Reason for ‘the war’

THE question now becomes obvious and crucial; What will George Bush and Tony Blair do if their forces now occupying Iraq find no weapons of mass destruction? How will they react if their causus belli, their principal reason for invading Iraq and toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, proves to be totally unfounded? Will the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the UK resign their office, retire in sackcloth and ashes, and repent for the rest of their lives for pursuing this brutal and unjustified invasion of Iraq?

Will Bush and Blair then accept responsibility not only for the death and destruction, the state of anarchy, they have inflicted on that hapless country but also for the lives of their own soldiers lost in this so-called war? Will they then subject themselves to trial as war criminals before an international tribunal? It seems significant that their rhetoric, and that of their warmongering cohorts, no longer centres on the urgent need to protect the US and the world by disarming Saddam of what they claim to be his huge stockpile of chemical and nuclear weapons. Rather, their justification for destroying Iraq by three weeks of pulverising bombardment and massive military onslaught is now being hailed as their removal of an oppressive dictator and the freeing of the Iraqi people who, they confidently predict, will now embrace democracy and set this pattern for the rest of the Arab world.

Those who opposed this unwarranted invasion from the very beginning, meaning the vast majority of the world's population including large sectors of the US and UK societies, must not allow Bush and Blair to get away with that kind of indecent deception. Moreover, they must be disturbed by the new and ominous superpower policy that this reckless Iraqi adventure has introduced, that might is right, that the means — no matter how many innocent non-American lives are lost — justifies the end.

In defiance of the United Nations Security Council, disregarding huge anti-war demonstrations across the world, showing no regard for the UN weapons inspection process and having nothing but contempt for the persistent denials of the Iraqi regime that it has hidden weapons of mass destruction, Bush and Blair went ahead with this massive and disastrous assault on Iraq. Now we have Lt Gen Amer al-Saadi, Saddam Hussein's science and weapons adviser, who surrendered to US military authorities on Saturday, declaring again that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction. The US could not have wanted a more authoritative voice on this issue. It was al-Saadi who comprehensively refuted the case presented by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, to the UN Security Council in February.

But the US gave no credence to al-Saadi's response, as Bush and his war hawks in the White House were hell bent on invading Iraq, regardless. Now the real reason, the hidden agenda behind this apparently senseless "war" is now becoming clear and will ultimately reveal itself as the occupation and the "reconstruction" of Iraq proceeds. The cause, of course, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and all to do with the maintenance of US economic hegemony in the world. As an Australian journalist has pointed out — his revealing article was published in Newsday on Friday — the decision of Saddam to sell his oil in Euro dollars, with the prospect of Chavez in Venezuela and other Arab states following suit, presented such a threat to the dollar's long predominance as a reserve currency and, as a result, to the US economy, that it became imperative for the US to get rid of Saddam — at any price in terms of Iraqi lives. The American TV news channels, covering the "war" in Iraq round the clock, have been conspicuously silent on this proffered reason for the conflict. We wonder why.