[Peace-discuss] Re: [Aware] Can you help?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Gilbert Langdon wrote:
> Mr or Ms Estabrook,
>    Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions. If you have 
> the time I would like to respond and maybe ask you a couple more. If you 
> dont respond I will respect that you dont have the time.

I'll try to respond to them individually, below.

>    I thought that the U.N. sactioned Iraq after they attacked a 
> defencless country. Killing their men,women and children for their oil?

I assume you refer to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.  The American 
ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, may actually have approved that 
invasion, or at least indicated to the Iraqi government that its dispute 
with Kuwait was a matter of indifference to the US.

But the US did object to the occupation of Kuwait, one of the 
governments through which the US controlled Mideast oil.  Iraq proposed 
a regional conference, in which all questions of occupation, including 
Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, could be resolved.  The US 
rejected negotiations.  Troubled by what was called then "the nightmare 
scenario" -- the possibility that Iraq would withdraw from Kuwait and 
leave a puppet government in place, as the US had just done in Panama -- 
the US hurried to get an invasion force ready, knowing that the Iraqi 
army would be no match for it.

After the Iraqis were expelled form Kuwait, the Iraqi Shias rose against 
Saddam Hussein, but the US supported Saddam and the Shia were massacred, 
because the US preferred a strong man under US control in Baghdad to an 
unpredictable popular government.

"In 1990, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, 
administered mainly by the United States and Britain ... No Westerners 
know Iraq better than Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who served 
successively as U.N. humanitarian co-ordinators there from 1997 to 2000. 
Both resigned in protest of the sanctions, which Halliday has 
characterized as 'genocidal.'

"As they and others pointed out for years, the sanctions devastated the 
Iraqi population while strengthening Saddam and his clique, increasing 
the people's dependency on the tyrant for their survival." (Noam Chomsky)

>    I wonder if Isreal had not been attacked some 40 years ago if they 
> would have occupied anything?

The recent scholarship on the origins of the modern state of Israel 
makes it clear that ethnic cleansing of Arabs was always part of the 
Israeli agenda.  The leading Israeli historian of the matter, Benny 
Morris, regrets only that it was not carried out more completely.

>    If Osama bin Laden felt oppressed by the Saudi Arabian government, 
> why didnt he crash planes into cities there instead of here. Wouldnt it 
> have been closer?

He objected to US control of the murderous sanctions against Iraq, 
Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and the tyrannical Saudi 
government.  He said that he first thought of attacking America when he 
saw the towers of downtown Beirut burning in 1982, as a result of the 
Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which the US sanctioned.

>   Are you saying that the U.S. military in Iraq is responsible for 
> killing every person who has died there?

No, but the best estimate (from a research team from Johns Hopkins 
University) is that we are responsible for well over half a million 
"excess deaths" in Iraq after we invaded in March 2003.

>   Why blame the U.S. gov. for the deaths of children in Iraq durring the 
> oil sanctions? Saddam had how many cars? how many palaces? Iraq 
> recieved  alot of money and food. The people never got any of it because 
> Hussan kept it all for himself. They starved because he would not let 
> them eat. He looked as though he never missed a meal and there was 
> plenty of money for his sons. His boys who raped and killed at will and 
> whim.

In fact, Iraq had a sophisticated and complex system of food 
distribution during the 1990s.  It had to, in order to survive at all 
under the harshest sanctions (administered by the US) any modern country 
has had to endure.  The result was of course that the population was 
even more dependent on Saddam Hussein's government than they would have 
been without the sanctions.  Otherwise Saddam might have been overthrown 
by his own people like Ceauşescu in Romania, Marcos in the Philippines, 
Suharto in Indonesia, and other monsters supported by the US.

>  Do the insurgents have any accountability for any deaths in Iraq?

Of course, just as the American patriots had accountability for deaths 
during the American Revolution.  But don't you think that people in a 
country occupied by a foreign army have a right to take up arms against 
it?  That's what the American colonists said in 1775.

>  Thank you again for your time.

You're quite welcome.  I think that these are important questions for 
our fellow citizens to consider.

