From: Frank Isaac (frank_isaac@stanfordalumni.org)
Date: 04/10/03-03:39:13 PM Z
Take me off this list. How dare you lecture me, or anyone for that matter, as
if I were a child and unable to think for myself about this matter. Don't
EVER email me again.
Jack Fulton <jefulton1@attbi.com> wrote:
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
>
____________________________________________________________________
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 05/01/03-11:59:54 AM Z CST