Opinion, May 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Trust
is most precious, Gulf News
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The
American and British governments appear to have misled the world with
their claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This failure of
truth will now give both governments a serious challenge when they ask the
Arab world to trust them in their efforts to rebuild Iraq or to find peace
in Israel. Why should the Arabs believe governments that treat the truth
so lightly?
When the American led coalition invaded Iraq and toppled the government of
Saddam Hussain, their declared purpose was to stop the production and use
of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. President George W. Bush, and Prime
Minister Tony Blair were both quite specific in their statements before
the war, stating that their war was because Iraq had both the means to
make weapons of mass destruction and a store of the weapons themselves.
At the time, the United Nations and IAEA inspectors in Iraq had not found
any weapons of mass destruction. Despite this, the American and British
governments persisted in their claims that these weapons existed, quoting
their own intelligence sources. In fact no such weapons were found and now
U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has said that the weapons of
mass destruction might have been destroyed before the war.
In Britain, the failure of the coalition to find weapons of mass
destruction has led to the resignation of two ministers, Robin Cook and
Clare Short, from the government, and a mounting campaign to have the war
declared illegal. Such allegations, coupled with other charges on the
indiscriminate use of cluster bombs, may harm Tony Blair's political
standing.
When Bush and Blair wanted United Nations approval for the war, they were
forced to base their case on how Iraq had broken UN resolutions. They
could not make the political case that they really wanted, which was that
the dictatorship of Iraq had to be ended. That more brutal reality was
hidden behind a legal cover, which has now turned out to be false.
It is certain that Iraq is a better place without Saddam's government, and
there is a historic opportunity to make the country into a better place.
However, it is all too likely that this opportunity will slip past, as the
United States does not seem to have a coherent plan for taking the country
forward. To do so requires the Iraqis to trust the Americans, and it
appears that they have made up the evidence that took them into Iraq in
the first place.
If America wants to be taken seriously as a force for good, it must work
to the highest standards. Otherwise it will degrade itself to being a just
military power and lose all claim to the moral high ground. This is
happening now, and the United States has a brief opportunity to put it
right. It does not look likely that the U.S. realises that it is on trial
in Iraq, and the Arab world is watching, with some hoping for it to
succeed and others for it to fail. Honesty is an essential starting point
for the Americans to win a wider trust from the Arabs, and a false war aim
has been a disaster for that test.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |