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CounterPunch
January
29, 2003
Showdown at
the Crawford Corale
Time to Become
an Even Finer Generation
by LINDA HEARD
With accumulating war clouds ominously looming
over the world's most ancient civilization, and the planet's
leaders demanding that the Iraqi president hand over his weapons
of mass destruction leaving his nation naked and vulnerable,
nobody is asking this question: why on earth should he?
Imagine that America or Britain had been
the object of United Nations sanctions for 12 years leading to
the deaths of more than half a million children and babies. Imagine
that Western countries had to put up with international weapons
inspectors crawling all over them for years, including enemy
spies. How would you feel if the Iraqis had been regularly dropping
bombs on Alaska and Florida, or Inverness and Cornwall for a
decade while the world pretends not to notice?
Imagine if the shoe were on the other
foot and Iraqis and their allies were surrounding the US or Britain
with hundreds of thousands of service personnel wielding state-of-the-art
weapons, and refusing to rule out the use of nukes. You can't
can you? It could only happen to poor, weak third world countries
not to 'proud' nations like ours.
Ask yourselves these questions: Would
the US, Britain or Israel lead UN and IAEA inspectors to their
stocks of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons? Would Britain
let Iraqi spy planes crisscross over its skies? Would the White
House or Downing Street submit to their very own scientists flying
off to a third country to be interrogated or to allow inspectors
to rummage under the beds of their sick wives? The answer is
of course not.
"Ah, but that's different",
I hear you muttering. "Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds and
has used chemical weapons on his Iranian foes". You are
right, he did. But is he any worse than a succession of American
leaders who were responsible for crimes against humanity and
horrendous death tolls in Japan and South East Asia? Is he worse
than those stalwarts of Britain's upper crust who rudely carved
up the Middle East and brutally subjugated hundreds of millions
on the Indian subcontinent? Is he so very far apart from Ariel
Sharon who was found by an Israeli commission to have been responsible
for the murder of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
and who is even today slaughtering them in their thousands on
the West Bank and Gaza?
What is clear is that there is one rule
for the Superpower, its satellite Tony Blair's Britain, and its
protectorate Israel but there is quite another for everyone else.
There is no moral high ground in their aggressive stance. There
is no justice. Just a hotchpotch of propaganda, and paranoia-inducing
rhetoric designed to elicit fear in the populace. Bush, Blair
and Sharon are the ultimate conmen and we are their victims.
All three are presently engaged in the theft of oil and/or land
under cover of protecting us from the ubiquitous enemy.
Dancing a diplomatic
minuet
The Bush-Blair combo is determined to
go to war with or without a credible pretext. They would, of
course, prefer to do this with the blessing of the world community
and they are currently dancing a diplomatic minuet in the UN,
but at the end of the day they will simply say 'Screw the lot
of you' and go ahead anyway. Those countries they cannot bribe
or bamboozle that is. Sharon is rubbing his plump hands together
eagerly awaiting a pretext to inflict even more pain and suffering
on the Palestinians people.
The UN itself has been the object of
the American president's derision and it constantly been put
under threat of being deemed irrelevant. American Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld has described Jacques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder
as being of 'Old Europe' while the Potentate of Poodlestan has
labeled his detractors as treasonous.
George Bush has called the opposition
among the Democrats as unpatriotic and going by all the statements
emanating from the Oval Office and Downing Street, there is no
doubt that Bush and Blair are on the same page when it comes
to Iraq.
What page is that exactly? There are
various interpretations of this. According to the stammering
Texan, Saddam Hussein with his deadly arsenal is a danger to
the entire world, while Britain's own smooth talking Prince of
Spin concurs.
This motley pair, however, appear little
bothered by the real threat looming over the planet, which is
Kim Jong-Il of North Korea. Kim is a peculiar pipsqueak who actually
does have nuclear weapons, the missiles with which to deliver
them to Alaska, Hawaii and London, and has threatened the US
with their use.
If you call me 'evil' again I'll make
you eat your words is Kim's reaction to being included in the
evil Axis. In Bush's State of the Union address last Tuesday
he stopped short of re-labeling the Korean leader as 'evil' but
his personal attacks on Kim Jong-Il were just as venomous. Incredibly
they come just when Japan, South Korea and China are trying to
diplomatically resolve the crisis.
Saddam Hussein, the dictator who Bush
accuses of representing an imminent threat to the entire world,
has opened his doors to weapons inspectors. However, they've
failed to produce anything other than a dozen rusting warheads,
and an out-of-date document on laser technology. The Iraqi leader
has made it clear that he doesn't want to attack anyone and his
neighbors believe him. The weapons inspectors have asked for
more time. So, why not let sleeping Saddams lie?
The answer is clear. This planned invasion
of Iraq has nothing at all to do with threats that Iraq will
radiate the planet or spread smallpox in downtown Seattle. The
inspectors have found no evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass
destruction. Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei said as much last
Monday in front of the UN Security Council, although you would
hardly realize that the way that their words have been twisted,
turned and taken out of context by Powell, Negroponte and Straw.
