On January 29th, 2003, CNN published an
article by Mohammed Aldouri entitled “Bush: Iraq, al Qaeda linked” confirming President
Bush accusations that Iraq was linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Also,
he made a link between a possible war in Iraq and the war against terrorism,
and considered former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a danger to all
Americans as he claimed that "He is a danger not only to countries in the
region...because of his Al Qaeda connections, because of his history, he is a
danger to Americans…And we're going to deal with him. We're going to deal with
him before it's too late."
A few years after Iraqi war, after 100,000
civilian dead, and over two million
external refugees, Bush admitted that Al Qaeda wasn't
in Iraq before the invasion and made light of the issue by responding to it and
saying "So What?"
On February 17th, 2012, after reading the
article "Target Britain: Iran and al-Qaeda link up with
UK in their sights" published in same day by Chris Hughes in the Mirror News about the link
between Al Qaeda, Iran and the new 9/11, one pressing thought comes to my mind.
Just how many Iranian people should die? How many millions should live as
refugees? And how many years we have to wait to hear someone telling us there
was no link between Iran and Al Qaeda and dismissing it as “So What?”
In the past, we heard about the Iranian
plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States, recently we
read about the Iranian assassination campaign against Israeli people abroad in
India, Georgia, and Bangkok, and who knows, maybe in the future we will read
about Iranian terrorist attacks like 9/11 in Europe, Arabia Saudi or in Qatar for
his commitment with Occident, just to justify attack on Iran. We repeat the
same story, yesterday the beast was Iraq, today is Iran and maybe tomorrow
Arabia Saudi or other Arab - Muslim country will be the next.
So What?
It
is time to cease to observe what politicians and media are telling and what
they are doing. It is time to know the truth, to contribute, and to be actors
not just spectators. It is time to participate as cosmopolitan citizens in our
shared future by telling our politicians and leaders: “that’s enough” to
continue to use the power of lies, if there’s one violent way to solve our
conflicts there are also many pacific ways to transform them, and we demand our
right to know the truth, because, although we are not politicians, we are not
stupid and we want be part of a real culture of peace not peace stained by preventive
war and the blood of innocent civilians.
