In the name of freedom

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
My View - The Sun Daily
March 18, 2015

EXACTLY 12 years ago, tomorrow, the invasion of Iraq was unleashed. Led by the US and its band of merry men under the banner "coalition of the willing" – including the United Kingdom, Poland, Australia, Spain, Denmark, and Italy – a unilateral attack was launched. The United Nations was pushed aside, and so were the majority of its members who were "unwilling" to be in cahoots. Instead many warned that unless the root of the problem is tackled, the incursion into Iraq would be a grave misadventure. This wisdom has been proven to be right today.

The arrogant decision to proceed based on the outdated fallacy that might is right, divide and rule, and that it is the white man's burden to civilise the Arabic world as did Lawrence of Arabia not too long ago have backfired. As predicted the war on terror has spread far and wide, and becomes more lethal.

The myth that "eye-raq" with the so-called fourth strongest army in the world was in possession of or was in the process of building "weapons of mass destruction" to its advantage was a blatant lie, although the guilty ones are still in denial.

What is becoming increasingly obvious is the desperation to lay hands on the massive oil reserves that Iraq has to ensure an uninterrupted supply to the world (read: West).

Even the alleged links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda during the lead-up to the war was discredited amid reports alleging that the US Administration, particularly former undersecretary of defence Douglas J. Feith, manipulated evidence to support links between the two.

At the same time, opposition to the invasion worldwide coalescing in an anti-war protest on Feb 15, 2003 was totally ignored. This is despite more than 800 cities being involved, attracting "between six and 10 million people" dubbed "the largest such protest in human history" according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The eagerness to attack was in fact demonstrated when the "48-hour deadline" set by US President George W. Bush for two of Saddam Hussein's sons to surrender was not kept. Indeed, the bombing of Iraq went ahead without any explicit UN authorisation.

It is not surprising that Kofi Annan, the then UN secretary-general, said in September 2004: "From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, it (the war) was illegal." Two years later in February 2006, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court reportedly received 240 communications in connection with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 which alleged that various war crimes had been committed.

On the fateful day in 2003, minutes after the "shock-and-awe" raids on Baghdad, Bush gloated in a televised address: "At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." As to whether this is the case today, is for the whole world to see and judge. And hold the perpetrators accountable.

Given what is happening around the world beyond just Iraq, especially with the entry of a new entity named "IS" one can safely conclude that neither of the two "goals" has been realised. In fact, quite the opposite. The UN has held IS responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and alleged ethnic cleansing of "historic scale" by Amnesty International.

So much for the illusive freedom which today takes over 60 countries to still directly or indirectly attempt to deliver. So too in defending the world from an even more grave danger against this new ruthless entity which could be traced to the March 2003 incursion when in October 2006 it morphed into IS of Iraq. Later, into the IS of Iraq and the Levant, and more recently by June 2014, it proclaimed a "worldwide caliphate" – simply known as "IS".

According to some analysts this territorial expansion signifies "a failure of US foreign policy" that resulted in near collapse of the so-called "free" Iraq; now forcing the return of US military aggression in the area.

Arguably, the biggest failure is the failure to disassociate "IS" from the word "Islam" despite the many contradictions and lack of consensus that it is indeed a caliphate. Unless the strategy is to drive a wedge among Muslims. In short, IS is US – an un-Islamic state, and it must be addressed as such. It is no good that while admitting that "We are at war with people who have perverted Islam," (to quote President Obama) but at the same time continue to pervert the religion by continuing to accept the label of a so-called "Islamic State". This perversion too must stop if "IS" is to lose its appeal!

With some four decades of experience in education locally and internationally, the writer believes that "another world is possible". Comments: letters@thesundaily.com