Through its powerful media machine, both at home and abroad, America is trying to tell the world it is targeting Saddam Hussein and wants to liberate Iraq from the clutches of his rule. That is why Washington called this war “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.
We don’t know how sending tanks and rockets to tear off the flesh of the Iraqi people could do the job. How can the Iraqi regime be the target of this campaign when rockets keep landing on Iranian soil, killing people traveling in the desert between Iraq and Syria and devastating poor Iraqi neighborhoods?
Where is the link between going after the regime and what is happening on the ground? Was the Iraqi teacher shown on television crying hysterically while struggling to calm down her terrified pupils a sister or daughter of Saddam so as to be targeted? Was the old bereaved Iraqi woman beating her face in mourning a mother or sister of Saddam? What is the point in having the Iraqi people punished with such brutality and barbarity just because Saddam happens to be the president of their country? It is the fist time in history that a declared target of a military campaign sharply contradicts its course of action.
The first suicide bombing of this war came when an Iraqi officer detonated his booby trap car, taking down with him a number of American soldiers. The man wasn’t defending Saddam when he did what he did, but died defending his country.
Every Iraqi knows that maintaining the embargo and keeping the international weapons inspectors would have been more effective than launching a military campaign to chase a man a already saddled with every kind of accusation.
This war of the United States and Britain is a colonial invasion, plain and simple, as corroborated by the recent announcement that an American company has been awarded a contract to administer the Umm Qasr port in southern Iraq. This is a war that aims at breaking the will of the peoples of the Middle East by making them helpless with no say over their own resources. It is a war aimed at ensuring superiority and domination for an Israeli-American alliance that is openly rejected by everyone from Najaf and Basra to Sheba Farms in southern Lebanon.
It was strange listening to the British defense secretary ensuring his audience last week that no missiles were fired at Israel so far when none of those who were listening to him had mentioned the word Israel.
All this is known to the Arab man in the street, who is also aware of the great disappointment of Washington seeing itself waging an unjust war on the advice of the powerful Zionist lobby and at the expense of America’s friendship, foreign relations and international reputation.
It is time the American public knew all of this. Why are those grotesque and horrifying pictures screened all over the world not shown to those singing and dancing in discotheques and dining at restaurants throughout American cities? The American public must realize that the billions of dollars they pay in taxes and the young Americans sent to die in a foreign land are right now being sucked into a war that has nothing to do with its declared intentions.
The Arab media should convey this message and reveal to the Americans the true nature of this naked aggression targeting innocent children and civilians. The entire stockpile of American weapons stored for a third world war is now being used against a people no longer able to find a meal or catch some sleep.
The American media is not conveying the true picture because freedom of expression and human rights don’t apply there when it comes to the Arabs.
Arab News From the Local Press 6 April 2003
