Committee On The Middle East
A unique assocation of independent Middle East experts
and scholars around the world
.
Press Release: 2/4/98 - COME Spokespersons are available 24-hours daily at
this time
202 362-5266 Fax: 202 362-6965 Word Version (2 PAGES
for printing)(Iraq.Doc)
DO NOT BOMB IRAQ
While the U.S. clearly has the military power to further devastate and
prostrate Iraq, we strongly believe that the course the
U.S. has chosen is not only grossly unjust, but also exceedingly
hypocritical and duplicitous. We further believe that though the
U.S. may be able to pursue its imperial policies without substantial
opposition in the short term, the policies being pursued
today, especially the new and massive military assault being prepared
against Iraq, are likely to have tremendously negative
historical ramifications.
As Middle East experts and scholars--many with close and personal ties to
this long-troubled and misunderstood region--we
feel a political, a moral, and a historical responsibility to speak up in
clear opposition at this critical time.
Origins of Today's Imbroglio:
Throughout this century Western countries, primarily the United States and
Great Britain, have continually interfered in and
manipulated events in the Middle East. The origins of the Iraq/Kuwait
conflict can be found in the unilateral British decision
during the early years of this century to essentially cut off a piece of
Iraq to suit British Empire desires of that now faded era.
Rather than agreeing to Arab self-determination at the end of World War I
and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Western
nations conspired to divide the Arab world into a number of artificial and
barely viable entities; to install Arab "client regimes"
throughout the region; to make these regimes dependent on Western economic
and military power for survival; and then to
impose an ongoing series of economic, cultural, and political arrangements
detrimental to the people of the area. This is the
historical legacy that we live with today.
Throughout the 1930s and the 1940s the West further manipulated the affairs
of the Middle East in order to control the
resources of the region and then to create a Jewish homeland in an area
long-considered central to Arab nationalism and
Muslim concerns. Playing off one regime against the other and one
geopolitical interest against another became a major
preoccupation for Western politicians and their closely associated business
interests.
Following World War II:
After World War II, and from these policy origins, the United States became
the main Western power in the region,
supplanting the key roles formerly played by Britain and France. In the
1960s Gamel Abdel Nasser was the target of Western
condemnation for his attempt to reintegrate the Arab world and to pursue
independent "non-aligned" policies. By the 1970s the
CIA had established close working relationships with key Arab client
regimes from Morocco and Jordan to Saudi Arabia and
Iran--regimes that even then were among the most repressive and undemocratic
in the world--in order to further American
domination and to secure an ever-growing supply of inexpensive oil and the
resultant flow of petrodollars.
By the late 1970s the counter-reaction of the Iranian revolution was met
with a Western build-up of the very same Iraqi regime
that is so condemned today in a vain attempt to use Iraq to crush the new
Iranian regime. The result was millions of deaths
coming on top of the terrible destruction of Lebanon, itself a country that
had been severed from Greater Syria by Western
intrigues, as had been the area of southern Syria, then known as Palestine.
Additionally the Israelis were given the green light to
invade Lebanon, further devastate the Palestinians, and install a puppet
Lebanese government--an attempt which failed leading
to an American and Israeli retreat but ongoing militarism to this day.
Meanwhile, throughout all these years Western
manipulation of oil supplies and pricing, coupled with arms sales policies,
often seriously exacerbated tensions between
countries in the region leading to the events of this decade.
The Gulf Conflict:
It was precisely such American manipulations and intrigues that led to the
Gulf War in 1990. Indeed, we would be remiss if we
did not note that there is already much historical evidence that the U.S.
actually maneuvered Iraq into the invasion of Kuwait,
repeatedly suggesting to Iraq that it would become the pivotal military
state of the area in coordination with the U.S. Whether
true or not the U.S. subsequently did everything in its power to prevent a
peaceful resolution of that conflict and for the first
time intervened with massive and overwhelming military force in the region
creating today's dangerously unstable quagmire.
The initially stated American goal was only to protect Saudi Arabia. Then
after the unprecedented military build-up the goal
became to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Then the goal evolved to toppling the
Iraqi government. And from there the Americans
began to impose various limits on Iraqi sovereignty; took over much of
Iraqi air space; sent the CIA to repeatedly atttempt to
topple the Iraqi government; and placed a near-total embargo on Iraq that
many--including a former Attorney General of the
United States--have termed near-genocidal. The overall result has been the
subjugation and impoverishment of Iraq and the
actual death of approximately 5% of the Iraqi people as the direct result
of American actions.
With the Clinton Administration, the U.S. began to insist on the "dual
containment" of both Iraq and Iran--both countries which
just a few years ago the U.S. was working very closely with and providing
considerable arms to. With few in the press able to
remember from one year to the next or to connect one historic event with
another, somehow Washington has come to insist on
Iraqi disarmament and Iranian strangulation. Furthermore, these policies
are being pursued even while Israel and key Arab
client states are receiving American weapons in ever larger amounts, with
Israel's weapons of mass destruction making her
forces 7 to 8 times stronger than all Arab armies combined. Furthermore
still, the U.S./Israeli strategic alliance has never been
closer, the U.S. has repeatedly helped Israel defy the will of the
international community and the United Nations, and the U.S.
continues to champion a disingenuous Israeli "peace process" which in
reality on the ground continues to dispossess the
Palestinians and to corral them onto reservations in their own country!
In a future statement we will move on to the crucial subject of what
alternative policies the United States should be pursuing.
