Most people have settled views on the military intervention and won’t budge.
We should be clear about what happened and learn lessons – I am particularly concerned about the evident failure of post-war planning. Hubris and short-sightedness as well as a major underestimation of the physical and psychological impact of decades of a fascistic dictatorship caused great damage and bloodshed in which too many Iraqis and allied soldiers needlessly died.
We could focus on that and other issues to the exclusion of everything else but we would also be missing a vital part of the picture – the state of Iraq today and the needs of its people, democratic process and economic reconstruction.
I have had the privilege of visiting Iraq six times since 2006 and have seen fairly rapid change for the better. The second parliamentary elections in Iraq in March will be vital in consolidating politics and isolating terror.
I have mostly stayed in the Kurdistan region which deeply and widely talks of 2003 as a liberation. Some may not like to hear that but it’s the truth of how they see things and it isn’t surprising given that Saddam wanted to wipe the Kurds off the earth with WMD. I have just returned from a week there meeting the president, prime minister and other senior political and business figures as well as Christian leaders, unions and women’s rights activists. They have made large strides, are seeking to overcome deeply embedded problems and are clearly asking for greater UK and international ties, commerce, investment and cultural exchanges. They rate Britain and its institutions – over half their MPs turned out for seminars by me and Meg Munn on how our system works (or doesn’t). Yet so much of the debate around the Chilcot inquiry ignores all this.
People who take different positions on the intervention or the inquiry can and should work together to support Iraqis who are trying to build a decent and democratic society. I think it’s particularly important that the labour movement here does a lot more to support the labour movement there. Unions were nearly liquidated by Saddam and have re-emerged as a force, but are still stymied by illiberal laws and practices. International solidarity is vital to them as it is to the rest of their compatriots.
Yes, we must suport the people of Iraq and the emerging trade unions. However democracy in Iraq as we know it may be difficult to achieve. The Tribal system will remain as it should.
Saying that, we must encourage the people to take on board the good points of our form of democracy such as free elections.
I fully agree with this article about Iraq but I’m not so sure about headline. It gives the impression that Campbell was trying to distract attention from the realities of the war whereas he was doing exactly the reverse, in a very impressive way. In particular he pointed up the brutalities of Saddam’s regime in contrast to the tendency of the anti-war lobby and the media to play them down. I was particularly moved by what he said about the anti–war march in relation to what Iraqis were saying to him. “We met some Iraqi exiles in a hotel in Scotland, who had got in touch with me actually and said — because they sensed the UN thing going wrong, and they just came and said, “Look, he has got to see this through. He has got to see this through. We have got family back there, we know what Iraq is like. You have got all these people on the march, no doubt well-meaning, but they just do not understand the reality of this regime. Please.” This another side of the story that rarely gets an airing and Campbell’s appearance at the inquiry should therefore be welcomed by all true friends of Iraq.
I fully agree with this article about Iraq but I’m not so sure about the headline. It gives the impression that Campbell was trying to distract attention from the realities of the war whereas he was doing exactly the reverse, in a very impressive way. In particular he pointed up the brutalities of Saddam’s regime in contrast to the tendency of the anti-war lobby and the media to play them down. I was particularly moved by what he said about the anti–war march in relation to what Iraqis were saying to him. “We met some Iraqi exiles in a hotel in Scotland, who had got in touch with me actually and said — because they sensed the UN thing going wrong, and they just came and said, “Look, he has got to see this through. He has got to see this through. We have got family back there, we know what Iraq is like. You have got all these people on the march, no doubt well-meaning, but they just do not understand the reality of this regime. Please.” This another side of the story that rarely gets an airing and Campbell’s appearance at the inquiry should therefore be welcomed by all true friends of Iraq
Even Gary Kent knows full well that Campbell was a paid liar. That was his job. Constructing mendacious ‘narratives’ – aka a pack of lies – was and is the New Labour mantra. International law is clear,as the Dutch, only the most recent, report makes clear (and as Peter Goldsmith knew until he was suborned). Lawbreaking (posing as “moral courage’ for some feel-good vainglory, typical of Campbell’s master Blair) is an addiction with New Labour. Those who claimed that Saddam Hussein (not to mention Nasser, not to mention Milosevic) was the new Hitler in order to recreate a new (Americo) British empire did not MISTAKENLY generate “the evident failure of post-war planning. Hubris and short-sightedness as well as a major underestimation of the physical and psychological impact of decades of a fascistic dictatorship “. If they believe/d their Hitler comparison, there could have been no such underestimation. If they did not, their reckless and mendacious negligence deserves a session in a Nuremberg dock. Either way, unlike Gary Kent, they had no time for the personal fate, let alone the national rights, of Iraquis. But as that great ‘ethical dimensionist’ Robin Cook made clear, international law is to be applied only to the lower races. So – time for regime change? Peerhaps the continuing hubris and imperial overstretch in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia etc will bring this about.
It wasn’t my headline and I was not commenting on Alastair Campbell’s evidence to the Inquiry. I think that his testimoney deserves much better coverage than I have so far seen. My main point is to focus on the new Iraq.
Those who supported the intervention, in my view, did care about the Iraqis who had suffered massively under Saddam. Putting exact figures on this is difficult but it has been estimated that a million died in the Iran-Iraq war, that 200,000 Kurds were killed in the Anfal genocide in the 1980s and hundreds of thousands of Shia and Marsh Arabs. The continuation of his regime would most probably have been bloody, depending on how long it would have lasted or if power had been transferred to one or another of his sons.
