The Pain of Bush

Is it worth it to kill more than 450,000 people, the majority civilians? Yes. And to destroy a thousand-year-old culture? Yes. And, as if it were a petty subject, to kill prisoners in jail? Effectively, yes. It is seen this way by the president of the United States, George W. Bush, at the five-year anniversary of theinvasion of Iraq.

It seems unbelievable, like the lies in which the imperialist invasion of Iraq was based, that for a president of a country that calls itself democratic a war would be worth it, a war that, moreover, it is losing. The incalculable number of displaced is worth it. And also the three billion dollars “invested” in it and the psychological harm to women and children. For Bush, who continues to lie, the invasion of Iraq “was worth it.” The bombings, the slaughter of innocent people, the siege of cities, the destruction of infrastructure. All this was worth it, because, clearly, there are the foreign transnationals commissioning themselves for the reconstruction.

The “hell disaster,” as Churchill said of Palestine, now belongs to the government of Bush. And of this disaster in human lives and in historic monuments and relics, Europe is also an accomplice, and in these parts the government of Alvaro Uribe that supported the imperial adventure of Bush. An incursion that violates all the norms of international law, that passed over the authority of the United Nations, which once again has put itself in the pocket of the United States.

The “civilized” world swallowed the lies of Bush and his chums about weapons of mass destruction and the alleged society of Saddam Hussein–an old ally of Washington–and Osama Bin Laden. The evidence of the North American farce was no good and then, supporting a villain, there were Great Britain, Spain, Italy, among others.

In any case, the gringos perhaps were not thinking that their bombers, their infantry, their paraphernalia–yes–of massive destruction, would be unable to overpower the people. The empire did not learn the lesson of Vietnam. The resistance has the North Americans in failure and the U.S. people more aware now of the mistakes of their rulers. And I say that empires hardly ever learn from history. Maybe the gringos do not remember the days of Iraqi insurgency, in 1920, against the British Empire.

The Americans, and in particular their arbitrary president, believed that their invasion would be able to bring about victory in one month. The people of Iraq shattered the arrogant declarations of Donald Rumsfeld: “The war in Iraq could last six days, six weeks, but never six months.” And then that operation of “shock and awe” has, five years later, many neoconservative gringos full of fright.

Of course, for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who see the war from their offices, drinking whiskey or orange juice, this affair is very comfortable from a distance. As a chronicler would say, those guys– curiously the most bloodthirsty ones–never fired a shot in defense of their country when they were of age to do so. Now, they are directing orders to destroy a sovereign nation. The control of markets and the search for oil can bring one to commit the most hair-raising atrocities.

The North American invasion ruined Baghdad, a cradle of civilizations, old libraries, irreplaceable documents, evidence from five thousand years ago that sheds light on science and the arts. And like one reporter stated: Baghdad has been destroyed by the true forces of evil in this world: those directed by Bush, the same one who, according to Hugo Chavez, “smells of sulfur.”

Today, this country to which, according to the imperial verse, they were going to bring democracy and liberty, lives under a regime of terror. The invasion demonstrated, furthermore, that international terrorism is at the head of Bush and that the real “axis of evil” has its epicenter in the United States.

The atrocities of Washington in Iraq have taken on characteristics of genocide, which had begun before the invasion, when the United States issued an embargo that caused thousands of deaths, especially of children, due to hunger and lack of medicine. Despite the “victorious” declarations of Bush, the empire is opposed in Iraq.

The Iraqi people, who today suffer the unspeakable because of a criminal invasion, know that in their history no external occupier has ever triumphed. Not the Romans nor the English. Today, without work, without social security, without peace, but with the intense hope of expelling the invader, they continue with their resistance.

And for the displaced and the disabled, for the humiliated Iraqis of today, it will be worth it to reverse the situation and defeat the troops of the superpower. And then history will say: the defeat of Bush and company was worth the pain.