[shniad at sfu.ca: [R-G] Saddam is Hitler and its not about oil]

[Hans Ehrbar]

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Independent   27 January 2003

Saddam is Hitler and it’s not about oil 

Robert Fisk

The Israeli writer Uri Avnery once delivered a wickedly sharp open letter 
to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who sent his army to defeat 
in Lebanon. Enraged by Begin's constant evocation of the Second World War 
likening Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945 
Avnery entitled his letter: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is Dead."

How often I have wanted to repeat his advice to Bush and Blair. Obsessed 
with their own demonisation of Saddam Hussein, both are now reminding us  of
the price of appeasement. Bush thinks that he is the Churchill of  America,
refusing the appeasement of Saddam. Now the US ambassador to the  European
Union, Rockwell Schnabel, has compared Saddam to Hitler. "You had  Hitler in
Europe and no one really did anything about him," Schnabel  lectured the
Europeans in Brussels a week ago: "We knew he could be	dangerous but
nothing was done. The same type of person [is in Baghdad]  and it's there
that our concern lies." Mr Schnabel ended this infantile  parallel by adding
unconvincingly that "this has nothing to do with oil".

How can the sane human being react to this pitiful stuff? One of the 
principal nations which "did nothing about Hitler" was the US, which 
enjoyed a profitable period of neutrality in 1939 and 1940 and most of	1941
until it was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. And when the 
Churchill-Roosevelt alliance decided that it would only accept Germany's 
unconditional surrender a demand that shocked even Churchill when  Roosevelt
suddenly announced the terms at Casablanca Hitler was doomed.

Not so Saddam it seems. For last week Donald Rumsfeld offered the Hitler  of
Baghdad a way out: exile, with a suitcase full of cash and an armful of 
family members if that is what he wished. Funny, but I don't recall 
Churchill or Roosevelt ever suggesting that the Nazi führer should be 
allowed to escape. Saddam is Hitler but then suddenly, he's not Hitler 
after all. He is said The New York Times to be put before a war crimes 
tribunal. But then he's not. He can scoot off to Saudi Arabia or Latin 
America. In other words, he's not Hitler.

But even if he were, are we prepared to pay the price of so promiscuous a 
war? Arabs who admire Saddam and there are plenty in Jordan believe Iraq 
cannot hold out for more than a week. Some are convinced the US 3rd 
Infantry Division will be in Baghdad in three days, the British with them. 
It's a fair bet that hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqis will die. But  in
the civil unrest that follows, what are we going to do? Are American  and
British troops to defend the homes of Baath party officials whom the  mobs
want to hang?

Far more seriously, what happens after that? What do we do when Iraqis not 
ex-Baathists but anti-Saddam Iraqis demand our withdrawal? For be sure	this
will happen. In the Shia mosques of Kerbala and An Najaf, they are  not
going to welcome Anglo-American forces. The Kurds will want a price  for
their co-operation. A state perhaps? A federation? The Sunnis will  need our
protection. They will also, in due time, demand our withdrawal.  Iraq is a
tough, violent state and General Tommy Franks is no General  MacArthur.

For we will be in occupation of a foreign land. We will be in occupation  of
Iraq as surely as Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  And
with Saddam gone, the way is open for Osama bin Laden to demand the 
liberation of Iraq as another of his objectives. How easily he will be	able
to slot Iraq into the fabric of American occupation across the Gulf.  Are we
then ready to fight al-Qa'ida in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and 
Pakistan and countless other countries? It seems that the peoples of the 
Middle East and the West realise these dangers, but that their leaders do 
not, or do not want to.

Travelling to the US more than once a month, visiting Britain at the 
weekend, moving around the Middle East, I have never been so struck by the 
absolute, unwavering determination of so many Arabs and Europeans and 
Americans to oppose a war. Did Tony Blair really need that gloriously 
pertinacious student at the Labour Party meeting on Friday to prove to him 
what so many Britons feel: that this proposed Iraqi war is a lie, that the 
reasons for this conflict have nothing to do with weapons of mass 
destruction, that Blair has no business following Bush into the 
America-Israeli war? Never before have I received so many readers' letters 
expressing exactly the same sentiment: that somehow because of Labour's 
huge majority, because of the Tory party's effective disappearance as an 
opposition, because of parliamentary cynicism British democracy is not 
permitting British people to stop a war for which most of them have  nothing
but contempt. From Washington's pathetic attempt to link Saddam to 
al-Qa'ida, to Blair's childish "dossier" on weapons of mass destruction,  to
the whole tragic farce of UN inspections, people are just no longer fooled.

