It is widely accepted that street to street fighting in Baghdad will lead to thousands of casualties and fatalities, and the innocent will bear the brunt of this carnage as they have done since the invasion commenced.
It is also feared that if there are chemical and biological weapons to be used, Saddam Hussein will use them during this phase of the war – Saddam’s lsat stand. Now is therfore that time to call a ceasefire and thus avoid further hell. It is time to show the innocent people of Iraq, and those like me throughout the world who cannot accept the illegitimacy or immorality of this invasion that the sole purpose of the invasion really was to liberate the people from a cruel and inhuman regime.
The US and Btritain have said that they are sorry or the deaths and injuries of the innocent Iraqi people. These words will be seen as empty and shallow rhetoric if the coalition now proceeds along a course that will undoubtedly and inevitably escalate the butchery. The result of this invasion has never been in doubt. The invading armies will win – but at what cost in human life. They have now shown to Saddam that they were not bluffing. Let them now call a ceasefire from this position of strength and show that they not only have a heart but a conscience.
The turkey shoot should end and Bush, Blair Kofi Annan and representatives from Iraq should once again try to prove that the pen is mightier than the sword and that jaw-jaw is better than war-war.
Unless Bush and Blair use their position of strength to create a unanimous, unchallengable and united world against Saddam, uniting Christian and Arab, they will only succeed in uniting the Arab world in a jihad from which the world may not recover. As the numbers of innocent deaths increase, so does the begrudging support for Saddam, not only in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world. Further incursion into Baghdad can only exacerbate this reality and ensure that circumstances are created for the use of chemical and biological weapons, if they exist.
Lateral thinkning is now required to avoid such a holocaust, and a real and honorable victory can be achieved by those who put life and living before death and destruction. Unless we quell the anger that is building up day bny day as each family buries its dead, unless we demonstrate real and genuine remorse for the likes of Sarah and Karrar Awaid, aged six and seven, who were blasted to death and their young sister and brother, aged two and three, who were severely wounded, then we are the problem and not the solution in Iraq.
We must use a ceasefire to make the Iraqi people our friends and in that way we can surely defeat the enemy, Saddam Hussein.