Feb 3, 2003 Op Eds

Feb 3, 2003 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

Fear of immigration has been a key factor in the politics of post-imperial Britain. Campaigning to become Britain’s Prime Minister in 1979, Margaret Thatcher signaled that she understood the anxieties of Britons who feared that their country was in danger of being “swamped” by people from alien cultures. This was cynical, but brutally effective politicking. At a stroke, Mrs. Thatcher secured the allegiance of Britain’s racists and xenophobes and sidelined the burgeoning Far Right, which was threatening to rob her of valuable votes. She never needed to mention the matter again.

Things, it is true, seemed very different by the time Tony Blair came to power in 1997. Stringent legislation had effectively ended immigration into Britain by black people from the former British Empire. In any case, there was a growing sense that Britain had moved on. The popularity, among other things, of black media and sports personalities suggested that, albeit slowly and grudgingly, the British were at last coming to terms with the increasingly heterogeneous character of their society.

What few anticipated in the late 1990s was that the fear and loathing once provoked by black immigration were going to be reawakened in dramatic fashion by the issue of asylum seeking. Thanks not least to endless television coverage of the (now closed) Sangatte refugee camp on the French coast, the issue has seldom been out of the British news during the past couple of years. And it is fair to say that many British people have not reacted kindly to “asylum seekers”, proclaiming on camera their determination to cross the English Channel and take up residence in Britain come what may.

It is a widespread British belief that such people are less apt to be genuine refugees than professional parasites; that, once admitted to Britain, they jump the queue where housing and welfare benefits are concerned; and that they bring with them all manner of crime and disease.

Public feeling about asylum seekers was, to be sure, already running alarmingly high when the Manchester policeman, Stephen Oake, was stabbed to death last month in the course of interrogating a suspected north African terrorist, who is alleged to have sought asylum in Britain.

Suddenly, a veritable nightmare scenario is taking shape: In paranoid British minds, asylum seekers and terrorists are becoming indistinguishable from one another. It is an appalling development — one, alas, that is ripe for exploitation by rabble-rousing rightists.

Trailing far behind Blair in opinion polls, the leader of the British Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, has not been slow to make political capital out of the asylum issue. Blaming Blair’s New Labour government for reducing Britain’s immigration service to a chaotic shambles, Duncan Smith maintains that all asylum seekers should be held in detention centers, pending the verification of their bona fides. His stance is aggressively endorsed by much of the British press, with Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing, nationalistic tabloid, the Sun, especially bellicose in its anti-asylum seeker pronouncements.

As it happens, the Sun has a provocative new editor in the person of Rebekah Wade. An unashamed populist, Wade first came to prominence when, as editor of Murdoch’s tawdry Sunday scandal sheet, the News of the World, she sought to instigate a witch hunt against pedophiles. Now, this journalistic witch-finder general is busy demonizing asylum seekers (along with anybody who dares to speak up for them).

While the Sun’s tabloid rival, the Daily Mirror, has been inviting readers to protest against attacking Iraq, she has been encouraging readers of the Sun to sign a petition insisting that the government act over asylum seekers without delay. It must be said that the number of people who have signed the Sun’s petition (in excess of 300,000 so far) leaves public backing for the Mirror’s anti-war crusade looking distinctly modest.

Though often at odds of late with watchdogs of civil liberties, Britain’s Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has — to his credit — been unequivocal in his condemnation of this poisonous demagoguery. Likening Britain to a “coiled spring,” Blunkett deplores the damage that is being done to race relations and social cohesion by intemperate commentators. Not that he has received much support on this score from his prime minister. For the reaction to the asylum issue of Blair himself has been characteristically evasive and mealy-mouthed. In line with Duncan Smith and conservative editorialists, Blair announced last week that Britain may have to review its obligations under the European Treaty on Human Rights. Yet the truth is that — unless Britain were to forego its participation in the comity of ‘civilized” nations — this is the stuff of fantasy. Like his response to a great deal else, what Britain’s current leader had to say about asylum seeking was so much temporizing humbug.

The awkward truth is that the right is not entirely wrong about asylum seeking. It is the systematic inefficiency of Britain’s privatized immigration service which lies at the root of the country’s asylum seeking crisis. Approximately 100,000 people applied for asylum in Britain last year — an overwhelming number considering that, at any given time, the service is striving to cope with a prodigious backlog of unprocessed claims. And because claimants often appeal against negative verdicts and their appeals usually take an interminable time to be heard, there are cases which remain unresolved even after the passage of several years. The result is that an incalculable number of asylum seekers are wandering about Britain in a state of limbo. Not a few of them have simply melted into the background, taking advantage of the country’s booming unofficial economy and of the fact that Britain — in curious contrast to other European countries — does not require its citizens to carry identity cards. God knows who or where they are.

For some time, a great many British people (some of them members of Britain’s established ethnic minorities) have barely been able to contain their fury about all this. Now, in the wake of the murder of DC. Stephen Oake, Britain is turning into an edgy and vindictive place — a place which will almost certainly become edgier and more vindictive still should the country go to war against Iraq and should further examples of criminal behavior involving asylum seekers hit the headlines. Interviewed the other day, David Blunkett acknowledged that there was “not a lot of fun and laughter around some of the challenges” that he faces. Who would envy him in his efforts to combat the mass hysteria that is sweeping Britain? Blind from birth and long accustomed to handling guide dogs, Britain’s home secretary finds himself struggling to tame a tiger.

— Neil Berry, a London-based freelance journalist since 1980, is the author of “Articles of Faith: The Story of British Intellectual Journalism”.

Vote against peace
Arab News 2/3/03

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s resounding election victory has reshaped Israel’s political map and has handed the Israeli premier a strong mandate to continue his hard-edged approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The poll was also where the last efforts of the champions of the Oslo peace accords were annihilated.

With his smashing victory over the left-of-center Labour Party, Sharon is now in a position to do precisely what his rightist Likud Party officially demands: To prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Sharon would now easily have majority support in the Knesset to expel Yasser Arafat — a step he has said he wants to take — and to accelerate the already rapid growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He is free to tighten the already harsh restrictions on the more than three million Palestinians who live there.

