Heading toward disaster: Congress back war plans
Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan 2002
A version of this article appeared in War Times, October/November 2002, p. 1.
by
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Despite bullying
and bribery, George Bush cannot find much support for his war on Iraq.
Bush went to the
United Nations to sell the war as an international effort, but other countries
saw his speech as an ultimatum either
obey or risk "irrelevancy," as the U.S. plays judge, jury and
executioner for the world.
France and Russia,
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, are resisting war
despite the administration's effort to buy them off with promises of a (small)
share of postwar oil concessions in Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair
supports Bush, but the people are a different matter. Nearly 400,000 marched
last month in the largest antiwar protest in Britain since the Vietnam era.
Meanwhile, U.S.
protesters are occupying congressional offices, and a majority of the American
people opposes war if the U.S. goes it alone. Nationwide antiwar protests are
planned for October 26.
Why is most of the
world rejecting Bush's war plans? One reason is the effect on the people of
Iraq.
INNOCENT
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
Bush claims that he
has no quarrel with Iraqi people, but it is they who will suffer the greatest
consequences of a war.
Despite talk about
precision bombing and minimizing civilian casualties, U.S. strategy guarantees
large-scale civilian death and suffering. Routine high-altitude bombing to
"soften up" an area before ground troops attack means routine
targeting mistakes, compounded by the use of indiscriminate weapons such as
cluster bombs. These tactics reduce U.S. military casualties at the expense of
innocent civilians.
In Afghanistan, at
least 3,000 civilians (as many who died on Sept. 11 attacks) died during the
bombing, with estimates of roughly 20,000 deaths from the disruption of
agriculture and food distribution.
Also expect the
U.S. to deliberately target civilian infrastructure -- electrical generation,
water and sewage treatment -- as it did during the 1991 Gulf War, according to
government documents. That means not only immediate but long-term civilian
casualties, as people without clean water or sanitation die from disease.
Thousands, possibly
tens of thousands, could die if Iraqi troops dig in around Baghdad, a city of
five million people, and the United States unleashes a bombing campaign against
them. In Afghanistan U.S. forces regularly bombed targets in crowded urban
areas. There is no reason to think Iraq would be different.
Opposition is also
mounting as it becomes clearer this will be a war of U.S. aggression, not a war
to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction as the administration
claims. Bush's plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq rest on shaky grounds. The
best evidence provided by previous UN inspectors indicates that weapons
inspections, terminated in late 1998 when the United States pulled inspectors
out, had achieved 95 percent disarmament.
Bush's
"preemption doctrine" -- the idea that the U.S. can arbitrarily and
unilaterally attack anytime it claims a threat -- undermines international law,
establishes the rule of brute force, and provides a justification for U.S.
attempts to control the Middle East, Central Asia, and anywhere else the Bush
administration sees fit.
PROFITS OVER
PEOPLE
And who will fight
these wars? Certainly not the sons and daughters of Bush's cronies.
Those who do the
fighting and dying will be the poor and people of color. The privileged will not
be fighting, but it does not mean they will not be dying.
An unprovoked attack on Iraq will almost certainly increase terrorism
aimed at the U.S., as networks like al-Qaeda tap the anger and resentment of the
Arab world against U.S. policies in the Middle East. The FBI and CIA now admit
that the war on Afghanistan increased the threat of terrorism, as predicted by
the antiwar movement.
This war will be
good for some -- weapons manufacturers and arms dealers, construction companies
that get contracts to rebuild a devastated society, and oil companies that win
the rights to exploit Iraqi oil. It will serve the tiny elite at the heart of
the U.S. empire by cementing control of oil and oil profits. For the rest of us,
it will be a disaster.
---------------
Robert Jensen, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas
at Austin, is the author of Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. He can
be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Rahul Mahajan, Green Party candidate
for governor of Texas, is the author of The
New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism. He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca.
Other articles are available at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/home.htm and
http://www.rahulmahajan.com. Both are members of the Nowar
Collective.
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