Crusaders and Mongols
Mohamed Hakki fears that a US invasion of Iraq will provide Israel with the cover it needs to forcibly transfer the Palestinians from their homes
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Not in our name: Kids for Peace take part in an anti-war protest in Washington on International Women's Day
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By the time this report is published, the war against Iraq will probably already have started, or at the very least be just around the corner. Last minute efforts by Arab foreign ministers to avert war will have gone largely unnoticed in the United States. Even news of a humiliating rebuff by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, telling Arab envoys to go to New York instead of meeting with her was buried on page 23 of the Washington Post, in the middle of a long article. To add insult to injury, the writer said that it was not clear whether Colin Powell would meet the group, which included Arab League head Amr Moussa and the foreign ministers of Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Syria.
So much for the free press of America. I wonder what would happen if the delegation had insisted on coming to Washington and held a press conference outside the gates of the White House.
But, those ministers need not feel marginalised. The US is already in the process of destroying the very international institutions that it earlier helped create: the United Nations, the Security Council and NATO. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund may soon follow.
It is also obvious that the Bush administration was unhappy with the report to the Security Council by Mohamed El-Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In it, El-Baradei asserted that the British-obtained "key evidence" claiming that Iraq was producing nuclear weapons was not only false, but actually fabricated. El-Baradei also rejected a claim, made twice by the US president in major speeches and repeated by Colin Powell, that Iraq has tried to purchase high-strength aluminium tubes for uranium enrichment. El-Baradei asserted that the IAEA found no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material after a meticulous sweep of Iraq with advanced radiation detectors.
Most nations feel that debate at the Security Council is at a "historic turning point", as the Russian foreign minister put it. He said, "the way we resolve this problem will determine not just the future of Iraq, but the future of the Security Council itself."
President Bush did not hesitate to show his utter contempt both for the UN and the Security Council throughout his press conference on 6 March. Almost all the questions asked of him, which were more telling than his answers, went something like this: your policy on Iraq has generated opposition from the governments of France, Russia, China, Germany, Turkey, the Arab League and many other countries. It has opened a rift with NATO and the UN, and drew millions in anti-war protests. What made all of them see the US under your leadership as an arrogant, aggressive, and defiant power? The US president's answers questioned the very utility of the UN Security Council in the first place.
The question then becomes: What is this insistence on war all about? What is to be gained that is worth destroying the UN's institutions and killing 500,000 Iraqis (a figure mentioned in a congressional hearing)? When 500,000 Iraqi children were killed because of US dictated economic sanctions, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it was a "fair price". Now, some estimates say that as many as one million Iraqi civilians may be killed, which incidentally is the very same number of Iraqis killed by the Mongol leader Hulagu in the 12th century. He even built a pyramid with their sculls. Today, some within the Bush administration are saying that the Iraqi people will be dancing in the streets of Baghdad in the aftermath of a US invasion. Well, nobody is disputing for one minute that the majority of Iraqis resent Saddam Hussein's rule, but killing one million Iraqis will immediately play into the hands of those who are saying that this is a new crusade of Christians and Zionists against Muslims.
This will, most likely, coincide with another scenario that is much talked about within Israel, namely the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and their transfer, along with Arabs living inside Israel, as Israel's "final solution" to the Palestinian problem. James Akins, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "Israel has been waiting for a chance to do just that, but they needed a war to cover it up. They even thought of starting one themselves against Syria, which would have been helped by a subservient US media covering their crimes and claiming Syria started it. Israel could do this in a very short time."
The Israelis might tell Palestinians that trucks are ready to take them to Egypt, Jordan, or Syria. Even those refusing to leave, would probably cave in in the end. If a person has children, would he take the chance of them being killed by the Israelis? What do you think he would choose?
Although there are a lot of Jews who are extremely worried about this scenario and its ramifications, Israeli apologists are still writing about it as an idea propagated by conspiracy theorists. One of these apologists for Israel is Bill Keller. In a New York Times article, he cited the now famous document entitled, "A Clean Break", prepared in 1996 by a group of defence thinkers for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He says that this study proposed a "redirection" of Israeli strategy, including a plan to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He also mentions that three of its authors, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wursmer, are now prominent "embeds" (his words), meaning that they are firmly rooted in the present US administration. The whole basis of his defence or rebuttal is that "A Clean Break" did not call for a US conquest of Saddam. But, isn't it much easier for this "Cabal", who are helped and abetted by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to do Israel's bidding? Are all the people who are warning against the war- mongering policies of this group, anti-Semites? Are former President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the first peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security advisor, and all the other patriotic Americans who accuse the Bush administration of doing Israel's bidding anti-Semites?
