"We believe these actions to have been taken in error... The actions taken can scarcely be reconciled with the principles and purposes of the United Nations to which we have all subscribed. And beyond this, we are forced to doubt even if resort to war will for long serve the permanent interests of the attacking nations...There can be no peace -- without law. And there can be no law - if we were to invoke one code of international conduct for those who oppose us and another for our friends."  
US President D.D. Eisenhower 
[Speech responding to Anglo-French invasion of Egypt and Soviet invasion of Hungary; Oct. 30, 1956] 

As of this writing, sabers are rattling in Washington, the prelude to yet another war in Iraq. This time, a bare pittance of states have joined the fledgling number sworn to attack Iraq, a far cry from that if Iraq I - "Operation Desert Storm" 

As in the first engagement, this latest military option has less to do with 'violating UN Resolutions' than with securing future access to oceans of petroleum. What was somewhat obscured in the first wave of aerial assaults in 1991, has been clearly demonstrated in the second: that the UN is but a thin fig leaf for what are US (and Multinational Corporate) interests. 

Where was this high and mighty concern for the "sanctity" of neighbors and borders when the apartheid regime rules in South Africa and raided, strafed or bombed the frontline states of Angola and Mozambique? Where was the global umbrage about "weapons of mass destruction" when news emerged about the apartheid state in possession of nuclear arms? As an outlaw state, which tortured and killed thousands of her African 'citizens', which shot down her own children in 1976, Soweto, and which treated UN anti-Apartheid Resolutions with a long train of contempt, it is interesting to note that her best friends in the international arena were the US and Israel. During the long years of racist state terrorism, the US never once hinted it was considering military action to liberate the oppressed Black majority or to relieve the frontline neighboring states. Indeed it is remarkable that South Africa's beleaguered neighbors did receive military assistance, not from the USA, but from the tiny island of Cuba, whose forces bested South Africa in battle in Angola's Cuito Carnivale. 

What makes Iraq's neighbors so worthy of 'help', and South Africa's so unworthy? In a word, oil. 

Iraq and her neighbors house over 65% of the world's oil reserves. 

Once again, we are in the maw of war, where thousands (if not tens of thousands) face death. The deaths of Iraqi men, women and children to protect the corporate interests of Western Industry! Is there something obscene here? 

American politicians and their PR specialists in the media and the academy are revving up for death, and the voices of peace are silent. American women talk of "collateral damage" on TV, as if they are talking about washing dishes, not the tortured, horrific death of babies.  

The US meanwhile, talks about upholding the dignity of the United Nations, while it refuses to pay millions of dollars in UN fees. 

Once more, into the breach - for oil! 

(c)MAJ 
All Rights Reserved