Robert Fisk: Don't forget the third clock still ticking away

www.nzherald.co.nz 29.01.2003

First, there was the ticking clock: the countdown to the war by the United States.

Then there was the second ticking clock: the diary of the week - the Blix statement, the State of the Union Address, the Blair-Bush war cabinet.

No one in the press talked about the third ticking clock: the dollar, the collapsing US economy, Venezuela and North Korea.

How easily do we slip into war?

The people don't support us? Why, let them be reminded of the asphyxiated Kurds of Halabja (whom we didn't care about at the time), the "weapons of mass destruction" which have never been used against us (but which we helped to create), the flagrant breach of United Nations resolutions of which Iraq has stood guilty (along with Israel, though we mustn't say so).

Ah yes, it's a hard life trying to convince a free people to go to war.

Especially when some of them - the British perhaps - take note of some unhappy facts along the way.

Let's take, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: 14 dead Palestinians in Gaza in just 12 hours - killed by an army led by a general whom President George W. Bush has called a "man of peace".

Few newspapers in Europe reported two weeks ago that Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said he supports a change in the country's legislation, which would, after all, allow Sharon to be tried for war crimes during the Sabra and Chatila Beirut camps massacre in 1982.

When Sharon stood for election in 2001, he expressed his regret about the "terrible tragedy" of Sabra and Chatila - at 1700 civilian dead, this was more than half the total fatalities of the World Trade Centre on September 11 that year. The most important prosecution witness against Sharon was the Lebanese Phalangist militia leader Elie Hobeika, who agreed to testify in Brussels last year, but was murdered just over 12 hours later. Israel denied any part in the murder.

The critical aspect of the forthcoming war in Iraq - alas, I suppose we must use such words as "forthcoming" - is that journalists are already using the language of inevitability.

The Americans are the good guys, the British the same - if their tank units perform as efficiently as the Americans' - just so long as no one brings up the subject of Israel.

Just take a look at Israel's man in space, Ilan Roman, a hero of the interstellar world who is now a crew member of the space shuttle Colombia, "a crew fighter pilot who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981," according to Associated Press.

But then AP says that, "He fought ... in the 1982 war in Lebanon". Really? But 17,500 civilians were slaughtered in this war, mostly by the Israeli Air Force.

Does Roman really fit into the new US space world? There is a serious case for some Israeli pilots in 1982 being brought before a war crimes tribunal.

I have met some of Roman's colleagues, who are haunted by the killing of the innocents they were called upon to commit. Maybe Roman is a nice guy. He certainly looks it. But when the New York Times suggests that the pilots may become "targets for terrorists" it doesn't say why.

Strange, you may think, to include all this in the third ticking clock. But in the Middle East, it is part of the story.

In other words: When the Americans invade Iraq, let's watch the Israel-Palestine war and ask ourselves the old question "why?".

Let's ask why we don't invade North Korea. Let's remember the dollar.