Mission Accomplished

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Mission Accomplished
by Manuel Valenzuela
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 27, 2003

The Bush administration is "…the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years... I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."

--- Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

Air Force One had barely landed, its tires still warm from its reluctant touchdown onto English soil, and already raucously large protests had started amidst an army of 14,000 police officers, all welcoming King George and his 700-person personal entourage of aids and army of soldiers. Snipers, Secret Service, fighter jets, Blackhawk helicopters, a mini-gun tank, bullet-proof windows, concrete blast barriers and a host of other foot soldiers accompanied the King to London, capital of America’s staunchest ally in the war to oust Saddam and find those pesky immediate-threat, mushroom-cloud-spewing WMDs. Had not Big Ben been standing proudly overlooking the Thames, one would have been under the impression that King George was landing in Baghdad, Tehran or Damascus.

Such has become the traveling circus that is the President of the United States, relegated to visiting his few ally’s nations trapped inside a pretentious bubble – a creation largely of his own making. Even in the United Kingdom our bubble-trapped Commander in Chief must move around under constant and impervious protection by his ever-growing cavalry of human shields. The Bubble King’s experience when visiting foreign countries is that of a view surrounded by thick fog, far removed from its average citizens, their lives and its living environment. He travels sheltered, unable to do much more than meet with monarchy or government officials, in artificial settings and in pomp circumstances.

Far removed from the 100,000-plus very angry Brits protesting his numerous anti-world policies, King George smirked, toasted and celebrated in Buckingham Palace, all the while continuing to live in delusion, perhaps even denial. These same circumstances played out during his mid-October express tour of Southeast Asia and Australia, where he presumably spent more time trying to figure out the function of boomerangs and didgeridoos than in seeing any one nation – photo-ops excluded. His Asian trek was not so much an excursion of exotic lands as it was an experiment in stopovers due to the deep seeded worry about his safety. Under these conditions, it is doubtful the Bubble King sees the reality of what the world has become since he was crowned.

At no other time in American history has a President been so unpopular throughout the globe. He is unwelcome everywhere; in all cities, in all nations and throughout all continents. From billionaire George Soros to the inconspicuously average peasant farmer in Africa, King George and his policies have helped foster an animosity movement that has taken on a life of its own. Two people could disagree on everything and still find solace in their communal dislike of the American President. Wherever he goes, large numbers of protesters from all walks of life eagerly await his arrival, only to be forced far away from his majesty’s presence by security.

He is arguably the most disliked man on the face of the Earth. Polls conducted throughout the world attest to this growing phenomenon. Bush-hating is in vogue, a label proudly worn by peoples from the most primitive village to the most cosmopolitan capital.

Not surprisingly, as King George’s popularity among the fellowship of nations continues its precipitous fall, so to do the feelings against the United States. The two are not mutually exclusive, the latter having started as a result of the actions and personality of the former. Anti-Americanism is growing faster than McAl-Qaedazation franchising, the worldwide phenomenon proliferating thanks to our perpetual "war on terror." As a South American friend told me, "Stop monopolizing the term "Americans". Everyone in the New World is American, and you are giving us all a bad name." Ken Livingstone’s comments are not unique, and a worldwide realization is beginning to emerge through the nebula of deception and inertia that Bush is the most dangerous man on the planet and that his leadership is an enormous threat to world peace.

Being President of the United States means more than being "leader of the free world." It also means being the most powerful man on the planet. With the title, however, comes the enormous responsibility of leading the rest of the world by example. And at this, King George has failed miserably. Indeed, he has fostered and furthered policies that have placed every man, woman and child on the globe in peril, whether from never-ending war, economic genocide, market colonialism, incessant pollution, worsening global warming or the continued growth of the malignant tumor that is the corporate leviathan.

Beginning with his rather dubious anointment in 2000, Bush immediately began unilaterally withdrawing the U.S. from various world treaties, protocols and institutions. Among these were the following: the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of Landmines, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the International Criminal Court, a protocol to create compliance for the Biological Weapons Convention, decisions concerning the Chemical Weapons Commission, the UN framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention to Limit the Sale of Small Weapons. The seeds of world discontent were beginning to be sowed as an alert world began seeing in King George a divider, not a uniter; nothing more than a puppet for the United Corporations of America and the Military Industrial Complex.

