THE ROAD TO IRAQ

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Col. Writ. 8/29/02]

"War is the health of the state." -- Randolph Bourne (RADICAL WRITER)

To the U.S. Civil War general, William Tecumsah Sherman is ascribed the saying, "War is hell," but, truth be told, war is not hell to all.

War is hell to the poor, to the weak, to women, children, and the elderly. It is often hell to the young men who wage wars, who see and experience the inhuman horrors of war, and have to carry the physical and psychological scars of battle into their last days.

To the wealthy, to the elites, to the business class, war is not only not hell, it's opportunity. Indeed, war is big business.

To the U.S., war is profitable simply because it is the top arms dealer on earth. The U.S. military well knows Iraqi military capability in part because the bulk of their war material came from the United States. Remember the charge that Iraq was worthy of invasion because it used "weapons of mass destruction" (poison gas) against its "own people?". Does the reader recall the recent news that at the time of the gassings against the Kurds and bordering Iranians, U.S. weapons and military people were there, assisting them ?

Boy, is this hypocrisy, or what?

Back then, Iraq was a client state, a 'pal,' and the Islamic Republic of Iran, "the bad guys." Now, the Bush regime is rattling the shiny sabers of war against Iraq. Like a Roman potentate, Bush is saying the U.S. could care less what its European or Arab so-called "allies" want; the U.S. will act, if needs be, unilaterally -- alone.

Empires, you see, don't need allies; they need subjects. More specifically, this empire needs oil. It's all about oil. For, as socialist Tony Cliff has noted:

If we were talking about Middle East oil before the Second World War, we would have spoken mainly of British oil imperialism. Then Britain controlled 100 per cent of Iranian oil and 47.5 percent of Iraqi oil; the U.S. interest was only 23.75 per cent in Iraq (equal to France's). Since then the situation has changed radically; in 1959 the U.S. share rose to 50 per cent of all Middle East oil, while that of Britain declined to 18 per cent (France had 5 per cent, the Netherlands 3 per cent, other, including the local Arab governments, 24 percent). Now oil imperialism is really United States imperialism. [From Cliff, T. "The Struggle in the Middle East," in Tariq Ali, ed. The New Revolutionaries (Marrow 1969)]

The U.S. really could care less for the people of Iraq, its Kurdish minority, "weapons of mass destruction," or any of the other pretexts it offers as justification for war.

It cares about the dark, slippery ooze beneath the sands of Iraq, and it wants to wage war to control its flow and distribution.

Human blood for the long-dead remains of dinosaurs!

 

Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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