Liberation And Destruction ( Peace Movement Ch.8 )

(This is an alternative recent/current history of the Iraq crisis as it might have affected the world. This is not intended to be accurate history. Events in the real world have in many ways overtaken the events in my writing, and new complications and barbarisms not even imagined have taken over. I am thinking in particular of the Syrian Civil War, the inability of Iraq to form a proper government inclusive and representative of all its peoples, and the unpredicted rise of the ‘Islamic State’ movement. Who knows what will happen next? Little of it seems to be good news.
None of my writing is intended to be offensive or insulting to any particular group. They are merely words and ideas. I hope that all religious and ethnic groups, and nationalities will respect each other and learn to live together in harmony and with the spirit of compromise.)

Liberation And Destruction (Peace Movement Ch.8)

There was revolution in Jordan against the royal government, supported by many disaffected Palestinians, who were willing to follow the Dictator because they believed he meant to keep his promises to them and would restore their people to their homes and lands, and to self rule. The new government in Jordan, dominated by Palestinians and those who served the Iraqi Baathist cause in that country, declared alliance with Iraq. Soon the Iraqi party had infiltrated the revolutionary government and effectively issued its orders. Some said orders from Iraq caused the revolution. Iraqi tanks rolled into Amman, supported at first by many ordinary citizens who were willing to see the iron rule of the Dictator in return for the liberation of Palestine.

The Israelis were suddenly feeling very much more uncomfortable as the moderate and sensible monarchy of Jordan was swiftly taken over by the immoderate and unstable Dictator. They had for a long time prided themselves on being ready to deal with any threat. They had won all the wars the Arabs had ever thrown at them, and they had begun to believe that they could defend themselves without gaining the support or acceptance of the Arabs who surrounded them and lived in the territories they controlled. All of a sudden the Dictator’s newly acquired military hardware was now right on their borders.

After the Dictator of Iraq developed his nuclear and chemical weapons and his long range missiles the balance of power in the world started to shift. The bully in the Middle East started to threaten his neighbours and influence events more actively. The semi pro western President of Egypt was assassinated, and the bully made it clear he would assassinate other figures who criticised him or sought action against him in politics. The new invasion of Kuwait was more successful than the previous one as none of the ‘superpowers’ were allowed by their electorates to get involved in middle eastern adventures any more, and the newly developed weapons of the Dictator deterred even the governments from attempting to restore the old balance of power.

The American President could not find any allies so he had to leave the policing of the Arab bully to the United Nations, but the Russians and the Chinese would not allow the U.N. to do anything decisive which might cause the bully to withdraw, so his soldiers stayed in Kuwait this time, and the Royal House of Kuwait would never get it back. Arabs from other countries who worked and lived in Kuwait got full rights of citizenship, although that did not mean anybody would ever be allowed to vote ever again unless the Dictator decided to hold some kind of election to justify himself or his government.

All nations were now fearful of the Dictator’s new weapons, and no one cared to tackle him in any way. The United States had lost much of its influence in the region. Its aircraft carriers could become targets of Iraq’s new missiles, and its bases in Saudi Arabia from the last Gulf War had long since been returned. Saudi Arabia did beg the United States, secretly, for the return of its military to dissuade the Dictator from any rash invasion of its oilfields. The Americans and other western allies did send troops and air forces to Saudi Arabia, knowing that if the Dictator were to defeat the Saudis the whole middle east would be putty in his hands.

The other main effect of Prime Minister Anthony’s tactics apart from the reconquest of Kuwait by the Dictator was the final Destruction of Israel. There was little chance of Israel resurrecting itself quickly after the atomic and chemical missiles which landed across the nation. Some were shot down by Israel’s state of the art defence systems, but no system could ever be perfect and some slipped through and that was virtually the end of more than a century of Zionism. Israel’s recent rulers in particular had been unable or unwilling to create any sort of peace, whether fair or unfair with the Palestinians or the Arabs in general. They finally paid the price for their haughty superiority when an Arab nation had been allowed to rearm with higher quality technology and finally showed that they were not merely issuing words of destruction, but actually meant business.

