What is Bush good for?...oil greed and wars

This President had had the rarest reputation of bringing disrepute to the US

THOUGH THE world is not worried much about its continued existence, thanks to the interference of an ordinary mortal like George Bush, it is a good idea to ask an individual question to each one of us – what is Bush good for? The question may sound simple enough, but answering the question may demand a little sense of humour and a tinge of cynicism.

The former requirement, sense of humour, is what the world comes to experience as and when Bush makes a statement on international affairs, and the second requirement, cynicism, is what goes into the making of such comments. See some of his comments and suggestions on international affairs.

“The US would help the oil giant Saudi Arabia to protect its oil reserves.” What does the world understand when it listens to such a comment? A comment is made by whom? And what is he commenting on? When was he making the comment? Where does price of oil per barrel stand in the international market?

“We are happy to assist Saudi Arabia to generate nuclear energy.” What does Saudi Arabia need more than this? Are not the Arabs powerful enough now to dictate oil terms with the rest of the world? They are. Still as Bush needs to be good for the world, he is offering a little help to the ’king’.

When it is of Palestine, Bush cannot resist making a comment that ’independent statehood is what is needed to keep peace in this part of the world’. Since the rest of the world is left with lasting peace, thanks to Bush incorporated, and as Iran is staying in where it has always been, now it is time and the same is ripe for Palestine and then Egypt. Again Bush is becoming of some good to the world order.

Closely following the comment that it is Indian middle-class that is eating away the due food shares of the rest of the world, he had come up with yet another comment on Kashmir the other day. “It is time India and Pakistan found a solution to Kashmir issue.” Are we not going to respond to that comment? A brokerage from America would work wonders in bringing peace in the borders.

His West Asian regional tour focussing on peace comes to close this week, he would have made himself good to a lot of communities around the world, and by the time he leaves office not very soon, the world community would, including those bereaved families of thousands of American marines who got killed around the world, record in their respective histories that there was a president in America who had been good, not at keeping the world peaceful but ensuring the rest of the world in pieces and geopolitical regions.

How can mainstream Muslims perceive Bush or the United States as respecting Islam when their overwhelming propaganda machine is producing this torrential flow of anti-Muslim terminology and their overpowering war machine is disintegrating Muslim societies to pre-state age, allegedly to defend the freedom of American people. How could a leader secure his people's freedom when he deprives other peoples of their freedoms!. His global war on terrorism targets "Islamic terrorism" almost exclusively. "Till recently, of the 36 organisations on the U.S. State Department's banned list, 24 were Muslim. The rest were Basque and Irish separatists and leftist groups. There were no Christian, Buddhist or Hindu groups. The State Department also lists 26 countries whose nationals represent an 'elevated security risk' to the U.S. Barring North Korea, all are Muslim-majority countries."
And Bush still can't come to grips with the question of "Why they hate us." Bush's line: "They hate us because of our freedoms."
No Mr. President, they hate you because your administration and its predecessors have been for decades depriving them of their liberty, freedoms, resources and elected governments, in a historic trend that extends from removing an elected leader in Iran in the 1950s because of his nationalizing the oil and replacing him by the Shah, a brutal dictator, to suffocating the Palestinian people to squeeze out the elected Hamas-led government from power in 2006.
Bush's scare tactics aimed at American public should not blur the divide in Bush's WWIII. The battle lines should be redrawn to be between U.S. and Israeli militarism and military occupation and expansion and the liberation movements that were led by nationalists or Pan-Arabists in the 20th century and now are led by Islamists.

Bush's religious terminology is shooting his unreligious war in the legs, antagonizing not only the mainstream Muslims but also the non-Muslim large Christian minority in the midst of their ethnic compatriots because this minority feels threatened by his inciting anti-Muslim propaganda, which creates an explosive antagonistic environment that plays in the hands of the same extremists whom he uses as a scapegoat for his unjust pre-emptive wars.
However, Muslims and especially Arabs are very well aware that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the former USSR have made Islam a useful scapegoat for tightening the US grip on the unipolar world. Books by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations became popular in the west because they promoted the idea that Islam was the main threat to Western "civilization."
They are also aware that this war to establish total and lasting U.S. global hegemony, a sort of modern-day Roman Empire, is spearheaded in the heartland of Muslims and Islam, the Arab world, where all the regimes are targeted sooner or later; it makes no difference whether they are Islamic, Islamist, secular, liberal, or Pan-Arab regimes, monarchies or republics.

And this President had had the rarest reputation of bringing disrepute not only to the US but to the rest of the world too. What, an ordinary mortal like Bush, is good for after all? Good for not a good thing!