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What Is the United Nations Worth? The US President is racing against the tide in a persistent bid to wage annihilation war against the Iraqis under different unfounded pretexts. The announced main objectives for this war are to change the Iraqi leadership and eliminate what he called Mass Destruction Weapons ‘ threats’ posed by Iraq to the world. Many observers worldwide, however, differ with the objective behind such war; the objectives are many in the form of another Sykes-Picott as to dismember Iraq, exploit and control oil price and flow and to threaten the surrounding in implementation for the Zionist lobby dictations. Actually Mr. Bush’s claims about the Iraqi weapons contradict not only the reality but the very basics of the US foreign policy and statements. The U.S. once claimed that its 1991 attacks destroyed 80% of Iraq's military capacity. The UN inspection efforts declared the dismantling of 90% of Iraq's post-1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction. Thus, the claims are baseless and void of truth. If the aim is to help cleaning this strategic region from weapon threats, the Israeli nuclear facilities do badly and urgently need such international verifications. An interesting example of the absolute and total rejection of a new war against an independent sovereign state, stricken with sanctions, blockade and hunger, is a letter by Mr. Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and founder of the New York-based International Action Center (IAC) The letter was sent on July 29, 2002, to all UN Security Council members." Any remaining hope the peoples of the United Nations have to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war through the United Nations would be crushed by another United States attack on Iraq. Threats to attack, invade and overthrow the government of Iraq by President George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, various cabinet officers and Pentagon officials have been routine for a year. The psychological warfare is itself a crime against peace and violates the UN Charter. Today's front-page headline story in the New York Times, "U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option," is typical of the in terrorism intention of the threats. The danger to civilian life in Baghdad from such a strike would be enormous." Said Mr. Clark. "If the United Nations is unable to restrain the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, from committing crimes against peace and humanity as well as war crimes against a nation that has already been violated by the U.S. beyond endurance, then what is the United Nations worth? At the very least, opposition to any attack or attempt to overthrow the government of Iraq by force must be publicly expressed by the United Nations." Actually almost every member stated opposition to such a possible strike including the UN Secretary General, who did welcome the Iraqi offer to resend inspection teams. Hopefully the UN would stand to its obligations and preserve its Charter sending qualified inspectors and not professional multi-agent proxy spies! No single true Arab is willing to watch silently the slaughter of the Iraqi brethren by any invading US troops or any Israeli nukes. The land, sea and sky of Arabs is vulnerable to any provocation. Every Arab street is to burst with every unexpected volcano. "The U.S. led and glorified the massive assault on Iraq in January a and February 1991. The Pentagon announced it conducted 110,000 aerial sorties against the defenseless "cradle of civilization," dropping 88,500 tons of bombs. The widespread bombing destroyed the economic viability of the civilian society throughout the nation. It killed tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and others. A major part of the bombing was directed at civilians and civilian facilities. It was less accurate than the recent indiscriminate attacks in Afghanistan. U.S. bombs destroyed Iraqi water systems, electric power transmission, communications, transportation, manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, poultry and livestock, food storage facilities, markets, fertilizer and insecticide production, business centers, archeological and historical treasures, apartment houses, residential areas, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and synagogues." said the letter. "The U.S. crafted economic sanctions against Iraq which the Security Council approved on August 6, 1990, the 45th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. Those sanctions are the direct cause of the very cruel deaths of more than a million people. This is the greatest crime against humanity, in the last decade of the most violent century in history. Each painful death of an individual wasting away--from malnutrition; Kwashiorkor; the rush of dehydration from contaminated water and from diseases was preventable. The sanctions continue to this time to cause hundreds of deaths each day. Every United Nations agency dealing with food, health and children--including FAO, WFP, WHO, UNICEF--has proclaimed the horror, magnitude and responsibility for this human catastrophe. The great majority of the deaths caused by the sanctions are infants, children, the elderly, the chronically ill and emergency medical cases. These are the people most vulnerable to polluted water, malnutrition, and the lack of medicines and medical equipment and supplies. The letter added that the U.S. blocked oil sales by Iraq for six years before appearing to yield to humanitarian pleas to permit oil sales to purchase food and medicine. "Since 1997, when sales began, it has effectively frustrated and delayed the Oil for Food program, which does not provide sufficient income at the levels approved to stop the daily deterioration of health and growing death rates in Iraq. "The U.S. has engaged in air strikes against Iraq at will since March 1991, when the massive attacks averaging one aerial sortie every 30 seconds ended" asserting that scores of people each year in attacks on radar stations in or near the U.S.-imposed no-fly zones; all the persons aboard a UN helicopter shot down by U.S. aircraft; and civilians from all walks of life, including the internationally famous artist and Director of Iraqis' National Center for Arts, Leila al Attar. Actually, this part of the world doesn’t need another Vietnam or Panama-Caribbean like model. It does direly need an even-handed reasonable approach to internationally cooperate and coordinate as to eradicate poverty, malnutrition, terrorism and other backwardness-related spreading phenomena. The world, which at large stood by the US in its Sept.11th aftermath expects but the more of balanced and calculated constructive and political moves. BY Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim |
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