The 'Great Leader of the Universe', on
the other hand, didn't even bother to twist and turn, preferring
outright lies. In his Tuesday address, he said that Iraq had
imported large quantities of aluminum rods for the purpose of
building nuclear weapons. Yet on the very day before, Monday,
ElBaradei of the IAEA had told the UN Security Council and the
world that whereas those aluminum rods could indeed be utilized
for dual purposes, in this particular case they had been employed
in a commercial capacity. He said that his team had checked this
out carefully and was wholly satisfied.
Who are we supposed to believe? The American
president in his ivory tower surrounded by warmongering sycophants,
or nuclear experts on the ground who have seen how those aluminum
rods are being used with their very own eyes? It is now patently
clear that Bush will distort the truth to back up his self-serving
agenda.
Let's face it. In the event that Britain
and America knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and
wished to launch them on an unsuspecting world, would they be
treating that country with so much disrespect? No, they would
not.
The glaring truth is that the Bush administration,
backed by Whitehall, is on an oil grab. They know it, we know
it and the Iraqis certainly know it. Non-Opec oil is dwindling
fast, a fact, which lends far more importance to the rich deposits
of black gold under the soil of Iraq, the second largest in the
world. Lending credence to this argument is the President's own
words on Tuesday. He stressed that he wanted America to be less
reliant on foreign energy sources and wants to devote 1.2 billion
dollars to fund research on hydrogen-powered automobiles.
Now that there is such a large allied
force in the Gulf, the world's richest energy resources are under
Washington's control. The Rand presentation to a Pentagon committee
last year, which nominated Egypt as 'the Prize' could well have
been referring to the Suez Canal, gateway to Arabia and the key
to its rich underground deposits.
This strangulation of the region not
only insures that gas-guzzling America can continue enjoying
cheap petrol but could only mean that the expansion of 'strategic
competitors' (to use a Bushism) like China could be curtailed
at the whim of the White House.
Showdown at
the Crawford Corale
Another spin-off from an invasion would
be the 'display of power and might' factor. Experts say that
the Pentagon's war plan includes bombarding Iraq with more missiles
in one day than the total expended during the entire duration
of the Gulf War. If the Iraqis aren't cowering in their boots
after that then they can expect more of the same until they discard
their footwear and run for the dunes.
Iraq would serve as the perfect testing
ground for new weapons too. There are plans to test new microwave
technology, designed to render the enemy's electronic weapons
as useless. Experts have suggested that bunker busting nuclear
warheads could be part of the Pentagon's armory too. If the campaign
goes as planned by the hawks in the form of a short Blitzkrieg,
like the fastest gun in the Old West, the US would reign supreme
over all of us.
Anyone who sashayed into the Crawford
Corale wanting a showdown at dawn would be terminated before
he could utter 'Skull and Crossbones'. 'Naturally, though, Britain's
Blair, the trusty sidekick, would be allowed to flex his puny
muscles and bask in the ensuing, Bush-approved, benefits, including,
perhaps, a place on the board of Carlyle like his Prime Ministerial
predecessor John Major.
But like in the Old West, there is always
somebody out there who is even more ruthless, someone who will
not shirk from shooting his enemy in the back or someone with
an even faster draw. George Bush and his cohorts are creating
the soil in which contenders for top gun will flourish. He is
virtually saying to America's foes: 'Come and get us. We are
invincible'.
Sadly, Mr. Bush, no individual and no
nation is invincible forever. Unless you stop creating enemies
where none exist, and fuelling the flames of anti-Americanism
around the world, then the day will come when you too will be
challenged by a merciless opponent... and another... and another.
Defenders of
truth and justice
My heroes in this murky mess are those
who boarded a London bus en route for Baghdad, led by Kenneth
Nicholls O'Keefe, a former marine, where they will willingly
serve as human shields. Keefe said on BBC World's Hard Talk that
he wanted to look an Iraqi in the eye and tell him that there
are Westerners who care and he's one of them.
The incredibly honest and authentic O'Keefe
reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia who in the movie attempts to
explain how he is very different from the 'fat' people in England.
Lawrence succeeded and garnered the trust of the Arab tribes
only to be stabbed in the back by the British establishment.
O'Keefe will, no doubt, share a similar fate.
In the same way that Lawrence turned
his back on his own and went into obscurity, the former marine
already has. He took the step of relinquishing his American citizenship
because, as he says, he could no longer swear allegiance or pay
taxes to the country of his birth.
The Greenpeace guys and girls on the
Rainbow Warrior, presently anchored in the Solent blocking Britain's
warships from sailing off get my vote, along with those protestors
who marched to Fairford RAF base in Gloucestershire demanding
inspection of Britain's weapons of mass destruction. I wish I
had half their courage and commitment. I can only glue my fingers
to the keys and hope that someone out there is listening.
Come on Americans and Britons. Let's
see your mettle. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers who
swallowed mud in the World War I trenches have been designated
'the finest generation'. Let's show the world that we are just
as fine and we will not allow egomaniacal greedy leaders to endanger
the very existence of humanity in our name.
Linda Heard
is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be reached
at: freenewsreport@yahoo.com
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