�God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he
instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to
solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not,
the election will come and I will have to focus on them.� �George W. Bush
Having summarily pointed
to the U.S. war on Iraq from understanding how Zionism formed a political state
on Arab soil, we have to relate it to the current Iraqi situation inside the
U.N. system where Israel rules unchallenged through its control of the United
States, which is controlling the United Nations. However, other external
sources allow Israel to pursue its agenda inside the U.N. undisturbed.
To prove this, it
suffices to mention three known facts. First, despite the fact that Israel
possesses an awesome nuclear arsenal, and despite the uproar the Bush
Administration is raising against Iran and North Korea�s nuclear ambitions, no
one including the loud mouths at the American-controlled International Atomic
Agency (charged with monitoring nuclear proliferation) have ever dared publicly
to discuss the issue of Israel�s nuclear weapons. Second, despite all the
resolutions that the U.N. passed against Israel, Israel never complied and the
U.N. was able to enforce none! Last, after the U.N. passed a resolution
equating Zionism with racism, the U.S. forced the UN to repeal that resolution,
albeit nothing changed in the nature of Israel to warrant repealing it. So,
what are these external means?
These are Israel�s
international connections. To begin with, after France, Britain, and the U.S.
supplied military technology and made Israel a nuclear power, now Israel is
selling certain aspects of its acquired and improved (by the U.S. of course)
technology to China and India; therefore, these countries are now under
Israel�s dependence and influence. As for Israel�s influence over Britain,
France, Germany, and Russia, etc., these are old stories.
Other external
sources come from Israel�s determination to keep the Palestinian issue
unresolved and its military occupation of Arab territories perpetual. This
means that Israel remains the ultimate authority capable of imposing any
solution on the Arabs thus increasing its perceived strength and
impregnability. Yet, another interesting source comes from the structural
weakness of the Arabs. The moment they surrendered and accepted Israel
consequent to the Madrid Conference and the Oslo Accord, many Islamic, African,
and some Arab countries opened up to it, thus ending its international
isolation. As a consequence, the myth of tiny Israel capable of changing the
world had become reality. Whether the myth is true or exaggerated, it is a
success story that all the vaunted and wasted Arab money could
not ever buy! Yet it is only a success as far as it concerns Zionism.
Historically, it is the wrong kind of success, for many compelling reasons
including the colonialist origin of Israel, ideological makeup of the state,
militarized imperialism, fascist policies, and the drive for rebuilding
colonialist empires.
After exploring
Israel inside and outside the U.N., the inclusion of the U.N. in our
investigation is inevitable. Up until 1991, no war, on the scale of the wars
unleashed on Iraq, could have happened without endorsement of the United
Nations. Presently, as the immense Iraqi tragedy keeps unfolding, so are other
concomitant events whose impact on the course of imperialistic designs is
already changing many calculations and projections. Among these events is the
attack of August 19, 2003 against the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which is
one of the focal points of this investigation. It was remarkable to see how
that attack opened the mouths of many hypocrites around the world, especially
U.S. Zionists, as if the U.N. were a relief agency, and not an important global
organization under the rule of one power (the U.S.) that uses it as a
�legitimizing� tool to consecrate its hyper-imperialistic dictatorship on the
world.
To begin debating
issues related to the U.N., we shall address first the attack against its
headquarters in Baghdad. About this attack, we have to state immediately that
in cause-effect terms, no attack could have ever happened against the U.N. or
anyone else had the U.S. not invaded and occupied Iraq. This means the U.S. is
solely responsible for putting in motion consequential events that culminated
with that act. Under this light, the 4811th meeting of the Security Council
where the UN condemned the attack confirmed the endemic duplicity of the
permanent members. Why did Russia, France, and China, who opposed U.S. war,
deem the U.N. attack condemnable, while considering the U.S. invasion of Iraq
an accomplished fact, therefore no longer subjected to classification?
It is preposterous
that the SC who failed to condemn the Anglo-American terrorist attack against
Iraq in violation of international law and its own charter, felt �morally�
compelled to condemn the �terrorist� attack against the United Nations. Under
U.S. pressure, the SC further deepened its hypocrisy when it declared that the
attack against the U.N. was an attack against the world. It is beyond
supposition that the U.N. attackers targeted only the occupation regime and its
symbols, and not the �world� or individual U.N. member states such as Austria,
Madagascar, Honduras, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Luxemburg, Mexico, Nigeria, or
Cambodia.