Apparently, Sharon’s election victory has propelled him much closer to the state of affairs he envisions for Israelis and Palestinians alike. He has said he will accept an eventual Palestinian state that would occupy less than half of the West Bank — and none of Jerusalem — and be demilitarized. Israel would control its airspace. He envisions the borders of this state as being made final in perhaps 10 years.

Under Sharon’s plan, Israel would retain areas of the West Bank that he regards as essential to security — areas where, not incidentally, most of the settlements have been built. He supports what he calls a long-term interim arrangement with the Palestinians. That is effectively what he has now, with no talks toward a final settlement of the dispute under way.

There is also Sharon’s famous mantra in which he has repeatedly said he would make “painful concessions” for peace but he has not spelled out what the concessions would be.

Tempering Sharon’s machinations should be the Mideast road map to peace which envisions a three-stage process that would create new Palestinian institutions, establish provisional borders for a state by the end of this year and reach a final agreement with defined borders in 2005.

The US delayed publication of the plan until after the Israeli elections. Now it wants to delay some more to give Sharon time to form a coalition government which will take about five more weeks. And then there is the specter of war with Iraq. Even five weeks may be too little as the administration looks likely to press to delay the plan until after the confrontation with Iraq is resolved. Sharon says he accepts the road map but that he also wants numerous changes made. In recent statements and speeches, he has suggested he will craft his own road map plan, arguing it will be truer to President Bush’s vision than the outline negotiated by diplomats since August.

In fact, the administration has toughened up some of the language in the document in response to Sharon’s requests but Israeli officials believe the administration will be receptive to additional changes.

Sharon’s repeated answer to the administration’s road map proposals has been a quick “yes” followed more quietly by modifications. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other European leaders have made the case that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — symbolized by publication of the road map — must be made in order to assuage public opinion in the Arab world if a war is launched. However, this piece of advice has been ignored for the most part by Sharon and Bush who devoted only one line to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in his State of the Union address which instead focused on Iraq.

Israel’s general election demonstrated one thing above all others about the state: The demise of the Oslo peace process and all those associated with it. Given the way it was implemented or interpreted even by those, like the Labour party, who subscribed to it, nobody need to shed any tears for the Oslo process. But the total rejection by an overwhelming majority of Israelis of the very idea of peace which the Oslo underlined should worry all.

The America plan for the Arab world

Fahed Fanek

Jordan Times, 2/3/03

THE UNITED States under George W. Bush is publicly planning to launch a second war against Iraq, in defiance of Arab and world opinion. Yet, despite widespread opposition, the hardline Resolution 1441 America proposed to the UN Security Council was passed unanimously. How can this irony be explained?

The alternative America put forward in case the Security Council rejected 1441 was all-out war. Bush was determined to attack and invade Iraq even if America had to do it unilaterally. It was this fact that explained the unanimity in the Security Council. Council members voted for 1441 not because they were satisfied with its harsh language, but because it was the only alternative to an American nuclear war on Iraq.

The world realised that the resolution was drafted in a way that would leave Iraq with no option but to reject it, thus giving the US the pretext it was looking for to respond militarily. That's why America was surprised — and frankly irritated — by Iraq's rapid acceptance of the resolution and its expressions of readiness to cooperate with UN inspectors.

It was obvious that Iraq has learned its lesson, and has decided to undermine America's plans by diplomatic means. This was in stark contrast to the situation in 1990, when the elder Bush presented the Iraqis with one peace offer after another — but not before being assured by his advisers that Saddam Hussein would reject them, thus giving the impression that Iraq was intent on confrontation.

There is no doubt that Resolution 1441 delayed military action against Iraq. There is even a small hope that it might succeed in putting it off altogether. Yet, the resolution caused another war to break out in Washington, one that is still raging. This war is between moderate administration officials, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and hardliners, guided by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz.

The main difference between these two camps is one of style rather than substance. While the hardliners want a quick war under any excuse, the so-called moderates — though not objecting to the aims of military action — want to achieve war with international cover and in the company of as many allies as possible.

In fact, some analysts believe Resolution 1441 made war even more likely than if the situation had progressed according to how the hardliners preferred. In the latter case, a military attack would have been seen by the civilised world as naked aggression, and would have attracted fierce criticism.

It is fair to say that Powell is the only US official tolerated by the international community. That is why it is said that while Bush needs Powell, the latter does not need the president. Nevertheless, the secretary of state is almost isolated within the administration — a situation he has tried to remedy by drawing closer to Bush in an attempt to gain his backing against the “Gang of Four” (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz).

Administration hawks are already trying to prepare a blueprint for a post-Saddam Iraq. This blueprint is supposed to be part of a world domination plan that would make the US the greatest empire known to man. But Powell has another plan that, while less ambitious than that of his rivals, is independent of whether war breaks out or not. This is his plan to promote democracy in the Arab world, and trying to address “the oppressed Arab peoples” instead of talking to their regimes. It seems that America has arrived at the conclusion that these regimes no longer serve its objectives — at the forefront of which is eradicating terrorism.

What are the Arab rulers going to do now that America has ordered them to democratise — voluntarily if possible, but forcibly if necessary?

Democratisation has become an American demand to be achieved by force. This demand is seen by the US as part of the “war on terror”, which the Americans believe is a natural result of isolation, authoritarianism, backwardness, poverty, unemployment and school curricula that “sow the seeds of hate and prejudice in young Arab minds”, according to US commentators.

The winds of change that swept the world in the early 1990s stopped at the gates of the Arab world.

In fact, in the last 10 years, the Arab world has been moving away from democracy. Oppressive states became even more so, while half-democracies either stayed where they were or actually regressed because of the absence of effective social forces that would have protected democracy and forced governments not to go back on their promises.

Many believe Washington is insincere in its calls for democracy in the Arab world, for the simple reason that present Arab rulers are more pliable and thus better for America than those who would come to power through fair elections. Nevertheless, democracy remains a powerful tool with which to pressure Arab regimes that have the temerity not to support America in its intended war on Iraq.

