Arab League
Amr Musa, secretary general of the Arab League, was asked in an interview with BBC’s Tim Sebastian, “if he had any message for Saddam Hussein”. His answer was that I have some message that I cannot publicly divulge and that we are against war and with the people of Iraq. The Allied forces should withdraw and the “legitimate government of Iraq should continue to serve the interests of the Iraqi people”.
It is sad to see that the Arab league has become a league of eunuchs despite wielding control of the largest resources of the world. They keep worrying about the welfare of the Iraqi people, either Amr Musa is blind or he doesn’t seem to understand what a welfare state is! If watching on screens nowadays he thinks that the Iraqi people under Saddam are having ball of a time then he should get an eye and mental checkup. What we are seeing on the screens nowadays is the plight of southern Iraqis living in conditions below poverty lines. It’s like the farmers of the region have no equipment or mechanized way to reap from their lands. I didn’t see any though I did see many burnt out tanks. The land served by the two rivers and contains 112 bn barrel of proven oil reserves is stuck in the stone and the Arab league has the audacity not to condemn it or not to speak about it. Rather the Arab league encourages the tyrants in the Arab lands to continue the abuse of their civilians.
These civilians need liberation from the chains of slavery that have been tied around their entire being and nothing short of change of systems will bring it. The fact that Amr Musa does not want to accept is that freedom in Iraq for 25mn people would mean the same desire for the people of Egypt, Syria and other nations like Sudan. Arab league is a convenient place where Amr Musa chairs over grand meetings and opulent palace. With the exception of the Gulf States where the standards of livings have definitely improved most of the other Arab nations are tied up in the circle of poverty, or “poverty trap”. The Arab league has never tried to break that poverty trap. Yes Amr Musa politicizes the actions of Allies and I have no qualms in conceding that the Anglo-Americans have their own double-standards but that should not derail the plans of the Arab league to instill measures in the Arab lands to remove poverty. A fixation with American involvement as honest brokers in the Middle East is nice slogan however if the Arab league improves the conditions of the majority of the population and make itself an effective organization where democracy and freedom is the norm of the day then Israelis will not be able to treat Palestinians the way they do since Palestinians will also have a democracy. It is the lack of democracy and pluralism of the Arab states that is the cause of the all evils and brings about the hated Anglo-American intervention. If Saddam would have put his house in order, if he had not invaded Kuwait, if he had not shown such an aggressive behavior towards the nations of the region he would have not been targeted.
Amr Musa did make a good point on tyrannies, that if tyrannies were friendly Americans would support if it were unfriendly Americans would go after them. So his logic that why should Anglo-American alliance change their preference for a friendly tyranny, that preferential status in his mind should stay. Amr Musa’s gives into the fact that there is a tyranny but if it is a friendly tyranny and supported by the Anglo-Americans there should no departure from the Status quo. But I believe that if mistakes have been made to support a friendly tyranny and if a tyranny does not change its color and does not help bring a change in the welfare of its populace then the tyranny should be uprooted. Any time an Anglo-American alliance tries to remove any tyranny, even if they made a hundred mistakes in the past, all those mistakes will be overlooked if a corrective measure is taken. Two wrongs do not add up to a right so whenever I discuss with any person from the political Islamic spectrum that “Americans created OBL and Saddam so thus why should they change them”. Americans might have changed but then the priorities changed and these people have to be brought down. The question is why the Arab league doesn’t support these corrective measures, which will bring a sigh of relief to the population. |
