I was wondering what my international relations expert brother's opinion on the war in Iraq was. HE is the editro for the journal for one of the big jewish organizations in israel. The following surprised me, because my brother is a pacifist. I have no idea how much he had to write and how much is his true feelings, but I still thought it was interesting, and I know he wouldn't print anything he thought was a lie. The Australian Parliment members he quotes echo some of the anti-war sentiment I have seen voiced elsewhere. I particularly felt enlightened by reading the part about oil - he is right - if we wanted iraq's oil we could just lift sanction.s
http://www.aijac.org.au/review/2003/283/parl-iraq-283.html Cheap shots Muddled facts in the parliamentary debate on Iraq By Tzvi Fleischer In the early days of February, the Federal Parliament of Australia saw several days of intense debate about potential Australian involvement in a war in Iraq, and in that context, the role of the United Nations, Australia’s relationship with the US, and the nature of Australia’s national interest. Most of the debate was serious, reasoned and intelligent, if heated and vociferous, as is understandable given the important issues of war and peace at stake. But as in our last report on this subject in October, some of our political leaders made statements which were factually incorrect or betrayed basic misunderstandings of international law, were irresponsible or seemed to display an inability to make basic moral distinctions. And one or two made claims that were just plain bizarre. Here’s our run-down of a few of the claims being made: Myth: Lots of state besides Iraq are violating UN Security Council resolutions, especially Israel Arch Bevis (ALP): "However, if failure to comply with UN resolutions is the test for war, there are a few other candidates… Israel is in defiance of a 1967 resolution, resolution 242, which required the withdrawal of its armed forces from the territories it occupied following the 1967 war." Sid Sidebottom (ALP): "Why should the UN’s credibility be determined solely by Iraq’s failure to comply with Security Council resolutions when many countries, including Greece, Cyprus, Indonesia and in particular Israel, have ignored Security Council resolutions for years." Sen. Meg Lees (Ind.): "As far as Israel is concerned, it also has a long list of UN resolutions that it has not abided by. In fact, I think it takes the prize as the country which has ignored the most UN resolutions–there have been some 32." Anthony Albanese (ALP), Joel Fitzgibbon (ALP), Anna Burke (ALP) Frank Mossfield (ALP) also made or implied similar points. We dealt with this in detail last October. It is simply a matter of law that the resolutions on Iraq are different because they are taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, concerning "Threats to the Peace". Such resolutions are binding and enforceable by sanctions or force, and require unilateral compliance. Almost all the other resolutions usually cited, including those on Israel, are under Chapter VI, "Pacific Settlement of Disputes", which are advisory, cannot legally be forcibly enforced under the Charter, and virtually always recommend reciprocal action by both sides of the conflict. Moreover, it simply is not true that Israel is violating UN Security Council resolutions, especially the most oft-cited, 242, because these resolutions do not mean what they are often claimed to mean. There is no resolution requiring Israel to unilaterally pull its forces back to the 1967 borders or "end the occupation of Palestinian land." I could go on, but let me instead cite one of t he best and most thoughtful parliamentary debaters, a former Labor leader: Kim Beazley: an informed contribution Kim Beazley (ALP): "If the United Nations announces under chapter 7 that it intends to do something about a matter and it is not done, that will undermine the authority of the United Nations; that will render it ineffective. There are many other resolutions under other chapters. Resolution 242 gets a bit of a guernsey here every now and then. Resolution 242 is under chapter 6, not chapter 7. It does not carry the same mandate and authority that chapter 7 carries. Chapter 6 is the United Nations trying to put up resolutions which might help the process of peace and it states matters of principle that are important for the world to take into consideration. Resolution 242 says that Israel should withdraw from territories that it has occupied. It also says that Israel should withdraw to secure and recognised boundaries and that the one is dependent upon the other. Resolution 242 says that, but it is not a chapter 7 resolution." Myth: The US is really motivated by a desire to steal Iraq’s oil Sen. Bob Brown (Greens): "This is an oil war. This is the United States recognising that as the economic empire of the age it needs oil to maintain its pre-eminence… This is a war deliberated upon by the oil barons in the United States, who largely financed the Bush campaign, who have enormous connections and inter office placements with the White House staff and who are aware that a key to the future prosperity of the economy of the United States–five per cent of the world’s people–depends on who controls that 65 per cent of the world’s oil resource." Senator Kate Lundy (ALP): "This war is about oil and domination more than disarmament. There is no humanitarian motivation in military intervention into Iraq, only a concern for the bank balances of the West." John Murphy (ALP): "Like many of my constituents I called upon America to tell the truth to the world, that the attack we were being called upon to participate in was really about the need for America to more reliably control oil." Others making or implying support for this claim include Jill Hall (ALP), Frank Mossfield (ALP), Sharon Grierson (ALP) Peter Andren (Ind.), Sen. Lynn Allison (Dem.), Sen. George Campbell (ALP), Sen. Kerry Nettle (Greens). Sorry, but as several of the debaters, including Prime Minister Howard, Teresa Gambaro, Kelvin Thompson, and Steven Ciobo pointed out, this conspiracy theory makes no sense. The main evidence given for this theory seems to consist of the facts that US President Bush has connections with oil men, and Iraq has oil. But the US does not actually need Iraqi oil, could buy all the Iraqi oil it wants simply by agreeing to lift sanctions, or could have seized Middle East oil fields, if that is what it wanted to do, in 1991. Also, the US oil industry is mostly sceptical and cautious about a war in Iraq because it might effect supply, and anyway does not want massive new supplies which would lower prices. And let’s not forget that slogans about "war for oil" were also flung about by the anti-war fringe even with respect to Bosnia and Afghanistan, which have no oil. There may be many good reasons to oppose war in Iraq, but if your reason is that there’s really a secret US plan to grab Iraqi oil, you simply are out of touch with reality, and should not be surprised if people treat you as such. Myth: War will lead to the death of 100,000s of Iraqi civilians and the US will carpet bomb Iraqi cities, killing mostly children Carmen Lawrence (ALP): "Every time a bomb hits, on average we can expect half of the victims to be children." Tania Plibersek (ALP): "Who can tell why – oil, ego, stupidity, electoral advantage? I cannot get past the point that 250,000 civilian lives may be lost in this conflict." Sen. Andrew Bartlett (Dem.): "President Bush said, ‘We are here to liberate you from the dictator Hussein.’ But every reported action likely in terms of the military action that would occur would involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians." While a concern for the potential deaths among Iraqis, especially civilians, is a highly appropriate part of this debate, claims about 100,000s of civilians deaths are simply scaremongering and cannot be sustained by any realistic scenario of war. The US did not carpet bomb Iraqi cities in 1991, it did not carpet bomb cities in Bosnia or Afghanistan. There no reason to think it will do so in a new Iraq war. The best estimates are that between 1000 and 5000 Iraqi civilians died from military action in the 1991 Gulf War — this number may be somewhat higher or lower this time around, but in fact, the Iraqi military is weaker and the bombs likely to be used are more accurate, so lower would be a better bet than higher. The fact that anti-war advocacy groups and aid groups trying to get as much humanitarian aid available as possible have put out fanciful worst case scenarios does not excuse treating these unsustainable claims as gospel. Just Wrong or Plain Bizarre Sen. Lynn Allison (Dem): "Yesterday, the Prime Minister was defensive about Israel, talking about the courageous efforts of Ehud Barak, whose generous offer to give the Palestinians the ‘bulk of their demands’ was ‘repudiated’ by Yasser Arafat. Like so much of what the Prime Minister is saying, this is untrue. Barak offered to negotiate only a small percentage of the Palestinian territory that Israel occupies, in spite of United Nations resolutions." Even Palestinian participants at Camp David agree that Barak offered more than 90% of the West Bank and Gaza at Camp David and even more later, but criticise that as inadequate for a variety of reasons. Sen. Allison is just wrong, unless she is counting all of Israel as "Palestinian territory that Israel occupies", as some extremists do. Julia Irwin (ALP): "When an El Al cargo plane crashed in the Netherlands during a flight from New York to Israel, its cargo included four principal agents used in the manufacture of VX nerve gas." Actually, it wasn’t "four principal agents" of the superdeadly VX, it was DPPT, a key ingredient of much less—sophisticated Sarin, but a chemical also with a number of other uses. And Israel explained that the chemical was part of its defensive chemical weapons research, intended to test the effectiveness of gas masks and other filters in case of chemical attack. This is completely legal under the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which Israel is a signatory. Peter Andren (Ind.): "Australians want to know whether regime change in Iraq is simply about putting in place another regime sympathetic to American, British and other interests in the Middle East – that means oil interests and pro-Israeli interests." Pro-Israeli interests? What Israel would most like is an Iraq which ceases to pay Palestinian suicide bombers, and export other terrorists, and also ceases to target Israel and other neighbours with weapons of mass destruction. But then, so would almost all the other governments in the Middle East. Why would this be a bad thing, and why is it only about Israel? Jill Hall (ALP): "Any student of history knows that there is never a winner in war. Wars are usually fought to promote the agenda of a powerful and aggressive nation. We had World War II. Everyone knows what Hitler’s agenda was, what the devastation was and what the result of that was. It can be argued that same war is still being continued in the Middle East, in Israel and Palestine. We had the Korean War and the US intervention in that country. We heard President Bush’s recent comments about the ‘axis of evil’. Korea is still in there, so there is another issue that still has not been resolved." Is Ms. Hall seriously suggesting it was wrong to fight Hitler during World War II? And I don’t know what point she is trying to make about Israel and Palestine. And would it really have been better to have allowed North Korea to overrun the South, given what we know about that regime today? Senator George Campbell: illogical theories Sen. George Campbell (ALP): "There is the suspicion that unilateral US military action against Iraq would be motivated by the desire to control Iraq’s vast oil resources. This suspicion is reinforced by the extraordinarily close links between oil companies and the Bush administration. I do not know if everyone in this chamber saw the 60 Minutes report a couple of months before Christmas, in which it was clearly demonstrated that there were convoys of oil trucks 100 miles long heading out of the north of Iraq through Kurdistan, which was charging them a toll fee to pass through the country, into Turkey and out into the Western world. No-one can tell me the US administration was not aware of that occurring. But what were they doing? They had a couple of ships stationed at the other end of Iraq to prevent the oil coming out by sea into the Persian Gulf. What a joke! They did not take action to enforce the sanctions. They knew the oil was coming out, but that was more important than the issue of preventing the loss of lives and preventing further destruction of people within that country." Let me get this straight. Senator Campbell’s theory is that the US is deliberately allowing Saddam to illegally export oil in defiance of the sanctions so they can get their hands on that oil? Don’t you think if they really wanted the oil that badly they would just lift the sanctions? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=5 Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
