The Morality Of Gulf War II
©Lucio Mascarenhas. May 2nd., 2004. .
Michaelinum / Orthopapism II: Catholic Resistance Resource Center
George Bush commenced Gulf War II ostensibly as part of his
War Against Terror, in response to 9/11. Yet, it seems that the State of Iraq had no real connection with the perpetrators of that crime, although this is still hotly debated. It is claimed, as a basic fact, that, for all his brutality and megalomania, Saddam Hussain al Tikriti was a "Secularist" who was deeply suspicious of the religious intentions of Osama bin Ladin and his Al-Qaida.
It is alleged that Al-Tikriti was a creature of the British and the Americans and of their allies; that these powers cultivated and armed and used him for their own purposes; but that they fell out over Kuwait — Gulf War I.
It is alleged that Gulf War II was motivated by a perceived need to finish the incomplete task left over from Gulf War I, when the Emirate of Kuwait was liberated from Iraq's Occupation. Additional objectives, apparently, were to revenge the insults against the former US president George Bush, Sr., and also to safeguard the security of Israel from the threat that Iraq and Al-Tikriti posed it.
Moreover, it is stated that George Bush did wrong in that he did not seek and obtain the permission and authorisation of the United Nations in order to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussain; that Bush claimed that Al-Tikriti possessed "Weapons of Mass Destruction", which are utterly untraceable today, after he has overthrown Al-Tikriti; and that Al-Tikriti, for all his sins, was the best man to govern and keep together Iraq.
I will grant that there was no connection between Al-Tikriti and Al-Qaida, though I believe otherwise. Let us take up the other allegations and dispose them one by one.
Al-Tikriti was neither a religious Muslim nor a Secularist. He was, first of all, an egomaniac, and secondly, an opportunist, constantly contriving to aggrandise himself.
As an opportunist and egomaniac, he saw in the predominant Islam of the Shias and his own Sunni sect, both an opportunity and a threat. He exploited the opportunities, when possible, by cultivating these sects, throwing goodies their way, and he also acted with swift and decisive violence — most often pre-emptive — when faced with even an imaginary threat to himself.
There is no truth whatsoever in the allegation that Al-Tikriti was the creature of the Americans and their allies. On the contrary, Al-Tikriti commenced his carrer with a single minded objective of seizing the State of Iraq and its organs of Supreme Government and make them into his personal toys, for his personal aggrandisement. Towards this end, he took part in numerous adventures and revolutions, suffered setbacks, made alliances and betrayed those who had put their trust in him.
On the contrary, Al-Tikriti exploited the cupidity of the various world powers by cultivating their patronage.
I too believe that one reason why Gulf War II was commenced, was in order to finish the incomplete task left over from Gulf War I. And not only I, but a great many people believed that this was necessary; that Powell and the USA did wrong in stopping at the Iraq-Kuwait frontier and that they should have pursued the enemy to Baghdad.
The result of this failure was evident for a long time, though now many tend to forget it. And that was principally the games of cat-and-mouse that Al-Tikriti constantly played with the Allies and with the UN and with the Inspectors...
Al-Tikriti never demonstrated his sincerity; on the contrary, with his games he demonstrated that he was merely defeated for the present but was seeking for chinks in the unity of his opponents; looking for an opportunity to resume his grandiose program of constructing an Pan-Arab Empire...
There are good reasons to believe that Al-Tikriti, with his vengeful obsession with George Bush, Sr., was responsible for the assassination attempt made upon him when he was on a visit to Liberated Kuwait.
When Al-Tikriti invaded Kuwait, and found (nearly) all the world (except such ancient hypocrites as the Indians, etc.) united against him, he attempted to transform that war by striking, without any provocation whatsoever, at Israel, killing a great many people there.
If Israel had retaliated, as she very well had good reasons to, that war would have been transformed into a World War, with the Muslims blindly uniting behind Al-Tikriti and the rest of the world arrainged against them. That was what Al-Tikriti was aiming at; and it was only the urgent pressure and appeasement by the USA that made Israel to refrain and not to strike back.
But, in exchange, the Allies who fought Gulf War I, and the UN, which legitimised that campaign, had a moral responsibility to keep their part of the bargain with Israel by taking Al-Tikriti permanently out of circulation; and George Bush, Jr's Gulf War II can be completely and entirely justified solely on this basis.
But let me explain myself even more clearly what I am saying here, for I know that many will take umbrage at this, my contention.
Many people have serious objections to the State of Israel and to the ever-conceited and ever-abrasive Jews. Catholics and every sane Protestant is aware that the Jews, by and large, are their most vicious and virulent enemies, constantly plotting to ambush and overthrow them. Yet, no sane and moral man will deny that the State of Israel — as a legitimate State — has a moral and legal right to exist, and to exist in peace, unmolested.
No sane and moral person will deny that Israel, like any other state on the face of the earth, has the right to protect itself and its citizens from those who seek to destroy and harm.
Al-Tikriti assaulted Israel for no just and moral reason, other than to create for himself an opportunity to escape the consequences of his own wrongdoings in Kuwait.
But Al-Tikriti was not merely a past and historic threat to Israel; he was also a present threat. It was Al-Tikriti who violated the UN sanctions, to which he had consented to abide, by building his Al-Samoud missiles with the capability of reaching Israel. And he demonstrated his hatred for Israel by financing liberally the Muslim colonial terrorists who struck time and again against Israel and its citizens.
For all the problems with Israel, there is no sane and moral man, I believe, who would look on without concern, at the prospect of Al-Tikriti sparking World War III by firing some of his Al-Samoud missiles into Israel...
For all the passionate certifications freely tendered on behalf of Al-Tikriti, that he had no love for religion, he was moved enough by his religion, both to hate Israel, and to hate the Shias, whom he brutally suppressed. Those are facts that contradict his "secular" image.
All this militated the urgent and pressing removal of Al-Tikriti from positions of continuing his mischiefs, and therefore, I believe, what was done, was well done.
The United Nations is a forum of all the States of the World. It is not a Nation in its own right, of which its members are merely subordinate parts — provinces. The UK, the USA, and all other members of the UN are not provinces of the UN; therefore they are not insubordinate provinces who actually and factually need the leave, license of the UN, to be issued at the Secretary General's whims and fancies, for them to be able to wage a war according to their necessities.
It is true that the UN had already imposed sanctions upon Iraq and Al-Tikriti, and authorised the Allies to take various actions in order to enforce, uphold and maintain these sanctions. It may be, as claimed by the Allies, that they already possessed by virtue of these acts, the right to invade Iraq in furtherance thereof, though I am not myself knowledgeable of the arguments for or against such a position.
But it is true that the Allies did in fact desire to present their program before the UN and obtain its approval; a plan that failed because of the peculiar attitude of certain states, notably France, Germany and Russia.
I would like to point out that all of these recalcitrant states were already in possession of the facts that I have outlined above; however, it seems that they had either forgotten them, or chose, for particular reasons, to forget them.
But let us examine the UN and its pretensions.
The UN, as I have already pointed out, is merely a forum and not (yet) the One World Government, so that the various States of the World are not yet reduced to the status of being merely its provinces, or of glorified municipalities.
And the UN has not demonstrated its sincerity in the past; it had acted as the handmaid and facilitator of malefactors and mischief-makers.
It sought for the dismemberment of certain states on false basis, particularly the fabricated charge of "Colonialism", even as it hypocritically failed to apply those same principles to the very movers of those motions.
The end result of these misanthropic measures was the foisting of unsought-for civil wars, rebellions, invasions, occupations, genocides, and more, all over the world.
It resulted in the Rape of Timor, in the Rape of West Guinea, in the Rape of Goa.
