Condemn the U.S.-British Bombings of Iraq

On 16 February the United States and Great Britain launched air raids against military targets in and around Baghdad. The attack was the first time in more than two years that areas near the Iraqi capital had been bombed. The majority of international opinion was quick to condemn the air strikes.

Russia issued one of the strongest condemnations. A senior Russian defence ministry official, Leonid Ivfashov, said the U.S. was " trying to replace the United Nations Security Council, which constitutes a dangerous tendancy that will destabilize an already fragile international situation". He went on to say that the strikes "make it clear for Russia that the United States has assumed the role on an international gendarme." He also pointed out that the air strikes come at a time when resolving the issues of weapons inspections and sanctions was reaching a crucial phase with the Iraqi government.

A Chinese representative at the UN said his country opposed "armed intervention by any UN member state under any circumstances against any other nation without the express consent of the Security Council".

The Canadian government has announced its support for the renewed attacks on Iraq. A Canadian foreign ministry spokesperson said Canada "has supported…all means necessary to ensure that the military forces under the regime of Saddam Hussein do not resume their assaults on the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Shi'a population."

The air raids signal a renewal of the policy of the U.S. and Great Britain to portray Iraq as the destabilizing force in the Persian Gulf region and thus justify the continued presence of U.S. and British forces in the Middle East. The attacks were first described as a "self-defence" measure to limit Iraqi defence capabilities. In recent days a further spin as been added to turn world opinion against Iraq. The U.S., Britain and Canada have defended the action by portraying Iraq as a dangerous state because it possesses weapons of mass destruction.

The underlying issues are much broader and have little to do with the present military capabilities of Iraq or its potential threats to peace and stablility in the Middle East. The U.S., Russia, China and the European Union all have deadly military capabilities, as do most of the other countries in Middle East, including Israel which is widely recognized as one of the world's undeclared nuclear powers. At present the most serious danger to peace in the Middle East comes from the continuing conflict between the Palestinian people and the Israeli state which refuses to recognize the legitimate right of the Palestinians to establish a sovereign state.

The recent bombing of Iraq came just days before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell began his six-nation tour of the Middle East, his first foreign trip since taking office. Powell's trip comes at a time when the whole Middle East is in turmoil and U.S. control of that region faces its most serious challenge since the Gulf War. The collapse of the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the upsurge in the intifada poses a grave threat to U.S. hegemony and control. Besides this, the support for sanctions against Iraq is crumbling amongst Arab and European states.

The U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, James Lorocco, summed up U.S. policy in the Middle East when he said: "We stand ready to protect Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the whole region from any threats. We believe that the security of the Gulf is a vital U.S. national interest." However, many of those countries whose security the U.S. purports to be defending do not see the U.S. attacks against Iraq to be in their own national interest. As a result, the U.S. finds itself increasingly isolated from the Arab states which are more and more looking to resolve their problems on the basis of their own interests and strengths.

This is the threat to U.S. imperialism - not the military capabilities (real or imagined) of Iraq. This is why it is planning further aggression in that region of the world.