Melville Cooke Mi no know how me an dem a work it out
But someone will have to pay
For the innocent blood
They shed every day
- Bob Marley and the Wailers
THERE IS a certain style of begging which I thought peculiar to Jamaica, where the approach is somewhere between a request and a threat; where it is not immediately clear to the persons being approached if they are being asked for or robbed of their money.
I saw one of those beggars on television last week, addressing the United Nations and, by ex-tension, everyone around the world who cared to tune in. He is not Jamaican. He is not black. He wears suits.
His name is George Bush.
Faced with a situation in Iraq where a significant enough portion of the population is against the misnamed coalition to make life rather uncomfortable for U.S. soldiers there, he turned to the very body he rode roughshod over for help.
The United Nations. In essence, us.
But he did not return with cap in hand, begging for troops; he approached the matter as if "woe befall you if you do no co-operate", as if he had a big knife in his waistband. And, although he has explicitly stated that there is no evidence Saddam Hussein had anything to do with what is now commonly called 9/11, he has expressed no regrets about an illegal, immoral and unjustified invasion.
In which, incidentally, over 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed - and that is an estimate.
Similarly, Tony Blair has not backed down a bit, despite "sexed up" dossiers and elusive weapons of mass destruction.
So, here we are, two alternatives before us. In one scenario, the United Nations responds to the request, being mindful of the unsaid threat, and sends troops. In the other, they refuse.
LOSE-LOSE
If the United Nations does send troops we face a lose-lose situation. Either the Iraqi resistance is pacified and the United States and Britain go on to claim victory, hold an election to install the usual puppet government, claiming democracy (which is not too far from demagoguery, when you think of it), marching onto Iran and maybe Syria as the oil flows into the tanks of the free and the brave.
If the resistance is not crushed, we simply have more targets from countries which do not deserve to be receiving body bags, in a conflict not of their making and for which they will not be thanked.
Never forget that when the Blackhawk went down in Somalia, the U.S. troops were rescued by Pakistanis. The poor Pakis do not get much footage in the stinker of a movie that immortalisies the "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A." fantasy version of the incident.
If the United Nations declines the invitation to the bloodletting, we face a lose-win situation. The losing scenario is a bit like the first loss version of the U.N. sending troops. The win, though, is totally different. The resistance keeps chipping away, sending body bags back to the U.S. on a regular enough basis to keep the voting public wondering. They sabotage the oil pipeline enough so that no fuel goes out for revenue to come in to pay U.S. companies to rebuild what they destroyed in the first place. Bush's approval rating keeps falling (it's under 50 per cent for the first time) and he is voted out next year.
Ditto for Tony the turd (that is not a description, simply a Jamaican language spelling of the numerical position).
Then, hopefully, someone of at least mediocre intelligence will take over and get the U.S. and British troops the hell out of Dodge.
In other words, the win situation is if things continue as they are progressing now.
BEGAN IN BLOODSHED
That, however, means that as Bob Marley and the Wailers said in Natural Mystic, "many more will have to suffer, many more will have to die". No situation began in bloodshed can be resolved instantaneously without additional bloodshed and, if the U.S. voters are to get rid of the mad chap heading rather rapidly towards the same chapter of history as Hitler, more American troops will have to go home lying down.
It is unfortunate that wars are fought by people who do not know each other on behalf of people who do, and Rumsfeld and Saddam are old pals from 1983.
There has been a great deal made of a measly 85 U.S. troops killed since that son of a Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1. There has not been much heard of the Iraqi civilians who are being killed, like the 10-year-old girl killed in Kirkuk on Monday when U.S. troops opened fire on demonstrators who threw stones at them.
We await the United Nations decision - not that there are many to make the call, as there are only seven or so such in the world. When you get right down to it, most countries are simply an anthem, a flag and a football team.
MY CALL IS LET 'EM BLEED
Footnote: Georgie has made a great deal of Saddam Hussein offering US$25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. How much is a U.S. Air Force pilot who drops a cluster bomb or a 2,000 pounder on a civilian population pain annually? And he sure as hell lives to enjoy it.
And it seems like
Total destruction
The only solution
And there ain't no use
No one can stop them now
- Real Situation,
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
