By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
I had wanted to make this announcement after the war… but I had no idea that as the years go by, I will not be hearing the words — After the War — any time soon.

According to former President George W. Bush, the United States did not declare war against Iraq in 2003 because he did not need to seek authorization. His reasoning: because the first Iraq war had never ended. That means that since Jan 17, 1991, the United States has been in a continuous state of war. Before the war, then, means Jan 16, 1991… This means that there are college students alive today who have not known a day without war…

Even if we only counted since 2001, nine years is a long time to be at war, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq… and a few other countries, with prospects for a few more. This also means that for nearly the past ten years, there hasn’t been a day in which people weren’t dying because of our so-called wars…

Many if not most people envisioned hearing the words — After the War — soon after President Barack Obama was elected. Such was not the case. What a disappointment. Truly, the disappointment has been with ourselves — the people — with our inability to stop the criminal and imperial pursuit of permanent worldwide war… disappointment with our inability — as peoples — to distinguish between truth and permanent lies and arrogance as a form of government and also the failure to bring anyone to legally account for the unprecedented crimes of the previous eight years.

I’ve been writing since 1972 (La Gente Newspaper UCLA) and I’ve been writing columns since 1984, beginning with Eastern Group Publications and La Opinion in L.A. (I actually began my column writing at Lowrider Magazine in the late 1970s).

As a writing team, my wife (Patrisia Gonzales) and I began writing joint columns since March of 1994 through Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate. For the past few years, Patrisia’s Patzin column has been in hiatus. During the same time period, I’ve been writing for New America Media.

It is now time for Column of the Americas to also go into hiatus, but not before one last column at the end of this month of March.

This does not mean that I, or we, will stop writing. Quite the opposite. Patzin will come back. I’m not so sure about Column of the Americas. What I’m actually quitting is deadline writing. I may write columns whenever I see a need. In a nation that believes the United States has the right to wage permanent war, there will always be a need. Thus, I will continue to write an occasional column, just not deadline based. And yes, I envision the day when I will return to writing a weekly nationally syndicated column in newspapers and other media across the country. Just when that might be, I’m not quite sure, but it could be between 2-5 years.

In the meantime, there are two other kinds of writing that will take precedence for me over the next several years.

Because both of us now teach at the University of Arizona, both of us have to finish several books per our academic research. Thus, you should see several books on traditional birthing and traditional medicine from Patrisia and a book on the [cultural] history of maiz, and a book on origins and migrations from me in the next several years.

But even more exciting, for me at least, is that in the next few years, I will be writing and publishing mostly Huhuetlahtolli (ancient guidances) — and similar kinds of writings. Examples include: Quetzalcoatl, the Ants and the Gift of Maiz … and a forthcoming story on In Lak Ech, Panche Be and Hunab Ku… The material comes from the sum total of all of my work since the early 1970s, but particularly materials gathered from since when I embarked on getting my PhD. More importantly, it comes from guidances from elders going back even further, including from my own parents and other relatives, neiighbors and friends since the 1950s.

I don’t say goodbye because as I said, there will be one more column, and we both will continue our writing. Thanks always for the dialogue and the collaborations that we’ve had and enjoyed during the past generation. Always feel free to write or call and please stay in contact as we are not going away.

Gracias — Thank you — Tlazocamati

Dr. Cintli… & Dr. Patzin
Dr. Cintli: XColumn@gmail.com Dr. Patzin: Patzin@gmail.com
520-626-0824

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

   Columnist – John Sammon
I vividly recall John F. Kennedy just a month before his assassination telling Walter Cronkite something to the effect that, “what is great about this country is, that we don’t have to import our way of life onto other countries by the use of force.”

This was just moments before he said what had to be the most chilling of all ironies, that “in Vietnam, we can’t fight their war for them. We can help them, but they have to do the fighting.” In light of what eventually happened, it makes you sick.

Now comes a Newsweek Magazine cover-page headline trumpeting “Victory at Last, The Emergence of a Democratic Iraq.” The headline makes me sick.

Iraq is a war crime. A genocide. Initiated under false pretenses. A million-and-a-half Iraqis were killed in this obscenity, not to mention several-thousand Americans. Here are ten reasons why Newsweek is wrong:

  1.   Whatever Iraq is, right now, at this moment, is only because it’s backed up with American guns. Pull American troops out, and what have you got? A mystery. The notion that once American troops pull out the puppet regime we set up will be “Democratic,” and that once we pull out the country will remain peaceful, is presumed and wishful thinking at best, downright delusional at worst.

