The following is a selection of letters from our readers on Bush’s September 12 speech at the United Nations and US plans for war against Iraq.
Thank you for your accurate depiction of President Bush’s speech to the UN. It can be simply summed up as we’ll do what we want, and if you don’t play along we’ll undermine you. In Britain, especially by the media, it is largely being portrayed as a generous multilateralist gesture. The propaganda is getting worse daily. On the BBC breakfast news ordinary people with honest doubts about war are taken to self-proclaimed or academic experts who try to persuade them war is necessary and morally defensible.
Not a single expert on the slot has been opposed to war, mentioned the suffering of the Iraqi people under sanctions, expressed scepticism about the claims of terrorist links (again claimed by Bush yesterday) or accurately described the actual threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction relative to the more impressive arsenals of other nations. The aim is to mislead the British people into supporting yet another war that has little direct impact on them, but will have a terrible effect on a voiceless and powerless civilian population who lack the liberty to change their leadership.
In this context of misinformation the well-researched web site of the Fourth International is playing an invaluable sanity-restoring role. I just wanted to make clear my profound gratitude.
JL
13 September 2002
Where were the war hawks when we needed them?
One is forced to wonder where the swaggering American war hawks who are now so intent upon invading Iraq were back in the days of the Cold War when a belligerent Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at American cities and a land army larger than ours.
Why didn’t American forces launch an invasion of the Soviet Union similar to the one now being planned against Iraq? After all, the Soviets were definitely a threat to our security. And they certainly had plenty of nuclear and biological weapons—a thousand times more than Saddam Hussein could ever amass.
The answer is simple. The Soviets would have offered resistance and would have returned fire on an intercontinental scale.
Our generals and politicians determined discretion to be the better part of valor at that time and accepted the so-called “balance of terror” that characterized the Cold War era.
By way of contrast, Iraq is a small, primitive, sparsely populated Third World nation with limited military potential, no offensive capability beyond the Middle East, and vast petroleum reserves.
Iraq can be pummeled indefinitely from 30,000 feet without offering resistance or posing a serious threat to the lives of American flight crews involved in what will be called a “war” by the Bush administration and the suck-up American corporate media.
There will be no war—only death from six miles high to tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children who’ve done me no harm and against whom I harbor no ill will.
Get out your beer nuts and Budweiser, American couch potatoes. This one’s gonna have you standin’ up and cheerin’ like Super Bowl weekend.
Dan Rather and Peter Jennings will spend months solemnly narrating pyrotechnic feeds from a dying Baghdad as global capitalism wages another brave war against men and women in donkey carts and adobe huts.
I want no part of the economically and politically motivated slaughter likely being planned by the Bush administration for Iraq in the upcoming media event, “Persian Gulf War, Part II.”
DH
12 September 2002
Congratulations on your generally excellent and informative articles.
In a world where most of the real journalists have been gutted from large newspapers or have kowtowed to serve the interests of capital to keep their jobs it is refreshing to see those who are prepared to take on the issues and offer an alternative view.
I don’t agree with all the views expressed, but I find them interesting, factual and unfettered by concerns of what the interests of power or capital may think. In any case, whether of the left or the right, it is correct information which is paramount. This ultimately will prove the value of the wsws.org. Without a pretence of lecturing, I feel wsws.org must never be caught out on the facts. Too much of the mainstream media is full of acquiesce to serving, as you would say, “the ruling elites.”
The current debate on Iraq is such an example where a fog of lies and humbug is offered by Bush and his oily criminals as they prepare their “armed holdup” of Iraqi oil. The mainstream seems strangely silent on the fact that Iraq has 10 percent of the world’s oil and is the second largest oil deposit. This is obviously not of interest to an oilman like Bush and his oily coterie, right? ... Like hell it isn’t. Without oil “Circus America” stops and with it military power. But we have no honesty in the debate from the mainstream press on this obvious point, preferring instead to distract the populace with the issues about “terror” ... “freedom and democracy” and perhaps even Mickey Mouse, etc., etc....
Many people have picked up on the fact that September 11 is the same date as the CIA-Kissinger-sponsored coup of the democratically elected government of Allende of Chile. Yet no coverage or ceremonies were conducted to remember the 3,000 dead and the death of democracy in Chile on that day. It seems bin Laden had a sense of history when choosing the attack date. This is not unusual. The attempted coup on Chavez on 15/4/2002 was almost the same day as the Bay of Pigs attack in 1961. This again is no coincidence since the “likely rogue” behind that attack on Chavez was Otto Reich, a rabid right-wing ex-Cuban in the Bush junta who consorted with Venezuelan coup leaders in Washington in January.
It is important that people are properly informed of all the issues instead of the homilies offered by that idiot Bush, which are an insult to one’s intelligence, as is Mr. Bush.
Also I like the WSWS standard of grammatical expression which is often missing from many articles of the so-called “free press,” which seem to be written by 19-year-old cadets who failed English.
Finally, I frequently contact politicians and reference (sometimes) your material. Whether it’s my imagination or not, [they] realize that someone who knows the truth is watching. I think it is having an effect, judging by the back-downs on otherwise red neck positions of various politicians after some concerted campaigns on issues targeting various politicians ... some read the emails and “like advertising” it has a subconscious effect on them, whether they like it or not. Of this, I am convinced.
To make a better world the first thing we need is the truth.
Keep up the truth.
Yours sincerely,
DB
12 September 2002
I never did like the idea of a one world order. What right do we have to take over the world ... how would the US like it if it were China who took over the US? And if we had the oil, why shouldn’t we be allowed to sell to who we wanted to? Bush is beginning to act like a Hitler.
MP
12 September 2002
To all at WSWS,
I recently came across your web site and I have to say it is a breath of fresh air. I have visited many sites ostensibly providing alternative news, however they do not really offer any in-depth analysis or such powerful arguments as yours.
Moreover, it is my opinion, based on your analysis and arguments regarding the events of 9/11 and additional research, that the US Empire has allowed these tragic events to transpire in order to use it as a pretext to expedite its three-pronged strategy. That is to (a) eliminate all figureheads of resistance to US imperialism, (b) take control of all major natural resources and (c) containment of Russia and China by eastward expansion of NATO and also by stationing US troops in former Soviet republics lest they form some kind of strategic alliance to resist US imperialism. What we are seeing in the world today is a product of this murderous imperialist policy. Well that’s my opinion anyway!
Lastly I would just like to say, keep up the great work!
Regards,
HB
12 September 2002