Up to now, the lack of democracy and the absence of public liberties were necessary for the stability of Arab regimes against domestic opposition. However, now democracy is going to become essential for the stability of all countries — besides protecting these countries from direct foreign intervention.

It remains to be seen whether Arab rulers are going to understand the implications of this new era, or whether they will continue down a dead-end street.

Inspection reports

By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah

Jordan Times, 2/3/03

THE WORLD's attention was focused on the UN Security Council on Monday like never in recent history, as UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix, and his counterpart from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammad El Baradei, gave their reports on inspections in Iraq so far. But the sense of suspense was created less by any real mystery about what the two UN officials would say, and more by uncertainty about how the United States, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other, would react.

Before Blix and Baradei spoke, it was clear that they would neither exonerate Iraq nor provide any hard evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction — the kind of evidence that international opinion, including public opinion in the United States, insists is the minimum necessary condition to justify any military action against Iraq.

Neither Blix nor Baradei, in their lengthy reports, could incriminate Iraq in any meaningful manner, although in the absence of evidence, Blix seemed to go out of his way to draw inferences that could be used by the Americans to justify war. Baradei made it clear that Iraq, as was the case in the mid-1990s, has no nuclear weapons programme. He also stated that there was clear evidence confirming Iraq's claim that aluminium tubes purchased by the Arab country were for a permitted conventional artillery programme and not, as the UK and US had claimed, components for nuclear centrifuges. Baradei asserted that even if they were not for proscribed weapons, importation of the tubes violated UN Security Council Resolution 687. He failed to note, however, that it takes two countries to violate these restrictions, the importing country, Iraq, and whichever unnamed country exported the tubes.

It must now be clear that as far as the nuclear file is concerned, Iraq is almost as far today from having a bomb as it is from putting a man on the moon. The present inspections, which confirmed the work of the IAEA in the 1990s, lead only to the conclusion that the nuclear file should be closed. By keeping it open, Baradei fed the hopes of warmongers that, however unlikely, something incriminating might yet be found, although he insisted several times that inspections can and should be part of a peaceful resolution.

While Baradei strayed into the political realm, by calling for peace, Blix's political statements seemed to push in the direction of war. Baradei pointedly asked for more time for inspections; Blix did not.

Although acknowledging that his inspectors had been given prompt access to all sites and good cooperation from the Iraqis, it seemed as though Blix was reading straight from Condoleezza Rice's briefing book when he unfavourably compared Iraq's alleged “passive” cooperation, with South Africa's active cooperation with the IAEA, which verified its voluntary dismantling of its nuclear weapons programme.

Blix compared two completely different situations.

Apartheid South Africa, which had jointly developed its nuclear weapons with Israel, decided to get rid of them in part for fear that the weapons would one day fall into the hands of a black-led government and partly in order to boost the crumbling international legitimacy of the failing racist regime. Blix, if he wanted to extend his political comparisons in the other direction, might have pointed out that Israel, which does not deny that it possesses hundreds of thermonuclear warheads, has refused to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, refused to place its nuclear programmes under IAEA surveillance, built its nuclear weapons programme in defiance of an agreement with the United States, and has recently hinted that it might even use nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict with Iraq, even though Iraq has no nuclear weapons.

According to UN resolutions, Blix's mission is to look for weapons of mass destruction or to verify that none exist. Making assessments about the state of mind of the Iraqi leadership, or that of apartheid-era South Africa goes well beyond his mandate.

Blix also made unfair assumptions when he declared that 3,000 pages allegedly about enriching uranium — the equivalent of a few books — that were found in the home of an Iraqi scientist could be part of an effort by the Iraqi government to hide incriminating documents in private homes. Baradei declared only a short while later that Iraq had provided effectively full disclosure about its nuclear programme and remaining questions about this programme were not related to “disarmament issues”.

It should, therefore, have been relatively simple for Blix to tell the world if the documents were incriminating or not simply, as the scientist asserted, professional and academic papers that he, like his colleagues all over the world, kept at home. According to what Baradei told the world, there is no reason to believe that there was anything suspicious in these papers. Yet, US Ambassador John Negroponte, commenting immediately after the Security Council session, quickly seized on the documents as further evidence of Iraqi perfidy.

On the question of interviewing Iraqi scientists, there have been conflicting stories. We heard that the Iraqi government provided names of hundreds of scientists and encouraged them to meet individually with inspectors. We heard also that scientists refused to be interviewed by the inspectors without the presence of Iraqi government witnesses, to protect themselves against possible distortion of their words. On the one hand, Blix says, correctly, that Iraq must earn the trust of UNMOVIC. Why should that not be true the other way round? It is a fact that UNSCOM, UNMOVIC's predecessor, was riddled with spies from countries whose declared goal is the overthrow of Iraq's government, not fulfilment of UN resolutions.

While the Iraqi government may have no choice but to comply with Security Council demands, no matter how it feels about them, the same is not true for individual Iraqi citizens. All they have to go on is Blix's assurances that all of his staff are completely professional and trustworthy, and a long record of deception by previous UN inspectors.

Yet if the Iraqi government were to try to force scientists to speak, Iraq would probably be accused of violating their rights. As it is, there is no way of refuting or proving the colourful American charges that Iraq has threatened the scientists with death if they speak. Nor can one refute or prove claims by an Iraqi scientist that an American inspector tried to bribe him into leaving the country by offering medical treatment for his sick wife. The solution here would be for a neutral third party to verify, record and possibly host these interviews. Switzerland, which recently offered to be a mediator in the Iraqi crisis, would be an obvious choice.

Despite the circus surrounding the Security Council session, little has changed: neither those working for war — the United States and the United Kingdom — nor those working for peace — the rest of the planet — got a trump card out of the affair. It seems clear, however, that efforts to appease the United States by passing Resolution 1441 and putting Iraq back at the centre of a dangerous and unnecessary global crisis, while the conflict in Palestine and the situation in Afghanistan are forgotten, have done little to dampen Washington's war fever.

