Old Asia Says NO - 25 March, 2003

It is rumored that the USA has prepared over 300 new super-effective instruments of killing for today’s war in the Gulf. Within the 12 years since the First Gulf War America has been strengthening its power and Iraq, on the contrary, was losing its might under the pressure of total embargo.  When the USA pretended it was thrilled with horror because of Iraq’s chemical and bacteriological weapons, it was deceiving the whole of the world in the network of a campaign it designed to persuade everyone that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Within the first two days of the war it became clear that the Iraqi leader had no weapons of mass destruction. Is there any reason then to disarm Iraq at all? There are only outdated tanks and missiles that cannot hit targets even in Kuwait. Americans knew perfectly well that there was nothing to be afraid in Iraq, otherwise they wouldn’t rally about the deserts so madly. Resistance of  the Iraqi troops was the only thing that really surprised Americans. 

The idea to send inspectors to Iraq and then to recall them was a fraudulent trick. This was done with a view to embed CIA agents into the mission  headed by Hans Blix so that they could upgrade maps of Iraqi military objects on the eve of intrusion in Iraq. The people were also to recruit more agents. This was planned to be done with money of the UN! With the help of their Apache helicopters and Tomahawk missiles it is much easier for the USA to destroy the Iraqis than it was to do away with Indians a couple of centuries ago. Main difference between the Gulf wars waged by the father of the incumbent American president and by George W. Bush is that the first one was organized as a universal campaign against Baghdad, and the present war turned out to be a universal campaign against Washington. Asia is a remarkable participant of the campaign.

The Commission for international affairs in the Chinese People’s Congress issued a statement saying: “ China strongly calls for immediate stop of military actions against Iraq, return to track of political solution to Iraq issue.” A similar statement was also made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

It won’t be a surprise at all if someone in Washington calls China “old Asia”, the same manner that the label “old Europe” was invented for France and Germany. By analogy with leaders from the “old Europe” (Bulgarian and others who would like to rush to Baghdad), there are Asiatic politicians who also want to do George W. Bush favor. Bangkok, Kabul, Manila, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo expressed their solidarity with the US aggression on the very first day of the war. But these six YES in support of the aggression are all together much less than one NO said by China, and also by India.

India’s NO was the most disagreeable truth George W. Bush has learnt recently. It is not so harsh as China’s, but it was voiced on a higher level. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said: “The use of force by a superpower to change a regime is wrong and cannot be supported”.

“The US has certainly made progress in the war against international jihadi terrorism. India, the most suffering victim of pan-Islamic jihadi terrorism in the world today, has reasons to be gratified over the US success in its operations,” B.Raman says. B.Raman is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India. He was also head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research & Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, from 1988 to 1994. But Mr. Raman himself isn’t so much enthusiastic what can be seen by the headline of his publication “The USA Will Achieve Pyrrhic Victory” posted on Asia Times website in Hong Kong on March 21. He wrote: “What the US advocated and continues to advocate for Iraq is not democracy as perceived by the majority of Iraqi people, but democracy as designed in the Central Intelligence Agency that would serve US national interests. The question is not whether the US will win, but how soon. But it will be a Pyrrhic victory, which will not contribute to enhanced peace and security for the US, Israel or the rest of the international community. The world has nearly a billion Muslims”.

India’s Moslem population is 130 million people; the Moslem states of Pakistan and Afghanistan are its neighbors. Moslem community is the biggest in Malaysia, that is also very close to India. Indonesia with its 220 million population is considered to be the most densely populated Moslem country of the world, and it is also very close to India. The Indian expert on anti-terrorist struggle cannot but denounce US’s operations in Iraq that aggravate the terrorism problem even more. However, it seems that he himself hasn’t yet realized the depth of the forecast concerning the “Pyrrhic victory”.

The cannonades of the US/UK war in Iraq are not heard neither in South nor in East Asia. In these regions analysts are more focused on economy: they are trying to forecast how the aggression in Iraq will influence oil prices, exchange indices, dollar rate, business activity and economic growth. All Asiatic countries are in the same boat: if it leaks somewhere, all of the Asiatic countries will suffer, no matter if they said yes or no to the aggression. Majority of forecasts say that Asia is in for hard times. And this is one of considerable factors of the “Pyrrhic victory”, unfortunately not the only one.  

When I looked over economic analysis on the website of People’s Daily, I came across a publication on its English-language version saying what financial problems the USA may face as a result of the aggression in the Middle East.  There was some curious response from an American reader of the website who called himself as “Borg” published on March 20: “The funny thing is that once we stop trading with China, your economy will take a nose dive into the dirt and your citizens will cause unrest and the government of China will begin to lose power. It is well known that China lies about its actual GDP figures and that its economy is not growing as fast as it would have the rest of the world believe.
The American people have already begun boycotting Chinese products and we will continue to do so until you feel the pressure and until we see you crumble into dust. Eat **** bastards! You are next!”

Next for what? For another Desert Storm operation?

The anger of a billion of Moslems about which B.Raman warns is certainly a serious problem. But madness of a superpower that lost an adequate counterbalance after the breakup of the USSR is even more dangerous.

Andrey Krushinsky
PRAVDA.Ru

Photo: results of demonstrations in front of the US Consulate in Hong Kong (Reuters)