Socialist Appeal on Today's Attack on Iraq

["Paul Flewers" <hatchet.job@xxxxxxxxxx>]

List members may be interested in this.

Paul F

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The first shots in the war against Iraq
By Alan Woods

Last night up to a hundred British and American planes have attacked Iraqi
air defences outside the no-fly zone. The attack was directed against an air
defence command and control facility at a military airfield 240 miles west
of Baghdad.

The British and Americans have alleged that one of their patrols in the
no-fly zone was attacked. But no serious person will believe that Iraq,
threatened with invasion by the world's only super power, would willingly
attack its planes. The whole thing is a self-evident provocation. We warned
about this in our last article, The Lull Before the Storm. That was on
Monday. By the end of the week, they had already acted exactly on the lines
we had predicted.

The raid was the 35th air strike reported this year by the Anglo-American
coalition put together to patrol zones in the north and south of Iraq
following the 1991 Gulf War. However, the excuse that this was just a normal
exercise over the no-fly zone is nonsense.

The no-fly zones are supposed, for "humanitarian purposes", to "defend" the
civilian population of certain areas against attacks from the forces of
Saddam Hussein. US central command has alleged there had been more than 130
Iraqi attacks against American aircraft this year. The Iraqis are accused
of -- defending their own country. A terrible crime! But no concrete details
of such acts have so far been forthcoming.

It is self-evident that the latest military operation was an act of
unprovoked aggression and a calculated provocation. The fact that Iraqi air
defences were targeted speaks for itself. This is precisely the kind of
attack one would expect to see as part of the preparations for an invasion.
It is partly an attempt to weaken Iraq's already damaged defences.

On the other hand, the fact that the target was clearly outside the "no-fly
zone" (an arbitrary zone, the declaration of which was in itself an act of
aggression against a supposedly sovereign state) was obviously an attempt to
provoke the Iraqis into military resistance, which would then serve as a
pretext for invasion.

Read on at <http://www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/iraq_first_shots.html>.








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