Iraq: Anglo-American war puts different gods at odds with each other

Geneva, 2 Apr (Chakravarthi Raghavan) - As the Bush-Blair invasion and war of aggression in Iraq ends its second week, with British forces waiting (laying siege?) outside Basra still under the full control of Saddam Hussein loyalists (according to the Washington Post’s ‘embedded’ correspondent), and the US forces battling some Republican Guard units 50-100 kms from the approaches to Baghdad, the war seems nowhere near an end.

The sudden end of the opposition from the Iraqi army and the republican guards, Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi people everywhere could still come about quickly; but the ‘occupation’, ‘reconstruction’ and relief and rehabilitation is going to take a long time, and will absorb a great deal of aid and humanitarian relief budgets.

It may be easy to project world economic growth and prospects, factoring in only the price of oil and its supplies, but the world economy is subject now to so many variables, that it will be foolhardy to predict or project anything.

While everyone’s mind, across the world, is gripped by the impending tragedy and catastrophe for the Iraqi people (long suffering under UN sanctions), and are feeling helpless, in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Commission, is forced to consider the humanitarian aspects, only under item 9 on its agenda, ‘questions of violations anywhere in the world,’ a catch-all item with special rapporteurs giving their country reports and the views of members on them.

In terms of current market theories, each member (or the governments that give instructions to the representatives) has acted rationally, weighing all pros and cons, in voting for a focussed discussion on the issue, or against (they were a majority) or abstain. But collectively, the outcome is a minus.

As for the Bush-Blair war, Bush originally launched it (on 12 September 2001)as a war against extreme Islamic elements and Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Having failed to dredge up any evidence of the links between that network and Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the invasion by US and British forces of Iraq has now been launched, after virtually tearing up the UN charter, to disarm Saddam Hussein and eliminate his ‘weapons of mass destruction.’

In such a fight, George W.Bush (and Tony Blair) have cloaked themselves as knights in white shining armour - trying to bring rationality, appeals to reason (and not religious hatred), and democracy and good governance to the oppressed in Iraq (and then to Syria, Iran and North Korea) according to the agenda set out for the American 21^st century by the US neo-conservatives.

The Anglo-American propaganda machine has long ago surpassed the Nazi wartime Goebel’s one. And the forgeries and false statements about the weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s guilt have been such that anything the invading forces might produce as evidence would strain credulity.

At the end of the second week, the war, with all the ‘precision bombing’ and targeting (and at least seven cruise missiles straying off their lanes apparently and falling in Saudi Arabia and Turkey), the death and injuries have been mostly to the civilian population and destruction of buildings and towns and cities.

The US and British media, with some exceptions, have wrapped the flag of patriotism around themselves in their propaganda campaigns - where fact and fiction have become difficult to separate.

And public opinion polls in both countries are being cited for the view that though there is dissent over whether the war should have been launched without UN sanctions, people want to conclude the war with success and victory, and least casualties to their soldiers.

But those citing popular support would do well to refer back to the Nuremberg trials (all now published), and the testimony of Hitler’s Reich-Marshall, Herman Goering there, who said: “Naturally the common people don’t want war; but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy.  All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

The British and American media, have all gleefully seized the message from President Saddam Hussain, read on Iraqi television Tuesday, to raise doubts whether he is alive at all (hoping this will result in ‘complete surrender’ and no further US-British casualties), and projecting the view that despite the setbacks to US initial thrust, Baghdad would soon be occupied.

A few British and American media persons have pointed out that at a time when the US CIA is hardput to pinpoint where he is in Baghdad, Saddam Hussain would have been pretty stupid to appear on live tv, and thus enable the Pentagon and the CIA intelligence to pick up his tracks.

The western media have also picked on Saddam appeal for jihad, to argue that at heart the ‘secularist’ is a an Islamic terrorist with links to the Bin Laden network.

However, the appeals to religion from the ‘allies’ have not been less.

Immediately after 11 September, Bush spoke of his ‘crusade’ against Bin Laden, but the reactions persuaded his script writers (or are they minders?) not to use that word. But now it has become a ‘divine mission’ for Bush.

A little noticed report from Berlin, by the German newsagency DPA, has the President of Germany, Mr. Johannes Rau, as bluntly criticising George W. Bush, for claiming “God’s blessing in the war in Iraq.”

Mr. Rau told a German TV interviewer that the American leader was under an immense misunderstanding when he claimed a “divine mission.”

A leading lay figure in the Rheinland Evangelical Church and son of a revivalist preacher, Mr. Rau told the German TV interviewer: “This is an utterly one-sided message by George Bush.”

“I don’t believe,” he added, “one nation receives a divine instruction to liberate another nation. There is no passage in the Bible that had ever called for crusades.”

The German President said, Mr. Bush’s views are not binding on Christians, contrasting Bush’s views to the strictly anti-war stance of Pope John Paul II.  “It is rather the Pope who speaks with the voice of the whole of humanity....  There are situations in which war is unavoidable, but this was not the case in Iraq,” Rau said.

