Jeff Koopersmith

Remembering Doyle Bollinger, Jr. and Sergio Vieira de Mello
by Jeff Koopersmith

August 21, 2003 -- New York (apj.us) -- I have been thinking about the great deal of heartbreak we have witnessed these past few days in the Middle East.

We do not pay attention to Afghanistan any longer, where the killing and plotting continue, where Al Qaeda & Friends are gathering new strength, lethal power they intend to aim toward Iraq and its American occupiers -- our fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, and friends.

Our eyes remain riveted to the nightly news and scenes from Baghdad where a superlatively noble man lay under the dreadful rubble of the United Nations headquarters, frantically calling on his cell phone in an effort to help rescuers locate him.

They were too late.

Sergio Vieira de Mello

His name was Sergio Vieira de Mello.

He was to leave Iraq next week. He didn't make it. Some say he might have been the next Secretary General of the United Nations -- Vieira de Mello was that abundantly loved and respected by his colleagues who devote their lives to world peace, understanding, and health.

De Mello, buried under the debris of the Bush-Perle-Wolfowitz machine yesterday, was an icon, and now a trophy -- a mounted head for a group of sick fanatics who believe their "god" wants them to murder men who have spent the bulk of their careers anxious over other's misfortunes and aiding them to rise from the ashes of imperial-sponsored war.

Vieira de Mello was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. He had all-embracing know-how in compassionate action and in nations such as Bangladesh, Sudan, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru, Lebanon, and Iraq.

In July he told the United Nations Security Council, "Iraqis need to know that the current state of affairs will come to an end soon. They need to know that stability will return and that the occupation will end."

United States point man Paul Bremer was reported in tears over de Mello's murder, as was Kofi Annan and perhaps hundreds of others whose lives this man touched over his career.

He was married with two sons.

Doyle Bollinger, Jr.

Then there was Doyle Bollinger from Poteau, Oklahoma.

He was just twenty one years old. Doyle died in the unforgiving desert north of Baghdad when unexploded munitions exploded slicing into his body, ending his dreams and his unending pursuit to make others smile.

According to the Associated Press, Doyle wasn't a very big guy, but even his seventh grade teacher, Pat Eidschun remembered his eagerness to please -- and had kept a little ceramic turtle he had given her nearly a decade before. Eidschun said, "He was always grinning and had a smile on his face. He wasn't very big, but he didn't know it. In his mind, he was a giant."

Yes. Doyle was a giant, and one that I would have liked to have known. You see, I too am eager to please, to make people laugh, to see the momentary joy I might create just from giving a little something to someone I cared for. I would have understood Doyle, his dedication to his country, his sense of self and what that could mean. He is sorely missed.

I make an effort, every day, to look at the photographs and, when available, the biographies of the hundreds of brave men and women, who have willingly given their lives, body parts and well-being to our President and, as rumor has it -- for us.

Yet I cannot obliterate what I know: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his assemblage of cold-blooded think-tankers were planning the invasion of Iraq for more than decade before George W. Bush took residence in the White House. They were not plotting in retribution for September 11th, 2001 -- not in 1992.

I knew, and now you know, some of the uglier reasons for this war in Iraq -- reasons that have nothing to do with "liberating" the Iraqi people. No sane person I know believes Iraqis are free today. In fact, they are far worse off than before Saddam Hussein's hasty departure into the murky Twilight Zone of vicious autocrats. Yes, Iraqis feared Saddam and his stalwarts -- and they, in spite of everything dead and destroyed, still do. They worry he will be back. Yet they fear us as well. They worry that there is no electricity where there once was. There is no water to bathe their children or to drink. There is no freedom even to walk the streets in Baghdad under a US-led curfew that smacks of the most terrible martial law -- the fear of death. There is no government worth trusting -- only appointed puppets chosen strategically by Washington, men and women who are not dependable to most Iraqis. There is no money, there are no jobs, and there is no place to hide from the scorching insufferable heat -- Iraq today is more Hell than earth.

Was the Bush Administration so brainless to believe that once we conquered this pathetic nation our enemies would simply lie back and allow us to create the perfect Arab democracy, free from hunger and want?

Today President Bush has succeeded in creating a Disneyland for Death -- a terrorist crowd-puller, a virtual alluring extravaganza of killing and mutilation -- enticing to the fanatic with an appeal so strong that nothing we might do can stop it.

The President remains on a month-long vacation at his sorry "ranch" in Texas while our children are dying, while de Mello was crushed under tons of concrete and steel.

What is wrong with the man? Is he so full of himself, so egomaniacal, that he can't bring himself to sprint back Washington and at least appear to handle a quickly unraveling super-crisis that promises to undo the world as we know it?

Has he no sense of dishonor?

Thus far we have killed more than eight thousand non-combatants in Iraq. No one has any idea what the death toll is in Afghanistan -- we do not seem to be bothered. The pundits are telling us, "Better in Iraq than here" -- yet there was no direct threat from Iraq. There were no ties there to Al Qaeda, no atomic bombs, no bio-weapons or systems capable of delivering them. There was nothing at all that could have left us shaking in our boots -- only lies from the White House and, today, an almost giddy hopefulness in Rumsfeld's office that "Chemical Ali" will lead us to some mystifying smoking gun.