>                             Health and Happiness to you and yours,
>                             sincerly Virginia Langdon.
> */"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
>     Virginia Langdon wrote:
>      > Can you help me understand why you are against the war on
>     terroism? I
>      > came to see your protest the war movement on saturday 27. I
>     watched and
>      > read some of the signs and I am not sure what to believe. On sept.11
>      > 2001 radical Islamists killed a lot of americans. Why should we
>     not try
>      > to keep them from doing it again? I hope you can tell me. Thank
>     you for
>      > your time. sincerly Virginia Langdon.
> 
>     Dear Ms. Langdon:
> 
>     The "war on terrorism" is not keeping radical Islamists from killing
>     Americans, as they did on 9/11/01. Instead, it's driving them to try
>     again. Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration knew --
>     even the CIA told them so -- that the invasion would increase terrorism
>     by bringing the terrorists new recruits. But the administration was
>     willing to have that happen, because its real goal in launching wars on
>     Afghanistan and Iraq -- which they misleadingly called a "war on
>     terrorism" -- was to continue the long-standing US policy of
>     controlling
>     the oil of the Middle East.
> 
>     It is particularly hypocritical of our government to use the crimes of
>     9/11 as an excuse for crimes of their own. The government that you and
>     I are responsible for has killed hundreds of thousands of men, women
>     and
>     children in Iraq.
> 
>     Of the nineteen men who committed the suicide attacks on 9/11, fifteen
>     were from the principal American ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia,
>     and none was from Iraq. But our government immediately wanted to attack
>     Iraq, even in place of going after those who were probably responsible
>     for the attacks, Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. The Bush
>     administration did decide that they had to appear as though they were
>     going after bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan, but when the Afghan
>     government offered to negotiate turning him over for trial, the US
>     refused the offer, and attacked the country instead.
> 
>     Osama bin Laden has said that he planned the 9/11 attacks for three
>     principal reasons: (1) the sanctions on Iraq enforced by the US and
>     Britain after the Gulf War (1991), which killed hundreds of
>     thousands of
>     Iraqis -- perhaps as many as half a million Iraqi children -- during
>     the
>     Clinton administration; (2) US support for the occupation and
>     oppression
>     of Palestinians by the Israelis for almost forty years; and (3) the US
>     military presence in the holy places of Islam and support for the
>     oppressive government (Saudi Arabia) that controls them. These truly
>     are crimes, and many people in the world -- not just the Muslim
>     world --
>     regard them as such.
> 
>     Of course, our crimes do not justify the crimes of 9/11, just as the
>     crimes of 9/11 do not justify the further crimes the US has
>     committed in
>     attacking Afghanistan and Iraq (and by proxy, Lebanon and the Occupied
>     Territories). But the 9/11 crimes killed three thousand people: the
>     American crimes just mentioned probably killed five hundred times as
>     many -- and they are continuing.
> 
>     Most people now realize that it was an outright lie when the Bush
>     administration said that they launched an aggressive war on Iraq "to
>     eliminate weapons of mass destruction." Instead, our government wanted
>     to establish permanent bases (which are being built) in the midst of
>     the
>     world's greatest energy-producing region, in the country that in fact
>     has the world's second-largest oil reserves (Saudi Arabia is first,
>     Iraq
>     is second).
> 
>     It is a basic principal of US foreign policy for decades that the US
>     must control Middle East oil, not just have access to it. The US in
>     fact imports very little oil form the Middle East, but Republican and
>     Democrat administrations alike have demanded control of Middle East oil
>     as a way to control America's economic competitors in Europe and Asia.
>     And now the Bush administration, which does not have to face the voters
>     again, seems willing to attack Iran, a much stronger country than Iraq,
>     and even use nuclear weapons against it, in order to assert this
>     control.
> 
>     The "War on Terror" is just a cover story for the maintenance and
>     extension of American control around the world. The best evidence for
>     that fact is that the Bush administration has not done the simple
>     things
>     that they would do if they were primarily concerned with keeping
>     Americans safe from more attacks like 9/11. Baggage on airplanes is
>     still not completely screened for explosives, and containers coming
>     into
>     American ports on ships are not examined. And the cost of doing that is
>     a fraction of the sums that we have spent to kill people in the
>     Middle East.
> 
>     I agree with you that one of the first responsibilities of any American
>     government is to keep Americans safe. But not only is this
>     administration not doing that, it is committing vast crimes and mass
>     murders that can only result in Americans' being less safe, not more,
>     every day.
> 
>     Regards,
>     C. G. Estabrook
> 
>