Re: [casi] Campaign Against Sanctions?

["M" <xxx@DELETETHISntlworld.com>]

I am concerned by Colin's and other postings which seem to present an
intellectual dilemma over the US plans to invade Iraq. Many things Colin
says I agree with but it is Colin's 'belief system' that I have always found
hard to fathom as it comes from someone I think is both an intellectual and
humane individual whom I have the upmost respect for. Mainly it is this
passage from Colin which is the most frightening.

I also share your perception that the fastest way to remove sanctions may be
> to allow the US to topple Saddam's regime, in part given the US'
commitment,
> this past decade, to not allowing Iraq's economic normalisation under
> Saddam.  I felt uncomfortable coming to this sense, as it is not 'right'
> somehow: I dislike feeling that the US should be able to evade
> responsibility for its bankrupt and lethal policy by shooting its way out
of it.  But, if that did allow Iraq to rebuild, and to restart its life,
> perhaps it is a price worth paying.

Aside from strangely echoing the callous comments of a well known Zionist
Madeline Albright it is the attitudes here which shock me. It is only in the
PAST FEW MONTHS it seems that Colin has questioned this line of thinking
because when visiting the Iraqi people he "put faces on them,[Iraqi's] and
helped [him] to feel some part of the new fear that many Iraqis must feel"
So like most human beings he 'discovered' that they were afraid of being
blown to shreds. How odd.

Perhaps the sense Colin expresses of not feeling 'right' somehow about
invading another country may have something to with not having the GOD GIVEN
RIGHT TO DO IT. The age empire is over despite Blair/Bush's best attempts to
resurrect it which are
doomed to failure. However be sure that despite the amount of children on
swings that Colin saw he still feels that "Intellectually, these experiences
didn't change my arguments". In other words on principal he is not against a
foreign aggressor invading another country which is nice to know.

It seems some of our list contributors will never shake off attitudes in the
western colonial mode that gives them the eternal arrogance to be judge jury
and executioner of another country. We are quick to accuse the  west of
creating Hussein, of arming and backing him diplomatically until he invaded
Kuwait but  it seems some of us still cannot resist the urge to play god
over the lives of others. A certain type of upbringing and education
continues to ensure that some individuals believe we in the UK are the most
important people in the world. Tony Blair is a good example of that system,
creating a leader who has all the worst qualities of Churchill (an arrogant
imperialist and racist who thought the working class were a disease) and the
best qualities of Hitler (passionate speaker, brilliant liar, and he loves
dogs). Unfortunately Tony Blair doesn't seem likely to carry out Hitler's
last act as a human being anytime in the near future.

Colin's other flicker of doubt about his sense of righteousness stems from
the
fact that he doesn't trust current members of the US administration. "The
Bush administration does not seem to me to be interested in setting out a
coherent and comprehensive vision for Iraq" as Colin puts it. He then
postulates on several possible "post Saddam-scenarios" which could occur but
draws no firm conclusions about either US motives in the region or which
kind of government the US would be likely to adopt.

Looking at US history of invasion, CIA backed coup de tats and
counter-insurgency we could draw some conclusions if we cared to look.
Chile, Iran, Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, who suffered the
most in those examples? The people. The Governments installed in all these
cases were all essentially dictatorships which worked only for benefit of US
profit. The people suffered in hell.

Wars are fought between leaders but it is the workers who suffer the 'blood
price' as Blair puts it. Bush's war is a war onthe people of Iraq. Look at
the 1990 Gulf War for a recent example. From Colin's 'intellectual'
perspective a war which he could have and no doubt
did support at the time. The expulsion of Iraq (who illegally invaded
Kuwait) sanctioned by the UN. But look at the results, the war was taken
into Iraq totally destroying the civilian infrastructure of the country with
the full knowledge of the massive resulting civilian deaths. Crushing
sanctions followed torturing the people for 10 years. Doesn't that teach us
anything about US motives and methods? The US war in Iraq is part of a wider
war on democratising forces across the globe. The US war drive to redominate
the Middle-East by force is a direct challenge to the revolutionary forces
within the  Arab/Islamic world which are and will become the greatest threat
to
the US the world have ever seen.

Bush, Cheney, Rumfield et al all conduct themselves as Colin suggests with
different degrees of slyness, cunning and in Bush's case idiocy but that is
not why I do not trust them. It is because they all support Israel in its
current Zionist incarnation a conqueror/settler state with its hands so
drenched in blood that all the rivers in the world cannot wash them clean.
According to US doctrine Hussein is an evil dictator, Sharon is a statesman.

