Neoconic Hypocrisy
In May of 2007, like his cousin in Asmara, Meles
Zenawi, the Butcher of Adwa, is celebrating
"his victory" over his nemesis Mengistu Haile
Mariam, the former head of the
Ethiopian military junta. No one despite the wishes of Bereket Simion,
the Eritrean Shaibean agent and Zenawi's political guru is distracted by this
charade. Simion recently declared in a statement he gave to Statesman.com
that he wants and has given permission to the Ogaden National Liberation Front
(ONLF) to set free the people of the Somali Region of Ethiopia and declare the
region independent just like his motherland Eritrea was let go in 1993. Simion
was quoted as stating that "Somali-speaking people inhabiting
our region, they are Ethiopians, they have full rights," said former
Minister for Information Bereket
Simon. "They can secede from Ethiopia
if they want. Their right is respected to this level so they have never enjoyed
better." Zenawi
the Tigrean tribal supremacist and liberator however is now comfortable in Haile Mariam's
chair and 'the liberation of the people in the Tigray region' is tactically on
hold until an opportune time, or his grip on power is seriously
challenged.
George W. Bush however wants Ethiopia and the East
African region to remain in the hands of the Tigrean People's Liberation Front
(TPLF/EPRDF) until Meles Zenawi, Bush's viceroy, and secretary–general of the
Marxist Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT) allied to the Chinese Communist party,
accomplishes 'his charge' – subdue the Ethiopian opposition and safeguard the Ogaden
and other selected regions for US secret missions. Three New York Times
American journalists 'stumbled' on the protected zone and ended up being held
and tortured for five days and released without charges after their equipment
and evidence they gathered were confiscated.
Meanwhile a tragic-comedy is being staged all over
Ethiopia today - the Ethiopian people are presumably celebrating with joy
"the 17th anniversary of the removal in 1991 of Mengistu Haile
Mariam' - one of the most blood-thirsty African tyrants (now living in exile in
Zimbabwe under the protection of Robert Mugabe and US government blessing) and
the ascension to power of Meles Zenawi. To boot, Zenawi is digging the graves
of Haile Mariam's victims and allowing their kin to
re-bury the remains today. Ironically, thousands of Zenawi's victims dumped in
shallow mass graves since May 1991 will have to await a similar rite once the
US and British governments come to their senses and dissociate themselves from
the dictator and he is brought to his knees by the Ethiopian people. Zenawi
meanwhile is busy with the carnage and genocide against non-Tigreans. The TPLF
propaganda machine and hired conservative Washington lobbyists of course want
the world community to learn that Meles Zenawi 'the great leader and democrat' (but
in fact a psychotic neo-fascist who replicated Haile Mariam's brutality)
liberated Ethiopians from 'socialist tyranny'.
The paranoid schizophrenic Zenawi thinks, and Bush concurs, that the Tigrean US trained Aagazi troops
(less than one percent of the population) will succeed is corralling the
Ethiopian people into "African Guantanamos",
similar to Isaias
Afeworki's police state in Eritrea, and sustain Zenawi's dream of remaining
in power for decades, not unlike his tyrannical brothers in Africa
and elsewhere. Zenawi's TPLF was soundly beaten at the polls in May 2005, but
the tyrant nevertheles declared marshal law and incarcerated the elected
representatives of the people, once he learned that the people wanted him out
of the seat of government that he seized through the barrel of the gun. No
doubt, Bush's contorted vision of history and neoconic delusional undertaking
is not working in Bagdad and will never
succeed in Addis
Abeba. Zenawi claimed that he
invaded Somalis because phantom Islamic Judaists based in Mogadishu
threatened his regime, just like Bush resorted to
state violence to destroy 'Al-Qaida
of Iraq'
and to disarm its mentor Sadam
Hussein of WMD. Fear mongering and
cantankerous arguments are used as tools to confuse the gullible and extract
subservience from blind and opportunistic obedient cadres.
However, no power on this
earth could force the people of any nation, through shock and awe, to accept
occupation masqueraded as freedom and democracy. Democratic governance must be
based on the local people's culture, custom, traditions, historical context and
determination, and not imported from an alien concoction of norms of civilized
behavior. Balloting in itself is not democracy. The imposition of Sadam Hussein
in the 1980s on the Iraqi people by US intelligence and military
created an oppressive dictatorship that American soldiers are being sacrificed
to undo. The imposition of the TPLF and the Eritrean Liberation Front (EPLF) in
1991 by State Department's Herman
Cohen on the Ethiopian people led
to the current quagmire in Ethiopia.
Like that of Hussein, the demise and fate of Meles Zenawi's
brutal dictatorship is inevitable regardless of what the Republican
administration wishes. George W. Bush
should have been given this lesson in high school at the earliest or Yale if he was (is) a slow learner.
While indeed terrorists
ought to be contained and disarmed and every nation's borders secured, not a
single citizen of any nation with a grain of pride in his/her soul wants to be
subjugated by mercenary and occupying forces no matter how the ethnic or
religious liberationist theory and hegemoneous military mission is sweetened
and propagated. Ethiopians demonstrated their determination to be free, in
the not to distant past, to the Italian fascists who occupied the country for
almost five years during WWII. Only those who do not learn from history repeat
the same mistakes! The Ethiopian people's yearning for freedom and democratic
governance shall prevail!
Bekele Molla,
Ph.D.
May 28, 2007