The United States has a dangerous predilection to unilaterally invade countries without the slightest provocation. We should recall that in December 1989, before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the first President Bush, invaded and occupied Panama, on the flimsiest pretext, in order to remove from power Manuel Noriega who, even more than Saddam Hussein, was supported, backed and created by the United States. We should also recall that the US invasion of Panama, which resulted in thousands of innocent deaths, was far more bloody than Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, although that does not, in any way, justify or mitigate the latter.

At this time, there is no evidence before the world that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, despite months of unfettered inspections. If, ignoring this inescapable bottom line, the United States continues to pull the world towards war, the international community must make a clear choice. Either it must choose to allow the United States to continue to make a mockery of the entire UN system and international law or America's friends must insist that the verdict of the inspections be accepted and any action should be based on that and that alone. No state, no matter how powerful, should be allowed to take the law into its own hands.

Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. Hasan Abu Nimah is a former ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan to the UN. They contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

Irony as Columbia breaks up over America’s Palestine

An Arab press review, By The Daily Star, 2/3/03

“Shuttle Columbia breaks up over America’s Palestine at an altitude of 65 kilometers,” is how Saudi, pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat headlines its coverage of the disaster that struck the US spaceship as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere following a 16-day space research mission.
The paper was pointing to the quirk of fate that saw seven astronauts including Israel’s first man in space die as Columbia disintegrated over a city named Palestine in the state of Texas.
Editorially, Jordanian columnist Basem Sakkijha writes in the Amman daily Al-Dustour: “We drove on one occasion through Dallas, Texas, without realizing that a city called Palestine was only 100 kilometers away. When following news of Columbia, I was surprised to hear that the US space shuttle disintegrated over the city carrying the world’s loveliest of names: Palestine.
“The twist of fate does not end there. I then realized that the seventh astronaut on the shuttle was Ilan Ramon, an Israeli Air Force colonel, whose biggest achievement in life was the (June 1981) bombing of Iraq’s Tammouz nuclear reactor (near Baghdad) …
Another irony is that the shuttle’s space mission during its time in orbit related to spy satellites scanning targets for the war on Iraq.”
Sakkijha says while such freaky coincidences are not uncommon in life, “what we need to ponder is the American space tragedy proper because while we grieve over the peace-lovers among its victims, we cannot but cast doubt on the malevolent use of science to launch satellites that, instead of serving mankind, the environment and economic well-being, are meant to pave the way for massacres and wars.”
Another Jordanian daily, Al-Rai, says the loss of shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven is a “loss to humanity as a whole.”
Ever since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, America’s space supremacy has never been in doubt, which puts added moral, political and scientific responsibility on America’s shoulders to work for a better, freer and more democratic world.
Despite the international community’s anxiety over the drumbeats of war being sounded by the neoconservatives in Washington, their militarization of international relations and their espousal of the doctrine of preventive wars that violate international law and the UN Charter, says Al-Rai, the world has sympathized with the US over its new space tragedy. And that, it suggests, should prompt the US administration to rethink its approach to its current standoff with Iraq and to the conduct of its international relations.
The Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, without touching upon the space disaster from far or near, wonders in its lead: “Why doesn’t America engage the Iraqi leadership in a dialogue?”
America, it recalls, “did not shun dialogue with its enemies from the former Soviet Union and its partners; it did not slam the door in the face of many leaders of states that it had opposed for strategic and political reasons, whether in the Arab region or elsewhere in the world. To accept meetings with Iraqi politicians representing Saddam Hussein does not demean America’s prestige. On the contrary, it would give the US the opportunity to listen, to give and take” and to cut short inferences by its adversaries that it is hell-bent on war.
Al-Riyadh recalls that Switzerland has offered to host last-ditch talks between the US and Iraq to avert the war. Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey made the proposition during her half-hour meeting last month with US Secretary of State Colin Powell on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos. Geneva hosted a similar, and ultimately unsuccessful, meeting between Iraq’s Tarek Aziz and then US Secretary of State James Baker in Jan. 1991.
“Switzerland put forward the offer in the belief that realistic diplomacy is sure not to embarrass either of the two sides in Baghdad and Washington,” the Saudi paper writes. “But America’s doggedness and its refusal to meet with the Iraqis, except those in exile, on grounds that those in Saddam’s circle are killers and outlaws who should not be given such an opportunity, is an irrational political gamble.”
America, according to Al-Riyadh, risks repeating Germany’s mistake on the eve of World War II, when it thought it was an invincible power. “The question is not who can defeat the other, but the fallouts of war (on Iraq),” including its cost in human life to the American side, which would ultimately be perceived as the invader.
Another Saudi daily, Al-Watan, lashes out at the double standards underpinning the US argument on the need to divest Iraq of the capability, or the potential capability, to produce nuclear weapons. The newspaper’s lead editorial argues that if weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are internationally banned, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its head, Mohammed al-Baradei, who will be going back to Iraq next week as part of the UN effort to disarm the country, should be visiting Israel, which has nuclear weapons that threaten its neighbors.
“Why don’t Mohammed al-Baradei and chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix go to Israel, if only to have a look and not even to search for nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction?” it asks.
