Once in a while we hear strong words against Iran and the so
called threat of " Iranian nuclear capability". While the nuclear
arsenal is a explicit uncontested right for certain members of the
international community, the potential thought of such capability for others such as Iran, constitutes an outright threat. Now, for several years, in spite
of the lack of any evidence, the IAEA refrains from clearing the Iranian
dossier on the pretext that Iranians have to somehow convince the international
community (ie Western Powers) that they do not have a military agenda for their
nuclear program. Western powers on the other hand, have set
on a course of paralyzing sanctions against the nation, purportedly to
convince Iran to stop its nuclear activity. But as many analysts believe,
sanctions are devised in order to weaken the economy and break the
nation's resilience in face of decades of pressures against the Islamic
revolution and ultimately facilitate the regime change that American neocons
have aspired for so long. In spite of hardships and heavy criticism against the
government, the Iranians feel that pressures against the peaceful nuclear
program are unjustified. Iranians are actually facing two fronts. They are
facing an internal struggle for reform on one hand and an unjust and arrogant
Western entity on the other.
Even as American militarism has
faced heavy casualties and defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing massive
humanitarian disasters and the deaths of millions of civilians during the past
decade, the world sees no sign of relent or repent .
The National
Catholic Reporter makes a point of this fact:” Many believed then, and the world knows
now, that the purported government justification for bombing and occupying Iraq
were based on lies and deceit. Yet 10 years later, no senior government or
military leader who ordered, directed and carried out this blatantly immoral
and illegal invasion and occupation has been held accountable. No apology has
been made, no public act of repentance or contrition has ever been offered by
any U.S. official for the unspeakable war crimes committed. The use of white
phosphorus anti-personnel weapons in a massacre in Fallujah in 2004 and the
torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib are just two cases in point.”
While The
Lancet reported over 600,000 civilian casualties in 2006 the numbers are
known to be much higher now 7 years later.
On the tenth anniversary of
the US occupation of Iraq there were many reports about the consequences and
aftermath of this event for the people of Iraq and for the region. Joseph
Palermo did an interesting article in the Huffington Post. He reminds us of some of the dreadful facts of this tragic decision:
"Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting (FAIR) surveyed the nightly news during the first three weeks of
the invasion in March and April 2003 and found that on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN,
and Fox, pro-war U.S. sources outnumbered antiwar sources by 25 to one. With a
25 to 1 ratio of warmongers versus critical voices on the nation's dominant
news shows it's no surprise that people came to believe the Bush
administration's hype about WMDs. These news sources also assiduously avoided
giving much coverage to the massive anti-war demonstrations that took place
across the United States in the lead up to the war, including the 15 million
strong global rally for peace on February 15, 2003."
Have the American media learned their lessons? Do they have the independence to resist a new scenario? Or
are they preparing for a similar scenario against Iran, now even more sophisticated with the aid of others like Hollywood ( Argo's anti Iran propaganda).
The Huffington Post article
goes on :”We also hear the "argument" that Saddam Hussein was such
a bad guy we had no choice but to invade and occupy Iraq, kill over 100,000
Iraqi civilians, and send over 4,400 American soldiers to their deaths. But at
the time the world had plenty of human rights violators, including many, like
Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, who were for decades considered faithful U.S. allies.
The warmongers ten years ago brushed off the observation that the United States
armed and aided Saddam Hussein's government throughout the 1980s in his war of
aggression against Iran, which was the period when he committed some his most
heinous acts. (Remember the 1983 footage of Donald Rumsfeld warmly shaking the
tyrant's hand?) To this day, on occasion, we hear Condi Rice or Ari Fleischer
or some other defender citing the litany of villainy that Saddam Hussein was
responsible for as an ex post facto justification for Bush's war of aggression
against Iraq.”
Does it ever pass the mind
of the warmongers that contemporary history gives Iranians the justification they need in their resistance
against American hegemony in the region and against their bullying of the Islamic Republic.
Tony Blair told BBC World a few days ago that they had considered Saddam to be a
threat to world peace when they attacked Iraq, he had told told the world that
he had weapons of mass destruction, a familiar reasoning that we hear today
about Iran.
The consequences of the war in
Iraq go beyond loss of life and physical destruction. Scott Bates, President
of Center for National Policy, a Washington think tank, said there is a
geopolitical price to pay for the decision to invade Iraq.Pointing to the “law
of unintended consequences,” Bates said that US credibility and influence were
tarnished following the attack on Iraq, while Iran’s clout has increased.
America is still living with the consequences of this, 10 years later: “Our
unipolar moment ended when we went into Baghdad, but we didn’t know it,” Bates
said.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson,
who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell at the time of
the invasion, said that Iraq has changed the way the world sees the US. “Our
rhetoric is high and lofty and we talk about human rights and human dignity and
freedom and democracy, and then what do we do? We mount a war of aggression on
Iraq, kill a couple hundred thousand people, and mess it up majorly, including
the region,” Wilkerson told RT in an
interview.
When asked if the individuals
who made the decision to invade Iraq, despite widespread global protest, should
be held responsible, Wilkerson said that “history will hold them responsible,”
emphasizing that there is “no accountability for people who make grievous
errors in high office in the United States.”
Washington’s tendency to
forget its past mistakes could prove disastrous, with new war talk brewing on
Capitol Hill. The American people need to be
vigilant about the decisions of their government. If they believe that they are
constituents of a democracy then they will be held accountable one day for the
actions of their government and for the decisions that have affected the lives
of millions and has taken people to the verge of death and devastation in many
parts of the world. When the American people elected Obama in 2008, it seemed that they were disillusioned with the Bush era and opposed American
militarism, in 2012 it seemed that they still opposed interventionism. Although, he has not met their expectations, but many still expect and hope that Mr. Obama and the more reasonable politicians in the Capitol Hill prevent any new
adventurism in the Middle East.
