Washington's Nuclear Policy:
Moral Clarity or Double Standards?
Muqtedar Khan, PH.D.
Have you ever seen an alcoholic preaching abstinence and advocating
prohibition?
Just listen to President George W. Bush lecturing the world on the threat
from Iraq and North Korea and on the virtues of nuclear non-proliferation.
He is the commander-in-chief of a military force that not only possesses and
maintains nearly 10,000 nuclear weapons but also boasts an array of weapons
of mass destruction, including chemical and biological arsenals. The
American position on nuclear weapons is rife with hypocrisy and layered with
double standards.
The U.S. is the number one proliferator of weapons in terms of marketing.
Even in regions such as the Middle East where peace is deemed crucial to
American interests, America is the top exporter of advanced weapons
including strategic fighters (such as F-16s) and missiles to both
sides--Israel and Arabs. The U.S. sold nearly $13.9 billion in weaponry to
governments, and licensed nearly $30 billion in commercial sales in 2001. If
the next Arab-Israeli war involves vastly more sophisticated and dangerous
weapons than ever before, we will have only the U.S. to thank for it.
The U.S. was not only the first to produce nuclear weapons, but to date
remains the only nation in the world to have used nuclear weapons, more than
once. Even now, long after the end of the cold war, it continues to possess
chemical and biological weapons and has just announced a massive new missile
system that will enhance its global military domination--in turn
facilitating an enhanced unilateralist posture. It will also ensure a new
arms race by triggering a security dilemmaa for other nations wary of
Washington's neo-imperial agenda.
Washington continues to maintain close relations with such nations as India,
Pakistan, and Israel that have refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty and are widely known to possess significant nuclear arsenals. Israel
is reputed to have anywhere between 50-200 illegal nukes. Yet the Bush
administration is determined to intimidate and punish nations that evidently
do not have nuclear weapons but only nuclear ambitions, such as Iran and
Iraq. The nuclear ambitions of these two nations are not unlike those that
spurred India, Israel, and Pakistan to develop their own nukes.
To this day the U.S. has never expressed any concern over the illegal
nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction that Israel possesses. Now in
the post-9/11 climate, Washington has decided that its own interests are
best served by ignoring the fact that India and Pakistan also continue to
defy not only the nuclear non-proliferation regime but also the nuclear test
ban regime.
According to Washington, Iraq and Iran nurse an unquenchable thirst for
nuclear weapons. American propagandists have also argued that these nations
desire these weapons of mass destruction for the explicit purpose of using
them against the U.S. and its allies (read Israel). Unless it can be
demonstrated that both Iran and Iraq have a very strong desire to
self-destruct it is difficult to understand why any nation would be willing
to sign its own death warrant by attacking the United States. The world has
not forgotten what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Children born in
those cities still bear signs of the U.S. nuclear attacks.
In his first State of the Union address, President Bush made his intentions
clear about the "axis of evil"--Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. He was
determined to eliminate their capacity to threaten America or its allies.
But now we have a strange situation. Iraq denies that it has any weapons of
mass destruction and so far after over 200 inspections the UN inspectors
have discovered nothing. The U.S. claims it has certain knowledge of Iraq's
evil weapons and even after sharing its "intelligence" with the inspectors,
nothing has been discovered. In contrast, North Korea has not only declared
that it has an active nuclear weapons program but is determined to become a
nuclear power in the immediate future. But the U.S. is targeting Iraq for a
massive military attack while ruling out any military option against North
Korea
On many levels, America's current war plans raise questions about its moral
clarity. Washington articulates policy in idealistic terms but applies it in
realistic fashion. If the objective is to limit the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, then the U.S. must continue to pressure those who already have them
(India, Pakistan, and Israel) and those who are about to have them (North
Korea) just as much if not more than those who aspire to them (Iraq and
Iran).
And if nuclear weapons are indeed seen as a danger to world peace, then
Washington should work to denuclearize South Asia and the Middle East by
persuading India, Pakistan, and Israel to voluntarily denuclearize (like
Sweden, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil) and submit to inspection
regimes. At the same time, the U.S. should also give the world a firm
timetable on its own denuclearization program (in concert with UK, France,
Russia, and China) and immediately cease all further development and
production of all weapons of mass destruction.
If these measures are impossible for reasons of realpolitik, then President
Bush should at lest spare us the tedious rhetoric about U.S. "moral clarity"
and the battle between good and evil, and let his actions and policies speak
for themselves.
Read this from the UK Independent Newspaper of 18/1/03:-
Robert Fisk: This looming war isn't about chemical warheads or human rights:
it's about oil
Along with the concern for 'vital interests' in the Gulf, this war was
concocted five years ago by oil men such as Dick Cheney
18 January 2003
I was sitting on the floor of an old concrete house in the suburbs of Amman
this week, stuffing into my mouth vast heaps of lamb and boiled rice soaked
in melted butter. The elderly, bearded, robed men from Maan – the most
Islamist and disobedient city in Jordan – sat around me, plunging their
hands into the meat and soaked rice, urging me to eat more and more of the
great pile until I felt constrained to point out that we Brits had eaten so
much of the Middle East these past 100 years that we were no longer hungry.
There was a muttering of prayers until an old man replied. "The Americans
eat us now," he said.
Through the open door, where rain splashed on the paving stones, a sharp
east wind howled in from the east, from the Jordanian and Iraqi deserts.
Every man in the room believed President Bush wanted Iraqi oil. Indeed,
every Arab I've met in the past six months believes that this – and this
alone – explains his enthusiasm for invading Iraq. Many Israelis think the
same. So do I. Once an American regime is installed in Baghdad, our oil
companies will have access to 112 billion barrels of oil. With unproven
reserves, we might actually end up controlling almost a quarter of the
world's total reserves. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil?
