Iraq occupation reveals thwarted ambition

It is no secret that in this world, unseen by most people, a sophisticated system of plunder has forced more than ninety countries into structural adjustment programmes since the eighties, widening the divide between the rich and the poor as never before. This is referred to as good governance by the quad dominating the World Trade Organization (the US, Canada, Europe and Japan) and the Washington-based triumvirate (the World Bank, the IMF and the US Treasury) that controls even minute aspects of government policy in developing countries. It is said that their power derives largely from an unrepayable debt that forces the least developed countries (LDCs) to bite on any programmes basically framed by outside agencies. But, why should Bangladesh follow the trend? Our hard working and sagacious finance minister Mr. Saifur Rahman says: we are regularly repaying our debts. If it is true, where is the catch?

Today, an elite of fewer than a billion people controls almost eighty per cent of humanity's wealth. Promoting this are the transnational media corporations (mostly American and European) that own or manage the world's principal sources of news and information. For instance, from Iraq or any other country under direct or indirect subjugation of the United States or UK the rest of the world receives only what their media such as CNN or BBC would like to disclose. Indeed, they have transformed much of the information society into a media age where extraordinary technology allows the incessant repetition of politically safe information that is only acceptable to them. This, according to them, is the civilized practice!

However, the suffering nation's protests usually remains under the ground for obvious reasons. The most heinous part is that the new rulers view other societies in terms of their usefulness or threat to them and regard cultural differences as more important than the political and economic forces by which they judge themselves. Those with resources to understand this, including many Bangladeshis who teach and research in the American Universities in particular, suppress their knowledge publicly; perhaps never before there has been such a silence. Dr. Farhruddin Ahmed's writing (Professor of Princeton University, USA) is indeed an exception in this respect. It is always a delight to read his 'Letter From America' column, regularly published in The Daily Star, mainly because of his undaunted and down to earth forthright approach.

I admire the guts of Mr. Pilger who sets out to explain something of this new order and the breaking of silence, notably on the war in Iraq in the nineties. The new rulers are usually connected to the transnational corporation, that dominates the world. Certainly their enormity and scale of operations are unprecedented, for instance, Ford Motor Company is bigger than the ceremony of South Africa and General Motors wealthier than Denmark. There is no denying the fact that the capacity of the American military machine to smash impoverished countries is undisputed. The exception was Vietnam. Regardless of their B-52 bombers, napalm bombs, chemical defoliants, American troops could not match the knowledge and tenacity of a people prepared to see off an invader. Bangladeshis, also have had a similar proud achievement. Ninety thousand well-trained Pakistani soldiers had to surrender after a nine-month sanguinary war on 16th December 1971. I have a felling that the Scaramouch American marines are now moving towards a similar defeat in Iraq soon.

In cause and effect, the crucial similarity is distance from the carnage, and the dissemination of insidious propaganda (by Bush and Blair) that says a crime is not a crime if 'they' commit it. It was not a crime to murder more than half a million citizens with bombs dropped secretly and illegally on Cambodia, igniting an Asian holocaust. The American administration say that it is not a crime for George Bush or Tony Blair to have caused the deaths in Iraq of more people than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history (in 1990s), to quote the conclusion of an American study (John Mueller and Karl Mueller, The Methodology of Mass Destruction: Assessing Threat in a New World Order, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2000, pp 163-87). The killing was taking a new shape in late 2003, the Iraqis retaliating boldly as the Freedom Fighters of Bangladesh in 1971. This has become a special sore point for the American propaganda machinery. The American intelligence is not able now to successfully create what the CIA in Indochina used to call a 'master illusion'. Even after nine months of brutal devastation since March 2003 in Iraq by the coalition forces without any proof or evidence of the plea of WMD, the innocent Iraqis are killed day in and day out, and the Americans think that they are justified. The Pakistanis also felt in the same manner in 1971. Even after 32 years, they didn't officially repent on their Rape of Bangladesh.

Indeed, the present Iraqi freedom fighters' threat to the Bush-Blair administration is real, whether they acknowledge it or not. In Washington, the defence policy board, a semi-official panel, which advises Rumsfield, Defence Secretary, increasingly influences the oil lobby under President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. In fact, the extreme right of American political life is inspired by the Jew mafia (working in the US administration, media and Wall Street) to conduct such wars in the Middle East in particular.

Let us for a moment recall the situation in the Middle East in the 1990s. Before the Gulf War. The US President George Bush senior (who was also US representative in the UN in 1971 and who vehemently supported Pakistani actions alongside the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Nixon) said, "We do not seek destruction of Iraq. Nor do we seek to punish the Iraqi people for the decisions and politics of their leader (Saddam Hussein)." His voice was strengthened by the then US ambassador Madeleine Albright. When asked if the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were necessary, she categorically said, "I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it...." In 2003 wherever you went in Iraq, there was dust. It rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds (if there is any thing left out of destruction). Beneath the dust, particularly on the roadside mines are laid every day, which destroys the American army vehicles and tanks. The Iraqis are getting desperate every day and the American soldiers are trying to secure their posts. Like the Pakistani soldiers (in 1971) the Americans are neither comfortable nor safe. The Iraqi freedom fighters are very active in Tikrit, Mosul, Basra and Karbala.

Only the rich, the black marketeers, the present Iraqi regime's cronies and favoured supplicants, are visible in the streets of Baghdad during the day time in tinted glass Mercedes and BMWs navigating their way through the rust buckets, having been ordered to keep their network of clubs, restaurants and clinics, the presence of which make nonsense of everything, under control! The Iraqis are trying their best to survive to get involved in their freedom fight. Ordinary citizens are fighting for water, electricity, and their rights. They are now convinced that there is a common good to defend. That the country cannot be left in the hands of the American soldiers is a new slogan for the Iraqis. The US marines call it a triumph. But describing this as a triumph is like lauding the superiority of the German war machine (during the Second World War), vindication of Nazism. I am told that from an American standpoint, in the media age, ignorance is strength and omission standard practice.

Columnist Martin Jacques of the London Guardian has called the year 2003 a year of thwarted ambition for the United States. In fact, the invasion in Iraq reverted the likely limits to American imperial power. He added, "It is difficult to imagine the US and Britain ever enjoying the same kind of respect again in their claim to be the mantle of democracy and human rights." It seems that the whole world now knows that before US election in November 2004, President Bush will resort to many gimmicks, one after the other. For instance, the most recent one was his unscheduled visit to a US camp in Baghdad on thanks-giving day while the public announcement was that he would be in Texas, USA! On the gimmick, Madeline Albright, former US Ambassador in the UN, whispered recently that perhaps the most interesting one would be the official capture of Osama-bin-Laden in late 2004 (prior to US election)! To end the day's column, according to John Pilger, "if there is any weapon of Mass destruction anywhere it is in the USA, and that WMD is George Bush junior himself."

Nuruddin Mahmud Kamal is former Chairman, Power Development Board.