Category: Politics and Economics

I awoke this morning to this quote on Radio 4: “The Iraqi experiment in democracy is taking place in a pretty scary neighbourhood.”

The American pundit being interviewed then continued to explain how Syria was aiding terrorist organisations, providing a safe haven for fleeing Iraqi officials from Saddam Hussein’s regime, and holding large stocks of chemical weapons. (I turned the radio off again pretty quickly.)

And the top story in this morning’s Guardian is that George Bush has apparently “vetoed” plans to go to war against Syria.

This offends on so many levels. First of all, how could a Radio 4 news presenter let anyone get away with a quote like that? “The Iraqi experiment in democracy?” As if the Iraqi people had decided to dabble with free elections for a lark, instead of having their previous government overthrown by an invading foreign power. As if they are running their country themselves now, rather than being told what to do by an occupying military force. As if this whole war thing (which we’d rather not mention any more) was all about liberation.

Secondly, Syria. On all of the points made against it: duh. What country in the Middle East doesn’t?

Third, George Bush’s political machine. He gets his hawkish factions all charged up with a relatively short, victorious war against Iraq. Then these same hawks rile up public opinion even more by mouthing off against Syria, raising the spectre of a rolling invasion eventually covering all of Iraq’s neighbours. This allows Bush to come in and act magnanimously by ruling out war against another country.

Wow. Picture that. He invades Poland Iraq, then gets credit for not going even further. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all! Maybe he did have the good of the Iraqi people at heart all along! We liberated them, didn’t we?

The whitewash started before the war even began. History will tell the whole story, but probably won’t tell it until after the 2004 US presidential election. If the Bush regime can persuade the American people to ignore the facts for just a little bit longer (easier than it should be, unfortunately), they will secure a second term in office, cement the Neo-Republican power base, and have another four years in which to make the world even an even safer place for terrorists corporate profits respectful, law-obiding citizens! Hurrah!

Where the hell is the opposition?

Julian Barnes in the Guardian today:

‘The peacenik question before the war went like this: suppose Saddam destroys all his weapons tomorrow, do we still invade on humanitarian grounds? I can’t imagine there would have been too many cries of, Yes please. But that, in retrospect, may be what we’ve done, or shall endeavour to claim we have done and therefore had been intending. Does it look like a humanitarian war to you? Are “shock and awe” compatible with “hearts and minds”? Early on, a US infantryman was seen grimly returning fire over a sand dune, then turning to camera and complaining: “They don’t seem to realise we’re here to help them.” How odd that they didn’t.’

I thought the war was a bad thing before it started. I have been opposed to it throughout. And when it is over (but how will we know? We still don’t even know what we went to war for) I know it will still have been a bad idea.

Whatever benefits may (may) fall to the Iraqi people, Britain and the US have proved ourselves to be willing to go to war on the flimsiest of evidence, for reasons that were impossible to define before the fact, and with brutal disregard for both internal and international opposition.

I fear for the new century.

While I understand the sentiment behind the “Not In My Name” statement with regard to the War in Iraq, I don’t think it’s a banner I want to use myself. I worry that it’s just another way to not think about what is really going on in Iraq. “Oh well, the war is not happening in my name, so I don’t need to take my share of the collective blame and guilt it.”

No. Our government has sent British troops into Iraq on behalf of all of Britain. That’s one of the consequences of the parliamentary democracy we live in: no matter how vocal the minority is, the majority holds the trump card. Saying that the war is “not in my name” is about as true as saying that I don’t intend to pay increased duty on beer, because I didn’t vote Labour at the last election. It’s a statement of desire, not a statement of reality.

Besides, doesn’t it make you more angry that the government is going to war in your name? Won’t it make you more cautious about the candidate you’ll vote for at the next local, regional, or general election? Doesn’t it provide you with more of a spur to take an interest in what your elected representatives are actually doing with the power you have given them?

Regardless of whether you voted for them yourself, they are answerable to you, for the entire time they are in office. An individual’s interest in, and influence over, politics and politicians shouldn’t start and end with elections. Research your MP. Write them a letter or an email. Visit a constituency clinic. Ask questions. And keep on asking them until you get an answer.

Because this is what “fire and forget” politics looks like: a government that feels it has a mandate to go ahead and do whatever the hell if feels like for four or five years, regardless of the scale of popular opposition during that time.

That’s not democracy. That’s an elected tyranny.

It’s hard to write about what I’m feeling about the war. This is partly because so many other writers elsewhere are putting it more clearly than I feel I can. It is also partly because I get very upset when I even think about the war.

It is a shameful thing that we are doing. It is a cliché to say that one feels ill because of the political direction we have taken, but for me it really is true. Reading and watching the news is making me feel sick. It makes me feel embarrassed and it makes me feel ashamed.

