Accountability required from warmongers

Accountability required
from warmongers

Mahatma Gandhi was an apostle of non-violence and peace. Hardly anyone has insulted Mahatma Gandhi more than Mahmood Elahi (December 13, 2008), a Canadian national contributing frequently to this column.
His warmongering character was revealed during 2002-2003 when he became a strong advocate for George Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. In those days, Mahmood Elahi wrote incessantly in numerous papers around the world in order to build up global public opinion in favour of George Bush.
Often he wrote the same article simultaneously in several newspapers. His guru those days was Ahmed Chalabi, a wanted criminal in Jordan, where Chalabi was sentenced in absentia to 22 years of hard labour for embezzling $70 million from his family’s Petra Bank.
When the Saddam regime was overthrown, Mahmood Elahi’s joy knew no bounds. On May 27, 2003 he described George Bush as ‘a man of vision’ in a leading Bangladeshi newspaper. (http: //www.thedailystar.net /2003/05/27/ d30527110659.htm)
The type of democracy that George Bush introduced in Iraq came out of the barrels of gun resulting in the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis. The country is ruined and has been pushed back half a century.
More than four million Iraqis have become refugees. Innumerable Iraqi girls and women became the object of sexual lust of the invading soldiers acting as the vanguard of Bush’s ‘democracy’. The puppet regime of Iraq emerging through Bush’s ‘democracy’ was powerless to touch these rapists who in many cases acted with impunity.
Millions and millions of people marched around the world against the invasion of Iraq. World leaders such as Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy spoke against the war. Mahmood Elahi’s effort to mobilise public opinion in favour of Bush’s Iraq invasion met with severe criticisms.
Many compared his writings to those of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Adolf Hitler. But as time passed by and the heroic people of Iraq fought back, Mahmood Elahi realised that George Bush’s criminal attack on Iraq did not become a cakewalk. He changed tactics and now even talks of Mahatma Gandhi.
The other day the brave Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zeidi threw two shoes at George Bush, one of them as ‘a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people’ to a ‘dog’ and the other ‘for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.’
He acted not just for the people of Iraq but for the entire humanity demanding peace and justice. Time has come to demand accountability from all those warmongers including Mahmood Elahi who willingly joined the bandwagon of George Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq that resulted in one of the great tragedies of all times.
Ahmed Sadiq
Via e-mail