December 29, 2004

Mr. President Sir,

I am one of the teeming millions of Muslims. Unlike most of them, however, I am from among the few thankful ones. I want to wish you a Happy New Year through this open letter, sir. I will also take this opportunity to remind the unthankful ones of your stunning feats through which you have made this world a far safer place than it was three years back. I will be a bit longish, as I find it hard to summarize your long and envious record in so short a space.

Happy New Year, too, to your great nation for having ensconced you back in that White House. Otherwise, the unthankful ones would have us believe that you, sir, belonged more to the International Criminal Court, where you should have been taken kicking, screaming and biting all the way. Ah the whining of the naïve, we few know.

The ungrateful ones have a long list of charges against you sir, stupid as they are. For starters, they accuse you of perverting the American Constitution through the so-called PATRIOT Act and the world Constitution by breaking international law and treaties, lying not just to the Congress but the whole world in your State of the Union address by advocating for a pre-emptive war based upon non-existent Iraqi WMDs, crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan and secret US prisons around the world, blah, blah, blah.

One can clearly see that these charges are indicative of some very sick minds. They merit no attention from you, sir. Please continue doing what you are doing, as with each passing day the world is virtually turning into a Fort Knox, so secure has it become. The Osamas are on the run, as are the Zarqawis, a few beheadings in between notwithstanding.

They don't know, for instance, that with the latest elections in Afghanistan, milk and honey has, for sure, started to gush forth in full geysers there. There are signs of prosperity everywhere in Afghanistan. The skylines of Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad are now dotted with upcoming skyscrapers. Food is in such abundance that even dogs there are sated and seldom bark. There is no looting, rape, plunder or murder. Even President Karzai is now feeling safe enough to drive his armored car to an unprecedented seven kilometers from Kabul's town center, not very far from the city limits. In short, every Afghan soul, canines included, is basking in the blissful glow of your benevolence. That, sir, is some achievement. We few understand and are grateful.

What we do not understand is how we, your hooked admirers, will continue to get our thrills under this new Afghan administration. Back then, we had really delighted in the neutralizing of those Afghan women and children in that marriage party. Remember, sir? I wish I had been in the cockpit of one of those C-130 gunships. I am sure the pilots must have been able to virtually see the hopeless terror on the faces of those terrorist women and children, what with the slow speed of the C-130 and a cockpit full of gadgetry. It must have been lovely with all these terrorist women and children trying to hide behind small bushes in open fields, and your brave pilots turning them into pulp with disdainful flicks of their trigger fingers.

Wow. Not that your pilots did a bad job, but we were sorry to hear later that only 200 of them could be neutralized; the other hundred got away. Terrorists' mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and children are all terrorists. We are one with you on that and we understand, the grumblings of the ungrateful not withstanding. They just don't seem to understand that the battle for liberty and freedom sometimes requires liberating some souls from their miserable existences too. We hope Rumsfeld and Condi are quickly able to come up with something. With their undying love for Muslims, and a little help from Wolfowitz, we should be seeing that kind of action soon again. We are not disheartened.

There is no end to the antics of the unthankful. One is sick at their joy when a brave American falls victim to the Afghan brutes. That those courageous Americans died defending some other Afghans' right to junk food and freedom is a fact lost on them. They'd rather start blaming a complete news blanket, allegedly thrown by your minions to fool Americans back home, for the full facts not emerging to the outside world. They claim, to the horror of those of us who do understand, that things there are much worse. That a steady stream of body bags is flying out of Afghanistan to America and destinations west. That there is a word on the wind that the Afghan rebels are getting their horses ready for a game of Buzkushi. That the rules of the game were slightly changed when the Soviets were occupying Afghanistan and live Russian soldiers were then used in the game instead of slaughtered sheep. That they intend to follow the same rules, and a collect call to Putin would confirm those.

Nonsense all. That these are outright lies, we know and understand. Firstly, there are not that many Afghans and their horses left, after the rich doses of Daisy Cutters that you administered them, who could now re-muster the numbers and courage to take on your valiant soldiers. Secondly, with the fearless Northern Alliance soldiers policing the countryside, no one dare as much as look askance at your braves. We, sir, do not believe a word of it. Yet prudence demands that you do make a small little call to this Putin guy and learn the rules. There is no telling what these monsters are up to. It is better to be prepared rather than taken unawares. After all, your braves have gone a little soft on online porn, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Spice Girls.

From Iraq, too, we hear similar outrageous stories coming out. For example, they say that your G.I. Joes are now deserting in hordes. That they are paying the Kurds up north thousands of dollars to get smuggled into Turkey, from where they are disappearing into thin air, only to reappear in cooler climes. That the Mosul bombing is only the beginning of more horrific surprises to come. That the so-called ''Sunni Triangle' is a figment of your imagination and your not having learned your geometry lessons very well. That in fact the whole Iraqi population is up in arms against your benign occupation and it is not a question of triangles, circles and rectangles.