We know that
France, Russia or Germany could not have requested that the SC issue any
condemnation of the U.S. and the U.K. (the US would have vetoed it) for
launching an unprovoked Nazi type invasion. Nevertheless, the anti-war front
should have had no problems in issuing an independent declaration of
condemnation! This did not happen, and the question is why? Another question:
why did France, China, and Russia who opposed the invasion so
vigorously, turn around and then accept its outcome so sheepishly? Is
that not a contradiction in the basic philosophy of rejection and consent? Of
course it is a contradiction, but only as far as it concerns the idealistic
nature of that philosophy. On the practical terrain of inter-imperialistic
pacification, however, philosophical contradictions have no value in relation
to selfish necessities where yielding to U.S. coercive diplomacy is a way to
abandon unprofitable dissent that could further aggravate an already strained
relations and dim chances to share in colonialist profits.
Punctually, after
the Anglo-American invasion had become a fact, the once noisy �anti-war front�
went into an irreversible hibernation and commenced patching up insignificant
differences with the U.S. on methods but not on concepts or objectives. In any
case, and despite all appearances of passing the critical mass in world
relations, the U.N.�s acceptance of Iraq�s occupation put an end, permanently,
to the international system that existed before the invasion with repercussions
yet to be defined.
How shall we react
to the U.N. victims? As we sincerely mourn the loss of any human life because
of violence, we must highlight the huge imbalance and political differentiation
in reporting on other deaths caused by disparate methods of warfare. While
those who condemned the killing at the U.N. and kept individual counts of the
casualties suffered by the occupiers, including the time of passing, they never
condemned the U.S.-U.K. imperialist attack against Iraq. Nor did they ever
bother to count the thousands of Iraqis whom the U.S. intentionally killed, as
President [sic] Bush cynically puts it, in its most �humane military operation�
in history. One tiny example of this intentionality is when U.S. War Secretary
Rumsfeld authorized over 50 air sorties where more than 30 civilians were
expected to get killed as a result of bombardment. [1]
Pointedly, why
should this underreporting on Iraqis killed by U.S. violence be amazing in a
world so desensitized to mass killing and controlled by hyper-imperialists,
imperialists, chauvinists, racists, supremacists, adulators of power, war
profiteers, coward rulers, and mutes seeking safety? What is the matter? Has
the world descended into a hypnotic state where awakening depends on the finger
snapping of Sharon or Dick Cheney?
Not even the attack
that took the lives of the Shiite religious leader Mohammad Baqire al-Hakeem
(whose contradictory and uncertain pre-invasion policies facilitated the U.S.
aim) and over 90 of his followers, had managed to change the equation of
conditional and qualitative reporting on who is dying in Iraq. In fact, two
days after his assassination, all scant and lopsided reporting on it had
entirely ceased. As for the assassination of al-Hakeem, it is important to
speculate that either Washington or Tel Aviv killed him. This speculation is
plausible because of the silence of the Shiite leadership that followed his
killing. Let me explain, if the Shiites knew for certain that Arab Sunni
Muslims or other Iraqis did it, as the U.S. insinuated, Iraq would have plunged
into civil war instantaneously. Because that did not happen, there is a reason
to believe that the perpetrators were not Iraqis; especially knowing that
al-Hakeem started to criticize the occupation regime after he ambiguously
supported it.
While reports on
U.S. casualties proceed on the rhythms of �one died since May 1, when President
[sic] Bush declared an end to major combat operations, etc., two died since May
1, when President [sic] Bush, etc., three died since May 1, when President
[sic] Bush, etc., and so on,� the reporting on Iraqi casualties is either
ignored or casually followed. Even reporting done by organizations such as �Iraq
Body Count� lacks accuracy and proper tabulation, as it depends on
tallies of separate sources without coordination, and not on reliable
information from inside Iraq. So, how many Iraqis did the army of an unstable
and homicidal president [sic] kill since he ordered the execution of Wolfowitz
and Perle�s �preemption war� garbage?
