Bob George
Proud Member
This is an essay, article, whatever I wrote about the impending threat and worldwide fear of a third world war. I thought some of you might be interested to read it. So here it is...
WORLD WAR III
By Bob George
We, as people of this world, have endured a lot. But our endurance as people of this world has been tested twice in the form of war. The first of these was World War I. It began in 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and ended in 1918 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Our world went to war again in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland and Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. World War II ended in 1945 when Germany surrendered to the British after the death of Adolf Hitler and Japan surrendered to the U.S. after they dropped atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ever since then, there has been a constant fear of a third world war. But now more then ever, it seems our worst fear is being realised.
Following the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers. So naturally, they went to war with each other. The Cold War started in 1947 when U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Truman Doctrine, which committed the U.S. to containing further expansion of Communism. The Soviet Union had a completely polar objective. Their objective was to spread Communism into Northern Asia. The Cold War escalated into the Korean War and Vietnam War. It ended in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin was elected as President of Russia and the Soviet Union was officially declared dissolved. But what led to the fall of the Soviet Union prior to 1991? And what does this have to do with the threat we are facing today of a third world war?
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to save the crumbling Communist regime there. U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorised funding for Afghanistan mujahideen, initially aiding them with $5 million in weaponry. This was later doubled to $10 million. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. He authorised a CIA covert operation to increase funding and supply training to the Afghanistan mujahideen so they could defeat the Soviet Union. The $10 million of weapons the U.S. was already supplying to the Afghans was raised to $500 million. That figure was also matched by Saudi Arabia, making the total $1 billion. The operation was a success and the Soviet Union started to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1987. In correlation with other key events, this operation is credited with leading to the demise of the Soviet Union.
Pressure was put on U.S. President Ronald Reagan to continue funding Afghanistan so that they could build roads, schools, military and establish itself as a civilised country so that the billion dollars in weapons and training they were given would not be put to bad use by a corrupt leadership. Reagan did not support continued funding to Afghanistan as he only considered them to be allies because they were their enemy’s enemy. Now that the Soviet Union had dissolved, Afghanistan was no longer considered a U.S. ally and funding was no longer given to them. Five years later, Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, an extremist Sunni Islamic terrorist organization that originated from Mujahideen groups in the Soviet War in Afghanistan who received weapons and training from the United States of America. Now are you starting to understand how this is all relevant to the threats and fears we face today? If you don’t, it’s all about to become very clear.
Not long after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, a Saudi who worked in cooperation with the U.S. to funnel money and arms to the Mujahideen during the Soviet War in Afghanistan, forged an alliance between his own extremist Sunni Islamic terrorist organization, known as al-Qaeda, with the Taliban. His name was Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden is a member of the wealthy and powerful Bin Laden family who are well connected with the Saudi royal family. Saudi Arabia is very rich in oil. Being well connected and well established, the Bin Laden family controlled a lot of the oil and invested a lot of money in oil companies. One of those companies was Arbursto Energy. A company run by a young U.S. businessman from Texas by the name of George W. Bush.
George W. Bush comes from a family of businessmen with good connections in business, particularly with the Saudis. One of those connections was with the Bin Laden family. They were connected as major investors in the Carlyle group and the Bin Laden family’s own Binladin group. As business partners, the Bin Laden family supported George W. Bush’s business endeavours by investing money in his company, Arbursto Energy. By this time, his father, George H. W. Bush, had moved on from business to politics. He was elected Vice President of the United States under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and President of the United States in 1988. His son failed in his business endeavours and followed his father into politics.
