The True Motives Behind The Impending War on Iraq
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9th October 2002
The True Motives Behind The Impending War on Iraq
On the anniversary of the start of the U.US. war in Afghanistan, in
Cincinnati, Ohio, George Bush delivered a speech attempting to string
together a convincing argument to launch a war against Iraq. In unison
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was also on a tour of the Middle
East and Persian Gulf, discussing with Saddam's neighbours the
possibilities of an upcoming war.
Despite the numerous attempts that the British and American governments
are putting forward, it should be clear that this will be a colonial war
based on furthering their strategic, political and economic interests.By
reviewing the arguments that are put forward to provide a rationale to
attack Iraq their absurdity becomes apparent. This should prompt us to
scrutinise the true and real motives behind this impending war. The
following are some of the key reasons for going to war with Iraq that
have been outlined by Bush and Blair:
1. The first claim made about Iraq is that it is in material breach of
numerous UN resolutions. George Bush in his address to the UN General
Assembly on 12 September went through a painstaking review of all the
resolutions that Saddam had broken. The problem with going down this
path is that other countries notably India and Israel have also put the
proverbial V sign up to UN resolutions, yet there is no sense that Tel
Aviv or New Delhi are being warmed up for an imminent attack. The
concept of double standards gives too much credence to Western leaders
as it assumes they have some belief in the concept of International law
in the first place, they simply don't. Conformity with International law
only occurs when it coincides with national interests. The simple fact
of five permanent members having a veto in an institution which is
designed to represent democracy and the norms of international law would
be laughable if it wasn't so serious.
2. The second claim made about Iraq is that it should be attacked
because it has weapons of mass destruction (WMD's). Well taking that
logic a lot of countries have WMD's including the countries, which want
to do the attacking. So obviously this cannot be the real reason. Bush
said in his recent speech, "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are
controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has already used chemical weapons
to kill thousands of people." Yet Bush's predecessors in the Whitehouse
also used nuclear bombs and chemical weapons, in Japan and Vietnam to
name a few, needless to say these killed hundreds of thousands of
people.
3. The third claim is that Saddam is a monster, a real brutal dictator
who terrorises his own people and therefore needs to be removed. The
retort to the argument that it was the West who armed and befriended
Saddam in the 80's is met with disdain. According to Bill Clinton's view
the West has some moral duty therefore to cleanse the swamp it has
itself created. There wouldn't be a problem with this argument if the
West just came out and said that dealing with nasty and brutal dictators
really did depend on one's political interests rather that this farce of
pretending in some way that they have empathy and sympathy with the
people who live under these dictators. Madeline Albright when asked a
few years ago on US television whether the death of 500,000 Iraqi
children as a result of UN sanctions was a price worth paying, she
replied 'Yes I believe it was a price worth paying'. The real acid test
on whether the West conforms to this doctrine of an ethical foreign
policy is to look at the West's current allies in the 'War on Terror'.
This reveals several unsavoury people like Islam Karimov the butcher of
Tashkent who routinely kills and imprisons his political opponents.
While Baghdad anticipates the imminent prospects of cruise missiles,
F16's and carpet bombing Tashkent expects with bated breath, bumper US
aid packages, more IMF loans and further encouragement in its crackdown
on Islamic groups.
4. The fourth claim is that Saddam Hussein is a special case in that he
has a track record of using his WMD's on his own citizens as well as
previous experience of invading his neighbours. However the use of WMD's
and invading other countries is not confined to Saddam and the same
accusation can be legitimately applied at the US, Britain or Israel . So
in need of a convincing argument Britain and America prophesise that
Iraq could develop nuclear weapons within months and then pass these
over to groups such as Al Qaeda. This latter argument gives rise to the
new neo conservative thinking within the Bush White House which states
that pre-emption is a perfectly acceptable political and military
doctrine especially after 9/11 which they say has changed the
international and security landscape.The advocators of this doctrine or
as some have described the real 'axis of evil' are Defence Secretary
Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and Deputy Defence Secretary Wolfowitz.
They believe in the absolute superiority of the United States and the
fact that multilateral and international Institutions such as the UN are
constraints on the US acting in her own national interests. Consequently
they believe a pre-emptive attack on Iraq is not only justified but
imperative. No wonder that even European diplomats believe that the
lunatics have now taken over the asylum. The issue with pre-emption as
many have pointed out is that it can only be carried out it seems by the
United States or its allies. Under similar circumstances a Syrian and
Egyptian attack on Israel would equally be justified. Israel has WMD's,
has invaded its neighbours and remains a menace, violates international
law and conventions, oppresses its own people and is led by a brutal
leader who has been implicated in war crimes. This argument also
conveniently ignores the fact that Iraq's past aggressions have not only
be done with the West looking on but have been done with the latter's
tacit approval. The Iraqi president has no track record of acting alone
as even the invasion of Kuwait shows, where the US ambassador's wink and
nod were well understood.
So what are the real reasons for a war on Iraq that the West wants to
avoid talking about. Many have mentioned oil, and this is obviously a
key rationale. The Bush Cabinet including Bush himself have extensive
personal and political interests in the Oil sector. VP Cheney was CEO of
Haliburton who were responsible in actually building the damaged oil
fields of Iraq after the UN relaxed some of the sanctions in 1998, yet
Cheney now calls Saddam Hussein 'the world's worst leader'. Presumably
after the next round of bombing, Haliburton will once again be in pole
position to provide their services to a post Saddam Iraq. The oil and
gas industry more and less own Washington these days and have pumped
about $50m to political candidates since the 2000 election. More than
that America views oil not simply just as an economic commodity but a
strategic necessity due to the effect oil and its price has on trade and
commerce. The US has been seeking numerous ways to diversify its oil
supplies away from its reliance on Saudi Arabia and has been wooing
other countries such as Nigeria, Angola and Russia in this context. The
control of Iraqi oil would therefore not only fill a strategic gap but
would act as an alternative to an increasing erratic and volatile Saudi
regime. It wasn't without reason that a US official in the Commerce
department last week speaking in Warsaw said that a by-product of a new
gulf war would be cheaper oil for the world markets.
