ABSTRACT
The Gulf crisis also demonstrated all too convincingly that the gross inequities of the continuing, never-reformed imperialist economic system are alive and flourishing. The Gulf crisis demonstrated that the same double standards were alive and well thirty years after the imperial and colonial era was ostensibly over. Underlying the Gulf crisis were a thousand years of general Western cultural antagonism toward the Arabs and Islam. The Iraqi territorial and oil grievances that were in fact acknowledged in the first Security Council resolution condemning Iraq's aggression were quickly buried in most Western media by the avalanche of demonization launched by the war powers. Western media rediscovered, and hailed, the United Nations as though it had gone away somewhere. Under the screen of this genuine support, every Iraqi offer to negotiate, and the initiative of every head of state or government to mediate, was stifled and deflected while the coalition's military forces were assembling in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf waters.
