Thursday 9 June 2016

About CHENEYLAND

My name is Jack Felson, I'm a French writer still working on a political fiction novel called "Cheneyland". It's a book about a theme park for adults that could be the opposite to Disneyland - basically it's a war zone, which is visited by a 12-year-old boy, and by two adults along with him (his father and elder sister).

I'm writing this for some good reasons.

Everybody knows what happened in Paris last November 13. As the first of that series of bloody attacks occurred, I was at the English-French border, about to go to my parents' home in the suburbs of Paris. Because of what was happening, everything got suddenly blocked at both borders and it took me lots of time to finally reach my family in France.

It was horrible enough, maybe more awful than what happened when a Concorde plane crashed in the same suburbs of Paris in 2000. But the most horrible was to come.

Just a few days later, some of the terrorists were spotted in Saint-Denis - a city just near Paris. Whatever they were doing, they were peacefully living inside an apartment there. The French police forces attacked them at 4 am that night (November 18).

My father, who's a doctor, has his own practice in this very same city, in the same area, almost on the same street. If the French police forces - praise them - had decided to attack a few hours before or later, my dad would have been caught in the heavy gunfire that occurred.

As a reaction to all this - the attacks, plus those in the Middle East, and the heavy situation we've been enduring since 2001 -, I finally started the writing of this book, in February. At the time, the attacks in Brussels hadn't even occurred yet.

Why have I titled the book this way? For an even more simple reason.

We have all declared war on ISIS, or ISIL, or Daesh, whatever those guys call themselves. But I believe that if we want to do it effectively, we must first declare war on those who gave birth to that group.

I'm talking about the Bush administration, and what it did when they attacked Iraq back in 2003.

At that time, Iraq was a destitute country ruled by a lay leader, Saddam Hussein. He was a bloody dictator, okay. But as a layman, he had no connection - or too little - with Islamist groups, so he didn't have any with Al-Qaida and with what happened on 9/11, contrary to what the Bush administration made us believe.

Also, even if Saddam Hussein really had 'weapons of mass destruction', it was what was left of a pack of chemical weapons he used in the 80s to face the Iranian forces, then against the Kurdish people in 1988. That arsenal was built for him by... the Republicans - with notably the help of... Donald Rumsfeld (see this and that), who was appointed as Special Envoy to the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan -, and the rest of it had all the time to run obsolete and useless before being found in 2003. In other words, he had nothing.

Despite those facts - facts that they perfectly knew about -, and the heavy worldwide opposition, the Republicans started that illegal and colonial war, attacking and ruining what was left of Iraq, and finally allowing a bunch of terrorists to emerge from the chaos and use it as a pretext to take over, and to establish an Islamist authority in the country. An Islamist authority that has spread over to Syria and Lebanon since. And that has been hitting hard in Western Europe. And in the US, very recently.

Whose real fault is it?

In the name of 'Freedom of Iraq' and the fake desire to bring democracy there, the Republicans have killed and tortured hundreds of thousands (if not over a million) innocent people, and forced over two other million people to exodus, only for a small group of them to steal the oil and make more money than they already had.

They have made some of the most dangerous people even angrier than they already were. Their so-called 'war on terrorism' resulted in an even bigger threat.

The funniest thing is, they are now laughing out and enjoying great lives with all the cash they made from this, when they should be enjoying... life sentences, inside maximum security prisons.

Since it seems impossible to only lodge a complaint against them, I thought I could write a satirical book.

But this book is not only about the past. It's also about the future.


The US presidential elections are coming fast. I'm very surprised about why people don't wonder more about what may happen if the Republicans come back in charge next year.

Since what happened before the war in Iraq was triggered, the whole world knows how the American people can be influenced, intimidated, manipulated ("You are with us, or you are against us").

Back in 2010, the Republicans, notably war crazy Sarah Palin, who sees everything in black and white (all the Americans are good, all the Arabs are terrorists), put heavy pressure on President Barack Obama in order to try to make him attack Iran. "If you want to get yourself the chance of a second term, you need to bomb Iran", she said, more or less.

Fortunately - yes, fortunately! - Barack Obama didn't let himself get impressed, he didn't bomb Iran and he got his second term easily.

Will any candidate learn from this? Frankly I don't think so. Actually nobody cares. Most of the Republicans want to attack Iran, when Iran is a muslim Republic - and when Iraq was not, back in 2003 -, when Iran has certainly developed nuclear stuff in order to become an important nation able to defend itself against an attack from the West.

But this won't stop the Republicans. It didn't stop them from attacking a country that was supposed to be massively armed - as they said -, and from crossing the crucial line of nuclear deterrence, which has become obsolete.

Donald Trump is the most powerful Republican candidate. Trump is clearly a racist, a bigot and a demagog, but he said that it's not among his plans to attack any 'rogue state' in sight if he becomes president. During a confrontation against Jeb Bush, he heavily criticized the Bush administration for what they did in Iraq, and for lying about the WMDs.

Problem is, he's already promised Sarah Palin to give her power if he gets elected. This means she could push him to attack Iran. As a powerful advisor she might be able to do that.

We can imagine the consequences if she manages to succeed. If the United States attack a country that probably has real WMDs. We avoided these consequences when French President Jacques Chirac refused to follow Bush in his 2003's crusade for money. We won't be lucky forever.

Every time the Republicans are in charge, a war for nothing is triggered somewhere, especially in the Middle East and on its soil still filled up with oil and other materials that are as raw as valuable.

Since the lifting of sanctions last January, Iran has become one of the biggest oil producers. The Iranians may sell their black gold at the cheapest price, they are not free from anything. Especially when we know that the Republicans have welcome the lifting of sanctions with much hostility.

If we don't want to be manipulated into wars again, if we don't want to be deceived with the biggest lies one more time, if we really want to stop other useless wars from being triggered, and to save thousands - millions - of precious lives, and if we want to be properly ruled and protected all over the world - and inside of America in the first place -, we need to keep the Democrats in charge.

I am not an American, but I am a Democrat. This is an important call for the American people so they vote for the Democrats.

Visit the official website for my book - many thanks for your time!