I received a phone call from Guyla Hills, a devout Catholic moviemaker, who calls herself a fundamentalist evangelical. Without knowing me prior to the call, she wanted to share her frustration. She said that she and, "thousands of other good Christians" are appalled at the message of Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and others who are propagating a policy of hatred towards Arabs and Muslims and are supporting and actually advocating a policy of war against Iraq. She added that these people threaten the world with their crusading ideas. "Fortunately, not all Christians think like them, but unfortunately we don't have a microphone. They do," she added.
This war could open the gates of hell for religious bigotry and hatred, or begin religious wars that might engulf the whole of humanity. It could easily be manipulated and portrayed as a new crusade.
Unfortunately, Saddam Hussein's vulgar thinking can only comprehend the imminent threat of war as a new Mongol invasion, which will be defeated before Baghdad is totally destroyed. It took Iraq six to seven hundred years to regain its population and become a viable country again after the Mongols. The fear is that the new Crusaders, or the new Mongols embedded in the US administration, are not only going to destroy Baghdad, but will set in motion events that can destabilise and destroy much of the wider region.
One of the side effects of war will be the destruction of historical monuments which are part of the collective memory of mankind. The destruction of Iraqi monuments and treasures will be a total loss to humanity. The New York Times says in a feature article that, "some of these hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites were only beginning to be discovered. Only 10,000 sites of these have been identified and only a fraction of them have been explored." The article continues, "any of them could change what we know about human history, as past excavations have done. Some of them have already revealed the world earliest known villages and cities and the first examples of writing." All these precious legacies of Islamic art and culture are now threatened in the name of Iraqi democracy.
The other pretext of the war is that the US is keen to keep Iraq "nuclear free". But, even before disarming, Iraq was years away from developing a nuclear weapon. If Iraq's government was not rejected by almost all Arabs, they would have come to Iraq's aid, both financially and scientifically to build a deterrent. What America ignores is that Israel has 200 nuclear bombs. It took only two small bombs to defeat another superpower during World War II. So why does Israel need 200 bombs? At least one of the Arab countries should have a credible deterrent, but Saddam has disqualified this possibility also. In Arab eyes, this not only exposes the fallacy and hypocrisy of the US's position, it actually ignores the existing and real North Korean nuclear threat. Again, Arabs feel that North Korea has never been a direct threat to any Arab country, but Israel is.
All this leads the Arab and Islamic world to reject America's war on Iraq. There is nothing to warrant it. Democracy cannot by re-created by way of old school colonial invasions or by installing foreign pro-consuls and viceroys.
The case of Japan, another oriental country, is different. Japan is unique. Her emperor was considered to be a god, and he accepted total surrender. Because of their peculiar structure, the Japanese concluded that the US must be superior. It is also an island, and not part of a larger Japanese nation.
Bush's advisers also ask why the Muslim world did not rise up after the invasion of Afghanistan. Again, Afghanistan is different. The US invasion of Afghanistan was against Al-Qa'eda, which attacked America at home, killing thousands of innocent people. The US asked the Taliban government to deliver the perpetrators of this crime because they stood against the killing of innocents, Christian, Jewish and Muslim. In contrast, attacking Iraq constitutes killing part of everyone in the Arab world. It represents the destruction of their history and their independence. It is a return to the age of hateful colonialism and crusading.
Had it not been for oil, it would have been easy for many to conclude that this whole thing is Israel's bidding. But, in fact, there is an unholy alliance between three interest groups: the Israeli lobby, the oil companies (the first US contract to rebuild and reutilise Iraqi oilfields went to the Halliburton Corporation, a company with which Vice- President Dick Cheney still has strong ties), and the military-industrial complex.
When Israel completes its "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians while the US is busy destroying Iraq, will the president be able to say that he is praying for the Palestinian people the way he now says that he is praying for Iraqis.
