This is a wonderfull article please read
> Robert Fisk: The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest
of
> America
> 15 February 2003
> In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being
> talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and
scare
> stories and false information and student essays dressed up as
> "intelligence". We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair
> and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of
> neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of
> the Middle East to their advantage.
>
> No wonder, then, that Hans Blix's blunt refutation of America's
> "intelligence" at the UN yesterday warmed so many hearts. Suddenly, the
Hans
> Blixes of this world could show up the Americans for the untrustworthy
> "allies" they have become.
>
> The British don't like Hussein any more than they liked Nasser. But
millions
> of Britons remember, as Blair does not, the Second World War; they are not
> conned by childish parables of Hitler, Churchill, Chamberlain and
> appeasement. They do not like being lectured and whined at by men whose
> experience of war is Hollywood and television.
>
> Still less do they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas
> governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil
> buddies, is now sending America's poor to destroy a Muslim nation that has
> nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September.
Jack
> Straw, the public school Trot-turned-warrior, ignores all this, with
Blair.
> He brays at us about the dangers of nuclear weapons that Iraq does not
have,
> of the torture and aggression of a dictatorship that America and Britain
> sustained when Saddam was "one of ours". But he and Blair cannot discuss
the
> dark political agenda behind George Bush's government, nor the "sinister
> men" (the words of a very senior UN official) around the President.
>
> Those who oppose war are not cowards. Brits rather like fighting; they've
> biffed Arabs, Afghans, Muslims, Nazis, Italian Fascists and Japanese
> imperialists for generations, Iraqis included - though we play down the
> RAF's use of gas on Kurdish rebels in the 1930s. But when the British are
> asked to go to war, patriotism is not enough. Faced with the horror
stories,
> Britons - and many Americans - are a lot braver than Blair and Bush. They
do
> not like, as Thomas More told Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, tales to
> frighten children.
>
> Perhaps Henry VIII's exasperation in that play better expresses the
British
> view of Blair and Bush: "Do they take me for a simpleton?" The British,
like
> other Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to
> this obscene war may make them feel more, not less, European.
>
> Palestine has much to do with it. Brits have no love for Arabs but they
> smell injustice fast enough and are outraged at the colonial war being
used
> to crush the Palestinians by a nation that is now in effect running US
> policy in the Middle East. We are told that our invasion of Iraq has
nothing
> to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - a burning, fearsome wound to
> which Bush devoted just 18 words in his meretricious State of the Union
> speech - but even Blair can't get away with that one; hence his
"conference"
> for Palestinian reform at which the Palestinians had to take part via
> video-link because Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, refused to let
> them travel to London.
>
> So much for Blair's influence over Washington - the US Secretary of State,
> Colin Powell, "regretted" that he couldn't persuade Sharon to change his
> mind. But at least one has to acknowledge that Sharon - war criminal
though
> he may be for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres - treated Blair with
the
> contempt he deserves. Nor can the Americans hide the link between Iraq and
> Israel and Palestine. In his devious address to the UN Security Council
last
> week, Powell linked the three when he complained that Hamas, whose suicide
> bombings so cruelly afflict Israelis, keeps an office in Baghdad.
>
> Just as he told us about the mysterious al-Qa'ida men who support violence
> in Chechnya and in the "Pankisi gorge". This was America's way of giving
> Vladimir Putin a free hand again in his campaign of rape and murder
against
> the Chechens, just as Bush's odd remark to the UN General Assembly last 12
> September about the need to protect Iraq's Turkomans only becomes clear
when
> one realises that Turkomans make up two thirds of the population of
Kirkuk,
> one of Iraq's largest oil fields.
>
> The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli
> lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful
Arab
> nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas
> Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all
campaigning
> for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected - if he
was
> elected - US President. And they weren't doing so for the benefit of
> Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for
> Securing the Realm (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) called for
war
> on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud
> prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by - yes,
> Richard Perle. The destruction of Iraq will, of course, protect Israel's
> monopoly of nuclear weapons and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and
> impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon has in store.
>
> Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us - a war for Israel
is
> not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices - Jewish
> American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with
enthusiasm.
> Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose
> this madness have been the first to point out how pro-Israeli
organisations
> foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should
> canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then,
> that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot
> Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal
> the day after Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations'
> objections to the war might - yet again - be ascribed to "anti-Semitism of
a
> type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a
> malignant intent." This nonsense, it must be said, is opposed by many
> Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argue that an Iraq war will
> leave Israel with even more Arab enemies, especially if Iraq attacks
Israel
> and Sharon then joins the US battle against the Arabs.
>
> The slur of "anti-Semitism" also lies behind Rumsfeld's snotty remarks
about
> "old Europe". He was talking about the "old" Germany of Nazism and the
"old"
> France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that oppose this war
are
> the "new" Europe, the continent which refuses, ever again, to slaughter
the
> innocent. It is Rumsfeld and Bush who represent the "old" America; not the
> "new" America of freedom, the America of F D Roosevelt. Rumsfeld and Bush
> symbolise the old America that killed its native Indians and embarked on
> imperial adventures. It is "old" America we are being asked to fight for -
> linked to a new form of colonialism - an America that first threatens the
> United Nations with irrelevancy and then does the same to Nato. This is
not
> the last chance for the UN, nor for Nato. But it may well be the last
chance
> for America to be taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies.
>
> In these last days of peace the British should not be tripped by the
> oh-so-sought-after second UN resolution. UN permission for America's war
> will not make the war legitimate; it merely proves that the Council can be
> controlled with bribes, threats or abstentions. It was the Soviet Union's
> abstention, after all, which allowed America to fight the savage Korean
war
> under the UN flag. And we should not doubt that - after a quick US
military
> conquest of Iraq and providing 'they" die more than we die - there will be
> plenty of anti-war protesters who will claim they were pro-war all along.
> The first pictures of "liberated" Baghdad will show Iraqi children making
> victory signs to American tank crews. But the real cruelty and cynicism of
> this conflict will become evident as soon as the "war" ends, when our
> colonial occupation of a Muslim nation for the US and Israel begins.
>
> There lies the rub. Bush calls Sharon a "man of peace". But Sharon fears
he
> may yet face trial over Sabra and Chatila, which is why Israel has just
> withdrawn its ambassador to Belgium. I'd like to see Saddam in the same
> court. And Rifaat Assad for his 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama.
> And all the torturers of Israel and the Arab dictatorships.
>
> Israeli and US ambitions in the region are now entwined, almost
synonymous.
> This war is about oil and regional control. It is being cheer-led by a
> draft-dodger who is treacherously telling us that this is part of an
eternal
> war against "terror". And the British and most Europeans don't believe
him.
> It's not that Britons wouldn't fight for America. They just don't want to
> fight for Bush or his friends. And if that includes the Prime Minister,
they
> don't want to fight for Blair either.
>
>