Al-Watan calls on the Arab countries to forcefully and persistently demand that Israel be subjected to such inspections in the long run, not only “amid the din of the Iraqi crisis and in its aftermath, but because WMDs are internationally proscribed.” Since this is the case, “why are the UN and its Security Council not implementing that ban on countries whose doomsday weapons threaten their neighbors?”
The Saudi paper provides two reasons that have prompted the IAEA to exempt Israel from accountability for its nuclear arms. “We are certain that if Baradei were to merely think of raising questions about Israel’s nuclear program, he would not now be in Vienna as head of the IAEA, but would be unemployed,” says the paper, hinting that in its view, the pro-Israel lobby could influence the foreign policies of several major world powers, particularly the US. “The same applies to other international organizations,” it says, hinting that Blix and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan are also being manipulated by a powerful and pro-Israel Bush administration.
The second reason is that “the Arab countries themselves have not taken one serious step to rid the region of WMDs, nor have they drummed up international support of the kind that is being mobilized now against Iraq to divest all countries, including Israel, of their WMDs, nor have they ever asked the Security Council to keep the issue on its agenda,” laments Al-Watan. “When will that happen?” it asks rhetorically.
Zuhair Qusaibati, in the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, focuses on the about turns of Secretary of State Powell, Russia’s flamboyant ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and “an Arab country which does not border Iraq (presumably Egypt),” which he does not name.
Powell, he remarks, has turned from dove to hawk on the issue of war on Iraq. For instance, he started by telling the National Conference of World Affairs Councils of America in Washington last week: “There are a lot of disagreements around the world on some of our policies a question that our policy with respect to Iraq is not supported by large numbers of Europeans and other nations around the world. But that is anti-American policy. And as policies change, that attitude can change along with policy.” But then he went on to declare: “I think we can work our way through this. Success changes attitudes very quickly. And if we are successful with some of our more controversial (Iraq) policies, then I think those attitudes would change.”
Zhirinovsky, in turn, a one-time close friend of Saddam, is now visiting Israel to root for war on Iraq, remarks Qusaibati. And the capital of an Arab country, which does not border Iraq, is waging a vehement campaign against Saddam that duplicates rhetoric it launched on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War.
Only South Africa’s former president, Nelson Mandela, refuses to be two-faced, remaining fearful for the Iraqi people’s fate and the UN’s future and warning of a new holocaust.
Writing in the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, Sudanese commentator Abdelwahab al-Affendi says Saddam “cannot have been transformed into a hero in the eyes of the majority of Arabs and Muslims and a sizeable group of other human beings unless they know that his adversaries are responsible for crimes that dwarf the horrors attributed to him.”
Last week’s scathing attack by Mandela on US plans for war on Iraq was direct and harsh, eschewing the usual diplomatic language that would have observed niceties toward Washington by merely asking the US to avoid precipitous action. But he did not mince his words, “describing US President George W. Bush personally as shortsighted, and accusing the US of coveting Iraq’s oil.”
The significance of Mandela’s attack does not merely spring from the fact that it was sharp, direct and stronger than anything that has even come out of Baghdad, but from the fact that someone of his international and moral stature should have chosen to speak out in this way. Realizing that it could not possibly accuse Mandela of being a hypocrite or of having vested interests in defending Iraq, “the White House could not but acknowledge that Mandela is a great man, despite his harsh criticism of the White House’s master,” says Affendi. He compares that reaction by the US administration to its earlier “campaign” against the leaders of US allies France and Germany, whom it accused of “representing old Europe” and of being marginal merely because they had “timidly criticized Bush.”
Mandela’s wrath against the US is typical of the feelings harbored by the majority around the world, and even by some Americans, and has several reasons. “There is a general feeling that the US wants to do to the world what Saddam has done to Iraq,” Affendi writes. Power has gone to Washington’s head, and it has adopted an arrogant, bullying stance, and “neither heeds the advice of those who have compassion, nor listens to the complaints of those with grievances.”
The “resentment expressed by Mandela represents popular world resentment against the unjust balance of power and the flagrant exploitation of such a balance to consecrate the injustice and repression in the region and the world,” he continues. Arabs and Muslims see the regional balance of power that favors Israel over the Arabs as an extension of the international situation, “which represses the (pan-Arab) nation and its aspirations.”
In the Iraqi daily Babil, Abderrazzak al-Hashemi comments on what he calls the “Advertisement Leaders” in a reference to the letter that the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic published last week in several newspapers, including the London Times and Spain’s El Pais, to declare that the relationship between Europe and the US must not become a casualty of Baghdad’s “persistent attempts to threaten world security.”
Hashemi says: “One weird aspect of current international diplomacy is for heads of state and government to pay for publishing an advertisement in the media in which they express their support for the US administration in its aggressive and criminal attitude toward Iraq … Why would heads of state and government resort to such an odd measure to express their view on an issue which is so vital to the world? Does it mean that they are expressing their personal view, which does not express the official viewpoint of their respective countries? Does this mean that the decision-making bodies in their countries namely, the council of ministers and parliament do not share their support of the US administration?”
Hashemi says the answer to all these questions is undoubtedly “yes,” because “only private individuals and nongovernmental organizations resort to such means to express their opinion on issues of war and peace.”
Recourse to paid advertisements shows the problem that Washington is facing in rallying support for its war schemes, according to Hashemi, who concludes with a sarcastic remark, saying: “We hope we won’t see another advertisement in some of our Arab newspapers, although we are aware that the Arab ruler is in a position to wheedle out such resolutions from legitimate branches of government in his country.”

