|
Recent
Stories
April
7, 2003
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
The CIA is Back on Campus
Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce
Gideon
Levy
America is Not a Role Model
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Jules
Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin
James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush
Shake Gerry's Hand?
Robert
Fisk
The Twisted Language of War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
John
Mackay
War and Art
Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
Other Mideast Regimes
Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
Hot Stories
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!
|
April 8,
2003
The Future of Regime Change
Wallowing in
Hypocrisy
By AHMAD FARUQUI
Rarely has the world seen such a one-sided war.
In the first two weeks of the campaign, coalition forces had
fired more than 725 Tomahawk missiles and dropped more than 14,000
precision-guided bombs on Iraq. About half of these munitions,
estimated to weigh about 7 million tons, fell on Republican Guard
units. Even if none of them exploded, the sheer weight of the
falling objects would be enough to fell an army.
The military outcome of the war was never
in doubt. How could a third-world country that had been under
12 years of sanctions take on the world's mightiest nation? Iraq
had no operational navy or air force and its army's T-72 tank
was no rival for the American M-1 tank. Most of the T-72s were
taken out by A-10 aircraft before they even got close to an M-1.
Those that survived were taken out by the M-1 tanks before they
got within the T-72's gun range. The most successful Iraqi weapon
proved to pickup-mounted machine guns being fired by paramilitary
units and infantrymen firing rocket-propelled grenades. It was
a case of Mogadishu redux.
The performance of the Republican Guard
during the First Gulf War had been much reviled in the media.
But Stephen Bourque found that "They did not run away and
fought with extreme bravery." Indeed, after enduring weeks
of air strikes from a vastly stronger enemy, they fought with
extraordinary tenacity. He says that their Tawakalna Division,
facing a massive attack from several directions, "had little
opportunity to do anything but surrender or fight and die in
place. They chose the latter."
After being mauled in the first Persian
Gulf War, and fully aware that their tanks were still out-ranged
and outgunned by US armor, the Republican Guard must have foreseen
the outcome when this war began. But, in contrast to 1991, they
never had a chance to fight this time around. According to Paul
Koring, their predicament was similar to that of the Light Brigade:
"Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die."[1]
The Iraqi Republican Guard has set a new standard for courage
and bravery that will that will inspire armies for decades to
come.
The war is almost over now, and an American
victory is at hand. But events will show that it was a hollow
victory. To quote Quentin Peel of the Financial Times, "The
danger for Mr. Bush is that he will win the war, eventually and
unpleasantly, but he will never be seen as a liberator. If he
had understood that, he might never have gone to war."[2]
But let us grant Mr. Bush his right to
fight Saddam, since he claims that the latter has not complied
with the terms of the cease-fire that came at the end of the
First Gulf War and that in a post 9/11-world, Iraq's alleged
weapons of mass destruction pose a threat to the national security
of this country.
But what can one say about the Arab and
Muslim leaders whose countries border Iraq. History will record
that while Iraq was attacked and run over, they were wallowing
in hypocrisy.
Abu Moussa, the secretary general of
the Arab League, warned several months ago that a war against
Iraq would "open the gates of hell." His warnings,
like Cassandra's in mythology, were ignored. Amid rising anger
in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has implored the US to end
the war, saying it would create a hundred bin Ladens. When asked
why Egypt had not closed the Suez Canal to British and American
naval vessels journeying to the Gulf, he replied that that Cairo
could not deny other countries the use of the Suez Canal under
the terms of a 19th century treaty unless Egypt was at war with
them.[3] Mubarak has in public urged an immediate end to the
conflict while in secret he opened Egyptian airspace to the coalition
forces.
In a similar vein, after meeting the
French president Jacques Chirac in Paris in January, Saudi foreign
minister Saud al Faisal said that a US attack on Iraq would result
in "a calamity of immense proportions." As war became
imminent, he noted that, "Saudi Arabia will not join the
conflict and will not [allow its territory] to be used to attack
Iraq." Saudi Arabia has secretly allowed its airspace to
be used by cruise missiles, and made a northern airbase available
to coalition forces. The prince has now asked Saddam Hussein
to leave Iraq, but not even dropped a hint of imposing an oil
embargo. This comes as no surprise to Saudi watchers.
Many people expected the Saudis to impose
an oil embargo in support of their March 2002 peace plan, once
it became clear that the Israelis had responded to it by stepping
up their reprisals in the West Bank and Gaza. However, the Saudis
flatly rejected the use of oil as a weapon, disowning completely
the policy King Faisal had used in 1973. Walid Jumblatt of the
Progressive Socialist Party in Lebanon reminded the prince about
his father's conduct, who gave his life by daring to say that
he would stop oil supplies to the West and that he wanted to
liberate Jerusalem and pray there.
