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November 1998 
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D O   N O T   B O M B   I R A Q

A Public Statement from the COMMITTEE ON THE MIDDLE EAST

For more information see: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/iraqx.htm

The following is a statement from the Committee On the Middle East (COME) concerning the American threats to bomb Iraq. We urge you to circulate it as much as possible. The International Advisory Committee of COME, including Middle East experts and professors throughout the world, is listed at the end. Please join with us and support our efforts at this critical time. To reach COME: Phone: 202 362-5266 Fax: 202 362-6965 Email: COME@USA.NET Web: http://WWW.MiddleEast.org/come.htm

D O   N O T   B O M B   I R A Q

While the United States clearly has the military power to further devastate and prostrate Iraq, we strongly believe that the course the U.S. has chosen is not only grossly unjust, but also exceedingly hypocritical and duplicitous. We further believe that though the U.S. may be able to pursue its imperial policies without substantial opposition in the short term, the policies being pursued today, especially the new and massive military assault being prepared against Iraq, are likely to have tremendously negative historical ramifications.

As Middle East experts and scholars - many with close and personal ties to this long troubled and misunderstood region - we feel a political, a moral, and a historical responsibility to speak up in clear opposition at this critical time.

Origins of Today's Imbroglio:

Throughout this century Western countries, primarily the United States and Great Britain, have continually interfered in and manipulated events in the Middle East. The origins of the Iraq/Kuwait conflict can be found in the unilateral British decision during the early years of this century to essentially cut off a piece of Iraq to suit British Empire desires of that now faded era.

Rather than agreeing to Arab self-determination at the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Western nations conspired to divide the Arab world into a number of artificial and barely viable entities; to install Arab "client regimes" throughout the region, to make these regimes dependent on Western economic and military power for survival; and then to impose an ongoing series of economic, cultural, and political arrangements seriously detrimental to the people of the area. This is the historical legacy that we live with today.

Throughout the 1930s and the 1940s the West further manipulated theaffairs of the Middle East in order to control the resources of theregion and then to create a Jewish homeland in an area long consideredcentral to Arab nationalism and Muslim concerns. Playing off one regime against the other and one geopolitical interest against another became a major preoccupation for Western politicians and their closely associated business interests.

Following World War II:

After World War II, and from these policy origins, the United Statesbecame the main Western power in the region, supplanting the key rolesformerly played by Britain and France. In the 1960s Gamel Abdel Nasserwas the target of Western condemnation for his attempt to reintegratethe Arab world and to pursue independent "non-aligned" policies. By the1970s the CIA had established close working relationships with key Arabclient regimes from Morocco and Jordan to Saudi Arabia and Iran -regimes that even then were among the most repressive and undemocratic in the world - in order to further American domination and to secure anever-growing supply of inexpensive oil and the resultant flow ofpetrodollars.

By the late 1970s the counter-reaction of the Iranian revolution was met with a Western build-up of the very same Iraqi regime that is socondemned today in a vain attempt to use Iraq to crush the new Iranianregime. The result was millions of deaths coming on top of theterrible devastation of Lebanon, itself a country that had been severedfrom Greater Syria by Western intrigues, as had been the area ofsouthern Syria, then known as Palestine. Additionally the Israelis were given the green light to invade Lebanon, further devastate thePalestinians, and install a puppet Lebanese government - an attemptwhich failed leading to an American and Israeli retreat but ongoingmilitarism to this day. Meanwhile, throughout all these years Western manipulation of oil supplies and pricing, coupled with arms sales policies, often seriously exacerbated tensions between countries in the region leading to the events of this decade.

The Gulf Conflict:

It was precisely such American manipulations and intrigues that led to the Gulf War in 1990. Indeed, we would be remiss if we did not notethat there is already much historical evidence that the U.S. actuallymaneuvered Iraq into the invasion of Kuwait, repeatedly suggesting toIraq that it would become the pivotal military state of the area in coordination with the U.S. Whether true or not the U.S. subsequently did everything in its power to prevent a peaceful resolution of the conflict and for the first time intervened with massive and overwhelming military force in the region creating today's dangerously unstable quagmire.

The initially stated American goal was only to protect Saudi Arabia. Then after the unprecedented military build-up the goal became to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Then the goal evolved to toppling the Iraqigovernment. And from there the Americans began to impose various limits on Iraqi sovereignty; took over much of Iraq air space; sent the CIA to repeatedly attempt to topple the Iraqi government; and placed anear-total embargo on Iraq that many - including a former Attorney General of the United States - have termed near-genocidal. The overall result has been the subjugation and impoverishment of Iraq and the actual death of approximately 5% of the Iraqis as the direct result of American sanctions, plus the reallocation of oil quotes and petrodollars to American client-states.

With the Clinton Administration, the U.S. began to insist on the "dual containment" of both Iraq and Iran - both countries which just a few years ago the U.S. was working very closely with and providing considerable arms to.

With few in the press able to remember from one year to the next, or to connect one historic event with another, somehow Washington has come to insist on Iraqi disarmament and Iranian strangulation. Furthermore, these policies are being pursued even while Israel and key Arab client states are receiving American weapons in ever larger amounts, with Israel's weapons of mass destruction aking her forces 7 to 8 times stronger than all Arab armies combined.

