During the Q & A period following Joe Biden’s recent speech sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he made a statement that typifies the cruel and rhetorical devices the U.S. gov’t resorts to in defense of their failed policies. Affecting the insider intonations of a Falwell sermon, he claimed that suicide bombings in Israel have decreased in number now that Saddam isn’t around to compensate their families.
Saddam was captured on December 13, 2003. Here’s a timeline of suicide bombings that have occurred since, as well a timeline for all of 2003. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Joe is correct in his wild assertion. That he would make it speaks to the real barrier that exists in finding peacefull solutions to this terrible conflict.
The people with the power to institute change are deaf, dumb and blind to the real cause and effect that transpires, or worse and more likely, fully aware and engaged in an ongoing campaign of deliberate misinformation.
Sheldon Richman in his recent commentary 9/11 Could Have Been Prevented states the obvious.
Part of their propaganda campaign is the claim that the Islamists hate us because “we love freedom.” If they did, they would say so. Instead, whenever they explain their hatred, they specify U.S. intervention in their societies. There is no reason to believe they would be attacking a free and noninterventionist America.
The question now is, when will the American people understand? The crimes of 9/11 should have focused attention on the policies that made Arabs willing to commit such heinous acts here. But the Bush administration — and the “bipartisan” political establishment as a whole — made sure that Americans would draw only lessons that did not threaten the interventionist program. Anyone who attempted to point the finger at those policies was stigmatized as an appeaser or terrorist sympathizer. By and large, the news media fell into line.
Let’s take the administration at its word. The horrors at the World Trade Center could not have been prevented by actions taken between January 20 and September 11, 2001. The real issue is whether they could have been prevented had U.S. administrations followed the noninterventionist advice of the Founding Fathers. The answer is obvious.
So long as the real motivations for such attacks are ignored or dissembled to fit the agenda of imperialists who selectively assign ideals of freedom and justice only to those causes that are instrumental to achieving their selfish goals, there will be suicide bombers.
A recent poll found that Americans were more concerned over rising gas prices than they were attacks on Americans in Iraq. Is it any wonder Joe Biden still has a job?
If only Joe and his colleagues were questioned on why they spend so much time on their hair and makeup and not enough debating articles like these we might make some inroads to constructive dialogue in this country.