In 2003, thousands of us took to the streets to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq. ‘We shall help Iraq move towards democracy’, Tony Blair told us. Perhaps he shared speech notes with George W. Bush, who promised a better future for the Iraqi people. ‘When the dictator has departed’, the President said, ‘they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.’ Ignoring the warnings of ordinary people who could see the catastrophe ahead, and bypassing any approval from the United Nations, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, and set off a spiral of hatred, conflict and misery that is still spinning today.
Just like Iraq, we are being treated to increasingly fragile and ludicrous justifications for illegal acts of war. As self-proclaimed defenders of the free world, the loudest cheerleaders of the Iraq war relied on the same old, tired smears those who opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq were giving succour to authoritarian dictators. But millions of ordinary people knew the truth. That was no moral mission. It was an illegal, imperial conquest, hidden behind the language of democracy and human rights.
Today, nations and leaders are once again falling in line behind the United States, making vague appeals to a ‘democratic transition’. It is telling that Trump’s messianic motivations in Latin America do not extend to Argentina, where a right-wing President has plunged the nation into an unprecedented economic crisis characterised by falling employment, soaring poverty and repeated corruption scandals. According to Trump, Venezuela warrants military intervention; Argentina deserves a bail-out.
The United States tells us it needs to abduct a head of state in order to punish him for ‘narco-terrorism’. This is the same line it has used to justify extrajudicial killings at sea over the past few months. The US has not yet provided any information about the people on board the ships, let alone any evidence that they were transporting drugs. Indeed, it is well known that most of the cocaine does not come from Venezuela on small boats, but via major commercial shipments through the Pacific. You can tell how thin these lies are by how quickly they fade. ‘The oil companies are going to go in’, Donald Trump said, ‘and we’re taking back what they stole.’ This was never about drugs. This is about the United States reasserting imperial power in a mineral-rich nation.
I am not alone in finding the UK government’s response utterly pathetic. The failure to stand up to the United States is not just symbolic. By refusing to stand up for international law, the UK has given the green light to the United States to act with impunity. Venezuela first. Who’s next? Is there anything the United States could do that would warrant condemnation from our government? Unfortunately, given that the UK and the US have spent the past two years enabling the genocide in Gaza together, I am not sure there is any point appealing to hypothetical limits of morality.
As Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico, said this week, ‘The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being, nor lasting stability. Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government.’
The story of US-led foreign interventions is a story of chaos, instability and misery. How many more of these catastrophic failures do we need before we learn the lesson? And what will it take for the UK to finally defend a consistent, ethical foreign policy based on international law, sovereignty and peace?
Source: Tribune