Unhappy Iraq

The American War on Iraq

Glimpse of the historical background
Iraq is a state in the region of Southwest Asia (also called the Middle East) , located in the territory of historic Mesopotamia between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. From the 6th millennium BC, several ancient civilizations originated there (Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Chaldean, Persian) . In the 6th century, Mesopotamia was ruled by Muslim Arabs, then the name " Iraq " was created . In the 13th century. however, the Mongol Empire seized Iraq for more than 200 years; Mongol hordes then killed several hundred thousand people in Baghdad (then one of the largest cities in the world) .
   In the 15th century. then the territory of Iraq was long ruled by the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, when the Ottoman Empire disintegrated, Britain occupied Iraq. In 1932, independence was declared and the Kingdom of Iraq was established .
   In 1958, a political coup took place, which abolished the monarchy and declared a republic (but Islam was established by the state religion) . In 1968, the Ba'ath Party (Arab Socialist Party) took the lead . Oil companies have been nationalized, making the Iraqi state rich in oil revenues. It could thus support the development of education, health care, housing construction, and the standard of living increased. In 1979, Saddam Husain became president , and in the previous 10 years he greatly contributed to the development of Iraq , from which he built a moderna secular state with advanced industry, education and health care, a relatively good standard of living. Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism were almost eliminated here. S. Husain promoted education and equal rights for women, building dams and irrigation. Iraq has thus become the most developed Arab country .
   However, S Husain's great popularity among the inhabitants partly grew into a cult of personality. Husain did not "bear" it and began to behave authoritatively and despotic (removing his opponents) , as is customary for most rulers throughout the Arab region ... In the late 70's, political relations with neighboring states began to deteriorate (often, but not always, because of Iraq). In 1980, the war between Iraq and Iran began, justified by the prevention of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the "holy war" promoted by Iranian officials. However, Iran was too "a big bite" and the protracted war, which lasted more than 8 years, in addition to the great casualties, exhausted Iraq and ruined it financially.
   S. Husain's biggest mistake was the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in August 1990 due to disputes over oil fields in southern Iraq near the Kuwait border. This sparked a war in which the US Allies first invaded Iraq militarily and defeated its troops in Kuwait. About 200,000 soldiers died, and tens of thousands more civilians were victims of the brutal American bombing of Iraqi territory. A small, weak country was unable to defend itself many times over (the Iraqi army may have been enough for the surrounding Arab states, not the world powers) ...

The American war against Iraq - false pretexts, the destruction of democracy, the rise of terrorism
After 2000, especially after the great terrorist attack of September 21, 2001, the US pulled out propaganda claims about the danger of Iraq, which allegedly possesses weapons of mass destruction (chemical, nuclear). Inspection groups were sent to Iraq, but found nothing... Not even the claim of support for terrorism was based on the truth (in addition to president G. Bush, this deliberately false information was officially proclaimed mainly by the then US Secretary of State C.Powell). Yet these fabricated propaganda claims have become, with the support of the mass media, a pretext for aggression.
   The invasion began in March 2003 about 300,000 US (and partly Britain) troops to Iraq. By mid-April, they had occupied the entire territory of Iraq, including Baghdad, without major problems. Former President S.Husain was also captured in December; he was handed over to his opponents, who, as expected, executed (- actually murdered) him. After the occupation of Iraq, two facts in particular became apparent :
1. The information on weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's involvement in terrorism was definitively proven to be untrue .
2. Only the occupation of Iraq and the removal of S.Husain started a wave of religious struggles and terrorism, which practically did not exist in Iraq before ...

I wrote this about 14 days before the outbreak of the war against Iraq:
   Despite all the propaganda and one-sided information, I am convinced that what is going on is an unjust aggressive war of the stronger against the much weaker , with a tragic impact on the peaceful civilians. There are no banned weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (and inspections have not shown them) , no terrorist activities come from Iraq, and Islamic fundamentalism is not exported from there. There are more countries where, unfortunately, there are at least equally problematic governments (eg Saudi Arabia, where criminal terrorism with
    in the United States) or which are armed with weapons of mass destruction (eg Pakistan). However, they are going smoothly - world-ruling circles are measuring "by a double meter" according to their behind-the-scenes interests, as was shown some time ago in the disgraceful aggression of the US and some of its "allies" against a peaceful and unarmed Yugoslavia (see " Aggression against Yugoslavia ") . It is clear to me that a "mini-earth" like ours cannot in fact affect the machinery of the great powers in any way. Nevertheless, they touch and insult me from a moral point of view some attitudes of our representatives (expressed, for example, in the disgraceful war statements of Havel or Tvrdík - people of this kind should enter the front line in the fight "man against man", then perhaps they would speak differently!).
On this issue, I was pleasantly surprised by Germany and France, whose governments probably value the opinion of their citizens more, despite their very close political ties with the United States. And the mass demonstrations in England and the United States themselves also show something… Our "rectoscopy" to "strong" allies "is traditional, but even in times of" normalization "it did not go so far as to send some troops alongside the USSR to Afghanistan. (After all, if the then government in Afghanistan had not been defeated at that time and the Islamic fundamentalists had not been armed with the help of the US, Afghanistan would not have become one of the supporting countries of terrorism.)
   It would be different if our soldiers were helping in a defensive war against the aggressor, or were carrying out peacekeeping or humanitarian missions - that would be "all ten" for , regardless of the financial side. I do not know what commitments we have within NATO (which we entered without a referendum). If, within these mechanisms, some of our troops are involved in planned military operations, this should, in my view, be at least partially morally balanced by a declaration, memorandum or diplomatic activity against the war promotion of superpower interests and in favor of a peaceful solution to this political dispute; to make it clear that not everyone in our country can be bluntly manipulated by the mass media and that many people are able to look at thingsobjectively and to form an independent opinion based on humanism and tolerance.

The American war against Iraq = a war crime

Let's not approve of evil!

Let's say our resolute NO to aggression against a sovereign country and the American murder of innocent people in Iraq!

Let us not believe in unilateral tendentious propaganda

----------------------------------------------
Current US government , which is in the hands of an irresponsible group seeking world domination , poses a great danger to democratic development in the world. There is no "if" in history; however, it is likely that if the current low-enlightened president and his group did not come to power in the United States (perhaps so did the electoral fraud) , but his democratic opponent A.Gore, there would be no tragic terrorist attack on September 11 in New York , nor to the even more tragic vendetta of the USA against innocent people on the other side of the world!

Subsequently, I received a petition "Not on our behalf" , which I, together with several colleagues from our university, immediately signed (it is interesting that none of the doctors and other fellow university staff dared to sign it - even that says something about the situation between our intelligence....) .

Vojtech Ullmann