for "sub-humans"]. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.
---- Anonymous senior British Army officer

The Fallujah Crusade

Bodies that have ceased to breathe lie motionless on the streets of Fallujah, becoming stiff now that energy no longer flows through them. Everywhere they lay, dropping where they were killed by American forces. Those lucky enough to have been picked up from sidewalks and asphalt have been laid to rest in gardens and soccer fields. Still many others are buried in several feet of concrete, steel and brick, their lives extinguished as buildings they occupied were disintegrated by bombs and missiles falling from the heavens above. Yet many relatives are too afraid to venture outside their homes and makeshift shelters to collect and bury their dead, in accordance with Islamic faith, for fear of American bombs, missiles, sniper bullets and artillery raining down on them.

Their city is under siege, systematically being flattened section by section, block by block and house by house. Fallujah is reliving wars fought by Western nations when madness became king and reason turned a blind eye on humanity. The most modern weaponry known to man has been unleashed on the Sunni city of 300,000. The most powerful army the world has ever known has descended like a firestorm to release its winds of destruction, maiming, death and suffering. Fallujah is being made an example, you see.

Welcome to the Fallujah Crusade, a Christian adventure reborn, waking from the slumber of 1000 years, reincarnated through the armies of the Evil Empire. Over six-hundred Iraqis have perished in one city; over 1,200 have been injured, maimed or wounded. A new Crusade is upon the world, intent on conquering Muslim lands and the devil’s excrement they sit on. Forces of carnage have been released upon the splendor of the Fertile Crescent; blood now flows through the mighty Tigris and Euphrates, those fountains of civilization that gave us life by catapulting humanity to all corners of the globe.

Collective punishment on hundreds of thousands of people of all ages is being exercised by a nation whose quench for violence is dastardly ceaseless and hereditarily conditioned. Men, women and children are dying in barbaric ways by barbarian occupiers opening up the gates of hell on the doorstep of Iraq’s mosques and minarets. An entire population is being punished for hating without remorse those who have brought death and destruction into their city. The killing, beating, dragging and hanging of American mercenaries proves without question the parasite of hatred boiling against Americans in Fallujah. These manifestations of frightful animosity, desperation and frustration are signs that the oppressive occupiers are no longer welcome in Iraq.

The Cradle of Civilization has become the Grave of Humanity. All evil done by humankind, all negative energy spawned by the great human race now flourishes in Mesopotamia. Carpet bombing and depleted uranium fill the land, cities and towns have been made harbors of misery and suffering. Fallujah is being destroyed, wiped off the face of the planet. The nightmares of Somalia are being exorcised through the targeting of Muslims. Bullets, artillery, bombs and missiles, having the brain of men, are set free to indiscriminately blast craters and vaporize houses regardless of the innocence of life or the absurdity of fate.

We are witnessing a declaration of war against Islam. Destruction of mosques, rape of women, humiliation of Arabs and oppression of a region is slowly giving birth to hatred, animosity and vengeance. The occupation of Iraq is unsettling tens of millions of pebbles of dust that have remained placid during the long years that Western boots have trampled Arab ground. An enormous dust storm is arising, however, full of energy and power, building momentum and unconscionable anger, soon to engulf Bush’s Crusaders with winds of carnal fury.
Fallujah is where heads had to roll, where Bush proved yet again that the size of his testicles is larger than that of his diminutive, virus-infected brain. Espousing all things wonderful about Christianity from his pulpit of hypocrisy he has only served to unearth, yet again through the commands of premeditated suffering he shouts out, all things inherently evil in the religion he professes maniacal faith in. From indifference to state executions in Texas to Fallujah decapitations, Bush has shown the world the high disregard he and his right-wing messiahs have for human life. It is this apathy, combined with lack of wisdom and honor that the world must fear.

Propagators of Extinct Prophesy

Forces are slowly being created that will be hard to contain. The inertia of the Bush/neocon experiment is entrapping, as is America’s sojourn into the Middle East. Once unleashed, as is the case now, there will be no turning back, and soon America will find herself immersed in a next generation Crusade whose inevitability has been assured by zealous and delusional neocons loyal to Zionist interests, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists seeking Armageddon and an American administration lacking the precepts of human wisdom.

The world has been hijacked; growing tensions and expanding resentment continue to lubricate the engine of hate and violence. Slowly we are turning the indifference of ignorance into the omnipotence of fear. We have allowed ourselves to be taken over by the pestilence of malevolent religion that is corrupting the honorable, spiritual form of worship. Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the three pillars founded by the same patriarch, are being led astray by leaders whose ignorance of human reality is only surpassed by the wickedness of their ultimate intentions.

Fundamentalists and extremists, ignorant and uneducated, seeing the world in black and white, good and evil and unable to open their eyes beyond the pages of primitive fable are dictating the future of our civilization through the dogma of times past, when to honor oneself with flatulent winds was to bestow upon the world the power of the gods.