Furthermore still, the U.S. and Israeli strategic alliance has never been closer, the U.S. has repeatedly helped Israel defy the will of the international community and the United Nations, and the U.S. continues to champion a disingenuous Israeli "peace process" which in reality on the ground continues to dispossess the Palestinians and to corral them onto reservations in their own country!

The Future:

In a future statement we will move on to the crucial subject of whatalternative policies the United States should be pursuing. But at thiscritical moment we are compelled to come forward and urgently condemnthe policies now being pursued by the United States and regional allyIsrael. We call for an immediate cessation of the economic embargo against Iraq, an end to U.S.-imposed restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty and airspace, and most of all immediately suspension of all plans to attack Iraq using the overwhelming technological and militaryinstruments available to the U.S.

If the U.S. continues to pursue its current policies then we conclude and predict it will not be unreasonable for many in the world to brand the U.S. itself as a arrogant and imperialist state, and if that becomes the historical paradigm it will be both understandable and justifiable if others pursue whatever means are available to them to oppose American domination and militarism. Such developments couldquite possibly lead to still more decades of conflict, warfare, and terrorism throughout the region and beyond.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

COME Advisory Committee: Arab Abdel-Hadi - Cairo; Professor NahlaAbdo - Carleton University (Ottawa); Professor Elmoiz Abunura -University of North Carolina (Ashville); Professor Jane Adas - RutgersUniversity (NJ); Oroub Alabed - World Food Program (Amman); ProfessorFaris Albermani - University of Queensland (Australia); Professor Jabbar Alwan, DePaul University (Chicago); Professor Alex Alland, Columbia University (New York); Professor Abbas Alnasrawi - University of Vermont (Burlington); Professor Michael Astour - University of Southern Illinois; Virginia Baron - Guilford, CT.; Professor Mohammed Benayoune - Sultan Qaboos University (Oman); Professor Charles Black - Emeritus Yale University Law School; Professor Francis O. Boyle, University of Illinois Law School (Champlain); Mark Bruzonsky - COME Chairperson (Washington); Linda Brayer - Ex. Dir., Society of St. Ives (Jerusalem); Professor Noam Chomsky - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge); Ramsey Clark - Former U.S. Attorney General (New York); Professor Frank Cohen - SUNY, Binghamton; John Cooley - Author, Cyprus; Professor Mustafah Dhada - School of International Affairs, Clark Atlanta University; Zuhair Dibaja - Research Fellow, University of Helsinki; Professor Mohamed El-Hodiri - University of Kansas; Professor Richard Falk - Princeton University; Professor Ali Ahmed Farghaly - University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); Professor Ali Fatemi - American University (Paris); Michai Freeman - Berkeley; Professor S.M. Ghazanfar - University of Idaho (Chair, Economics Dept); Professor Kathrn Green - California State University (San Bernadino); Nader Hashemi - Ottawa, Canada; Professor M. Hassouna - Georgia; Professor Clement Henry - University of Texas (Austin); Professor Herbert Hill - University of Wisconsin (Madison); Professor Asaf Hussein - U.K.; Yudit Ilany - Jerusalem; Professor George Irani - Lebanese American University (Beirut); Tahir Jaffer - Nairobi, Kenya; David Jones - Editor, New Dawn Magazine, Australia; Professor Elie Katz - Sonoma State University, CA; Professor George Kent - University of Hawaii; Professor Ted Keller - San Francisco State University, Emeritus; John F. Kennedy - Attorney at Law, Washington; Samaneh Khader - Graduate Student in Theology, University of Helsinki; Professor Ebrahim Khoda - University of Western Australia; Guida Leicester, San Francisco; Jeremy Levin - Former CNN Beirut Bureau Chief (Portland); Professor Seymour Melman - Columbia University (NewYork); Dr. Avi Melzer - Frankfurt; Professor Alan Meyers - BostonUniversity; Professor Michael Mills - Vista College (Berkeley, CA);Kamram Mofrad - Idaho; Shahab Mushtaq - Knox College; Professor MinervaNasser-Eddine - University of Adelaide (Australia); Professor PeterPellett - University of Massachussetts (Amherst); Professor Max Pepper,M.D. - University of Massachusetts (Amherst); Professor Ruud Peters -Universiteit van Amsterdam; Professor Glenn Perry - Indiana StateUniversity; Professor Tanya Reinhart - Tel Aviv University; ProfessorShalom Raz - Technion (Haifa); Professor Knut Rognes - Stavanger College (Norway); Professor Masud Salimian - Morgan State University(Baltimore); Professor Mohamed Salmassi - University of Massachusetts;Qais Saleh - Graduate Student, International University (Japan); AliSaidi - J.D. candidate in international law (Berkeley, CA); Dr. EyadSarraj - Gaza, Occupied Palestine; Henry Schwarzschild - New York(original co-founder - deceased); Professor Herbert Schiller -University of California (San Diego); Peter Shaw-Smith - Journalist,London; David Shomar - New York; Dr. Manjra Shuaib - CapeTown (SouthAfrica); Robert Silverman - Montreal; Professor J. David Singer - University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); Professor Majid Tehranian - Director Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy (University of Hawaii); Dr. Marlyn Tadros - Deputy Director, Legal Research and Resource Center for Human Rights (Cairo); Professor John Williams -College of William and Mary; Ismail Zayid, M.D. - Dalhousi University (Canada).

The Committee On The Middle East - COME
Phone: 202 362-5266 - Fax: 202 362-6965
Email: COME@USA.NET

 


 

 

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