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THE ROVING EYE
The inevitable war
By Pepe Escobar
PARIS - Bush says 'Let's do it.' The Pentagon says 'Let's do it.' National Security Agency types say 'Let's do it.' Cole Porter says 'Let's do it. Let's fall in love.'
The current American diplomatic turbo-offensive in the Middle East is a marvel: an exercise in how to coordinate two simultaneous missions - make peace (Anthony Zinni) and make war (Dick Cheney) - and at the same time demonstrate that there's no link between Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy. To say the least, this is - in the words of a top negoatiator in Brussels - 'an insult to the intelligence'.
US Vice President Cheney insists to all his interlocutors that Iraq's fabled weapons of mass destruction must be dismantled before Saddam Hussein forms an alliance with al-Qaeda. You don't need to be the King of Jordan or the Emir of Qatar to know that such an alliance is extremely far-fetched.
Cheney's tour has only one aim: to muster Arab support for an attack on Iraq. It all has to do with the Bush family's pathological obsession with Saddam Hussein, and involves practically the same players, Cheney included. Zinni's tour had to have outside help - which happened in the form of a carefully timed, US-framed United Nations resolution proclaiming the Palestinians' right to have their own state.
Palestinians themselves are not exactly encouraged by lofty declarations about a virtual state: the voice from the street in occupied Ramallah, for instance, is: We want the tanks out, we want the end of the occupation. Saeb Erakat, the top Palestinian negoatiator, says it's 'illogical to talk about a ceasefire while Israel has 20,000 soldiers and 150 tanks in the center of Ramallah'.
The Palestinian people took the UN resolution for what it is: words, words, words. There is absolutely no reference to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The original resolution was from Syria - and it specifically mentioned Israel as an 'occupying power', a truth that every stone around al-Aqsa Mosque is aware of. There is no mention of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. There is no mention of East Jerusalem as Palestine's capital. There is no mention of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Syria abstained from the final vote. Israel called the resolution 'balanced': no wonder, because the final text proposed by the US was previously 'approved' by Israel.
The now 35-year-old UN Resolution 242 defines what needs to be done in terms of a political solution - much more so than the bland brand-new Security Council resolution. The recent proposal by Saudi Prince Abdullah - Israel back to 1967 borders in exchange for normalization of relations with the Arab world - plays around a softer version of nothing else than Resolution 242.
Meanwhile - in a development that obviously has nothing to do with the Middle East, as they would say - rabid dogs in Washington have nothing on their minds other than to nuke Baghdad. This is a direct consequence of the fact that the US has no strategy for the Middle East. Sending Zinni as an errand boy once in a while is nothing but a minor diplomatic initiative. Baghdad is accused of possessing or trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction; but the US would never admit that Israel itself is loaded with chemical, biological and atomic weapons, and it's been violating UN resolutions for more than three decades now. And it gets paid for it, too: US$3 billion from Washington, annually, like clockwork.
At the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, any researcher can tell that the situation in the Arab world now is completely different from what it was in post-Gulf War 1991. The US pro-Israeli bias is viewed in the Arab world as an unbearable injustice - and compassion toward the Iraqi population is widespread.
Europe continues to insist on a more civilized approach toward Iraq. General Michel Roquejeoffre, formerly the commander of the French forces in the Gulf War, says all diplomatic avenues must be tested before one starts contemplating war against Iraq. The general wonders whether 'the best way to end the suffering of the Iraqi people would not be to run the risk of a priori suspending the embargo against Iraq'. But selling that to Washington is hard - especially when Iraq is already listed for all the world to see in the 'axis of evil'.
Europe, meanwhile, is also trying to show the intellectually handicapped Bush administration that it's possible to rally behind a war against terrorism and at the same time consider very delicate nuances in relations with the Arab-Muslim world.
