November 9, 2002
Not Until the Fat Lady Sings
The former attorney general of the United States, Ramsey Clark, wrote a letter to the United Nations on July 29, 2002 to prevent a U.S. war in Iraq. It is one of the most coherent anti-war statements that I have read that deals with reality and not some fictionalized fairy tale hastily concocted from the "Oil" Office of the White House.
Today I heard Bush proclaim that the debate about Sadaam is over. Well, excuse me, George, but I beg to differ. The debate has not yet to begun. Many of us have been gagging on the idiotic propaganda that war with Iraq is necessary and New. Well, you've sold it, new and improved, like some energized laundry detergent, but not everybody's buying it, (Mandate, be damned.)
Furthermore, your so-called debate has never occurred based on the real facts. In the land of freedom of speech no one not even a self-appointed emperor and liar can tell the American people when they no longer have the right to debate. People say that the golden rule means whoever has the gold rules. That's true, except that the real American gold is human capital, so whoever can frame the debate, think beyond the din of war drums beating, can exert power, not to mention maintain some semblance of sanity.
Let's get one thing straight. You can't start what has already been started, you can only escalate it. Since l99l the U.S. has been bombing Iraq. According to Ramsey Clark, the U.S. bombed Iraq "mercilessly" for forty-two days in l99l and has continued for the last eleven years with air strikes "at will".
Start a war? The Iraqi people are still reeling from the ll0,000 aerial sorties and 88,500 tons of bombs dropped from the last war and the depleted uranium that remains. Clark's letter chastens the United Nations to restrain the United States "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..." He goes on to call the economic sanctions genocidal.
In September, l998 the UN coordinator of the Food for Oil program quit stating that the sanctions were "totally bankrupt" and went against the U.N. charter.
It's not like the public and the journalists didn't know about the sanctions and bombing. A New York Times editorial on March 3, l999 spoke of the bombing in Iraq as a shift in military strategy toward toppling Sadaam Hussein. That was bombing in l999. In December, l998 the Times published an article, "Iraq is a Pediatrician's Hell; No Way to Stop the Dying." Major humanitarian organizations and "leftist" groups have been decrying the decimation of life in Iraq since it started.
As for economic sanctions, hundreds of innocents perish daily from malnutrition and lack of medicine. The death toll of children is about 4,000 per month as a direct result of U.S.-led sanctions. Many deaths are from curable diseases that could have been prevented with the proper medicine. More than a million Iraqis have died since l99l. The U.S. blaims it on Hussein. Might as well blame it on the rain, Georgie...of bombs.
Shall I frame the question? Should we, the biggest and most brutal bully on the global beach, escalate a war on a people upon whom we are already commiting genocide? And how can we disarm an enemy of weapons of mass destruction (Sadaam) when we have no real proof that he is armed. In fact Bush's own CIA contradicted his public statement that Iraq could be ready to strike with WMD in six months. Bush's own people (the international energy folks) have denied issuing a report that Bush made up to try to give his audience a "smoking gun" to justify his warmongering.
So we are not going to "start" a war with Iraq. But what has started is the daily barrage of wolf tickets against Sadaam and his little country sold from a draft dodger, a coward, and a theif. (But little Baby Bush is at least smart enough to exempt the U.S. from the scrutiny of an international court for war crimes, and shield the executive office from review, oversight, and congressional inquiry.) What has started is a lockdown on any semblance of the truth and the purveyors of it about this war. What has started is a bold chess move to position the oil barons to open a corridor to the vast oil reserves around the Caspian Sea by gaining a foothold in Iraq, a country that is second in the production of oil in the world. What has started is a propaganda machine to prepare the world for military adventures to feed the coffers of the military industrial complex indefinitely. What has started is a public relations campaign through a complicit media that makes people feel comfortable about the words "imperial", "unilateral", and "aggression."
Imperial Bush with his Republican mandate is the "manifest destiny" kid. Of course "manifest destiny" is no longer PC since the genocide of Columbus's discoverees. But the word "Imperial" is in like flint. Just "manifest destiny" all dressed up and ready to go. And just when I was beginning to think the emperor had no clothes.
But let us not lay blame in the "Oil" Office for the devastation of the Iraqi people. It's just business as usual for them. It is us, the American people, who can ill afford to duck responsibility and hide behind our fear. Four thousand children a month. I can't go gently into the good night with that on my conscience. I can't slink behind the democrats and wait for them to get an agenda (much less a clue.)
The debate about this war has not yet begun, and it ain't over until it's over...or until the fat lady sings. Whichever comes first. Well let me tell you, fat Lady Liberty has a lot to sing about.
--Auset--