Grasping at Straws
Searching
for a War Pretext
by
Kim Petersen
Dissident Voice
March 4, 2003
Judging from the main portion of the history of the
world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.
-- Walt Whitman
It
seems the re-escalation of the Persian Gulf War is fast approaching. This is
despite the multitudes that hit the world’s streets in a historical outpouring
of pro-peace power that probably caused more than a few jitters to the
chickenhawks. Iraq is disarming but the US and UK are claiming that it is too
late and not enough. They seek a second UN Security Council Resolution as a
ruse for war. France remains steadfastly opposed to war at this moment and
prepared to wield its veto. In the absence of a second resolution many eyes are
watching for an incident – manufactured or otherwise -- that the US and UK will
seize as their casus belli.
The US history of aggression
reveals a string of contrived pretexts to wage war. The evidence is rife from
the time of US expansionism in North America to the consolidation of its world
imperialism of today. The litany of phony pretexts ranges from the baiting of
the Mexicans into the US-Mexican War to the present re-escalation of the
Persian Gulf War. (1)
In 1846 US President Polk
ordered the army to exacerbate tensions on the disputed Mexico-US border to
provoke an incident. The Mexicans obliged and US retaliation was launched with
backing of the press. The US retaliation justified the grabbing of much of,
what is now, the southern US.
Cuba lies at the foot of
Florida and is definitely within the purview of the Monroe Doctrine. In the
late 19th century rebellion was rife in Cuba against Spanish rule and the US
saw this as the opportunity to exploit the situation. In 1898, the US
battleship Maine was dispatched to Havana to protect American interests. While
in harbor the Maine was rocked by a loud explosion and sank. An investigation
revealed that the explosion was internal but the press ignored this. After a
relentless barrage of reports denouncing the Spanish, the US government declared
war. The US booty this time was Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
Filipinos were crushed next by US imperialism.
During WWI the British
sought to bring the US into the war. It sent an armament-laden merchant ship,
Lusitania, with a complement of passengers – among them Americans - unescorted
through waters known to be patrolled by German U-boats. The resultant sinking
of the Lusitania presaged the American entry into the war.
During WWII the US instigated
provocative measures against the fascist Japanese government. Some researchers
claim that President Roosevelt knew of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor but
sacrificed it to overcome pacifist American sentiment and lead the US into the
war.
Following WWII Korea was
divided and the US reinstalled the hated Japanese occupiers in the south as an
insensitive first act. Border altercations between the two Koreas ensued and
following one incursion the US steered the UN into a war. The war was a stalemate
with millions of Koreans having perished.
President Johnson’s Gulf of
Tonkin lie to garner Congressional support for a Declaration of War on Vietnam
is a matter of historical record. Vietnamese peasants courageously held out
against the US.
Tiny Grenada was incapable
of putting up much resistance to the US invasion, which was deplored by the
OAS. Protection of American students was an emphasized but phony pretext.
In Panama, President Bush
Sr. authorized Operation Just Cause to seek retribution for a so-called attack
on US military personnel in Panama in which one American died. Thousands of
Panamanians paid with their lives in this so-called just cause. One is afraid
to contemplate how many innocent Iraqis might die if the fate of one
unaccounted-for US Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher was used to justify an
invasion of Iraq.
The Persian Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War gave
the US the opportunity to play the gallant knight in shining armor, saving the
beleaguered Kuwaiti sheikhdom by vanquishing the armed hordes of the Iraqi
tyrant Saddam Hussein and thereby ridding the US of Vietnam Syndrome.
Fabricated pretexts had entered a new realm. A Kuwaiti girl’s tearful but fake
account of Iraqi soldiers ripping babies from incubators had swayed US public
and congressional sentiment. Saudi Arabia was drawn into the fray by spurious
satellite photos of Iraqi tanks massing at the Saudi border.
Self defense
A common casus belli of the US is self-defense.
Somewhat hysterically the US invoked self-defense against diminutive Nicaragua
in the World Court but it was nevertheless found guilty of terrorism.
The US is attempting to
invoke this same right of self-defense against Iraq, a nation which has
withered under the genocidal UN sanctions for 12 years; a nation which was
“fundamentally disarmed” by UNSCOM; a nation still found to be without weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) by UNMOVIC. To assert that Iraq in its present
deteriorated condition poses a threat to the world superpower is risible. Even
previously attacked neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, deny a threat.
A search has been on ever
since 9-11 to draw Mr. Hussein’s “long-standing, direct and continuing ties to
terrorist networks” to al-Qaeda itself. (2) In this manner
Washington has managed to avert public gaze from the failure to attain its main
objectives in Afghanistan and fixate the compliant American media on Iraq as
the next target in the War on Terrorism. The rumored Prague meeting between
al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence figure fizzled out.
American intelligence officials have in the main demurred on any al-Qaeda-Iraq
connection. The “firsthand informants” of US intelligence have demonstrated to
be liars or unreliable. Nonetheless CIA director George Tenet caved in and gave
support to Secretary of State Colin Powell and the administration’s supposed
Iraq-al-Qaeda link. The souring of CIA morale was palpable. (3)
Mr. Powell even desperately
seized on a purported Osama bin Laden tape, on which Mr. Bin Laden decried Mr.
Hussein as an apostate, as proof-pudding of a link. Apparently Mr. Powell
received a poor translation. Washington has been taciturn since.
The possibility of an Iraqi
link to the postal anthrax in the US was a bust.
Despite assertions by the
chickenhawks to the contrary the terrorism link is a no-go. Even Mr. Bush Sr.’s
National Security advisor General Brent Scowcroft declared that “[Iraq’s] not a
terrorist state.” (4) All right, so it is not a War on
Terrorism any longer.
International Law and WMD
Well then, there is always
upholding international law. Leaving the world’s leading terrorist state, and
the only state indicted of terrorism in the World Court, in charge of upholding
international law is like letting the fox mind the chicken coop. Among the
myriad unheeded UN Security Council Resolutions Mr. Bush selectively focused on
the enforcement of Resolution 687: Iraq must be disarmed of all WMD. Mr. Bush
argued that Iraq “needs to let inspectors back in.”
Despite Mr. Bush’s being
“highly doubtful,” Mr. Saddam did indeed let the inspectors back in. (5) A chagrined Mr. Bush then counted on the discovery of WMD
as a trigger but alas no “smoking gun” has so far been found.
The nuclear program is dead
but Iraq is always being accused otherwise. IAEA inspectors stated that the
aluminum rods were not of the type destined for uranium enrichment. Iraq has
never been shown to have enriched uranium. Early attempts to pin Iraq to a
massive seizure of enriched uranium in Turkey turned out to have a very short
half-life. (6)
Another change in tactics
was called for; now Iraq was being called upon to prove a negative. The burden
of proof had been shifted from UNMOVIC uncovering WMD to Iraq having to prove
they don’t have WMD. Full Iraqi co-operation is demanded.
A latest attempt to find the
smoking gun is the three mystery ships traversing the Indian Ocean
incommunicado with who knows what potentially deadly cargo. (7)
The Moral Case
Prime Minister Blair, of
plagiarized dossier infamy, even tried to push the moral case for war. This
from a country who’s previous Prime Minister Churchill had used poison gas
against the “uncivilized tribes” of Iraq. (8) British
church leaders were quick to counter the moral argument.
Getting a Second UN Security
Council Resolution
Despite the futility of US
and UK intelligence and weapon inspectors to provide compelling evidence of
Iraqi possession of WMD both countries have decided to go for a second UN
Security Council Resolution to win over the multitudes of anti-war partisans.
France, Germany, Russia, and China call for inspections to continue. The
smaller non-permanent Security Council members have experienced great US
belligerence to vote as expected. Adding fuel to the fire is a disclosed US
National Security Agency plan for a dirty tricks campaign to eavesdrop on
diplomatic communications of these nations. (9) A second
UN Security Council looks less likely at this juncture.