According to
Medact, a London-based medical charity, since the invasion on March 19, 2003
and up to November 13, 2003, the U.S. killed at least 7,500 Iraqi civilians and
13,500 soldiers for a total of more than 20,000. [2] Iraqi hospitals however affirm different figures. From the day of
invasion and up to September 11, 2003, the total of those killed by U.S. fire
is much higher than the number reported by Medact. [3] Indeed, Iraqi records show the U.S. killed
37,137 civilians; military and militia casualties were not included. (Russian
intelligence put the total number of soldiers killed by U.S. fire around
40,000.). Yet, Philip Adams reports that European and British sources confirm
similar accounts but with different figures. According to these sources: 10,
000 civilians and 50,000 troops killed, while at least 40,000 people were
injured. [4]
If we limit the
count just to the civilians whom the U.S. killed with premeditation and then
called �collateral damage,� we immediately realize one thing: if death of this
size does not constitute mass destruction, then what is mass destruction? Must
one million people die in one day so we can call them victims of mass
destruction? For the Iraqis that the U.S. killed in 1991, please read the
excellent article that demographer Beth Osborn Daponte wrote for Business Week.
[5] Daponte conservatively put the numbers of
those killed by the U.S. during that war and its aftermath at around 158,000
people. In a later study, she raised that number to 205,500 people including
those who died from delayed effects of war. If you add all the preceding
numbers of victims to those whom the U.S. killed through the sanctions imposed
on Iraq (according to international sources, approximately 1- 1.5 million
people), the dimension of an Iraqi holocaust becomes well defined.
If you add, from
the end of WWII until present, the number of all those whom the US killed in
Iraq, Yugoslavia, Panama, Vietnam, Korea, and in all other parts of the world,
where it either intervened militarily or promoted bloody coups such as in Iran,
Indonesia, Congo, Iraq, Chile, Argentina, el-Salvador, etc., the result would
be prohibitive to fathom. In just 58 years, an America armed with the
�civilized democracy� alibi and a bizarre �freedom jargon,� has killed more
people than all other aggressive empires in world history combined had killed
in 2000 years, thus making it (the U.S.) the uncontested insane mass killer
entity of all ages since humanity learned how to walk on two limbs.
In the case of
Iraq, what is behind this unprecedented mass slaughter of Iraqis, who in their
entire history never attacked the United States, and whose former dictator had
even executed their plans in the region? Is it because Saddam owned
weapons he no longer possessed? Is it because genocidal minds want to exact a
revenge for 9/11 from Iraqis who did not commit the crime? Is it because Bush
wants to build �democracy� for Iraqis deprived from it? What are the real
reasons for this mad killing, and why do we have to witness the incarnation of
Hitler�s philosophy in a sanitized and beautified terminology? We shall discuss
that later in the series.
The invasion of
Iraq, the killing of thousands of its citizens, and the consequence of war lead
us back to the UN attack; so, who attacked the UN and why?
Despite abundant
speculations on motive and identity, the attack is technically limited to three
possibilities: First: if non-Iraqis and non-Arabs such as Israel did it with
the U.S. knowledge and blessing, then the U.S. targeted the U.N. as a means to
consolidate occupation. Indeed, aside from destabilizing the Iraqi situation,
an attack like that, in U.S. thinking, could induce nations susceptible to
pressure to send troops to an Iraq in the thrall of �extremists� who are
attacking, as Bush puts it, even �compassionate� organizations such as the
U.N., thus making the occupied country impossible to �re-build.� Second, if
non-Iraqi Arabs did it, this means that Iraq indeed has become a battlefield
between the forces of pan-Arab nationalism and U.S. colonialist forces
occupying their lands.
Third possibility:
let us assume that the authors were strictly Iraqis fighting the occupation and
its symbols. In this case, it is an indirect attack against the U.S. occupiers
but with the U.N. in direct focus. Is this a plausible speculation? It is
plausible for one good reason. The U.N. has become an operational instrument in
legitimizing the U.S. occupation of Iraq which, in reverse logic, means that
the U.N. has also legitimized, ex post facto, the invasion that lead to that
occupation. Accordingly, if Iraqis conducted such an attack, it is possible
that the UN�s conduct on the Iraqi issue had provided a valid alibi.