In 1992, George H. W. Bush lost the general election to a Bill Clinton, due to Bush’s unfavourable foreign policy in Iraq, which was ruled by the corrupt dictator Saddam Hussein. Out of office, George Bush Sr. helped his son campaign for Governor of Texas. George W. Bush was elected Governor of Texas in 1994. Meanwhile, U.S. President Bill Clinton was facing threats from al-Qaeda, the terrorist group lead by Osama Bin Laden. In 1998, al-Qaeda was suspected of being responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania. In 1999 and 2000, al-Qaeda was suspected to have ties with the attacks on the U.S. navy ship the U.S.S Cole. President Clinton instructed intelligence units to find a confirmed link between al-Qaeda and these attacks so he could send troops to Afghanistan with a seek-and-destroy mission to find Osama Bin Laden. He held regular meeting on al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden up until the end of his second term, which under constitutional law was the end of his presidency.
In 2000, George W. Bush ran as a candidate for President with the Republican Party on the policies of regime change in Iraq, tax breaks for all and compassionate conservativism. He won the nomination after a competitive and controversial primary contest with opponent John McCain. The Democratic nominee was U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Vice-President, Al Gore. The general election was very tight and could not be determined until the last state was counted, which was Florida. Florida, governed by George W. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush, was the cause of much controversy. Major news networks initially called Florida for Al Gore and therefore announced him President Elect. But minutes later, George W. Bush’s cousin John Ellis, who worked for Fox News, called Florida for Bush. Other networks followed suit and retracted their earlier reports that called Florida, and the general election, for Al Gore. The controversy surrounding the results of Florida led to a recount. Two initial recounts went to Bush but the outcome of a third recount was tied up in courts for a month until reaching the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled out a third recount and stopped an ordered statewide hand recount. Bush ended up winning 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266 votes. Making him President Elect. But Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million vote, making Bush on of the few President’s elected without the majority of the popular vote.
U.S. President George W. Bush was met with controversy and criticism from the day of his Inauguration. As his motorcade drove up to White House for his Inauguration, it was pelted with eggs thrown by protestors holding up signs calling Bush a “cheat” and labeling the election just passed a “stolen election”. This was just the beginning of a very rough first year as President for George W. Bush. Within months of taking office, he retreated back to Texas to fish, hunt and spend time with his family and animals on the Bush ranch. Although this was called out by the media as a vacation, Bush insisted he was still working via telephone and fax and getting as much work done as he would if he was actually in Washington. But obviously he wasn’t working hard enough as members of staff testified to the 9/11 commission that he did not hold any meetings on al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden even after being handed a classified document labeled “Osama Bin Laden determined to attack within the United States”. I suppose he didn’t realize the seriousness of that threat. Well he’d come to realize it on September 11, 2001.
The day after his father met with the Bin Laden family in Washington for an investment meeting for the joint interests of the Binladin and Carlyle group, U.S. President George W. Bush visited an elementary school in Florida. He had just arrived at the elementary school when Presidential Advisor Karl Rove alerted him that a plane had just crashed in to the North Tower of the World Trade Center ten minutes ago. He carried on with his scheduled visit and entered a classroom of young children to sit with them and read a story. The story was titled, “My Pet Goat”. The President began reading the story to the children at 9:03AM; seventeen minutes after the plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Two minutes later, Bush’s Chief of Staff interrupts the classroom and whispers in Bush’s ear, “a second plane hit the second tower. The nation is under attack”. Bush continued to read to the children. Ten minutes later he finally leaves the classroom to address the situation.
Within hours of the attack, Osama Bin Laden was named as the prime suspect. All flights in and out of the country were shut down except for authorized flights to transport the Bin Laden family, who were in the U.S. for an investment meeting with George H. W. Bush, back to Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Laden initially denied the allegations that he was responsible for the attacks. But a video found days later showed Osama Bin Laden talking about the attacks and taking credit for them. Bush addressed Congress on September 20 where he confirmed Osama Bin Laden as being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and announced the War on Terror, a global effort by the U.S. and its allies to combat terrorism coming out the Middle East. The objectives of the War on Terror were to remove al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. The next day, the Taliban offered to hand Osama Bin Laden over to the U.S. if they could provide evidence that he was responsible for 9/11. The U.S. rejected this offer as an insufficient public relations ploy and on October 7, they, along with allies including Great Britain and Australia, initiated military action in Afghanistan. By November 13, the Taliban had withdrawn from the Afghani capital of Kabul. By early 2002, al-Qaeda had received a serious blow to its operational capacity. But nevertheless, a significant Taliban insurgency remained in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden remained at large.
With Osama Bin Laden at large and hard to track down, the U.S. started suspecting he was receiving asylum from Iraq, controlled by the evil dictator, Saddam Hussein. In November 2002, the 9/11 commission was set up by U.S. President George W. Bush to thoroughly investigate the responsibility of 9/11, the physicality of how the towers collapsed and if there are any operational relations between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Central intelligence also investigated the alleged link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. In the initial stages of the War on Terror, the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, held a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld where he insisted that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Cheney and Rumsfeld, not convinced by Tenet’s findings, initiated a secret program to reexamine the evidence and investigate Iraq’s weapons development. Bush then sought authorization to invade Iraq based on the premise that they failed to comply with the UN’s weapons inspectors and they may be concealing weapons of mass destruction. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution in October 2002. In January 2003, during his State of the Union address, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the invasion of Iraq and thus fulfilled his campaign promise.
The Iraq War began on March 20 in 2003. As the months went by it was quickly realized that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush changed his objective from finding weapons of mass destruction to overthrowing the Baathist government and removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq so he could be tried and convicted for war crimes. Saddam Hussein was captured on December 13, 2003, met with celebration and congratulations from both sides. But the war in Iraq did not stop there. Saddam’s leadership had to be replaced. The Coalition Provisional Authority governed Iraq until power was transferred over to the Iraqi Interim Government in July 2004. A government was democratically elected by Iraq in October 2005. But still, the war in Iraq did not stop there. The Iraqi Insurgency formed an armed resistance against the U.S.-led Coalition and the newly formed Iraqi government. Many Iraqis fled the country to escape the conflict between the Insurgency and the Coalition. There are now millions of Iraqi refugees scattered throughout surrounding countries. The problems in Iraq were far from over, but the U.S. presence in Iraq just seemed to be making everything worse. To date, over one million people have died in the Iraq war, six hundred thousand of them being Iraqis. And according to the UN, over five million Iraqi refugees are scattered around surrounding countries.
Now the U.S. has changed its focus to Iran, who has failed to comply with UN weapon inspectors and may be concealing nuclear weapons. Sound familiar? That is the same reason Bush gave to congress when he wanted to invade Iraq. But Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. That mistake cost one million deaths. Is the same mistake about to be made again? Iran is a similar situation to Iraq was when the U.S. invaded it. Iran is led by a corrupt leader who, because of his failure to comply with UN weapon inspectors, is suspected of concealing weapons of mass destruction. U.S. President George W. Bush said it best. “There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas so it's probably in Tennessee. It says, fool me once, shame on..... shame on you..... If you fool me you can't get fooled again.” I couldn't have said it better myself.
What we now know as World War I was called the European War at the time it was fought. We could be in the midst of World War III right now without even knowing it. The events since the 9/11 attacks could be looked back on in history books as the third world war. But if we aren’t in the middle of World War III right now, then you can bet it’s about to begin. If the U.S. invades Iran, history’s mistakes will be repeated and the third world war will begin. If Iran does in fact have nuclear weapons, the U.S. will make a critical error in invading their country. Iran’s number one target is Israel. They will attack Israel with nuclear weaponry if provoked. The U.S. and its allies will come to the aide of Israel. Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jordan will be united by their hatred for the Kafir (i.e. infidels, non-Arabs i.e. Israel and the U.S.-led coalition). A war will break out between the Kafir and the Mujahideen and World War III will be in full effect. On the night of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush wrote in his journal "the pearl harbour of the 21st century happened today". We all know what Pearl Harbour led to. History seems to be repeating itself. Let’s just hope we, as people of this world, can prevent it before we foolishly repeat the mistakes of our past and engage in a third world war.
