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'.

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