Meanwhile, the real terrorists are still out there -- stronger than ever, more of them than ever, hating us more than ever. Osama bin Laden is alive and taping more cryptic messages to his minions. Saddam Hussein is doing much the same. Are we all really hypnotized by the FOX News hype?

And then there is Israel.

In Israel, the inexplicable underpinning for Arab hatred of the United States, at least five babies were blown to bits along with twenty religious Jews in just another chapter in a tome of homicidal and outrageous anti-Semitism which has plagued this region for what seems forever.

Yesterday, in Gaza, the slaughter-hungry Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab told the world that the cruel bombing of more than one hundred people, including forty children was an answer to "continuing Israeli violations of the truce. We have declared the truce, but Israel has continued the killings and arrests."

Did Shanab truly believe this?

Of course not. What he believed in was killing Jews -- all of them.

Shanab is now burned to a crisp -- reduced to ashes in his automobile as his recompense for sewing copious death into the garment of the tiny resolute nation of Israel.

The fact is that nothing more than anti-Jewish bigotry and avarice are driving this mind-reeling extremist-Islamic assault on innocent life. Make no mistake -- far too many Palestinians in positions of power are not interested in peace. Like the Pharaohs and Hitler before them, they are interesting in murdering every Jew alive -- and the quicker, the better.

So much for George W. Bush's "road map," just an added naive and feebly arranged cover-up for his administration's concentration on oil, not humanity.

There we have it. We find ourselves embroiled in death and terror, far worse perhaps than anything even this President could have imagined.

Recently I have written that Mr. Bush should exile much of his cabinet -- most notably Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This suggestion is not made from partisanship, nor from seditiousness. If is made from fear. Fear that our nation is being run by simpletons.

If these policies are not his -- and I do not believe they are, because I believe him incapable of making them -- then it is his advisors who must go, to be replaced by clear-thinking and seasoned, reasoning individuals not tied to big oil or other corporate interests.

Last evening I heard a Republican spokesperson use the examples of Germany and Japan as evidence that America can succeed in building democracies from what were dictatorships. On its face it seemed a valid argument. The differentiation of course is that the entire free world was united against these two villain-lead nations. Today, it appears that most countries are aligned against the United States and its forays in Iraq, and, more importantly, our outward appetite for majesticism and bloodshed.

While I applaud many activities designed to defend our nation against terrorist attacks from within, I also know that warfare in far off places does not succeed without vast cooperation from myriad allies.

We would not have to protect ourselves from terror if we did not amply engage in it ourselves.

President Bush has succeeded not only in angering the worst among us on the world stage, but has also alienated nations that were once our staunchest allies. Can you imagine our leaders, only a few years ago, making fun of France and Germany as if they were banana republics? Even if he is well intended, there are not enough tanks, ammunition, tax dollars, and youngsters' lives to sustain our efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Central Europe, North Korea, and elsewhere.

It is clear to me that Islamic extremists have turned on the United States -- even more cruelly than before and on September 11th, 2001 -- because of what they perceive as our impudence in attacking Iraq without justifiable ample provocation based on true threat.

Before the tragedies at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Al Qaeda and myriad radical groups seem bent on trying to blackmail us to abandon Israel.

Now the situation is dire, far worse than before.

America stands nearly alone within the community of nations with regard our foreign policy. Our country is nearly bankrupt with hundreds of billions in increasing debt in a global economy unkind to our mission. President Bush believes that dozens of nations with means will come to the table and invest in redeveloping Iraq under his vision of democracy.

This is yet another of his pipe dreams.

Instead, to pursue his folly, the President and the jumpy Congress will be forced to cut further those programs which buttress education, health care, community welfare, and infrastructure. While we labor to provide reliable electricity to Iraq, our own domestic power grids will remain in shambles.

The time has come to score or to punt.

Recent escalation in the death and injury or our soldiers is unacceptable -- and that not to mention the intensifying drumbeat of demise for innocent civilians on an humanitarian mission and with no stake at all in the outcome of our nasty "shoot 'em up" power brawls.

Either the White House must craft a far more extensive and sweepingly brutal policy toward extremist Islamic terrorist campaigns, or retreat from its current posture. There is no talking with terrorists, it seems. Ask them what they want and they shamelessly tell you, "It's the Jews. We want to get rid of the Jews."

It may be time also to stop constraining Israel to dance to our rhythm and allow her to unleash her strength against thousands-year-old bigotry with or without our support. The current leadership of the Palestinian people has demonstrated quite clearly that it has no concern for the well-being of its own population, and it is clear that Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad will not cease their filthy and vicious incursions until such time as they coerce Jews to abandon their legitimate homeland or force them into the sea.

The free world has been lulled to sleep by twenty-four-hour cable news babble.

Just another dead baby.

Just another dead mother.

Just another dead American boy barely out of high school.

Just another brave and dedicated exploding diplomat.

Just another future gone up in smoke, body parts, and ash.

Hour after hour, minute after minute, the news spew goes on -- hardening us, leaving us at ease with a world gone mad -- and one we are not obliged to, must not, endure.

We do not have to tolerate this insane conduct.

Americans are fortunate to live in as close to a true democracy as any nation in history. Let us jump off the bandwagon of meaningless flag-waving nationalism and petty allegiances to xenophobic symbols and documents not etched in stone.

Instead, let's throw the bums out.

Today, President Bush and the rabid warmongers surrounding and supporting him are just that.

Bums.

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist."