From: Richard Knoppow (dickburk@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 04/10/03-06:37:02 AM Z
Iraqis have paid the blood price for a fraudulent war
The crudely colonial nature of this enterprise can no longer
be disguised
Seumas Milne
Thursday April 10, 2003
The Guardian
On the streets of Baghdad yesterday, it was Kabul, November
2001, all over again. Then, enthusiasts for the war on
terror were in triumphalist mood, as the Taliban regime was
overthrown. The critics had been confounded, they insisted,
kites were flying, music was playing again and women were
throwing off their burkas. In parliament, Jack Straw mocked
Labour MPs who predicted US and British forces would still
be fighting in the country in six months' time.
Seventeen months later, such confidence looks grimly ironic.
For most Afghans, "liberation" has meant the return of rival
warlords, harsh repression, rampant lawlessness, widespread
torture and Taliban-style policing of women. Meanwhile,
guerrilla attacks are mounting on US troops - special forces
soldiers have been killed in recent weeks, while 11
civilians died yesterday in an American air raid - and the
likelihood of credible elections next year appears to be
close to zero.
In Baghdad and Basra, perhaps the cheering crowds have been
a bit thinner on the ground than Tony Blair and George Bush
might have hoped - and the looters and lynchers more
numerous. But it would be extraordinary if many Iraqis
didn't feel relief or euphoria at the prospect of an end to
a brutal government, 12 years of murderous sanctions and a
merciless bombardment by the most powerful military machine
in the world. Afghanistan is not of course Iraq, though it
is a salutary lesson to those who believe the overthrow of
recalcitrant regimes is the way to defeat anti-western
terrorism. It would nevertheless be a mistake to confuse the
current mood in Iraqi cities with enthusiasm for the foreign
occupation now being imposed. Even Israel's invading troops
were feted by south Lebanese Shi'ites in 1982 - only to be
driven out by the Shi'ite Hizbullah resistance 18 years
later.
Nor does the comparative ease with which US and British
forces have bombed and blasted their way through Iraq in any
way strengthen the case for their war of aggression, as some
seem to have convinced themselves. Not even the smallest
part of the anti-war argument rested on any illusion that a
broken-backed third world regime could win a set-piece
military confrontation with the most technologically
advanced fighting force in history. Rather, the surprise has
been the extent of the resistance and bravery of many
fighters, who have confronted tanks with AK 47 rifles and
died in their thousands.
In reality, the course of the conflict has strengthened the
case against a war supposedly launched to rid Iraq of
"weapons of mass destruction" - but which has now morphed
into a crusade for regime change as evidence for the
original pretext has so embarrassingly not materialised. Not
only have US and British forces so far been unable to find
the slightest evidence of Saddam Hussein's much-vaunted
chemical or biological weapons. But the Iraqi regime's
failure to use such weapons up to now, even at the point of
its own destruction, suggests either that it doesn't possess
any - at least in any usable form, as Robin Cook suggested -
or that it has decided their use would be militarily
ineffective and politically counter-productive.
So great is the political imperative to find such weapons,
it seems hard to believe they won't turn up in some form.
This is after all the coalition which used forged documents
to implicate Iraq in the purchase of uranium for nuclear
weapons from Niger. But, short of a last-ditch deployment in
Tikrit or Mosul, the main pre-emptive pretext for war has
already been exposed as a fraud.
As the price that Iraqis have had to pay in blood has become
clearer - civilian deaths are already well into four
figures - Tony Blair and his ministers have increasingly had
to fall back on a specious moral calculus to justify their
aggression, claiming that more innocents would have died if
they had left the Iraqi regime in place.
What cannot now be disguised, as US marines swagger around
the Iraqi capital swathing toppled statues of Saddam Hussein
with the stars and stripes and declaring "we own Baghdad",
is the crudely colonial nature of this enterprise. Any day
now, the pro-Israeli retired US general Jay Garner is due to
take over the running of Iraq, with plans to replace the
Iraqi dinar with the dollar, parcel out contracts to US
companies and set the free market parameters for the future
"interim Iraqi administration".
Shashi Tharoor, UN under secretary-general warned Britain
and the US against treating Iraq as "some sort of treasure
chest to be divvied up", but the Pentagon, which is calling
the shots, isn't listening. Its favoured Iraqi protege,
Ahmed Chalabi - scion of the old Iraqi ruling class who last
set foot in Baghdad 45 years ago - was flown into Nasiriya
by the Americans at the weekend and, almost unbelievably for
someone convicted of fraud and embezzlement, is being lined
up as an adviser to the finance ministry.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair is once again seeking to provide a
multilateral figleaf for a policy set by Washington
hardliners. "Democratisation" in Iraq could only have
legitimacy if security were handed over to a United Nations
force of non- combatant troops and elections for a
constituent assembly held under UN auspices. But nothing of
the kind is going to happen, when even Colin Powell insists
on "dominating control" by the US. The "vital" UN role Blair
has secured from the US president appears to be no more than
humanitarian aid and the right to suggest Iraqi names for
the interim authority.
The most that could eventually be hoped for from US plans is
a "managed" form of democracy in a US protectorate, with key
economic and strategic decisions taken in advance by the
occupiers. Given the likely result of genuinely free
elections in any Arab country, it is little wonder that the
US would have such problems accepting them - just as they
collude with torture and dictatorship by their client states
in the region. Anyone who imagines the US is gagging for
independent media in the Middle East should ponder Tuesday's
attacks on the al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV offices in
Baghdad.
The wider global impact of this war was spelled out by North
Korea's foreign ministry this week. "The Iraqi war shows,"
it declared, with unerring logic, "that to allow disarmament
through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather
sparks it", concluding that "only a tremendous military
deterrent force" can prevent attacks on states the US
dislikes.
As the administration hawks circle round Syria and Iran, a
powerful boost to nuclear proliferation and anti western
terror attacks seems inevitable, offset only by the
likelihood of a growing international mobilisation against
the new messianic imperialism. The risk must now be that we
will all pay bitterly for the reckless arrogance of the US
and British governments.
s.milne@guardian.co.uk
--- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA dickburk@ix.netcom.com
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