Gross miscalculations

Washington will embark on its military invasion of Iraq with no legal backing, and in the face of massive international opposition. History will be the final judge and it will condemn this unjustified war as an illegal act of willful recklessness.

Invading Iraq is immoral. It is also a gross political miscalculation. US military may easily topple the Iraqi regime but few Arabs will be grateful and no one is buying Washington's cynical claims that it is "liberating" the Iraqi population. US actions will serve only to reinforce its reputation for double standards, forcing even wider the gulf between Arabs and America. That gap has almost reached breaking point.

Many of Washington's closest allies in the region fear that toppling the Iraqi regime will have a domino effect: chaos throughout the region will be the result. What more fertile breeding ground for terrorism could there be? Iraqis have suffered horribly under Saddam Hussein. Yet it remains perilous to discount the words of one Iraqi national: "Better Saddam's hell than the Americans' heaven."

And Iraqis fare no worse than the Palestinian people who have suffered at the hands of a brutal Israeli occupation for half a century. All indicators point to a vicious Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian people in the wake of Washington's punitive strike against Iraq. The Israelis will use the war as a pretext to intensify the collective punishment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The US is invading Iraq to control the region's vast oil reserves. The US is not invading Iraq to free the Iraqi people from dictatorship. The invasion is a disaster for the entire Middle East.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 20 - 26 March 2003 (Issue No. 630)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/630/ed.htm