However, this is simply not only about oil, the last Gulf war was a
successful marketing campaign for US defence contractors. If we were
talking about a third world country corruption would immediately spring
to mind when reviewing the closeness of the relationships between the
defence industry and successive US Governments. Mr Rumsfeld's oldest
friend is a man called Frank Carlucci, a former defence secretary
himself who now heads the Carlyle Group, an investment consortium which
has a big interest in the contracting firm United Defence. Carlyle's
board includes George Bush Senior and James Baker. One programme alone,
the Crusader artillery system, has earned Carlyle more than $2bn in
advance contracts. Oil and defence contracts may be the tangible morsels
but the neo conservatives who now control the west wing dictate that the
US has 'for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf
regional security'. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the
immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force
presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam
Hussein. This has been a plan for successive US administrations since
the second world war and a successful invasion of Iraq with the
inevitable restructuring of institutions and personnel are the key
enablers to do this.
The West having imposed its puppet in Afghanistan now wants to impose an
Iraqi Hamid Karzai. One of the key individuals being mentioned is a man
called General Nizar Al-Khazraji, who according to many Human Rights
groups;was the field commander who launched the chemical attack on
Halabjah in 1988. However this use of the 'world's worst weapons'
doesn't stop David Mack a senior official in the US State department
arguing that Khazraji 'enjoys a good military reputation' and 'the right
ingredients' as a future leader in Iraq. A second man is Brigadier
General Najib Al Salihi who played a significant role in Iraq's putting
down of an uprising after the end of the last Gulf war, which led to
1.5m people fleeing their home, while Salihi wrote a book about how he
effectively crushed the rebellion. Salihi defected in 1995 and now heads
the CIA sponsored Iraq Free Officers Movement. The third individual is
Ahmad Chalabi who first came to international attention not for his
political opposition to Saddam but because of his fleeing to London from
Jordan after allegations that he embezzled funds from a bank he used to
own, allegations which later led to a trial in his absence in 1992
sentencing him to a 32 year sentence, Chalabi is viewed in Jordan in the
same way as Robert Maxwell is remembered in the UK.
Consequently what glorious replacements the West have for the people of
Iraq, convicted embezzlers, accused war criminals and CIA stooges. Yet
this is the vision that is being sold to all of us by Messrs Bush and
Blair. Are British and American soldiers really going to their deaths in
the hot deserts of the Gulf for the sake of US hegemony, oil, defence
contracts and the establishment of a discredited and corrupt Iraqi Hamid
Karzai? They should remember what they got last time, the restoration of
a corrupt Emir in Kuwait, the death of many of their colleagues and
painfully for many of them a disease nicknamed Gulf war syndrome,
something they have yet nearly 12 years on still not received
recognition for, never mind any real compensation. Are European citizens
really going to accept this new America Roman empire and its new
imperialism who will not only cause misery for themselves but for the
entire world?
The Islamic ideology provides the only real alternative to the
capitalist dominated world we live in today. Islam provides both
solutions that address the spiritual and political voids in society. In
contrast to the materialistic centric approach of foreign policy, Islam
seeks simply to spread its ideas and system so that the injustices of
human inspired legislation is removed. The Islamic ideology has spawned
a great civilisation, which was implemented and led the world for
centuries. It excelled in scientific achievement and advancement while
Western Europe decayed during the dark ages. Not without reason that
Christians fought alongside Muslims against the crusaders in the 11th
and 12th centuries because they believed in the superiority of living
under the Islamic State something confirmed by thousands of Jews three
centuries later who having been banished after the Spanish Inquisition
left for the sanctuary of the Islamic State. This is because the Islamic
State applied to the letter of the law the Prophet of Islam's statement
'Whoever harms a dhimmi (non-Muslim citizen) harms me'. Look at the
history of Palestine under Islam and compare it to when it was ruled by
the Crusaders and now by the Zionists.
The Islamic State, the Khilafah is an obligation on all Muslims to
establish, we also seek regime change in the Muslim world but not for
materialistic reasons but to bring about the Islamic political system.
The establishment of the Islamic State will not be the West's biggest
nightmare, it will be a beacon of light for the oppressed peoples of the
world including those millions who suffer in silence in the West. What
the Islamic State will however not rest in doing is to rid the world of
the corrupt system of Capitalism, a system which has no humility,
humanity or compassion and whose foreign policy treats the world and its
inhabitants as mere cattle fodder.
Allah (swt) says in the Quran,
"Hold fast to the rope of Allah and do not be divided". [TMQ
Al-Imran:103]
As Muslims we should hold fast to the rope of the Quran, not to the rope
of the British or American Government, or to the rope of the UN, not to
the rope of the Arab league, or to the rope of the latest opinion poll
or public opinion survey but to the time honoured and eternally proved
words of Allah (swt). Muslims in Britain must rise to this challenge and
expose this colonialist war, demonstrating through it that the
capitalist system continues to be a bankrupt ideology for mankind and
that the only viable alternative remains the Islamic political system,
the Khilafah.
Hizb ut Tahrir Britain
9th October 2002
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