Victims of unjust aggression
By NDUKA UZUAKPUNDU Sunday, March 30, 2003
THE United States-led unjust aggression against Iraq is progressing as planned. But, if you are familiar with received war-time parlance, given the consuming mobilisation and the strategy made by Washington and its allies – in order to sink President Saddam Hussein – you are most likely to think otherwise. Suppose in the first 72 hours of the aerial bombardment of Basra and Umm Qasr by U.S. troops there was a gleeful and genuine beam of footage of broken Iraqi resistance – this time not just by the ubiquitous, Qatar-based Arab satellite television station – Al Jazeera – but also other influential broadcasters – like the BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS etc. – the language of the sitrep issuing from the U.S. Central Command post in Qatar, would have been cheeringly different: “the war is progressing beyond our wildest imagination.” And that could have been General Tommy Franks – the Kosovo veteran – who is in charge of the anti-Saddam aggression – speaking. But this war is not progressing as President George W. Bush, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State General Colin Powell may have expected. It is too unjust and morally indefensible to be.
Iraq - Saddam and his associates in the alleged weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D) saga - as the pre-war ranting went - would be tested within days. That has not been. And yet Rumsfeld did say that Iraq would not be too much of a problem, even if Washington were to take on North Korea at the same time. The friends of Washington are eagerly waiting to see a demonstration of that. While he said Iraq is a new kind of war, neither Washington nor London knows how to fight it. Bush may have - in the weeks ahead - to shift position, for obvious reasons: Iraq is not as backward as Afghanistan; Iraq is about four times the size of Afghanistan; 24 times Kuwait; its people are a justifiably proud lot driven by their 8,000-year long history of civilisation, which has been nurtured by the Euphrates and the Tigris and their leading geo-strategic position in the Arabian Gulf region.
The breadth of Iraqi resistance to the aggression, so far, suggests the inaccuracy of the pre-war intelligence about Iraq gathered by Washington and its regional allies. Iraqis are, for all these traits - and many more - unlikely to bow soon. Bush and his distinguished ‘War Council’- including the famous Congressman from North Texas, alias Tony Blair - are well into plans in readiness for a long, stretching aggression against Iraqis. Almost too early in their self-appointed errand, they have come to realise that Iraq holds forth a telling feature that is quite distinct from Grenada, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. But, like Somalia, there is some unveiled unease in the Bush camp that the casualties: 18 U.S. troops missing in an ambush in An Nasiriyah; the felling of British planes by friendly fires flung from American Patriot missiles; the beamed confessions by some American soldiers that they were unwilling - as opposed to illegal - combatants in the anti-Saddam war; that, indeed, they had nothing against the Iraqis; are developments too unhealthy for the Coalition’s cause.
Still, the latest intelligence forecasts a crippling soar: as ‘another’ anti-Vietnam civil disobedience brews on the U.S’s Atlantic seaboard, a crop of unidentified U.S. troops in Umm Qasr may be plotting to jam the Coalition forces’ central communication lines, disable some B-52 war planes and waste the head of the unjust war out there in Qatar. These are Americans, augmented by the consuming anti-war protests and the fact that theirs is an outing not backed by the resolution of the United Nations Security Council, who have come to realise the duty they owed their conscience - and the cause of justice and peace - that Iraq is decidedly a war of blame. These are Americans who figure that against the run of their country’s war history, the aggression against Iraq would not win them the hearts of Iraqis whenever the din of war subsides. They would rather act now, the way they have planned - by April 9 - so some intelligence say - if only to be seen as having expressed their disapproval of the aggression.
Cultivated patience
Meanwhile, American voters and tax-payers are waiting - with some cultivated patience - to task Bush over his promise to send American sons and daughters to war fronts to conquer and amble out unscathed. There is already a build up to an opportunity to that effect right inside Iraq - an opportunity which Afghanistan was, understandably, not magnanimous enough to offer: Several families of captured U.S. legal combatants have been trooping to Fort Bliss - the base of the 507th Maintenance part of the 111th Air Defence Brigade, in Texas - whence some of the prisoners of war came. Bush expects that their Iraqi captors would treat them humanely, because they are as good as the illegal combatants who have refused to evacuate Guantanamo, because of the unimaginable comfort and bliss they have found on the island; something that wealthy and magnanimous Afghanistan was too stingy to offer them. Said Bush on his return last week to the White House from Camp David: “We expect them (the American POWs) to be treated humanely, just like we’ll treat any prisoner of theirs ... If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”
But for ordering a criminal aggression against the people of Iraq, Bush and his associates shall be treated as heroes. The POWs have been shown on Arab, American and British television stations. But, as the spokeswoman of the International Committee of the Red Cross (I.C.R.C), Nadu Doumani, said, the showing of the POWs on television violates Article 13 of the Geneva Conventions, which says POWs should be protected from public curiosity. The unanswered questions posed by Article 13 – in its assumed magisterial disposition are: What is the just definition of ‘curiosity’? Who defines it? Is it Bush, Blair or Saddam? Because of the aggression against Iraqis, Article 13 ought to be tolerant of certain informed infractions. Although, it is true that those who crafted Article 13 were never that clairvoyant to foresee such obvious falsity that could lead to an unjust aggression, it is, nonetheless, imperative they should retire to their chambers and reflect on all possible unjust future war situations - including what is left of Bush’s “axis of evil” - Iran and North Korea - and loosen it up with some provisos, in a transparently liberal fashion, to accommodate some informed extremities.
