|
by William A. Cook
It occurred to me in one of my less cynical moments, deluded no doubt by the merriment of the season, that all of those responsible for the havoc and chaos of these past six years should face the wrath of the American people and, one might hope, the wrath of the God of Justice and Vengeance. Once before I had similar urgings, in July of 2004 to be exact, and I penned an article titled Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons that appeared in Counterpunch, wherein I placed our benighted leaders into the Infernos circles of Hell. The experience of the last two years heaped on that of the preceding four necessitates a reconsideration of the leniency of Dantes punishment as it fits the crimes of our current horde that deserve an exclusive damnation prepared for their unique and heinous sins.
The urgency of this endeavor grows with time as these nefarious lunatics slither away from the public eye escaping to new positions and new offices beyond the glare of TV cameras and press conferences. Should one envision the Capital afloat in the marshes of the Potomac just beyond Jeffersons Memorial, one might see the rats cascading down the gang planks and sliding down the ropes fleeing the Ship of State as it sinks into the muck led by William F. Buckley Jr. while Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, and Douglas Feith cling to his coattails in their mad rush to disclaim responsibility for the death and destruction they have wrought on the American people and the people of the mid-east. Behind them come the other wormsmiths, the crafters of polemics that enticed the American people and their clueless representatives to arms against innocent people that their ends might be achieved in wealth and power.
These men crafted their arguments in patriotic colors and ingenious innuendo that belied the deceit buried in obfuscation and omission. Their own conflict of interest -- working on behalf of another state, benefiting from the largesse of Abramoff and his cronies, gaining visibility that brought them renown and access to insider contracts that increased their wealth went unmentioned as they sent our youth to slaughter and sent Americas good will into the gutter. As the American people express their displeasure, indeed their anger at the lies and deception that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, almost 3000 American soldiers slaughtered and countless maimed and wounded, and in Palestine, thousands of innocent civilians savaged by missiles, cluster bombs, and chemical weapons of unimaginable kind, as the horrendous cost in infrastructure, commercial and cultural buildings and hospitals reaches into the billions of dollars, these pin-striped, coiffured and scented men scatter into the darkness of obscurity lest their vile words be resurrected and their guilt made transparent.
These men and the organizations they represent must receive
universal recognition for the devastation they have wrought: Adelman
and Abrams, Cheney and Chalabi, Cohen and Clawson, Feith and Frum,
Krauthamer and the Kristols, Ledeen and Libby, Perle and Pipes,
Rumsfeld and Rubin, Steiner and Eisenstadt, Wolfowitz and the Wurmsers,
Beck and Foxman and Limbaugh and Yousef and all whose names I have
failed to mention deserve equal representation in this time of
retribution.
Let us not forget the instruments used to disseminate their lies and
deceit, the litany of think tanks and organizations that propelled the
country into the morass it now faces as this once proud ship of state
sinks into the slough of despond: the Project for the New American
Century that issued the report that led the U.S. into the ditch, the
document that emblazoned pre-emptive war and extra-judicial killing and
world dominance as the foreign policy of America, the American Israel
Political Action Committee, that equal opportunity exploiter of our
Congressional representatives, that managed to infiltrate our Congress
and the administration to such a degree that one cannot distinguish
American policy from Israeli, the American Enterprise Institute, the
Defense Policy Board, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the
Office of Special Plans, the Washington Institute for Near Eastern
Affairs, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute of
National Security Affairs, the Iraqi National Congress and others too
numerous to mention.
Now these same voices through these same think tanks pour out their
declarations of innocence as they rush to the ramparts to cast blame on
an inept President and his Secretary of Defense. Had they been in
positions of power to direct the war they initiated, all, they
proclaim, would have turned out well; but since they did not care to
run for office and receive the mantle of power, they had no right to
entice the republic into illegal wars or support for apartheid regimes
like that in Israel. And so lacking a position that carries with it
responsibility to the people they have harmed, these cowards slither
off to other places where they can belittle the idiots they lured to
the precipice, always in the comfort of air conditioned offices and
plush surroundings, never caring to view the legless, eyeless,
mind-broken men that return from the field of battle scarred for life
because these soulless Neo-Cons take no responsibility for the
slaughter they have brought upon a hapless people.
But they are not alone; theres another group that stands yet on the
decks of the Ship of State, so clueless that they continue to believe
that this Neo-Con, government-led administration follows their dictates
and believes the superstitions they inflict on their respective
congregations, the right-wing Zionist Evangelicals that know they speak
the Lords words and predict the coming Armageddon. Despite the
evidence revealed by David Kuo in his recent book, Tempting Faith, these
prophets, whose words rebound off the baldacchino of commercial
satellites, respond only to their own egos as they extol their
brilliance before their believers, parading in their padded outfits,
gesturing in dramatic mode with Bible held aloft, resonant in voice,
dripping with pious sincerity and holiness.
Such men have
guided their faithful to turn from the teachings of Christ and take up
the cross of racism and revenge that is embedded in the vengeful God of
the Old Testament, the one, true God that called upon His people to
exterminate the tribes that occupied the lands sought by the Israelites
of old, the promised lands that even now, 2500 years later, a new band
of Zionists claims belongs to them using the superstition of ancient
texts as legitimacy for their contention, even as they ethnically
cleanse or kill outright the indigenous people of the land of Palestine.
Who are they, these ministers of war, that flagellate their laity daily
with dire diatribes about Satans impending presence in their midst,
the prophecies of doom and destruction that John predicted in the Book
of Revelation? They are cruel, heartless men who have abandoned
compassion for coercion, humility for hubris, truth for treachery, and
faith for fable. They have maligned the loving Christ of the New
Testament by metamorphosing Him into a blood thirsty God of vengeance
intent on destruction of the world while they enlist their congregants
as obedient and willing soldiers in their crusade to enshrine the
Zionists in Israel and eradicate the Palestinian people. To this end
they have cajoled and coerced our representatives, joined their bloody
hands with the Neo-Con lobbyists, and enlisted the fear of Gods wrath
as a political tool of power to control and ravage the nations of the
mid-east. These are ministers of hate that have corrupted the cloth by
bearing false witness before the very God they proclaim to serve.
A litany of these fabricators of truth must include the mystification
of Dobson, Robertson and Hinn, the mendacity of Lindsey, Kennedy and
Hagee, the guile of Falwell and Ryle, the forgery of LaHaye, the sham
of Franklin Graham, the deceit of Roberts, the hollowness of Evans, and
their secular counterparts that encourage such deception as heard in
the quackery of Miller, Prager and Coulter, and the dissembling of
Limbaugh. There are more, too numerous to mention, who find voice
through the casuistry created doctrines dispensed by Dominionists,
Dispensationalists, End Timers, and Christian Zionists; others who join
forces in organizations like The Christian Coalition, the Eagle Forum,
the Family Resource Council, Promise Keepers, and the Vineyard Movement
to name a few.
What appropriate retribution might be imagined for this horde of
sinners that took Gods gift of intellect and twisted it into a tool of
deceit, vengeance and death? Dante placed the politicians and the popes
in his circles of hell, in torments appropriate to their crimes; lets
update Dante since he could only contend with destruction by sword,
lance, catapults, and fire. We are far more advanced. Progress in arms
has been our one delight and arguably our greatest achievement. Such
wars and political intrigue that Dante witnessed would be but footnotes
compared to our accomplishments. He found fault with Florentine
politics, quibbles in a city state that resulted in his conviction for
graft and corruption; his absence at the time of the trials became his
permanent exile. Our conflicts are global and our means of achieving
our goals more ruthless and absolute. We need punishment appropriate to
our progress.
This is my vision. Every year from now and in perpetuity, we hold a
world wide Day of Lamentation on the penultimate day of the year, just
in time to force reflection annually on what bestiality humans inflict
on their own. On this day, the sun would not shine; we would awake to
see the sun in the east rise in fullness over the distant hills or the
sea and watch as it slowly lost its glow. The dome of the heavens,
sparkling with stars at first, would suddenly go completely black. Then
in the east a new day would dawn as the dome became an enormous IMAX
screen with streams of images moving inexorably through the dark sky
toward the west. These images, seen by all the living in every part of
the world, display our band of Neo-Cons, Evangelicals and Zionists that
have so destroyed our earth doing what they do best, sitting at a
computer or pacing before a pulpit while they fulminate and froth
getting ready to belch their venomous lies to their respective flocks.
But instead of the plush, air-conditioned splendor of their respective
offices at the AEI or AIPAC or PNAC, they would sit before a computer
that displays no words and records nothing that they think. Rather they
sit wrapped in green slime mucus that pours forth from their mouths
covering them in their own mental vomit and cascades down over their
pin-striped suits, over their trousers and sparkling shoes, as it flows
over the Berber carpets and down the halls.