King Abdullah of Jordan, whose heavily
accented Arabic betrays his western upbringing, said he had contacted
other countries before the war started in an attempt to prevent
the conflict. Claiming that he was "a Muslim, an Arab and
a Hashemite," he asserted, "Nobody can outbid my concern
for my people and my (Arab) nation." He said that coalition
forces had asked Jordan for use of its airspace, a request he
"adamantly rejected" because a war with Iraq would
breed "extremism." Yet he has allowed Patriot batteries
to be placed on Jordanian soil, and permitted Special Operations
Forces to launch operations into Iraq.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, which had
fought a long and punishing war with Saddam's Iraq a decade and
a half ago, was more than happy to stay neutral in the course
of this conflict. It had adopted the same posture during the
First Gulf War, and had accommodated 100 front-line aircraft
of the Iraqi Air Force that sought sanctuary in its airbases.
Having lost a million of its fighters during the eight-year old
war with Iraq, the Ayatollahs in Iran must find Saddam's departure
at the hands of his erstwhile sponsors a truly sweet form of
poetic justice. But they cannot ignore the ticking of the clock.
Saddam's departure will soon reduce the membership of the axis
of evil to just North Korea and Iran. Since the former does
not support any Middle Eastern terror groups, and since it could
very easily carry out a first-strike against Seoul, it is not
likely to be attacked any time soon. Thus, Iran may soon find
itself standing on the front lines of regime change.
Syria, the only Arab country on the UN
Security Council, claims all it could to stop the war at the
UN. It has already received a warning from Secretary Rumsfeld,
for having provided lethal weaponry in the form of night-vision
goggles to Iraq. Israel continues to occupy its Golan Heights,
and continues to allege that Syria is fighting a proxy war with
Israel through the Hizbollah of Lebanon. The storm cannot be
too far away.
Perhaps the strongest support for Iraq
came from the new Muslim but secular government in Turkey. It
found a clever parliamentary way to deny land access to the heavily-armed
US Fourth Infantry Division, and delay the opening of a northern
front in the Iraq war. Even Paul Wolfowitz, the guru of regime
change, was left speechless. All he could on Sunday's Meet the
Press program was that Turkey is a democracy, and the US had
to respect its wishes.
Somewhat further removed physically but
very close ideologically, the government of Pakistan found itself
in a very awkward position. In December 2001, General Musharraf
had cautioned the US against going after Iraq. His military-appointed
democratic government deplored the US decision to attack Iraq,
but was truly frightened at the prospect of voting against the
US in the UN Security Council, where with Syria it was only one
of two members from the Muslim world. The best they could do
was put off the Prime Minister's trip to the US. Yet that was
not enough to prevent the foreign m inister of India from inviting
the US to carry out a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan. He
said that Pakistan satisfied all three conditions for regime
change even more than Iraq: it had nuclear weapons, it supported
terrorist groups, and it was not a real democracy. It remains
to be seen how long Pakistan's military rulers can carry on with
this juggler's act of supporting the US fight global terrorism
of the al-Qaeda ilk on the one hand while supporting freedom
fighters of the local variety in Kashmir.
Postscript
Singling out Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, former CIA director
James Woolsey said recently in a speech at the University of
California, Los Angeles, "We want you [to be] nervous. We
want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years,
this country and its allies are on the march and that we are
on the side of those whom you-the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family-most
fear: We're on the side of your own people." Woolsey noted
proudly that the US was engaged in fighting World War IV. That
term was introduced by Elliot Cohen to describe the global war
against terrorism, but it has now been expanded to include changes
of tyrannical regimes that have access to weapons of mass destruction
(WMD).
The import of his remarks will not be
lost on Muslim and Arab leaders. A fundamental change has occurred
in the tactics of implementing regime change. What was formerly
accomplished through covert "black" operations is now
being accomplished through overt military operations by the world's
most powerful military whose budget exceeds that of the next
ten nations combined.
In the near future, regime change may
be expanded to include not just those un-elected despots with
access to WMDs but any rulers who stand in the way of the neo-conservative
agenda of global domination. Then the hypocrites of today will
come to taste their just desserts.
Ahmad Faruqui,
an economist, is a fellow with the American Institute of International
Studies and the author of Rethinking
the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached
at faruqui@pacbell.net
Notes
[1] Paul Koring, "Analysis: A tenacious
stand, doomed from the start," The Globe and Mail, April
3, 2003.
[2] Quentin Peel, "The perils of
wartime wishful thinking," Financial Times, April 1, 2003.
[3] James Drummond, "Mubarak
fears war may increase terrorism," Financial Times, April
1, 2003.
Yesterday's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|