© Bob George, 2008
__________________
My closing thoughts? Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know how to heal the world. I don't know enough. But I do know one thing. Usually, if there are many problems that can all be traced back to the same bigger problem, then solving that bigger problem is the simplest solution to solve all of the other problems that stem from it. As I said, I don't know everything. But it seems to me that all the Mid-East problems stem from the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. That's where the Middle Eastern countries' anger towards to US and its allies stems from anyway. For years, the US has been involved in supporting Israel. I believe this to be counter-productive. Nothing can be gained from supporting one side and one side only. What better way to unite everyone else against a common enemy? If the US is genuinely interested in world peace and solving the Mid-East conflicts, then it needs to stop being one sided and do what's in the best interests of both parties involved. The Israelis and the Arabs. The solution is simple in my estimation. Give the people what the want. And what they want is to divide the West Bank and Gaza Strip into two states. One Arab and one Israeli. Done. It's not necessarily a permanent fix, but it's more productive towards gaining peace and calm in that area then threatening countries, who have nuclear weapons at their disposals, with military action and invading other countries that don't even have weapons to that scale at all.
I guess the last thing I will say on this is vote Obama. I didn't want to make this about the 2008 US election. Because that's not what this article was all about and I didn't want people to think it was all just building up to a plug for Obama. But Barack Obama is the only US presidential candidate, beside the no-chancer Ralph Nader, who has his head on straight when it comes to the Mid-East conflicts. In the past he's supported rights for Palestinians and he supports a two-state solution. I urge US voters who are perhaps undecided to vote for Obama for these reasons. I urge US voters who would like Obama to be President, but not enough to make them get and vote, to do exactly that. Get out and vote. And lastly I urge US voters who plan on voting for McCain to reconsider. Consider that the election is not between McCain and Obama, but war and peace. Easing the Mid-East conflicts will start a domino effect that will solve a lot of problems we face in the world today with oil prices, the ecomony and terrorism. So vote for the candidate who supports a more permanent fix in the Middle East than the same old short-term fixes that were tried and failed by the Bush administration. So what's it going to be? War or peace?
WORLD WAR III
By Bob George
We, as people of this world, have endured a lot. But our endurance as people of this world has been tested twice in the form of war. The first of these was World War I. It began in 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and ended in 1918 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Our world went to war again in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland and Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. World War II ended in 1945 when Germany surrendered to the British after the death of Adolf Hitler and Japan surrendered to the U.S. after they dropped atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ever since then, there has been a constant fear of a third world war. But now more then ever, it seems our worst fear is being realised.
Following the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers. So naturally, they went to war with each other. The Cold War started in 1947 when U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Truman Doctrine, which committed the U.S. to containing further expansion of Communism. The Soviet Union had a completely polar objective. Their objective was to spread Communism into Northern Asia. The Cold War escalated into the Korean War and Vietnam War. It ended in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin was elected as President of Russia and the Soviet Union was officially declared dissolved. But what led to the fall of the Soviet Union prior to 1991? And what does this have to do with the threat we are facing today of a third world war?
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to save the crumbling Communist regime there. U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorised funding for Afghanistan mujahideen, initially aiding them with $5 million in weaponry. This was later doubled to $10 million. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. He authorised a CIA covert operation to increase funding and supply training to the Afghanistan mujahideen so they could defeat the Soviet Union. The $10 million of weapons the U.S. was already supplying to the Afghans was raised to $500 million. That figure was also matched by Saudi Arabia, making the total $1 billion. The operation was a success and the Soviet Union started to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1987. In correlation with other key events, this operation is credited with leading to the demise of the Soviet Union.
Pressure was put on U.S. President Ronald Reagan to continue funding Afghanistan so that they could build roads, schools, military and establish itself as a civilised country so that the billion dollars in weapons and training they were given would not be put to bad use by a corrupt leadership. Reagan did not support continued funding to Afghanistan as he only considered them to be allies because they were their enemy’s enemy. Now that the Soviet Union had dissolved, Afghanistan was no longer considered a U.S. ally and funding was no longer given to them. Five years later, Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, an extremist Sunni Islamic terrorist organization that originated from Mujahideen groups in the Soviet War in Afghanistan who received weapons and training from the United States of America. Now are you starting to understand how this is all relevant to the threats and fears we face today? If you don’t, it’s all about to become very clear.