It is conceivable
that the Iraqi resistance (if it were behind the attack) view the behavior of
the U.N. as complicit at best, hence making it a legitimate target, no matter
how hyper-imperialists and spinners of the world want to portray it. Under the
dire conditions that the U.S. dastardly created in Iraq, subtleties, niceties,
or legalistic distinction between the U.S. and the U.N. are not important in
the judgment of the occupied, nor should it be otherwise from factual viewpoints.
To continue with
our investigation of the U.N., the preceding interactions could highlight the
complicity of the U.N. cartel, and as I stated earlier, could explain the
attack against it�assuming, once again, that Iraqis were the perpetrators. In
any case, in its broadest meaning, the U.N. attack has dealt a strategic blow
to U.S. designs of colonialist grandeur and world imperialistic hegemony, and
directly confirmed that the U.S. is only interested in defending itself in
Iraq, and indirectly illustrated the limits of U.S. power.
In its narrowest
meaning, it confirmed that the U.S. Zionist Junta is facing an implacable
resistance�although at an exorbitant price to Iraq and Iraqis�- in imposing
conquest, thus failing to retrograde world societies into accepting a primitive
barbarian order, except this time, depleted uranium and firebombs replaced
sword and spear. To confirm the trend of failure, several nations have either
already refused or are reluctant to send their men to protect an insidious
occupier whose imagination materialized the joy of future strategic and
economic benefits of colonialist occupation without suffering its costs or
casualties.
How does the U.N.
of Kofi Annan stand today as an international system in relation to Iraq? Let
us answer the question with a question: do we mean that �slave system� where
the U.S. runs unopposed? As for meaning of the U.N., we could be gracious
enough to call it the embodiment of political sphinx-ism and moral dwarfism
where one can detect the irrelevant presence of its members by the vanishing
warmth they leave on their seats.
When talking about Annan, keep in mind that he is not a president of a private
company where identification between the two is immediate. Annan, as all U.N.
secretaries, is a special creation. Big powers select, nominate, veto, or
approve the secretary according to strict imperialistic political criteria and
agendas. To conclude, any U.N. secretary is an unelected officer with no
mandate from the General Assembly, accordingly, he or she has no democratic
mandate to speak on behalf of any state, and therefore is only a caretaker of
special interests.
Annan�s choice as a
metaphor for the U.N. system's failure and as a target for criticism is not
accidental; it is a way to see the inner thinking of imperialist powers,
especially the U.S., because more often than not, he appears to pave the way
for what the U.S. was planning to do. The last such episode happened when the
U.S. presented the draft for resolution 1551. Annan protested a few things, the
U.S. winked, giggled, and then re-presented the same draft for vote. Annan
remained silent. From studying Annan, our guess is that he is inclined to
cohabitation and to the preservation of an assumed personal prestige in a position
of complete servility. In rare occasions, and when the issues before him are of
a minor significance to the U.S., Annan becomes a �concerned� idealist; but he,
a sharp observer of U.N. politics, never forgot how his outspoken predecessor
and former boss Boutros Boutros Ghali ended up when he defied U.S. policies.
Ultimately, when the U.S. vetoed the selection of Boutros Ghali for a second
term and picked Annan as successor, Annan decided that in order to maintain his
career he must lower his head each time a U.S. ambassador reprimands him.
So where does that
leave us with Annan? Next, in part four, we shall talk about Annan�s simplistic
treatment of serious matters such as terrorism, genocide, and WMD. This is
important because Annan appears genuinely eager to share his bewildering
findings with the world.
Notes:
[1] Reported in �Two U.S. soldiers killed in
Iraq, U.N. convoy attacked,� Reuters, July 20, 2003.
[2] George Wright, "Report finds 'alarming deterioration' in
Iraqi health," The Guardian, November 11, 2003.
[3] James Ridgeway, "Counting the Bodies, Hard to Keep Track of
the Dead in Iraq," The Village Voice, September 3�9, 2003.
[4] Phillip Adams, "Iraq: the next Afghanistan,"
The Australian (on-line edition), December 6, 2003.
[5] "Toting the Casualties of War,"
interview with Beth Daponte, Business Week Online, February 6, 2003.
Next, Part 4: Annan
and the Vocabulary of Deception
B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. He can be reached at: bjsabri@yahoo.com.