The Istanbul conference: a post mortem

By Muna Shuqair

The Daily Star, 2/3/03

While each of the six Middle Eastern states Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Turkey that met in Istanbul on Jan. 23 to discuss ways to prevent a US war on Iraq has its own fears and concerns, they all agree on one thing: opposition to America’s plan to target Iraq.
They realize all too well that they would lose out economically if war breaks out. This is especially true of Turkey and Jordan. Each of the participating countries have their own economic worries which make them unprepared and unwilling to have to withstand the consequences of a new crisis.
They also realize that attacking a country with the express purpose of overthrowing its government in the absence of conclusive proof that it possesses weapons of mass destruction would set a dangerous precedent. They know that in the context of America’s declared “war on terror,” any nation can become a target. All it needs for a country to be attacked would be for the US to feel threatened. No proof is necessary. This caused all nations that feel threatened to oppose a war on Iraq.
Besides damaging economies and development programs, a new war would also destabilize the Middle East because of the expected increase in terrorist acts and regional tensions resulting from competing interests. War will play havoc with security in an already unstable region.
America’s agenda for change in the Middle East is as hostile as it is radical. Among Washington’s objectives are changing the Baghdad regime, seizing control of Iraq’s oil wealth, confronting religious-based political systems (even targeting Islam per se) and introducing democratic change by external means. With such a vast array of objectives, it is no wonder that regional countries fear that the impending war on Iraq would only be a prelude to profound changes that would serve the interests of external forces at the expense of their own.
But what can Middle East countries do to avert war?
The diplomatic influence wielded by any country is necessarily a function of the political clout it exercises in its regional environment. The nations that assembled in Istanbul vary in their political influence as well as in their relations with both Baghdad and Washington. Moreover, they don’t share a common political outlook and direction. With the exception of Iran (and Syria to a lesser extent), all are allies of the United States, which puts them under Washington’s influence and not the other way round.
The countries that participated in the Istanbul meeting cannot therefore exercise any appreciable influence on American policy, despite their influence on Arab affairs (Saudi Arabia) and regional conflicts (such as Egypt in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Iran and Syria in the case of Lebanon).
Turkey therefore knew beforehand that its initiative in calling the meeting would not have a profound effect. Leaders of participating nations, for their part, realize that they lack the political clout necessary to reverse the American drive to war. That was why they decided not to elevate the Istanbul meeting to summit level.
The communique issued at the end of the meeting mirrored the weakness and vacuousness of the Turkish initiative. It called on the Iraqi leadership to honestly assume its responsibilities for upholding peace and security in the region, take concrete and sincere steps to achieve national reconciliation in order to preserve Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, pursue confidence-building policies vis-a-vis its neighbors, respect international borders and boundaries and cooperate with UN weapons inspections. The responsibility of the UN Security Council in preserving international peace and security and its role in determining the degree of Iraq’s cooperation were only mentioned in passing.
As a matter of fact, there was nothing of significance in the closing communique save that it absolved the US of responsibility for starting the coming war and laying the blame for any conflict firmly at Iraq’s feet which reflects an unprecedented degree of political and diplomatic bankruptcy.
It is obvious that attempts made by Middle Eastern nations to avert a war are directly linked to their foreign policies. We have to remind ourselves, for example, that before it announced its initiative, Turkey was negotiating with Washington about the number of American troops it would allow to cross over into Iraq from its territory. We must also keep in mind that Saudi Arabia officially announced that it would not oppose a UN-sanctioned war on Iraq. After bitterly opposing American attempts to persuade the Security Council to issue a new resolution concerning Iraq, the Syrians finally voted in favor of Resolution 1441.
The problem with the Istanbul meeting was not that it was held at ministerial rather than summit level. Its problem was in the contradictions between the interests of the US and those of the six participant states especially as far as providing military assistance to America is concerned. All six countries are afraid that participating in the imminent war would destabilize them and threaten their security.
It is a well-known fact that alliances between different nations have to be based on stable and permanent mutual interests. A good example of this is the strategic alliance between America and Israel.
Turkey believed that its alliance with the US and Israel was based on the solid foundation of permanent mutual interests. Yet American plans for a new war on Iraq (in light of the results of the 1991 Gulf War) would cause immense damage not only to the Turkish economy, but also to the country’s security by resulting in the creation of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq that would threaten Turkey’s political and demographic unity.
These factors revealed conflicts of interests within Ankara’s alliance with Washington, and raised questions about the pro-American policies pursued by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The post-war era will reveal that Iraq was only a prelude for a widespread process of change designed to eradicate the sources of terrorism, and targeting most of the countries of the Middle East.
Turkey wanted to exploit the growing international opposition to war to back its calls for peace and enhance the positions of the countries taking part in the Istanbul meeting. Yet the United States does not seem to care about the anti-war movement or about the position taken by the Turkish parliament when the question of deploying American troops on Turkish soil comes up for debate soon.
The US realizes that rhetoric is one thing and action is quite another. Washington knows that it can exert enough pressure on each of the six countries to force them to adopt positions it wants them to adopt.
For all these reasons, the Turkish initiative was nothing more than a diplomatic attempt that achieved nothing because it was handicapped from the very beginning by the limited influence wielded by the six participants.
Diplomacy can never be separated from politics. Countries cannot exceed the influence they gained through their foreign policies over time.

Muna Shuqair is a Jordanian political analyst.

North Korea gains Arab admiration

By Fahed Fanek

The Daily Star, 2/3/03

Since it was first employed, the phrase “axis of evil” has been clouding world peace, and today it is threatening destruction and bloodshed in several parts of the world. That term is rooted in two sources. The first is the description by the Western allies of Nazi Germany and its partners as the “axis states,” and the second is former US President Ronald Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” in a 1982 speech to the British House of Commons.
David Frum was President George W. Bush’s speechwriter during the first year of his presidency, and has now published his memoir of that period. Entitled The Right Man: The Surprising Presidency of Bush, it contends that the president actually decided the direction of US foreign policy to a greater extent than did other senior administration officials in the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council. What Frum is referring to is the phrase he planted in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, designating Iraq, Iran and North Korea as constituting an “axis of evil.”
Frum says the instructions he received on preparing the speech were to justify waging war on Iraq. Initially, it occurred to him to limit the speech to Iraq, but he found that no axis could only comprise one point, since it required a line connecting two points, so he added Iran. When it was noticed that evil was confined to Islamic quarters, he decided to add North Korea.
Frum adds that the original term he coined referred to an “axis of hate,” but it was changed to the “axis of evil” to give it theological overtones. The three components included in the new “axis of evil” no doubt harked back to the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis, preserving a three-dimensional concept to achieve the required psychological impact. The main thing is that Bush committed the US to confronting Iraq, Iran and North Korea because he doesn’t overlook evil or give it a chance. In other words, there has been a need to recreate the atmosphere that led to the outbreak of World War II.
Bush would naturally rather deal with the sides constituting the “axis of evil” individually and in succession. He has spent the past year preparing the American people for war on Iraq on the pretext that it has weapons of mass destruction that threaten America’s security. That trend seemed to be working well, as evidenced by the opportunistic behavior of Iran, which has been striving to avert being targeted by the “Great Satan” by pushing the Iran-based Iraqi opposition into coordinating with the CIA.
However, the third member of the “axis of evil” chose a time that is inappropriate to Bush’s plans to announce the revival of its nuclear program, its planned withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the expulsion of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
So the “axis of evil” slogan was transformed from a US policy tool into fetters that are tying the Bush administration’s hands, forcing it to woo one of the evil parties by discussing a diplomatic solution, linked to US food and oil aid.
Ideological policies used to be standard fare for the leaders of socialist and revolutionary governments, whereas US policies were based on pragmatic calculation. We have now arrived at a situation in which the US builds its policies on ideological considerations, leaving it up to its adversaries to avoid any harm it might inflict upon them by resorting to reason and calculation. North Korea is a small, poor state living under a Stalinist regime that is out of step with the spirit of the US era. It is politically isolated and suffers a famine. Yet it has adopted a position deserving of admiration, particularly in the Arab world, which is suffering humiliation at the hands of America and Israel.
At first sight, it might seem as though the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il has, in a sudden burst of near-mythical courage, chosen to challenge the strongest power on earth, as though he were inviting it to wage war. But a second, more discerning look reveals that Washington was the one to adopt a position of enmity towards Pyongyang first, and that North Korea’s position has been the natural response.
To begin with, the US allocated $60 billion to the establishment of a missile shield in Alaska on the grounds that North Korea is a hostile country that could direct its missiles at US targets if it were to be attacked. In his State of the Union address last year, Bush named North Korea as a member of the “axis of evil,” alongside Iraq and Iran. North Korea was designated as one of the world’s nuclear states deserving of a pre-emptive nuclear strike, although it is a broadly accepted principle that nuclear arms are a deterrent, and are not for use in pre-emptive strikes. The US did not meet its commitment to supply North Korea with two nuclear reactors to produce electricity for civilian purposes, despite a pledge to do so in 1994 under then President Bill Clinton as part of a well-known “Framework Agreement.”
As though all this were not enough, the Bush administration slammed the position of South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-Hyan calling for achieving reconciliation and understanding with North Korea through dialogue without preconditions. Lastly, it was the US that withdrew from talks with North Korea when the latter admitted that it was involved in a program to enrich uranium. The US withdrew even though North Korea expressed its willingness to halt the program immediately in exchange for a written agreement in which Washington would pledge not to launch a pre-emptive strike against it.
In response to all those provocations against a country able to defend itself and benefit from US involvement in a possible war in the Middle East, Pyongyang was able to confront the challenge with a similar challenge. And the US was forced to speak of a peaceful solution, diplomatic efforts, and the use of neighbors as mediators, instead of the heavy-handed, bullying policies it has used on any country bold enough to raise its head above the parapet.

