The War Against Humanity
By Hank Roth
"No one disputes the grim, totalitarian nature of the regime; but Saddam Hussein was careful to use the oil wealth to create a modern secular society and a large and prosperous middle class. Iraq was the only Arab country with a 90 per cent clean water supply and with free education. All this was smashed by the Anglo-American embargo. When the embargo was imposed in 1990, the Iraqi civil service organised a food distribution system that the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation described as "a model of efficiency . . . undoubtedly saving Iraq from famine". That, too, was smashed when the invasion was launched." [Pilger]
"Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin." [Pilger]
If enough people come to their senses and begin to understand the underlying causes for these wars we can stop them. The problem will always be to disseminate the information. That is why the job of telling the truth and teaching is so important and so difficult. We don't own the printing presses, but there are books and they only need to be read and there are web sites and they only need to be visited and there are neighbors and the people you work with and they only need to be told the truth and with patience re-taught a people's history. Start by giving Howard Zinn's book of that same name to your kids and grandkids. For birthdays and holidays, give books. If you can get people interested enough to read maybe you can change hearts and minds. If you need a bibliography, look at the reviews at http://amazon.com/ and the books lists which are at times posted at PNEWS-L (http://pnews.org/signup.shtml).
"A growing body of legal opinion around the world agrees that the new court has a duty, as Eric Herring of Bristol University wrote, to investigate "not only the regime, but also the UN bombing and sanctions which violated the human rights of Iraqis on a vast scale". Add the present piratical war, whose spectre is the uniting of Arab nationalism with militant Islam. The whirlwind sown by Blair and Bush is just beginning. Such is the magnitude of their crime." [Pilger]
U.S. hegemony is at stake. With growing interest in the EURO it is especially necessary for America to spread her tenticles. Those who work for George Bush understand this which is why it is the basis of his foreign policy.
"At the same time direct control over the region's (Asia and Africa) petroleum resources will give the United States another important lever to use against china, which will become considerably more dependent on petroleum imports during the next decade. The United States also sees capitalist China as a potential threat to its plans for domination of East and Southeast Asia. The United States has taken various steps to block China's plans to obtain independent (i.e., not controlled by the United States), stable access to West Asian oil or Caspian oil The United States has already installed its military throughout oil-and-gas-rich Central Asia; now it is in the process of doing so in vastly richer West Asia." [Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE) - "Behind the Invasion of Iraq" 2003]
"Although certain circumstances have led the United States to navigate a resolution on Iraq through the UN Security Concil,the United States has now openly declared the death of the UN system, for what it was worth: this was the content of Bush's speech to the UN, where he declared that it would be irrelevant unless it rubber-stamped U.S. supremacy. The new doctrine is contained in theU.S. National Security Strategy document, which declares the right of American pre-emptive strikes against `emerging' or potential threats, and warns that it is willing to act unilarterally if other imperialist powers do not follow its lead. In line with the new doctrine, the United States is systematically revising the existing international consensus on the use of nuclear-weapons." [RUPE]
"In order to carry out its plan, the United States, already over extended, will have to extend itself even further. Not only has it rapidly multipled its military outposts and involvements across the word, from the Phillippines to Asia (Central, South, and West) to Latin America, but it has taken on the status for a direct occupier in Afghanistan, and evidently intends to do so in at least Iraq.Thus it both spreads its forces thin and calls forth much fiercer nationalist resistance than under the indirect rule common in the neo colonial order. Anticipating the heavy costs of their new mission, intellectual hacks of the U.S. and U.K. ruling classes are busy preparing theoretical justifications for a new bout of colonialism. At the same time the internal repressive apparatus is being strengthened int0 the United States and panic, submission to authority, and their elements of fascism are bing manufactured."[RUPE]
HOWEVER, "The simultaneous emergence of worldwide popular opposition and resistance, opposition from other imperialist powers, and profound weakness in the U.S. econommy suggest that events will NOT DEVELOP AS U.S. IMPERIALISM WISHES." [RUPE]
Hank Roth
http://pnews.org/
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