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

Saturday, July 17, 2004

Unleashing Terror Abroad and Preserving the Charade at Home

Preserving the Charade


As the incompetent failure that is Iraq continues to be purposefully vanished from our collective conscious by a corporate media complicit in its undertaking, George W. Bush strolls along America, waging his reign of terror onto an ever-more paranoid citizenry. Slowly but surely the defeat in Iraq is being eliminated from the airwaves and the printing presses now that puppets and charades have replaced proconsuls and occupiers. A mirage of so-called ‘sovereignty’ has been granted to Iraqis, you see, thereby cleansing our hands of the debacle our leaders and armies created in Mesopotamia.

Thus, the need to report on a war that still rages, ravages and kills has been surpassed by the need to shift the American mind back to good old American dumbing down news stories focusing on Martha Stewart’s sentencing, Brittney Spears’ engagement and George Bush’s terror-filled re-election campaign. Our minds are being conditioned away from the death and suffering created by our leaders and back to reality shows and summer blockbusters, for to acknowledge the sound defeat of the mighty empire by those ‘dead-ender’ resistance fighters battling to rid their homes and lands of terrorist occupiers is to delve into a mental quagmire Americans cannot be made to comprehend. We must be made to return to ignorance, to unquestioning drones filled with the curiosity of a three-toed sloth slumbering its life away.

The fallacy that is our great morality and virtue remains intact; the charade of the grandeur of our power and invincibility of our military has been made safe once more. America stands proud, returning to indifference, world and cultural ignorance, unhindered arrogance and the utter decay of its society. Since we are the ‘Good’ in war against the ‘Bad’ we can do no evil ourselves. Anointed by a ‘higher power’ the United States has been chosen to bring ‘freedom and democracy’ to the world, even through the barrel of a gun and to those who do not seek it. The entire world craves to be like us, you see, even if they do not realize it. They simply need a little push in the right direction, even if it takes missiles and bullets to achieve this.

We are America, after all, chosen by the Creator to free the world of evil, tyranny and injustice, or so says George W. (Burning) Bush, whom the Almighty converses with, instructing our President to do His will, even if it means murdering tens of thousands and creating suffering in the minds of thousands more. American style capitalism is the Creator’s chosen form of governance, full of exploitation, subjugation and greed, and so we must introduce it to the world, even at the barrel of a gun and the decimation of a bomb. The communalism of billions must not be allowed to stand in the selfishness of the few.

What the peoples of the world realize but we in America fail to learn is that the cherished ‘freedoms’ and ‘democracy’ exported abroad are but cynical code words disguising crony corporate capitalism, debauched democracy, geopolitical hegemony and puppet control benefiting only America at the expense of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Hegemony Halted

The political defeat in Iraq cannot hide the reality that had it not been so, had the colonization and occupation of Iraq succeeded as those in power had envisioned, Bush and the neocons would today be emblazoned, confident and powerful, preparing to attack Iran and Syria, extending the machines of war and death yet again, terrorizing the world, killing thousands more and making America a much more dangerous place to live. The debacle in the sands of the Middle East has at least temporarily halted the advances of military devastation onto other sovereign nations. Were it not for the very successful guerilla war in Iraq, history might be directing us toward a truly bleak future controlled by warmongers and evildoers.

It was Iraqi nationalists and freedom fighters who prevented catastrophe from extending its grip to other lands and peoples; it was they who history will one day thank for halting the evil that state sponsored terrorism unleashes; it is they who prevented the terrorists in Washington and Tel Aviv from fulfilling their sinister vision that would have murdered thousands more innocent civilians and patriotic but misguided American soldiers conditioned to fight for the corporate masters under the rubric of blind patriotism. It is they the world will one day look back to as the ones who defeated the lunatic administration in Washington and the Zionist puppeteers whose call they heed.

Unfortunately, it was American men and women who had to pay the ultimate price for the profiteer, warmonger and corporate driven war that sent so many to untimely death and debilitating injury. If blame is to be passed, which it surely must, then it should be directed at those in power, those who war benefits most, those who under false pretenses sent soldiers to die and those whose interests are furthered by unleashing state sponsored terrorism onto innocent civilians in distant lands. Do not blame freedom fighters for the death of American soldiers, they are simply doing what you and I would do if invaded and occupied, humiliated and oppressed. Blame Bush, blame Sharon, blame the military-industrial complex and the corporate media for a war without cause or necessity based on an amalgam of premeditated lies disguised as liberation, WMDs, democracy and wrapped in the charred remains of a post-9/11 American flag that has so far led to the death of 900 US soldiers and to the injury of 10,000 more.

