Here’s The Big Problem

The Bush administration doesn’t have the slightest understanding of the culture of the people who live in the Middle East. And the Bush administration has no desire to understand. The ethos, culture and mindset of the folks who live in the Middle East has changed very little since the beliefs of the Old Testament were set down in writing. The Old Testament is a disturbingly bigoted, mean-spirited, superstitious, paranoid, xenophobic treatise on how to keep a small group of rich men in power by making everyone else scared shitless of everything, most particularly of God. The God in the Old Testament was created in the likeness of the nasty, bigoted small group of rich men who ruled the known world at the time. And that God is merciful and good only to those who oppress dissenters and the disenfranchised. As I said, the Bush administration has no understanding of the people who live in the Middle East. But the Bush administration has a complete and comprehensive understanding of, and is in total agreement with the way theocracies ruled the world in the Old Testament. And that’s a problem. The Bush administration has to constantly put out reports about how different and morally superior it is from the Iraqis it claims it is trying to educate and reform. But in fact, the ethos and value system of the Bush fascists is the same if not on a lower level than those of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi nation in general. The Iraqis may live in a culture very different from that of most Americans, but stupid they are not. They can’t figure out why they should embrace a bunch of foreign tyrants who have killed them, raped them, tortured them, stolen from them, and destroyed their land, when if these foreign tyrants had stayed home, the Iraqis could have been killed, raped, and stolen from by home-grown tyrants. And at least they would have understood the language of the hometown bullies who would have looked like them and had familiar attitudes. In a land where wars, pillaging and blood feuds have been going on for 6,000 years, a new oppressor is not going to make much of a dent. To the warring factions in Iraq, the United States army (such as it is) including the United States consultants and advisors are just more assholes to be outwitted. And not only has the United States lost the war in Iraq, it has been outwitted in spades. We look like fools. Our own weapons are killing our soldiers and our money is now in the coffers of Iraqi insurgents. Through fraudulent arms deals former Iraq officials stole $800 million from the new Iraq government. That money had been earmarked to buy equipment for the Iraqi army. And let us be clear. The new bunch of bullies taking advantage of the Iraqi people is not only made up of Shiites and Sunnis. The new Iraq government that is fucking over the Iraqis includes Americans. The Iraqis, and not a few Americans are asking themselves, “How is Iraq better off with this new band of thieves than it was with the old band of thieves?” And of course, the answer is that Iraq is not better off. The Americans who orchestrated the invasion of Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein have become Saddam Hussein. The worst of it is, the Americans who attacked Iraq always were Saddam clones. They only needed to invade a weak oppressed nation to let their true natures burst forth and flourish.