If the US Administration continues the policy of destroy first and rebuild later, as it did in Iraq, the coffers of Arab and Western countries will soon be empty. They will all be plunged into bankruptcy.
The United States says it wants to rid the world of terrorism but is adopting terrorist tactics itself. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark sees what the US is doing in several parts of the world as acts of terrorism where ordinary people pay the price. The presence of terrorists in this or that country does not give the world’s only superpower the right to destroy and traumatize smaller nations.
You would expect people to be happy when supernatural powers come to save and protect them from injustice and tyranny. They should be even happier when those powers announce their intention to establish peace and security, and promote freedom and justice in the country they occupy. But Iraq tells of something different. What is happening there is unworthy of a superpower which allegedly defends freedom, democracy and human rights.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the humanitarian situation in Iraq as a great challenge to the international community and called on donor countries to speed up assistance for the reconstruction effort. He knows very well that in the eyes of a great many countries it is the US that should bear the cost of rebuilding what it destroyed in the first place.
The Europeans have repeatedly questioned the American position, hoping to make the Americans change their irrational behavior and show more consideration to other people and other countries. Unlike the US, European states have taken moral positions against war and killing.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell was unable to hide his emotions when he talked about the need for the world to join in Iraqi reconstruction. Applying the same logic, we should demand that America, being the official sponsor of Israel, invite an international conference to meet in Washington or London to discuss the reconstruction of the Palestinian territories ravaged by years of Israeli occupation. Israel has systematically destroyed the Palestinian infrastructure and is still doing so, demolishing homes, uprooting trees, burning crops and killing Palestinian men, women and children.
The US may deduct some amount from the billions it grants annually to Israel and which enable Tel Aviv to prolong and consolidate its occupation of Arab lands. Neither the Palestinian National Authority nor the Palestinian resistance have demolished Israeli homes, uprooted trees or damaged Israeli infrastructure. It is time America accepted both its moral and political responsibilities in Palestine.
