“Sanctity of
Life Day?”
by Susan Abulhawa
Dissident Voice
January 21, 2003
Is this the ultimate hypocrisy and irony,
or just a joke?
Either way, excuse me while I
vomit. Or pull my hair out in utter
disbelief that any part of the voting public is buying it.
Just whose life is that imbecile talking about, exactly? We know it isn’t the many many inmates, over whose execution he personally presided. It isn’t the one million Iraqi children who’ve died as a result of sanctions. After all, “we think it’s worth it.” Nor is it the life of America’s poor whose assistance he cuts left and right. Save any negative publicity, it isn’t for the lives of US troops he proposes to send to Baghdad to end the other no-sanctity lives of its inhabitants whose great crime is their misfortune to live over the world’s second largest oil reserve. Sure as heck, it isn’t for the lives of Palestinians, the hapless souls who’ve been butchered every single day with our weaponry in the hands of the world’s greatest rouge nation—Israel.
I think we
should flush his sanctimonious declarations and make our own. How about What happened to the USS
Liberty Day, Why did the US stop an investigation into the Qana massacre
Day, or Who engineered the overthrow of democratically elected
governments of Nicaragua and Guatemala Day.
Don’t know what
I’m talking about? All the more reason
why we should have a How does Congress Spend My Money Day.
With an already fragile economy, the self-proclaimed vanguard of life wants to invest at least $250 billion to bomb, kill and maim yet more of the Iraqi people whose entire weapons arsenal amounts to the equivalent of a spit wad against the great death machine Bush has amassed around them. Unprovoked, to be sure.
Is his warm and fuzzy concern only for zygotes and embryos? Wait. No. To be fair, I think he cares deeply for the lives of white, ultra rich people, unless, of course, they happen to be gay or opposed to the Ashcroft-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz misogynistic and warmongering frenzy.
How about Think
for Yourself Day, where we contemplate how, even in his monosyllabic brain,
can George Bush fathom that Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut and architect
of the greatest post WWII massacre, a “man of peace.”
I just can’t get
over that one. Sharon, whose name is
synonymous with death, has enough innocent blood on his hands to warrant an
invitation from the Hague and a special place in hell right next to Hitler.
Independent
Media Day is a good idea. For one
day, we can get the news, not the corporate spin, or government press
releases. Americans can finally, for
one day, hear the words “illegal settlements for Jews and only Jews built on
land confiscated from Palestinian owners” instead of the lie of “disputed
neighborhoods;” For one day, real journalism would lay bare the administration’s
religion of capitalism that makes profit the single measure of the value of
human, plant or animal life. Or rather,
the measure of the “sanctity of life.”
For that day, maybe the violated children of Iraq, Palestine, or
Afghanistan can have a moment on TV. At
least on this day we’ll not hear that Saddam “expelled” UN weapons inspectors
because, in fact, they were withdrawn by the US when Clinton deemed it
necessary to bomb the hell out of their water infrastructure (the no longer
secret CIA plans for this barbaric act would also be highlighted)—This,
conveniently executed around the time we were just getting the juicy details of
Lewinsky’s cigar.
Let there be Probe
Into Cheney’s Ties to Corporate Scandals and The Carlyle Group’s Great Profit From
the ‘War On Terrorism’ Day. Why
not?
I want a Power
To The People Day. A Public
Servants, Not Career Politicians Day.
A National Healthcare Day. A Limit The Materialistic Abyss Of
Our Nation Day. A Fix Our Education System Day.
What a glorious dawn on life it would be
if the American people would wake up long enough to have the revolutionary Put
The US Constitution And Everything It Stands For In All Foreign And Domestic
Policy Day. Imagine that.
Susan Abulhawa is a
Palestinian living in Pennsylvania. She is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-profit
organization dedicated to building playgrounds and recreation areas for
Palestinian children living under military occupation. Email: sjabulhawa@yahoo.com