-Caveat Lector- >From http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/020801/7/1ykhg.html
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK AGAIN, REDUX, PART 2 Thu Aug 1,12:02 PM ET By Ted Rall Back to Baghdad for Bush's Bullies NEW YORK-Should we send in 250,000 ground troops or will 25,000-pound bombs be enough? Do they have nerve gas, and if so would they use it? What about the Republican Guards-are they as fierce, smart and loyal as advertised? How many people will die? It's the middle of a Bush administration, so it must be time to distract a recession-battered public with saber- rattling tirades equating Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) with Adolf Hitler. How else can Bush get his approval rating back up from 65 to 92 percent? But selling Americans on Gulf War ( news - web sites) Boondoggle 2: The Revenge will likely prove more difficult than convincing them to show up for the 1991 original. As Congressmen Chuck Hagel (R-NE) points out, "There are a number of difficult questions that need to be asked before Congress would support a resolution of war against Iraq." First, there's no inciting incident: Saddam hasn't invaded Kuwait. The guy is making no effort to dis us properly. Second, the highly- anticipated ending of the first Gulf War, in which columns of victorious American troops were to be showered with roses and free oil by liberated Iraqis, never materialized. Third, the Afghan action epic Tora Bora Bora, though initially well-received, is now considered trite, clichéd and banal. Fourth, this expensive sequel would probably be financed exclusively by America. A July 27 London Times poll shows that most Britons, our biggest partners in the original GWB, are not up for a sequel. The rationale for attacking Iraq changes by the day, according to administration insiders. First came the unfinished-business argument: Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, used chemical gas and remains a threat in the Middle East. Never mind that the Iraqi dictator worked for our CIA ( news - web sites) when he did that stuff, and that nothing worse has transpired in the last 12 years than garden-variety Third World repression. Then Bush declared Iraq a member of an "Axis of Evil" along with Iran and North Korea ( news - web sites), unrelated countries that share neither common ideological nor geopolitical aims. Finally, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld implied a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda in planning September 11th. Rummy says "absolute proof" isn't necessary to justify an invasion, which merely confirms that they don't have any. "[The Bushies] don't seem to have a cohesive message to describe the threat," a U.S. government analyst commented to Reuters' Carol Giacomo. "They seem to be throwing things at the wall to see what might stick and nothing's taking hold." "When there is a democratic Iraq-and that is our goal-an Iraq that truly cares for the welfare of its own people, it won't only be the people of Iraq who benefit from that. It will be the whole world and very much the region," a deluded U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed on July 17. "Turkey stands to benefit enormously when Iraq becomes a normal country." Remember, that's what they said about Afghanistan ( news - web sites) in October. Now Osama, Mullah Omar and the Taliban are running loose in Kashmir ( news - web sites), radical Islamist movements are on the rise in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and U.S. Special Forces are guarding Afghan president Hamid Karzai, a despised and ridiculed American puppet whose bribed soldiers can't be trusted not to kill him, much less defend their Kabul city-state. As bad as the Taliban were, the thugs who replaced them may be even worse. And getting rid of Saddam could lead to even-more-apocalyptic consequences. Saddam's principle opponents are Iranian-backed Shiite groups and 20 million Sunni Kurds whose "peshmerga" fighters are struggling to create an independent Kurdish homeland comprising northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and extreme northwestern Iran. The Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) agree that we should depose Saddam, but no one wants another strongman to replace him. "Our viewpoint regarding regime change is that it has to be at the hands of the Iraqi people. We will not permit there to be foreign interference, whatever its nature, in orchestrating this change," SCIRI's Mohammad al-Hariri says. Most experts expect Iraq to disintegrate into civil war after an overthrow of Saddam's oppressive Ba'ath Party. From 1994 to 1998 the KDP and PUK fought a brutal over control of the "no fly zone" created by the American-led allies to protect Iraqi Kurds north of the 36th parallel. And a Turkish Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has split off from Iraqi Kurds as it launches guerrilla attacks within Turkey. A post-Saddam power vacuum will encourage the Iraqi Kurds to fight for the spoils within Iraq, with the winner taking on the Shiites. Iran would likely evict its own Kurds, most of whom arrived as refugees from the Gulf War, while arming the Shiites. Just this month, 2,000 PUK troops fought pitched street battles against Islamist guerrillas of the Jund al-Islam group, leaving at least 20 dead in the northern Iraqi city of Halabja. And Turkey, which has already lost 30,000 lives in its own Kurdish civil war, will undoubtedly see a renewed drive for a free and independent Kurdistan carved out of its mountainous east to join whatever Kurdish state emerges from a shattered postwar Iraq. European and Middle Eastern, secular and Islamic, Turkey is the economically fragile strategic lynchpin that holds together eastern Europe and the Balkans. If Turkey falls apart, all hell will break loose between Muslim separatists and Slavic nationalists in what's left of Yugoslavia and Albania. Gulf War 2 could ultimately lead to millions of deaths spread across three time zones. Opinion of the United States is now at an all-time low among Muslims around the world. One reason is our continued support of Israel's military campaign against the Palestinian Authority ( news - web sites). Another is that we replaced what was seen as the world's purest Muslim regime, the Taliban, with an oil-company stooge. Going after Iraq will make matters worse. Why give radical anti-American Islamists even more political ammunition with which to recruit suicide bombers and attract the financial donations that fund their assaults? The administration calls attention to Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction," but a former U.N. weapons inspector says that Iraq possesses neither nuclear nor biological devices. (Of course, no one ever calls upon the U.S. to account for its weapons of mass destruction. Presumably white male Protestants are intrinsically more trustworthy than swarthy male Sunnis.) If and when Iraq attacks its neighbors or American interests, U.S. retribution might be justified. Until then, the current combination of weekly bombing raids and devastating economic sanctions should serve as sufficient punishment for whatever it is that Saddam did to offend delicate American sensibilities. As if it wasn't bad enough that we have no moral justification for or strategic interest in attacking Iraq, the Bushies' irresponsible war talk is hurting an economy already battered by accounting scandals, the dot-com hangover and fleeing foreign investment. War rhetoric and the resulting increased threat of terrorist attacks against the U.S. are driving up oil prices and making markets more volatile, says Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics in Boston. "An invasion of Iraq raises a huge number of unanswered questions, and that kind of uncertainty is deadly for financial markets." Oil is now going for about $26 per barrel, up from $22 in January-before Bush dubbed Iraq part of an Axis of Evil. Given that Iraq produces four percent of the world's oil supply, a jump like that, at a 30 percent per annum rate, boosts gasoline, heating and transportation costs significantly, slamming the two-thirds of our economy that is dependent upon consumer spending. And the more the Bushies trash talk about the big ass-whuppin' they're going to give Saddam, the more oil prices will rise. "In the oil market, it's just starting to dawn on people that something big might be happening," says Roger Diwan, managing director of Petroleum Finance Co., a Washington consulting firm. As we saw during World War II, defense spending can spur economic growth-but only if the war and the government spending to fight it is long and sustained. "In what is likely to be a reasonably quick and decisive operation, there isn't going to be time for a war economy to develop," asserts Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Do the Kurds deserve a homeland? Sure. Would Iraq be better off without Saddam? Probably. But if we're smart, we won't be the ones to blow over this particular house of cards. We have too much to lose and too little to gain in the mess that would certainly ensue. (Ted Rall's new book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan and Back," is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.) < Previous Story Email Story ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no automatic endorsement + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. 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