They Work For The Devil And Call Him Jesus

Scoop first published this column five years ago this week, immediately after the massive suicide bombing in Baghdad killed the United Nations’ leading diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others, three miles from the American-controlled Green Zone.

It could have been written today.

Pause and reflect for a moment on this astounding fact: a suicide bomber in a flatbed truck blew up the United Nations headquarters in Iraq and killed Kofi Annan’s special representative, perhaps the most respected and loved man in the UN community.

This is where America’s "global war on terrorism" has led the world. We are not defeating terrorism, but spreading it like a virus. We are not achieving security, democracy, and peace in the region and the world, but generating a vortex that is plunging the entire world into darkness.

The Bush Administration has created a black hole not only for American forces and civil servants in Iraq, but a black hole for the UN and the world. They work for the devil and call him Jesus.

According to Annan and many others, Sergio Vieira de Mello was "an outstanding servant of humanity." "I can think of no one we could less afford to spare", Annan said. Another spokesman at the UN said that de Mello "was the UN in a way." If so, the Bush Administration is succeeding in its "win/win" strategy of either destroying the UN, and/or bringing it completely to heel under US power.

The last act in the Bush Administration’s sordid power play has not been written yet however. The horror and sorrow they are spreading is accelerating an examination of not only US power as the fulcrum of stability in the world, but propelling a reexamination of the core premises of the entire campaign to rid the world of terrorism.

First and foremost, the essential principle of waging a "global war on terrorism" must be thrown out. To wage war on terrorists is to elevate them in status and prestige, and that spreads the virus of terrorism. Criminalizing terrorist activity, treating terrorists not as "enemy combatants" but as desperately sick mass murderers, robs them of status and support.

In truth, the Bush Administration thinks much the same way as the terrorists it vows to exterminate. Both see their cause as a holy war. Both are willing to kill civilians to attain their ends. Both see the world in simplistic terms that lend themselves to perpetrating evil in the name of good. Both want to destroy the UN.

The irony is that an effective way of dealing with terrorism already exists, and is quietly being carried out. Cooperative international police activity has caught many perpetrators, and prevented scores of others from carrying out their crimes against humanity.

But the mentality and propaganda of war and militarism preclude any possibility of eliminating the scourge of terrorism. Indeed, it is providing a far more putrid breeding ground for it.

War is a barbarity, an atavism that has become an anachronism in a global society. And yet, the Bush Administration has successfully won its most basic propaganda victory by couching the terrible challenge of terrorism in terms of war. And that plays right into the hands of the terrorists' agenda.

Even the UN has accepted this philosophical and linguistic framework, and now has paid with the lives of its most cherished servants for doing so. Furthermore, the perception of the UN as an arm of US policy is not without basis.

After the illegal US invasion, UN diplomats acted like it could be business as usual in Iraq. Now that Iraq is a battleground for all forces opposing US power in the Middle East, the UN is seen as complicit.

The Bush Administration hews to its self-fulfilling prophecy, believing that the UN must now follow US "leadership." If it does, it will continue to follow the bastards into hell.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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