M.A. Shaikh
Despite lengthy and intensive lobbying by Washington and London, the only countries ready to join them unconditionally in their frenzied crusade to butcher the Iraqi people are Germany, Australia and Canada - all fully paid-up members of the Anglo-Saxon mafia which is responsible for most of the recorded genocides in the world.
Even Turkey - a NATO member as well as a normally pliant tool of US imperialism which is also far from squeamish when it comes to shedding Muslim blood - has declined to join the Anglo- American warmongers, saying it would not allow US bases on its own soil to be used for military operations against Baghdad.
US president Bill Clinton and British prime minister Tony Blair say that tha Iraqi leader, Saddam Husain, must allow thorough inspection of his arsenals by the United Nations inspection team - dominated by American experts - or face military attack by the US and British forces. They insist that any assault would aim at destroying Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, not at his removal, although they describe him as the world’s most dangerous man, who must be stopped before he causes global devastation.
They also assert that Saddam is defying the will of the United Nations, and that in taking him on they are enforcing UN resolutions. But the UN Security Council they claim to represent is divided, with three of its own members - France, Russia and China - against bellicose measures, preferring a compromise solution, which does not humiliate Iraq.
France is flatly against any military attack on Iraq and has now joined the Arab League in proposing a compromise solution which does not humiliate Iraq while facilitating a revised plan for weapons inspection and paving the way for an early end to the UN sanctions against Baghdad.
The Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, has put up an energetic resistance to the Anglo-US war plan, asserting that it would lead to a third world war. Clearly, Yeltsin who did not think twice about bombing Chechenya to bits is not concerned about the lives of Iraqi women and children. His main fear is that if Iraq is bombed again Baghdad will not be able to pay the huge debt - worth billions of US dollars - it owes Moscow for many years to come, and that the lucrative contracts Russian companies recently signed with Iraq will become practically useless. Cash-strapped Moscow, which cannot even pay its own army and civil servants, is desperate for Iraqi petro-dollars and wants UN sanctions against Iraq lifted in the near future.
Any remaining claim to international legitimacy the Anglo-American plan might have enjoyed was removed on February 9, when the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan urged the parties to seek a negotiated settlement, warning that any bombing of Iraq by Britain and the US would be devastating. If three members of the UN Security Council, out of five, and the secretary-general are against a military solution the threatened military operations have no UN backing.
The only major power in Europe backing the plan is Germany. Chancellor Helmut Kohl said on February 7 that Clinton ‘seemed to have a point about Iraq’. He added that while no one had asked him, he was ready for German air bases to be used by US and British warplanes if they went into operation against Iraq.
German opposition leaders, including Social Democratic leaders in the Bundestag, were equally forthright in supporting US policy, which they said had been misrepresented in some European countries by factions that did not want to face the seriousness of weapons proliferation in Iraq.
Canada declared its support for military operations the same day. The Canadian prime minister, Jean Chretien, said that his country would join military action if diplomacy failed. Australia announced its support for the Anglo-US criminal plan the following day.
The Anglo-Saxon five share one characteristic: their nations are blood stained either as a result of wars in Europe (Germany, for instance) or through the destruction of the indigenous populations they had colonised. The American, Canadian and Australian power elites have arisen from the ashes of the indigenous populations their ancestors had eliminated en masse.
They even see their past crimes as heroic acts: Christopher Colombus for instance, is presented in American Children’s books as a grand hero, although he was responsible for the mass murder of over six million indigenous people.
Cleary they will not lose a night’s sleep over the mass killing of Iraqis through the indiscriminate bombing they threaten. Their aim, as they insist, will not be the removal of Saddam Husain, a natural and useful ally.
Instead, they want to destroy the military capability of Iraq, a potential adversary of Israel, and to create a climate of fear in the Middle East to justify their military occupation of the region as well as the continued mass weapons purchases by oil-rich Gulf States without which their own war machines and defence industries could not be financed.
Muslimedia: February 16-28, 1998
Washington’s push to limit the first wave of NATO expansion to only three countries, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, provides a t...
NATO, which stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was created to confront the challenge posed by Warsaw Pact countries led by the e...
The response of some people in Europe and North America to the pandemic and its cure has brought to the fore the dysfunctional nature of Wes...
Before US President Barack Obama landed in Chicago to attend the NATO conference on Afghanistan (May 20–21), albeit to noisy protests from...
