How George W. Bush Destroyed the Temple of Baal

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First he bombed mercilessly, cruelly grinning throughout. Costumed in a flight suit, he proclaimed a Mission Accomplished after he had, with what they call bipartisan support (as though this lends some sort of legitimacy), destroyed the modern country of Iraq.

George W. Bush destroyed Iraqs infrastructure, its institutions, its ruling party and its army. Then he destroyed its social fabric, which had permitted widespread Sunni-Shiite intermarriage and religiously integrated neighborhoods.

Bush destroyed the law and order which had permitted girls to walk to school, heads uncovered, in modern western dress. He destroyed the freedom of physicians and other professionals to go about their work and caused masses of them to exit their country. He destroyed neighborhoods whose residents were forced to flee for their lives. He destroyed the Christian community, which dropped from 1.5 million in 2001 to perhaps 200,000 a decade later. He destroyed the prevalent ideology of secularism and ushered in an era of bitterly contested sectarian rule. He destroyed the right to broadcast rock n roll music, or sell liquor and DVDs.

He destroyed the stability of Anbar province by sowing the chaos that allowed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to establishfor the first timean al-Qaeda branch in Iraq.

He destroyed the stability of Syria when Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (now ISIL) retreated into that neighboring country during the surge of 2007. By creating power vacuums and generating new chapters and spin-offs of al-Qaeda, he destroyed Yazidi communities and their freedom from genocide and slavery. By hatching the forerunner of ISIL, he destroyed the prospects for a peaceful Arab Spring in Syria three years after his presidency ended.

Through his actions he destroyed the border between Syria and Iraq. He destroyed the Tomb of Jonah in Mosul. He destroyed 3,300 year old monuments, the glorious art of the Assyrians, in Nimrud. On August 23 while sitting in his home artists studio in Crawford, Texas, he destroyed the 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, Syria.

The most complete structure in that gorgeous pearl of an ancient preserved city, a mix of Roman, Syrian and Egyptian artistic influences, is now a pile of rubble.

(Have you noted how this heart-breaking loss of a world cultural treasuredesignated by the UN as a World Heritage Sitehas been all but ignored by the mainstream media, which takes all its cues from the State Department? Its as though this particular ramification of the criminal war-based-on-lies is just so embarrassing that they cant bring themselves to talk about it. So the talking heads redouble their attentions to Kentucky clerk Kimberly Davis, the spectacle of the Republican primary, the New England Patriots Deflategate scandal, and the routine shipment of Russian arms to Syria rather than asking frankly: What the hell have we done in the Middle East? Why has our government inflicted such calculated, ongoing, unforgiveable terror on so many innocent people, and on the cultural heritage of all humanity?)

The status quo in the region was grim enough in 2001, when Bush began to plan his general assault. The status quo now is far, far worse. Its all murder, crucifixions, beheadings, ruin, and the demolition of ancient priceless cultural monuments, with no end in sight.

What will be next, you wonder. Young Muslims are flocking to the black and white banner of the Islamic State, seeing in it a revival of the glorious caliphate of the pasta turning point in world history, retribution for the sins of the west, a scourge upon traitorous leaders and sundry infidels and pagans.

No moral hesitation pauses the fanatic as he takes aim at the Buddhas of Bamiyan, or the exquisite 2900 year old stone reliefs at the palace of King Ashurnarspal II, in Nimrud. Let the unbelieversthe ecstatic vandal thinksgasp in horror at the death of their idols! Allah wants this done. How great is He!

The destructive power of religious idiocy takes many forms. President George W. Bush was once asked by a journalist to name his favorite philosopher. Jesus, he replied. He initially proclaimed his War on Terror as a crusade. While denying any anti-Muslim intent, and indeed averring puzzlement that anyone would think him religiously intolerant, he deliberately conflated a host of Muslim targets with al-Qaeda.

GIs in Iraq put up posters in their barracks showing Saddam Hussein next to Osama bin Laden, as though these mutual enemies in real life were somehow comrades-in-armsboth Muslim, Arab, and anti-American. They should not be faulted for their display of stunning stupidity; it was inculcated in them. Meanwhile Bush labeled the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat a terrorist and refused to deal with him, as he refused to deal with Iran, brusquely rejecting a diplomatic overture in 2003 through his co-ruler, ####### Cheney.

Bush exploited anti-Muslim feeling in this country after 9/11 to foment public support for a generalized assault on the Middle East. Famously ignorant of the world and of history, he not-so-subtly encouraged the view overtly conveyed by his Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence from 2003 to 2007, Lt. Gen. William Jerry Boykin, who gave speeches in full military dress at religious events declaring that the U.S. was fighting a spiritual battle in the Middle East against a guy called Satan who wants to destroy us as a Christian army.

George W. Bush is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, plus tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers doing what soldiers typically do when their country is invaded. Estimates of the total death toll between 2003 and 2011 range from around 150,00 to over 600,000. The U.S. military provides no estimate, expressing disdain for such activity (We dont do body counts). But surely the numbers killed by U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East since 2011 far exceed the death count of the Islamic State.

Bush himself did not take a sledgehammer to the walls of Temple of Baalshamin, but he did enable those who destroyed the temple, who are now systematically destroying the ancient tombs surrounding it, battling, in their own fevered minds, some mythical Satan of Gen. Boykins imagination.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powells chief of staff, said in an interview on RT television September 3 that Cheney should be in prison for war crimes and ####### Cheney, in a word, is an idiot. Id say Powell himself bears enough responsibility for war crimes to stand trial, and that he was a useful idiot in presenting that collection of lies to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003even while privately harboring grave doubts about the charges validity.

(Notice how following his stint as the first African-American Secretary of State, in which he did the white power structures biddingas loyally as he did when he covered up the My Lai Massacre during a tour in VietnamPowell despite some forays out into the media has become for the most part a quiet recluse, allowing Wilkerson to reclaim his dignity, and portray him as a victim of the war-mongers rather than a war crimes co-defendant himself?)

But the buck stops at the Chief Executives desk. Bush is the chief war criminal. Obama also ranks with Cheney among others who, in a better world, would today be in the dock. Obama stands charged with absolving the Bush cabinet of any legal responsibility for their crimes, and with following up on their regime-change agenda by destroying Libya and spreading unimaginable suffering in Syria and Yemen.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/15/how-george-w-bush-destroyed-the-temple-of-baal/

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I hope the author gets some help.