By the time you read these words, American bombs will almost certainly be raining down on more than 20-million largely defenceless Iraqis. Phase one of the United States’s generously publicised war strategy is to send 3 000 bombs and missiles against Iraq within hours of invading, to encourage the populace to rise up and topple their brutal overlord, Saddam Hussein. Saddam himself will be sitting pretty in a bombproof bunker.
As former US president Jimmy Carter so eloquently argues, this is an unjust war for many reasons. It has no international sanction. The United Nations is solely concerned with Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction; President George W Bush has no international authority to pursue regime change.
Because UN weapons inspections have been curtailed, the war is not one of last resort. As there is no proven threat to US security, and American efforts to link Saddam to September 11 have been unpersuasive, it is in no way proportional to any injury suffered. But most importantly, there is no reason for thinking a Pax Americana is desired by ordinary Iraqis or will improve their lot.
A crack doing the rounds is that post-war Iraq will be divided into two regions — leaded and unleaded. The country possesses 11% of the world’s oil and ranks second to Saudi Arabia in the size of its reserves. The Anglo-American oil giants are excluded from Iran and Iraq, which have signed oil contracts and production sharing agreements with French, Russian and Chinese oil companies. Before a shot is fired, oil and other “reconstruction” contracts are being doled out to US corporate vultures.
But the war is also about revenge; about American penis size as much as American bellies. It is an object lesson to the Islamic world in the aftermath of the Twin Towers and a shot across the bows of the other great powers with interests in the Gulf. It is an opportunity for hard-eyed generals and their industrial suppliers to test new military toys. The last thing it is really about is the liberation of the Iraqi people.
What they face is a humanitarian calamity, with the UN estimating that a million refugees may be unleashed and Oxfam voicing fears of widespread epidemics and famine following the destruction of water, sanitation and transport networks. Iraq has not recovered from the 1991 air strikes, and has been further enfeebled by 12 years of sanctions. Sixteen million people already rely on food aid, while child mortality rates have rocketed. One-third of the national power supply remains inoperative, and 70% of water purification plants are down.
A confidential UN document predicts that as many as 500 000 people may require treatment as a result of war injuries, in a context where medical stocks are inadequate and primary health care is likely to collapse. Inevitably, the lifeline oil industry will be disrupted. There is a good chance that Iraq’s volatile mix of Shia and Sunni Muslims, Kurds and Turkomans will fly apart in a paroxysm of sectarian conflict.
Against this backdrop the US has earmarked $65-million for emergency food, water, shelter and medical treatment — compared with $12-billion a month for bombs. As in Afghanistan, the needs of ordinary Iraqis will slip rapidly down the US and British agenda once the war is won. And as in Afghanistan, the toppling of a regime will far outweigh the establishment of a stable, legitimate successor.
It is not just Iraqis who have this war to fear — the world we will all inherit is certain to be less generous and more fragmented. The Axis of the Not Much Better — essentially the Anglo-Saxon powers — stands isolated in the international community, as a potent symbol of callous wealth and imperial arrogance. Europe has been left divided, with Anglo-French relations in tatters.
Elsewhere in this edition, Guardian writer George Monbiot outlines how aid flows to Africa have already dried up as the West fixates on the Gulf and Middle East. It is hard to imagine how the UN, the only universally accepted institution of global law-enforcement, can recover from the US’s belligerent unilateralism.
Bush, and the terrifying forces he represents in American society, project this war as a crusade for a safer and freer planet. The reverse is far more probable. Grinding another Arab regime into the dust, with “collateral damage” to millions of ordinary Muslims, can only inflame the hatred and sense of humiliation felt throughout the Islamic world. It is a gross miscalculation to think that a show of overwhelming military force will deter and demoralise — it is much more likely to drive the already aggrieved to more desperate acts of violent extremism. If the US cannot be opposed by conventional arms, other methods will be sought.
The official pretext for this war is to prevent “weapons of mass destruction” falling into terrorist hands. In reality, it enormously increases the risk of biological, chemical and nuclear attacks on Washington and London.