Opinion

To all American Bush-Voters

By Douglas Lummis

For years, people all around the world have been kind enough to say, "We're not angry with the American people. It's the U.S. government's policy we are angry about." When I visited Iraq in the summer following the first Gulf War, many people said this to me, almost in those exact words.

During the first Bush administration, you could say the American people never voted for these policies. During his election campaign, Bush never said this was what he was going to do. And when he started doing these things, he had to lie constantly to gain support for them. So the people who supported them were misinformed. Once the American people understand what he is doing, they will quit supporting him. (And besides that, he never got a majority anyway - he stole the election.)

Those days are over.

By the time of the 2004 election, everything was out in the open. Bush's government had carried out two wars of aggression, and made clear its willingness to carry out more. The lies by which these wars were justified (Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, etc.) had all been revealed as lies, even in the mainstream media. The U.S. war crimes had also not been hidden, but rather had been given wide coverage in the major media for all the world to see.

That the Bush administration is violating - destroying actually - international law and also U.S. domestic law is obvious to anyone who has the will to see it. And it should also be obvious to anyone who knows anything about military matters that the United States is losing the war in Iraq - and probably in Afghanistan too.

The American voters, by 2004, knew these things. Or if they claim not to know them, this can only be called willful ignorance. It would be rather like a bank robber claiming that he was unaware that theft is illegal. The American voters knew these things, and they voted for their continuance. So now you can no longer say it's the government, or the elites, or the big businessmen. It's America.

The cruelest definition of democracy is: Democracy is the political system under which the people get the government they deserve. This pretty well fits the U.S. presidential election of 2004. You people who voted for Bush will get what you voted for: more war, more crimes authorized by your government, more enemies all around the world, fewer places where you can travel safely, less freedom at home, and many, many more lies.

So when the policies of the second Bush administration begin to unfold as they already have with the criminal invasion of Fallujah, remember: This time you asked for it.

Shukan ST: Dec. 10, 2004

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