On September 11, 2001 the world forgot this massive bravado of arrogant unilateralism and was united with us in a never before-seen show of support. From the smallest village to the largest city, humans everywhere were with us, prompting the French newspaper Le Monde to declare "Today, we are all Americans." The feelings would not last long, however, as King George began eroding global support for us with his asymmetrical quest to attack Iraq less than a year after 9/11. The neoconartist designs for imperial domination were beginning to be firmly planted and the world was beginning to take notice.

Arrogantly, the Bubble King ignored overwhelming world opinion about Iraq – which coincidentally turned out to be right – and unilaterally launched an all-out assault against Iraq. The rest is history. The wannabe Emperor turned out to have no clothes, his puppet masters stumbled their way into a quagmire and the world collectively said "I told you so." Today, empire building will have to wait until the King and his court of neoconartist jesters learn the lessons of history and humanity and not those of self-absorbed illusion and pomposity.

United States foreign policy has created a cause-and-effect dislike for us throughout the world. Our trade policies have unleashed an economic jihad onto the developing world, causing extreme poverty, exploitation, suffering and resentment. Dictators and leaders we have supported and helped maintain in power – and whose loyalty we have monopolized for decades – have ineptly governed entire nations to ruination. WTO, World Bank and IMF policies, most spearheaded by the US, have favored the rich countries of the north while spreading poverty and decimation throughout the developing world, and billions are beginning to realize this. Al-Qaeda, its numerous franchises, Marxist movements and other radical groups around the globe all owe their birth to our self-serving policies and their hate-inducing consequences. A tidal wave of peoples rising up against these real injustices is growing ever stronger. There is valid reason the citizens of the world hate us, and for our sake we must acknowledge this fact quickly before the monstrous tsunami is unleashed and crushes us.

This hatred is amplified a hundred fold when King George rules with arrogance, malfeasance and unilateralism, concerned not for the planet’s worsening health or in improving the lives of billions but rather in enriching his friends and contributors, unleashing pre-emptive empire building through perpetual warfare and unilaterally deciding what course this planet takes. Bush is correct to point out that there is a "war on terror," that evildoers do exist. But these evildoer terrorists are not only those hiding in Afghanistan caves or in Asian jungles. Those unleashing destruction on our planet, exploiting both man and land, causing premature deaths to hundreds of thousands through toxins, weaponry, poverty, greed and through a callous disregard for the welfare of their fellow human beings are also to blame. We can combat both forms of terrorists, reaching deep down to uproot the causes of both; American foreign policy and worldwide poverty for the former and sheer corruption and crony greed-mongering capitalism for the latter. Our exit strategy from terrorism can start with the defeat of King George in 2004. Regime change must start at home. We owe it to the planet; its inhabitants, environment and ourselves.

King George has succeeded in uniting the peoples of the world against him. In that sense he is the uniter he claims to be. But he has also divided the US from the rest of the world in ways never thought possible, especially after 9/11. Billions of people worldwide can’t be wrong about our smirkin’ and struttin’ King George, right? Sometimes, however, when billions of people communally agree to oppose a war based on lies and deception, when they agree in unison that King George is nothing but bad news and when they shout with one very angry voice that Bubble Bush is the greatest threat to world peace and a growing danger to humanity and the planet, there is a sense that there is in fact a certain if not inalienable truth ringing out of the mountains and valleys, cities and villages. So many men, women and children, speaking out from all corners of the globe and walking together for one common cause cannot be wrong.

A pulsating energy, united in body and soul, is emanating from all corners of the globe, growing ever wider in its quest to restore balance to a polarized world. It is the universal calling for change, of realizing that one man and his court of jesters are bringing down the entire deck of cards along with them. If it takes a village to raise a child then it takes a world to save a nation. And right now, the world is trying to save our country, and in the process save us all as well. We must heed the trumpets resounding from our fellow humans. They see what we cannot, and that is the danger one man poses to us all.

King George III, you may remember, was the English monarch who lost the American colonies in the American War for Independence. Our present King George, quite similarly, and not to be outdone, has lost the entire world. It is an achievement of monumental ineptitude. George, from the start of your reign you have alienated us from a world that respects this nation less every day by imposing corporate and military power, dominance and interests throughout the planet that has cemented the entire human race into the most dangerous time in our history. Hail to the King! Mission Accomplished.

Manuel Valenzuela is an attorney, consultant, freelance writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel that will be published in 2004. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net