Not long after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, a Saudi who worked in cooperation with the U.S. to funnel money and arms to the Mujahideen during the Soviet War in Afghanistan, forged an alliance between his own extremist Sunni Islamic terrorist organization, known as al-Qaeda, with the Taliban. His name was Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden is a member of the wealthy and powerful Bin Laden family who are well connected with the Saudi royal family. Saudi Arabia is very rich in oil. Being well connected and well established, the Bin Laden family controlled a lot of the oil and invested a lot of money in oil companies. One of those companies was Arbursto Energy. A company run by a young U.S. businessman from Texas by the name of George W. Bush.
George W. Bush comes from a family of businessmen with good connections in business, particularly with the Saudis. One of those connections was with the Bin Laden family. They were connected as major investors in the Carlyle group and the Bin Laden family’s own Binladin group. As business partners, the Bin Laden family supported George W. Bush’s business endeavours by investing money in his company, Arbursto Energy. By this time, his father, George H. W. Bush, had moved on from business to politics. He was elected Vice President of the United States under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and President of the United States in 1988. His son failed in his business endeavours and followed his father into politics.
In 1992, George H. W. Bush lost the general election to a Bill Clinton, due to Bush’s unfavourable foreign policy in Iraq, which was ruled by the corrupt dictator Saddam Hussein. Out of office, George Bush Sr. helped his son campaign for Governor of Texas. George W. Bush was elected Governor of Texas in 1994. Meanwhile, U.S. President Bill Clinton was facing threats from al-Qaeda, the terrorist group lead by Osama Bin Laden. In 1998, al-Qaeda was suspected of being responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania. In 1999 and 2000, al-Qaeda was suspected to have ties with the attacks on the U.S. navy ship the U.S.S Cole. President Clinton instructed intelligence units to find a confirmed link between al-Qaeda and these attacks so he could send troops to Afghanistan with a seek-and-destroy mission to find Osama Bin Laden. He held regular meeting on al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden up until the end of his second term, which under constitutional law was the end of his presidency.
In 2000, George W. Bush ran as a candidate for President with the Republican Party on the policies of regime change in Iraq, tax breaks for all and compassionate conservativism. He won the nomination after a competitive and controversial primary contest with opponent John McCain. The Democratic nominee was U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Vice-President, Al Gore. The general election was very tight and could not be determined until the last state was counted, which was Florida. Florida, governed by George W. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush, was the cause of much controversy. Major news networks initially called Florida for Al Gore and therefore announced him President Elect. But minutes later, George W. Bush’s cousin John Ellis, who worked for Fox News, called Florida for Bush. Other networks followed suit and retracted their earlier reports that called Florida, and the general election, for Al Gore. The controversy surrounding the results of Florida led to a recount. Two initial recounts went to Bush but the outcome of a third recount was tied up in courts for a month until reaching the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled out a third recount and stopped an ordered statewide hand recount. Bush ended up winning 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266 votes. Making him President Elect. But Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million vote, making Bush on of the few President’s elected without the majority of the popular vote.
U.S. President George W. Bush was met with controversy and criticism from the day of his Inauguration. As his motorcade drove up to White House for his Inauguration, it was pelted with eggs thrown by protestors holding up signs calling Bush a “cheat” and labeling the election just passed a “stolen election”. This was just the beginning of a very rough first year as President for George W. Bush. Within months of taking office, he retreated back to Texas to fish, hunt and spend time with his family and animals on the Bush ranch. Although this was called out by the media as a vacation, Bush insisted he was still working via telephone and fax and getting as much work done as he would if he was actually in Washington. But obviously he wasn’t working hard enough as members of staff testified to the 9/11 commission that he did not hold any meetings on al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden even after being handed a classified document labeled “Osama Bin Laden determined to attack within the United States”. I suppose he didn’t realize the seriousness of that threat. Well he’d come to realize it on September 11, 2001.
