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What’s Black White and Red all over?
By Iskander Khaleeli
American foreign policy
The
black and white, cut and dried, “you’re either with us or with the
terrorists” attitude of the Bush administration is soon to open a new
chapter. The warmongers decided long ago that they would revisit Iraq; it
never really mattered if the inspectors found the weapons that the United
States, Britain, France and Russia sold to Saddam, nor did it matter if the
dictator they put there co-operated with them, the former pair of this
quartet were looking for an excuse, and if they could find none they would
manufacture it. This whole conflict carries the obvious stench of flimsy
evidence, weak arguments and blatant double standards. But evidently that
doesn’t matter either – no one, not even the UN, can stop the hungry,
rampaging colossus that has been unleashed unto the world.
War is here again, as if the first one was not enough. As if the ten years
of deliberate and crippling bombing, and the tragic deaths of one million
innocent Iraqi children because of U.S. led sanctions was not enough. Soon
the filth-filled water of Iraq will flow with the blood of more victims, as
a fresh wave of “collateral damage” is unleashed. Saddam and his
former-puppeteers have tortured the land and the people for decades, and now
the latter is coming to deal the final blow. Let us not forget the crimes of
the soon-to-be “liberators” of Iraq; as it was they who gave Saddam his
power that they now wish to usurp, and it was they that gave him the weapons
of mass destruction that the inspectors cannot find. And since ten years
ago, rather than remove Saddam, their betrayal continued with a decade of
bombing hospitals, schools and water treatment facilities of the people they
claimed to protect.
As halting Bush junior and the hawkish Rumsfeld preach about Saddam’s
flouting of UN resolutions, his use of chemical weapons against the Iranians
in the Iran-Iraq war and his years of oppression against the Iraqi people,
they should remember that their friend Israel has done no less, and that it
was Rumsfeld who in 1983 proudly shook Mister Hussein’s bloodied hand, and
congratulated him on a job-well done for gassing Khomeni’s revolutionaries
with chemical weapons proudly manufactured in the U.S of A. For over two
decades the powers that be have sat idly by, and seen no reason to
intervene; contented instead to let the tyrant Saddam continue with his
slaughter. How can they now justify their all-too ready “humanitarian”
interest? Can we honestly believe that America wants some kind of justice
for the Iraqi people? Or are we about to see another repeat of the
Afghanistan fiasco? Will America bomb Baghdad into peace and prosperity by
using food packets cleverly disguised as cluster bombs? Perhaps they will
hit training camps while they host weddings, and then hide the evidence?
Twenty-thousand victims of “collateral damage” in a high-tech war is much
more than pure stupidity, it’s a war crime.
But then America has never been too picky about it’s targets or it’s allies;
Saddam certainly wasn’t the first monstrosity they recruited, and neither
was he the last. They used, abused and vilified the Taliban, who’s
successor, the Northern Alliance has proven to be far worse. Aside from the
brutal and inhumane treatment of prisoners, that includes, but is not
limited to beatings, castration, mutilation and suffocation in sealed
shipping containers. Under the watchful eyes of the American liberator, mass
graves are appearing across the already war-torn countryside, order is
dissolving as old rivalries break out and opium production soars; freedom
has not endured in the shattered lands of Afghanistan. Bloody tribal warfare
and a thriving drugs trade have risen in the place of peace - I wonder if we
shall see the same kind of “infinite justice” for the next nation
“liberated” from suffering?
Will the people of Iraq finally receive the peace they have been starved of for so many years filled with poverty, tyranny and precision guided bombs? Or will this merely be a further episode of suffering for the devastated land of Karbala? How can anyone claim to care about the poor dejected orphans of American foreign policy when they have been complicit in the devastation of a generation? Those nations that call for war and those that stand against are all desperately trying to wipe the crimson stain from their right hands, and the black smear from their left. Could France and Russia really care less about the Iraqi’s? Or is safeguarding their oil supply from Anglo-American corporations the source of their anxiety? Likewise, Britain and America never cared if Saddam was a butcher, he was “our son of a bitch” and if “Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn’t give a damn”. Britain and America, France and Russia all hold one common objective; their thirst for the petroleum reserves sitting under the sands of Iraq. Oil is expensive, and innocent blood is cheap. America has reduced this country to a land of starvation and despair; but as long as the oil is being bled – they don’t give a damn.