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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Letter to Raleigh News & Observer [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] August 28, 2002 No Iraq invasion In its campaign to promote a war against Iraq, the Bush administration has failed to make the case that the U.S. is under an imminent threat from the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. But looking below the surface, one might discover other motivations for the administration s desire to wage a Middle East war. Rushing headlong toward regime change, the administration refuses to take counsel from our allies, military and weapons experts, and even members of President Bush s own political party who warn that an unprovoked attack on Iraq could actually jeopardize U.S. interests. One expert the administration is trying hard to ignore is Scott Ritter, the U.S. Marine Corps officer who headed the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspections team in Iraq. No one who observed Ritter in action would ever accuse him of being soft on Saddam. Iraq, Ritter says, has been fundamentally disarmed and its weapons of mass destruction destroyed. More importantly, the facilities capable of developing such weapons have been destroyed, Ritter says. And under 11 years of the most comprehensive economic and military sanctions the world has seen, Iraq has had no opportunity to reconstitute such capabilities. The U.S. s sophisticated satellite intelligence capabilities would surely have detected such activity--if there were any, concludes Ritter. Given that an attack on the U.S. would be suicidal for Hussein, what might the administration s true goals be for advocating an attack on Iraq? For starters, war with Iraq would be a financial windfall for Bush s supporters in the munitions industry--while diverting the political focus away from a faltering U.S. economy. But a bigger motivation could be control the U.S. stands to gain over the world economy. Every nation on Earth is completely dependent on energy. While the Middle East produces only about one-third of today s oil supplies, the region contains nearly two-thirds of the world s proven reserves. Fossil fuels have not diminished in importance but are being depleted. Thus, the Middle East is projected to supply an ever-increasing share of world oil consumption in the not-too-distant future. With Iraq estimated to hold about a fifth of Mideast oil reserves, control of that piece of real estate would vastly increase U.S. leverage over the world s economies. Moreover, the Middle East contains the purest and most easily accessible oil. It is just beneath the surface and is the most profitable oil to develop. A successful takeover of Iraq could serve as a launching point for military action against other Middle East oil-producing states. Already, word is leaking out from administration corridors that Saudi Arabia is a terrorist state that may need to be taken over--along with its oil fields--through the same type of plan being floated for an invasion and occupation of Iraq. It shouldn t take too much imagination to see how the administration would find some honorable justification for liberating the Kuwaitis in a military crusade to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Little wonder that no nation (except Israel) has stood up in support for the Bush administration's war plans. In an era when the U.S. is the world's only superpower, the American people must be even more vigilant of our government's potential misuse of power. Invading a sovereign country in the absence of any evidence that it represents a threat to legitimate U.S. interests cannot be justified under any circumstances. And as Americans, we must take the initiative in voicing this concern to our government representatives. After all, it is only "we the people" who have the right, and indeed the responsibility, to demand that our government act in accordance with the principles our nation stands for. Rajaie Qubain Raleigh [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] |