In the column of 31 March, titled ‘the daily outrage,’ by Matt Bivens in The Nation (weekly) in Washington DC, (www.thenation.com) is this report, about how even the most personal of all subjects, a man (or woman’s) prayer before going into battle, has been appropriated by the Bush administration.

Bivens says that according to ‘A Christian’s Duty in Time of War’, a pamphlet created by In Touch Ministries, an evangelical group in the US, and given out to thousands of US Marines in Iraq, with a tear-out section to be filled by the Marines and sent along to the White House, the Marines are to “pledge to pray every day for George W. Bush.”

The pledge according to the column, says: “I have committed to pray for you, your family and your staff.” The evangelical group that has created this pamphlet says in it, “We may not all be in the military. But we are all engaged in warfare.... spiritual warfare.”

The prayer for Tuesday, the column quotes from the pamphlet, is “Pray that the President and his advisors will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics” which Biven translates as: “pray that, even if all agree this war is a horrific catastrophe, even if Congress leaps to its feet in anger and despair, even if millions of Americans pour into the streets begging to bring you home .... even then, pray that the president will wave aside his critics and order you forward.”

The prayer for Wednesday is “pray that the President and his advisers will be safe, healthy, well-rested and free from fear.” Friday’s prayer? “Pray that the president and his advisers will be safe, healthy, well-rested and free from fear.” It also cites, Romans 13:1, “Every person is to be in subjugation to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”

Other evangelical groups (to whom Islam is an evil religion) are also said to be waiting in Jordan, to go into Iraq preaching their version of Christianity and providing humanitarian aid to the population.

The agnostics and rationalists (in theory all market based economics is based on rationality) of this world may wonder what, if the different gods of the different faiths, if they are there, and get together, might think of these prayers being addressed to them from their ‘followers’ on this planet.

At the World Trade Organization down the hill from the Palais des Nations (the UN complex), the issue does not seem to figure - or at least that is what the chairman of the Special Sessions on Agriculture (Mr. Stuart Harbinson, who is also the chef de cabinet of the WTO Director-General) told a press briefing on Monday night, in answer to a question, that he did not think the “international security situation is having any effect on the agriculture negotiations.”

Senior capital-based officials of the trade establishments of the member countries are in Geneva this week, for meetings (informal on 2 April and formal on 4 April) of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), chaired by Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, to assess the 17 months of talks on the Doha negotiations. Senior capital based officials also met Tuesday night over dinner hosted by the US deputy trade representative, Mr. Peter Allegier.

At the informal meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee Wednesday, where senior capital-based officials also set out their ‘wish-lists’ to enable the Doha round of talks to be concluded and in time, and no one favoured any extension of the talks, the Iraq invasion and its effects did not figure at all, trade officials said, explaining, “this is something beyond our control.”

With one more deadline, this time on agriculture modalities missed, (three have already been missed on implementation, special and differential treatment issues relating to the UR agreements, and the issue of implementing the Doha ministerial promises and mandate of ensuring access to medicines for those countries not having the capacity to produce them), the trade talks are acknowledged even by the cheer leaders in the financial media to be in deep crisis.

The WTO Director-General, Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, who took over last September (and must demit his office in August 2005), with an unmanageable trade agenda of negotiations that his predecessor (Mr. Mike Moore) and Supachai’s present chef de cabinet Stuart Harbinson and the Qatari government got launched, by managing or manipulating the processes at Doha, is now facing the impossible task of getting the membership to complete the agenda successfully over the next 21 months.

While privately, and for quite some time, he has been expressing his concerns and worries, publicly he has been insisting that the negotiations should not be stretched, but must be completed by the 1 January 2005 deadline, set at Doha in November 2001.

He has acknowledged the setbacks in the failure to settle the modalities on agriculture, and that the Cancun 5^th ministerial meeting’s agenda would now be complicated by the missed agriculture deadline “and three other important deadlines” (which in his column in the International Herald Tribune, he does not identify, nor in his prepared statement to the informal TNC), but that ministers “must prepare themselves for the official political decisions that will confront them.”

Many non-governmental groups, well-meaning and promoting the development and interests of the poor in the developing world, are supportive of the stands of developing countries against the rich industrialized world in the negotiations, (and in the process or in logic for its moving forward) and demanding the dismantling of protection in Europe and the US in agriculture and in other areas.

However, in the process, as in the Uruguay Round in 1992-1993, everyone will be demanding the US and EC to make up their differences and complete the round. And the two will come up with a deal of their own, and ask others to accept it and complete the talks by 1 January 2005, and the developing world may be losers again.

And on the security and strategic fronts everyone is hoping not to provoke the USA, and trying to adopt a low profile.

But collectively, all these may lead to a situation, that might prove worse.  For, if Mr. Bush and the US could tear up the Charter because it does not suit them, what would a WTO agreement or agreements avail, if the outcome at any time does not suit them? – SUNS5317

[c] 2003, SUNS - All rights reserved. May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or service without specific permission from SUNS. This limitation includes incorporation into a database, distribution via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists, print media or broadcast. For information about reproduction or multi-user subscriptions please contact: sunstwn@bluewin.ch