Manuel Valenzuela, American Ali Baba: George W. Bush and the Stealing of America, January 25, 2004

Iraqis have a slang term for those whom they believe guilty of thievery and chicanery, those people who steal, lie, cheat and are endowed with low levels of scruples. This term, Ali Baba, in reference to the great fictional work Arabian Nights and its story, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, has, since the occupation began, spread throughout Iraq�s population when talking about American soldiers, and, to a more extreme personality, George W. Bush.

To the Iraqis, our nation and our occupying army are Ali Baba�s, plunderers of resources and usurpers of foreign lands. George W. Bush is seen as the greatest Ali Baba of them all, a thief and a liar, enriching his friends, cronies and contributors through the privatization of most of Iraq�s economy, businesses and government institutions, laying waste to a proud nation and ruining the lives of millions of its citizens. Colonizing and occupying Iraq under the fa�ade of bringing freedom and instilling democracy, Bush is fooling nobody in Iraq.

Everyone living in the cradle of civilization knows what America came for, everyone can see that without black gold and strategic base locations, Iraq would be allowed to decay into oblivion much like the many nations of Africa that are in need of greater intervention than Iraq. In the great geopolitical game of Empire building and world domination through economic and military prowess, fantasies and propaganda fool no one. Iraq is but the playing field; not the first nor the last.

And so Ali Baba has come to Iraq, returning in a rather mutated force, intent on stealing, plundering and oppressing, enriching and pilfering, destroying only to rebuild, installing crony capitalism and debauched democracy not for the benefit of Iraqis but for that of the oligarchy back in America. Ali Baba and his many thieves have been reborn, American style, a gross distortion of the noble tale told by generations of Arabs.

The term Ali Baba can also be borrowed by us to anoint onto our President, (with no insult intended towards the original Ali Baba) for he has wreaked havoc onto our nation, stealing, plundering and decimating so much of what we have in this rich and powerful nation. George W. Bush, Ali Baba. Ali Baba, George W. Bush. Thief, liar, debauched inheritor of dishonor and nefarious consciousness. Creator of an unbalanced world, yielding arrogance, ignorance and apathy, spawning unnecessary hardship at home and throughout the world, smirking and strutting from fund raiser to fund raiser, raping our lands, waters and air, leaving everyone behind, robbing our nation�s wallets of its treasure, its loved ones for his wars.

American Ali Baba has stolen America from each of us, 285 million Americans, of all creeds, colors and beliefs. He has stolen what we once were, our way of being, our high hopes and vision, the bright flame of idealism that once lit and inspired a world and the collective fraternity of a world sympathetic to the horrors of 9/11. What once enlivened the people of the world to make our shores their home has been trashed. What at one point was the country boasting the greatest liberties and freedoms now suppresses each more every day. The bastion of democracy, the espouser of human rights, the altruistic leader of nations has given way instead to a malignant cancer spawning deadly tumors throughout the planet.

The virus that was born in November 2000 has spread its deadly pathogens from coast to coast, robbing us of America, from sea to shining sea, from the tallest peak to the lowest valley, from the largest city to the smallest town. We are slowly hemorrhaging to death; the sickness we have been infected with grows stronger while we become weaker. American Ali Baba�s hands of perpetuating failure have clenched our country tightly, sucking away our energy and vitality, slowly despoiling yet another entity that has had the misfortune of being touched by his grasp of death.

For three years our spirit has been drying up, resembling the dry river beds now common thanks to global warming; the drought, the curse of American Ali Baba is upon us, condemning us all. It has enveloped us as our stupor continues unawakened, ever dormant, allowing the thief to continue his pillage and his cronies the power to ceaselessly leach our pockets of everything that once belonged to our collective being. Will we ever awake? Or will our eyes next open when the backbone and flesh of what America once stood for is gone, forever decayed, remaining but brief sentences in the short life of the Pax Americana?

Under the pretext of terrorism American Ali Baba has meticulous taken our freedoms and rights. He has stolen our civil liberties, our right to protest, our freedoms of speech and assembly. Protest is curtailed and monitored, free-speech zones act as a hindrance rather than as a beacon to free speech. Any American can now be taken from his home, without notification, in essence disappeared, perhaps never to be seen or heard from again. The government can come into our homes without our knowledge. It can oversee what we read from libraries and bookstores. Personal information from our lives is now stored and surveyed; our Internet habits can now be monitored. Police now act with impunity and punish without accountability. Intimidation and blunt use of force are now standard operating procedure. Our major cities are under increasing levels of martial law. We are seeing the rise of a police state, a cocktail fusion of the old Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi. Can the evolution to the Nazi Gestapo be far behind?

