newsletter: april, 2003
Since I last wrote a newsletter for this site, we have gone through one quick ‘invasion’ of a foreign country (I use ‘invasion’, because it was never a ‘war’ in the sense that two coherent forces were lined up in battle). We have also had the undermining of the United Nations, and international diplomacy, by a group of men whose main purpose in the world is to encourage ‘wars’ and ‘invasions’ and spread the boundaries and commercial interests of the United States. I’ve thought for a long time that the American military machine was primed for a good work-out, and it only needed a brutally simpleminded Administration to give it the go-ahead. Step forward George W Bush and his self-righteous cronies: Iraq was served up on a platter, after the routine appetizer of Afghanistan.
The mercifully brief ‘war’ depressed me, not because it took place, but because of the mendacity of the men who promoted it, and who overruled the legitimacy of the United Nations to set it in motion. We were lied to – in Britain and the US – by our administrations. First, we were led to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (which brought us the pitiful sight of that great ‘dove’ Colin Powell trying to fool the UN with ‘evidence’ that wouldn’t have tricked my grandson); when the world didn’t buy into this, and the Inspectors were failing to find what the US wanted them to find, the argument for invasion took a slight swivel. No weapons?
Fine, let’s go with Plan 2: there’s collusion between Al-Quaeda and Iraq. The stupid public will buy that, right? The stupid public didn’t, not in great numbers anyway. So Plan 3. This was ‘regime-change’, based on the spurious notion that Iraq was a threat to the US, and the more acceptable idea that its leader was an evil person who ran a regime based on terror and torture. (I don’t doubt terror depends on who’s doing the name-calling, notice. It was never wrong that the US had weapons of mass destruction; it was never wrong that these same weapons, so feared, were also in the hands of Great Britain. Why? Because Bush and his henchmen are always right. Always self-righteous. Always fundamental Christians. Iraqis? They’re infidels. Muslims. All potential terrorists.)
When the concept of regime-change annoyed some fairminded people, who took exception to the notion that a country could, without provocation, violate the borders of another country to overthrow a leader they didn’t like, it was time for the Bush Gang to drag out the funniest and most arrogant item in its catalogue of stupidity. It wasn’t about weapons, or terror, or regime-change – no, we were so dumb we’d been failing to see all along – it was actually about the ‘liberation’ of a people, the long-suffering Iraqis. This sleight of hand worked a little better than the other fumbled attempts at pulling wool over the worlds’ eyes, because ‘liberation’ is one of those words that have echoes of dignity. Maybe the Iraqis needed to be liberated. They could be free. (Like the Americans are free? Anyone checked the Patriot Act lately? Anybody looked at what Homelands Security really stands for and how it is run?)
So the US, shored by a sorry collection of allies, battered Iraq with all its latest technology. Nobody gave a thought to the numbers of people who’d be murdered in the course of this ‘war’. The current Administration has shown a tragic indifference to Islamic peoples, and to the beliefs of that religion. It has bombed modern cities and historical sites alike. It has undertaken the role of an occupying force, in a nation it does not understand. It expected the Iraqis to throw flowers. It didn’t expect the streets to be filled with anti-American demonstrations. It didn’t expect looting and pillaging and murder, nor the bile most Iraqis feel towards the army of invasion. What did they imagine – the Iraqis would love and worship them for bombing their country and killing their parents, sisters, brothers, babies?
There is a serious naivety behind American thinking about Iraq, or any other country that might be the victim of the US’s legally-questionable ‘pre-emptive strike’ thesis of barbarism. It is this: this Americans Administration assumes it is always right. It is heavily Christian in its makeup and support, and its righteousness and lack of self-doubt is equivalent to a kind of infallibility, which is the last resort of the fanatic. America, these people are trumpeting, can do no wrong. In fact, we can only bring good to the world. How? By imposing American Christian values, and making sure that Democracy is allowed to flourish.
American Christian Values always seem to bring in their wake an assortment of commercial enterprises. These devout people believe without pause in Big Business; Big Business may just as well be another arm of the holy trilogy of Christ, the Flag, and Profit. These ideologies may work for the vast number in the United States (although I believe there are many Americans who feel uneasy or even ashamed by US actions in Iraq). Islam, with its propensity to fundamental fervour, will again rise up in its hatred of these imposed values. Add Democracy to the bundle of goodies countries like Iraq can expect. How do you convert an average Iraqi to the charms and advantages of Democracy when it is clear, from recent American electoral experience, that Democracy was not the process that put George W Bush into the White House? How do you explain that to the man whose house has just been bombed into the ground and his family slaughtered?
He is expected to support a concept that, in the American variation anyway, is flawed, unfair, riddled with vested interests, and responsible for unleashing the armies that killed his family? With great difficulty.
The road ahead is perilous for America and those who supported the attack on Iraq. Apart from the mendacity I mention above, nobody can be certain what lies ahead in the American imperial adventure. We will see a power struggle inside Iraq, and religious factions fighting among themselves; we will see the Kurdish people attempt to promote their national cause…And who has been selected to oversee this riot? A retired American General, a former soldier – not a diplomat, not a specialist in Islamic culture and history: no, typically, another soldier, another figure with attachments to the Pentagon.
The wheel turns. Iraq is blasted by soldiers. And another soldier comes in as a kind of colonial Governor. What kind of choice is that? One that only a self-righteous self-satisfied insensitive Administration could make….
contents©2006 Campbell Armstrong
web design + hosting:
