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01: The Opening Invocation
01: Surah Al Fati-ha
Initializing our soul

01:01
In the Name of God, the One Spirit of All, Allah;
the Spirit of Compassion, the Compassionate Soul

01:02
Praised is the One Spirit of All;
the Lord of everyone's world,
all nations and creations;
now and in the hereafter.

01:03
The Spirit of Compassion, the Compassionate Soul;

01:04
the only Master on that Day of Reckoning.

01:05
"O Lord: We pledge our souls to you.
O Lord: We ask for the help of no soul but yours;

01:06
so, lead us to a path of righteousness;

01:07
the way of the people who were favored with your blessings.
Not the way of the people who had angered others;
nor the way of the souls that went astray".

Bush at the crossroads of all conflicts
By Neal AbuNab

After 7 months of besieging Tyre, the legendary Greek King Alexander the Great built a bridge to connect the insolent island with land. He stormed the high walls with newly invented war machinery and killed every person in the city (333 BC). He provided future foreign conquerors with an important lesson: in the Middle East you have to kill everyone or they will battle with you till the end of time.

The crusaders remembered that lesson when they captured Jerusalem in 1099; they killed all of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. In 1258 the barbaric Mongol King Holako stormed Baghdad and burnt it to the ground. President George Bush conquered Baghdad in 2003 but left most of its people alive. He was a kind invader who gave people a choice: convert to a new religion called democracy or be killed. Most of them did not convert and they persisted in their old creed. He is now reaching a fork in the road and it is befitting that he went to Jordan this week to seek the inspiration of the gods for a new direction.

The Middle East has been and will always be the crossroads of all human conflicts. A more optimistic term is usually used when referring to the Middle East as the crossroads of all civilizations. It is the birthplace of human civilization and human misery. History has shown that any nation that wants to be on top must be in control of Jerusalem. When the British controlled the world Jerusalem was under their yoke. Before them, the Ottoman Turks possessed Jerusalem and they controlled half of Asia and Europe. We can keep going back in history to the Muslim Arabs and before them the Romans and before them the Persians and before them the Greeks. Every great empire is lured to its demise in the Middle East.

Today, the Star of David flies over Jerusalem and the children of Israel rule the world. They allied themselves with a young rising nation called the United States of America and ruled it from within. America became addicted to oil. The value of its dollar became addicted to the control of oil assets. So, Bush found himself like all the other emperors that came before him, in the unenviable position of having to conquer the Middle East or risk losing his empire’s wealth and power.

After more than three years of waging war in Iraq, Bush thought his enemies would be worn out. But his own army and his people at home who grew tired and worn out. The enemy is prepared to fight for another hundred years, unless Bush is prepared to do what Holako had done.

This week, one of the American Generals in Iraq warned that the sectarian violence might have developed its own unstoppable momentum. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Iraq and he blamed them for all the anarchy. Next to him was Jalal Talabani, the highly ceremonial and powerless President of Iraq who did not denounce any of Ahamadinejad’s words.

The new game championed by Shi’a cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr; admittedly the most-influential figure in Iraq today, is to break down the Iraqi government and make it illegitimate just like the Lebanese and the Palestinian governments. The American forces obtain their occupational legitimacy from Al-Maliki’s government and if it loses support then the occupation would have to end abruptly.

Bush refuses to negotiate with Iran over the Iraq issue. Iran is going to make sure that it carves up a big and visible role in Iraqi politics. Bush will keep denying Iran a role in Iraq until the Maliki government disintegrates and a power vacuum emerges. The US and Iran are probably preparing for the next phase of Iraqi politics and each is grooming his own Iraqi strongman to be the next dictator.

King Abdullah of Jordan warned this week on ABC News that we could have three civil wars raging in the Middle East; Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. The Palestinians offered a cease-fire and it was accepted by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. Hours after the cease-fire took effect, Israeli forces stormed into Jeneen killing and abducting scores of Palestinians. The European Envoy, Javier Solana, called for International monitors to observe the cease-fire. It was summarily rejected by Amir Peretz, the Israeli defense minister. No one in America reported the killing of Palestinians in Jeneen. A couple of primitive rockets were fired by Palestinians from Gaza. Israelis released a statement saying that they will be restrained in their response. The US state department praised the Israeli response.

This vicious cycle of American officials sucking up to Israeli positions is something the Arab world has grown accustomed to. American officials never mention any of the daily violations that the Israeli military commits against the Palestinians or the Lebanese. This asymmetrical reporting maintains the benefit of US policy to the Israeli side, all the time.

Jimmy Carter’s new book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid” and the courageous interviews he’s been doing to promote his book may help America understand that all of its problems with Arabs and Muslims can end if they give Palestinians an independent state. Olmert asked the Palestinians this week to give up their right of return. Fat chance. His request is equivalent to asking the Israelis to strike from the bible any words that may give Israel a right to the land of Palestine.

The battle for the “right of return” is going to be waged in Lebanon as it inches ever closer towards a civil war. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be caught in the cross fire and they will be forced to choose between the path to Lebanese citizenship through the Sunni-Christian alliance or the path of resistance through the Shi’a-Hizbullah-Syria alliance. Both are rough roads and everyone is ready to sacrifice the Palestinians for their cause.

At this highly inflamed juncture in the Middle East, if Bush and Olmert are not prepared to do what Holako had done then they better sit down with their enemies and work out their differences, sooner rather than later. Delaying the inevitable will make the loss that much greater for the American people who never asked for a hundred year war with Arabs and Muslims. Staying the course to get “the job” done that was laid out, yet again, by Bush after his summit meeting with Al-Maliki, leads straight through the gates of hell.

Iran’s technology revolution
By Neal AbuNab

Last week’s Ted Koppel Discovery Channel documentary painted a meticulously-framed picture of Iran to support a hostile mindset. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy; one always finds what he is looking for. He focused on the schisms of Iranian society much the same way that Iran always points out the schisms that exist in America. Koppel reminded Americans of the origin of this conflict when in 1954 the CIA toppled the democratically elected government in Tehran and appointed the Shah. Then, in 1979 the Islamic revolution kicked the Shah out and took over the US embassy and held up American hostages for over a year.

“Iran-the most dangerous nation” was the title of his show and the name said it all. It set out to prove just how much danger Iran presented to America and its darling Israel. Scenes of Iranian crowds marching in the streets chanting “Death to America and Death to Israel” faded in and out of the screen like a needle knitting all the stories together. By the end of the 2-hour documentary my mind surrendered to the message that Iran is America’s number one enemy.

It is the conclusion that any western viewer with an average education will reach. Koppel was laying the cultural foundation for the inevitable military confrontation with Iran. He began his story by saying: like any other country I visited which was ruled by an authoritarian regime…freedom of expression is almost non-existent…and women have to adhere to a repressive code of conduct. He interviewed political dissidents and people who’d been jailed by the Iranian regime and demonstrated how opposition views and newspapers were disappearing under the current president, Ahmadinejad. But he also showed the obsession of younger Iranians with the internet and western culture. They see American movies, dance to rap music and hold mixed sex parties at underground locations. The Iranian regime is obsessed with censorship and it shuts down numerous internet sites and spends lots of energy spying on its people.

They say that good things are either illegal, immoral or fattening. Iranians search for fun in breaking such prohibitions and doing naughty things in secret. “We used to drink in public and pray at home. Now, we pray in public and drink at home.” This is what Koppel heard everywhere he went in Iran. They are beginning to taste the fruits of peace and prosperity and women are teething for a sexual revolution. His photographer told him that her sister and the younger generation do not even know the name of their own president. Younger women in Iran today are mostly concerned with finding a career and having fun. Many of them are getting educated and rebelling against the rigidity of traditional customs. These are the signs of an affluent society in the making.

The brightest personal moment for Koppel in this episode happened when he clasped the hand of a young man who told him that he liked George Bush. A large portion of the documentary was devoted to the question of Iran’s nuclear energy program. But Koppel also reported that the price of Gas in Iran is 30 cents per gallon; people hardly pay any taxes; electricity and water services are highly subsidized, and education and healthcare are almost free. This was made possible by the skyrocketing oil prices.

Most Iranians believed that their nuclear program was peaceful in nature and that’s why they supported it. It was a matter of national pride to them to develop a home grown technology. Nuclear research sites are scattered all over the country and enrichment facilities have become numerous. Ahmadinejad announced last week that 30,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges will be installed within the next year. He also brokered peace between Syria and Iraq thereby making a goodwill gesture to the American negotiator indicating that Iran has something to offer in the way of stabilizing Iraq.

Koppel’s documentary closed by stating that the US had to negotiate with Iran over the Iraq issue, but at the same time it has to keep its military options open. That seems to be the current conclusion of most senior statesmen like Henry Kissinger and James Baker. The idea of national pride attached to the nuclear program is the easy explanation offered by most media. But the matter is more complicated and the Iranian regime is dealing with two vital issues regarding the nuclear program. The first one is called employment and the second one is called development of an industrial base.

More than 50% of Iran’s population of 70 million is under the age of 25 and about 800,000 people will be entering the job market every year. The nuclear program with its massive facilities under construction, provide employment for hundreds of thousands of people. This can not be simply shut down. It is like the nuclear construction boom of the sixties and seventies in America. Iran’s program has been set in motion irreversibly for the next 20 years.

Iran realizes that within the next 20 years there will be alternative sources of energy available to the industrialized world. Oil producing nations will be left in the cold if they do not use their current revenues to develop a real industrial base. Iran is building car factories, a defense industry and a home-grown technology base. CNN reported last week that Iran was making a breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research.

In the nineties Clinton worked so hard to complete the human genome project which produced the human genetic map in 1999. Stem cell research would’ve taken off in America if Bush had not slowed down the program because he “respected the sanctity of human life.” Iran, as well as the rest of the world, benefited from Clinton’s work and it had its Mullahs issue a religious Fatwa in 2002 that embryonic stem cell research was Halal and sanctioned by the Qur’an. They ruled that the “spirit” entered an embryo at the age of 121 days. Thus, aborting a fetus up until that point does not amount to killing a human life. Iran is bringing questions of religion and technology together in a way that is surpassing the Vatican’s pace.

Iran’s research program brought back movement to a rat’s paralyzed limb. Its stem cell research is more advanced today than America’s. Iran is in a hurry to build a solid home-grown technological base with scientists that can champion inventions in every field from electronics to medicine. This will provide opportunity to build factories that can employ millions of people and fuel a robust economy.

In the aftermath of the 1979 revolution Iran suffered from a massive exodus of scientists, educators and thinkers. In the eighties it suffered from the enormous toll of death and destruction imposed on it by Saddam Hussein. Today’s Iran does not look like a nation preparing for war. It looks like a nation hard at work trying to re-build itself and chart a path towards modernity. The erosion of the freedom of the press indicates that it has chosen to follow the Chinese model. These are state-mandated necessities that most people disagree with just like sacrificing civil liberties in America in the name of security.

Iran is trying to make itself look attractive to business leaders who prefer autocracy to achieve fast growth. It is creating a higher standard of living for its people and at the same time becoming the most influential player in the Middle East. Its nuclear program is the most visible symbol of the bubbling technological revolution. It seems determined to make the transformation to a fully industrialized self-reliant nation making it the first one in that region. It will never give up its nuclear program voluntarily. In fact, it is already talking about exporting the technology to places like Venezuela and Egypt.

Hamas learns a hard lesson
By Neal AbuNab

Domestic policy and local issues have always played the primary role of bringing political parties to power. But no Palestinian organization has ever promised internal reform and won except Hamas. The struggle of Palestinians remains as a conflict with an external enemy in the first degree. Israel has made its policy of survival dependent on the methodical annihilation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians can talk all they want amongst themselves, conduct mock elections as if they are a free people, and have a so-called democracy but all that does not change the aim of their enemy.

All this internal fighting between Fatah, Hamas and the zillions of other factions has only served to strengthen the ruthless hand of their enemy. Since the death of Arafat, two years ago, the Palestinians have been engaged in an internal power struggle to replace him or to divide all that power that was concentrated in one person. Israel has taken advantage of their infighting by creating conditions on the ground that make it impossible for an independent Palestinian state to be established. Israel is toying with Palestinians like scientists experiment with mice in a laboratory. It feeds them for a day and starves them for a month. It imprisons them in a big camp and draws a maze for their leaders to follow. They jump through hoops and loops to please the master and when they reach that point Israel had already devised a new game plan.

Peace processes, wars, elections, international conferences, UN resolutions and many ridiculous ploys have all come and gone while Israel’s aim remained constant. The Palestinians are tired of being defeated by Israel. Collectively, they are incapable of fighting Israel and so they should do what they did back in 1948 and surrender their cause to the Arab League.

Hamas promised internal reforms when it came to power back in March. It has not delivered anything to the Palestinian people except economic sanctions. It has created more reasons for internal strife by hiring 6,000 Hamas fighters and making them part of the security force. It promised to create an army that can defend its people and instead it created another faction in the fragmented security apparatus. It promised things it could not deliver. The only thing it keeps talking about is resistance, fighting the occupation, denying Israel’s existence and renouncing all forms of negotiations with the enemy. I am sure they will remain faithful to their principles for hundreds of years. That is the nature of Arabs. Their leaders have made enormous personal sacrifices but they just don’t have the know-how to fight or to confront their enemy.

Since their election in January, many Hamas leaders have been either imprisoned or assassinated by Israel. Hamas had good intentions but in the arena of politics and governance it proved to be utterly incompetent, just like the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration. They have a lot of religious fervor and faith-based ideologies but they can not manage a grocery store. Politics is a secular business of managing power and wealth in the most pragmatic way. It is built on coalitions and compromises between conflicting interests.

Hamas has proven that it can not manage internal conflict and so it can not possibly manage the greater conflict with Israel. The Palestinian people are in dire straits and they can not find any food to eat because of the severe sanctions. No one in the world can stand up to Israel and break the financial blockade. Palestinians have no choice but to sit down and talk with their enemy.

The Arab League declared this week that it was going to break the financial blockade against Hamas and Amer Mousa urged Arab banks to start dealing with Hamas. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, urged the US to re-engage Israel in a peace process. Spain is championing an initiative to hold an international peace conference to bring the Arabs and the Israelis back to the negotiating table. Hamas said that it would attend a peace conference if organized by the Arab League. Israel said it would not attend such a conference.

A new Palestinian government will be formed in a matter of short weeks and Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, agreed to relinquish his position. The power struggle between President Mahmoud Abbas and the prime minister has been decided in favor of Abbas. The Hamas government collapsed because it could not pay the salaries of its employees for the past eight months. Instead of delivering economic prosperity Hamas brought ruin to the Palestinian economy.

Hamas was not ready to govern. It should have stayed as an opposition party and kept its principles and agenda unexposed to such a superior enemy. Now, the idea of resistance has been ridiculed and Hamas will have nothing to offer to its people. Palestinians don’t want to create a Muslim state and they don’t want religious zealots ruling over them. They want peace, prosperity, an end to humiliation, an ability to go to other countries and visit with their relatives, and most importantly they are looking for a dignified livelihood to feed their families.

They are tired of being defeated, massacred, starved, humiliated and imprisoned by Israel. They don’t care what Hamas or any Palestinian government has to say to Israel to achieve this goal. The world has proven that it has no authority over the state of Israel and nobody can force it to do anything it does not want to do, except Hizbullah. In the past three months, the incompetence of Palestinian leaders has squandered much of the moral victory achieved by Hizbullah.

Palestinians have proven that they would rather fight with each other over ministries and seats of power instead of fighting with their enemy. They allow young men to fire primitive rockets into a small settlement inside Israel called Sederot. The destiny of the Arab-Israeli conflict now rests in the hands of a bunch of 19-year olds from Gaza. They call this “resistance”. Somebody has to stop these kids from firing these fireworks that they call “rockets”. If Palestinians do not have real weapons to fight with they should not be staging such symbolic acts that only bring harm to their own people.

Israel retaliates by killing 25 Palestinians for each rocket that lands in Sederot. The Palestinian government has no control over the numerous pockets of “resistance” groups that sprang up in the past five years. Palestinian society is fragmenting just like the Iraqi society. Poor Palestinians are attacking the rich and stealing from them. The middle class has almost disappeared. Any rich Palestinian who wants power is hiring a bunch of kids with guns and he patrols his neighborhood and declares himself as a Chieftain.

The Palestinian people as a collective have proven that they can no longer be the spearhead of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is time for them to reverse what Arafat had done in the seventies when he made all Arab states recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians. The PLO, the Palestinian Authority, and this generation of Palestinian leaders have all failed. They have delivered defeat upon defeat to their people. The ideologies of defeatism, self-enrichment, self service instead of public service, fake idealism instead of realism, and feebleness have all become ingrained in their approach.

They should nullify their corrupt Palestinian Authority, cancel the Oslo Agreement, hand their guns to Israel, and wave the white flag of surrender. Most of their rich leaders will end up in Paris and London where their families live in great big palaces. Hand the Palestinian cause to the Arab League and Iran. Let President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Sayed Hassan Nasrallah speak on behalf of the Palestinian cause.

The Democratic Agenda for Arabs
By Neal AbuNab

Democrats will have a lot to be thankful for when they carve up their Thanksgiving Turkey this year, but it was not a liberal revolution that carried them back to power. This election was a referendum on Bush’s presidency. The people have spoken and their dissatisfaction with the neo-conservative leadership created a political tsunami that swept the Republicans out of power. Most people voted against the Republicans because of their deep dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Iraq, the botched-up war on terror against Bin Laden, the economy and corruption in politics. In their entire campaign, the Democrats have not offered one specific plan to address these grievances. They rode the wave of dissatisfaction and kept criticizing while deliberately shying away from offering specific plans or concrete measures.

The Democratic plan was engineered by Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The duo pierced through the presumed shield of Republican invincibility fashioned by Karl Rove; the architect of three consecutive successful elections for Bush and the neo-conservatives. They devised a sensible plan to regain the favor of the Reagan Democrats. They recruited former Republicans like James Webb in Virginia and ran him against a formidable foe like Senator George Allen. They figured that the country had begun its swing back to the center but it had not passed that point yet. They ran people who had a strong reputation of being socially conservative like Claire McCaskill in Missouri to recapture the heart of America. They succeeded in striking a fine line which triggered a political tsunami of epic proportions. This election will go down in history as a pivotal turning point which shaped the rest of America’s destiny.

The new whiz kids of politics turned a midterm election into a national campaign and drove a stake through the heart of neo-conservatism. Bush realized the incoming danger a couple of months ago when he created the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Commission. He was hedging his bet in case the Republicans lost control of the Congress. Most of the die-hard neo-conservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz, were shuffled out of the glare of the public eye at the beginning of Bush’s second term. But Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, refused to tone down his “in-your-face” rhetoric. He was the throbbing passionate heart of the neo-conservative leadership while Vice President Dick Cheney remained as the dispassionate brain calculating what was best for America.

The neo-conservatives live and die by the idea of clear cut victory or defeat. This election was a clear cut defeat. This humiliating and shameful defeat was most evident in the way Rumsfeld was immediately fired the next day. We can now confidently declare the death of the neo-conservative doctrine. They will be remembered as a secretive gang of reckless leaders who insisted on the righteousness of their incompetence and attempted to make America a dictatorship. The message out of this election to the rest of the world from America is one of hope and possible renewal of goodwill. The world will breathe a momentary sigh of relief and watch America’s next move cautiously.

But the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party can not really claim victory in this election. The real winners in this election were the regular conservatives who deserted the Republican Party and voted for conservative Democrats. In Michigan, voters rejected Affirmative Action and the Republican Senate candidate, Michael Bouchard, who could not shake Bush off his back. Varying degrees of this sentiment prevailed all over the nation. The new leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was very much aware of this fact when she offered reconciliation and cooperation with the Bush administration.

The Democrats won because of the conservative movement which is still very much alive, and the Republicans lost because they fought with their own neo-conservative dictators. The leadership of the Democratic Party sees its mandate as getting things done in the next two years while paving the way for the White House in 2008. The conservatives of the Reagan legacy led by James Baker have gotten the real mandate in this election to recapture the Republican leadership. Newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is a Baker protégé whose creed is pragmatic politics and diplomacy.

This friction between the Baker camp and the Cheney camp surfaced as soon as Bush declared his clear intentions of invading Iraq. But Bush had been pushed by the Saudi Royals and the pro-Israel lobby to attack Iraq and dethrone Saddam Hussein. The Saudi Monarchy invested all of its assets in the Bush camp and he needed their help to beat the Democrats. Subsequently, they were rewarded immensely by skyrocketing oil prices that quadrupled their revenues. The Democrats have a grudge and a bone to pick with the Saudi Royals.

The Democratic leadership is now evading the question of Iraq and pointing to the highly anticipated Baker-Hamilton report, due out next month, as the first benchmark. They are reluctant to inherit the mess of Iraq in much the same way that Bush has now become eager to bequeath it to them. The answer lies in working out a compromise that allows the Democrats to take credit for anything that may succeed in Iraq, while at the same time assuring Bush that he won’t be facing a trial similar to Saddam Hussein’s. This difficult task was thrown in the lap of the Dean of diplomacy; James Baker.

Baker will face hard-nosed negotiations with the new brains of American politics; Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer. They are both Jewish and ardent supporters of Israel. Emanuel’s parents came from Israel and he volunteered in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He has strong Zionist convictions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Senator Joseph Lieberman waged a campaign against the will of the Democratic Party and prevailed. By a twist of fate he was handed the power to give Democrats the absolute majority in the Senate. He will be the most powerful power broker in the Senate for the next two years. He is Jewish, extremely pro-Israel and pro-war in Iraq. Jewish intellect and leadership will now dominate the moral argument within the Democratic Party.

Domestically, they will push an agenda to roll back some of the extreme measures of the Military Commissions Act and restore some of the lost civil liberties. In the Middle East, they support the idea of occupation but they see the Bush administration as losing the war in Iraq. Their opposition to the war does not stem from a conviction that it was either illegal or immoral. They oppose Bush’s strategy which has not brought victory.

Their strategy will most likely follow the Israeli model of unilateral disengagement. American troops will redeploy out of population centers and get out of the Sunni-Shi’a cross fire. Their focus will be on minimizing troop casualties thereby getting the Iraq story off the American TV screen. They will tighten their grip on the countryside and all points of egress and ingress. They will not cut the defense budget. On the contrary, they will acquiesce to more defense spending to build more bases in the Middle East.

The gates of hell have opened up in Iraq and it will be easy to sell the idea that we need to get out of the way of Muslims slaughtering each other. In fact, we may even encourage them to do that while we stand watching from a safe distance and making sure that no side ever wins. We did that for eight years when Iraq waged a war against Iran from 1980-88. We can do that again for another decade.

The neo-Democrats will put Saudi Arabia in the cross hairs while opening a direct dialogue with Iran and Syria. There will be serious attempts to neutralize Iran’s threat to Israel using the carrot approach. They will use the fact that Bin Laden is still on the loose to re-define the war on terror and wage their campaign for the White House.

In short, we have two years of policy re-alignment that lies ahead. There will be massive gridlock, partisan fighting, and investigations. The wave that carried Democrats to power demands accountability from the Bush administration. Too many lives were destroyed in the past five years and some neo-conservatives will surely pay a heavy price for this defeat.

How to fix US Democracy
By Neal AbuNab

Sweeping changes have to be made to restore the faith of Americans in their system of government. Recent polls have found that only 18% of Americans approved of the performance of congress. Of course, these numbers reflect on the poor Republican leadership but there is also a sense of hopelessness that nothing will ever come out of a new congress.

The Democrats have an excellent chance of regaining control of the House of Representatives and they will have to live up to higher expectations from the American people. The issues that surfaced in this campaign are more structural in nature. They question the utility of the system. Campaign finance and low voter turnouts are the two most chronic ailments that ironically shield the system from the benefit of real change and rejuvenation.

Elected politicians have no incentives to level the playing field so that their potential foes can unseat them. Every member of congress is like a feudal Lord; they sit there for 20, 30 or even 50 years. My own congressman, Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) has been in the House for 40 years. My stomach turns every time I go to the voting booth and punch or fill in the circle next to his name. I am disgusted of a system that calls itself democratic when I have to vote for the same person every two years.

My congressman does not need my vote to win the elections. I, the regular voter, have very little power to influence any decision in this system. I write to my congressman and I send him emails but his power had become so entrenched that he does not even need to answer me. And he never does.

Our congress is not accountable to the people. The President chooses a policy course that 70% of the people disagree with, and the Supreme Court is appointed by the President. The original ideas contained in the constitution have become empty words used by powerful politicians to inspire us (the naïve masses) to give them contributions.

It is estimated that a record 2.4 billion dollars will be spent on this election season. This money will reappoint at least 80% of the same 435 feudal Lords we call the lower House of Representatives. They will spend 2.4 trillion dollars of our money as next year’s government budget. Those who financed the campaign get rewarded by receiving a hefty return on their political investment. Small investments of $1,000 and under may receive a “thank you” note.

Judgeships and special legislations cost at least $100,000 in this system. It is a capitalist democracy. If you have money you can invest in it and you have to tell them what you want in return. The gun lobby represented by the NRA buys politicians to tell us that guns on our streets are the greatest guarantee against government tyranny. Then, they give them laws that expand their markets. Seniors represented by AARP pay politicians to tell us that our elders must live in comfort and dignity. Insurance companies, churches, energy companies, defense industries, and lobbyists for every type of imaginable business interest pay politicians to sing their tune. It is a free market where power and influence are sold to the highest bidder.

People who care about advancing their own agendas contribute money to politicians. If they don’t care enough then they won’t dig into their pockets. That’s the way professional politicians see it. But the constitution gave equal participation to everyone. So, the idea of buying influence makes this democracy only accessible to people with wealth. The constitution did not make democracy a privilege. Equality of influence is supposed to be the right of every citizen. Democracy was intended to create a free market of ideas but because it can be bought and sold, it has turned into a massive marketing campaign of targeted ideas.

If you have no money then you can sit at home, receive the pamphlets in the mail, watch the TV ads, and then go out and vote for the lesser of two evils. If nothing else, it’ll give you a thrill for a moment when you fill in the circle next to the name of the leader of your choice. But a feeling of disappointment sets in as soon as you leave the voting precinct. You already know deep down inside that nothing will ever change. The only two choices on the ballot got there in the first place because they were able to raise the money to become viable candidates. Their names appeared on the ballot not because of you but in spite of you. Incumbent politicians sitting in office have an advantage of filling up their coffers in exchange for favors years ahead of an election. That’s why they will never abolish this system.

Money should have no place in a democracy. It enslaves society to a set of ideas and a class of leaders that serve the interests of special groups of people at the expense of the silenced majority. Contributions should be banned from politics altogether and all campaigns should become publicly funded. A qualified candidate who collects the required petitions to run for a public office can apply for campaign funds. Candidates competing for the same office will receive an equal amount of money to fund their campaigns. This will open the door of democracy wide open to every person who is willing to do the hard work of leadership. Free from the obligations of investors, a leader can focus on doing what is right instead of what gets him more money for re-election.

It is estimated that 28 billion dollars will be earmarked by politicians in this year’s budget. This is unnecessary pork barrel spending reserved by elected politicians to reward the people who financed their campaigns. It is cheaper for the taxpayer to pay 2.4 billions to fund the campaigns instead of 28 billions.

Most people who don’t vote fail to see a direct benefit coming to them from their vote. They view Government as a permanent monkey riding on the back of the people. It is a tool of taxation and a source of constant struggle for power between corrupt politicians. If conservatives are disappointed with their GOP they stay at home and if Democrats are excited they go out and vote. Politicians compete to suppress the vote of their opposition. The system works towards the goal of achieving a low voter turnout. There is a self-defeating mechanism in this system.

Then, politicians reprimand us the voters for not getting involved to change the system. But they won’t listen to us unless we give them money. And if we have money to give to them it won’t be in our favor to change the current system. Community leaders blame their communities for not participating and individual voters say shame on us for allowing ourselves to become so helpless.

If voting is a basic right guaranteed by the constitution then it should become a compulsory obligation of citizenship, just like jury duty. In times of war, young men are drafted involuntarily into the armed forces to defend their nation. We are now facing a crisis and a structural breakdown in the system of government. These times call for such measures so we can begin fixing the most glaring defects in our system.

Iraq is terminally broken
By Neal AbuNab

He just arrived in America fresh from Iraq. The deep lines in the face of this 40-year old Chaldean Iraqi speak silently of the sorrow and sadness of his people. He is very happy to be in America and he’ll never go back to Iraq.

Earlier this year he was kidnapped in Baghdad and held for 24 days as a hostage. His kidnappers claimed to be Sunni Muslim and they demanded a huge ransom for his release. They kidnapped him in the name of Jihad and they received hundreds of thousands of dollars to release him in the name of their jihad.

While in captivity, he was abused verbally and tortured physically. His Christianity was denigrated and he was slapped around as a worthless Kafir or infidel. He showed me his back which was used as an ashtray by his captors. It was dotted with black marks of cigarette burns that burrowed small holes like volcano craters. As a Muslim I felt deeply ashamed of my cruel Muslim brothers.

Back in the days of Saddam Hussein this man was a major supplier of alcohol in the Baghdad area. His life was good and even by American standards he was a millionaire. But now he tells me that Iraq had become hopeless and killing is the only game in town. He says that Iraqis are bracing for a long and protracted civil war like the 15-year war of Lebanon.

He might be right because I watch the Arabic TV stations and their version of the news is different from what is shown in America. The commentators here are fighting the wars of “staying the course” or “cut and run” while the commentators in the Arab world are mostly turbaned Imams extolling the virtues of Ali, the prophet’s nephew. One might wonder about a historical figure like Ali and his relationship with what’s going on in Iraq today. The Shi’a Imams are arguing that only in the days of the Umayyad rule (661-750) were Shi’a believers killed based on their religious identity. They were persecuted because they believed that Ali was more deserving of the Caliphate; the Supreme leadership of Islam.

This is a religious dispute over 1,300 years old and it was not settled back then and it is being used today to fuel the sectarian violence. The Shi’a Imams are making their case that Muawiya, who established the Umayyad rule, had little faith in his heart and it was Ali who was filled with the faith of Muhammad since his childhood. By focusing on this ancient argument they are creating a long-sought legitimacy for the rule of Shi’a over Sunnis.

This is irrelevant in toady’s politics except that it widens the gulf of animosity between traditional Sunnis and Shi’a. Sunnis do not consider Muawiya as a revered figure like Ali, but they respect the fact that he expanded the Muslim empire from India to Morocco and united it under one banner. He is nicknamed as the genius of Arab politics.

Some Iraqi Shi’a Imams are equating the ways of Sunni terrorists with the ruthlessness of the Umayyad rulers. They claim that Sunni terrorists are killing them today just because they are followers of Ali. Shi’a terrorists, on the other hand, are only retaliating for the killing initiated by Sunnis.

This started almost three years ago and the vicious cycle of retaliation and counter-revenge has entrenched itself. Too many people have already died and no one in Iraq is calling for forgiveness. Prime Minister Maliki is shuttling between religious and political leaders calling for reconciliation and power-sharing. Most Sunnis are highly skeptical of his motives as he had not called for an end to de-baathification.

The Sunni-Shi’a argument cuts deep across the Arab and Muslim world. A coalition of seven Sunni insurgent groups, including Al-Qaida of Iraq, called this week for the establishment of a Muslim state and a caliphate out of Baghdad. They offered a plan to divide Iraq into three states. The plan was almost identical to the one that democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Joseph Biden, had outlined earlier this year.

But most Arabs and Muslims have now become involved in this civil war in one form or another. The Sunni Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia do not want to see a Shi’a state on their northern border. They want to keep Iraq united under a Sunni ruler. Jordan has an interest in maintaining insecurity in Iraq as it has been very good for its economy. Syria and Iran want to keep the US military bogged down in Iraq so they do not become the next target. Egypt’s Mubarak wants to capitalize on Sunni phobia of Shi’a power and he sends messages that a Shi’a state in Iraq is unacceptable. Almost everyone is united in rejecting the foreign occupation.

It is almost in everybody’s interest to keep the war alive in Iraq. The only way to stop this madness is through a Muslim-Muslim reconciliation initiative where everyone will convene under the auspices of a Muslim conference and strike a deal like the Taif Accords of 1990, which ended the Lebanese civil war. The framework of the solution has to be fashioned by all Muslim nations. Iraq has become their problem.

The Bush administration did not start the religious war but its invasion of Iraq was the catalyst that sparked this disintegration. Whenever President Bush is in real trouble he calls on the power that was behind his father’s presidency, and the ultimate Republican diplomat, former Secretary of State James Baker. He called him in 2000 to lead the Supreme Court battle over Florida’s election results. Now, he has appointed him along with former congressman Lee Hamilton to chair a study group on Iraq. Their report is due in December, not surprisingly after the elections. Baker predicts that the report’s recommendation will be somewhere in between “cut and run” and “stay the course”.

This is a major shift in Bush’s unwavering stance. The Democrats deserve the credit for this shift as they have been very disciplined in broadcasting the same message in this campaign. Patrick Murphy, a young army captain running for congress in Pennsylvania, answered the President’s radio address last Saturday by saying: “staying the course is not visionary, it is blind. Standing still and staying the course is not resolute, it is reckless.” I heard the same punch lines used by Senator John Kerry in New Hampshire and by Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the House, in California. They are all singing the same hymn lines whether in New York or in Minnesota.

They have adopted the Karl Rove modus operandi in running campaigns and Bill Clinton seems to be heavily involved in the current campaign to take back the House. It looks like President Bush has already factored in the expected Republican defeat by calling on Baker to work out the compromise with Democrats. The Iraqi debacle will belong to the US Congress in 2007.

Early next year, we can expect US troops to redeploy from Iraq to Afghanistan where they will resume the war on terror. As for Iraq, we can expect with confidence the disintegration and the dismantlement of that state in the near future.