In the face of the offensive against the Iraqis, Article 13 is indefensible. It is archaic and unrealistic. If war is not about propaganda - propaganda that, in some instances, is steeled by the footage of POWs and laboriously stuffed body bags, of what relevance is Article 13?. For now, Article 13 should be rested. Here is an unjust war for which, in fairness, the Iraqis should be allowed to press their case by any means within their reach. As it presently is, Article 13 is akin to an unjust crusade to tamper with press freedom, just in case any newspaper naughtily publishes the truth with supposedly an unjust intent to embarrass a public officer. It is morally offensive and unjust to crave a veil - as Article 13 seeks, in every material particular, to do - for the faces behind an unjust aggression. Iraq is enough as an unjust war milieu for which it will be more tolerable to beam the faces of POWs, than those of lifeless victims. If war has nothing attractive to offer, Article 13 ought to be ambitious enough to ban it. By implication, there will be no more POWs – and the I.C.R.C. will be saved the discomfort of some television stations exposing legal combatants to curiosity. Regrettably, Article 13 is, unjustly, about making the media one of the countless casualties of the war.
Presently, the Saudi crown - torn between its loyalty to Washington and the anger of public opinion against the war - is pondering over what it would look like if the Americans should topple Saddam from his oil empire. Would it corrode the mighty influence of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in global oil politics? Would it be nunc dimitis for the cartel? Would Washington, thereafter, steep itself in creating a permanent glut in the global oil market to cheapen the price? Would it then have transmitted to fruition the threat of the crude Republican Nixon administration, during the 1973 crude oil crisis, when a barrel sold for $40, that those oil-exporting Arab countries - and their accomplices in the oil cartel - who whetted the attendant embargo - shall, whenever the United States found an alternative to Arab petroleum, quaff their hard currency earner. Perhaps. That was in 1973. This is 2003. Some 30 years later. Is crude Nixon’s oil prophecy about to come true? The unjust war against Saddam casts Republican Washington as being too crudely ambitious. It is no longer satisfied with its indisputable leadership of the post-Soviet, unipolar world, especially in the field of space and war technology, it also wants, with the crudest of intentions, to control the supply and demand of the crudest and commonest commodity in international trade. Iraq might well be it: since the bombing of the World Trade Centre and The Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the Afghan campaign, USS Cole and growing Arab unease and open criticisms of U.S. stagnating policy on Palestine, amongst others, Washington had been in search of an alternative source of cheap crude oil – to supplement what it gets from such short hauls from neighbouring Mexico and Venezuela. And because Washington realises that it cannot, for too long, rely on a local Arab instrument to take care of its oil interests in the Gulf – just as the experience with the Shah has shown – it is beginning to eye the treasures of the Gulf of Guinea.
Clinton administration
Although the Washington of the mid 90s was well positioned to take on Saddam, soon after the Iraqi troops were chased out of Kuwait, the Clinton administration was pretty wary not to besmirch its image, should it go beyond the brief of the Security Council resolution. The Bush administration says it has an anti-Saddam war plan that would make for an easy encounter with Iraqi troops, with a minimum human catastrophe. Independent reports say the opposite. Today’s U.S.-led aggression against Iraq, in spite of Saddam’s recorded co-operation with the arms inspectors, will surely have the crudest of consequences on both sides.
There was no justification for Bush and his associates to have read the Iraqi case as one of inaction, on the part of the Security Council, which, it is true, characterised its handling of the abuse of human rights and crimes against humanity in the Balkans, and lawlessness and terror in Afghanistan to defend his slipping American troops into a unilaterally declared war. Indeed, British Middle East specialist and journalist, Patrick Seale, charges Washington with deceitful propaganda to justify the aggression, saying Washington has not proved its accusation that Baghdad was developing weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorist groups. The real target of the war, he says, is to make U.S. supremacy prevail on a strategic oil-rich region, and to protect Israel’s regional superiority and its monopoly over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.
The unjust aggression against Iraq will surely draw upon the Middle East and certain parts of the world, including the U.S. and Britain, humanitarian crisis and mighty pestilence of Biblical magnitude - the kind that would stretch Washington awfully thin. Washington may not find a post-Saddam Iraq and its breathing oil deposits to control. Baghdad, by some accounts, may turn out to be another Stalingrad for the Coalition forces. The historian, Anthony Beevor, speaks of Saddamgrad. It is likely that Iraq, thanks to an informed Arab conspiracy to thwart Washington’s unjust designs, will be balkanised into ungovernable counties – a la Somalia, until all foreign troops disengage from the territory. Before then, you cannot rule out the possibility of some of the hard by complacent, pro-American and undemocratic cronies being swept away. Put differently, this violent campaign against Saddam that is not blessed by a resolution of the Security Council could lead to the disappearance of Iraq from the world map, if only temporarily. And this is one situation that would surely make the retrieval of a belle epoque, a herculean burden.