It also resulted in the Soviet enslavement of Eastern Europe for so long, with all its attendant miseries.
I find it very peculiar and hypocritical, that the UN pontificates — and enforces — that a discontinous state ought to be dismembered on grounds that discontinuity denoted "Colonialism" and the domination of one people over another, even while it blindly denied enslaved peoples from contigous lands, such as the Kurds in West Asia, the right to secede and to erect themselves and their homeland into their own national state!
I find it very peculiar and hypocritical that the Angolans, for all their disparate ethnic origins, are declared and certified to be one inseparable "nation" — a privilege denied to Portugal!
I find it very peculiar and hypocritical that the various members of Portugal — Metropolitan Portugal, Madeira, the Acores, Angola, Mocambique, Sao Tome e Principe, Cabo Verde, Guinea Portuguesa, Ajuda, East Timor, and my native Goa, etc. — are considered to be in an artificial unity which must be broken up with unholy haste, and without reference to the concerned peoples, but that the Chechens and Tibetans do not have the moral right, in the UN's eyes, to independence!
I therefore discount the UN as being a bunch of pretensious hypocrites, and pay no serious attention to it other than to record that it perpetrates crimes against humanity.
As for the "Weapons of Mass Destruction"; it is a fact that Al-Tikriti did in fact manufacture them; also a fact that he continously strove to gather and maintain them in his possession. When the Liberation of Iraq was accomplished by the Allies, however, they could not find any — still cannot. It is now claimed that Al-Tikriti did in fact destroy them. However, at no time before Gulf War II, was anybody able to ascertain this, nor did Al-Tikriti ever sincerely claim that he had destroyed it, nor did he sincerely cooperate with the Inspectors to prove that this was so. Therefore, if it is anybody's fault that Gulf War II was fought, among other things, on the grounds that Al-Tikriti possessed these weapons, the fault of this deception lies solely and entirely on Al-Tikriti.
Coming to the last argument. It is even now being seriously argued, ostensibly by sensible men, that Al-Tikriti is the best man to restore order to Iraq.
It is very telling of the sense and morality of those who forward such arguments that they overlook the inhuman brutality with which Al-Tikriti ruled and imposed himself on Iraq; how miserable he had made the daily lives and existence of the vast majority of the people of Iraq.
It is forgotten how he and his sons and his goons tortured and murdered citizens; how captives were thrown — alive — into meat shredders.
It is forgotten how he seized and used foreign citizens as human shields in order to protect himself from the just retribution that came his way for his Rape of Kuwait.
This is the man — this inhuman monster — whom these wise men desire to restore to power, to return the reigns of power.
Others will argue that for all his brutality, he is a man whom the Iraqis understand, and is a product of the local culture, which can be governed only by men of his type.
If this is a serious argument, I would much prefer to go along with Bush's stated ambition of imposing democracy and the
sensus of a civil society, willy-nilly, upon the Iraqis.
I cannot accept racism in any form; I cannot stomach the insinuation that the people of Iraq are sub-human or inferior, that they therefore need to be brutalized in order to be governed.
Certainly, it is better, from my viewpoint, to have Iraq liberated than to not. I have no problems in understanding that some Iraqis have not got the picture, and that they are trying to make trouble, for while they disliked Al-Tikriti, they disliked him because they were not themselves in the position he seized and cut out for himself, while they themselves want to take his place and lord it over their fellows, as he once did. They will have to learn to live in a civil society the hard way, and more power to George Bush!
I am not an indiscriminate supporter of the Americans. I certainly do not look with kindness upon their works — since the very beginnings — in Latin America.
In the case of Afghanistan, from the viewpoint of the hierarchy of evils, I considered that Islam is a greater evil than Communism, which is why I supported the Communists against the forces of Islam and their American allies.
Lucio Mascarenhas
©Lucio Mascarenhas. May 2nd., 2004. .
Michaelinum / Orthopapism II: Catholic Resistance Resource Center