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Admit the truth by Abid Ullah Jan – abidjan@sympatico.ca Sunday, February 23, 2003 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 the 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's 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. The 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 the UN to end a nascent Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. It used the UN to punish the Iraqi people for the last 12 years for its crime of momentarily occupying Iraq. It now needs the UN once more to let it wage another war. Why has the UN been made irrelevant in the case of the Israeli occupation of Palestine? Are US and Israel not undermining and sidelining the 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 a 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 the tyranny faced by the 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? Are any of the Iraqi cities a reflection of Sabra and Shatila, or at least, Gaza and West Bank? During 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 longer a priority, or is a progressive state different than a 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 are irrelevant as long as the US objectives are served. Interestingly, there is neither 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 frustrate them, 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 will forever remain a dream for Bush and the 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. Concluded February 23, 2003
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