GULF WAR REVISITED?

Aliran views with grave concern the current political stand-off between Iraq and the United States. If last minute diplomatic efforts fail, the impasse could certainly resurrect the horrors of the previous Gulf War, leaving in its wake thousands of innocent babies, children and adults killed and maimed.

We desperately hope that every effort will be made to find a just solution to this protracted conflict so that ordinary Iraqis will be spared the wrath of the high-tech American war machine.

As it is, ordinary Iraqis, particularly babies and children, have suffered enough under the crushing weight of the seven-year-old US-inspired United Nations' sanctions against the economically battered West Asian country.

We're told that the bone of contention for the US in this conflict is Iraq's refusal to allow the UN weapons inspection team to examine certain allegedly strategic sites in and around Baghdad. Access to these sites, Washington insists, is vital to ensure that Iraq does not keep weapons of mass destruction that could eventually threaten the security of the region, particularly that of the US' West Asian outpost, Israel (which, incidentally, has nuclear weapons).

It is instructive and ironical that in its apparent crusade to stamp out purveyors of weapons of mass destruction, the US has once again shown that, as a custodian of weapons of mass destruction itself, it, too, can threaten the security and survival of less powerful nations with its penchant for unilaterally action in a conflict.

One also cannot help but wonder if the "Iraq problem" has been conveniently used as a ruse by the American president to divert the attention of the world away from the intransigence of its Israeli ally which has caused an impasse in the Middle East peace proceedings, or worse, the attention of American citizens from the reported steamy sex scandal that is apparently rocking the White House.

It would be a terrible tragedy if President Clinton were to use these diversions to rally the American peoples' support to wage an unjust war against Iraq. It would be totally unjustifiable - no matter how dictatorial Saddam Hussein may appear to be.

Aliran Executive Committee
3 February 1998