That the series of bombings that left hundreds of innocent Iraqis dead and scores of others injured were in fact planted by your cohorts to drive a wedge between Shias and Sunnis. That in Fallujah and some other Iraqi cities, despite having killed the citizens of those cities to their hearts' content, your 'Bart Simpsons' are now so spooked that they are shooting at their own shadows after having shot out all the goats and sheep. That they are now jumpy to the extent that in broad daylight they cannot tell the difference between a five-year-old toting a schoolbag and a full-grown adult wielding a Bazooka. That due to the deteriorating aim of your nervy warriors, the hospitals are now overflowing with mis-shot dead and dying Iraqis who otherwise sympathized with your occupation of their country. That the trade in body parts has really picked up, what with the rich harvest of dead Iraqis all over. That the only reconstruction in Iraq is in a few oil wells for the express purpose of providing this stuff to the needy Israelis. So on and so forth.

All drivel, this. We don't believe a word of it and continue to understand your actions that, as always, speak exactly as loud as your words. Why these fools cannot understand simpler facts of life, is something beyond us few. For starters, how could the reconstruction begin when the destruction is not even half way through despite your best efforts? Then desertions and American soldiers, unbelievable. We are sure that it is some double-pincer attack that your able Generals sitting in their austere command centers in Florida have planned to envelop the Iraqi resistance from both north and south. And what if your poor Israeli friends do get a few drops of Iraqi oil? They do, after all, consume a lot of this stuff keeping those tanks, aircraft and armored personnel carriers going to snuff out the cursed Palestinian terrorists and their damned stone-throwing children. And to kill these hooligans with their brethren's oil is a pleasure known only to you and us few.

To be honest, sir, these Muslims have a habit of complaining and wailing. Do not be distracted by their noises. We few are proud of the way you are conducting your affairs between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I mean, look at these Palestinian cowards blowing themselves up in the midst of Israelis. We simply do not understand to what depths these cowards can sink. We all know how Muslims proliferate. Their lives are not at all equivalent to those who have your blessings.

Moreover, a man half as intelligent as you, Mr. President, can see the abject spinelessness of taking one's own life for a dim little cause. Anyone could do that. Why can't the unthankful ones understand these simple facts? And then these Palestinian terrorists have the cheek to simply die away with their victims and deprive your friends of a nice little talk in the cozy privacy of one of their jails. Cowardice is written large all over these acts. How unreasonable can Muslims become sometimes? We often wonder. Although some of us do think that you went a little too far in calling this Sharon character a man of peace they keep showing pictures of small Palestinian babies with holes in their chests the size of a grown man's fist yet again they miss the point. These babies are like little snakes. Allowed to grow, they will turn into hydra-headed monsters and then it will be too late. Better now than later.

Don't know why they call Sharon, such a tenderly caring man that he is, as the Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla? These stone-throwing kids are indeed a grave danger to the entire world, we few know for sure. Sharon does this with a heavy heart, we recognize and appreciate . He only needs a little understanding from us Muslims. Do advise Sharon to file off those fangs, though. Every time he opens his mouth they show, and friends like us are at a loss to justify the next peace Nobel for him.

But, to our utter frustration, the ungrateful ones don't stop there. They get wilder in their accusations from this point onwards. They refer to your famous "we will smoke 'em out of their holes" speech and ask how did you know in advance that Saddam would be recovered out of a hole in the ground? They claim that you either put him there to make your words prophetic, or Saddam already knew his role in the drama and just crept in there to pleasure your grace. Here we few find ourselves at a total loss. We continue to understand nonetheless, I hasten to add. Though with each passing day we seem to understand more than we actually know, yet onwards we march.

Do you at least get some time for quiet contemplation, Mr. President? Or won't the Rummy, Dickey, Condi and Wolfie gang allow you that, for fear of your finding out the truth? Do you sometimes suspect that this gang took you for a ride?

The ungrateful ones, though, don't give us any respite. They then ask where are Saddam's WMDs? And where is Osama? Has he disappeared into a hole of another kind or something akin to a hole in Alice in Wonderland? He did appear just in time for your elections, but only just. We hope he is not enjoying some poolside dinners in your august company with Saddam's WMDs tucked safely away in the White House basement. That would put us, your diehard devotees, in a real quandary, though we would continue to understand.