Fahed Fanek is a Jordanian economics and media consultant.

Such rights are wrong: Israeli militia in the Palestinian territories
Gulf News, 03-02-2003
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For Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon any excuse is as good as another for an opportunity to have Israeli militia march into the Occupied Territories, creating fear and intimidation upon the Palestinians. His latest foray into the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday was to demolish houses which were allegedly built without building permits. So 22 houses, and the lives of those who were living in them, were destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, guarded by soldiers. Maybe the houses were there without the relevant paperwork - who is to say? For it really depends on who is considered the owner of the land, and therefore entitled to allow building permission.

But then, who is to demolish all the Jewish houses in the colonies that are ever-expanding into Palestinian land. It is nothing more than a devious policy undertaken by successive Israeli governments to ensure that if ever the time comes for retreating or negotiating the rightful return of land to Palestinians, it will be made more difficult because of the Jewish "squatters". The Israelis may think they are clever in building such homes, in the belief it will entitle them to "squatters rights" - but these squatters have no rights, for they have wrongfully trampled upon the historical rights of the Palestinians.

Bush must convince others besides himself

By Dr. James J. Zogby | 03-02-2003

If President George W. Bush's two speeches this week are any indication, it appears that he, in fact, has his heart set on a military confrontation with Iraq.

For weeks now, I've argued the opposite. I did not believe that the administration would go to war for many reasons: the U.S. public, to date, has not been sympathetic to a war unless such an effort has UN support; the absence of allies' support makes a war logistically, materially, and diplomatically risky; a war will be a costly venture that the failing American economy can not easily afford; and the fact that a U.S. military adventure in the Middle East, at this time and under current conditions, poses grave dangers to and will exacerbate already tense U.S.-Arab relations.

For all these reasons I have argued that the administration would continue to pressure the Iraqis to disarm, but would stop short of a war. Now I'm not certain. The State of the Union, and Bush's follow up address in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the next day put the president in the rather precarious position of preaching that this war is a historical mandate and a religious necessity he feels compelled to carry out.

While the State of the Union (Sotu) address was a formal presentation, his Michigan remarks appeared to be more informal and, therefore, reflective of the president's personal thoughts. His appearance in Grand Rapids received less attention than the Sotu, but because Bush spoke with such apparent passion and conviction, it is useful to examine his remarks since they may provide some indication as to the president's state of mind.

In both the State of the Union and the Michigan remarks, September 11 and Al Qaida only received passing mentions. Osama bin Laden was not mentioned at all! Instead, it appears that the "war on terror" is now seen as merely a segue to the unfinished business of Iraq. As President Bush said:

"Our might is needed in the world right now to make the world a more peaceful place. The war on terror is not confined strictly to the Al Qaida that we're chasing. The war on terror extends beyond just a shadowy terrorist network. The war on terror involves Saddam Hussain because of the nature of Saddam Hussain, the history of Saddam Hussain and his willingness to terrorise himself (sic).

"Saddam Hussain has terrorised his own people. He's terrorised his own neighbourhood. He is a danger not only to countries in the region, but as I explained last night, because of Al Qaida connections, because of his history, he's a danger to the American people. And we've got to deal with him. We've got to deal with him before it is too late."

Bush then makes passing mention of the UN and the inspections - both of which are somewhat treated dismissively, to the delight of his supportive Michigan audience. On the UN, the president said, "I wanted the United Nations to be something other than an empty debating society", while the UN inspectors are described as: "108 inspectors running around a country trying to stumble into something…".

Bush then goes on to state his hope that the conflict can be resolved peacefully. He acknowledges "the terrible price of war", but observes, "the risks of doing nothing… it's just not a risk worth taking."

Finally, Bush notes that "if war is brought to us [by which I presume he means, if the United States is 'forced' to go to war"]… we will commit the full force and might of the United States military and for [sic] the name of peace, we will prevail."

He then proceeds with a stunning conclusion that should be read in full: "We will free people. This great, powerful nation is motivated not by power for power's sake, but because of our values. If everybody matters, if every life counts, then we should hope everybody has the great God's gift of freedom.

