An aye for an eye

Not only are these fantasy scenarios, the implication that American and British leaders are indulging in such fantasies in order to advance a case for pre-emptive strikes, perhaps even catastrophic nuclear strikes, reveals a leadership that has degenerated into pathological monsters.

Pre-emptive strikes were something unheard of prior to Israel's employment of them and threat to cripple any power in the Middle East that might eventually use destructive weapons against Israel. This was certainly the case in Israel's 1981 bombing of a nuclear reactor in Iraq.

The reasoning that sanctioned that strike went like this: Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, is an Israeli antagonist. Iraq would therefore destroy Israel if it had an opportunity to do so. The acquisition of nuclear power would ultimately give Iraq the opportunity to destroy Israel.

The flaws in that reasoning have never been effectively analysed; and if they have, they've been ignored. Thus, what the Israelis called a pre-emptive strike was no less an attack as vicious to Iraq as the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour was to America. Iraq, unlike America however, was in no position to respond.

What are the flaws in the reasoning behind Israel's pre-emptive attack?

First and foremost, it ignored the reasons for Iraq's antagonism toward Israel, that being Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the lands occupied by the Israelis.

Next, and most importantly, even if Iraq developed a nuclear warhead capability from a nuclear reactor capacity, they would hardly use that potential to bomb Israeli occupied Palestine. Such an act would not only damage Israel, it would kill and wound more Palestinians than Israelis.

According to columnist George F Will, "the raid probably was not Israel's first pre-emptive act against Iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. In April 1979, unidentified saboteurs blew up reactor parts at a French port, parts awaiting shipment to Iraq. In August 1980, an Egyptian-born nuclear physicist important to Iraq's nuclear programme was killed in his Paris hotel room."

Now, the same kind of thinking and reasoning is taking hold of the US government. According to this, the best defence is a good offence.

"Defending the US requires prevention, self-defence and sometimes pre-emption," explained US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on January 31, 2002.

"Defending against terrorism and other emerging 21st-century threats may well require that we take the war to the enemy. The best, and in some cases, the only defence is a good offence."

Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney have publicly applauded Israel's destruction of the Iraqi reactor. Cheney's comments were made when he was defence secretary at the height of the Gulf War. Rumsfeld made his remarks as George W Bush's Secretary of Defence.

What is it that the US is planning to defend against with offensive, pre-emptive strikes against Iraq or Iran or North Korea, the countries labelled by Bush as the "Axis of Evil"?

None of the September 11 disaster can be attributed to any of these countries. The alleged culprits were Saudi nationals sponsored by Al Qaeda and supported by the Afghanistan Taliban, not Iraqis or Iranians or North Koreans.

When British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon echoed the pre-emptive tactics in the UK, columnist Hugo Young observed, "Instead of deploying nukes in a conflict initiated by the other side, we claim the right to start nuclear war before any attack is made; and we contemplate doing so, for the first time, against a state that is neither nuclear itself nor allied with a nuclear power."

What is the US defending against? A nuclear attack against the US by Iraq? An Iranian invasion of America? A North Korean accord with South Korea after the US fought a war there to keep them separate?

Bush and Rumsfeld claim to be Christians. However their policies and positions derive not from Christianity but from a modernised version of the Old Testament's "an eye for an eye" vengeance.

What's modern about the version practised by Israel and infecting the thinking of the US?

It's now "your eye before you can develop the means to harm mine."

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)