Bush fails to convince
on need to attack Iraq



I'VE JUST finished watching US President George Bush's State of the Union address and am not at all convinced that the United States is justified in wanting to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime by force.

Bush was tough on Iraq and its nasty leader, but he failed to provide any of us listeners with any new and compelling evidence that Saddam is an imminent threat to the United States or to any of its neighbors. Indeed, Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein said on MSNBC's "Hardball" after the speech that she hadn't seen any evidence as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Saddam and Iraq pose a clear and present danger to the US.

Senator Feinstein emphasized that the US should get the support of more allies, working through the United Nations' Security Council, before deciding to invade Iraq. Commenting on Bush's assertion that the US already had a coalition of allies ready to back a war with Iraq, Feinstein said, "Who is the coalition? Bush didn't say. I think we should use our good allies to get the Security Council to force Saddam to comply with its demands. George Bush I had a coalition of 30 countries, now that's a coalition."

President Bush claimed in his speech that Secretary of State Colin Powell would present new intelligence to the UN Security Council in New York on Feb. 5 that would prove that Saddam's regime has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But this begs the question of why hasn't the Bush administration already released this information, and more importantly why they apparently haven't shared this information with the UN weapons inspectors currently in Iraq? Perhaps it's because the US doesn't really have compelling evidence.

Bush summoned up all the usual descriptions of just how bad the Saddam regime is: That it gassed its own people, and regularly tortures, rapes and kills its opponents. All of this well known and is not denied by anyone. Saddam is without a doubt the nastiest and most brutal dictator that the Middle East, and indeed the world, has seen. But is this enough justification for first bombing Iraq to Hell and back in a eight-day bombing campaign that, according to US leaks to the press last week, would use more missiles and bombs than were used during the entire first Gulf War?

Observers abroad of US foreign policy are struck by the evident hypocrisy of sticking to diplomatic negotiations with the nasty North Korean regime. One that is hard-line communist, has several nuclear bombs, and starves its own people while its leadership lives in obscene luxury. A North Korea that still poses a threat to world peace, regularly exports weapons of mass destruction to rogue regimes and groups across the globe, and which forces the US to keep 30,000 US troops permanently stationed in South Korea to protect it from its neighbor.

I think the world community would support the US much more if it was consistent in dealing equally with all dictatorships around the world, but then America has never been consistent in doing so. National interests, such as oil supplies and strategic position of certain nations, have caused this inequality in applying the American values of freedom, equality and democracy overseas.

Everyone is saying that the looming war in Iraq is all about oil and nothing much else. Perhaps this explains why North Korea gets away with turning off monitoring cameras at its nuclear power plants, withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and still brutally repressing its own people: Because it doesn't sit on massive reserves of oil like Iraq does. Oil that American, British and French oil companies are desperate to get their hands on.

Bush was very good during his speech at sounding like he and the US military would be the saviors of the Iraqi people by saying, "We will bring to the Iraqi people food, medicines, supplies and freedom!" But that begs the question of the millions of Iraqis who have suffered under mean-spirited UN sanctions for the past 11 years, with medicines and some food supplies in short supply, as US-backed sanctions bled life out of the Iraqi economy, punishing its people just to spite Saddam.

Bush also made the grandiose and false claim that the US exercises power without conquest. Does he really think that people across the globe are stupid enough to swallow that line of thinking, hook, line and sinker?

There is nothing more that the world would like than to see Saddam overthrown and a new and democratic government installed in Iraq. Indeed, as many hawks have noisily pointed out in the US, the Middle East is starved of democracy and freedom. But can true democracy be imposed from the outside by force? Won't this cause more resentment of America and its seemingly limitless support of a hard-line Israel that continues to oppress the Palestinians?

The US should continue using the UN Security Council as its main avenue of dealing with Iraq. Bush said in his speech that the US was prepared to go it alone in invading Iraq, but I think this would be a terrible mistake. As Senator Feinstein pointed out, "I think we will have a deep chasm between us and others if we don't get a coalition."

America's sudden obsession with democracy and freedom in the Middle East is suspicious to most Arabs who smell a rat and rightly believe that it is only rhetoric being used to cover up America's true target of securing Iraqi oil supplies. Planting the seeds of democracy takes a long time and cannot be done overnight. Where has the US been for the past 50 years in the Middle East? Actively promoting democracy? Hardly. Its been cozying up to dictatorships because it suited America's own selfish economic interests. Until the US admits this and tries to mend its foreign policy, the world won't believe that Iraq is going to be invaded for freedom and democracy's sake. Bush can insist on that all he wants, but the world isn't buying it, not even for a second.

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Visit the author's website at http://www.manilamoods.com to read past columns.