So-called leaders of today are directing us towards the primitive prophesies of ancient times, when the human mind had yet to comprehend the vastness and complexities of the truths we live nor the sheer dimensions of a world much larger than the microscopic parcel of land they inhabited. Modern man is being misled into the coming storm of war by the impotence of stories once created by nomadic tribes and curious peoples wanting in vein to understand the world that enveloped them. These small-minded visions of times gone by are of no use to those who comprise humanity in the 21st century. Yet it is these beliefs, together with the men who preach them, that are making the absurdity of primeval thought the inevitability of modern reality.

We are being led astray by those with a myopic interpretation of history who are unable to understand the passage of time or the advancement of civilization. Professing a deep knowledge and enlightenment for the archaic myths of simple-minded tribes living in ignorance of science and awe of nature, those leading us down the passage to the abyss cannot fathom the world of pragmatism that has passed them by. Instead they rely on the prophesy of those whose understanding of the world consisted of gods and fear, ignorance of human nature and primitiveness of self. These are our hijackers, these are our horsemen carrying us in their chariot of demagoguery to the dungeons of Armageddon.

These are the evildoers of our time, eviscerating the brotherhood of humankind by the separation of the divine. Terrorists upon the world these men have become, resurrecting fear and hatred among us by the devastating effects of ignorance and the cancerous nourishment of violence, destruction and death. The world is seeing the engenderment of world war. Forces have been put in motion, their inertia gripping us away from escape. Those seeking the fulfillment of prophesy have hijacked the caravan of humankind, leading us down the path of decay and destruction through the resounding trumpets of war and into the battlefield upon where our spirit will be made to rest.

The Coming Storm

The siege of Fallujah by troops encircling the city like Medieval armies of times past intent on smelling the blood of thousands and seeing the razing of lives is a microcosm of the much larger Crusade leisurely entering our conscious. What has transpired cannot be undone. The pain, suffering and seething hatred created by every missile, bomb and bullet tearing apart human flesh and extinguishing innocent life will not evaporate. Madness has replaced moderation, rage has expropriated tolerance and vengeance has superceded morality. The seeds of the coming storm have been firmly planted along the marshes of the Fertile Crescent.

Iraq has exploded into violent resistance to oppressive occupation. An entire nation, plastered together by colonial powers using unmatchable puzzle pieces, is uniting into one giant storm of jihadi martyrdom. Honor and vengeance brought about by humiliation, subjugation and violent uneven-handedness is rupturing the submissive acquiescence the Iraqi people patiently exhibited for a year. The Revolution has been let loose, continuing to grow exponentially as more and more Iraqis, thanks to a multitude of reasons, decide to wage holy war on America and its legions and proctors. The Cradle of Civilization has become the spark that has ignited the coming devastation that only man is capable of accomplishing.

The cries and shouts of Fallujah have awakened an entire nation into resistance and revolution from the American Crusaders invading Arab land. For a year Iraqis have waited, setting their trap, building strategy, learning their enemy, carefully and patiently laying the groundwork for the coming battles. America, through the stupidity of her leaders, is trapped in a hornet’s nest she will not be able to extricate herself from. Her leaders’ vision of delusion has condemned her sons and daughters to the guillotine of death.

Trumpets proclaiming jihad will soon resonate from minarets, Algeria and Palestine will be reborn, and the historical allegory of resistance by those conquered and invaded will be forever sworn. Fallujah is the rallying cry, the call to arms that might enflame an entire region, mobilizing Muslims against invading Western Christians in what future history books will surely label the first Crusade of the 21st century.

Two-headed beast

The ranks of mujahadeen continue to swell. Each day gives birth to thousands more who are willing to die and kill American infidels who through their actions give credence to the term “Great Satan” that more and more Arabs are adopting into their lexicon. Together with Israel, America is becoming the most reviled nation on the planet. A venomous hatred has risen, thanks to the Bush debacle in the Middle East that has made, in the eyes of billions, America and Israel one and the same, nothing more than a two-headed beast. Both are synonymous are inextricably linked in the eyes and minds of billions of world citizens who see two terrorist states flourishing thanks to the exploitation of fellow human beings.

Atrocities and terror are bastard twins being born from the belly of the two-headed beast, devastating Iraqis and Palestinians. Cities are condemned to Hades using the same tactics of decimation. Peoples are exterminated using the same methods and circumstances. Citizens are dehumanized thanks to the same policies and apathy of leaders. The Stars and Stripes has fused with the Star of David, morphing into the German Swastika of yesteryear. Two nations are leading the world to the eternal caverns of darkness from which we may never escape.

Indistinguishable to billions, especially to those of Muslim faith, the two-headed hydra, repressing and exploiting dark-skinned, developing nation peoples continues its reign of terror onto lands hostile to its occupation. A war is being built up, slowly conditioned into our minds, made to exist in our reality and being pushed into existence that will see the hydra engaged against the indigenous races of the Middle East. Unfortunately, those in the Western world appalled at the crimes done in our name will be dragged into the flame of multilateral carnage. It is already occurring, as American men and women, mostly low and middle class citizens, Christian in faith and made ignorant to truth fight as mercenaries against the enemies of other nations and for the ideology of fanatical oligarchs.