To conclude I will just say I think people should be wary of the easy way
some people on this list discuss western adventures in the Third World,
forgetting both the cost in human life and also the wests imperial past and
how that affects their attitudes today.

M


----- Original Message -----
From: Colin Rowat <c.rowat@espero.org.uk>
To: discussion list Discussion CASI <casi-discuss@lists.casi.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2002 12:42 PM
Subject: RE: [casi] Campaign Against Sanctions?


> > It seems that this list has lost all meaning. To some this has
> > become an anti-War list, to others it's a pro-Saddam list, but it
> > none, or so it seems, is this an anti-sanctions list.
> >
> > My main objective has always been to get rid of sanctions. But I
> > am a realist too. I realise that currently, the quickest way to
> > get rid of sanctions, the way that will save the most amount of
> > lives - because I truly believe that millions have died - is to
> > not oppose the US's regime change.
> >
> > I will no doubt get booed for this by many. But I ask,
> > realistically speaking, leaving idealistic scenarios alone, what
> > other solutions can we follow?
>
> Dear Sama and others,
>
> I share your concerns, which I think extend beyond the list.  The debate
on
> Iraq has been shaken up a great deal in the past year or so, and possibly
> greatly complicated.  This, I think, has led to some intellectual disarray
> as well, part of which may be reflected on the list.
>
> I also share your perception that the fastest way to remove sanctions may
be
> to allow the US to topple Saddam's regime, in part given the US'
commitment,
> this past decade, to not allowing Iraq's economic normalisation under
> Saddam.  I felt uncomfortable coming to this sense, as it is not 'right'
> somehow: I dislike feeling that the US should be able to evade
> responsibility for its bankrupt and lethal policy by shooting its way out
of
> it.  But, if that did allow Iraq to rebuild, and to restart its life,
> perhaps it is a price worth paying.
>
> I've become less comfortable with this conclusion over the past months,
> though, for at least two reasons.  First, when I travelled to Baghdad in
May
> for a week (to a conference hosted by the Iraqi government - I was
therefore
> their guest; my speech was the first, after two days, to receive a
rebuttal
> from Tariq Aziz, the chair; the subsequent conference bulletin printed his
> rebuttal, but not my remarks) I was able to put faces to this argument.  I
> saw friends, and could see how worried they were about what their future
> held.  I attended a private function hosted by one of them and was asked
to
> say a few words.  I made a few joking and banal remarks about being put on
> the spot but was then saved by a woman who asked whether people in the UK
> were listening.  My perception of the mood changed completely: I sensed
that
> part of what she was asking me was whether she would live or die.
>
> A second memory that left an impression on me was a supper with friends on
> another night in a restaurant.  As I watched the children playing in the
> swings and running about, I had the sense that, for some (and not just
> Saddam's cronies?), some semblance of normal life was being restored in
Iraq
> after a decade of trauma: the house of cards was being slowly rebuilt.
The
> prospect of removing a single card buried deep within that house struck me
> as a daunting one, and the costs of failure became tangible - children on
> swings.
>
> Intellectually, these experiences didn't change my arguments, but they did
> put faces on them, and helped me to feel some part of the new fear that
many
> Iraqis must feel.  This had made it more difficult for me personally to
feel
> supportive of the US in this.
>
> My second concern is that I simply do not trust the Bush administration.
> Bush condemns Palestinian terrorism from the golf course and, without
> pausing, asks the press to watch his drive.  Cheney strikes me as a deeply
> secretive individual, who prefers operating in shadows, something that I
> find at odds with democracy's basic premise of government by the people.
> Rumsfeld's penchant for presenting pure speculation as fact as long as it
> advances his agenda is equally antithetical to what I would like to see in
a
> democracy; while I understand the importance of pragmatism, this cynicism
> disturbs me.
>
> Further, I do not trust their agenda - in part because I do not think that
> it has been honestly presented.  It is clear that Iraqi disarmament only
> forms a small component of what this is about: were it the largest
priority,
> I think that US assurances that this was their largest priority would now
> see Saddam eagerly swallow a lot of pride and welcome in full, unfettered
> inspections.  A large part of it does seem to be about toppling Saddam.
If
> the only consequence of this was Saddam's deposition, then I would have no
> concerns with this.  But there are other consequences, which I do not know
> how to properly assess: how many civilians will be killed; what does the