Points taken, Gary. I wish others like Mr Cobbett would also take them instead of repeating the old anti-war propaganda.
Btw with regard to his reference to the Dutch verdict on illegality there is no certainty in this area of international law. It is simply a matter of opinion. Lawyers such as those serving on the Dutch commission, tend to err on the side of the niceties of the law in these matters. Governments have to interpret the law in a way that takes account of wider considerations, in this case the need not to allow legal niceties to stand in the way of disarming a brutal dictator who was defying the international community. As long as that interpretation is legally defensible (as it was in the case of the Iraq war) it has as much validity as any other.
The Dutch decision is not therefore the final verdict on this question
So Stan Rosenthal dismisses law as legal niceties. The Iraqi attack on Iran and its continuation were cheered to the echo by the ‘international community’ (far more genuinely and widely than the narrow clique of Bush, Blair and their hired hands and bribed Quislings in 2002-3),as indeed is the forthcoming Americo-Israeli assault on Iran. In fact Bush Blair etc then defied a far more genuine international community far more genuinely than did Saddam Hussein. Law, for Stan, is an obstacle to imperialist aggrandisement- but only when the aggressors are the Anglo-Americans (and I suppose the Israelis, with their massive nuclear arsenal…which no doubt Stan and Gary are agitating should be target by massive sanctions…..). Otherwise, law is a handy tool to beat down the lower races. Moreover, Stan is unfair to lawyers: Blair and Goldsmith were happy to break any law they could find if it pleased a Higher Power (Bush? Bush’s God? Blair’s God? who knows? who cares?). I plainly agree that the Dutch opinions are not the final verdict:a trial on at the charge of breaching at least the first Nuremberg indictment preparing a war of aggression – should take that place. Gary tries to fight his corner, in the usual selective fashion, and relying heavily on his ability to predict the future of any regime he dislikes. He is pretty light on the genocidal attacks by the Americans on the fleeing Iraqi troops – the Great Turkey Shoot, though I think Gen McCaffrey’s 24th Armored Division preferred burying Iraqi conscripts alive. The Iraqi state and nation were built under very difficult conditions, and can perhaps never be reconstructed. The British imperialists could have offered a state of Kurdistan with no risk to British society; Kassem, The Ba’ath, Saddam had no such luxury. It took the Iraqis decades of struggle to drive out the Quislings such as Nuri es Said (1920-1958 at least)’ helped as they were by the buffoon Eden with his ‘antifascist’ nightmares. In 1941 Rashid Ali who saw Britain’s difficulty as Iraq’s opportunity had of course to be portrayed as a Nazi. Some of the Kurds have indeed benefited from the destruction of Iraq, though the changing strategies of the two main tribal groupings vis a vis Ba’athi regimes suggest both that there could have been in their view an equal place in an independent Iraq for Kurds as for Arabs and Turcomans, and that ‘Kurdistan’ is a nation yet to be built. The Kurdish regime has a marked nationalist bias where the latter are concerned. And no doubt when British imperialism calls ‘antifascists’ and ‘liberal internationalists’ to corral or annihilate the Kurdish state, Gary and his faithful band of ‘friends’ will sell their clients down the river a la T.E.Lawrence. THAT prediction is based on centuries of British imperialist skulduggery. So ‘old antiwar’ comments are still – and increasingly – timely in a period of ‘one, two, many Vietnams- for slow learners……
Come on, Gary and Stan. You have forgotten to defend the agence provocateuse mounted by Bush the Good to use April Glaspie to entice Saddam to annex Kuwait, that wonderful democracy, back into the Iraq region as the 17th governorate. As defenders of AngloAmerican imperialism, you are certainly failing the grade. You also forgot to deal with the issue, raised by Jude Wanniski on, eg lewrockwell.com, of the possibility that the gas used at Halabja (frontline area in the Iran-Iraq war which your friends and patrons were so active in supporting) was an Iranian rather than an Iraqi production. That would help beat the Americo-Israeli drum for the prepared aggression against Iran, so why not get on with it? And, btw, why no comment about the proposed law suit of the new Iraqi government against the Zionists for their Osirak aggression in 1981? Double standards are no innovation for imperial propagandists, but you guys are skiving! Evil people, not me of course, might grass you up to Uncle Sam!
William Cobbett, a psuedonym possibly, may like to entertain nonsense about the Anfal genocide and entertains us with a wide breadth of vitriol but I am not playing this game.
No, Stan Rosenthal doesn’t dismiss law as legal niceties (a typical extremist distortion). But I do condemn those who exploit legal loopholes to prevent justice being done and those who can’t tell the difference between a real war criminal and those who removed him from power.
So no answer on the Bush manoeuvre via April Glaspie to lure Saddam into Kuwait. No answer on the appalling crimes against Iraq committed by the jubilant Americans in the Great Turkey shoot. Stan’s notion of justice plainly means no more than AngloAmerican world dominance, and ‘real’ war criminals are those who oppose them effectively. Those who oppose them ineffectively, or not at all, such as the Manchester 10 deportees whose ‘terrorist plot’ a la Gordon Brown never existed, are dismissed as terrorists. What happened, btw, to Anne Clwyd’s fabrication of the giant plastic shredders Saddam allegedly used to kill his opponents?