WAR IS PEACE
My Xmas Message
Editorial, 20-21 Dec 03, annotated by www.richardneville.com
The
photograph of a defeated and drugged Saddam Hussein with Ahmed
Chalabi, a US armed & funded
member of the Iraqi Governing Council, reproduced in The Weekend Australian
from a Baghdad newspaper, is a great end-of-year gift for the dictator's
long-suffering subjects, and people around the world and
media magnates.
Hussein's
capture signals the end of three decades of tyranny in Iraq, and marks
the sure end of a terror puts it under the thumb of a regime
with a track record of using weapons of mass destruction against its clapped
out enemies. Critics of the war who say the failure to date to
find operational or even
non operational WMDs demonstrates the war was unnecessary and/or
deceitfully instigated
should consider the jubilation with which Hussein's fall was greeted by many
of the Iraqi people. Without him, Iraq
is already transformed
still a mess. A free press does not exists[1]. People are no
longer still arrested for expressing an
opinion[2]. And the bazaar
cronyism is back as Western
consumer goods flood into the country and this nation of merchants
starts to build free enterprises dismantle
public services, like health &
education, and put in its
place of Hussein's command a
casino economy. The nation's infrastructure is being repaired and
replaced by corrupt corporations
linked to the White House after decades of neglect by the old
regime UN sanctions and illegal
bombing by the US and Britain, which ran services down. Critics
point to electricity shortages, but these existed long before the war,
owing to sanctions. Doomsayers use Baghdad's petrol,
food, water and medical shortages as evidence the people are doing
it tough, not to mention lack of functioning
schools, but the critics do not always
explain the problem is caused by an archaic
distribution system and massively increasing demand
the failure of Coalition planning. Now they are allowed to buy
what we like to sell,
Iraqis have imported 250,000 cars, straining ancient petrol bowsers,
as well as the eco system. Certainly,
it will take years to repair the damage done to Iraq's economy during three
decades of dictatorship, plus
our massive bombing of
infrastructure
in both wars, including civilian water supplies; the
sanctions, the
looting and
the everyday anarchy of occupation, but with the United States proposing to
allocate $US20 billion ($27 billion) to its favoured
corporations for reconstruction this year, living standards for
ordinary people will probably improve less
fast than for US
shareholders . And Iraq's oil industry is on target to reach
pre-war production levels by next March, increasing the national
income US profits,
and Western
dependence on fossil fuel.
The
end of Hussein's murderous reign has also made the middle east and the wider
world Iraq a
safer potentially better place ,
although it is generally accepted that most Iraqis are worse off now than under
his rule. Saddam had a fascination with weapons of mass
destruction, as his suppliers still do,
documented for decades. Whether or not his arsenals were equipped
with operational WMDs last March matters
less than the incontrovertible fact he had possessed
them - and used them - in the past. 3
Throughout the 1990s, Hussein sabotaged the work of UN
officers charged with checking on his arsenal, as did the CIA,
by infliltrating the
team with agents. Richard Butler's memoir of
his time as head of the UN weapons inspectorate makes clear Hussein,
like the CIA and the White House, was/is
never to be trusted. By refusing to co-operate
co-operating with the United Nations
team led by Hans Blix in the months before the war, Hussein was the architect
of his own doom. It now appears much nearly
all of the intelligence allied governments relied on was wrong.
But what the hell? Hussein's record as a
warmonger provided a sound foundation for the sort of
best-estimates that lies
and manipulations that my media
provide and that military
intelligence imperial grandeur requires. When
national security prestige is
involved, erring on the side of caution bloodshed
is no a necessary crime.
Certainly, the US and my editors spoke with too much
confidence and too few facts on the content of Iraq's arsenal, but on the basis
of years of UN reports, there was ample accurate evidence to justify war,
though I am not able to present this evidence
as we go to press.
Cheer-leaders
Opponents of this unjust and unnecessary
war must also accept that their fears of mass casualties and chaos have been
proved. comprehensively
wrong. There were warnings ranging from
thousands to of hundreds of thousands of civilian
victims, millions of refugees and postwar anarchy. But the war was short,
relatively bloodless bloodthirsty and
the refugee US camps remain
empty. inaccessible
and packed with more
political prisoners than in HusseinÍs
era. The reason
the estimate of Iraqi casualties is
unmentioned, is that disclosure
of such figures is contrary to the
interests Washington, and thus to the
interests of News Corp. 4
Certainly, a terror
campaign now plagues central much of Iraq.
But the terrorists insurgents do
may or may not speak for the mass of
ordinary Iraqis. Some are Islamic fundamentalists, others are hold-out Hussein
supporters who hope to make Iraq too hot for the Americans and seize power if
they give up and go home. And with the old army stupidly
disbanded, and largely unemployed, there are 400,000 men with military
training, and a grudge. If - and it is still a very large if - the US and its
local allies can restore the economy and work out a way of sharing political
power between Iraq's Kurds and the majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni Muslims,
support for the terrorists will end.
But
for many the case against the war was based less in the need to defeat a
dictator than a reflex hatred of the Us considered
suspicion of US foreign policy, the
likelihood of inflicting further suffering on Iraqis and a
fear the campaign would intensify
global acts of terror. There were muddled arguments
that Hussein should be left alone because the US had supported him in the
early 1980s driven from power by means other than a massive
military campaign .
The
legitimate national interests of
democracies change over time, and US policy on Iraq was as correct then,
when we supported SaddamÍs barbarity, as it is now,
when the Coaltion needs to extend its
military reach, profit from arm sales, expand consumer
markets and secure
supplies of a diminishing vital
resource . Some of the opposition to the war
was specifically because the decision to fight was made by a conservative
bonehead president,
George W. Bush, to dish
out revenge for 9/11, despite
HusseinÍs lack of complicity in this
crime against humanity. It is time for the Bush-haters, and all opponents of the war,
to accept that the US and its allies were right to remove
removal of Hussein is a good thing
for the victims of his
tyranny, despite the lies that were told to secure it,
the rebuffing of the UN, the ever
mounting numbers of dead and injured. It is also time for the Bush lovers
to admit that civil liberties in their
own lands
have been curtailed, that acts of terror
have escalated, and that
the war mongering Murdoch
Media failed in its
obligation to be fair, balanced and truthful.
Nations one envied for
their elevation of human rights
have reverted to the judicial standards of
the medieval warlords
they now put on payrolls.
From the Magna Carta weÍve sunk
to Camp X-Ray, from
protocols on dirty
weapons to widespread cluster
bombing, form the Geneva Conventions to targeted assassinations,
from progress on disarmament to depleted
uranium, mini nukes and Star Wars.
The war was fought and
won in the interests of the people of Iraq West
and the cause of peace power, profit and
the enrichment of those already rich.
Hoorah for Christmas!