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The Bush family's phony wars

 28 August, 2002.AsiaTimes on line

An entire region from Jordan to Iran is on the brink of catastrophe as it awaits one man's decision on how he will pursue his family's vendetta .India's former Ambassador to Jordan looks inside the Pandora's box which George Bush holds in his hands. Editor 

For the Bush family, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is the tempting Apple in the Middle Eastern Garden of Eden. The results of succumbing to the temptation to take a bite could be as disastrous as they were for Adam and Eve. – 

 [ US and UK leaders stand isolated, almost like pariahs ] 

In 1991 George Bush Sr sought the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He failed and left the region in a mess. Now his son, President George W Bush, having inherited Dick Cheney and other chieftains from his father's presidency, is pursuing the family vendetta 

It is difficult to know what to believe of the leaks regarding the US's current options to oust Saddam, ranging from assassination, fomenting a coup or internal rebellion, air strikes against Baghdad and other Iraqi command centers, to a vast amphibious invasion with massive air support, involving up to 250,000 soldiers The latest plan, involving around 60,000 troops backed by heavy air power, will begin with a swift attack on Saddam's elite Republican Guards around Baghdad, in the hope that the regular Iraqi army would then abandon Saddam. Such balderdash.  

[Similar plans to attack Iran are being leaked out , the results would be catastrophic] 

However, there is room for hope that worse may not come to worst: a saving grace of the US constitutional system of checks and balances is that Bush may be the most powerful man in the world, but he can't ignore Congress. And, however much George Bush Sr might hate Saddam, he would not want his son's presidency to end in disgrace. 

 [ Peoples  faith lies shattered with the nonpartisan US support for the invasion and evasions now]

Soon another leak countered that some in the Establishment favored an "inside-out" plan to "take Baghdad and one or two key command centers and weapons depots first, in hopes of cutting off the country's leadership and causing a quick collapse of the government". Such a plan was once dismissed by General Anthony Zinni, the US Middle East envoy, as a recipe for a "Bay of Goats" disaster, like the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba. 

[ How the inapt leadership self hypnotized itself to believe the Iraqi exile and convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi that Iraqis would welcome the US occupation forces with flowers. Now there is a 'Bay of Camels' plan for Iran]

The war's end [First World War) did not bring freedom to the Arabs as promised; for , at the same time, by secret Sykes-Picot agreement, the British and French arbitrarily divided the sultan's Arab domains and their warring populations of Shi'ites, Sunnis, Alawite Muslims, Druse, and Christians. The French took most of greater Syria, dividing it into Syria and Christian-dominated Lebanon. The British kept Palestine, Iraq and the rest of Arabia.  

By 1917 Britain's Balfour Declaration had also promised a homeland for Jews in Palestine. European Jews began emigrating to Palestine, and the trickle became a flood with the rise of anti-Semitic policies in Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe. After World War II, the state of Israel, carved out of British Palestine, was not recognized by the Arabs. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war allowed Israel to expand its area, while Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt took over Gaza. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the West bank and Gaza. Thus were laid the foundations for most of the problems of the region.  

[The Iraqis do not believe that US has brought freedom , security and development and a majority want occupation troops out ]

The US stumbled into the 1991 war without any strategic thought or planning. In fact, the West had supported Iraq's long war against Khomeini's Iran, and the US had granted loans to Baghdad worth billions of dollars. Amid high tension between Kuwait and Baghdad over common oil wells, two islands, and the return of a $10 billion loan, Iraq threatened Kuwait with war. A few days before the Iraqi invasion on August 2, 1990, US Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein that his dispute with Kuwait was a bilateral Arab affair. This was never clearly refuted by the US and Ambassador Glaspie disappeared from view.

The Western media never pursued her as they do others, and allowed themselves to become a handmaiden of the Western propaganda machine. (Later, they wrote little about the slaughter of retreating and surrendering Iraqi soldiers, and their credibility has declined further since then.)

Meanwhile, all attempts to find a peaceful solution to the Iraq-Kuwait row by Arab nations, led by King Hussein of Jordan and later joined by King Hassan of Morocco, were rebuffed by the US, as was Kuwait's offer of indirect negotiations. Feelers for negotiations by the Saudis were drowned in Western cacophony. Saddam's reported offer to the UN secretary general to withdraw fromKuwait, made just before the US retaliation, was brushed aside. Efforts by Mikhail Gorbachev, who had just unraveled the USSR, were treated with disdain.  

For the countries of the region, the war resolved nothing. Instead, the US made Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other allies pay through the nose, weakening them by an estimated $100-$150 billion. Iraq was bombed into the Middle Ages. Its enemy Iran, now a joint member of the "Axis of Evil", was the major gainer [ As it is now ] 

US promises turned sour in the aftermath of the Gulf War. George Bush Sr, without consulting his allies, encouraged Iraqis, especially Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south, to revolt. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, most of which had large Shi'ite populations, were horrified, as a Shi'ite state in south Iraq would strengthen Iran. The prospect of independence for Iraqi Kurds worried Turkey, whose own Kurds were fighting for freedom. The hapless Iraqi Kurds, now protected by the US-UK enforced "no-fly zone", and the Shi'ites paid a terrible price. 

Turkish President Turgut Ozal, seduced by US hints of winning "lost" Kurdish areas of north Iraq, had become an energetic supporter of the Bush coalition in 1990-91. He almost opened another front in the war against Iraq, but was prevented by stiff opposition from his powerful military. But instead of getting oil-rich Mosul and Kirkuk, the economic sanctions against Iraq and closure of the Iraqi pipeline via Turkey cost Ankara $50 billion in lost trade. Unemployment rose as the sanctions halted the 5,000 trucks that used to roar to and from Iraq daily, aggravating the economic and social problems in Turkey's Kurdish heartland of rebellion. A deputy prime minister once ruefully told this writer, "Mr Ambassador, you cannot trust the Americans, not even their written promises." A sobering thought for those who support the US blindly.  

[The Nato Alliance between Turkey and USA  is only in name .Relations , almost ally like with Israel earlier , are just about correct , with Turks accusing Israel of terrorism in Gaza and interference in north Iraq , undermining Turkey's stability in its south east. .Turkey has mended relations with its historical enemy Russia and deep rooted differences between Turkey and Syria has been placed on the back burner]

Iraq's emasculation made Israel feel bolder. Now Ariel Sharon wants Palestinians under Israel's heel. But the Palestinians, the most radicalized among Arabs, will not give up. Intifada was and is indigenous. (The PLO, now corrupted, just took the credit.) Arab and Muslim masses the world over watch what is happening in Palestine with great anger. This, and random US and UK bombing of Iraq, are among the reasons cited for the September 11 attacks on the US. 

 [ The result is there .Hamas has won and formed the government and has been accepted by Russia, Turkey and others .The constitution of the Irish Republic enshrines joining of northern Ireland to the Republic , still UK and others do business with Ireland .Then why not with Hamas , which recognizes Israel's 1967 borders. The founders of state of Israel belonged to terrorist organizations according to British colonial records.]  

It is difficult to trust the US, with its track record in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia and Serbia. What will Pandora's Box reveal in Iraq? How will Iran and Turkey react in a free-for-all over Kurdish north Iraq? The US was unclear in its strategic aims in 1991 and still is in 2002. At least there was a solid coalition in 1991; now there is none except for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose own people are opposed. 

According to the new Bush doctrine, an attack would be "pre-emptive self-defense". But this doctrine could be used to justify military adventurism from Chechnya to Palestine, or to bomb a schoolboy studying nuclear physics in Rameshwaram. 

[ Near home town of Indian President .Abdul Kalam , regarded as the father of Indian missiles program]