Intifadah in Palestine, Intifadah in Iraq, can Intifadah throughout the Arab world be far behind? Indigenous Semitic peoples are reaching their boiling point; their lid is about to explode. The region is at the brink, overflowing in scorching anger, exerting tremendous pressure on the dam of tolerance as the monolithic angel of vengeance circumvents the lands of Islam. The dangers to the world of a US/Israel war against all people of Arabian descent cannot be underestimated. It would be catastrophic, yet in this very direction we may soon find ourselves in, trapped in a modern day Crusade pitting Christians and Jews against Muslims in a clash of civilizations, religious belief and utter hatred. This conflagration is closer to rearing its ugly head than we might think.

Terror breeds terror, just as violence begets violence. The debacle in Iraq will only get worse. American soldiers and Iraqi resistance fighters are at war, using cities and towns to kill and maim each other. Yet no successful occupation in the last century has succeeded in squashing nationalistic fervor. The odds are heavily in favor that it will not occur this time. Jihad is about to be declared, mujahadeen are emerging everywhere. Time is inconsequential to them. Whether they succeed in two months or two years or two decades the patience they possess will result in hundreds, perhaps thousands of “transfer tubes” returning to the safe shores of America. In the end, a new Palestine will emerge, and the US will become the next Israel, struggling to keep alive in the wake of continuous occupation through perpetual death and destruction.

The US is now stuck in quicksand, sleeping restless nights under cover of Arabian nights and living a nightmare in sun-drenched days. Urban warfare will result in the unnecessary deaths of thousands, innocent or active participants, trapped in a quagmire not of their making. Street to street, house to house, battles forged and fights undone; bullets sprayed, missiles fired, blood soaked streets and bodies rattled.

America is trapped not in another Vietnam but in another debacle based on lies and deceptions. Again war has been awakened, its drums sounding loud, the Evil Empire’s armies once more marching proud. Insensitive and uncultured, naïve and arrogant, the worker bees and soldier ants follow directions without knowing, kill without understanding and destroy without questioning. The army of drones, abusing and using, humiliating and decimating, stomps its boots in the face of the Iraqi people, not knowing that ignorantly treading into unknown lands and alien cultures is a grand recipe for disaster, and near-certain retribution. The Iraq Intifadah is the effect of such arrogant causes.

The vicious circle of death has been liberated as vengeance and hatred intertwine to form that most ruthless concoction of human psychosis: mutual assured destruction. War is a game of losers, of death, destruction and enduring suffering. It is a no-win contest played by those sitting comfortably secure from the confines of their perched positions of leadership. War is real-life chess, pitting plebian foot soldiers against one another, becoming cannon fodder to the corrosive power of man’s deadliest and most evil inventions. It is war-like leaders who destroy humanity. It is they who lead us to our graves, yet we blindly follow and acquiesce, sacrificing blood and life for the interests and egos of emperors, kings and presidents. What do we expect? We are all human, after all.

The Human Virus

It has not yet been three years since 9/11 and look where we find ourselves. Patience is a virtue the evildoers leading us at present seem to possess. After all, WWII did not erupt overnight. Rather, it built up steadily, much like today, until finally a blitzkrieg unleashed years of war onto the planet. The same is happening in today’s world. Every step toward madness gets us closer to that which we most fear yet some want to procure. Every battle and death, continuing oppression and exploitation and call for genocide and extermination is a march forwards toward the coming war. History is full of Crusades by Christian armies invading Arab lands. Add to the Molotov cocktail of ideology, religion and culture the malevolence of black gold in its presently dwindling supply and the ingredients exist for that most self-defeating activity known to man: war.

We are witnesses to the birth of the next horrific war. When the entire history of man, from the moment we hung on trees to the present predicament we find ourselves immersed in has been defined by war and violence is it any wonder that our present is so haunted by our past? War is the symptom of our disease, and, like addicts, the human race needs violence and war as much as we need love and affection. We are violent, war-like animals, territorial and selfish, tribal and fearful. Our primitive selves cannot evolve as quickly as our technology, or our civilization. The great ape, ruler of the planet and despoiler of all things beautiful, has co-existed along with war, death and destruction. We have never known peace, never seen the light. Simply glance at history, glance at society, glance at today.

Respites from warfare may last a few decades, perhaps a bit more. Yet, pragmatically speaking, fifty years is a mere hiccup in the long history of man. A break from killing and maiming usually follows evils such as those of WWII as the victimized generation suffers the ingrained demons of human violence. In time, however, as new spirits emerge and warlike leaders are born, and as memory dwindles and history fades, the longstanding human pastime of killing each other rises once more from the coffers of terror to wipe itself clean of the cobwebs of human suffering and tragedy. New reasons are given, new excuses made, new lies are manipulated and the vicious cycle of man versus man, tribe versus tribe is reborn.

Cries of “Never Again” echo in time, yet we never learn, this thing called humankind. Genocide and cleansing, extermination and oppression, our rallying cry seems to be “Again and Again.” We will never be free of this thing called war, for death and destruction lives inside us galore. We are cursed, one and all, condemned to repeat the sins of our fathers and of those who continue to fall. Fallujah is humankind, humankind is Fallujah, and the continuing siege upon our species will continue its decrepit control over our lives and our ever-shortening destiny.