It is not possible to overstate the significance and urgency of the
march and demonstration against an unprovoked British and American
attack on Iraq, a nation with whom we have no quarrel and who offer us
no threat.
The urgency is the saving of lives. First, let us stop calling it a
“war”. The last time “war” was used in the Gulf was in 1991 when the
truth was buried with more than 200,000 people. Attacking a 70-mile line
of trenches, three American brigades, operating at night, used 60-ton
armoured earthmovers to bury alive teenage Iraqi conscripts, including
the wounded and those surrendering and retreating. Survivors were
slaughtered from the air. The helicopter gunship pilots called it a
“turkey shoot”.
Of the 148 Americans who died, a quarter of them were killed by
Americans. Most of the British were killed by Americans. This was known
as “friendly fire”. The civilians who were killed, whose deaths were
never recorded by the American military because it was “not policy”,
were “collateral damage”.
Today, after 13 years of an economic blockade that has been compared
with a medieval siege, Iraq is defenceless, no matter the discovery of
an odd missile that can reach barely 90 miles. Its ragtag army is
woefully under-equipped and awaiting its fate, along with a civilian
population of whom 42 per cent are children. They are stricken. Even the
export of British manufactured vaccines meant to protect Iraqi infants
from diphtheria and yellow fever has been restricted. The vaccines, say
the Blair government, are “capable of being used in weapons of mass
destruction”.
This is the nation upon which the Bush gang says it will rain down
800 missiles within the space of two days. “Shock and awe” the Pentagon
calls its “strategy”. Meanwhile the weapons inspectors and their morose
Swedish leader go about their treasure hunt and a cartoon show is hosted
in the UN by General Colin Powell (who rose to the top by covering up
the notorious My Lai massacre in Vietnam).
It is all a charade. The Americans want Iraq because they want to
control and reorder the Middle East. Their once-favourite dictator,
Saddam Hussein, made the mistake of misreading the signals from
Washington in 1990 and invading another favourite American oil tyranny,
Kuwait. So belatedly, Saddam must be replaced, preferably by another
Saddam, though more reliable and less uppity. There is no issue of
“weapons of mass destruction”. That is a distraction for us and the
media.
The wider significance of the promised attack is the rapacious nature
of the American state. As Tony Blair has confirmed, North Korea is
likely to be “next”. I think he is wrong and that Iran will be next.
That is what the Israeli regime wants and Israel’s wishes are as
important to influential members of the Bush gang as oil. Thereafter,
there is China. Says Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Institute in
Washington: “What radical US nationalists have in mind is either to
‘contain’ China by overwhelming military force or to destroy the Chinese
Communist state.”
ONE of the Bush gang’s planners, Richard Perle, has said: “If we let
our vision of the world go forth and we embrace it entirely, and we
don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war
… our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”
September 11 2001 was their big opportunity. On September 12 Donald
Rumsfeld wanted to use the Twin Towers tragedy as an excuse to attack
Iraq, which was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell argued that
“public opinion has to be prepared”. Afghanistan was the easier option
and they were planning to attack it anyway.
The subsequent American endeavour to encircle al-Qaeda in the eastern
mountains of Afghanistan was a fiasco and more than 20,000 people,
estimates Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, paid the price of that
country’s “liberation”.
Since September 11 America has established bases at the gateways to
all the major sources of fossil fuels. The Unocal oil company is to
build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has repudiated the Kyoto
treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, with the war crimes provisions of
the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states “if
necessary” – incredibly Geoffrey Hoon, on Blair’s behalf, has said
exactly the same.
Assassination is now legal. Virtually before our eyes, prisoners have
been tortured to the point of suicide in an American concentration camp
in Cuba. Under Donald Rumsfeld a secret group with the Orwellian name
of the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group has the job of provoking
terrorist attacks, which would then require “counter-attack” by the
United States. You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy:
that the enemy to all our security is not a regional tyrant – there are
plenty of those, many created by America and Britain.
And what of Blair? Do he and his craven Ministers understand any of
this? It is difficult to know. Such is Blair’s evangelical obsession
with Iraq, and perhaps his desperation in the face of overwhelming
public opposition, that he is prepared to mislead and deceive not only
the public but the armed forces he has sent to pursue his and the mad
Perle’s “vision”.
Does anyone believe the Prime Minister any more? During his interview
last Thursday with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, Blair lied once again that
UN weapons inspectors were “thrown out” of Iraq by the regime in 1998.
He knows the truth: that they were withdrawn when it was discovered the
CIA had planted spies among them in order to gather intelligence for the
subsequent Anglo-American bombing of Iraq in December 1998.
I MEAN,” said Blair last week, “(the threat of Iraq’s undiscovered
weapons of mass destruction) is what our intelligence services are
telling us and it’s difficult because, you know, either they’re simply
making the whole thing up …”
Making it up, indeed. On February 7 Downing Street had to apologise
when it was revealed that its latest dossier seeking to justify war –
“Iraq: its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation” –
was lifted word for word, including the grammatical and spelling
mistakes, from an article written by an American student 10 years ago.
As David Edwards of Media Lens has pointed out, “the only changes
involved the doctoring of passages to make the report more ominous: a
claim that Iraq was ‘aiding opposition groups’ was changed to a claim
that Iraq was ‘supporting terrorist organisations’.” Like Bush, Blair
lies that “we do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq”. An
investigation by America’s National Security Council, which advises
Bush, “found no evidence of a noteworthy relationship” between Iraq and
al-Qaeda. On February 5 a Ministry of Defence document, leaked to the
BBC, revealed that British intelligence had told Blair there was “no
current link” between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Blair has even denied
seeing this crucial report.
As a Christian, Blair says be is helping to build a “secure and hopeful world for all our children”.
The Labour MP Llew Smith recently asked the Education Secretary to
explain “how we can find billions of pounds to increase our defence
budget and go to war with Iraq but cannot find the money to scrap
tuition fees?”
There was no intelligible reply.
LAST November a report by the School of Public Policy, University of
College London, disclosed that “53 per cent of children in inner London
are living in income poverty”. Yet Chancellor Gordon Brown puts aside
“at least a billion pounds” as “a war chest” with which to attack not
poverty but an impoverished people half a world away.
A peaceful solution in the Middle East is only possible when the
threat of an attack is lifted and a total ban on so-called weapons of
mass destruction and arms sales is imposed throughout the region, on
Israel as well as Iraq. The economic blockade on the people of Iraq
should end immediately and justice for the Palestinians become a
priority.
The power of public opinion, both moral and political power, is far
greater than many people realise. That’s why Blair fears it and why,
through the inept Tessa Jowell, he tried to ban tomorrow’s
demonstration. He fears it because if the voice of the people threatens
the house of cards he has built on his obsession with Iraq and America,
it may well threaten his political life and make mockery of the
Anglo-American “coalition” and deny the Bush gang its fig leaf.
Should that happen, American public opinion, now stirring heroically
after the most sustained brainwashing campaign for half a century, may
even stop the Bush gang in its tracks. As of yesterday 42 American
cities had passed resolutions condemning an attack.
Is all that a cause for optimism? Yes it is. Look at how this week’s
French and German “rebellion” almost seemed to change everything; and
remember that those governments are speaking out only because of
overwhelming pressure from their people.
Now that has to happen in Britain. Tomorrow you can begin to make it happen.
