Letter From Bahrain

What will it take before Americans turn this loathsome, self-important fool impersonating a president out of the White House? Members of the American media, especially during the once-a-year press conference, behave like the blinkered, solipsistic, self-congratulating cunts they are.

The Commission on Credulous Stupidity is now meeting in Washington to examine the intelligence failures that led to both the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and an unfounded war to rid Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction. This Commission must really ask Congress and the press why the United States went to war against Iraq with such an air of juvenile excitement.

If Bush insists on changing the world “for the better” by simply invoking faith as a rationale for battling Saddam Hussein and the alleged connection with al Qaeda, he is now America’s version of an ayatollah. Faith may inspire individual religious worship, but it’s not the basis for a national foreign policy.

What good is this faith-based foreign policy when Ted Koppel reads his list of “The Fallen” for the American audience of ABC’s Nightline? What good is this faith-based foreign policy for the survivors of Fallujah?

Let’s hope Ted Koppel and other high profile American broadcasters do not reduce the causality lists to detached sports scores, the way the networks treated the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong battlefield dead in the late 1960s. If the figures of enemy dead were accurate during the Vietnam War era, the United States killed the opposition three-times over.

If Bush had led the Children’s Crusade of 1212, this faith-inspired rhetoric would be fitting. Now it’s dangerously irrational. So, while the unelected president insists weapons are still in Iraq, somewhere - in a North Pole of his imagination, the Iraqis are obviously benefiting from the America version of democracy.

This explains why, according to a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll (April 28), only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger.

While the Commission on Credulous Stupidity meets in Washington, when will CIA Director George Tenet finally be fired? Is this a task for Donald Trump? If Tenant had a shred of self-respect, he would have resigned his post on September 12, 2001. At the very least, Bush should have sacked his sorry ass by September 13, 2001. Yet Americans allow the Bush-Cheney Junta to retain Tenet and operate carte blanche. It’s abhorrent.

Just as nauseating are the one-sided reasons of the Junta for this war: America was attacked for no reason; people just don’t like us; and, of course, because these enemies are resentful of our “freedom.”

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court anointed president has been enormously successful in selling this lame line, just as he has been successful in tying the Sept. 11 attack to his reason for starting a war in Iraq.

The Commission on Credulous Stupidity should interrogate the nature of the American posture toward Israel that allows the United States to exercise unfailing support for assassinations of Palestinian leaders and approval of Ariel Sharon's apartheid policies.

If there is a country deserving of the “terrorist-state” label, it’s Israel. This is why Gulf States are right to be wary of American intentions in the region.

My teenage son will attend the Junior-Senior Prom in about a month. Because he requires a tuxedo for the formality, we decided to acquire a custom-made suit instead of renting the apparel.

In Bahrain this means a trip to a tailor in the souq; the centuries old market area where one may find all manner of goods and shops. No matter the intentions, a visit to the souq requires patience and some tenacity.

The neighborhood is a maze of unmarked narrow streets and barely negotiable pathways. To the uninitiated, it’s quite possible to note a shop’s location and yet never find the vendor again.

Despite the absence of a Western styled network of streets, there is exhilaration from encountering the Family of Man in this dense quarter: Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs; Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians, Filipinos, British, Americans; merchants hawking cold water, designer knock-off t-shirts, and tacky souvenirs of no value [“excuse me, friend … good price”]; money changers stationed strategically at alley corners – unmolested by thieves and riff-raff, male and female Arab beggars perched on narrow steps, with one hand outstretched, evoking the downtrodden image of another human crushed by too many indignities.

One navigates through this scene while the muezzin of a nearby mosque calls the faithful Muslims to perform the salaah, the fixed ritual of prayer. Yet in this district, most people take heed of only one kind of profit.

To acquire a tailor made suit in the souq is both easy and quite reasonable. Based on recommendation and a fairly accurate hand scrawled map, we located Mohammad Shafi Mahnga, a reputable Pakistani tailor, on Al-Hadrami Road, in what appears as a typical no-name passage of the souq.

This is merely the first step. A few doors away is the Suiting Corner, the fabric store, and this is the true beginning of the ritual. The proprietor, a middle-aged man fluent in both Arabic and English, lavished us with bolts of fine cloth from Great Britain and France; steering us away from the undeniably inferior materials of Southeast Asia. His regard for quality translated into a brief tutorial in the blends of cloths worldwide, and the high standards from Western Europe, as opposed to other less expensive regions.

We left with sufficient material for a tuxedo, including a shirt and a tie.

Then it was back to Mohammad Shafi Mahnga’s shop for proper fittings. A short, older man with the requisite tape measure around his neck, like a permanent necklace, Mohammad took every conceivable measurement of my son.

In perfect free hand, the veteran tailor provided minor illustrations in an old-fashioned ledger of the items he would fashion. The cost for both fabric and a custom-made tuxedo was about $150.

This was agreed upon with a firm handshake and a smile.

There are days when I could live here forever.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship....

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from great courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again to bondage."

- Sir Alex Fraser Tyler
(1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian

“The boundaries of a nation’s empire are marked by the graves of her soldiers.”
- Napoleon

Between the daily carnage in Iraq and the weekly shoot-outs in Riyadh, we are rather blasé about it all. Compared to last year, there are no specific warnings issued to American civilians by the U.S. State Department. It’s business as usual in Bahrain.

If the Bush Administration thinks an invasion of Iraq is the recipe for introducing stability to the Middle East, the results already speak volumes. America is more detested than ever in this part of the world.

So far, we are lucky here and experience no ill regard from the Bahrainis. Money goes a long way in creating political accord, and the U.S. government continuously adds enormous wealth to the Al Khalifa ruling family. This is a very agreeable arrangement, as long as the Shia leaders can be corrupted with appropriate pay-offs.

Events in Saudi Arabia, that incestuous and odious country, are genuinely disturbing. Censorship is usually tight in the KSA, yet reporting is now impossible to squelch completely in the cell phone and Internet era. And, the Saudis visiting Bahrain on weekends act like cell phones are a birthright. Nonetheless, the attacks in Riyadh remind me of the lead-up to the French Revolution.

Allegedly, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., advised Bush to avoid a deadly insurgency in Iraq by buying the loyalty of its former military for about $200 million. That is a bargain compared to the $300 million Bandar’s cousins paid to get Al-Qaeda to leave Saudi Arabia alone - except it didn’t work. The word of an Arab means nothing.

British film director David Lean best captured the nuances of the Arab culture in Lawrence of Arabia. It should be required viewing for non-Muslim expatriates.


Perks of The Job
A Bahraini Member of Parliament (MP) has been accused of repeatedly pestering a woman for sex and making lewd suggestions.

But the prosecution is withdrawing the case, because as an MP he has full immunity.

The offences allegedly took place in 2001 before the 47-year-old company director became an MP in 2002.

A Syrian student at college in Bahrain complained to police that the man fondled himself in front of her, asked her for sex and made other lewd suggestions, on different occasions, the Lower Criminal Court heard.

A letter to the court from the public prosecutor said the accused was an MP and therefore enjoyed immunity from prosecution, so the case should not go ahead.