The easy thing to do, of course, is to tune out. I can watch non-stop music videos on TV, or see hippopotamuses frolic on Discovery Animal Planet. I can go out to a pub, or a restaurant, and have something nice to eat. I can go see a film that makes me laugh. In fact, if I want to, I can completely ignore the fact that Britain is at war. At war.

The weather in Scotland is beautiful right now. Spring has come. Daffodils are in bloom. The sun is out, and people are wandering through Princes St. Gardens wearing T-shirts. Life goes on as if nothing is the matter. War? What war? It’s safely contained within the pages of the newspapers, or in the flashing box in the corner of our living rooms. We are completely removed from it.

In Iraq, people are living in fear of their lives. There are children who will never see their parents again, and parents who will never again have their children rush into their open arms. And I’m not talking about just Iraqi people: I’m talking about British and American soldiers, too. We have sent our armed forced to Iraq to do a job. This job is killing people, and dying. That’s what armies do. Whatever their ultimate goal is, they are trained to achieve that goal by killing people, and by dying.

I’m not a pacifist in principle. I don’t believe that no war is just. I do believe strongly that this war is not just. No single argument for the war stands up to prolonged scrutiny. Our elected leaders have had to use many different arguments to try and knock down people’s objections to it. Somewhere in the shopping list of rhetoric there may be a reason we can live with. Just something that makes us think that the war is justified, or reasonable, or a good thing. Something that allows us to put down the newspaper, change the channel, and sleep at night with a less troubled conscience.

The humanitarian argument is a particularly insidious one. In the long term, it’s possible that we may be saving more lives by going to war against Iraq than would have been lost if we didn’t. Saddam Hussein is a cruel dictator. He has made it easy for this argument to work. It’s tempting to take hold of it, and to ignore the means by which the end of a “liberated” Iraq is achieved.

I really want to have a clear conscience. It would be nice to think that the Iraqi people are crying out to be liberated, and that we are the forces of good, with absolute right on our side. But the world doesn’t work like that. Painting the world in black and white is great for building clean consciences. All you have to do is find a way that leaves you on the side of good, and you’re sorted. But if it’s all grey, then you have to accept that some of the blood shed is on your own hands. You can ignore it for a while, but it doesn’t go away.

By ignoring Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses and the murder of his own people for so long, there is blood on our hands. The same goes for every dictator on the planet. We should demand more active intervention on the part of our politicians and our institutions to do something about it. But we don’t, because that would mean having to think about the blood on our hands.

War is not the way to clean up a mess. It is how you create even greater messes. It lays the foundations for future tragedies, oppression, and misery. By going to war with Iraq now, for the reasons our leaders have stated, we are lowering the bar for entering into all future wars. I hope that the opposition to this war, and the political fall-out from it will serve as to discourage future leaders from citing it as a precedent. But I’m not confident that this will be the case. So long as we can all go about our daily business, and so long as the images of parents crying over the bodies of their children are confined to the TV, and can be turned off at the push of a button, people will turn off. If we ignore what’s happening now, it will happen again, and again, and again.

We must stop the Saddam Husseins of this world. But we must also stop this war.

War has been inevitable for some time, but its timing has been unclear until today. As I write this, MPs are voting on whether to support the government’s position to support president Bush’s unilateral and illegal invasion. Despite massive opposition by the British public, it looks unlikely that our elected representatives will take much notice of this fact.

We (the public) also keep being told that regardless of our opposition and protests before the war, we must support the government and British forces once they head into battle. Is this right? I’m not sure. If I was opposed to the war beforehand, why should I suddenly flip over to back the government and rah-rah for the troops?

(Update: the votes are in. 217 MPs voted for the amendment, 396 voted against. Current estimate is that 139 Labout MPs voted against the government. I’ve emailed my MP, Nigel Griffiths, to see which way he voted.)

On the one hand, I would like to see my position that this war is a really bad idea vindicated. I’m confident that no matter what happens over the next couple of weeks, history will bear this out. But a faster way for this to become apparent would be for America and Britain to be handed a bloody nose on the field of battle.

On the other hand, one of the reasons I am so opposed to the war is that so many people are going to die as a direct consequence of it. Regardless of Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses, and general wickedness, it’s our governments that are giving the orders for people to be killed. The best way to minimise these casualties would be not to go to war at all. Failing that, there are likely to be fewer people dead if the war is fought effectively by British and American troops, and is over quickly.

So I either secretly wish for bloodshed and a hairy furball of a conflict, or I wish for an outcome that will leave George Bush vindicated and smirking in the short term. I find both options quite distasteful.