Love of America covered in blind, ignorant patriotism was conveniently exploited by warmongers intent on altering an entire region. The simmering rubble of the World Trade Center had yet to dissipate and already the terrorists in power were manipulating its deep emotional discharges in the American psyche for their own evil intentions on the peoples of Muslim faith possessing oil, the devil’s excrement. Thinking they were fighting the perpetrators of 9/11 and protecting America from the WMD’s of a madman – thanks to sinister manipulation of lies and deceptions by leaders – and believing Bush’s rhetoric of bringing freedom and democracy to distant lands, America’s soldiers were sent to a war that was lost from the very beginning.

In Iraq we see the truth

The Iraq war was but a mechanism to enrich the corporate world through the pilfering of the American taxpayer. It was a war to loot black gold from the lands of Iraq for the sake of Bush’s and Cheney’s oil friends. Billions of dollars have been pilfered from America’s treasury; billions more from Iraqi capital. The privatization of Iraqi infrastructure has enriched American corporations; the so-called reconstruction has been but a malfeasant fallacy devoid of humanism. The Iraqi people are worse off today than before the invasion, even when a US sponsored war of economic depravity that lasted a decade is taken into consideration. Ten years of sanctions devastated Iraq and its people, killing up to one million innocent people.

This war was never about freedom and democracy, never about 9/11 and never about good versus evil. It was, pure and simple, a war sponsored by greed, profit and the almighty dollar. It was a war for the Corporate Leviathan, using and exploiting its slave army of rural and urban children, fighting not for their freedom but for the profit driven evil inherent in crony capitalism and corrupt governance. Disguised so an entire nation could fall hypnotized to the glaring colors of the red, white and blue, the Iraq war took advantage of the myopic view of Americans who fail to question authority or seek accountability. Our own government used us as pawns subservient to their lies, manipulations and deceptions. Our complacency led to the invasion of a sovereign land and the death and maiming of tens of thousands whose blood is smeared on our hands.

Iraq has been decimated and decapitated, a once proud people destroyed. A decade of sanctions and a year of occupation have ruined the cradle of civilization. The Tigris River is now a polluted cesspool of disease and death. The Fertile Crescent has, thanks to depleted uranium, been transformed into a radiation filled land spawning deformed births and cancerous deaths that will linger for hundreds if not thousands of years. The people of Iraq now live trapped in guerilla warfare, existing among bombings, maimings and explosions. They live in perpetual fear; their nation is occupied by alien armies and are led by American puppets whose interests lie in pleasing their masters, not their fellow citizens.

A new invading Crusader army has imprisoned their men, the vast majority of whom are innocent, dehumanizing, torturing, sodomizing and humiliating them in the process. Their homes are randomly searched in the middle of the night, their crops razed, their towns surrounded by tanks and razor-sharp wire. Sixty percent are unemployed, academics are being murdered by the dozens, kidnappings are commonplace, murders prevalent and freedom nonexistent. Their women are raped by American forces, their infrastructure pillaged by corporate interests, their oil stolen to feed the American beast.

Whether they like it or not, they have become a colony to the United States. They have become a land and a people suffering from the evils of greed and American capitalism. Privatization has meant ruination; American democracy has brought charades and escapades. The invaders are building bases, sending more troops and dictating the future of their nation. Mercenary armies run amok; divisions are growing between those few embracing occupation and the majority opposed. The Battle of Algiers is now the Battle of Baghdad; the American Revolution is now the Iraqi Fight for Independence.

Bush and America have only brought misery to Iraqis, exporting suffering and devastation to the lands from where we all derive. While we bask in the glow of our exorbitant lives Iraqis dwell in the crisis that has befallen them. While we enjoy the corporate media news about Martha’s little indiscretion Iraqis struggle to comprehend the fate that has landed at their feet. A war against one man has led to the death of thousands and the suffering of tens of thousands more. A war they did not ask for has relegated them backwards in time. American genocide of the 1990’s and crimes against humanity in 2003-2004 has rendered their nation a vast wasteland of lost opportunity and stolen wealth. The American Empire has brought along with its invasion a plague of military might and a sinister form of capitalism that is imposing principles and beliefs at odds with thousands of years of civilization.

