AN IMPERIAL WAR EXPANDS
[Col. Writ. 2/4/02] Copyright '02 Mumia Abu-Jamal

With characteristic imperial arrogance, George W.
Bush's 'State of the Empire' speech was a blustering
threat to several states that have yet to learn how to
kneel properly to the United States -- Iraq, Iran and
North Korea.

By calling them the world's "Axis of Evil," the Bush
regime is clearly trying to mobilize public support for
some sort of militarist adventure in those regions of
the world. If they cannot be tied to the acts of 9/11/01,
then they are violative of the US edict that no state,
except by their leave, may acquire or construct
"weapons of mass destruction."

For many Americans still smarting from the blows
of 9/11, and unsated by the aerial bombardment
and humbling of the Taliban in the dusty ruins of
Afghanistan, the challenges of Iran, Iraq, and
North Korea may seem tempting.

What makes Washington's charge almost laughable
(if it were not so serious) is that at least two of those
states were either clients or customers of the U.S.,
in their drive to become regional military powers.
The U.S. was, and indeed remains, the world's
pre-eminent arms dealer. When the bloody, 8-year
Iran-Iraq war raged on, the U.S. supplied it's then-ally
(Iraq's Saddam) with what can only be termed
weapons of mass destruction, as in the poisons
used by Iraq to liquidate their Kurdish minorities on
their border regions. As for the Iranian theocracy,
it would not exist today were it not for the U.S./CIA
intervention which overturned the Iranian parliamentiary
democracy of Mohammed Mossadegh of the early
1950s, and the backing of the autocractic Shah. Were
it not for this Western rape of Iranian democracy there
would not now be the rule of the clerics in Iran. The
Khomeini-led Islamic revolution was, in essence,
a reactive movement that strove to purge the nation
of the Western and foreign influences pushed by the
Pahlevi regime. Why did the US CIA and British M1-5
oppose the Mossadegh government? It had nothing
to do with "democracy," for Mossadegh's was, if
anything, too democractic for their tastes, for he
backed nationalization of British oil, to provide more
for the nation. The U.S. didn't back democracy,
it backed a neocolonial, repressive autocracy.

From Iran's perspective, where does the "axis
of evil" lie? What must they think of a nation that
deposed their president, installed a brutal, fascist
regime, and then armed their neighboring enemy
(Iraq) with conventional and chemical weapons,
which led to over half a million dead on both sides?
Isn't that "mass destruction?"

But being an empire means never having to say
you're sorry; it means telling others what they must
do, or else. It means always seeking enemies.

Copyright 2002 MAJ

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Text (c) copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights
reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is the author of three books: 'Live
from Death Row', 'Death Blossoms', and 'All Things
Censored'.

Write to Mumia directly at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335
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