Opinions
US achieved politically besides Saddam Hussein's removal, which happened soon after the invasion? Democracy will bypass Iraq as Muslim factions reinvigorate. Democracy for Middle East countries steeped in sharia law is an implausible concept anyway, (including Israel which, although pretending to be democratic, is controlled by an ultraconservative oligarchy of mostly Russian Jews).Even sceptical Americans now realise that the war was fought solely to gain control of Iraq's oil, now firmly in American hands. Cheney and his crowd are today's versions of a long list of predators that have raided the American exchequer in the guise of foreign policy and US security since the end of World War II. An early major event was Truman's support for Zion in usurping Palestine; then came North Korea, an unresolved and supremely irritating thorn in the side of the United States, now 60 years old, where dictator Kim il Jong has just died. The Korean War coincided with the anti-Communist campaign of Joseph McCarthy whose excesses in the US embarrassed President Eisenhower. Eisenhower managed to prevent a major Asian war, but could not avoid military involvement in Indochina to support first the French then the South Vietnamese. At the end of that presidency, Fidel Castro exploded in Cuba, ousting Battista and expelling over 100,000 American and Cuban wrongdoers from Havana to Miami, where they have thrived and plotted in vain against Castro and created an almost separate local colony and dictatorship.
The Cuban crisis merged with the Vietnam War which JFK and later Johnson and Nixon expanded seeking to establish the paramountcy of America's power and its ability to safeguard democracy. Indeed JFK had fulsomely pledged at his inauguration to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty." After two weary decades, Vietnam reverted to its people. Vietnam was followed by other disasters in Southeast Asia. Further west the CIA and Pakistan's ISI conducted the chronic destabilisation of India and adjacent countries, supported bin Laden, the Taliban and al Qaeda to oust Russia from Afghanistan, but after 9/11 became targets instead of customers for American armaments and provided the excuse for invading Iraq. In the past 50 years lesser victims of US aggression have included Chile, Guyana, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Philippines and Somalia. These conflicts have killed untold numbers and displaced millions worldwide, driving refugees to North America and Europe. The collapse of the USSR gave Americans freedom to exploit oil-producing countries of the former Soviet Union.
The butt of American wrath has shifted from Communism to Islam, pleasing the evangelical American right, savouring the prospect of profitable crusades. With Egypt, Tunisia, Libya following Palestine, and Syria pending, Iran becomes the next domino on the oil chain. So far none of the targets has achieved a Democratic status, the visionary objective used to justify war to the American people. This is hardly surprising; American politicians abuse the term democracy because America is not one. It is solidly under control and direction of commercial monopolies, recalling defunct European empires now falling into American hands; the children have become the new master.
American intervention in the affairs of other nations has merely given America control of their resources, while reducing local populations through military casualties and displacement, destroying their livelihood, enriching local quislings, installing some as puppet rulers of new American colonies, thus perpetuating American hegemony. Today Afghan warlords have begun to reclaim their territory. So a decade of terror in Afghanistan and Iraq has achieved nothing for the locals, but enriched American businesses close enough to the government to gain key permanent contracts.
The US-Vietnam War lasted 11 years. It cost over $200 billion, i.e. over $1,000 billion today. The 8½-year Iraq war cost well over $3,000 billion. Will Americans ever protest this misappropriation of their income by politicians whose excesses make Mr Madoff look like a petty thief?
Lessons from a first youthful
day at school
I started school at the tender age of five. My first hour at school was spent in the headmaster's office. Not that I was a bad boy from day one. That came ten years later, when I was a teen roiling with the surges from the hormones of rebellion.
I was in the principal's office for official stuff with paperwork so I could be streamed into kindergarten.
The paperwork complete, I received a top-down lecture from the headmaster. He was a giant of a man. When he spoke his voice rumbled as if it came from deep inside a water barrel. He wore a dark suit and suffered with the humidity. An aged fan did what it could,
spinning futilely in a corner, its blades misshapen and cantankerous. At times it groaned and clanked like a propeller on a plane. In fact, it groaned so much that if it was on an aircraft anyone boarding would certainly have to make sure their last will and testament had been safely left behind.After the headmaster signed the papers that officially made me a student for the first time in my life, he heaved himself off a king-sized wooden chair and walked to me with legs as long and thick as a pachyderm. When he arrived and was towering overhead, he leaned his huge torso in my general direction, and rumbled a greeting in the deepest bass I had ever heard up to then in what was still my early life.
His vocal chords would have been nothing less than the thickness of strands of licorice. They were buried deep under the thick skin that made up the dewlaps at the side of his face and the folds under his chin. His voice filled the office, climbing above the grinding of the fan to be absorbed by the large volumes of books on the shelves around. At the level where I stood, I could tell his big feet were uneven and jointed through the knobs that pushed out on the soft leather of his brown shoes.
But despite his formidable girth, he was surprisingly kind as he welcomed me. First and foremost (his words), I was cautioned about obeying the school rules. For this, he pointed to the wall in his office where the words 'Discipline, Tolerance, Productivity' were handwritten in a flowing script. Then his voice became stern. If the rules were broken, a trip would have to be made to his office.
He then spoke for the benefit of my mother, addressing her with eye contact. There would always be punishment for breaking the rules. He was a firm man and ensured that all offenders received a fair share of the strap.
He pulled a drawer open in his desk - it opened easily, the result of frequent use. My mother and I looked in. A leather belt, minus its buckle, was wrapped in languid coils in the corner. It took up most of the drawer. It was likely three feet long, patterned with square holes down its middle where the buckle once resided. The rest of the strap was a cross-hatching of loose scales, mostly due to age and daily use. It was at rest, perhaps in the daze that comes with the changing of skins. A forefinger the thickness of a sausage closed the drawer with the gentlest of nudges.
The headmaster then threw his large head back and laughed. It was a laugh that came from a well-tilled place. It is a place where sticks are cut from branches for rods, and where animals are tended for skins for leather that is plaited into whips. The mirth made him close flaps for eyelids that were as weighty as window shades. His mouth cracked open to reveal two rows of irregular yellow stones for teeth.
My mother was suitably impressed - with the headmaster's presence, his erudition, and his commitment to the age-old tradition of not sparing the rod and spoiling the child. She took the moment during the walk from the principal's office to the kindergarten class to reinforce one of the first lessons children of our generation were taught at school.
"Look here, boy! You better be sharp and learn your lessons. And behave yourself in the people school, you hear me. Or that headmaster will put a good lash or two on your little behind!" And to add the finishing touch to the teaching moment, she added: "And when you reach home, you will get another cut-tail just to remind you who is boss!"
These were among some of the enduring lessons we were taught as children attending school when I was growing up.
I did not have the privilege of discovering who was boss with this headmaster. He retired weeks later to much adulation. I did hear stories that were legend in our small world about his fondness for disciplining with the strap. However, this headmaster was far from my mind right afterwards, since it was the day I received my first piece of chalk and with this, a black slate.