When American Secretary of State Colin Powell stated yesterday that the Security Council had failed to pass a test set by the United States, a new Gulf War became inevitable.
It was, of course, a test the Security Council never stood a chance of passing.
The Security Council had been given two false choices: Either meekly to submit to the will of the United States or, by rejecting a US-led proposal, reveal itself as powerless to stop the war.
Powell has gone on record as saying that the goal of this war is not only to remove Saddam, but to redraw the regional map as a whole.
That he has the nerve, again and again, to talk in such language betrays an extraordinary arrogance, bolstered by a conviction that his government holds all the trump cards.
This war — which is illegal according to international law and immoral by any standards — is about oil and America’s strategic dominance of the Middle East — no more, no less. There was never any real debate. The war has been years in the planning, initially drawn up by neo-conservative zealots in Washington, D.C. who now dominate US defense policy.
The strategy had been finalized long before US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had assumed their respective offices.
These zealots must now surely be laughing in the knowledge that a small group of men and women has been able to harness the full military might of the world’s only superpower to the promotion of their private agenda in the face of almost total worldwide opposition.
If the US, with British and Spanish backing, goes to war in the next few hours, this day will be remembered as one which marked the beginning of a new era in the Middle East and international relations.
Is history repeating itself?
It is as though the Middle East has not moved on since the end of World War I, when Western powers carved up what is now the Middle East to suit their own ends.
Then, as now, Iraq was a morsel for the biggest power to dispose of at its pleasure.
The last-minute summits organized by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference proved only that the Arabs are divided. An Arab world speaking with a strong, united voice was the only force capable of stopping this war.
They did indeed fail an important test, and now they will have to live with the consequences.
Now the US will go it alone, without the UN, without legitimacy -— and in the full knowledge that none of Iraq’s neighbors has the power or the will to do anything but either sit by and watch or join in.
So now another war is upon us, decent people the world over pray for one thing: A short war, with an absolute minimum of civilian casualties.
To say that is not to dignify a victory in Iraq as anything other than a victory for imperialist aggression.
But the alternative — a long, drawn-out and bloody conflict -— would be even more catastrophic for that country, this region and the rest of the world.
