Tune into most US cable news networks, and plastered across their screens you’ll notice some catchy phrase such as “terror alert-high” or “orange alert” or “under attack”. And if you are like a lot of people in the USA who get their news from such sources, you will then be compelled to stock up on necessary medical and food supplies in preparation for the impending terror.
As opposition to Mr. Bush and his war policy spreads, what better way to convince the masses that their own security is at stake? And this from the man who went to the UN last October to make his case against Iraq using highly deceptive evidence. And when that was not enough, he sent in his Secretary of State to the same body a few months later with even more flimflam evidence, evidence we came to find out later that was lifted and plagiarized from a graduate student’s thesis on Iraq.
The US has been under a siege mentality for quite some time. And as long as the US government through the media keeps spawning such fears among the populace, there is hope that voices of opposition to unwarranted killings in distant lands would be muted or at least distracted enough to let the war machinery fire the first salvo. And in emphasizing the “you’re with us, or you are the enemy‚” doctrine so prevalent in US politics today, he has created an atmosphere where any dissenting opinion is sure to be branded unpatriotic.
From some of the voices of reason in the US Congress a resolution was recently drafted based on the president not having made a compelling case to Congress, the American people, or the international community that the use of armed force is the only alternative to disarm Iraq. It further stated that “Congress and the American people are increasingly concerned that the president is prepared to use armed force against Iraq without broad support by the international community, and without making a compelling case that Iraq presents such an imminent threat to the national security of the United States that unilateral action is justified. Therefore, it is the sense of the Senate that, before the president uses military force against Iraq without the broad support of the international community: (1) The US provide full support to the United Nations weapons inspectors to facilitate their ongoing disarmament work; and (2) Obtain approval by Congress of new legislation authorizing the president to use all necessary means, including the use of military force, to disarm Iraq.”
And in his mission to stamp out terrorism, Mr. Bush today can be certain of one thing. His foreign policy has given rise to anti-US sentiments, the likes of which have not been witnessed for decades. Why does Mr. Bush and company oppose UN inspections? Who gave Mr. Bush the moral authority to launch a war? Why in the name of God should one not go to great lengths to avoid bloodshed? Why foster future seeds of terrorism in the minds of those who see his policy as nothing more than Bush bullyism?
Could it be that in this leader’s mind, those are not lives and he has been singly ordained by a higher power to guide us all to a better world. Iraqi civilians are just symbols or non-living entities that must be taken down. And perhaps those precision-guided bombs would somehow avoid most civilians, when waves of bombs are launched against a population that would be pitifully defenseless against these weapons of destruction.
Mr. Bush is impatient. His troops are all ready and assembled and waiting for his signal. To turn to inner moral guidance at this stage would mean personal defeat. A lot is riding on this, perhaps even his hopes for re-election. And signals from the UN inspectors so far have been extremely discouraging to Mr. Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld and their band of bloodthirsty men.
The war on Iraq is not a war. Nor is Iraq a direct threat to the United States. Justify it to your conscience all you want, but it is nothing more than a killing of the innocent in a feeble quest to get Saddam Hussein. One single vanquished innocent life is murder! It is no less a barbarous murder as the one inflicted on the innocent victims of Sept. 11.
Scholars of international law should begin preparing briefs on those engineering this slaughter and spillage of innocent blood, and conceivably in the near future present them to the World Court. Murder under any circumstance should not be condoned or left unpunished.
— Tariq A. Al-Maeena, [email protected]
Arab News Features 15 February 2003