What have we done to 25 million Iraqis? We promised Eden and delivered Hades, espoused freedom and unleashed anarchy. From the tanks of salvation death and untold suffering has been spawned. Guided missiles have rained from the heavens above only to exterminate life and decapitate heads. Craters fill the land, poison lingers in the air, sewage runs in the rivers and the devastation of a once proud society continues to be played out by the hands leading the United States of America. The Fertile Crescent has mutated to Hell on Earth, thanks to American foreign policy and its plague of weapons of death and destruction.

Barren and impotent have Iraqis become, invaded, occupied and used as pawns. Their interests have never been a priority, nor will they ever be to an American machine that gave birth to genocide through sanctions and violent death through war. It is from observing the ramifications of evil unleashed that we can discern from its creators the evil they possess. From the terrorist in the White House to those in the Pentagon and Tel Aviv, in power have we placed wretched souls whose malignant and empty humanity parallels the utter destruction of homes and decimation of lives of the same people they claim to liberate from tyranny, suffering and death.

Wretched are those who…


Wretched souls are those who use religion to justify death and suffering. Wretched are they who claim good while unleashing human evil. Wretched are those miscreants who lie and deceive the masses to thrust human evil onto the world. Wretched are the exploiters whose vices grip us in eternal subjugation. Wretched are those whose lack of empathy for human suffering is only surpassed by their ability to help exacerbate it. Wretched are those criminals whose control of power transforms them into heroes and leaders, for it is they the citizenry must purge. Wretched are the terrorists who wrap themselves in the American flag and claim to be doing good, for it is they whose patriotism should be questioned. It is those claiming to act through the principles of Jesus, granting themselves permission to devastate, occupy, expand war, hate, exploit and humiliate their fellow man that the world needs to fear. It is those wretched energies exploiting religion and patriotism in order to expand their interests who should be sent to die in war, made to experience the horrors of the evil they help foster.

It is manipulators, exploiters, warmongers and profiteers that care nothing about you and me. It is they who are the scum of the Earth, born from toxic cesspools of waste, enriching themselves and their cronies at the expense of people like you and me who simply want to live in happiness, peace and security. It is those sentencing tens of millions to death through AIDS in order to protect profits that should be sent to live in Africa. It is those enjoying the fruits of the instruments of war they create that should have to live in lands filled with depleted uranium. It is those whose sanctions condemned hundreds of thousands to premature death due to lack of food and healthcare that should experience starvation and disease. It is those espousing salvation from tyranny for one people and denying it to another that should be forced to endure the scorching temperatures of Sudan. It is those preaching ‘Never Again’ but exacerbating Nazi like treatment of an entire people that should be made to live in the apartheid, ghetto and Bantustan-like existence of the Palestinians where suffering and dehumanization parallels anything created in 1930’s Germany.


Let us give thanks


And so, as life begins to return back to normal in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where monumental failures give way to whitewashed triumphs and fear becomes the air we breathe, let us give thanks that we are not Iraq, that we do not inhabit the lands believed to belong to religious zealots and that bombs and missiles do not thunder down onto our cities and homes.

Let us give thanks that our carbon dioxide emissions have not affected us as they have the developing world and that genocide and ethnic cleansing is not part of our daily lives. Let us give thanks that AIDS medication is making fruitful the lives of those infected who live in America and that we do not have 30 percent of our population suffering from the deadly virus. Let us give thanks that we live inside the belly of the beast, not outside it, enjoying the fruits of its devastation rather than suffering at the hands of its existence. Let us give thanks that we are the Empire, not its satellite or colony whose role as provider of exploitable land or people places us in the crosshairs of its corrosive foreign policy.

Let us give thanks that we do not live in countries whom the Empire has anointed with puppet regimes, monarchs or dictators that place the interests of the Pax Americana ahead of those of their people. Finally, let us give thanks that our corporate media manipulates and conditions our minds so that we can escape from all ills that affect the rest of mankind, thereby helping to erase from our memory all destruction, murder, crimes against humanity, all evil and all the suffering our government boldly and unapologetically releases into the corners of the globe. Let us give thanks to the dumbing down of America that vanquishes all curiosity of diverse peoples, knowledge of the outside world and understanding of the plight affecting billions worldwide. Let us give thanks to live in a nation devoid of accountability and a questioning citizenry. Let us give thanks we live in a nation of exorbitant lifestyles, materialistic mandates and consumerist tendencies.

If ignorance is bliss, then in Heaven is where we live. Not knowing, not caring and not understanding, intoxicated with greed, superfluous lifestyles and a materialistic society, the American Nirvana is what we call home.

May the Almighty Dollar continue to Bless the United States of America.