  2.   To maintain control in Iraq, we have to stay, and rule it as a colony like Puerto Rico.

  3.   We killed 1.5 million Iraqis, most of them innocent people including women and children, in a war that was launched to take out weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. As it became clear they didn’t exist, the government kept changing the reasons for the war, from a crusade to end violence in Iraq, to a noble exercise to establish Democracy. This ignored the reality; the war was planned long before 9-11 as a regime change to get rid of a troublesome dictator we had formerly befriended, supplied and encouraged, and to grab his oil.

  4.   If dishonesty and stupidity don’t mean anything to you, you won’t mind the above.

  5.   Iraq was a dangerous advancement in the power of the “Imperial Presidency” and a diminution in the influence of Congress and the American people. The irony is the war was led by the Republican Party, the party that in the past was renowned for its mythologizing the favoring of small government, and non-intervention in the entangling affairs of other countries. The opposite is true.

  6.   What the above means is that whereas America, even though it often didn’t do so in practice in the past, at least paid lip-service to the desirability of going to war only in defense. Instead, it now views war as a casual foreign policy tool. Any small, poor country whose leadership we don’t like for reasons true or false can be attacked and a million of its people killed. The American people and the Congress will go along with it whether it’s right or wrong. The appropriate justifications will always be made.

  7.   For example, let’s attack Cuba, a thorn-in-the-side of presidential administrations since 1960. It’s un-Democratic. Let’s kill a million Cubans in a war we start, and set up a friendly puppet regime that reinstates Mafia gambling. We can start the war by saying they were stockpiling secret weapons and then change the justification later when it’s proven otherwise.

  8.   Iraq proves that American Democracy is vulnerable, to a scheming, lying, crooked demagogue and his henchmen. We saw in Iraq, water-boarding torture of prisoners held without trial in secret camps in foreign countries, ignoring the Geneva Convention and illegal wire-tap spying of American citizens. It’s very possible that in the near future, with another unscrupulous president, if you’re a critic of the government, there could be a knock on your door at midnight, and you disappear.

  9.   Iraq was proof that in the end, Senator Joe McCarthy was the heart and soul of the real America, and that his chicanery was vindicated. It will be a country in which all you have to do to those with whom you disagree is to question their loyalty and brand them subversives. We have learned nothing from past mistakes. That comes with the corruption of unlimited power.

10.   Establishing Democracy by the use of force in an attack initiated by the Democracy, is not Democracy. It’s rather a Pseudo-Demo-Fascist-Hierarchy hybrid, in which the alleged benefits of freedom are enforced at the point of a gun, not choice, the freedom of which is central to the definition of a Democracy. In other words, an oxy-moron promoted by morons.

ALL OF THIS IS A VICTORY TO NEWSWEEK!

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

VIDEO: Bill O’Reilly of the “The O’Garbage Factor” trying hard to justify George Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq!

Osama Bin O’Reilly: ‘Obama sincerely believes‘ in health care reform just like ‘Bush sincerely believed Saddam‘ was a ‘threat’ LOL!

False!!

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

   By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
The images from Haiti compel us to look at the mirror and ask ourselves, if we have a heart and a face? What we see compels us to ask if we are the human beings that we profess to be. The answer moves us to act.

As Haiti bleeds, we don’t ask for proof of their humanity; we feel it.

We do not ask if we are related; we know it. As Haiti bleeds, we do not ask for their citizenship nor do we ask their religion. We… we realize that the world is we and we have become one. And so their children are our children and their elders are our elders. And all nations open up their borders.

As Haiti bleeds, we all open up our hearts. Celebrities freely lend their names, their words, their music and songs and we respond by sending ten dollars via a text message. Is that enough? Can we do more than simply send some bucks for a tax-break? Can we give of ourselves?

Can we give blood? Indeed, some do more.

Yet, deep down, we all know that no matter how much is raised, it won’t be enough. On the disaster scale, Haiti is 100 times Katrina.

Haiti is in danger of becoming one gigantic and permanent undignified Sally Struthers plea for assistance. Haiti does not need pity; it needs to be rebuilt. $100 million from the U.S. government and assorted charities will not suffice (This is 1,000 times less than the U.S. has spent on its current wars). Beyond that, Haiti needs to be brought into the family of nations, with dignity and a clear path to self-determination and self-reliance.

Haiti’s tragedy was not borne of a natural disaster; it was a tragedy before the quake. The U.S. imperial footprint is all over Haiti’s corridors of power and thus it cannot return to what it was. But that’s a narrative that will have to be written by Haitians, which may include the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide – Haiti’s first democratically elected president that has been ousted several times by U.S.-supported forces.

The other narrative that Haiti has already changed is that mirror that the rest of the world now wakes up to each morning.

