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Point Abidullah
Jan
Admit the Truth
In
one of his frantic attempts to justify war on Iraq, the icon of
American mainstream media, Thomas L. Friedman of New York Times,
came up with the idea for US Administration to tell the truth
to win public support for yet another war. He titled his February
19 column, "Tell the truth" and summarised the truth
in his 4th-last paragraph in the following words:
"Tell people the truth. Saddam does not threaten us today.
He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice - but it's
a legitimate choice. It's because he is undermining the U.N.,
it's because if left alone he will seek weapons that will threaten
all his neighbors, it's because you believe the people of Iraq
deserve to be liberated from his tyranny, and it's because you
intend to help Iraqis create a progressive state that could stimulate
reform in the Arab/Muslim world, so that this region won't keep
churning out angry young people who are attracted to radical Islam
and are the real weapons of mass destruction."
Anyone who has a mind and understanding of the ABC of international
relations and history may easily understand that these are merely
fig leaves to hide the truth. After days of homework and ceaseless
activity of the thought mills in Washington, the whole argument
for making a case for war boils down to the following:
1. Saddam is "undermining the UN";
2. Saddam's weapons "will threaten all his neighbours";
3. "…people of Iraq deserve to be liberated from his
tyranny";
4. Iraqis need "help" to "create a progressive
state"; and
5. as a result of war and "progressive state," "this
region won't keep churning out angry young people who are attracted
to radical Islam and are the real weapons of mass destruction."
If Bush and his Allies have the courage, they must face and admit
the truth as it is. Reality behind the "truths" mentioned
by Thomas L. Friedman is given as under for further discussion
by those who would like to separate truth from falsehood:
1. If Saddam is a violator of Resolution 1441, would Thomas Friedman
mind telling us something about UN resolution 242 of 1967 - leaving
out the rest -- requiring Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab
territories?
The US needed and used UN to end a nascent Iraqi occupation of
Kuwait. It used the UN to punish Iraqi people for the last 12
years for its crime of momentarily occupying Kuwait. It now needs
the UN once more to let it wage another war. Why has the UN been
made irrelevant in the case of Israeli occupation of Palestine?
Are US and Israel not undermining and sidelining UN for prolonging
the already longest occupation of modern history? Has Saddam killed
any of the UN personnel like Israel? Has Saddam shelled a UN compound,
killing countless innocent civilians?
Saddam can never undermine the UN the way the US has been doing
all along with its Veto power. Undermining the UN is actually
the US vetoing: two UN resolutions affirming the rights of "the
Palestinian people to self-determination, statehood and equal
protections"; four resolutions calling for "self-determination
of Palestinian people"; six resolutions affirming "the
inalienable rights of the Palestinian people"; seven resolution
endorsing "self-determination for the Palestinian people"
and many more.
2. Saddam's weapons "will" threaten its neighbours.
Alright. We accept "will" as a truth. However, what
about Israel's weapons which have already threatened and turned
its neighbours into spineless lambs. Are not the neighbouring
Arabs helplessly watching their fellow Arabs being massacred on
daily basis by the Israeli forces in the occupied territories?
Why are they silent if not due to the fear of Israel's threat
to use its weapons of mass destruction against them? Presenting
Iraqi weapons as a threat is not a truth but a distraction. The
only weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East are in Israel,
an American protectorate.
"Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches," said
Sharon before he became prime minister. Steinbach says such a
threat could be used to compel the Bush administration to act
exclusively in Israel's favour were it to waver in the face of
growing international support for the intifada. Francis Perrin,
the former head of the French nuclear weapons programme, wrote:
"We thought the Israeli Bomb was aimed at the Americans,
not to launch it at the Americans, but to say, 'If you don't want
to help us in a critical situation [when we] require you to help
us . . . we will use our nuclear bombs'." Israel used this
blackmail during the 1973 war with Egypt, forcing Richard Nixon
to resupply its badly shaken military. The Israeli nuclear threat
is seldom raised in Europe, and is a non-issue in the United States.
However, since the election of Sharon, who has presided over massacres
of Palestinian civilians since 1953, this may be changing. Television
pictures from Gaza and the West Bank ought to leave little doubt
that Israel is a terrorist state, threatening everyone who opposes
its policy of state murder.
3. Definitely, Iraqi people need to be liberated from the tyranny
of Saddam. Would, Friedman, however compare tyranny faced by Iraqi
people at the hands of Saddam with the tyranny faced by Palestinians,
Kashmiris, Algerians, Egyptians, or Pakistanis at the hands of
tyrants, fully sponsored by Washington. Are Saddam Hussein's tanks
rumbling in the streets of Baghdad? Are Saddam's security forces
bulldozing homes of Iraqi people and shooting their children at
will as we witness in Palestine? Is any of the Iraqi cities a
reflection of Sabra and Shatila, or at least, Gaza and West Bank?
In the week Thomas Friedman was thinking of telling "the
truth," and the American press focusing on Baghdad, the violence
in occupied Palestine suddenly surged. In six days, at least 30
Palestinians were killed in a series of Israeli operations, chiefly
in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Nablus. Did Friedman
not read those reports? Why does he not think of liberating Palestinians
from the tyranny of Israel?
4. Iraqis need help to "create a progressive state."
What about a democratic one? Why is this change in vocabulary?
Is democracy no more a priority, or a progressive state is different
than democratic state? Under the new concept, Egypt is a progressive
state. Afghanistan is progressive state in the making. Pakistan
is an example that shows democracy and dictatorships areirrelevant
as long as the US objectives are served. Interestingly there is
neither a talk of democracy nor progressive state for countries
already under American occupation, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen, etc.
5. The final "truth" Mr. Friedman likes us to believe
is that as a result of war on Iraq, "this region won't keep
churning out angry young people who are attracted to radical Islam
and are the real weapons of mass destruction." Please note
that it is not the "region" that churns out "angry
young people." It is the situation and circumstances shaped
by the policies of the leading powers of the day that first make
the people upset, deprive, suffer and frustrated, and then turn
them into living bombs and missiles. Why doesn't Switzerland churn
out such human bombs? Isn't it the same planet everywhere?
There must be some reason for our not witnessing as many "angry
people" turning into "weapons of mass destruction"
in the whole world as in Israel. There is nothing wrong with the
land. It is that the Israeli policies of occupation and repression
have created an environment that makes death more attractive for
its victims than life. Similarly, the "region" is churning
out "angry young people," not because Saddam Hussein
is in power. It is because the US is involved in replicating at
regional scale what the Israeli government has been doing on local
level since its inception.
Without bravely facing the truths summarised here and admitting
the associated duplicity and hypocrisy, it would forever remain
a dream for Bush and Thomas Freidmans of the US media to create
a global context where they butcher people in Iraq and elsewhere
and the world still applauding for them.
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