American Ali Baba and his junta of thieves have made us less secure, not more. His trumpeting calls for pre-emptive offensive imperial wars have created a new arms race as those who see themselves in the crosshairs of the Bush war party seek deterrence from the Evil Empire. The proliferation of WMDs is a natural consequence to those seeking protection from invasion. The race has begun, the clock is now ticking, "enemy" states are rushing to acquire man�s deadliest weapons. As a result, the entire planet has been made less safe.

The Iraq invasion and subsequent harsh occupation has created an oasis of resentment among sand filled terrain, an assembly line of new fighters eager to battle what they see as the greatest evil on the planet. Thousands willing to die have been born in the Fertile Crescent through the dropping of bombs and spraying of bullets, watered by the carnage of gushing blood. American Ali Baba has robbed us of our security, our sense of safety, through his unjust war and ignorant sojourn into Empire expansion he has opened us up for reactions to his frivolous actions.

The hate of the world is upon us, opening up doors of karmic repercussions and embittered reciprocation. We have only American Ali Baba and his ravaging Rasputins to thank.

His thievery and chicanery have made of us paranoid worshipers of fear, manipulated observers of color-coded propaganda eagerly displayed by corporate media to drown out our inherent right to live happy, content lives. We are made to fear and grow insecure; we are purposefully made to subconsciously associate protection from fear and "terrorism" with the pillager of safeness and security, American Ali Baba. Through this systemic conditioning American Ali Baba and his political messiahs extol his perceived yet fictional qualities as protector of America and bold leader in the face of terror onto the nation�s citizens.

The politics of fear has been unleashed, manipulating our emotions to assure his re-election and the further erosion of our American way of life. Fear has been imported onto our shores not by boogie men but by American Ali Baba and his Department of Homeland Insecurity, changing the fabric of our society, damaging the lives of both our progeny and ourselves.

American Ali Baba has stolen from us the tremendous show of solidarity exhibited by the entire brotherhood of nations after 9/11. Today we are hated throughout the globe for our unjust wars, our economic acts of genocide, arrogant indifference to the troubles of the world, spurious unilateral decision-making, sponsored acts of international terrorism and the debilitating effects of market colonialism that have been unleashed onto the people of the world. Our nation is seen as a rogue state, a spoiled brat that cannot seem to grow and mature. Because of American Ali Baba we are seen as the cancer that is infecting the planet.

To billions living the reality of humanity and not the dream of perched deities, America is the terrorist nation, responsible for millions and millions of deaths in the last 100 years, creating utmost misery and poverty in lands far and near, caring not for the planet�s future but for the ravenous appetite bellowing from deep inside the Beast�s entrails. American Ali Baba is seen as the greatest threat to world peace, the most dangerous man on Earth, a symbol of all that is wrong with American-imposed crony capitalism and debauched democracy that has wrought decimation to both man and land, in all corners of the globe, in every country and every region. He has stolen from the world the hope of peace, universal fraternity and a civilization free of inequality and injustice.

The corporate Leviathan has grown exponentially thanks to the exploits of American Ali Baba. The masses grow weaker, the Leviathan only stronger. Worker rights are disappearing; longer hours and less pay have appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Overtime is vanishing, ergonomics standards cater to the corporation. We are being made robots and automatons of the Leviathan; our blood, sweat and tears are being sacrificed in the name of making the elite richer. The gap between rich and poor continues to increase under the watchful eyes of American Ali Baba as he continues to swindle the people of their wages, benefits, healthcare and life. We must become more productive if we want to keep our jobs. We slave ourselves for the Leviathan; our lives grow unhappier as we realize the futility of our ever-growing working hours and dwindling leisure time.