The day after his father met with the Bin Laden family in Washington for an investment meeting for the joint interests of the Binladin and Carlyle group, U.S. President George W. Bush visited an elementary school in Florida. He had just arrived at the elementary school when Presidential Advisor Karl Rove alerted him that a plane had just crashed in to the North Tower of the World Trade Center ten minutes ago. He carried on with his scheduled visit and entered a classroom of young children to sit with them and read a story. The story was titled, “My Pet Goat”. The President began reading the story to the children at 9:03AM; seventeen minutes after the plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Two minutes later, Bush’s Chief of Staff interrupts the classroom and whispers in Bush’s ear, “a second plane hit the second tower. The nation is under attack”. Bush continued to read to the children. Ten minutes later he finally leaves the classroom to address the situation.
Within hours of the attack, Osama Bin Laden was named as the prime suspect. All flights in and out of the country were shut down except for authorized flights to transport the Bin Laden family, who were in the U.S. for an investment meeting with George H. W. Bush, back to Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Laden initially denied the allegations that he was responsible for the attacks. But a video found days later showed Osama Bin Laden talking about the attacks and taking credit for them. Bush addressed Congress on September 20 where he confirmed Osama Bin Laden as being responsible for the 9/11 attacks and announced the War on Terror, a global effort by the U.S. and its allies to combat terrorism coming out the Middle East. The objectives of the War on Terror were to remove al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. The next day, the Taliban offered to hand Osama Bin Laden over to the U.S. if they could provide evidence that he was responsible for 9/11. The U.S. rejected this offer as an insufficient public relations ploy and on October 7, they, along with allies including Great Britain and Australia, initiated military action in Afghanistan. By November 13, the Taliban had withdrawn from the Afghani capital of Kabul. By early 2002, al-Qaeda had received a serious blow to its operational capacity. But nevertheless, a significant Taliban insurgency remained in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden remained at large.
With Osama Bin Laden at large and hard to track down, the U.S. started suspecting he was receiving asylum from Iraq, controlled by the evil dictator, Saddam Hussein. In November 2002, the 9/11 commission was set up by U.S. President George W. Bush to thoroughly investigate the responsibility of 9/11, the physicality of how the towers collapsed and if there are any operational relations between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Central intelligence also investigated the alleged link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. In the initial stages of the War on Terror, the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, held a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld where he insisted that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Cheney and Rumsfeld, not convinced by Tenet’s findings, initiated a secret program to reexamine the evidence and investigate Iraq’s weapons development. Bush then sought authorization to invade Iraq based on the premise that they failed to comply with the UN’s weapons inspectors and they may be concealing weapons of mass destruction. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution in October 2002. In January 2003, during his State of the Union address, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the invasion of Iraq and thus fulfilled his campaign promise.
The Iraq War began on March 20 in 2003. As the months went by it was quickly realized that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush changed his objective from finding weapons of mass destruction to overthrowing the Baathist government and removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq so he could be tried and convicted for war crimes. Saddam Hussein was captured on December 13, 2003, met with celebration and congratulations from both sides. But the war in Iraq did not stop there. Saddam’s leadership had to be replaced. The Coalition Provisional Authority governed Iraq until power was transferred over to the Iraqi Interim Government in July 2004. A government was democratically elected by Iraq in October 2005. But still, the war in Iraq did not stop there. The Iraqi Insurgency formed an armed resistance against the U.S.-led Coalition and the newly formed Iraqi government. Many Iraqis fled the country to escape the conflict between the Insurgency and the Coalition. There are now millions of Iraqi refugees scattered throughout surrounding countries. The problems in Iraq were far from over, but the U.S. presence in Iraq just seemed to be making everything worse. To date, over one million people have died in the Iraq war, six hundred thousand of them being Iraqis. And according to the UN, over five million Iraqi refugees are scattered around surrounding countries.