Few of the really demented ones, from among the unthankful, really fly off the handle with some of their false insinuations. They start comparing, for example, Osama Bin Laden's scorecard with yours, and proudly point out Osama's feat of having slaughtered 2,500 human beings in just one go on 9/11. A self-defeating argument if there ever was one. They forget that your number has already crossed 100,000 and is rising by the hour. They forget too that while you also make no distinction between combatant, non-combatant, man, woman, old or young, you have thrown in children for good measure. How many dead, dying or crippled children, for example, does Osama have to his credit? Unfairness at its worst, one must say. They also forget the 1.5 million Iraqis that your father killed. How unjust. After all, that was in the family too. Above all, they forget, sir, that there are four full years of your august presidency ahead. Who knows? You may go for the red button one of these days and really Neokon the hell out of these ugly ingrates. Duh. We few are sure to have the last laugh then.

They then refer to the 190-odd billion dollars that you have spent so far on your war on terror, not to include the further countless billions for next year, or over one trillion dollars estimated over the next 10 years. They claim that for less than one-tenth of this amount you could have turned these countries into rose gardens--places not exactly conducive to the growth of your so-called "terrorist" variety. They rub the salt further by quoting one of your own ex-presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as having said:

'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.' Potential terrorists, they add. What should we do sir? We are dumbfounded, though we continue to understand.

And while at that, sir, do stop using this word "terror" a little too often. Although you look something à la Mona Lisa, with your beautiful derisive smirk, saying this famous T-word, some other jokers are using it to extend their own wicked agendas. You being who you are, your mantra is taken up by these Machiavellis around the world, and their absurd overuse of this word renders your practice futile. For however much that we the understanding ones try, we are now finding it increasingly hard to ignore the giggles of the ungrateful every time you say this T-word. Coin some other word, please. Drop the letter "T", for example, and use the remaining letters. See, the word "error" rhymes fairly well, and can be used for some years yet. Consider "error," "errorist," and "errorism." Who cares about the meanings?

We also hear that you were shocked at a report of your Advisory Group that the level of hostility in the Muslim world against the US has reached an unprecedented level. Firstly, sir, stop forming such think tanks, which cause stress to your gracious self by misleading reports on such petty issues. These are more "tank" than "think" anyway.

Secondly, this Muslim world must be on planet Mars for someone to have found out its thinking, feeling, grievances and aspirations. The one on planet Earth is unrepresented, unheard, disenfranchised and voiceless. Just order this Kofi man to sign a few more fig leafs and scram. Then watch the leaders of this same Muslim world falling over each other to save your boys from getting shot to doll rags in Iraq and Afghanistan, hostility or no hostility. We can already see a few straining at the leashes to bail you out. After all, if the life of even a single blue-blooded American "Johnny Bravo" can be saved at the cost of a few useless Muslim ones, why not? Good riddance is just one of the side-benefits of that. We few know and understand.

A few requests now, sir. Would you please Neocon these North Koreans to kingdom come for revealing the secret of Rumsfeld being a psychopath? I mean, everyone knew it, only nobody was saying it in so many words. There was no need. It is another matter that genuine psychopaths the world over have taken a strong exception to this insult. We hear they intend taking the North Koreans to court for this. This trend of revealing closely guarded secrets cannot be allowed to go on. What if they next reveal that you are actually "Sonic the Hedgehog" masquerading as the President of United States? Now, where would that leave us? And while you are ordering that Neokon strike, would you also consider tying this Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell to the missile for making such a mockery of your noble features? Even we, your ardent admirers, sometimes cannot suppress the odd spontaneous laughter, though we continue to understand.

On a more serious note, sir, do you sometimes, in your moments of quiet contemplation, really think that you have made this world a safer place? Do you have a handle on the emerging world situation? Do you have a clue why a German newspaper called your performance before the 58th UN General Assembly session as 'from a big mouth to a beggar'? Do you at least get some time for quiet contemplation? Or won't the Rummy, Dickie, Condi and Wolfie gang allow you that, for fear of your finding out the truth? Do you sometimes suspect that this gang took you for a ride? Would you recognize the truth if it hit you in the face? Do you know what is meant by "quiet contemplation"? Whatever the answers, we continue to understand.

That is all for now, sir. I will keep writing to you as and when further occasions to reaffirm our gratitude arise. I can see Iran and Syria emerging on the horizons. We are awaiting the action with a gleeful anticipation. Hope you do not blink, sir.

Happy New Year, Mr. President.

Happy New Year, America.

I remain,

A nameless, faceless Muslim.


P.S.: The word is slowly now coming out that, after having been sworn on their Holy Book before entering the town with guns blazing, your GI Joes also shot all the livestock in Fallujah. Would you please tell us if that Book contained the following passage?:

I Samuel 15:3, "Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath; spare him not, nor covet any thing that is his; but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."


Copyright 2004 by Anwaar Hussain. The writer, a former officer of the Pakistan Air Force, is now based in the United Arab Emirates. This story is published in the Chronicle with permission of the author. Mr. Hussain may be reached by email at eagleeye@emirates.net.ae.


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