Posted on 03/04/2002 5:45:53 PM PST by vannrox
Britain should unhitch itself from the American war machine and oppose military action in Iraq
Let go of Dubya's coat-tails
Dario Fo's An Accidental Death Of An Anarchist has a choice of endings. In one version, the dodgy agents of the state are blown to pieces. In the other, they kill someone else in order to survive. Watchers pick the endgame they prefer. This dramatic conceit, later borrowed by Jeffrey Archer, has now been adapted for the battlefield by George Bush.
Dissatisfied by the Gulf War finale, he seems almost certain to go for an alternative conclusion.
Saddam: the Sequel is due to open around September, and the pre-publicity has begun. CIA sources talk of covert plots to arm Kurdish dissidents in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south, and President Bush has promised a £700,000 transmitter to broadcast propaganda. Should Radio Dubya not do the trick, there are alternative strategies. Even if, as Donald Rumsfeld might put it, military planning is above your pay grade, these sound doubtful.
Unlike Afghanistan, there is no obliging opposition to do the dirty work. There is little hope that the élite Republican Guard, their privileged status enmeshed with Saddam's survival, will turn traitor. That leaves the prospect of a ground war involving up to 200,000 US troops and deplored by almost every section of Bush's crumbling alliance.
The French abominate his 'axe du mal', as do the Germans and the Arab states. The latest Gallup poll of 10,000 respondents from nine Islamic countries is highly critical of American action.
So, in Washington, is Tom Daschle, the Democrat leader in the Senate.
Almost the lone ally is Tony Blair, who last week gave his strongest backing to the President's ambitions. Although Mr Blair has not yet called for war, his support for a US campaign against Iraq seems assured. Though nothing has emerged to link Saddam to postal anthrax or 11 September, Hussein is ruthless, dangerous and a threat to the world. But we knew that. So did George Bush Senior, who omitted to go for him a decade ago because he feared the consequences.
Then, Saddam moved the Middle East to the brink of biological meltdown. This time he may do it, reasoning that he has nothing to lose when his removal is the explicit aim of war. After that, all options would be possible: thousands of deaths; the destabilising of a region; the nuking of Baghdad by the US. Monster-baiting is perilous, but Mr Blair has seen intelligence material that has persuaded him that Saddam must be stopped.
Whatever is in this shivery dossier - nuclear tinkering, dirty bombs - Mr Blair's horror seems naïve. We know that Saddam manufactures botulinum toxin much as Skegness makes seaside rock or the WI produces chutney. In the four years since the weapons inspectors left, Iraq's favoured cottage industry is certain to have become more sinister. So why the sudden shock?
Well, as Geoff Hoon told the Today programme, 11 September honed worries over external threats. The trouble is that fear is almost as pernicious as perceived danger. Asked whether North Korea is weak, Donald Rumsfeld slyly replies that no one would be saying that if it bombed downtown London. Though there is no hint that Kim Jong Il dreams of blowing up Harrods, a splinter of doubt is slipped under the skin.
In an adjournment debate on Wednesday, Labour backbenchers will air their opposition to an Iraqi war.
The public may be more persuadable. If the Government can unwittingly foster panic over a safe MMR jab, then it will have little trouble whipping up anguish about a villainous dictator with a biological arsenal the size of Slough. If Mr Blair is driven purely by the politics of terror, Mr Bush's motivations are more murky.
They are about oil, naturally. (Iran's 'evilness', for example, centres on its democrat tendency's wish to flout US sanctions and exploit its energy reserves with other partners.) They are about a hawkish longing among Bush acolytes to recreate the good old days in which President Nixon could advocate nuking Vietnam because he wanted to 'think big'. They are about imposing a Pax Americana from Georgia to the Phillipines. They are about double standards.
Paul Rogers, of Bradford University, has made the point that outrage over Saddam sits oddly with the US's refusal of tighter control on biological weapons. Meanwhile, secret work on 'earthquake nukes' and other toys for a reheated Cold War are being accelerated at Los Alamos and elsewhere. As Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman say in their updated book on chemical and bio-weapons, Hussein has held up a Caliban's mirror to the West.
Where does Mr Blair fit into this? He likes a global stage, but there is another lure. Although Bush failed on faith-based welfare, his faith-based warfare is a domestic triumph. While Old Testament notions of good and evil may form a fundamentalist creed too rigid for Mr Blair's tastes, his is also a moral crusade.
The paradox is that the war on terror flies in the face of morality. It's all about us, us, us, with a diminishing nod to humanitarian concerns routinely flouted by the US and, to a slightly lesser extent, by Britain. While paltry oil-for-food allowances and punitive sanctions have undoubtedly killed many Iraqis, we have at least attempted to lift embargoes on food and trade. We should try again, for humanity's sake and because the alternative may be apocalypse. Or it may not. Doom-mongering is less useful than analysis of the story so far. Next Monday is the six-month anniversary of 11 September, and the audit on the Afghan war is as follows.
Civilian casualties are somewhere between 2,000 and 8,000, and no one knows how many died of US forced starvation. Nor will they, for it is not in the World Food Programme's interest to count bodies. While it is likely that the war caused incremental deaths, it is also certain that the predicted humanitarian calamity involving millions did not happen.
The snows were scant and late. Aid agencies were deluged with money. Even so, Christian Aid, which raised an extra £3 million, says it is 'very hard to call' whether life for the poorest got better or worse post-Taliban. There just isn't any proof of the US announced horror there.
In the capital, clubbers drink Kabul slings and canned Russian beer. But Afghan exiles are slow to go home, and so are British peacekeepers, who must stay because the Turks won't take over. Osama is at large, a government Minister is murdered on an aircraft, the warlords stir and there is speculation that Mr Karzai's frail regime will be engulfed by civil war within the year. In addition, the internment of prisoners in Cuba points up the injustice endemic in this moral war.
If Afghanistan looks a flawed success, then the idea that Mr Bush can bomb Baghdad into something along the lines of the Prince of Wales's Poundbury seems truly fantastic. Should an elusive salvation still exist for Iraq, it lies in targeted sanctions, more food aid, plus global co-operation on weapons treaties and regional action on oil smuggling. Mr Blair should press for those and unhitch himself fast from the Bush game of swagger and double jeopardy. This time round, the Saddam drama may offer Western interventionists no choice of ending.
Babble-on, baby.
very Left. . .and beyond 'peaceniks'; have a real agenda.
Notice she referred to Da$$hole as a wise leader in America.
Wrong commie/socialist b$tch! Here is what we think of Mullah Ben Shorty Da$$hole:
No Dear that is not a clown! That is the evil whining munchkin Tommy Da$$hole!
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