22 - 28 February 2001
Issue No.522
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 February 2001 Issue No.522 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
In our own defence
The US-UK bombing of Baghdad, which killed and injured scores of civilians (euphemistically labelled "collateral damage") and destroyed Iraqi air defence installations has added yet another chapter to the "Humanitarian Intervention" chronicles. Malaysia's prime minister exclaimed: "I didn't know that killing people is humanitarian." The pretext that Iraq's defences threaten American and British planes reaches a new level of insolence; the planes fly over Iraq, not Texas. Arab governments are participating in this aggression, although the "no-fly zones" are imposed solely by the US and UK. They are outside even the "international legitimacy" used to launch Desert Storm. Ironically, the no-fly zone in northern Iraq has facilitated frequent Turkish attacks on Kurdish Iraqis, whom the "allies" claim to be protecting.
Iraq's air defences pose the same kind of threat as that facing Admiral Seymour when the British Navy approached Egyptian shores in July 1882 to occupy Egypt, not to visit the Sphinx. The polite letters he exchanged with Alexandria's commander were the forerunners of today's "new" world order pronouncements. Seymour considered that adding cannons to the city's defences as "an act of aggression against Her Majesty's Navy."
The attacks on Baghdad and the joint US-Israeli military exercises have several aims. One is to prepare key leaders as the US's strategic ally blackmails Arab states with its weapons of mass destruction and continues its vicious attacks on Arab children. Another is to convey the message that sanctions will be relaxed or lifted only on terms that will guarantee major economic benefits to US corporations.
The Egyptian government should take measures to protect our national interests. As a recent CIA report implies, symbolic boycott of some goods and peaceful demonstrations are useful tools to show the resolve and power of the masses.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is a retired professor of chemistry and biophysics.
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