Already millions have been laid off, their jobs sent oversees to exploit the slave labor espoused by and created for American Ali Baba�s neo-liberal cabal of subjugation. Close to three million jobs have vanished, unemployment does not diminish. Soup kitchens seem full, homelessness is once more a scar ripping open our proud faces. American Ali Baba and his henchmen have eviscerated healthcare in a land that is the richest in the history of the world. We are the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare coverage. Forty-three million people walk the streets of the Empire without healthcare. And laws and regulations signed by American Ali Baba and his henchmen benefit only the Leviathan while we are left to suffer disease, pain and sickness.

American Ali Baba has destroyed our once fiscally disciplined government. Our surplus is in tatters, the deficit is a monument to ineptitude and all the while the Robin Hood of the Rich keeps taking from the poor to fatten up the offshore bank accounts of the miniscule percentage that comprises his elite and oligarchic friends, cronies and contributors. American Ali Baba has squandered our treasure, now making it easier for him and his junta to devastate and implode the social programs they have been targeting for decades. Education, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, veteran benefits, Social Security and many other services can now be under-funded and gutted under the pretext of the ever-growing deficit. Millions of Americans will be affected; the Leviathan�s owners will further enrich themselves as we descend further down the well of decadence.

We are being robbed of the magnificent environment that still exists in our country as American Ali Baba does everything in his power to grant the Leviathan any and all carte blanche to rape, pillage, pollute and scar our national forests, lands and waters. Forests are being ravaged along with all its inhabitants; ecosystems are being eradicated; skies are being polluted with toxins and chemicals; lands are being devastated and scorched through fossil fuel and mineral exploration; lakes, rivers and oceans are becoming cesspools of waste. This is all thanks to the exploits of the corporate Leviathan and the thief of all that is precious, American Ali Baba.

Denying the real threat and existence of global warming, an imminent danger more real than "terrorism," capable of killing hundreds of thousands, American Ali Baba continues to pervert reality and spin fantasy in order to protect his friends in the oil/energy cartel. He is stealing all of us of our future; he is condemning our children to a world of hell. If no action is taken soon, Earth will in time resemble the barren plains of Mars whose images we see thanks to our robotic rovers polluting and trashing the Red Planet today. A greater thief of life does not now exist.

The American flag has been stolen from us; our patriotism has been hijacked by a thief, claiming both for himself and his army of rapacious followers. Red, white and blue has gone missing, especially if you dissent, criticize, seek accountability, transparency and the truth. To question American Ali Baba and his government is to be unpatriotic; to demand justice and truth is condemned. Secrecy and corruption run rampant; invisible winds circling the White House, settling where the buck stops: the Oval Office.

Honor and Integrity were but marketing gimmicks to win an election; they are nowhere to be found on the streets of Washington or in the West Wing. American Ali Baba, it has become readily apparent for three years now, has neither scruples nor virtue, instead caring only for his rich friends and the corporate Leviathan. This is pretty obvious, it seems to me, when nothing has been done for the masses and everything for the corporations. That should tell you who American Ali Baba is, what he espouses and where his loyalties lie.

Through hallways and chambers, the putrid smells of greed and dishonor roam freely, eroding our trust in government and in those seeking higher office. American Ali Baba will be remembered as the worst President to ever inhabit the White House. History will record his attempts to impose corporatism onto the American people, in essence stealing our rights, freedoms and democratic principles and giving them to our corporate masters. The masses have been made worse, our minds have been brainwashed, our country usurped from our endlessly working hands and the continued highway robbery of the American spirit continues unabated. We have but American Ali Baba and his gang of miscreants to thank.

The US has been set back many years, and the damage done by Bush will not be easy to undo. Each day American Ali Baba remains in office is a day more decimation is unleashed and the farther we fall down the underground abyss to Hades. Each day the stealing of America only intensifies.

The quicker we purge what never belonged the quicker we can rebuild the country that once was and that can still be, continuing our march to greatness as moral leader of the brotherhood of nations. We still have time, but first American Ali Baba must be excreted from our nation�s pores, giving way to a new light of hope and leadership that arises from the people like a new horizon emanating from the virgin morning eastern sky.

United as one we must stand, shoulder to shoulder we must march, resounding our calls for change on our way to saving our land and our planet from the unbalance created by the negative energy that is American Ali Baba. We have ten months to work on it. The ramifications of failure are not easy to contemplate.

** Coming on Wednesday: American Taliban: The Ignorant and Damaging Politics of George W. Bush

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net