Now the U.S. has changed its focus to Iran, who has failed to comply with UN weapon inspectors and may be concealing nuclear weapons. Sound familiar? That is the same reason Bush gave to congress when he wanted to invade Iraq. But Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. That mistake cost one million deaths. Is the same mistake about to be made again? Iran is a similar situation to Iraq was when the U.S. invaded it. Iran is led by a corrupt leader who, because of his failure to comply with UN weapon inspectors, is suspected of concealing weapons of mass destruction. U.S. President George W. Bush said it best. “There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas so it's probably in Tennessee. It says, fool me once, shame on..... shame on you..... If you fool me you can't get fooled again.” I couldn't have said it better myself.
What we now know as World War I was called the European War at the time it was fought. We could be in the midst of World War III right now without even knowing it. The events since the 9/11 attacks could be looked back on in history books as the third world war. But if we aren’t in the middle of World War III right now, then you can bet it’s about to begin. If the U.S. invades Iran, history’s mistakes will be repeated and the third world war will begin. If Iran does in fact have nuclear weapons, the U.S. will make a critical error in invading their country. Iran’s number one target is Israel. They will attack Israel with nuclear weaponry if provoked. The U.S. and its allies will come to the aide of Israel. Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jordan will be united by their hatred for the Kafir (i.e. infidels, non-Arabs i.e. Israel and the U.S.-led coalition). A war will break out between the Kafir and the Mujahideen and World War III will be in full effect. On the night of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush wrote in his journal "the pearl harbour of the 21st century happened today". We all know what Pearl Harbour led to. History seems to be repeating itself. Let’s just hope we, as people of this world, can prevent it before we foolishly repeat the mistakes of our past and engage in a third world war.
© Bob George, 2008
__________________
My closing thoughts? Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know how to heal the world. I don't know enough. But I do know one thing. Usually, if there are many problems that can all be traced back to the same bigger problem, then solving that bigger problem is the simplest solution to solve all of the other problems that stem from it. As I said, I don't know everything. But it seems to me that all the Mid-East problems stem from the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. That's where the Middle Eastern countries' anger towards to US and its allies stems from anyway. For years, the US has been involved in supporting Israel. I believe this to be counter-productive. Nothing can be gained from supporting one side and one side only. What better way to unite everyone else against a common enemy? If the US is genuinely interested in world peace and solving the Mid-East conflicts, then it needs to stop being one sided and do what's in the best interests of both parties involved. The Israelis and the Arabs. The solution is simple in my estimation. Give the people what the want. And what they want is to divide the West Bank and Gaza Strip into two states. One Arab and one Israeli. Done. It's not necessarily a permanent fix, but it's more productive towards gaining peace and calm in that area then threatening countries, who have nuclear weapons at their disposals, with military action and invading other countries that don't even have weapons to that scale at all.
I guess the last thing I will say on this is vote Obama. I didn't want to make this about the 2008 US election. Because that's not what this article was all about and I didn't want people to think it was all just building up to a plug for Obama. But Barack Obama is the only US presidential candidate, beside the no-chancer Ralph Nader, who has his head on straight when it comes to the Mid-East conflicts. In the past he's supported rights for Palestinians and he supports a two-state solution. I urge US voters who are perhaps undecided to vote for Obama for these reasons. I urge US voters who would like Obama to be President, but not enough to make them get and vote, to do exactly that. Get out and vote. And lastly I urge US voters who plan on voting for McCain to reconsider. Consider that the election is not between McCain and Obama, but war and peace. Easing the Mid-East conflicts will start a domino effect that will solve a lot of problems we face in the world today with oil prices, the ecomony and terrorism. So vote for the candidate who supports a more permanent fix in the Middle East than the same old short-term fixes that were tried and failed by the Bush administration. So what's it going to be? War or peace?
