Is Tony Blair's moral compass better than Nelson Mandela's?
As Blair prepares to promote his side of the Iraq story, let none forget the immense suffering of the Iraqi people; a region still on the brink of further catastrophic conflict; the tragic deaths of many British and US soldiers serving this criminal policy; and the degradation of parliamentary democracy and global legality.
By Andrew Murray
Stop the War Coalition
25 August 2010
Cartoon by Leon Kuhn: www.leonkuhn.org.uk
To be on the left has been to be on the losing side of most arguments these last thirty-forty years. Not wrong – but clearly in a minority.
The Iraq War is the greatest exception (although it might be noted parenthetically that the critics of New Labour's neo-liberalism can appear before the court of public opinion with confidence too). As far as Iraq goes, the debate was over long ago. The war was wrong, and those who opposed it in our millions were right.
Two issues have put the war, its launching and its consequences, back on the front pages recently. There was the withdrawal of US "combat troops" from Iraq, to the accompaniment of much bombast and an ill-advised shout of "we won" from a departing US soldier. And there is the imminent publication of Tony Blair's memoirs, in which he will no doubt explain how his own much-promoted moral compass was on this issue better oriented than those of Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II.
It can't be said that these events have really re-started a debate of substance, mainly because the bedraggled defenders of the Blair-Bush aggression are now left with little more than ad hominem attacks on the war's opponents – watch here.
Most of the points of controversy are long since done and dusted. Weapons of Mass destruction – none. Legal under international law – only the discredited Lord Goldsmith believed that to begin with. Secret promises to George Bush by Tony Blair in advance – refer to the "Downing Street" memo. Parliament lied to – see the evidence of Carne Ross inter alia to the Chilcot enquiry.
Invaders to be welcomed as liberators by Iraqis – comment now superfluous.
The outstanding issue is the state of Iraq today, always the most important matter. Iraq's phoney democracy – squeezed by US power and riven with sectarianism – has failed to produce a government in six months since the parliamentary elections. Four days felt like a crisis in Britain.
And Saddam-era laws have been left in place to crush Iraqi trade unionism. Just last month the Electricity ministry issued an order banning "all trade union activities at the Ministry and its departments and sites". The police were instructed "to close all trade union offices and bases and to take control of the union's assets, properties and documents, furniture and computers". For good measure, the government is to take legal action against trade union officials under the Terrorism Act.
Banning trade unionism hasn't helped with electricity supply either. In Baghdad's poorer districts power is only available for one or two hours a day. And the government recently doubled electricity charges to around 100 dollars per month.
More than eighty per cent of Iraq's water remains untreated, according to the United Nations. More than half of Iraqi children do not complete primary school, and youth unemployment runs at thirty per cent. And UNHCR has reports a big rise in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women across the region, among the more than four million Iraqis internally or externally displaced from their homes.
This is just part of the dystopian legacy of the 2003 invasion. And that's even before plunging into the debate as to how many civilians have died. It is in one sense a pointless discussion as even the lowest figures seriously advanced – around 200,000 – are more than enough to indict the perpetrators as war criminals on an historic scale.
The withdrawal of the US "combat troops" is a bluff on a par with Proconsul Bremer's vaunted ending of the occupation and hand-over to a "sovereign Iraqi government" in 2004. There are in fact still 50,000 US military personnel across Iraq. The idea that they are not engaged in "combat" puts one in mind of Bill Shankly's observation that if a footballer is "not interfering with the course of play", what on earth are they doing on the pitch? They will be replaced by a growing army of mercenaries and private contractors, beyond effective Iraqi control.
How long Iraq's malfunctioning "democratic process" will endure is an open question. Some form of pro-US military dictatorship imposed over at least Arab Iraq would seem to be the most likely eventual consequence of the continuing Allawi-Maliki pantomime, unless Iraqi democrats can effectively unify on a position of national independence.
Of course, it has not been all failure from the US point of view. Iraqi oil has been privatised, if not as fast as planned. And Washington has paradoxically benefitted mightily from the introduction of al-Qaeda into Iraq – absent before the invasion – since their brutal sectarianism blocked any possibility of the creation of a unified national liberation struggle in Arab Iraq, allowing the Petraeus "surge" to secure a patina of achievement.
For the rest of the world, the only good thing to come from the war has been that its evident catastrophe has at least raised the bar much higher for any repetition of the lawless interventionism of which Tony Blair was so fond – his sole remaining media courtier can only describe him as "the finest peace-time prime minister of the democratic era" by overlooking the fact that Britain was at peace for no more than two years of Blair's ten in power.This is a "success" brought at a price of the immense suffering of the Iraqi people; a region still on the brink of further catastrophic conflict; the tragic deaths of many British and US soldiers serving this criminal policy; and the degradation of parliamentary democracy and global legality. As Blair prepares to promote his side of the story, let none of this be forgotten.
See also:No book-signing for Tony Blair...