This poses little difficulty
for the Mr. Bush team. After all the sought-after second resolution is a test
of the UN. Failure to come up with a second resolution would mean that the UN
is not “going to be a body that means what it says?” The preamble to the UN
Charter clearly states that the UN is “determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war.” Yet Mr. Bush contends paradoxically that
in failing to authorize a US-led war “[t]he United Nations would betray the
purpose of its founding, and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time,” and
instill “a future of fear” in the US. Mr. Bush intoned: “We refuse to live in
fear.” (10) Noam Chomsky commented that Americans have
been bludgeoned into a “completely irrational fear” by the “drumbeat of
propaganda.” (11)
That this is true is clear
from the rhetoric of Mr. Bush, who declaimed that there is “clear evidence of
peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come
in the form of a mushroom cloud.” (12)
Regime Change
To inject some democracy
into the Middle East is not a bad idea; but not with a blood price of tens of
thousands of lives. The egregious US record on democracy is rather telling,
having backed numerous authoritarian regimes. Mr. Bush Sr. even had the anti-democratic
Sheikh Jabber reinstalled in Kuwait. But the truth is that the US doesn’t want
democracy in Iraq as that probably means a Shiite government and reconciliation
with Iran, which is quite possibly the next target in the never-ending War on
Terrorism.
Yet Mr. Hussein is a menace
and according to Mr. Bush he must be replaced. This is the shared view of the
Bushes and President Clinton. It is also a view shared by most of the planet,
but the US scheme for executing regime change is rejected by the vast majority
of people.
The US has a shabby record
of waging war, especially against smaller, weaker states on implausible
grounds. More often that not war is based on outright fabrications. Dennis Hans
systematically chronicled the mendacity of the chickenhawks. (13)
Likewise Mr. Blair’s penchant for prevarication has been exposed. (14)
Even without world backing
the chickenhawks seem hell-bent on going it alone. The implications are stark.
Although the US has a temporary immunity from prosecution by the International
Criminal Court, the unprovoked go-it-alone aggression against Iraq could carry
future implications for the chickenhawks too. Mohandas Gandhi on the architects
of war stated: “What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God
and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered,
and conducted wars, war criminals?”
Kim Petersen is an English teacher living in China. Email: kotto2001@hotmail.com
(1) Richard Sanders, How to Start a War: The American
Use of War Pretext Incidents (1848-1989), Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade,
May 2002, http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2002/How-To-Start-A-WarMay02.htm
(2) Associated Press, Raw Data: Text of Bush Speech,
Fox News Channel, Thursday, 6 February 2003, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77837,00.html
(3) Ray McGovern, CIA Man on the Agency's Days of
Shame: George Tenet Caves In, 13 February 2003, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern02132003.html
(4) Ben Snowden and Laura Hayes, “State-Sponsored
Terrorism: Rogue governments that support international terrorism,” http://www.infoplease.com/spot/terrorism4.html#iran
(5) Bill Sammon, Bush demands deadlines for Iraq
inspectors, The Washington Times, September 14, 2002, http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020914-23068880.htm
(6) Seva Ulman, Turkey makes huge haul, The Washington
Times, 29 September 2002, http://washingtontimes.com/world/default-200292923828.htm
(7) Michael Harrison, Three mystery ships are tracked
over suspected 'weapons' cargo, The Independent, 19 February 2003, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=379623
(8) Quoted in Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
(Noonday Press, 1992).
(9) Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy, and Peter Beaumont,
Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war, The Observer, Sunday 2 March
2003,
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,905899,00.html
(10) President Bush, Iraq: Denial and Deception, The
White House, 7 October 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
(11) Matthew Tempest, Chomsky On The Anti War
Movement: An Interview In The Guardian, The Guardian, 4 February 2003.
Available on the ZNet website: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2962
(12) President Bush, Ibid
(13) Dennis Hans, Lying Us Into War: Exposing Bush and
His "Techniques of Deceit," Scoop Media, 12 February 2003. Available
on the ZNet website: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=3024
(14) John Pilger, Blair Hypocrisy, Dissident Voice, 28
February 2003, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles2/Pilger_BlairHypocrisy.htm