Haiti’s Heavy Burden

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We now know that when Haiti bleeds, we too bleed. Perhaps people will come to understand that about Afghanistan and Iraq too. The people there daily bleed, not because of earthquakes or hurricanes, but because something has happened to dull U.S. minds and eyes. Something has prevented us from seeing our true hearts and our true faces. It is a smoking mirror. It is what has permitted illegal, immoral, senseless, costly and bloody wars to be waged in our names to the tune of over $1 trillion. And that’s but the short-term financial cost.

For at least a decade, U.S. bombs have been dropped all over those two nations with our names inscribed upon them. Our silence permits the carnage. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed and millions have been displaced. Yet, we don’t have an actual count because the U.S. government doesn’t even bother; this is the meaning of dehumanization. As far as this government is concerned, everyone there is a potential enemy, a terrorist or collateral damage. And we all accept their deaths and this generalized and permanent war as necessary to maintain “our freedoms” and “our safety.”

Most of us know better, yet we’ve grown accustomed to looking the other way. Perhaps it is war fatigue. Most assuredly, there is no urgency, nor are there mass appeals to stop this destruction. If we protest the illegality and immorality of these wars, we are told that they are yesterday’s wars or yesterday’s news. But they are being fought today and tomorrow. But already, today and tomorrow is Yemen and Pakistan, Somalia and the Sudan. Possibly even Cuba and Venezuela.

We have found our collective humanity in Haiti and it now compels us to remove that smoke from our mirrors. It compels us to act, not just in Haiti and not just abroad, but even at home.

Perhaps we are not far off from the day when people will also feel compelled to demand from the U.S. government to put a halt to its draconian, anti-immigrant policies that contribute to the killing fields along the U.S. Mexico border. In this decade, more than five thousand corpses have turned up in the mountains and desert, yet where are the mass appeals? Where is our humanity?

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

   By: Prof. Mahfuz Chowdhury
America has often fought the wrong war, at the wrong time, and against the wrong people. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan would seem to fall into such categories. Although, apart from the human tragedy, the enormous economic fallout of the Vietnam War might be imagined, the full outcome of the Iraq war must be awaited as it is not over yet. However, the debate on the launch of the Afghan war has only begun and it would take many more years to assess the damage, assuming the war is not going to end anytime soon. This war is also affecting neighboring Pakistan and creating a great controversy in terms of its economic cost and more importantly about whether it is winnable. Opinions vary, but those who doubt that the war could be won seem to be gaining ground.

Here are some of their arguments. Afghanistan was such a sectarian and unmanageable country that super powers like the Soviets and earlier the British failed to control it. This country has not changed much since those days. The enemy that America is fighting in Afghanistan is elusive and the situation on the battleground itself is very erratic and unpredictable. The daily news of horrors such as the recent killings of the chief CIA operative including 6 other colleagues in Afghanistan, and the unprecedented and ever increasing human carnage in neighboring Pakistan should provide some important clues. In fact, the escalating conflict and mayhem in Pakistan, a nuclear country, is now adding to the genuine fear that its nuclear weapons are not safe in the hands of its government.

Is America’s goal to contain terrorism or to oppose organized Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan? If the fight is to contain fundamentalism, winning this war in Afghanistan alone is not likely to achieve it. The skeptics should only look at the unrelenting and vicious terrorist activities as well as the outright defiance that is spreading not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and many other countries, including America itself. (Note the recent shooting rampage by an American army psychiatrist in Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives plus many more injuries). Clearly, there are innumerable signs that the conflict is spreading. Indeed, after the failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing plot on a flight from Amsterdam, the U.S. government imposed intense screening of passengers at airports worldwide from 14 terror suspect nations. America had thought that it had found a willing partner in the Yemeni government that would support the deployment of American troops to fight the rising Islamic militants there. But it has been reported that the government of Yemen has rebuffed the idea for fear of losing popular support.

Religious fundamentalism is nothing new as it has been in existence since the birth of religion itself. The main theme of every religion was supposed to guide people to lead a noble life. Yet human society has experienced enormous oppression, suppression, violence, crime, brutality, fatality, and war in the name of religion. No religion is immune from the appeal of fundamentalism, and fundamentalist practices are still very much in existence, though subtly in some cases and violently in others. Without a doubt, Muslims have had their share of religious violence, and the present situation is no different. But to blame only Muslims for what is happening now would be morally wrong. How could one justify what Jews are doing to Muslims in the Middle East? Does not anyone see how Israel is provoking the Muslims?