US
> administration regard as an acceptable post-Saddam scenario (the Hashemite
> monarch that the neo-cons have been promoting? a democracy, which might
> therefore be Shi'a dominated? an Iraqi Musharraf? what economic return
will
> the US demand on its possible expenditure of tens of billions of dollars
in
> Iraq?); how will international affairs be changed by this sort of a
> precedent?
>
> I think that these are important concerns, but they are not being
addressed
> by this administration, which avoids them, pretending that this is just a
> simple issue of appeasing Saddam or not appeasing him.  This blinkered
> presentation was noted by Senator Lugar, the ranking Republican on the
> Senate Foreign Relations Commmittee.  Noting the range of issues discussed
> during their hearings on Iraq, he said: "This is a whole lot more . . .
than
> I hear anybody in our administration talking about".  A oft used argument
> against altering or lifting the sanctions was that there was no coherent
> alternative: the Bush administration does not seem to me to be interested
in
> setting out a coherent and comprehensive vision for Iraq.
>
> I am therefore being asked to trust that a US administration whose senior
> members I do not trust, and who deny the concerns that I feel to be
> important, will make the right decisions for Iraq's future.  My worries
are
> further deepened when I note that this administration seems committed to a
> narrowly self-interested view of foreign policy, has helped cut Iraqi
> oil-for-food sales in half and seems to have adopted Israeli foreign
policy
> positions with respect to the Middle East.  Indirectly, Bush's presidency
> was listless before 11 September 2001, the economy softening, corporate
> scandal wrapping its tendrils around senior officials.  I am therefore
> worried that Iraq policy is being used to distract American attention.
>
> So, what alternatives do I propose?  For years, I've thought that they
must
> focus on process: the soundest basis for a good outcome is one in which
due
> process is attempted.  The Security Council is therefore an inappropriate
> body for this as the US veto on it places the US in the role of both an
> interested party in the case and a judge, a deep perversion of any notion
of
> justice or due process.  There are provisions in UN history for the
General
> Assembly to involve itself in issues of international peace and security
> when the Council fails to uphold its responsibility.  This path has not
been
> pursued yet here; I think it worth pursuing.  There are concerns about the
> compromises that would result, but I suspect that a majority of the UN's
190
> or so members would agree that Iraq must adhere to the disarmament
> provisions of SCR 687.  The fact that Arab states, which apparently oppose
> an invasion, are pushing for Iraqi admission of inspectors, seems to be a
> fairly strong sign of this.
>
> Further, a GA resolution with the support of a majority of the world's
> nations would present the Iraqi government with a far greater challenge
than
> do Security Council resolutions, which can be (without too much
distortion,
> I think), delegitimised as US/UK resolutions.  Bush, incidentally,
> implicitly recognised this by choosing to address the General Assembly
last
> week rather than the Security Council: the GA is the best approximation to
> the international community that we have.
>
> In conclusion, let me pick up on a few points made by subsequent postings
to
> this list.  I share Saibal's concern about civilian casualties, but fear
> (with Dirk) that - if a war does actually occur - they will be much than
> those in the US last 11 September.  Beth Osborne Daponte, who was a
> demographer with the US Bureau of the Census until she began to estimate
> Iraqi mortality arising from the Gulf War, later published an analysis of
> this in the Physicians for Social Responsibility Quarterly
> (http://www.ippnw.org/MGS/PSRQV3N2Daponte.html).  She concludes that:
>
> <begin quote>
> According to the methods described in this paper, the number of Iraqis who
> died in 1991 from effects of the Gulf war or postwar turmoil approximates
> 205,500. There were relatively few deaths (approximately 56,000 to
military
> personnel and 3,500 to civilians) from direct war effects. Postwar
violence
> accounted for approximately 35,000 deaths. The largest component of deaths
> in this reconstruction derives from the 111,000 attributable to postwar
> adverse health effects. Of the total excess deaths in the Iraqi
population,
> approximately 109,000 were to men, 23,000 to women, 74,000 to children.
> <end quote>
>
> Yours,
>
> Colin Rowat
>
> work | Room 406, Department of Economics | The University of Birmingham |
> Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK | web.bham.ac.uk/c.rowat | (+44/0) 121 414 3754 |
> (+44/0) 121 414 7377 (fax) | c.rowat@bham.ac.uk
>
> personal | (+44/0) 7768 056 984 (mobile) | (+44/0) 7092 378 517 (fax) |
> (707) 221 3672 (US fax) | c.rowat@espero.org.uk
>
>
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