A nuclear missile did penetrate Israeli airspace near Haifa and miraculously (for the Arabs) was not intercepted. Many in the south of the city were killed almost immediately as the shockwave and the instant incineration of everything reached them. Radiation quickly afflicted many more in the surrounding areas. A huge wasteland was created. In other areas sufficient biological chemical warheads landed to bring a different, but just as complete fate to Tel Aviv, In a period of just a few hours.

There was little left of Israel to fight back. Arab forces from Palestine, Jordan and Iraq drove through the West Bank, liberating the land from the hated Israeli settlements as they went. Few prisoners were taken, even the women and children were considered legitimate targets of the attack by Arabs who had learned to hate the colonisers of their lands over many years.

Only in Jerusalem was there a negotiation of surrender as the Dictator’s forces sought to avoid their own casualties. They permitted airlifts of Jews organised by the Americans to Europe, where many of them had originally come from or their families before them, and to America. There was a mass exodus of Israeli refugees, scrambling desperately to get away from the land that so many had believed would be theirs forever.

The US felt obliged to declare war to defend Israel, but the destruction of Israel was effectively accomplished already and there were few places, if any, where they could now fight an effective campaign to defend any of Israel or to retake any of it. The EEC was, as ever, divided upon the question of what to do, and very scared of the new Arabic lion on the world’s stage. Their leaders feared assassination and terror attacks, or the use of some of the weapons which had so swiftly destroyed Israel. They bowed to the new reality, and did nothing except to issue words, words which were swiftly muted.

Saudi Arabia told the U.S. President in no uncertain terms that there was no way they would sanction U.S. forces operating from their territory in the defence of defeated Israel. This would have angered the majority of Arabs within and without their Kingdom and made them very unpopular. The Saudi Royal family would surely lose their throne if they ever did such an unthinkable act. Iraqi tanks would have soon rolled into Riyadh as a general uprising by many groups from conservative fundamentalists to Baathists would have found common cause in turning against an Arab regime which could support America in attempting to re-establish Israel when Palestine had just been liberated! The only use of American forces which the Saudis could contemplate was the defence of Eastern oilfields and the border with Iraq to deter Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia. US forces were thereby forced to withdraw from any actions regarding Israel when they realised the balance of power in the conflict was very much against them. Within days they backtracked from their hasty declaration of war against Iraq, declaring a peace instead, and retained a presence in Saudi Arabia to assist the protection of the oil rich ally from its powerful neighbour and its Dictator.

“We stirred them up for years,” said Simon, as Andy interviewed Israeli refugees to Britain. “We had our chances. If only we had been a bit more understanding of the moderates and trusted them. We nearly had peace once, do you remember? All that lay between us was the arguments over the settlements around Jerusalem. If only we had backed down! We could have had a lasting peace. We wouldn’t have had to defend Jerusalem for long. There would have been trade and peace and soon the fighting would have become a thing of the past. Then we would no longer have had to defend ourselves. We would have been surrounded by friends, and would have had no need to defend ourselves from them. Instead we went down the road of allowing all settlements, even the ones our government tried to limit, to expand. We flouted the United Nations and kept alive the hatred the rest of the Muslim world had for us. Instead it only took an Arab dictatorship to build up its power and attract the embittered to its flag to knock us out of the land we thought would always be ours.”

“It wasn’t only that,” suggested Andy. “That Arab power would never have become strong if our leaders in Europe had not refused to act against that power when they could have.”

“Oh sure,” agreed Simon. “Your leaders were as much to blame as we were for what happened to us. They thought they were being sensible, not fanning Arab flames, avoiding war. It’s clear now that they appeased the dictator, not acting when they could have done something to change politics in the middle east for the better. With the benefit of hindsight, eh?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Andy. “We’ve all been blind. And look at the world now, it doesn’t even look like our world now. What the west thought was firmly in the bag, is out of it, and its all over the place, smashing up the things we thought would last forever!”