Every heinous act of terrorism is a serious crime, and it must never be condoned under any circumstance, be it individual or collective. But, instead of looking or treating every terrorist act equally, if society condones or overlooks one and tries to punish the other, it only intensifies violence. This is precisely what seems to be the case with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Islam is a world religion with a great following, and it certainly deserves respect. Yet the Muslim community always felt that they were being treated unjustly by the affluent west. The Arab-Israeli conflict has kept that feeling alive and very intense. The Muslims believe that the creation of Israel and the continued atrocities that are being perpetrated by Israel is nothing but a big conspiracy by the west to suppress them. They also believe that the Iraq and Afghan wars initiated by the United States are all part of the same conspiracy. And the religious fundamentalists are taking full advantage of public sentiment to create havoc and spread terrorism everywhere.

America claims itself to be the promoter of human rights and preaches self determination of all people. But it utterly fails to help the Palestinian cause. Why? The most difficult and painful situation for Muslims and other rational people, is to see and accept the sufferings of their fellow brethren in Palestine. The Muslims squarely blame America for the present tragedy because of its unequivocal support of Israel. After many years of armed struggle, the Palestinians have agreed to live peacefully with Israel in the internationally recognized pre 1967 border of Palestine. But Israel steadfastly refuses to compromise and continues to thumb its nose against world opinion by brutally suppressing the Palestinians, using American weaponry.

The best case for the Palestinians has probably been made by none other than the former U.S. President and a Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter, who argues in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” that Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East. The Israeli blockade of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents for the past year?as a collective punishment, which has drawn many international condemnations including allegations of war crimes?is a glaring example of actions that openly provoke Muslims to resent America, which refuses to intervene and stop such Israeli atrocities.

There are other issues of contention for Muslims. America supports Saudi Arabia, an autocratic country with no democratic rights, while it refuses to recognize the democratically elected Palestinian representatives of Hamas in Gaza. By the way, America along with Israel once supported the Hamas in Gaza as a counter to the Fatah movement. On the other hand, many believe that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring fundamentalism by providing financial help to religious schools in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

Additionally, America went to war in Iraq under false pretexts and different agendas, though it now claims that the purpose was to save the Iraqis from the brutality of Saddam Hussein. Muslims believe that the main purpose for invading Iraq was to protect America’s oil supply. And they have plenty of facts to justify their claim that America is driven by its economic greed. They look at the situation in Darfur, Congo, Myanmar and other countries where America failed to prevent atrocities or promote democratic rights.

Muslims even question the American policy of allowing Israel to hide its nuclear weapons and maintaining its own nuclear stockpile, while it rallies its western allies to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Ironically, America’s success against Iran would depend entirely on the co-operation of China and Russia, which might not be forthcoming as they too have their own world agendas to pursue.

The above exemplifies the ways that America has alienated Muslims over the years. Now the new generation of educated Muslims is getting impatient with American prejudices, and is effectively using the internet to communicate with and receive feedback from each other. The fundamentalists are successfully indoctrinating these young people to resort to violent tactics in the name of “Jihad“, a religious word for martyrdom. America and the rest of the world have already witnessed some of their brutal suicidal acts during and since 9/11. If the core issues are not addressed, even if America wins the war in Afghanistan, it might not dampen the spirit of young Muslims around the world to pursue their resistance. American suppression is likely to embolden the fundamentalists to embrace new or more dangerous tactics of terrorism. Violence begets violence, and it would be impossible for America to monitor, invade, occupy or control every Muslim militant country in the world.

Although it is the sole remaining super power, America seems to be losing its grip on its economic power. The country has yet to recover from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate is hovering around 10 per cent, the federal debt has already surpassed $7.5 trillion, and the federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2009. There are other emerging economic powers now, who are preparing to compete and check American hegemony in the world. In fact, America can no longer continue to impose its will on the world community. Nor can it suppress Islamic fundamentalism or its spread by its military power alone. It clearly needs to reassess its overall foreign policies if it wishes to rein in the fundamentalists and remain an important international player.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism with its current ferocity is a problem for the Muslim populace as well. But they will be reluctant to join the fight with true conviction unless America is willing to change its attitude towards Muslims and correct its past mistakes. A speedy and just settlement of the Palestinian crisis would be a good start. It should then be followed by a quick withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and a winding down of the Afghan war as fast as possible. Unless America plays its cards right, the consequence of its military exercise in Afghanistan will be just as futile as the war in Vietnam.

About The Author: Professor Mahfuz R. Chowdhury teaches Economics at C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, New York, USA. He has published articles on various issues of Bangladesh and other economic issues, which are posted on numerous web sites. He has wide ranging experience in international business and commerce, and has written on failure of communism & problem with developing countries. His book, “Economic Exploitation of Bangladesh“, addresses the economics of developing countries, using Bangladesh as a case study. | More Articles By Mahfuz R. Chowdhury |

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

———————————————————————————————————————————————-