-Caveat Lector-
http://www.etherzone.com/2003/shpa031903.shtml
IRAQ VERSUS THE NEW WORLD ORDER
THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR THE STATUS QUO
By: Max Shpak
As is well-known to all who follow world politics, the term "New World Order" gained common currency following Americas victory over Iraq in the first Gulf War. Gloating triumphantly over the smashing of Baghdad, in his speech of March 6, 1991, then-President George H.W. Bush proclaimed,
Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ..." A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfil the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations.
These words more or less set, or at the very least reflected, an ideological and geopolitical agenda that has been steadily carving away the autonomy and right to internal self-determination of sovereign nations. Throughout the world, the sovereign nation-state is now being replaced by a vassal-state whose economic and political life is to be determined by a cabal of transnational corporations, currency speculators, and above all a mythical "International Community" ever vigilant for "human rights violations" which set the pretext for invasion and destruction by well-armed acronyms such as the UN and NATO. Saddam Husseins Iraq was to be merely the beginning, for after 1991 the apparatchiks of the New World Order found numerous other whipping boys in the form of omnipresent "Hitlers of the month" to destroy. Of course, every such destruction campaign and the Quisling hegemony which followed was inevitably accompanied by hypocritical references to meaningless but noble-sounding phrases such as "freedom and respect for human rights," or, in more recent incarnations coming from the comopolitan Left, "global democracy."
Today the same clique, under the stewardship of a younger, more aggressive, and more inept member of the Bush clan, is again poised to attack Iraq, with not so much as the slightest legitimate pretext. One will recall that even in 1990, the case for an attack on Iraq was by no means clear or well-established. Prior to the war, the first President Bush himself was more than happy to arm and support the man who weeks later became "worse than Hitler." Even on the eve of Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, then Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz was assured by ambassador April Glaspie and the US State Department that the dispute over Kuwaiti theft of oil from what was indisputably Iraqi territory was "an Arab affair" on which the US has "no position," and that the Iraqis should resolve as they see fit. All of which set a trap for the Iraqis and a precedent for the first post-Cold War intervention by the US, and of course, the omnipresent "International Community."
So on what grounds was that war effort sold to us? The more gullible were of course told that US troops were fighting for "freedom" and "democracy" in the Middle East. The fact that there was not much of either to be found in Kuwait mattered little to a television-addled populace who eagerly supported a war against a nation they couldnt even find on a map. The more sober were assured that the war would secure the US oil supply in the Middle East and give us lower prices at the pump. The fact of the matter is that A) the US only receives a small fraction of its oil from either Iraq or Kuwait to begin with, B) tales to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no evidence that Iraq would charge anything other than market or OPEC prices for the oil from the conquered territory of Kuwait and C) the embargo against Iraq following the war actually (for self-evident reasons) raised oil prices rather than lowered them. It seems that the only beneficiaries of Gulf War I were the elder Bushs approval ratings, the corrupt monarchy of Kuwait, and of course Israels sole regional superpower status in the Middle East. The public never seemed to ask whether the effort was worth the enormous expenditure of money and resources by the US, and as for the tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a consequence of the war effort and the subsequent sanctions, well, we had no less trustworthy and honorable a creature than Madeleine Albright to tell us a decade later that it was all well worth it.
Hence, now that our special-ed President wishes to finish the job that the craftier old man began, the masters of deceit in our presses and television networks are again hard at work manufacturing approval from the trained seals among their readers and viewers. Fortunately, their job has been made easy by the events of 9/11, not due to any logical connection between Iraq and the attacks of course, but because a perverse game of guilt by