The denials that this war has anything to do with oil are as unconvincing 
as Colin Powell's claim last week that Iraq's oil would be held in 
trusteeship for the Iraqi people. Trusteeship was exactly what the League 
of Nations offered the Levant when it allowed Britain and France to adopt 
mandates in Palestine and Transjordan and Syria and Lebanon after the  First
World War. Who will run the oil wells and explore Iraqi oil reserves  during
this generous period of trusteeship? American companies, perhaps?  No,
people are not fooled.

Take the inspectors. George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and 
now, alas, Colin Powell don't want to give the inspectors more time. Why 
not, for God's sake? Let's just go back to 12 September last year when 
Bush, wallowing in the nostalgia of the 11 September 2001 crimes against 
humanity, demanded that the UN act. It must send its inspectors back to 
Iraq. They must resume their work. They must complete their work. Bush, of 
course, was hoping that Iraq would refuse to let the inspectors return. 
Horrifically, Iraq welcomed the UN. Bush was waiting for the inspectors to 
find hidden weapons. Terrifyingly, they found none. They are still  looking.
And that is the last thing Bush wants. Bush said he was "sick and  tired" of
Saddam's trickery when what he meant was that he was sick and  tired of
waiting for the UN inspectors to find the weapons that will allow  America
to go to war. He who wanted so much to get the inspectors back to  work now
doesn't want them to work. "Time is running out," Bush said last  week. He
was talking about Saddam but he was actually referring to the UN 
inspectors, in fact to the whole UN institution so laboriously established 
after the Second World War by his own country.

The only other nation pushing for war save for the ever-grateful Kuwait is 
Israel. Listen to the words of Zalman Shoval, Israeli Prime Minster Ariel 
Sharon's foreign affairs adviser, last week. Israel, he said, would "pay 
dearly" for a "long deferral" of an American strike on Iraq. "If the  attack
were to be postponed on political rather than military grounds," he  said,
"we will have every reason in Israel to fear that Saddam Hussein  uses this
delay to develop non-conventional weapons." As long as Saddam  was not
sidelined, it would be difficult to convince the Palestinian  leadership
that violence didn't pay and that it should be replaced by a  new
administration; Arafat would use such a delay "to intensify terrorist 
attacks".

Note how the savage Israeli-Palestinian war can only according to the 
Shoval thesis be resolved if America invades Iraq; how terrorism cannot be 
ended in Israel until the US destroys Saddam. There can be no regime  change
for the Palestinians until there is regime change in Baghdad. By  going
along with the Bush drive to war, Blair is, indirectly, supporting  Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (since Israel still claims  to be
fighting America's "war on terror" against Arafat). Does Blair	believe
Britons haven't grasped this? Does he think Britons are stupid? A  quarter
of the British Army is sent to fight in a war that 80 per cent of  Britons
oppose. How soon before we see real people power 500,000  protesters or more
in London, Manchester and other cities to oppose this  folly?

Yes an essential part of any such argument Saddam is a cruel, ruthless 
dictator, not unlike the Dear Leader of North Korea, the nuclear 
megalomaniac with whom the Americans have been having "excellent" 
discussions but who doesn't have oil. How typical of Saddam to send Ali 
"Chemical" Majid the war criminal who gassed the Kurds of Halabja to tour 
Arab capitals last week, to sit with President Bashar Assad of Syria and 
President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon as if he never ordered the slaughter of 
women and children. But Bush and Blair said nothing about Majid's tour 
either so as not to offend the Arab leaders who met him or because the	link
between gas, war crimes and Washington's original support for Saddam  is a
sensitive issue.

Instead, we are deluged with more threats from Washington about "states 
that sponsor terror". Western journalists play a leading role in this 
propaganda. Take Eric Schmitt in The New York Times a week ago. He wrote a 
story about America's decision to "confront countries that sponsor 
terrorism". And his sources? "Senior defence officials", "administration 
officials", "some American intelligence officials", "the officials", 
"officials", "military officials", "terrorist experts" and "defence 
officials". Why not just let the Pentagon write its own reports in The New 
York Times?

But that is what is changing. More and more Americans aware that their 
President declined to serve his country in Vietnam realise that their 
newspapers are lying to them and acting as a conduit for the US government 
alone. More and more Britons are tired of being told to go to war by their 
newspapers and television stations and politicians. Indeed, I'd guess that 
far more Britons are represented today by the policies of President Chirac 
of France than Prime Minister Blair of Britain.

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