THE EDITOR, Sir:
CONCERNING THE atrocities occurring in Iraq by the United States and its armed forces, President George Bush, with idiocies that make us wonder how did he get this far, now is pulling all kinds of platitudes out of his little mind to defend his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The longer Mr Rumsfeld remains in this post people like him will become more conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of prisoner interrogation. George Bush must remember that his methods of changing the social order in Iraq will not lighten the burden of tyranny: it has only shifted it to another shoulder.
The United States has played God. For what can be done with a wolf, can be done with a man. If such monsters as George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld can appear as mere by-products of man's individual greed and folly, what might we not hope for as a main product of their universal aspirations? The Americans will tell you unashamedly that their success as a nation came about as a result of "guts, blood, sweat and tears" and that the American people rose to the occasion. But the gringos must remember this, God himself cannot raise a people above its own level, and even though you stir a nation to sacrifice all its appetites to its conscience, the result will still depend wholly on what sort of conscience the Americans have.
What Bush and Rumsfeld can't do with physical force and the moral prestige of the State in their mighty hands, cannot be done by enthusiastic criminals and lunatics. The behaviour of what we are now witnessing in Iraq is cowardice and this is universal: patriotism, public opinion, religion, morality are only fine names for intimidation; and cruelty, gluttony and credulity keep cowardice in countenance. George Bush will not be forgiven even if he quotes his nemesis Fidel, who said "History will forgive me"
I am etc.,
Dr. MICHAEL LEON
silverfox@cwhiptop.com
George Town Hospital
Dental Clinic.
P.O. Box 915 Grand Cayman
Via Go-Jamaica
