“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”- George Orwell.
Reflecting on George W. Bush’s speech to the nation, forty eight hours before the (19th March 2003) invasion of Iraq, Professor J. Gregory Payne, of the Department of Communication Studies, Emerson College, Boston, Mass., reflected that his stance:
” … furthers the perception that the United States has appointed itself the sheriff of the world, who decide, on our own, what is needed, and precisely when to keep what the sheriff determines, to be ‘order.’ ” (i)
Bush also directed the Iraqi troops :
“not to die for a dying regime” and: “continued his repetition of ‘regime, ‘tyrant’, ‘murderer,’ and other devil terms to enhance the reception of his claims …” The Professor concluded: “Summed up: ‘Might makes right.’ “
He also reminds that Bush’s first warning to the Iraqis was: “not to set the oil wells on fire.” Admonishing not to detonate “weapons of mass destruction” — the stated “reason” for the war — was an afterthought. How modern history repeats.
President “humbled to be awarded the Nobel” Obama, has learned fast. Quaddaffi, he said in his speech on 29th., March was: “a tyrant”, engaged on a “campaign of killing”, “brutal repression”, and we were bombing the country in to possible oblivion: “to avoid a massacre.”
Iraq is further repeated in the Libya embargo.
As Iraq, assets are frozen: “$33 Billion of the regime’s assets”, trumpeted the President (who gets the interest? Will Libya ever see it again? Or as Iraq, will it simply vanish?) A travel ban is imposed on the regime, an arms embargo (and also, as Iraq in 1990, on a country those now bombing it, had awarded it virtually “favoured nation” status in their arms sales) and trade is crippled. The “no fly zone”, where the usual suspects can fly and bomb from a safe height, is another Alice in Wonderland mirror image (pun intended.)