"We go into Iraq to disarm the country. We will also go in to make sure that those who are hungry are fed, those who need health care will have health care, those youngsters who need education will get education. But most of all, we will uphold our values.

"And the biggest value we hold dear is the value of freedom. As I said last night, freedom and liberty, they are not America's gifts to the world. They are God's gift to humanity. We hold that thought dear to our hearts.

"This is a great nation. America is a strong nation. America is a nation full of people who are compassionate. America is a nation that is willing to serve causes greater than ourselves. There's no question we face challenges ahead of us - challenges at home, challenges abroad. But as I said last night, history has called the right nation into action. History has called the United States into action, and we will not let history down."

And so, in the mind of the president, this war is for peace and the promotion of values - not American values, but God's values. America, in the president's thinking, is merely God's agent, or history's agent - and "we will not let history down."

It appears that the White House strategy over the next few weeks is to have the president repeat those Michigan remarks in several other locations around the United States. They realise that Bush must work hard to convince the American people, who at this point are far less enthusiastic than their president about the war.

Polls, prior to the Sotu, showed that while 47 per cent of Americans expressed support for a war against Iraq, 49 per cent were opposed to such a war. The divisions are deep. While Republicans support a war by a 72-24 per cent margin, only 29 per cent of Democrats support a war, with 67 per cent of Democrats in opposition to war. Independents are also opposed, with 56 per cent opposed and 41 per cent supporting a war.

One important reason for this partisan split is the racial and ethnic divide that has come to define the two parties. On the matter of the war against Iraq, more than two-thirds of all African Americans and Hispanics (both largely Democratic communities) are opposed, while the same percentage of white "born again Christians" (largely Republicans) are in favour of a war against Iraq.

It is interesting to note that the polls also show that while a majority believe that the president has made his "case to commit U.S. troops to a war with Iraq" (by a 53 per cent to 43 per cent margin), they are still opposed to this war. The major reasons given are: lack of international support, fear of loss of life (American and Iraqi) and the future impact a war may have on the United States.

And so, even with his apparent deep, almost religious-like convictions, the president still faces a questioning U.S. public. Much of the heavy lifting to win international support will fall on Secretary of State Colin Powell as he attempts to persuade the UN Security Council this week.

But it is Bush who will have to win over the American people. From the Michigan speech, it appears that the president has convinced himself. He sounds like a man on a mission. We'll see if he can sell it.

The writer, president of the Arab American Institute.

When big brother starts to turn ugly
By George S. Hishmeh | 03-02-2003
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The flip-side of the Bush administration is slowly turning ugly. Read on.

"A 16-year-old boy who entered the (United States) lawfully on a student visa was separated from his pregnant mother, even though he is seeking permanent residency to be able to join his mother, who is a permanent resident, and stepfather, who is a U.S. citizen."

This is one of two absurd cases that three prominent U.S. senators - Russell D. Feingold, Edward M. Kennedy and John Conyers, Jr. - cited in a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft urging suspension of the so-called "special call-in registration" under which visitors from Arab and Muslim nations were unexpectedly compelled to comply with new immigration requirements or face deportation.

The legislators said they had "grave doubts" whether implementation by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service of the new procedures "has struck the proper balance between securing our borders on the one hand and respecting the civil liberties of foreign students, businesspeople, and visitors who have come to our nation legally on the other."

These controversial measures, applied against citizens of some 25 Arab and Muslim nations as well as North Korea which the U.S. government feels harbour terrorists, are the fallout from the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

Hundreds were temporarily detained because of minor visa infractions, precipitating widespread anxiety and fear in the community, as once experienced by Japanese, German and Italian Americans on the eve of World War II - nearly 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were then sent to remote "internment camps." Immigrants groups have now joined hands to defeat or tone down this arbitrary and unlikely effective measure.

Blunt condemnation

The senators, who sent their letter, after a class action suit seeking an injunction failed to materialise, were blunt in their condemnation:

"This pattern of targeting persons for arrest based on race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin rather than on specific evidence of criminal activity or connections with terrorist organisations only serves to undermine the trust of the American people, especially the Arab and Muslim American communities whose co-operation we need more than ever to protect our nation."

Under the new rules which are only applicable to all visiting males, 16 years or older, from the 25 countries will be registered, photographed and fingerprinted, and henceforth all travellers will be likewise treated at U.S. ports of entry - a discriminatory step that does not apply to others coming here to "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

The ominous turnaround has also been highlighted in reported by the American Civil Liberties Union titled: Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society.

"A combination of lightning-fast technological innovations and the erosion of privacy protections threatens to transform Big Brother from oft-cited but remote threat into a very real part of American life."

A growing "surveillance monster" is emerging. Americans are being monitored with video cameras to the extent, the Associated Press complained, "that it is becoming almost impossible to walk the streets of major cities without being filmed - yet there are virtually no rules governing what can be done with those tapes."

The ACLU study pointed to the Total Information Awareness pilot project, in which the Pentagon is exploring amassing a database of Americans' medical, health, financial, tax and other records.
Under the Patriot Act - the anti-terrorist legislation passed by Congress immediately after the September 11 attacks - the U.S. government can demand that libraries turn over reading habits of patrons.

Moreover, the wire agency recently reported, U.S. authorities can more easily attain telephone and computer wiretaps, and conduct searches in secret without immediately notifying the target.

Abandon intimidation

And now comes word that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is questioning as many as 50,000 Iraqis living in the United States in a search for terrorist cells, spies or people who might provide information helpful to a U.S. war on Saddam Hussain's Iraq. These are Iraqis who came here after the 1991 Gulf War, and many became U.S. citizens.

This must be a nightmare to Americans of Iraqi origin who, according to the Iraqi-American Council, number about 300,000 and most of them are of Kurdish origin, Shi'ites or Christians - groups that are unlikely to be supportive of the Iraqi regime.

The Bush administration should abandon this policy of intimidation against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans and any measures it deems necessary to protect Americans from terrorism should be applicable without exception to all U.S. citizens, "green card" holders, and visitors.

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