| Iraq is a Hard Sell By Antonio C. Abaya October 4, 2002 Even assuming that George W. Bush is right, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who has gassed thousands of his own countrymen, there is no compelling reason why the rest of the world should line up behind the US obsession to bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age and effect a regime change in Baghdad. Iraq poses a direct threat to Israel; it poses a direct threat to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and to the American and British oil companies that have vast interests there. But Iraq does not pose a direct or indirect threat to the rest of the world. That is why Bush and Tony Blair are having a hard time convincing even the French, the Russians, the Germans and the Chinese to go along with their strident warmongering. Even in the unlikely event that Saddam Hussein manages to gain control of Kuwaiti and Saudi oil, as he tried to do in 1990, it does not automatically mean that those resources would be denied the rest of the world or that they would be sold only at exorbitant prices. It just means that American and British old companies would not be making their usual mega-profits from their extraction and sale. Iraq would still have to sell that oil to the rest of the world and at prices that the rest of the world can afford. It would not be to Iraq�s or to any other country�s advantage to wreck the global economy by demanding extortionate prices for the monopolized oil. If Saddam Hussein is an evil man who cannot be trusted with weapons of mass destruction, as Bush and Blair have made him out to be, then so is Kim Jong Il of the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea, another rogue state in Bush�s Axis of Evil. Like Iraq, North Korea is suspected of having chemical and biological weapons, is known to be developing nuclear weapons (but is being bribed with food aid and �weapons-safe� nuclear reactors to abandon that program) and is actually more advanced than Iraq in the development of ballistic missiles. Less than a year ago, North Korea actually tested those missiles, pointedly firing several of them over Japanese air space and into the Pacific Ocean. In addition, North Korea has exported missiles and missile technology to other rogue states in the Axis of Evil: Iran and Syria. And yet, Bush and Blair did not beat any war drums then, did not demand a regime change in Pyongyang and did not threaten invasion. The reasons, of course, are a) there is not a drop of oil between the Yalu River and the East China Sea, and b) Israel is half a world away. In American domestic politics, the South Koreans and the Japanese may be expendable, but the Israelis are not. As for Bush�s crocodile tears for the sufferings of the Iraqi people and the absence of �democracy� in Baghdad, they are the egregious ramblings of an uninformed Texas cowboy. Blair�s language, at least, is elegant and has the distinct sparkle of an educated mind. But it does not mean that the British occupy a higher moral ground than the Americans. It should be kept in mind that it was largely the British, with the French, who redrew the map of the Middle East after the defeat and break-up of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. The French, builders of the Suez Canal, who did practically no fighting in the Middle East, wound up with crumbs: Lebanon and Syria, with splendid Mediterranean boulevards but no oil. The victorious British, not surprisingly, rewarded themselves with choice pickings: outright control of or strong influence in oil-rich Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia and a slew of oil-rich sheikdoms around the Arabian desert to keep the Arabs squabbling among themselves, plus strategic chokepoints such as Aden and Muscat, to protect their oil trade. Much of this enormous wealth was apparently hocked to the Americans during the Second World War to pay for the war against Hitler and Tojo, but it does not hide the fact that the British are on the Bush bandwagon also for the oil and the oil alone. ***** If there is a regime that needs changing, it is the one in Riyadh, not Baghdad. Saudi Arabia�s regime is easily the most undemocratic, the most medieval, the most obscurantist, the most inhumane (especially to women,) on this planet since the Spanish Inquisition went out of style. Unlike Iraq, Saudi Arabia does not have to be bombed back to the Stone Age; it is still there. But, of course, the US and the British will never bomb or invade Saudi Arabia because the Saudi royal family protects US and British oil interests (in exchange for US/British protection against neighborhood toughies like Saddam) even as it keeps the Saudi people in feudal bondage more execrable than that being endured by the Iraqis under Saddam. It is no secret that Iraq has had chemical and bacteriological weapons for more than 20 years. It is no secret least of all to the Americans who supplied Saddam Hussein in the 1980s with his initial stocks of anthrax spores, botulinum bacteria, and gas gangrene agents, as recently released US government documents reveal. Iraq cultured and weaponized these initial stocks and used them against the Iranians in their bloody war in the mid-1980s and against rebellious Shi�a Muslims in southern Iraq and separatist Kurds in the north in the late 1980s, drawing from the US neither condemnation nor a demand for regime change nor a threat of invasion. I raised this point in a recent US Embassy briefing on Iraq and I was told the US officially �deplored� this act of Iraq. But �deplored� is diplomatese for a mild slap on the wrist accompanied by knowing winks. It did not earn for Iraq the wrath of the Americans then because the Shi�as under the ayatollahs of Iran were considered the greater threat to US/British oil interests and to the survival of Israel, and Saddam Hussein was used to keep the