On the brink of ’incalculable harm’

Opinion by Luis Teodoro, Vantage Point, ABS-CBN, Friday 31 January 2003 9:16:16 p.m

The threat to US interests and US citizens is ultimately based on a political problem: the growing hatred of the US and what it stands for—intervention, the use of force against the weak.

Of course there will be war.

The conclusion is inescapable not only because of US President George W. Bush’s virtual declaration of one against Iraq during his State of the Union address on Wednesday (Tuesday in the US). It proceeds even more fundamentally from the logic of the so-called case the US has been trying to make for months against Saddam Hussein, as well as from its long-term intentions in the Middle East.

There is also good, old-fashioned capitalist greed. All that oil (billions of barrels of it) and all that natural gas (trillions of cubic feet of it) still unexploited are a vast treasure trove no authentic freebooting US oil company can resist. The US wars in the 20th century were waged for even less, though at great cost to others.

Thus has the US case against Iraq been based on premises that can only lead to war. Saddam, says the US, has weapons of mass destruction and is a threat to the US and the world. He is a dictator who has inflicted vast suffering on his own people. He refuses to disarm and continues to torment Iraqis as well as the minority Kurd population.

What’s more, insists Bush, he has links to al-Qaeda, a crime for which the United States overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and inflicted over 3,000 casualties among the civilian population.

Saddam is indeed a dictator and might even be quite mad. Other than that, however, the US case has foundered on lack of evidence. But it is not evidence of either Saddam Hussein’s threat to the world via weapons of mass destruction or his links to Osama bin Laden&8217;s terrorist network, but US determination to remake the Middle East, that’s at the heart of the US case.

Only Saddam Hussein’s giving up power, going into exile as the governments of some of Iraq’s understandably nervous neighbors have suggested, and turning over his country to it will satisfy the United States.

Remote as that possibility is, not even the less remote possibility of a dramatic demonstration by Iraq to convince the UN weapons inspectors that it is fully cooperating with them will do—not for the United States government. The United States wants regime change?—i.e., a government in Iraq led by a compliant member of the ineffectual Iraqi opposition, or by a US military governor—and that can only be achieved either by Saddam’s giving up power voluntarily, or by force.

And of course the United States will prevail in the likely event of a war against Iraq. It has assembled one of the biggest armadas in history in the Persian Gulf, and massed tens of thousands of troops on land and sea that could eventually number at least 150,000. Its military forces are the best equipped in the world, with the most sophisticated weapons and communications systems at its disposal.

The United States also has the biggest arsenal of conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the world—the very weapons of mass destruction it condemns in others. The most dreadful of these, its nuclear weapons, it has made a policy to use when necessary—part of the Bush doctrine of striking preemptively, and with all the force the US has.

Should Saddam Hussein indeed have the chemical and biological weapons the US says he has, he would likely use them should his defenses crumble—and they will—before the US onslaught. If he does, to prevent the casualties that could turn this adventure into a vastly unpopular one at home, the Bush government is likely to use nuclear weapons.

That possibility—part of the catastrophic consequences for the Middle East Iraq’s neighbors foresee in the event of a war— means the escalation of casualties not only among Saddam’s forces, but also among the Iraqi population as well as, in the long-term, Iraqi’s neighboring states. The latter could receive part of the fallout that, limited as it may be, is the inevitable by-product of nuclear explosions.

George W. Bush has also once more declared during his address that the US will not hesitate to go it alone.

The course of this nation does not depend in the decision of others. Well-spoken and well within the US tradition of deciding for others, since a war on Iraq could affect others who shall not have made the decision.

Decisions on war and peace—and on the state of the world— the United States has arrogated unto itself for the last 50 years. The results of its policy of aggressive intervention has not made a better world but a worse one, with the American people themselves now being under threat as a result.

US foreign policy, says the historian Gabriel Kolko, is both immoral and unsuccessful (and) is not simply stupid; it is increasingly dangerous to those who practice or favor it. Over the last 50 years, says Kolko, US foreign policy has led to unforeseen results, among them the fact that the US has never been so insecure and its people more vulnerable.

September 11, 2001, demonstrated Kolko’s thesis. A war on Iraq would very likely demonstrate it further. Both Bush’s earlier threats of war as well as his January 28 address have been provoking ominous threats from Islamic fundamentalists, who have vowed to make the US pay for what they say would be an attack on Islam. Even conservative analysts have argued against a war against Iraq, in fear of a backlash that could mean further terrorist attacks on the US, Britain and other countries supportive of the US attack.

The US response has been to allot billions for homeland security in the construction of a virtual Fortress America. The paradox is that the United States, its citizens and its interests are everywhere, and cannot be guarded 24 hours a day by attack dogs and swat teams armed with high-powered rifles. The threat to US interests and to its citizens is already global in scope, to which the US government response has mostly been to issue travel advisories.

The threat is ultimately based on a political problem: the growing hatred of the US and what it stands for—intervention, the use of force against the weak. This is the result of the US policy of intervention in the affairs of others, of which a war on Iraq would only be one of its latest follies, though perhaps one of its worst for the world as well as for Americans.

There are no technological quick fixes to political problems, says Kolko in reference to the US reliance on sophisticated weaponry in response to political problems.

Solutions (to political problems) are political, which requires another mentality and a great deal more wisdom, including the readiness to make compromises, and above all, stay out of the affairs of nations, or they will not succeed. Worse yet, its reliance on weapons and force has exacerbated or created more problems for the US than it has solved. After September 11 there can be no doubt that arms have not brought security to America.

That will not change after a war on Iraq—which could be swift and likely to result in a US victory, yes, but which nevertheless will not make the world any safer. On the contrary, it could usher in an era of greater instability and perpetual war, as the terrorist threat intensifies and as the US responds with even greater and more terrible force.

Kolko describes the US reliance on force and on unilateral decision making as mindless action, in that no enduring principles, despite all the lip service to democracy and human rights, govern it.

For example, the two men the US has most demonized, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, both collaborated for years with the US there is no greater proof of confusion and ineptness on America’s part, and rather than leading the world in a better direction, it has usually inflicted incalculable harm?

The world is not just on the threshold of war. It is also on the brink of reaping the same incalculable harm.