Re: From The Guardian

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From: pete (temperaprint@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 04/10/03-08:27:09 AM Z


Year,

Pete

> on 4/10/03 4:37 AM, Richard Knoppow at dickburk@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>
>> Iraqis have paid the blood price for a fraudulent war
>>
>> The crudely colonial nature of this enterprise can no longer
>> be disguised
>>
>> Seumas Milne
>> Thursday April 10, 2003
>> The Guardian
>>
>> On the streets of Baghdad yesterday, it was Kabul, November
>> 2001, all over again. Then, enthusiasts for the war on
>> terror were in triumphalist mood, as the Taliban regime was
>> overthrown. The critics had been confounded, they insisted,
>> kites were flying, music was playing again and women were
>> throwing off their burkas. In parliament, Jack Straw mocked
>> Labour MPs who predicted US and British forces would still
>> be fighting in the country in six months' time.
>> Seventeen months later, such confidence looks grimly ironic.
>> For most Afghans, "liberation" has meant the return of rival
>> warlords, harsh repression, rampant lawlessness, widespread
>> torture and Taliban-style policing of women. Meanwhile,
>> guerrilla attacks are mounting on US troops - special forces
>> soldiers have been killed in recent weeks, while 11
>> civilians died yesterday in an American air raid - and the
>> likelihood of credible elections next year appears to be
>> close to zero.
>>
>> In Baghdad and Basra, perhaps the cheering crowds have been
>> a bit thinner on the ground than Tony Blair and George Bush
>> might have hoped - and the looters and lynchers more
>> numerous. But it would be extraordinary if many Iraqis
>> didn't feel relief or euphoria at the prospect of an end to
>> a brutal government, 12 years of murderous sanctions and a
>> merciless bombardment by the most powerful military machine
>> in the world. Afghanistan is not of course Iraq, though it
>> is a salutary lesson to those who believe the overthrow of
>> recalcitrant regimes is the way to defeat anti-western
>> terrorism. It would nevertheless be a mistake to confuse the
>> current mood in Iraqi cities with enthusiasm for the foreign
>> occupation now being imposed. Even Israel's invading troops
>> were feted by south Lebanese Shi'ites in 1982 - only to be
>> driven out by the Shi'ite Hizbullah resistance 18 years
>> later.
>>
>> Nor does the comparative ease with which US and British
>> forces have bombed and blasted their way through Iraq in any
>> way strengthen the case for their war of aggression, as some
>> seem to have convinced themselves. Not even the smallest
>> part of the anti-war argument rested on any illusion that a
>> broken-backed third world regime could win a set-piece
>> military confrontation with the most technologically
>> advanced fighting force in history. Rather, the surprise has
>> been the extent of the resistance and bravery of many
>> fighters, who have confronted tanks with AK 47 rifles and
>> died in their thousands.
>>
>> In reality, the course of the conflict has strengthened the
>> case against a war supposedly launched to rid Iraq of
>> "weapons of mass destruction" - but which has now morphed
>> into a crusade for regime change as evidence for the
>> original pretext has so embarrassingly not materialised. Not
>> only have US and British forces so far been unable to find
>> the slightest evidence of Saddam Hussein's much-vaunted
>> chemical or biological weapons. But the Iraqi regime's
>> failure to use such weapons up to now, even at the point of
>> its own destruction, suggests either that it doesn't possess
>> any - at least in any usable form, as Robin Cook suggested -
>> or that it has decided their use would be militarily
>> ineffective and politically counter-productive.
>>
>> So great is the political imperative to find such weapons,
>> it seems hard to believe they won't turn up in some form.
>> This is after all the coalition which used forged documents
>> to implicate Iraq in the purchase of uranium for nuclear
>> weapons from Niger. But, short of a last-ditch deployment in
>> Tikrit or Mosul, the main pre-emptive pretext for war has
>> already been exposed as a fraud.
>>
>> As the price that Iraqis have had to pay in blood has become
>> clearer - civilian deaths are already well into four
>> figures - Tony Blair and his ministers have increasingly had
>> to fall back on a specious moral calculus to justify their
>> aggression, claiming that more innocents would have died if
>> they had left the Iraqi regime in place.
>>
>> What cannot now be disguised, as US marines swagger around
>> the Iraqi capital swathing toppled statues of Saddam Hussein
>> with the stars and stripes and declaring "we own Baghdad",
>> is the crudely colonial nature of this enterprise. Any day
>> now, the pro-Israeli retired US general Jay Garner is due to
>> take over the running of Iraq, with plans to replace the
>> Iraqi dinar with the dollar, parcel out contracts to US
>> companies and set the free market parameters for the future
>> "interim Iraqi administration".
>>
>> Shashi Tharoor, UN under secretary-general warned Britain
>> and the US against treating Iraq as "some sort of treasure
>> chest to be divvied up", but the Pentagon, which is calling
>> the shots, isn't listening. Its favoured Iraqi protege,
>> Ahmed Chalabi - scion of the old Iraqi ruling class who last
>> set foot in Baghdad 45 years ago - was flown into Nasiriya
>> by the Americans at the weekend and, almost unbelievably for
>> someone convicted of fraud and embezzlement, is being lined
>> up as an adviser to the finance ministry.
>>
>> Meanwhile, Tony Blair is once again seeking to provide a
>> multilateral figleaf for a policy set by Washington
>> hardliners. "Democratisation" in Iraq could only have
>> legitimacy if security were handed over to a United Nations
>> force of non- combatant troops and elections for a
>> constituent assembly held under UN auspices. But nothing of
>> the kind is going to happen, when even Colin Powell insists
>> on "dominating control" by the US. The "vital" UN role Blair
>> has secured from the US president appears to be no more than
>> humanitarian aid and the right to suggest Iraqi names for
>> the interim authority.
>>
>> The most that could eventually be hoped for from US plans is
>> a "managed" form of democracy in a US protectorate, with key
>> economic and strategic decisions taken in advance by the
>> occupiers. Given the likely result of genuinely free
>> elections in any Arab country, it is little wonder that the
>> US would have such problems accepting them - just as they
>> collude with torture and dictatorship by their client states
>> in the region. Anyone who imagines the US is gagging for
>> independent media in the Middle East should ponder Tuesday's
>> attacks on the al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV offices in
>> Baghdad.
>>
>> The wider global impact of this war was spelled out by North
>> Korea's foreign ministry this week. "The Iraqi war shows,"
>> it declared, with unerring logic, "that to allow disarmament
>> through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather
>> sparks it", concluding that "only a tremendous military
>> deterrent force" can prevent attacks on states the US
>> dislikes.
>>
>> As the administration hawks circle round Syria and Iran, a
>> powerful boost to nuclear proliferation and anti western
>> terror attacks seems inevitable, offset only by the
>> likelihood of a growing international mobilisation against
>> the new messianic imperialism. The risk must now be that we
>> will all pay bitterly for the reckless arrogance of the US
>> and British governments.
>>
>> s.milne@guardian.co.uk
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Richard Knoppow
>> Los Angeles, CA, USA
>> dickburk@ix.netcom.com
>>
>


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