We are all hoping that secretary of state Colin Powell would be able to make a miracle and succeed in stopping the Israeli military brutalities against the Palestinians and convince Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to immediately withdraw the Israeli troops from the Palestinian territories.

The United States provides billions of dollars of military aids to Israel while supporting at the same time the militarization of autocratic Arab regimes, and then we are all hypocritically surprised of ongoing military conflicts and depravation in the Middle East.

Our world is divided, more unequal than ever with rich people busy making money with money while poor people either survive or die of hunger, yet we have invented the supposed new term 'terrorism' to wage war on war.

The United States foreign policies have been a failure for the last many years, and worse of all we have now a Bush administration intended to wage an all out war all over the world against terrorism. Saudi Arabia has just proposed another peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and now we find that its government is distributing money to the families of Palestinians killed or injured in the 17-month-old intifada.

We need a commitment to peace, a commitment to alleviate poverty, a commitment for people's self determination, a commitment for better democracies, instead we have president Bush's new world order advertised under the commercial slogan 'with US or against US.'

I have felt that president Bush has gone mad and now I don't feel isolated with this understanding as former senator George McGovern has just raised the question

"is it possible that our well-intentioned President and his Vice President have gone off the track of common sense in their seeming obsession with terrorism? Is there still validity to the proverb 'whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad'?"

Instead to hope for a miracle of peace by waging war with war, wouldn't it be better to wage peace with peace? Financier and philanthropist George Soros discounts the Bush administration policy against terrorism and says

"we are acting like a nation that is fighting for its survival and not like the leader of the global capitalist system that has a responsibility for making the system work better.'

Further, the inconsistencies of the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East are highlighted by senator Ron Paul as he says

"current policy prompts our government on one day to give the go-ahead to Sharon to do what he needs to do to combat terrorism (a term that now has little or no meaning); on the next day, however, our government tells him to quit, for fear that we may overly aggravate our oil pals in the Arab nations and jeopardize our oil supplies. This is an impossible policy that will inevitably lead to chaos."

And as President Bush hails Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a man of peace and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a man of terror, former brigadier general James J. David says

"Maybe someone should remind these Israeli parrots [American politicians] that Yasser Arafat is a former recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and Ariel Sharon is about to go on trial in the Belgium Courts for 'war crimes'."

We need people with intelligent common sense, and certainly we don't need this Greasy and Bushy administration who uses the commercial gimmick of the war on terror to further grease their private hands and to further undermine our democracies.

References

Pertinent articles published in Ensign

The origin of the Palestine- Israeli conflict, published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East http://www.mediareviewnet.com/jewsforjustice.htm

The Truth About Terrorism Is Contained in Encyclopedia Entries by Isaac Melton http://www.mediamonitors.net/isaacmelton1.html#top

Saudi Arabia sets aside $50M for 'martyrs' by Pamela Hess, UPI Pentagon Correspondent April 9, 2002 http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=09042002-050314-4015r

Questions for Mr. Bush by George McGovern, Published in the April 22, 2002 issue of The Nation, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0411-05.htm

George Soros: The sound of one billionaire lashing. The currency speculator turned philanthropist took exception to the President's foreign policy here yesterday. By Miriam Hill, Inquirer Staff Writer, April 9, 2002 http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/personal_finance/3026933.htm

America's Entangling Alliances in the Middle East by Ron Paul http://www.mediamonitors.net/ronpaul2.html

White House Calls Sharon 'Man of Peace' By Randall Mikkelsen, April 11, 2002 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=9&cid=578&u=/nm/20020411/ts_nm/mideast_usa_dc_81

U.S. Bias an Obstacle to Peace by James J. David http://www.mediamonitors.net/jamesjdavid10.html