Why I Oppose the War on Iraq
by Michael S. Ladah
I was not impressed with President
Bush’s recent speech or his arguments to justify a war on Iraq. The President did not present any compelling
arguments for war, but capitalized on our fear of terrorism.
He did not present feasible peaceful alternatives nor did he outline the risks in
the form of intended and unintended consequences. I
still oppose the war on Iraq because it is immoral and illegal, and because it will add
more misery to an already miserable world and more uncertainty to an already frustrated
and uncertain American public.
An unprovoked (pre-emptive) war on Iraq
will be immoral, for we will be attacking a sovereign country simply because we do not
like its leader. This will obviously be the
first war of many to come because there are many leaders in this world whom we do not like
and who do not like us. Most likely, there are
other countries with whom our reputation as a nation with moral character has been
severely tarnished and where our policies are looked upon with contempt and disgust. Contrary to our administration’s
rationalization, these countries admire our democracy and liberties and look upon us, the
people of the United States, with admiration and envy.
They admire the principles on which this country was founded and which are
embodied in our Constitution. However, they do
look upon our government as arrogant, our foreign policies as imperialist, and some of our
allies as ‘bad company’ from whose policies we should dissociate ourselves. Like their people, most of the leaders of
such countries do not like us either, regardless of their diplomatic efforts to portray
themselves and their feelings otherwise, because of our arrogance. The war on Iraq will be immoral because our
leaders, the leaders of the greatest superpower that has existed on the face of this
planet, have lied about their objective from launching this war. They claim that they will wage war to destroy Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction while in fact they have imperial motives of economic, military
and political nature unrelated to the stated objective.
An unprovoked war on Iraq will be illegal
for it violates every principle of international law.
The United Nations Organization was created with the objective of ending all
armed international conflicts by negotiations and peaceful conflict resolution. If the United Nations authorizes an unprovoked
war on Iraq, it will have defeated the purpose for which it was created. If the United Nations Organization is truly
interested in peace, it would force Israel, our closest ally, to end its occupation of the
land and people it conquered and which the UN has told it to vacate on several occasions,
to no avail. If any country is in defiance of
UN Security Council resolutions, and should be forced to comply with them and with the UN
Charter, it is the state of Israel. Why are we
and the United Nations impotent in the face of Israel’s defiance?
The unprovoked war on Iraq will be the
first in a series of steps, to be used by these United States, which will subordinate
other countries and peoples to our economic, political and military interests, all for the
sake of dominating the world through the establishment of the American Empire. Many of us or our fathers or our ancestors
came to this country to escape the rule of what were invincible evil empires wreaking
havoc on their imperial subjects through discrimination, genocide, persecution,
empire-building and expansionism through intimidation and conquests. Many of us or our ancestors left the British Empire
and the European colonial rule, the Ottoman Empire and its atrocities, and the evil
communist Soviet empire and its totalitarian rule, to escape their evil imperial
intentions and practices. We have strayed so
far away from the principles which our founding fathers established for us in our
Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Neither
we the people, nor our friends, nor our enemies, see any resemblance of these principles
in our present policies or our hidden objectives. We
are being taken back to the era when nations took their armies to conquests to develop
their economic interests. We the people,
because of our indifference or silence, are in danger of becoming the conquistadors, the
conquerors of peoples who have what we covet. Iraq,
and the countries of the Arabian Gulf all have the resource that we do not have but which
we are eager to own, even illegally. Iraq is
only the first step in our imperial objective, and then come the other countries.
An unprovoked war on Iraq will add misery
to the world through destruction of lives and property, ours and theirs. Further, we will, willingly or not, provide a cover
for the Zionist expansionists in Israel to transfer the Palestinians out of their
ancestral homes in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.
While the world has been pre-occupied with the manufactured crisis in Iraq,
the Israeli military has been busy setting a new record in committing atrocities through
closures, house demolitions, separation and extended curfews. A war on Iraq and its people will provide further
cover for the Israeli war monger, the butcher of Sabra and Shattilla, to commit new
atrocities against the Palestinians.
An unprovoked war on Iraq will create more
enemies for our people because of our newly found imperialist policies, further adding to
our people’s frustration and confusion about the reasons why our people in these United
States are becoming targets of hatred and terrorism.
Our new imperialist policies are
tantamount to robbing nations of their sovereignty and will result in returning the
community of nations to the rule of the jungle where ‘might makes right.’ Our arrogance has found no bounds, our ambition no
moral or legal limits. Today it is Iraq,
tomorrow it is the others. As the leader of
the world, we may find it easy to start our hostility and belligerence; but once we start,
will we ever see the end?
© 2002 by
Michael S. Ladah. The writer is an Arab American who lived and worked in various
parts of the Middle East. He is the author of “Quicksand, Oil and Dreams: The
Story of One of Five Million Dispossessed Palestinians.” He may be reached at
ladah@hotmail.com
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