TYRANTS
Three tyrants are squaring up to each other in the Middle East and in terms of morality, there is little to choose between them. Like Saddam Hussein, George Bush and Margaret Thatcher have invaded other countries and subjected other peoples to occupation and murder. Now these three tyrants are drawing the world closer to all-out war than it has been since the defeat of the US in Vietnam.
The world has condemned Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait but that should not be taken as support for the war moves now being made by Bush and Thatcher. The objective of both the US and the British leaders is to re-assert Western control over the Middle East. and particularly its oil. The Iraqi invasion shows that this control has been eroded in recent years.
The sovereignty of small nations means nothing to the US president. He showed no respect for Panamanian sovereignty last December when he killed over 500 civilians in an effort to show off US power in Central America. In Ireland and in the Malvinas, Thatcher has shown her own fierce, colonial ambitions.
On Wednesday, George Bush told US citizens that his military presence in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf was ``wholly defensive''. That is a lie. His intention is to make war on Iraq if he can gain sufficient approval from the US public and from US and British client regimes in the region.
The war which now looms in the Gulf is a tangle of conflicting ambitions. It is a struggle for power between an Iraqi warlord and Western colonialists whose principal worry is the growth of Saddam's power among the oil-producing nations. The rest of the world may pay a huge price for their arrogance. They must be stopped.
Phoblacht, Thursday 9 August 1990
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