What are the implications for the region as a whole? And does anybody seriously think that the is a chance of a peace settlement any time soon?
Mar 26 2003
By Brian Reade
THE vicious circle of 9/11 goes on. Yesterday Palestinians were dancing through the streets with placards of Saddam. Meanwhile Israel revealed plans to move its border further into the West Bank.
So much for the so-called Israel/Palestine road map which Bush and Blair dangled before the UN to try to seduce it into making their war legal.
We already know of Turkey’s plans to move into Kurdistan, now we hear British troops have been moved to the Iranian border to stop them seizing Iraqi land. But how can we moralise when we are engaged in an unauthorised land-grab ourselves?
Even though most of them despise Saddam, Arabs are becoming more apoplectic by the day. How long before Palestinian suicide bombers decide it is time to strike at the people who, in their eyes, murder their Iraqi brothers while bestowing legitimacy on their Israeli oppressors. Us British.
The only horrific image absent from this war so far is the one that fired the starting gun.
The two planes crashing into the World Trade Center, leaving New York without 3,000 of its citizens and the rest of us in no doubt the world had changed for ever.
We knew America faced a daunting choice back then. Should it try to understand the hatred felt towards it by millions of Muslims, or should it stoke it up by declaring an indiscriminate war against that same mass loathing?
Sadly, when they could not find the men responsible for the attacks, America went for the latter option.
The world did change on 9/11 but only Washington hawks and their stooge in London decided how. Which is why today British troops face possible gas attacks, the Middle East is in turmoil and the Butcher of Baghdad achieves a martyrdom he never deserved.
Meanwhile Bush carries on stoking the hatred. Yesterday he said financing the war would be money well spent as far as the US economy is concerned. Well, I’ve yet to meet the economist who could equate a humanitarian effort to rid a country a tyrant, to a boost to your economy…
Unless you flatten the tyrant’s country, hand the rebuilding contracts to your own firms, seize its oil and create a puppet state with a market flooded by US-made goods. Which is America’s plan.
Some liberation. Some stability. Some hope.
