YOU JUST
CAN'T BELIEVE THE AMERICANS
.
SANCTIONS
AGAINST IRAQ SHOULD HAVE BEEN LIFTED LONG AGO!
MER - Washington - 7/7/98
Just listen to this guy, Ambassador
Bill Richardson, as he twists and turns his hypocritical path at the United
Nations these days.
"All I'm saying is we wish that [senior
aides to Secretary-General Kofi Annan] were as resolute and strong as the
U.N. weapons inspectors, and as strong as their boss is... If they do that,
then we won't have problems"
Richardson proclaims to diplomatically
threaten the senior U.N. leadership after published reports that practically
without exception they all oppose continuing sanctions against Iraq and
are all pressuring their boss, Kofi Annan, to stop U.N. involvement in
the sanctions. In essence, though their phrasing is usually quite "diplomatic",
at least this time the highest ranks of the U.N. have had enough of fronting
for the Americans.
But then let's not forget who Kofi
Annan is and how he got his job in the first place. Annan is a career U.N.-civil
servant who over many decades has learned to continually bend in the political
wind at America's U.N. Then, a few years, ago, an African being needed,
Annan was pushed into the Secretary-General's chair by the Americans after
a rather brutal U.S. attack against former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
The entire rest of the world wanted Boutros-Ghali to stay put; but the
Americans essentially vetoed his second term. Though Boutros-Ghali had
bent over backwards to accommodate the Americans -- himself having a lengthy
history of collusion with American policies in the Middle East -- he had
not obeyed all orders without challenge and so he was told to get out and
make way.
George Bush told his Generals in January
1991 to stand down from the "Turkey Shoot" after 100 hours of murderous
warfare -- the American giant against the puny Iraqis. The American forces
were quite literally committing a massacre against the Iraqis,
Bush felt the world was watching in horror, and so the American President
told his military to bring it to a quick end.
Since that time American "sanctions"
policies, unprecedented in history, have killed more than a million Iraqis
-- mostly civilians, mostly children. Thousands more die each month; with
many more terribly suffering medically and economically in ways few Americans
could possibly understand or accept.
"We believe because they've been violating
chemical and biological initiatives ..that we'll be able to keep the sanctions
on," Richardson proclaims. "But we're going to be facing a threat on this...when
in the months ahead the Iraqis try to lift sanctions and try to weaken
some of the disarmament standards in the U.N. Security Council." It's "very
premature" to do that Ambassador Richardson insists.
What a crock of you know what!
Israeli military forces are even now
being considerably expanded, including new nuclear missile-carrying submarines;
and America continues to sell billions yearly in the most sophisticated
arms to the "friendly" Arab regimes. But when it comes to those who won't
bow down to American dictate the situation is turned upside down and its
"very premature" to stop the slaughter!
The Americans continue to think they
can indefinitely play the same games of yesteryear. In decades past the
Americans put the Shah of Iran on his throne, kept King Hussein and the
al-Saud dynasty on theirs, restored the al-Sabah family to Kuwait, and
nurtured Israel into regional American-surrogate strongman.
The U.S. has constantly and continually
meddled throughout the region with untold covert and militaristic operations.
But now the whole facade of "client regimes," "dual containment", nuclear
"non-proliferation", and disengenuous "Peace Process", is coming unraveled
as a wave of populist, nationalist, and Islamic sentiments begin to sweep
across the entire region.
It took decades for pressures to build
in Iran leading to the anti-American revolution of 1979; the single most
significant development in the region since World War II. It may
take still more decades for the pressures building today to bring about
further revolutionary changes in the region. But one thing for sure, American
duplicity, hypocrisy, brutality, and chicanery, are not going unfelt or
unnoticed.