But at this critical moment we are compelled to come forward and urgently
condemn the policies now being pursued. We call
for an immediate cessation of the economic embargo against Iraq, an end to
U.S.-imposed restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty and
airspace, and most of all immediately suspension of all plans to attack
Iraq once again with the overwhelming technological and
military instruments available to the U.S.
If the U.S. continues to pursue its current policies then we conclude and
predict it will not be unreasonable for many in the
world to brand the U.S. itself as a arrogant and imperialist state, and if
that becomes the historical paradigm, it will be both
understandable and justifiable if others pursue whatever means are
available to them to oppose American domination and
militarism. Such developments could quite possibly lead to still more
decades of conflict, warfare, and terrorism throughout the
region and beyond.
COME Advisory Committee: Ms. Arab Abdel-Hadi - Cairo; Professor Nahla Abdo
- Carleton University (Ottawa); Professor Elmoiz Abunura - University of
North Carolina
(Ashville); Professor Jane Adas - Rutgers University (NJ); Oroub Alabed -
World Food Program (Amman); Professor Faris Albermani - University of
Queensland (Australia);
Professor Jabbar Alwan, DePaul University (Chicago); Professor Alex Alland,
Columbia University (New York); Professor Abbas Alnasrawi - University of
Vermont
(Burlington); Professor Michael Astour - University of Southern Illinois;
Virginia Baron - Guilford, CT.; Professor Mohammed Benayoune - Sultan
Qaboos University (Oman);
Professor Charles Black - Emeritus Yale University Law School; Professor
Francis O. Boyle, University of Illinois Law School (Champlain); Mark
Bruzonsky- COME
Chairperson (Washington); Linda Brayer - Ex. Dir., Society of St. Ives
(Jerusalem); Professor Noam Chomsky - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Cambridge); Ramsey Clark -
Former U.S. Attorney General (New York); Professor Frank Cohen - SUNY,
Binghamton; John Cooley - Author, Cyprus; Professor Mustafah Dhada - School
of International Affairs,
Clark Atlanta University; Zuhair Dibaja - Research Fellow, University of
Helsinki; Professor Mohamed El-Hodiri - University of Kansas; Professor
Richard Falk - Princeton
University; Professor Ali Ahmed Farghaly - University of Michigan (Ann
Arbor); Professor Ali Fatemi - American University (Paris); Michai Freeman
- Berkeley; Professor S.M.
Ghazanfar - University of Idaho (Chair, Economics Dept); Professor Kathrn
Green - California State University (San Bernadino); Nader Hashemi -
Ottawa, Canada; Professor M.
Hassouna - Georgia; Professor Clement Henry - University of Texas (Austin);
Professor Herbert Hill - University of Wisconsin (Madison); Professor Asaf
Hussein - U.K.; Yudit
Ilany - Jerusalem; Professor George Irani - Lebanese American University
(Beirut); Tahir Jaffer - Nairobi, Kenya; David Jones - Editor, New Dawn
Magazine, Australia; Professor Elie
Katz - Sonoma State University, CA; Professor George Kent - University of
Hawaii; Professor Ted Keller - San Francisco State University, Emeritus;
John F. Kennedy - Attorney at
Law, Washington; Samaneh Khader - Gruadate Student in Theology, University
of Helsinki; Professor Ebrahim Khoda - University of Western Australia;
Guida Leicester, San
Francisco; Jeremy Levin - Former CNN Beirut Bureau Chief (Portland);
Professor Seymour Melman - Columbia University (New York); Dr. Avi Melzer -
Frankfurt; Professor Alan
Meyers - Boston University; Professor Michael Mills - Vista College
(Berkeley, CA); Kamram Mofrad - Idaho; Shahab Mushtaq - Knox College;
Professor Minerva Nasser-Eddine -
University of Adelaide (Australia); Professor Peter Pellett - University of
Massachussetts (Amherst); Professor Max Pepper, M.D. - University of
Massachusetts (Amherst); Professor
Ruud Peters - Universiteit van Amsterdam; Professor Glenn Perry - Indiana
State University; Professor Tanya Reinhart - Tel Aviv University; Professor
Shalom Raz - Technion
(Haifa); Professor Knut Rognes - Stavanger College (Norway); Professor
Masud Salimian - Morgan State University (Baltimore); Professor Mohamed
Salmassi - University of
Massachusetts; Qais Saleh - Graduate Student, International University
(Japan); Ali Saidi - J.D. candidate in international law (Berkeley, CA);
Dr. Eyad Sarraj - Gaza, Occupied
Palestine; Henry Schwarzschild - New York (original co-founder - deceased);
Professor Herbert Schiller - University of California (San Diego); Peter
Shaw-Smith - Journalist, London;
David Shomar - New York; Dr. Manjra Shuaib - CapeTown (South Africa);
Robert Silverman - Montreal; Professor J. David Singer - University of
Michigan (Ann Arbor); Professor
Majid Tehranian - Director Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy
(University of Hawaii); Dr. Marlyn Tadros - Deputy Director, Legal Research
and Resource Center for Human
Rights (Cairo);; Ismail Zayid, M.D. - Dalhousi University (Canada).
ÆIdentifications listed are only for purposes of identification; only
individuals are associated.Å
.
COME - P.O. Box 18367 - Washington, D.C. 20036 - 202 362-5266 -
Fax 202 362-6965
Email: come@usa.net - Internet: www.MiddleEast.Org
Nils P. Lie-Gjeseth
nilslg@saltdal.vgs.no - http://www.saltdal.vgs.no/samf.htm
tlf:75691528 - 75692500(j) ICQ:5287620