Take the example of Iran - one-third of the axis of evil. This past week, Iranian President Muhamad Khatami was given the red-carpet treatment in Vienna. Austria was the first European country to receive him after Bush's 'axis of evil' speech. Khatami - as a man who had proposed, before the end of the millennium, a 'dialogue among civilizations' - was not bitter: he left the door open to resume dialogue with America. 'The key is in the hand of the Americans,' he told an Austrian newspaper.
Javier Solana, the European foreign-policy chief, also made a point of going to Vienna specifically to offer a cooperation agreement between the European Union and Iran, as long as Iran confirms its 'constructive engagement' in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. Needless to say, Europe is totally behind Khatami's reformist movement in Iran.
Bush and Washington hawks threw Iran and Iraq into the same bag. But while dialogue with Iran is a possibility - and the US administration might even catch up with Europe's constructive approach - as far as Iraq is concerned, catastrophe is inevitable.
A former director of Gulf Affairs in the US National Security Council made the case in Foreign Affairs magazine for an invasion of Iraq and the elimination of the present regime. As far as American unilateralism is concerned, this article is the icing on the cake. It certainly reflects the 'intellectual' mood in Washington.
The author in question favors the embargo, and criticizes 'ludicrous Iraqi propaganda about how the economic sanctions are responsible for the deaths of more than a million people since 1991'. Since 1991, the fact - verified by UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - is that one Iraqi child dies every six minutes, a victim of sanctions or bombing. The author considers it normal that Iraq, a sovereign country, has no right to have its own fiber-optic communication network, so the key nodes have been destroyed by US strikes. Iraqi society is being condemned to irreversible technological underdevelopment.
The author says an Afghan-style campaign won't work in Iraq (in fact it did not work in Afghanistan either: the war goes on). So he suggests a kind of Gulf War replay. The magic formula? Invasion: 'It would not cost much more while making success a near certainty.' This way, Saddam Hussein would not threaten the world's supply of oil again, the US would return to its pre-Gulf War presence, and the US would rebuild Iraq. At least one of these propositions is a fallacy.
To accomplish all these marvels, the US needs no support from anybody except Kuwait. The author says it would be 'much easier' if the Saudis helped - but that's unlikely. The author also assumes that the emirates of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Jordan would follow the US - but Jordan's King Abdullah would not sanction such adventurism. The author says that Egypt and Turkey are in the bag: Egypt might be, if offered some financial carrots, but certainly not Turkey, which is worried about the Kurdish problem. France, Russia and China would 'object strongly to the whole concept', but 'they could not stop a US invasion'.
So the US needs only to 'smash Iraq's ground forces with a single corps composed of two heavy divisions and an armored cavalry regiment'. 'Some light infantry' may be needed, as well as 'airmobile forces to seize Iraq's oil fields'. The force should have 'between 200,000 and 300,000 people' - that's what Pentagon generals estimate, anyway: between four and six divisions for the invasion, and 700 to 1,000 aircraft for the air campaign. Building up this force would take 'three to five months'.
So easy. And from now on, semi-official: Iraq will certainly be atacked before October. But wait! Iraqis could be so frightened by the massive American build-up there might be a coup d'etat to topple Saddam Hussein. Bingo! Great savings! No need for an invasion!
What do do after that? So simple. The US 'gets to decide the composition and form of a future Iraqi government'. The Foreign Affairs author cannot but be puzzled by the 'bewildering array of local and foreign interests involved'. So the best thing is to turn the whole hot potato over to the UN, thus 'spreading some responsibility for the outcome'. But the US would have to be 'prepared to contribute several billion dollars per year for as much as a decade' to rebuild Iraq. Not really: the fact is the European Union would be asked to pay the bill, according to the current motto, 'US bombs, UN feeds, EU funds'.
The message then is clear: invade and conquer before October. The reason, admits the author, has 'little or nothing to do with Iraq's connection to terrorism'. In fact, the whole operation will follow only two dicta: 'I suspect you, therefore you're guilty,' coupled with 'I bomb, therefore I control.' This is what American foreign policy is all about at the beginning of the 21st century. How civilized.
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