The US Department of Energy announced at the beginning of this month that by
2025, US oil imports will account for perhaps 70 per cent of total US
domestic demand. (It was 55 per cent two years ago.) As Michael Renner of
the Worldwatch Institute put it bleakly this week, "US oil deposits are
increasingly depleted, and many other non-Opec fields are beginning to run
dry. The bulk of future supplies will have to come from the Gulf region." No
wonder the whole Bush energy policy is based on the increasing consumption
of oil. Some 70 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the
Middle East. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil?
Take a look at the statistics on the ratio of reserve to oil production –
the number of years that reserves of oil will last at current production
rates – compiled by Jeremy Rifkin in Hydrogen Economy. In the US, where more
than 60 per cent of the recoverable oil has already been produced, the ratio
is just 10 years, as it is in Norway. In Canada, it is 8:1. In Iran, it is
53:1, in Saudi Arabia 55:1, in the United Arab Emirates 75:1. In Kuwait,
it's 116:1. But in Iraq, it's 526:1. And this forthcoming war isn't about
oil?
Even if Donald Rumsfeld's hearty handshake with Saddam Hussein in 1983 –
just after the Great Father Figure had started using gas against his
opponents – didn't show how little the present master of the Pentagon cares
about human rights or crimes against humanity, along comes Joost Hilterman's
analysis of what was really going on in the Pentagon back in the late 1980s.
Hilterman, who is preparing a devastating book on the US and Iraq, has dug
through piles of declassified US government documents – only to discover
that after Saddam gassed 6,800 Kurdish Iraqis at Halabja (that's well over
twice the total of the World Trade Centre dead of 11 September 2001) the
Pentagon set out to defend Saddam by partially blaming Iran for the
atrocity.
A newly declassified State Department document proves that the idea was
dreamed up by the Pentagon – who had all along backed Saddam – and states
that US diplomats received instructions to push the line of Iran's
culpability, but not to discuss details. No details, of course, because the
story was a lie. This, remember, followed five years after US National
Security Decision Directive 114 – concluded in 1983, the same year as
Rumsfeld's friendly visit to Baghdad – gave formal sanction to billions of
dollars in loan guarantees and other credits to Baghdad. And this
forthcoming war is about human rights?
Back in 1997, in the years of the Clinton administration, Rumsfeld, Dick
Cheney and a bunch of other right-wing men – most involved in the oil
business – created the Project for the New American Century, a lobby group
demanding "regime change" in Iraq. In a 1998 letter to President Clinton,
they called for the removal of Saddam from power. In a letter to Newt
Gingrich, who was then Speaker of the House, they wrote that "we should
establish and maintain a strong US military presence in the region, and be
prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests [sic] in the Gulf
– and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power".
The signatories of one or both letters included Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
now Rumsfeld's Pentagon deputy, John Bolton, now under-secretary of state
for arms control, and Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's under-secretary at
the State Department – who called last year for America to take up its
"blood debt" with the Lebanese Hizbollah. They also included Richard Perle,
a former assistant secretary of defence, currently chairman of the defence
science board, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the former Unocal Corporation oil
industry consultant who became US special envoy to Afghanistan – where
Unocal tried to cut a deal with the Taliban for a gas pipeline across Afghan
territory – and who now, miracle of miracles, has been appointed a special
Bush official for – you guessed it – Iraq.
The signatories also included our old friend Elliott Abrams, one of the most
pro-Sharon of pro-Israeli US officials, who was convicted for his part in
the Iran-Contra scandal. Abrams it was who compared Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon – held "personally responsible" by an Israeli commission for
the slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian civilians in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila
massacre – to (wait for it) Winston Churchill. So this forthcoming war – the
whole shooting match, along with that concern for "vital interests" (ie oil)
in the Gulf – was concocted five years ago, by men like Cheney and Khalilzad
who were oil men to their manicured fingertips.
In fact, I'm getting heartily sick of hearing the Second World War being dug
up yet again to justify another killing field. It's not long ago that Bush
was happy to be portrayed as Churchill standing up to the appeasement of the
no-war-in Iraq brigade. In fact, Bush's whole strategy with the odious and
Stalinist-style Korea regime – the "excellent" talks which US diplomats
insist they are having with the Dear Leader's Korea which very definitely
does have weapons of mass destruction – reeks of the worst kind of
Chamberlain-like appeasement. Even though Saddam and Bush deserve each
other, Saddam is not Hitler. And Bush is certainly no Churchill. But now we
are told that the UN inspectors have found what might be the vital evidence
to go to war: 11 empty chemical warheads that just may be 20 years old.
The world went to war 88 years ago because an archduke was assassinated in
Sarajevo. The world went to war 63 years ago because a Nazi dictator invaded
Poland. But for 11 empty warheads? Give me oil any day. Even the old men
sitting around the feast of mutton and rice would agree with that.
With the very best of good wishes,
Musa Amadu Pembo
Glasgow,
Scotland
UK.
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Da’wah is to convey the message with wisdom and with good words. We should
give the noble and positive message of Islam. We should try to emphasize
more commonalities and explain the difference without getting into
theological arguments and without claiming the superiority of one position
over the other. There is a great interest among the people to know about
Islam and we should do our best to give the right message.
May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,guide us all to His Sirat Al-Mustaqim (Righteous
Path).May He protect us from the evils of this life and the hereafter.May
Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,grant us entrance to paradise .
We ask Allaah the Most High, the All-Powerful, to teach us that which will
benefit us, and to benefit us by that which we learn. May Allaah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala grant blessings and peace to our Prophet Muhammad and his family
and
companions..Amen.
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