Welcome to the New World Order

by Ghassan Ghraizi
Author of upcoming novel, Israel, By Any Other Name


Welcome to the new world order.

The United States drops bombs and food on Afghanistan.

Syria wins a seat on the UN Security Council.

The Israeli government headed by Ariel Sharon finally commends the efforts of the Palestinian Authority "for taking the measures which it promised to implement against terrorists."

Were the memory of those who died on September 11th less distressing, the mockery of humanity would not have cut as deeply.  Despite conflicting "expert" analysis on how to take responsibility in these uncertain times, the U.S. government, nevertheless, must be congratulated for its initial consensus-building efforts to combat terror against humanity.

Suddenly, Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, challenged the U.S. administration's tightrope balancing act in a self-serving contrast against his bloody past.  Considering that Sharon masterminded the blitzkrieg invasion of Lebanon that would have made many Prussian commanders proud, he  ignored his own self-indulgence and referred to Czechoslovakia's sacrifice accusing the Bush administration of appeasing the Arabs.

More craters. Vieques, Puerto Rico

"Unacceptable," the White House responded.  Unacceptable, yet the U.S . government immediately proceeded to add anti-Israel organizations, Hizballah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, to the list of terrorist organizations in its ironic twist of Israeli appeasement.  Unacceptable, but in expressing legitimate doubts about Syria's election to the UN Security Council, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested that the United State bombing campaign might include targets in Syria, Israel's currently most steadfast enemy.  Unacceptable, yet the U.S. government risks sacrificing an unprecedented support for its retaliation against those who masterminded the abominable attacks on New York and Washington by appearing to adopt the same deception that forged Arab support during the Gulf war, mouthing half-baked references to a Palestinian state.

Though a delusional Leonard Peikoff of the Ayn Rand Institute could have inspired Ariel Sharon's reference to appeasement, Sharon's metaphorical allusion to Arab nations as Nazis didn't even merit mention.  Unacceptable!

There is no justification for what happened on September 11th; but the anti-terrorism rally has been hijacked by the same misguided policies that created the Saddam Hussiens and the Sharons of this world.  Yasser Arafat had accordingly won the praise of Sharon's government and its indirect endorsement for admittance into the exclusive anti-terrorism club by violently suppressing an anti-US demonstration in Gaza, killing 14 year-old Abdullah Mohammed Al Franji and 21 year-old Yusef Aqel and injuring 47 others.  Other tyrants around the world are thus poised to pay their anti-terrorism dues with the blood of their dissenters.

Dissensions are growing while an otherwise noble effort to stamp out terrorism is bastardized by exploitative agendas.  So while the United States might have used a new world order to explain tighter domestic security measures, the rest of the world experiences more of the same tragic consequences in new packaging.

Sharon's government would be too content about supplementing the Israeli Defense Forces with a subordinate Palestinian Authority to brutally suppress the Palestinian aspirations for a democratic nation.

The continuing campaign to discredit the UN should now become even more appealing to the United States since Syria had been elected to the UN Security Council.

And as UN workers responsible for clearing land mines are portentously counted among the first civilian casualties of the US bombardment in Afghanistan, many more civilian casualties of the US food drops are expected in a land riddled with millions of land mines, reminiscent of the oil-for-food obstacles currently imposed on Iraq.

Welcome to the world of new order.