A similar image captures the criminals of the cloth as they prance
before their benumbed congregations; but out of their mouths pours
forth the blood of the Christ they have mutilated as they screamed for
death to his brothers and sisters. Before them stand their laity,
frozen now with arms aloft and eyes closed, mute statues depicting
their numbed consciences that they gave to these soulless men. No sound
issues from these mouths, once the refuge of their arrogant egos; no
music swaddles the congregants in rhapsodic melody to quash the
thinking mind.
These enormous images float over the dome of the night sky as new
images emerge on the computer screens and on the screens our prancing
prelates see next to the TV cameras that capture their eloquence for
transmission via satellite to the peoples of the world. Now this same
satellite sends images of all who have been destroyed by these hangmen,
these prevaricators that lured men of power to devastate the people
they hated and to lay waste the homes and farms and olive groves and
wells and shops that gave them life. Now they sit mute or stand
silently as those they killed stream before them, thousands upon
thousands of the mutilated and the maimed whose lives had been snuffed
out or destroyed before it could be lived; thousands upon thousands of
nameless people, forgotten souls whose time on this earth cut short by
the heartless, unthinking diatribes of these self-serving men.
And such images they are
poor Ali Abbas, tucked into bed by his
mother as she kissed him good night and blessed him in the name of
Allah, lying in the hospital bed, an orphan now without arms, covered
in burns that have seared his skin and his soul, a hapless accident of
shock and awe; another figure, an older man, Abdullah a-Zakh, appears
on the screen as he holds the remains of his 14 year old son in his
arms, a son that was buried twice, a victim of the IDF operation,
Locked Kindergarten, where he saw his sons body torn apart and
located what he could find for burial only to find more on another day
for another burial; the inhabitants of Fallujah, that once proud city
leveled by American forces in imitation of the Israeli sieges of Rafah,
Nablus and Jenin, move across the screen in single file, hundreds and
hundreds of the dead, blackened now by the white phosphorous that turns
the skin black and reveals the bones beneath, skulls visible beneath
the seared face, eye sockets starring at Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and all
the instigators of this civilized state that finds collateral damage
an acceptable way to dispose of the human detritus that stands in the
way of their infamy; then the ravaged bodies of the 28 children of Qana
in Lebanon, who became the innocent victims of Israeli vengeance, come
slowly from the rubble of their bombed home, ghostly remnants of lives
once lived in the joy of the morning glow and the laughter of their
siblings, a steady silent line of children who would never see the sun
rise again or see it set beyond the sea, and most sorrowful of all,
poor little Abbas Hashem, only one year old, moves past with his blue
pacifier still dangling from his green tank top; and, perhaps the most
devastating symbol of this vileness to citizens of these United States,
the mangled bodies of their own youth sent to slaughter by these fat
and satisfied Judases who thrive on the havoc and mayhem they have let
loose upon the world, each one in single file stares upon the faces of
these horrible clowns in the vain expectation that they might feel a
twitch of human guilt.
Throughout the Day of Lamentation, thousands of images would stream
through the sky, images that depicted the savagery of Bush and Sharon,
of all the tribe of Neo-Cons and their lackeys, the lobbyists that
promote Christian Zionism and the state of Israel in all its Zionist
racist reality, and of all the evangelicals that promoted the coming of
Armageddon. Perhaps the most savage of all the icons that capture the
inhumanity of this swarm of satanic locusts is the Wall of Infamy
erected to imprison the indigenous people of Palestine. It exemplifies
the heinous mentality that can isolate people from people, a mentality
that can expend billions of dollars to wall people out, alienate them
from the community of their brothers and sisters, and to do this while
they are alive. This even more than the white phosphorous, the depleted
uranium, the cluster bombs, the dense inert metal explosives that melt
and disfigure and desecrate a person, seems to bear witness to the
cold, barren innards that drive these men that find their beliefs in
Straussian or Zionist ideology that makes those born to follow their
lead fodder for the advancement of their progress toward some imagined
utopia they were born to create.
For twenty four hours the people of every country stand looking skyward
as these images flow over the black sky. They see these men that sought
prestige, power, and wealth, who believed that they alone were the
chosen and all others but sheep to be led to do their bidding, sitting
now mute before all, their faces and names clearly embossed on the
globe of the sky, condemned to everlasting mockery, their identity to
be forevermore the symbol of inhumanity. What more fitting retribution
than the erasure of their meaning and purpose in life, than the
desecration of their purported genius, the indelible stamping of their
legacy with the silent, slow, sorrowful passing of all the lives cut
short by their villainy, and arrogance, and inhumanity; thus shall
justice be made manifest on this Day of Sorrows, this Day of
Reflection, this Day of Lamentation.
|