College student responds to pro-war columnist
To the Editors:
This column will address some of the pro-war points that were made in Sam Feldmans
letter two weeks ago. I appreciate his respectfulness and eloquence, but disagree with his points.
I tried submitting this as a letter last week, but it was edited out because of its length. I will
have to address the pro-war Myths about Iraq column in that same issue some other time.
Feldman suggests that this war is morally, the best avenue for our country to pursue.
This war has nothing to do with morals. If it were about morals, why havent we dealt with
Saddam in the past two decades, especially in 1988, when he was much more of a threat? If it were
about morals, why have we cluster bombed civilian villages in Iraq and Afghanistan to attack their
leaders? The bombings in the Gulf War were supposed to degrade Saddams capacity, but it was
conceded before the bombings even started that they would increase his capacity. What about our
sanctions, that the U.N. has estimated have killed 500,000 Iraqi children, punished Iraqi civilians,
and have actually helped Saddam? Why did we provide billions in aid to Saddam to kill Iranians
in 1982? Why did we use 300-plus tons of depleted uranium as ammunition in Gulf War I, killing
Iraqis and our own soldiers with radiation poisoning at near Hiroshima levels? And even if we were
to kill Saddam, are we willing to face the 500,000 U.N. estimated Iraqi casualties, and American
casualties as well? Saddam may have killed 200,000, but in our attempts to resolve this weve
killed over 500,000. Is killing another 500,000 really the answer?
Of course this is a war for oil. Former Bush economic guru Lawrence Lindsey let it slip last Fall
in a press conference that the successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.
Iraqs huge oil resources could satisfy U.S. needs for imported
oil at current levels for almost a century and otherwise benefit the economy by $40 billion. Ask
me for my sources. Controlling Iraq would mean dominating most of the energy sources of the world,
putting the U.S. in a very powerful position.
About Saddam being a threat its tempting to link Saddam up with Osama Bin Laden, but
Feldman himself dismantled that link. Saddam is a terrible personbut why is he suddenly a
threat to us now? The C.I.A. admitted that Saddam is not likely to use his weapons unless he is
attacked. Were on an orange alert now. What does that even mean? Weve been
told by our government dozens of times since 9/11 that terrorist attacks were about to happen again.
Couldnt it be possible that were kept in fear to promote a corporate agenda, to sell
an unjust war that would make the government even more powerful? We have to see past these tactics
that are meant to isolate and control us.
For more evidence of a corporate agenda in this war, let me just mention the Project for the New
American Century, (PNAC) a Washington-based think tank created in 1997, founded by Cheney and Rumsfeld
and the like. PNACs job is to basically outline what is required of America to create the
global empire they envision. Included in their vision is positioning permanently based forces in
Southern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Thats right, we need Iraqs oil,
and we need a permanent military base there. Our troops arent leaving once the wars
over.
Feldman writes,
my point is clear: the so-called blood for oil argument
would only be valid if the U.S. were in the habit of committing war crimes and ignores who would
actually benefit from the opening of Saddams oilfields.
This country was founded on war crimes. Whats worse, theyre still happening today,
under our noses. Dont look to the media to tell you about them, thats not their job.
Whos going to benefit from opening Saddams oilfields? We are, of course; my guess is
with a puppet government like weve done before. Look at the U.S. 1989 invasion of Panama,
which killed over 2,500 people in 24 hours. The U.S. had similar excuses as we do today for going
to warsupposedly restoring democracy, getting rid of an evil dictator. The problem? The dictator
was Noriega, a puppet employed by the CIA at over $100,000 a year when George Bush Senior was president.
The war was started to replace him because he started disobeying orders and we needed control of
the canal. This was a war crime. If you dont know about this, also try researching other
American war crimes, like Arbenz and the CIA and Guatemala in 1954, or Allende and Chile and the
CIA in 1973, or our death squads in Honduras, or the genocides weve completely ignored, like
in East Timor. Once youve learned the context of what evil things the U.S. is capable of,
an unjust war today seems more probable.
Finally, Feldman mentions the Vienna Convention, signed by the U.S. in 1969 that forbids us from
utilizing the resources of an occupied country to its advantage. So what? Since when has the U.S.
ever followed every convention that it signed? The U.S. signed the Nuremberg Charter and the Kellogg-Briand
Pact, both of which are now also part of U.S. federal law under the Constitution, and both of which
forbid pre-emptive war (actually preventative war), so this whole war is actually illegal.
Havent we seen that if anything, this war is the official emergence of the United States
as a full-fledged global empire that it does what it wants, no matter what laws its breaking?
As a side note, in that same Review issue, the Review columnists shouldnt have condemned
the anti-war movement for being less important than the AIDS fight. There are a lot of causes worth
fighting for, and more often than not, the causes are linked. The same types of companies that
are profiting from this war are also profiting from exploiting Africans by withholding cheap medicine.
Our movements need cooperation, not competition.
Jordan Balagot
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