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Wallner files (GulfLink/Gulf War): Any war with Iraq will become a Holy War--A New Crusade SPECIAL TO U.S. VETERAN By Charles Baumgartner How much is a barrel of Middle East oil worth? Is it worth the lives of 100 young American soldiers? Is it worth, perhaps, the lives of 1,000? How about 10,000 or 100,000? Let there be no mistake about it, any war with Iraq will become a holy war, another Crusade--a ghastly battle between Christians and Moslems. It will be costly. And whether one is for U.S. intervention in the Middle East, or not, the fact is: if war breaks out, America, and the Arab nations, will pay dearly. Americans are not beloved in the Middle East, certainly not by the Iraqis and not even by the Saudi Arabians, whom we are defending. In opposing the Arabs, we are opposing, in their eyes, God. If we don't realize that, we don't know our enemy. MUST KNOW ENEMY Muhammad, the prophet and teacher of Islam, is also viewed by Moslems as a ruler and a soldier. His struggle involves a state and its armies. The fighters in the wars for Islam, holy wars in "the path of God," fight for God, and God, as sovereign, commands them. Therefore, their opponents are fighting against God. Since God is the sovereign, the supreme head of the Islamic state, God, as the sovereign, commands the armies of Islam. The armies are God's armies and the enemy is seen as God's enemy. It is the duty of God's soldiers, therefore, to dispatch God's enemies as quickly and thoroughly as possible and to put them where God can chastise them--in the afterlife. It is the classical Islamic view that the world and all of mankind are divided into two houses: the House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, the House of Unbelief or the House of War. It is the duty of Muslims to bring, ultimately, those of the other House, the infidels, to Islam. Holy war is obligated to begin at home and to continue abroad, against the same enemy--the infidels. Thus is explained the view of Islamic radicals about terrorism abroad. "For a long time now there has been a rising tide of rebellion against and restore Muslim greatness," Bernard Lewis writes in "The Roots of Muslim Rage," published in the current issue of "The Atlantic" magazine. "The Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat [particularly at the hands of the hated 'Zionists,' the Israelis]," Lewis explains. "The first was his loss of domination in the world, to the advancing power of Russia and the West." According to Lewis, "the last straw . . . was the challenge to his [Muhammad's] mastery in his own house, from emancipated women [thus, the hatred of the late Shah of Iran and his reforms] and rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage against these aliens, infidel, and incomprehensible forces that had subverted his dominance, disrupted his society and finally violated his sanctuary of his home was inevitable. It was also natural that this rage should be directed primarily against the millennial enemy and should draw its strength from ancient beliefs and loyalties." But note Lewis's most pressing warning about the "rage of Islam:" "If the fighters in the war for Islam, the holy war 'in the path of God,' are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents [at the moment the forces opposing Iraq] are fighting against God." Obviously, Christians and Jews have a different view, but this is how the Arabs, the common non-wealthy Arabs of the Middle East, who live daily lives of poverty and despair, view us. HUSSEIN A HERO This is why those in the Middle East following the classic Islamic teachings view Iraq's brutal president Saddam Hussein as a hero, the first Islamic leader to seriously challenge the "enemies of God." On the other hand, he is in fact the "Butcher of Baghdad." In 1989, Iraq's defense minister, Adnan Khairallah, had a falling out with his cousin, President Hussein, and was killed in a helicopter accident during a tour of northern Iraq. Western intelligence sources are certain that it was no accident. The minister's father was uncle and a foster-parent to Hussein, and his sister was the wife of Hussein. However, when Hussein decided to take a second wife, Khairallah was critical. Khairallah was also becoming increasingly popular and emerging as a potential rival of Hussein. According to a Jordanian official, being popular and an heir apparent in Baghdad "is the most dangerous job in Iraq."Hussein presides at the center of a web of intrigue and power, so carefully spun that even a slight twitch at the edge triggers a swift retaliatory strike. Hussein surrounds himself with those with whom he has blood ties--of relationships or of killings shared. The modern history of Iraq is bloodier than "Macbeth." Soldiers gunned down ruling King Feisal II in 1958, while a mob dismembered his prime minister and dragged the parts through the streets of Baghdad. Then followed six bloody coups, between the fall of the Feisal monarchy and the seizure of power by the Baath Party, to which Hussein belongs. Next followed numerous bloody purges, until Hussein emerged as Iraq's iron-fisted ruler. He has subsequently survived dozens of plots. THE APPLE'S CORE Aside from Hussein, those in power in Iraq are either generals, who are nearly anonymous in the public's eye, or well known political figures who share a common past with Hussein. "All of them know that if they don't defend him, they will fall with him, because he has made sure they have shared in the killings," Sahib al-Hakim, an Iraqi dissident living in London, stated. The dissident says that Iraqi leadership is like an apple core and the whole core must go before any real change can be achieved in Iraq. Western intelligence agencies have come to agree with this assessment. The Iraqis have been described as "the Prussians of the Arab world." Hussein's ministers enter cabinet meetings, saluting the president. They leave, clicking their heels and bowing. "They may speak their mind," a Jordanian official explained, "but their mind is always the same as Saddam's." A BLOODY CAREER Here are some of the highlights of Saddam Hussein's career: - At the age of 22, he tried to assassinate Abdul Karim Qassem, Iraq's leader at the time. - Some 75 fellow plotters in the assassination attempt were tried. Their courage and defiance made them martyrs. Hussein doesn't like martyrs. He just summarily executes plotters. - After the assassination attempt, he escaped to exile in Egypt, where he continued to plot, and, later, still continued plotting in an Iraqi jail. Hussein neutralizes all plotters. There is no imprisonment, no exile. They are killed. - In 1982, Health Minister Riyadh Ibrahim suggested that Hussein should step down temporarily as a means of ending the Iran-Iraq War. Hussein took him into an adjoining room and shot him. Hussein's reason? Ibrahim, as Health Minister, had issued tainted medicine, which had reached Iraqi troops. - Some officers opposed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. They were shot. 'FRIED EGGPLANTS' The cruelty of Hussein and his legions can perhaps best be explained by a story, related by Mark Fineman, a reporter for the "Los Angeles Times." "'Majnoon,'" Fineman writes, is what they call the marshes that divide Iran and Iraq. It is the Arabic word for 'madness.' "And in 1984, when the marshes became a battlefield in the Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein redefined the word. "As one of a handful of Western journalists at the front, I watched Hussein's army slaughter thousands of Iranian soldiers there. "The Battle of Majnoon was not nearly as widely documented as Hussein's use of chemical weapons on Iraq's rebellious Kurds. Nor was it as well publicized as his devastating missile attacks on schools, homes and mosques throughout Iran. "In fact, there were very few shots fired, and only a handful of artillery barrages. They were hardly needed. "'You wait until nighttime, and you will see how we are killing these Iranian dogs,'" an Iraqi officer said. "'We are frying them like eggplants.' "He showed us dozens of thick electrical cables lain through the marshy battlefield and he showed us the mammoth electrical generators that fed them from positions just behind the Iraqi front lines. "And when the Iranians made their regular evening advance, he and his men demonstrated the macabre genius of their invention. "Iraqi gun batteries fired just enough artillery to force the Iranians from their marsh boats. "Then a few switches were flipped and thousands of volts of electricity surged through the marshland. "Within seconds, hundreds of Iranians were electrocuted. "The following morning, Iraqi troops began another grisly routine called 'the morning road detail.' "They gathered up the dead Iranians and piled them on top of one another in the marshes in head-to-toe stacks, five bodies high and five across. "The piles formed long rows, the width of a troop truck, the top layers above the water's surface. "Each row extended through the marshes from the Iraqi's positions toward the Iranian border. When completed, the rows were sprinkled with lime and covered with a foot-thick tier of desert sand. "The Iraqis were using the bodies of their enemies to construct roads for their trucks and tanks." The regime of Saddam Hussein has developed deadly mustard and nerve gases. He is nearing the development of nuclear weapons. Would he hesitate to use such weapons against American forces now in Saudi Arabia? 
Top tags: hussein, god, war, iraq, iraqi, against, islam, enemy, east, holy
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