Plunging ahead, I uncovered a whole series of startling positions taken by this “other nation”.  Most startling was that no one, not even Israel had voted with this nation on any of the following issues:

        • 9 lone votes against U.N. resolutions to reduce or eliminate the use of nuclear weapons.

        • 6 lone votes rejecting prohibitions on weapons “of mass destruction”.

        • 20 lone votes against sanctions on South Africa for practicing apartheid.

        • 3 lone votes rejecting a “world charter for protection of the ecology”.

        • Another lone vote against “prevention of an arms race in outer space”.

        • 6 lone votes denying the right of “every state to choose its economic and social system … without outside interference”.

    The same nation which is even now watching its “roadmap to Mideast peace” unravel, voted alone with Israel 20 times to reject U.N. resolutions condemning Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and urging cooperation between the UN and the League of Arab States.

    Twenty times!  Is it any wonder that neither country takes the “roadmap” seriously?  Are Palestinians to truly believe that other nation wants to broker a fair and impartial peace when it has so consistently sided with Israel?  And what incentive do the Israelis have to act with restraint after decades of watching that nation look the other way?

    The same nation that went to war to protect the civilized world from Iraq’s hypothetical weapons of mass destruction twice voted alone to reject a U.N.  “prohibition of new systems of mass destruction
Four times in the 1980’s, the same nation voted alone against prohibitions on chemical and bacteriological weapons.  Could this vote have suggested to Saddam Hussein that the U.S. did not disapprove his use of chemical and bacteriological weapons against Iran and the Kurds?

    Along with Israel, this nation rejected “sovereignty [of occupied nations] over national resources in occupied Arab territories.  Did Saddam Hussein see this as his green light to invade Kuwait?  Or was this nation already thinking how it would use Iraqi resources, a.k.a. OIL, when it became the occupying power?
The same nation that now threatens to bankrupt itself fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq,  rejected U.N. proposals to study the political causes of terrorism.  Just imagine how different life might be today if it had studied, understood and then informed the nation’s people of the linkage between its unilateral actions in the Mideast and terrorist actions that resulted.

    An informed public might have cried out, “NO!” No to provocative actions like playing Iran and Iraq off other.  No to blindly supporting Israel.  No to blackmailing Yemen and countless other countries.  No to permanently stationing troops in Saudi Arabia. No to training Saudi, Egyptian and so many countries’ security forces to suppress internal dissent.

    If the study had been commissioned a couple decades earlier, the American public might have said no to installing the Shah of Iran.  No to provoking the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  No to training mujahedeen terrorists.  No to aiding the Taliban while they brutalized Afghani women.  No to embracing Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister who got his start as a terrorist.
The same nation that rejected 9 resolutions to end the Nuclear Arms race, now wants North Korea to disarm.  After 50 years of sabotaging the North while building up the South, is it any wonder that they’re so desperately poor and resentful of it?

    Just as an air force pilot ordered to bomb civilian targets might protest, “This isn’t the war I signed up for,” I have to take a long, sober look at my country  and ask:  How can we call ourselves leaders of the free world?
A leader has followers, yet no one supported any of the above cited positions except Israel when it served their ends.  The “coalition of the willing” was actually the coalition of the coerced.  10 countries supported war only to escape a U.S. veto of joining NATO.  Others feared loss of economic aid as happened to Yemen one day after they refused to support the first war.

    A couple weeks ago, Peru’s government completed a thorough soul searching and condemned its own criminality in putting down their nation’s terrorist movements.  Britain at least examined how they’d hyped WMD claims against Iraq.  Other countries have done similar introspection.  It’s time for that other nation—OUR NATION --to do the same.  To start, let’s open up the archives and stop hiding behind the rationale of “national security”.  Let the American people read for ourselves what our government has done in our names.  As we mourn the second anniversary of 9-11, let’s concern ourselves not just with the lives we’ve lost but the lives we’ve taken, the lives we’ve marginalized, the lives we take slowly.

    As the Taliban regroup in Afghanistan, as we brace ourselves to pay another $83 billion to clean our messes there and in Iraq, as U.S. casualties mount and the battle for Iraqi hearts and minds goes terribly awry, as George Bush’s approval ratings continue to dip, let us open our eyes and ask ourselves, “Is this the America we signed up for?”

Ron Bell
September 11, 2003