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By Jihad el-Khazen

August 8, 2005

Dar Al-Hayat - Original Article (English)

The world is remembering that it has been 60 years since the nuclear bomb fell on Hiroshima, which destroyed the city and killed 80,000 civilians, including 108 doctors and 1,654 nurses. The U.S. followed the Hiroshima attack with the atomic bombing of the city of Nagasaki, causing similar casualties. For many years thereafter, Japanese continued to die from radiation.

Hiroshima - Before and After the Bomb [Click for Larger Image]

While the U.S. fought the Nazi fascists in Europe and Japan's imperial ambitions in Asia during WW II, it had right on its side. But killing hundreds of thousands of civilians was unjustified, even if we take into account Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

The U.S. is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons. After that, it reverted to a conventional war where the people of North and South Korea pay the price. The United States was the aggressor in Vietnam and there suffered a humiliating defeat, despite its use of chemical weapons (Agent Orange), napalm and cluster bombs.

The U.S. now supports Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, provides Israel with all possible assistance and protects Tel Aviv in the U.N. Security Council, even though that nation is led by an extremist government with a known war criminal at its head.

For these reasons, the U.S. has no standing to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons, since Israel has a nuclear arsenal. Logic would dictate that the U.S. would want a nuclear-free Middle East; if it did, we would all support such a stance. Concern over the "possible" in Iran and not the "certain" in Israel is unacceptable.  The U.S. cannot talk of terrorism while it supports a terrorist government.

Al Dustour, Jordan

Once again, I insist that Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are national liberation movements in the face of Israeli terrorism. They will remain so, even if I oppose suicide operations and demand that they be halted. Personally, I will remove the description of "national liberation" from any Palestinian or other faction that carries out acts outside the territory of confrontation with Israel. The difference between these national liberation movements and Israel is that while Hamas, for example, confronts Israel and doesn't conduct international terror, Israel kills its enemies around the world, which is pure terrorism.

Perhaps the U.S. Administration might open its eyes and see that for every Israeli civilian who is killed, there are four Palestinian civilians killed; these latter are shot in the head and chest, i.e. deliberately.

If the U.S. is only indirectly responsibility for Israel's crimes, it is directly responsible for the collapse of the situation in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, because it is the ruling power. We all welcomed the fall of that ignorant dictator. But I never imagined that the situation in Iraq would be worse than it was under his rule.

Today the situation is worse, and only Israeli agents in and around the White House or Iraqi officials who gained power at the expense of Iraqi blood would deny this. Iraqi officials lie as if taking a breath and plunder their country along with the thieves. There used to be one thief in Baghdad and now there are a thousand, and thousands of terrorists from inside and outside the country.

I'm not the only one who thinks Iraq is worse off now. The United Nations Development Program has announced that the nation's standard of living, which was bad before the war, has now grown worse. The situation before the war was due to a regimen of international sanctions promoted by the U.S.; now the U.S. is in Iraq and the situation has deteriorated further.

The worst part of this is that dozens of Iraqis are killed every day by insane terrorist acts unknown to Iraq before the war. Estimates are that from 30 to 40,000 all the way up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, if you believe the authoritative British medical magazine Lancet, presumably a neutral party.

In Iraq, the "daily special" is bad news every day. This great Arab country with a very educated populace is being slaughtered every day as Arabs and Muslims look on, unable to save the country from its "saviors" or from the terrorists who kill Muslims when they are unable to kill the crusaders and Jews.

Pope Benedict, or the White House?

On the day we remember Hiroshima, the entire world is paying the price of America's mistaken policies. The country that saved the world from the dangers of Nazism, rescued the economies of Europe with the Marshall Plan, provided billions of dollars in assistance to countries around the world and stood as a symbol for freedom, democracy and human rights, is carrying out a unilateral policy to impose a single hegemonic power over the world's politics and economics.

Unfortunately, this has provoked opposition to useful and positive aspects of American policy, that by-and-large has lost its way amid the arrogance of force.

I close this remembrance of Hiroshima with a salute to Pope Benedict. This frail and elderly man is bolder than the entire U.S. Administration when it comes to the concept of "right." He condemned terror in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Britain and was criticized by Israel because he didn't condemn the suicide attack in Netanya. The Vatican responded by saying that Israel cannot impose its logic on Benedict, who refused to condemn a Palestinian attack and remain silent about Israel's misdeeds.

This is the plain, unvarnished "papal" truth, and I won't ask readers to determine which side is more honest: the Pope of Rome or the White House. But I will say that if the U.S. Administration had taken a decisive stance against Israel's crimes, terrorism around the world would have declined and not risen since America declared war against it.

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