IT’S getting a little silly. Here’s the spin. I don’t like the FF/PD government so therefore I am anti-Irish.
This is the logic used to explain away opposition to the coming US war against Iraq.
If you can’t understand the current American obsession with Saddam Hussein; and you feel that there are plenty of odious dictators with whom the Americans do business (including Saddam when it suited them); and that America simply wants to be in control of the oilfields; and that general goodness and American foreign policy are laughable bedfellows – you’re an anti-American racist.
It’s a sly, silly argument aimed at stopping opposition to the American war on Iraq. The truth is that the US is just barely on the legal side of international law here. They have made it plain that if they can’t orchestrate a war through the UN they will go to war anyway.
Nobody, but nobody, opposed to the US war wants Saddam Hussein in power one more day. But if this is the way that the Americans are going to do their business then world order becomes a matter of American interests and we are into an unending series of wars.
The reason very many people are opposed to American foreign policy is that it is used always to America’s short-term advantage, is increasingly becoming detached from any legal restraints and is suffused with hypocrisy.
Thus the US wants Saddam made amenable to the international community while refusing to allow its soldiers to come under the jurisdiction of the International Court at the Hague.
They claim that they oppose nuclear non-proliferation while they bankrolled Israel’s nuclear programme.
And so on. And on.
The sharp criticism of America comes from its role in the world. They occupy a position similar to the landlords of old in this country. Very civilised within but despotic in their dealings with the rest of the world.
The landlord’s agents (Ireland and the like) can do well out of collaborating with them but rebels are dealt the iron fist.
The US sits atop a world economy where they produce nearly one third of the wealth while 40,000 people a day starve. Their international aid is minuscule despite the fact that they are the chief beneficiaries of the current world order.
None of this relates to the American people but to the policies of their government. That’s not racism – that’s the truth.
As well as that…
The incubator story
THE last time the US went to war against Iraq one of the first stories to emerge was the one about the Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of their incubators and throwing them out the hospital window.
There wasn’t a word of truth about it. The whole thing was manufactured by some pro-American agency and our news stations and papers reported it as if it were a fact.
Remember this when the bullets start to fly. When the British and Americans tell you something about the war it is very likely to be complete BS.