ayatollahs (supporters of the Jew-hating Hezbollah in Lebanon) in check and the Israelis in relative security. That the vulture has come home to roost may be considered by some as poetic justice. ***** I am generally pro-American and I genuinely believe that, on balance, America has been a force for good in the world. But it does not mean that I automatically agree with everything the Americans say or do. During the Vietnam War, I was on the side of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. In the current debate on globalization, I have decried the hypocrisy of the US and other rich countries in preaching free trade while practicing protectionism whenever THEIR jobs are threatened. On the matter of Iraq, the Bush government is exhibiting the same arrogance of power that earlier US governments exhibited on and in Vietnam, which even senior officials of those governments have later admitted was a political, military and moral mistake of epic proportions. Even if Bush were to succeed in killing Saddam Hussein and in replacing his regime with a �democratic� one, it would be extremely na�ve to believe that he will have stamped out Muslim anger or the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism. He will, on the contrary, more likely multiply that anger and that appeal several times over and unite quarreling Sunni, Shi�a and Wahhabi factions into a mega-jihad that will, by sheer numbers, sweep Israel off the map, overthrow the lecherous degenerates of the House of Saud, sabotage a critical mass of oil wells to bring the global economy to a halt, and activate a vast army of suicide bombers, even inside the American heartland. What can anyone possibly do to detect and stop groups of two or three jihad warriors out to release smallpox or anthrax bacteria, or ricin powder, or sarin gas in the jam-packed subways of Manhattan or Washington DC or London at the height of the rush hour? What can anyone possibly do to detect and stop groups of two or three suicide bombers out to detonate car or truck bombs in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel or the Golden Gate Bridge or the Channel Tunnel? What can anyone possibly do to detect and stop Muslim revenge-seekers out to explode crude radiological bombs (the so-called dirty bombs, which can be built by science and engineering undergraduates) in the harbors of Los Angeles or New York or Southampton from the holds of innocuous freighters loaded with normal goods of commerce, and spread clouds of radioactive dust over hundreds of square miles of tightly populated urban spread? Gung-ho recklessness over Iraq may yet prove only one thing, that smart weapons in the hands of dumb leaders are extremely dangerous to the human race. *****. Bush has tried to link Iraq to al-Qaeda, presumably to drum up for his cause the sympathy that almost the entire world, Christian and Muslim, extended to America after September 11. But it is also not credible. It is difficult to find a single Iraqi in Super Saudi Osama bin Laden�s order of battle. No doubt because the dominant tribes in Iraq are mostly Sunni Muslims who generally do not share the extreme religious conservatism and martyrdom complex of the Shi�as and the Wahhabis who make up al-Qaeda.. Fifteen of the 19 known 9/11 hijackers, were Saudis; their team leader, Mohammed Atta, was Egyptian; the other three, if memory serves, were Yemeni, Lebanese and UAE citizen. Osama�s no.2 and no.3, chief political strategist Ayman al-Zawahiri and chief military planner Mohammed Atef, were Egyptians. His overall operations chief and head of all training camps in Afghanistan, Abu Zubaydah, was a Saudi-born Palestinian. The apparent 20th hijacker, the recently captured Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who failed to get a US visa in time for the hijacking, is a Yemeni. His apparent replacement, Zacarias Massaoui, who was jailed in the US just before 9/11 for a visa violation and is now being tried for complicity, is a French citizen of Moroccan descent. The man tagged by the US as the most likely tactical brains of 9/11, Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad, is a Kuwaiti of Pakistani descent. The commandant of al-Qaeda�s biggest training camp in Afghanistan, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was a Libyan. Al-Qaeda�s point man in Germany, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who took care of Atta and at least five other future hijackers in Hamburg, is a Syrian. Their point man in Spain, Imad Yarkas, is also a Syrian. Their alleged point man in Southeast Asia, the cleric Abubakr Beshir, is an Indonesian of Yemeni descent. In the post 9/11 scene, the Iraqis seem to be also invisible. The five US citizens whose alleged al-Qaeda cell in Lackawanna, New York State was broken up last September, were all of Yemeni descent. Another alleged al-Qaeda cell broken up this week in Portland, Oregon, was made up of a Jordanian national, two US citizens of Saudi descent and two black American converts to Islam. The recently convicted shoe bomber, Richard Reid, is a British-West Indian mestizo. So where were the Iraqis all this time? Cooking cous-cous for everyone? ***** The bulk of this article appears in the October 21, 2002 issue of Philippine Weekly Graphic. |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Iraq is a Hard Sell� I WAS SO impressed with what you wrote that I sent a copy to (my stepson) in Bellevue, Washington. I was very disappointed in Dubya�s speech, or rather my reaction to it, a couple of days ago. I was prepared to ridicule it but found myself surprised how well done it was. Quite convincing although there was nothing solid in it. Blair was much better about ten days ago. However, my main criticism about the whole scene is that it is all backwards. First of all, we must finish up Afghanistan � nation-building is what is required and it must be done NOW and vigorously. We�ve done very little to date, from what I can see, and neither have the Europeans. Then there�s Palestine. We should send in the troops there to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, push the Israelis out and help the Palestinians to get themselves going as an independent state. This would mean, too, the turnover! of all the so-called �settlements� to the Palestinians. All of this should be forced on, I think, both sides, whether they like it or not. I think Europe would accept this, and so would the Arabs. In fact, they could all be brought in to help in the reconstruction. This, together with Afghanistan, would take years of hard work, dedication and funding to get all these people on their feet. Once all this is started, at least, then would be the time to go after Iraq. UN Security Council agreement would, of course, be required. This means that the �march on Iraq� would have to be delayed for a year or so until the Afghanistan and Palestine programs have started, and then the US should try to convince France and Russia and China that all efforts are being made to settle the Iraq (problem) by means short of war. I don�t really think all this is possible now � it�s too late. I�m very disappointed with my fellow Democrats in Congress, but they don�t want to be labeled as �softies.� They are in the clutches not only of some of the oil people, but also of the so-called Jewish Lobby and of the millions of fundamentalist Christian followers of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who have the votes, money and influence. They believe that the Holy Bible gives Israel to the �chosen people.� Kenneth Wright, Ayala Alabang, Muntinlupa. [email protected]. October 9, 2002 ......................................................... TOUCHE, Mr. Abaya. Did you get inspired by Mr. Pacha over here? Jim Ayson. [email protected] October 8, 2002 MY REPLY. I do not get inspired by atrocious grammar and bad spelling. ........................................................ SUPPOSE for the sake of argument that US and British oil companies reap a bonanza with the demise of Saddam, is that bad for the world? Maybe (for) the French oil companies. War is very risky. If the job is botched � and there are many points along the way that it can go wrong � would Bush and Blair lose their jobs? Not fence-sitter Chirac and Schroeder. Yes, Iraqi people had had a bad deal. But who were the culprits? Iraqis mostly. Look at the bloody trail � from Kassem through the Aref brothers, thence to Saddam, 42 years all told of self-inflicted punishment. Most of the opposition to the decapitation of Saddam are hypocritical. Suppose the US offered to decapitate Marcos in, say, 1977. Would that not have been a boon to Filipinos. Ross Tipon, Baguio City. [email protected] October 9, 2002 MY REPLY. You are supposing, for the sake of argument, that only Saddam Hussein would die in a US-British invasion of Iraq. This is absolute nonsense. Hundreds, even thousands of American and British servicemen would die, too, along with tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi soldiers and civilians. So, too, would hundreds, even of thousands, of innocent civilians around the world as Muslims of many nationalities retaliate in the only way they can, through terrorism with car bombs, bio and chemical poisons and radiological bombs, from Manhattan to Mindanao. And all for what? To secure the profits of your US and British oil companies and the well-being of Israel. Is that bad for the world? Unless you are a psychopathic monster, the answer is YES, YES, a thousand YES. War is very risky, yes. So why are you pushing for it in this particular case where the expected victims would far outnumber the expected beneficiaries? Sure, the Iraqis have had a bloody history of self-inflicted punishment. But why should that bother the Americans and the British and their Filipino houseboys? Let the Iraqis sort out their problems themselves even if it involves assassinating their leader. But it should be done by the Iraqis themselves, to benefit no one else, least of all meddling foreigners out to grab their oil. Suppose, you write, the US offered to decapitate Marcos in, say, 1977, would that not have been a boon to Filipinos? Let me throw that question back to you. Suppose the Iraqis offered to decapitate George W in 2002, would that not be a boon to Americans? ........................................................ I AM forwarding your article on Iraq to several email groups. Best regards. Men Sta. Ana, Action for Economic Reforms, Quezon City. [email protected] October 9, 2002 ....................................................... BUSH�S US has successfully fashioned itself by its tremendous wealth, prestige, power and might into an idol before which all nations must bow and say �amen.� Protected by an unimaginably vast array of highly sophisticated weapons of mass destruction � the most powerful and lethal on earth � this god wants to bring down to its knees any nation that it perceives poses a potential threat to its lordship. It is a god intoxicated by its very own power it has acquired through the combination of hard work, an enterprising (capitalist) spirit and, yes, deception. There is no other god but Bush�s US. �We have no choice� but to say Amen. Levy Lanaria. [email protected] October 8, 2002 MY REPLY. I disagree. We always have the option to say �Up yours!�. In the end the Americans have more respect for those who stand up to them on principle and ably defend themselves (like the Vietnamese) than for those who are always obsequiously groveling in the dust before them (like the Filipinos). .......................................................... IT IS RATHER ridiculous to worry about Saddam using �weapons of mass destruction� because Saddam is cunning enough to know that the use of such weapons would bring annihilation for him and his nation. It�s the same scenario, MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction), that kept the peace during the Cold War era. It would be Hiroshima and Nagasaki a hundred times over. Bush is using that weapons-of-mass-destruction mantra because it is such a simple idea that even he understands what it means, and it substitutes for harder and bigger problems like rescuing the American economy and the environment. As Bill Clinton said to George�s dad, It�s the economy, stupid. Robert Hanan, Queensland, Australia. [email protected]. October 8, 2002. .......................................................... THIS ARTICLE that you wrote is great. It is justly critical of current US policy regarding Iraq. Your analysis is shared by many, including leading American Democrats and American greens, who are afraid that irresponsible steps taken by the world�s superpower can tilt the balance in favor of military extremism (as you call it, mega-jihad). I hope you can share your article over a wider network. I personally think that the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s was a mistake in the post-Cold War scenario as it was a lost opportunity towards adopting international cooperation for non-military pressures exerted on oppressive regimes. It was a break away from the united action taken against the policy of apartheid in South Africa. In peace, Jun Simbulan. [email protected] October 8, 2002 MY REPLY. Iraq in 1990 invaded a neighboring state without any provocation. So it deserved to be attacked militarily by the US and the coalition it led, even if the ultimate motivation then, as now, was to protect American and British oil interests and ensure the safety of Israel. Non-military pressures would not have compelled Iraq to move out of Kuwait. And because many Arab and Muslim states were members of that coalition, the possibility of a multinational Muslim backlash was far-fetched. In 2002, there are no indications that Iraq is about to attack and invade any neighbor even if it were in a position to do so, which it is not. A pre-emptive military strike against Iraq is therefore unjustified and merely exposes the naked greed behind the proposed attack. And because not a single Arab or Muslim state, and not a single non-Arab and non-Muslim state, except the UK, has lined up behind George W, the possibility of a multinational Muslim backlash is very real, thus exposing the rest of the world, including the Philippines, to terrorist attacks and consequent economic hardships. ......................................................... I LOVE this sentence of yours for its extreme accuracy and punch: �Gung-ho recklessness over Iraq may yet prove only one thing, that smart weapons in the hands of dumb leaders are extremely dangerous to the human race�� Do you think Dubya was thinking up his Iraq rhetoric all by himself, (if he is at all capable of thinking ANYthing up for himself), or do you believe that it was whispered into his ear by certain people? Do you believe that these certain people have something in common? Do you believe they represent the majority of the American people? Peter Ritter, Manila. [email protected]. October 7, 2002 ........................................................ IRAQI BLOOD may not be flowing among al-Qaeda members but could Iraqi money be nourishing terrorism? Every country promotes its own interests. Why should the US not do so? So, where is GMA? You wanted her to create a �strong government.� But a government in the Philippines can only be strong by siding with the US. It would seem that a country can only be follow-the-leader if small and poor. Gras Reyes. [email protected]. October 7, 2002 MY REPLY. Not true that a country �can only be follow-the leader if small and poor.� Small and poor Vietnam did not only not follow-the-leader but actually taught the leader (the US) some painful lessons in humility that it can forget only at its own risk, in the process gaining the admiration of the world and even the grudging respect of the US itself. Small and rich Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand all used to be small and poor like we are. They did not follow the leader (the US) on what constitutes �democracy�, which is one of the reasons (not the only one, of course) they became small and rich in the process. Is Iraqi money nourishing al-Qaeda? No one knows, not even the CIA or the FBI. But probably not, since al-Qaeda does not really need it. Osama bin Laden is said to have inherited some $300 million from his wealthy father. Living in caves in Jalalabad cost next to nothing. The entire WTC operation, including airfare to the US for the 19 hijackers and flight school tuition for the four suicide pilots, did not cost even $200,000. Theoretically, they still have more than $299 million left. To put at risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people � American, British, Iraqi and innocent bystanders all over the world � on the mere conjecture that Iraqi money funds al-Qaeda is unconscionable. Many prominent Americans will disagree with you in your belief that the US is promoting its national interests by bullying Iraq. They, as well as I, are convinced that Bush�s war-mongering is nothing but an attempt to use American taxpayers� money to protect US and British oil companies and the state of Israel. If you were to conduct a survey among American servicemen and women � most of whom come from the middle and lower classes of US society and are mostly non-Jews � and ask if they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for Texaco, Shell etc and six million Jews, you might be surprised by the answer. .......................................................... BRAVO, Mr. Abaya. Reynaldo O. Arcilla. [email protected]. October 7, 2002 MY REPLY. Thank you. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |