Embarrassed to be an American

As I watch the clock tick on the lives of thousands of Iraqi citizens, I get an overwhelming feeling of nausea as the media reports this as if it were a sporting event.  MSNBC and CNN have their countdown clocks on one segment of the screen while live footage of the ominous calm that settles over the city of Baghdad rest backdrop.  How can one of sound mind be proud of a nation that is about to engage in an unprovoked usurpation of a land under the auspices of liberation?  This so-called war with Iraq is the culmination of decades of the blind American masses being led by madmen.  This particular event is highlighted due to the obvious inadequacies of those attempting to make a case for war.  Yet Americans decided to think not with their intelligences but with their unsubstantiated passions and reckless emotions.

This war is being portrayed by the media almost like a prize fight.  It is amazing the amount of dehumanizing that has taken place at the supposedly highest echelons of American society.  How can we as American be awed and mesmerized by the sight of bombs littering the Iraqi landscape and call ourselves a moral authority?   As President Bush has stated innumerable times this is a defining moment.  However, this does not define America as being a beacon of hope for the light of democracy or defenders of peace and justice.  This illustrates the degeneration of so-called American “values” to that of an anthromorphic species that is paranoid by the sight of his own shadow.

As we engage in this process of “coercive liberation” one can’t help but think of the desperate cries for freedom and independence from Palestinians, that have perpetually fallen on the deaf ears of the American plutocracy.  Each charge that has been weighed against Saddam Hussein and his regime pale in comparison to the abhorrent acts of violence and repression that the Israeli government has waged against a seemingly defenseless Palestinian population.  So the question arises, how can the U.S. legitimately claim that its foreign policy has not contributed to the phenomenon of global “terrorism.”  After the calamities of 9/11, Americans were essentially told that Arabs and Muslims hate us because we are a free and peace loving country.  That may suffice to grade schoolers, but one would think that an educated population would ferociously challenge such an overly mundane and simplistic explanation.  However, a great deal of Americans bought that pathetic explanation and it has undoubtedly play tremendous role in the transference of animosity from terrorists to the ultimate American hater Saddam Hussein.

I understand that my views may seem unpatriotic.  Emerson, said that “patriotism is a virtue of the vicious” and with these madmen in the White House leading the blind into perpetual war, that statement is immeasurable in its substance.  American primacy and its arrogance of power are going to lead to destructive national and global implications unless Americans wake up and realize that they are being hoodwinked.

Mr. Girard Newkirk contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from North Carolina, USA. He writes on most of the issues regarding the Middle East, religion and its tremendous impact on the world as a Political Theorist.