Mojave V
Thursday, March 6, 2003
Mojave V
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The March issue of the IU News is out; there's some good reading there.
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Don't forget to read the lastest good stuff at Rudolf's Diner!
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What's to Be Gained from a War on Iraq?
By Chris
Knipp (website)
If only there were a bloodless way to do it, a takeover of the regime
of Saddam Hussein might be justifiable under the requirements of UN Resolution
1441. But the prospects have
never been bloodless, and this is one reason why there is so much visible worldwide
opposition to the Bush war plans. We have heard that there
will be 3,000 "precision weapons" in the first two days, ten times as many bombs
as at the start of the Gulf War. We have heard about
a new, untested bomb, the MOAB or massive ordnance air burst bomb,
21,000 pounds and equivalent to a small nuclear weapon. The MOAB, by the way,
is a weapon of mass destruction. It's a much larger cookie cutter bomb-- the
kind that randomly tears off people's limbs-- and it can be dropped from much
higher up, thus protecting the safety of American pilots.
And this time it isn't the desert that's to be struck, but a capital
city, Baghdad, with five million inhabitants. Baghdad, fabled city of the 1001 Nights,
of Sheherazade,
Ali Baba, Sindbad the Sailor, and Aladdin. We have heard that this massive
attack is to engender "shock and awe," and that means quite simply killing thousands
and thousands of innocent civilians, in a country 41% of whose population is
under the age of sixteen. And then President Bush
gives an address outlining the plan for humanitarian aid in Iraq.
This war is an act of enormous brutality and inhumanity.
It is also a very bad idea.
We must bomb them, so that we can set them free. And we must bomb them,
so that we can offer them humanitarian aid. Once again the last
thing that the Bush administration will mention is that many civilians will
die, more people, and for less justifiable reasons, than in the Gulf War.
Bush's first suggestion for the Afghan invasion was to drop food; now
the US is abandoning Afghanistan because it is in chaos and Hamid Karzai has
been begging Bush not to. The suggestion that
Gen. Tommy Franks will run Iraq after an invasion the way Gen. MacArthur ran
Japan after WWII is fanciful: Iraq will be a lot more
like Afghanistan than Japan. The difference is that
this time the attack is on dense urban areas, and many more people will die.
We will set them free; but they will be dead.
Another objection to the attack on Iraq is that in the big picture, Iraq
is not the main threat. Iraq was the hobbyhorse
of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other Bush cronies well before September 11.
Then, Iraq was their next priority after Afghanistan.
This had nothing to do with September 11 and everything to do with protecting
Israel, cornering the world's oil, and controlling the Middle East. Cheney et
al. are setting the timetable, and the UN inspectors and the various nations
the US is pressuring and bribing and threatening are falling into place to suit
that timetable.
A look at North Korea, Pakistan, and Israel destroys the feeble logic
of making an attack on Iraq a strategic priority in a rational, global effort
to limit weapons of mass destruction.
Various analysts, notably Jonathan Schell in his "Case Against the War" in The Nation, have shown
the illogic of making Iraq the linchpin of an anti-proliferation plan.
The thinking behind this plan for Iraq is akin to madness.
At worst, a bloodbath in Iraq could lead to an international Armageddon;
at best, it is a formula for destabilization in the Middle East.
Above all, it will provide a further stimulus for anti-western, anti-American
Islamic terrorist activity.
Iraq is not only not the main threat; it is a defeated nation.
Its children, 41% of the population, die by the thousands every month
because of the UN sanctions brought about after the Gulf War.
The UN is responsible for an ongoing decade-long human rights disaster
of vast proportions. The infrastructure
is still shaky, the economy crumbling.
A country that had made enormous progress since the Fifties was severely
damaged in the war with Iran in the Eighties, and then when the Gulf War came
was virtually set back forty years in forty days.
Saddam Hussein is a despicable tyrant. But there are many others
like him who are not under threat. The US has often supported
such tyrants, as it once supported Saddam himself; as it once supported Osama
bin Laden. The US didn't eliminate
Saddam in the Gulf War. It didn't catch Osama.
What certainty is there that they will eliminate Saddam now? Who will be put in to
replace Saddam? The US is preparing
a vague plan for a puppet regime, partly stocked with Iraqi dissidents to be brought in from outside. There is no reason to
think they will be any more successful than Hamid Karzai has been in Afghanistan.
And it won't be easy to buy Iraqis as the Afghan warlords were temporarily
bought.
Iraq, a defeated nation, will be further destroyed by a massive US attack.
But in the end, such an attack will be futile politically. American leaders
have not shown any stomach in recent decades, if they ever had one, for the
follow-through of political reconstruction. And American military campaigns
have never succeeded in a battle for "hearts and minds." In Iraq and elsewhere
in the Middle East, as in Vietnam, sophisticated weaponry and military superiority
are powerless against ingenuity, determination, and simple, improvised methods. A war by bombing --terrorism
with a big budget-- is not a way to reach people. You do not make a people democratic
by conquering them. You do not destroy a country in order to rebuild it. You
cannot defeat terrorism by bombs; you further motivate it. All it takes is total
dedication and a box cutter and you can bring down a skyscraper in the biggest
city of the world's richest nation.
It has always been the American error to think that power lies in money
and size, and that influence can be foisted upon people by sheer force of will. Our ugly Americans and
quiet Americans have always blundered this way.
But all these arguments against the stated aims of the US assault on
Iraq are really a waste of time, because the stated aims are not the real ones. The Bush administration
has become increasingly baldfaced in its deceptions.
The State of the Union Address was well delivered but utterly unconvincing
to anyone who analyzed it. Colin Powell's appearance
at the United Nations was worse than that: it was a humiliation
to see such shabby evidence and such unconvincing proofs; student paste-up jobs
presented as high quality intelligence.
Given Powell's earlier objections to Bush's war moves, the sight was
doubly humiliating -- for us, and for him.
UN inspectors following up on US "tips" in Iraq in the days after Powell's
appearance found them to be "garbage after garbage after garbage." Americans deserve better
of their leaders.
Worldwide opposition to the assault on Iraq is far stronger than during
the Gulf War, stronger than anything even during the Vietnam era.
(Again, Jonathan Schell has written an admirable summary). Many Americans see that there is nothing
patriotic about this new war drive. The future it provides
is bright only for American corporations. Bush has already been
planning "reconstruction" with leading members of his oligarchy, and things
look very profitable for those who invest in companies like Bechtel Corporation
and Dick Cheney's Halliburton. To the victor go the spoils, and the spoils are
already in view. The contracts
are being dealt out. In the minds of the
US administration, under a leader who avoided military service, the body count
is of no significance and the war on Iraq was already over before it had begun.
And let us not forget that weapons of mass destruction are only a pretext,
Saddam's former atrocities only spice added for further flavor, and the real
main dish is oil, with regional control and further protection for the USA's
number one client state, Israel, as major bonuses. This time what looks
very appetizing to George W. Bush is not only a distressing prospect for the
average American, but for the whole rest of the world.
Marach 5, 2003
CHRIS KNIPP
Say...
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