Why the World Hates Gringos

When America first went out to Afghanistan, there was a measure of international support. After all, the Taliban was a rouge government which didn't care much for human rights, international law and did have clear terrorist links. So the world wasn't that shocked when the US invaded Afghanistan.

Then they noticed that the Americans did not have a clear-cut plan. They allied themselves with local warlords, and in an affront to international law, the US labeled the Taliban and their supporters as "enemy combatants", an euphemism by which those captured by the American army where denied the basic Geneva Convention rights afforded to prisoners of war, including the right to public trial and humane treatment. Instead, those captured were sent to Guantamano, Cuba, where they pass their time restrained and getting cooked by the tropical heat. The world was outraged. America's response? Prop up a weak and ineffective puppet government and build a humongous oil pipeline.

And then, one fine day George W. Bush woke up with the bright idea of invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein. It didn't matter that Osama bin Laden and Hussein hated each other's guts, the US claimed that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. More than a decade of weapons inspections and UN sanctioned economic embargoes had left Iraq with nothing more than a lot of heated rhetoric. The Bush administration claimed that they had WMD's (weapons of mass destruction, another new euphemism) and even had the capability of launching an attack into American soil. Iraq, Bush now famously claimed in his State of the Union Address, had even restarted their nuclear weapons program by trying to buy uranium from Niger.

The Americans thought that the world would play along with them. After all, there was not much love for Saddam's regime after all. They were in for a surprise.

The UN's Security Council was totally against a US-led invasion of Iraq, unless there was no doubt left that the Arab country had the alleged WMD's and had an intent to use it. The Americans, being caught with no more proof than Bush's word, resorted to lies, fake documents and propaganda. The last drop was when Bush, with total contempt for international law, decided to label the UN as ineffective and inconsequential, broke up with their traditional allies France and Germany and decided to invade Iraq on its own -with the help of his "coalition of the willing", made up mostly of British troops.

And now you have the US stuck in Iraq, where lawlessness prevails and American troops die everyday. No weapons of mass destruction anywhere. Now the Bush administration is saying, along with Prime Minister Blair, that they went in to "liberate" Iraqis. As far as anybody knows, no one in Iraq wanted the US to come in, bomb them to oblivion and institute an occupation government. They didn't want to suffer up to 50,000 civilian casualties. They didn't want their cultural patrimony looted, nor their oil being auctioned to the highest bidder by the Americans.

Bush now wants the world to "help" rebuild Iraq, with no say about the future of this country, of course. He wants to go to the UN and ask that organization to sanction the invasion and pay for it. Right. He's in for another surprise.

What happened during the Iraqi debacle, and is happening right now, is that the world is appalled by the Bush administration AND the attitude of Americans. This little invasion has been very costly to Americans in terms of freedom of speech -anybody questioning Bush is instantly labeled a traitor. Basic rights such as privacy, information, freedom of movement, freedom of association have gone down the drain. And the American's public response? They are backing Bush thinking that he is doing the right thing.

It doesn't matter that he lied to them, flaunted fake intelligence, sent troops to die, killed thousands of civilians in Iraq, jailed an undisclosed number of people (some think that it borders on the thousands), did irreparable damage to the image of the United States around the world and won some new enemies along the way, sent the economy spiraling down like a downed bomber, and wasted the economic surplus that Clinton left him, tanking the US economy with an unprecedented deficit.

But Americans are cheering Bush. They may even reelect him.

That's why the world hates Gringos. Everybody thinks they're stupid letting a man like George W. Bush rule them, everybody thinks they're idiots by electing a Republican Congress, giving Bush Jr. total freedom into enacting his and his cronies will. Everybody is scared that corporations write legislation in the US, and that there are no penalties for corporate crooks and murderers. In other times, the world would sit back and watch how someone like Bush Jr. got impeached (hey, they did impeach Clinton, and all he did was screw an intern). The world is worried that there is nobody who can stop Bush's mad quest for power…

But for Americans themselves.

Prove the whole world wrong. Let us know that you haven't fallen for all the propaganda this administration has been spewing, that you do think that the rest of the world matters, that you can't have someone like Bush concentrate all this power and use it against people who are left defenseless. America used to stand for a lot many great things. It's your turn to make it right again. And for the world to stop hating Gringos and call you 'friends' again as so many people did not so long ago.

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