Last Friday the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution mandating strict guidelines for Iraqi disarmament. Many people hoped that U.N. involvement would avoid a United States invasion of Iraq, but the U.N.’s course of action is making war more likely.
Resolution 1441, approved under intense American pressure on others on the Council, is designed not to avoid war but to justify it. It is full of hidden triggers for attack and it sets the bar so high for Iraqi compliance that it will be next to impossible for Iraq to meet the deadlines even if its government is sincere in disarming.
The council passed the resolution through a mix of concessions and threats by the United States. Powerful states such as Russia and China were bought off with promises to look the other way while they commit atrocities inside their countries. Smaller states on the council remembered what happened when Yemen voted against the authorization of force against Iraq in 1990. After being told by the U.S. ambassador that its vote was “the most expensive ‘no’ vote you ever cast,” 750,000 Yemeni guest workers were expelled from U.S. ally Saudi Arabia and the entire U.S. foreign aid package to Yemen was cut. Threats of similar arm-twisting this time made for easy passage of the resolution.
Iraq was largely disarmed by the Gulf War and weapons inspectors. Despite all the obstacles put in their way by Iraq, inspectors were able to dismantle 90 to 95 percent of Iraq’s weapons. Neither inspections nor invasion are unlikely to find every little bit of weaponry that may be stashed somewhere in Iraq. Remember that a few years ago a religious cult in Japan made and released nerve gas without anybody’s prior knowledge and that somebody made or stole anthrax and mailed it all over the U.S. without being caught. If we can’t find somebody with weapons of mass destruction in our own country in over a year, how are we going to disarm an entire country in the next two to three months?
War is being threatened over trivial matters on a questionable timeline. President Bush said Tuesday that failure to allow access to “every site, every document, and every person identified by inspectors” would be a “additional breach of Iraq’s international obligations.” Debating the seriousness of any violations would be “unproductive” because “any noncompliance is serious.” This is a set-up for war. If we’re going to be so inflexible on what Iraq can and can’t do, even to the point of threatening war over a single document, then there will be any number of reasons to go to war. When the government wants a reason for war, it usually finds one or creates one. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident and those poor medical students down in Grenada?
The timing of the U.N. deadline conveniently coincides with Pentagon invasion planning. The final deadline, the reporting of inspectors’ findings to the Security Council, is Feb. 21, a time the military calls “optimal for war.” Earlier than that, large storms could slow down operations. Later than that, troops might find themselves fighting in the summer heat. I don’t think this timing is any sort of coincidence and it makes clear what the final solution to the Iraq problem is for the Bush Administration — the conquest and occupation of Iraq.
Bush calls Iraq a “uniquely dangerous regime.” How is Iraq, a country that cannot control all of its national territory or airspace, that is under the most comprehensive sanctions in the world, “uniquely dangerous” to us? When Iraq was backed by Russia, America, France, and Saudi Arabia it couldn’t defeat its isolated neighbor Iran, even after extensive use of chemical weapons. But Iraq’s going to get us now, when they’re an international pariah? This is ridiculous. Canada or Mexico are more dangerous to us than Iraq. The threat from Iraq is not zero, but it’s far from our biggest security threat. This “crisis” is being blown completely out of proportions to scare us into being quiet and letting the government do whatever it wants. I promise you, when the “Iraqi threat” disappears another will be found to take its place. We should have more intelligence to see this war for the sham that it is.