Monday 5 May 2003

A Civilization Wrecked

The invasion of Iraq by the coalition forces, led by the USA and Britain, was a mere pyrrhic victory, devoid of any form of international morality. It was like a venomous snake attacking a rat, using cowboy ethics. The real danger of this conflict is that two Western leaders who inculcate conservative Christian fundamentalist views are spearheading it. Christian fundamentalism is as dangerous as Islamic fundamentalism, and there is a tendency to use violence in nihilist ways.

As a people of the human race, we have to be representative of our Islamic or Christian Faith, we are duty-bound to maintain, at all times, a principled moral position in dealing with various situations. We live in a dynamic world, which is ruled by the ethic of post-modernity, where nothing is sacred and nothing is permanent. It is immoral to arbitrarily imbibe a perceived threat and then invade a sovereign country using the ideological militaristic philosophy of the pre-emptive strike. We the others in the World, cannot remain quiet, merely because it is being given the POLITICAL DECREE ABSOLUTE, by the initiators of the pentagon driven " cowboy ethics'. Invasion by perception is satanic and dangerous. A nation's historical artifacts are its treasurers for longevity and must be protected at all costs. Not content with the ransacking of antiquity, it was the turn of the books next as the Baghdad library, with riches untold, was allowed to go up in smoke. Scrolls, parchments, historical documents lost in the flames and the Americans, busy 'liberating' the Iraqi people, again untouched by any hint of embarrassment or remorse.

The University of Chicago archaeologist, Maguire Gibson, who heads the American Association of Research in Baghdad and who has been leading archaeological digs in Iraq since 1964, warned the US forces when he stated that, "when you have a war, armies tend to occupy higher ground. When they take higher ground, they tend to dig in. And when they dig in, they are digging into ancient sites." The university of Chicago professor, McGuire Gibson said last Monday, that he met with the Pentagon officials months before the war began and provided a list of sites that should be protected: "We warned them about looting at the very beginning, and I was reassured it world be secured." This did not happen. The soldiers watched while hospitals and museums were looted by unruly elements. Dr John Curtis, a director at the British Museum, and an authority on Iraq archaeology, remarked that, "Iraq is the cradle of civilisation and the museum reflected that. It was full of enormously important material, not just for the cultural heritage of Iraq but the cultural heritage of the world." Those of whom, who had visited the museum in Baghdad and many illustrious historians have recorded conclusive evidence of the biblical importance of this great treasure to all of mankind, and that's us. So, should we Canadians, who are, more than likely" the other" according to Bush, remain silent, without letting our voice be heard against the destruction of such a historic structure? The present World governments would lose credibility if it failed to manifest a moral principle, which was critical of the invasion by a foreign power. Morality takes precedence over the "manifest destiny of cowboy ethics" The Bush/Blair campaigners called this "Liberation"? No, it is bloody conquest, and we are witnessing America's mass theft of Iraq's resources and natural wealth. Ask the crowds in the streets, for whom the fear and hatred of Saddam Hussein have been transferred, virtually overnight, to Bush and Blair and perhaps to America and Britain at Large.

Such, is the magnitude of the Bush/ Blair folly and crime that the contrivance of their vindication is urgent? As if speaking for the vindicators, Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, reported: "[Blair] said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right."

What constitutes a bloodbath to the BBC's man in Downing Street? Did the murder of the 3,000 people in New York's Twin Towers qualify? If his answer is yes, then the thousands killed in Iraq during the past month is a bloodbath. One report says that more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed within 24 hours or less. Or are the vindicators saying that the lives of one set of human beings have less value than those recognisable to us? Devaluation of human life has always been essential to the pursuit of imperial power, from the Congo to Vietnam, from Chechnya to Iraq.

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