Lies & Greed Behind the Illegal War
By Brian Reade
WITH every
passing day it becomes clear that the muddled thinking behind this illegal
assault on Iraq is based on lies, greed and ignorance.
That the
argument for the invasion is so morally weak and the objectives so vague, that
the only justification left is that it has to be right because Our Boys are
there.
How
patronising and incalculably dangerous that logic seems, especially if your
loved one is now scrambling through the desert.
What an
admission that the war is being packaged in myth and sold by deceit. And nowhere
has that become more clear than in the language used to flog it.
Washington
claimed Iraq would be crushed by a new doctrine called Minimum Lethal Force. Or
MLF. Attempt to de-construct that phrase in your head without laughing, or
crying. Try to work out how, when it comes to war, you can use the word minimum
to soften the word lethal. Then realise they are actually saying Not Quite
Hiroshima.
Think of
those other euphemisms that insult both the English language and human dignity.
Collateral Damage and Friendly Fire. Then remember how much of it we have seen
in so few days.
Coalition
fire and accidents has claimed 16 British servicemen and an ITV camera crew.
America has lost five. A US missile has hit a bus full of Syrian workers as they
tried to flee Iraq, killing five and injuring 10. Thirty-three Kurds were
murdered as a stray bomb hit a village in Kurdistan. Two Tomahawk cruise
missiles have landed in Turkey and American rockets have landed in Iran.
It's
shocking all right. But not very awesome.
That is
before we count the hundreds of Iraqi civilians maimed and killed by that
wonderfully benign doctrine MLF. And we are still only softening Baghdad up for
the real horrors.
Donald
Rumsfeld said his heart breaks when he hears of friendly fire and collateral
damage. We all share the heartbreak but some of us also dredge up the facts.
COLLATERAL
DAMAGE: Syrian civilian with his arm blown off after a US missile hit a bus full
of workers
DURING the
first Gulf War, 24 per cent of American deaths (35 servicemen) were caused by
their own friendly fire.
As for
collateral damage who can forget last year's slaughter at the wedding party in
Afghanistan? Or the 64 Albanian refugees who were killed on tractors as they
fled Kosovo?
And after
every one of these incidents the same excuse is trotted out. That there has
never been a "eath-free war".
Well why
then did Bush and Blair sell this as one while they tried to arm-twist
authorisation for it through the United ations?
The
ambiguous language and the unsure notion of where America's WMDs another beauty)
should be landing, fits in perfectly with the ill-defined nature of the
conflict. Even the American convoy which was captured ended up in Iraqi hands
because the driver thought the area he was turning into was under Allied
control. Well when you control only areas of sand it is an easy enough mistake
to make.
The Allies
are telling us they have taken towns and cities, then having to go back and
re-take them. And you wonder how well this bodes for any peace. How easy it will
be for guerrillas to wage a constant war for many years to come, with our
soldiers having to take these bombs and bullets. And for what?
In the
south of Iraq the coalition says it is suffering major setbacks due to the
unforeseen level of resistance among soldiers and civilians. Why didn't their
intelligence predict this?
Meanwhile in the north, the nightmare
scenario of Turkey invading Kurdistan is unfolding, and with it a legality that
Washington cannot question. According to the Turks they are simply carrying out
a pre-emptive strike on a hostile people. Now where have we heard before?
This is the mess you end up in when
your cause is neither just nor legal. When contemptuous arrogance and blind
stupidity makes a superpower believe that because it has the technology, the
fire-power and the dollars to buy off the little guys, its might will prevail.
That simply turning up on Third World
soil with promises to re-build the country in your image after you have
destroyed it, guarantees you the moral high ground and the spoils of victory.
It was exactly what America thought in
Vietnam - that is before the body-bags kept being sent home in their
thousands.
Suddenly having Their Boys over there
seemed the worst justification of all.
