Harry Heidelberg’s letter from America

“I’ll be in Washington on January 20, 2005 when President Dean is inaugurated. This is a must do for me. It’s not a nice to do, it is a must do!” Harry Heidelberg

Harry Heidelberg is a Webdiary columnist and regularly reports to Webdiary on the Howard Dean campaign for US president.

 

TUESDAY, YANKS TIME:

Hi Margo

It sure sounds like you and some of the Web Diarists have been having fun. Great to hear from Polly Bush and Don Arthur in Strange encounters.

It’s pre dawn here in California and I’m drinking coffee as I will every morning this week. My body clock will return to normal just as I am catching the flight back to Europe. Can’t say American dripolator coffee (yeah, they have one in the rooom) is as good as a European espresso. Oh well, better than nothing.

I just watched Al Gore and Howard Dean speaking live from Harlem. Of course New York is three hours ahead of here so it’s looking a lot more like breakfast time on the East Coast.

Al Gore was introduced as the “elected President of the United States” and the crowd cheered. Every single time I see him I think of what may have been. I suspect I am not alone.

Today Al Gore officially endorsed Howard Dean as the Democratic candidate for President. Both Gore and Dean spoke in clear and impressive terms.

There is no waffling at the centre for them. They are in the mode of firing up the core of the Democratic Party. The true believers if you like. Some call the tactic risky, to be so strident and to be so clearly anti-Bush. I think it makes perfect sense.

I think electorates in more than one or two countries are tired of risk free politics. It becomes boring. We want to see politicians take clear non-waffling positions. We want to see them lead and we want to be inspired. A positive, hopeful agenda.

As I’ve said before, I’ll be in Washington on January 20, 2005 when President Dean is inaugurated. This is a must do for me. It’s not a nice to do, it is a must do!

Gore and Dean are clear on the war. Dean is the only Democratic candidate who was clearly against the war in Iraq from the beginning. The others waffled. Gore called it a “quagmire” and I think we will be hearing that word more often.

The election campaign is under way. Later today both Dean and Gore will be flying to Iowa. The famous Iowa caucus, states like Iowa and New Hampshire. States of political history.

George Bush is now to pump record funds into Medicare (focusing on a prescription drug benefit) but it seems this decision has made no change to his popularity. The latest poll shows the country divided with slightly more being against Bush than for him.

PS: WOW

Just saw a dynamite TV ad. It was a Santa Claus. The voiceover was saying “Yes big contributors, this is a very special Christmas for you”. Then the Santa started ticking off things that he would deliver, that interestingly included “more power to big media corporations”. At the end the cheery music stops and you notice the Santa is wearing texas style cowboy boots. Then the voice says, “You see big contributors, your dreams will come true because your Santa is in the White House”. Then a black and white picture of Bush comes up and there is silence.

I know US political ads are often dramatic but I thought that one was incredible.

No punches will be pulled in this campaign.

Howard: Never in doubt on Iraq

Hi. The clock is ticking, it’s the final countdown to war – whatever cliche you use, we’re all scared. Very scared. Don’t you wish you were John Howard? He’s never had doubts that he was doing the right thing. Me, I’ve always feared people without self-doubt.

 

Here’s what Howard told TV journalist Mike Hosking in New Zealand yesterday:

Hosking: Is this the greatest test of your leadership so far?

Howard: This is the most difficult issue I’ve had, yes.

Hosking: How hard have you wrestled with it?

Howard: You always anguish over something like this, but I have never thought of changing my position. Never.

Lucky Howard! Lucky Australia? There’s lots of doubt among other world leaders. A mainstream American journo at the Davos meeting of world heavyweights in January wrote this background note on the mood, the fear, and the angst at the top of world political, economic and military power:

I spent a week in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum (WEF). I was awarded a special pass which allowed me full access to not only the entire official meeting, but also private dinners with the likes the head of the Saudi Secret Police, presidents of various countries, your Fortune 500 CEOS and the leaders of the most important NGOs in the world. This was not typical press access. It was full-on, unfettered, class A hobnobbing.

This sweet little chalet village was during the WEF packed with about 3000 delegates and press, some 1000 Swiss police, another 400 Swiss soldiers, numerous tanks and armored personnel carriers, gigantic rolls of coiled barbed wire that gracefully cascaded down snow-covered hillsides, missile launchers and assorted other tools of the national security trade. The security precautions did not, of course, stop there. Every single person who planned to enter the conference site had special electronic badges which, upon being swiped across a reading pad, produced a computer screen filled color portrait of the attendee, along with his/her vital statistics. These were swiped and scrutinized by soldiers and police every few minutes – any time one passed through a door, basically. The whole system was connected to handheld wireless communication devices made by HP, which were issued to all VIPs. I got one. Very cool, except when they crashed. Which, of course, they did frequently. These devices supplied every imaginable piece of information one could want about the conference, your fellow delegates, Davos, the world news, etc. And they were emailing devices – all emails being monitored, of course, by Swiss cops.

Overall, here is what I learned about the state of our world:

* I was in a dinner with heads of Saudi and German FBI, plus the foreign minister of Afghanistan. They all said that at its peak Al Qaeda had 70,000 members. Only 10% of them were trained in terrorism — the rest were military recruits. Of that 7000, they say all but about 200 are dead or in jail.

* But Al Qaeda, they say, is like a brand which has been heavily franchised. And nobody knows how many unofficial franchises have been spawned since 9/11.

* The global economy is in very very very very bad shape. Last year when WEF met here in New York all I heard was, “Yeah, it’s bad, but recovery is right around the corner”. This year “recovery” was a word never uttered. Fear was palpable – fear of enormous fiscal hysteria. The watchwords were “deflation”, “long term stagnation” and “collapse of the dollar”. All of this is without war.

* If the U.S. unilaterally goes to war and it is anything short of a quick surgical strike (lasting less than 30 days), the economists were all predicting extreme economic gloom: falling dollar value, rising spot market oil prices, the Fed pushing interest rates down towards zero with (a) resulting increase in national debt, severe trouble in all countries whose currency is guaranteed against the dollar (which is just about everybody except the EU), (and) a near cessation of all development and humanitarian programs for poor countries. Very few economists or ministers of finance predicted the world getting out of that economic funk for minimally 5 to 10 years, once the downward spiral ensues.

* Not surprisingly, the business community was in no mood to hear about a war in Iraq. Except for diehard American Republicans, a few Brit Tories and some Middle East folks the WEF was in a foul, angry anti-American mood. Last year the WEF was a lovefest for America. This year the mood was so ugly that it reminded me of what it felt like to be an American overseas in the Reagan years. The rich – whether they are French or Chinese or just about anybody – are livid about the Iraq crisis primarily because they believe it will sink their financial fortunes.

Plenty are also infuriated because they disagree on policy grounds. For example:

* If Al Qaeda is down to merely 200 terrorists cadres and a handful of wannabe franchises, what’s all the fuss?

* The Middle East situation has never been worse. All hope for a settlement between Israel and Palestine seems to have evaporated. The energy should be focused on placing painful financial pressure on all sides in that fight, forcing them to the negotiating table. Otherwise, the ME may well explode. The war in Iraq is at best a distraction from that core issue, at worst may aggravate it. Jordan’s Queen Rania spoke of the “desperate search for hope”.

* Serious Islamic leaders (eg the King of Jordan, the Prime Minster of Malaysia, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia) believe that the Islamic world must recapture the glory days of 12-13th C Islam. That means finding tolerance and building great education institutions and places of learning. The King was passionate on the subject. It also means freedom of movement and speech within and among the Islamic nations. And, most importantly to the WEF, it means flourishing free trade and support for entrepreneurs with minimal state regulation. (However, there were also several Middle East representatives who argued precisely the opposite. They believe bringing down Saddam Hussein and then pushing the Israel/Palestine issue could actually result in a Golden Age for Arab Islam.)

* US unilateralism is seen as arrogant, bullyish. If the U.S. cannot behave in partnership with its allies – especially the Europeans – it risks not only political alliance but BUSINESS as well. Company leaders argued that they would rather not have to deal with US government attitudes about all sorts of multilateral treaties (climate change, intellectual property, rights of children, etc.) – it’s easier to just do business in countries whose governments agree with yours. And it’s cheaper, in the long run, because the regulatory environments match. War against Iraq is seen as just another example of the unilateralism.

* For a minority of the participants there was another layer of anti-Americanism that focused on moralisms and religion. I often heard delegates complain that the US “opposes the rights of children”, because we block all treaties and UN efforts that would support sex education and condom access for children and teens. They spoke of sex education as a “right”. Similarly, there was a decidedly mixed feeling about Ashcroft, who addressed the conference. I attended a small lunch with Ashcroft, and observed Ralph Reed and other prominent Christian fundamentalists working the room and bowing their heads before eating. The rest of the world’s elite finds this American Christian behavior at least as uncomfortable as it does Moslem or Hindu fundamentalist behavior. They find it awkward every time a US representative refers to “faith-based” programs. It’s different from how it makes non-Christian Americans feel – these folks experience it as downright embarrassing.

* When Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win over the nonAmerican delegates, the sharpest attack on his comments came not from Amnesty International or some Islamic representative – it came from the head of the largest bank in the Netherlands!

I learned that the only economy about which there is much enthusiasm is China, which was responsible for 77% of the global GDP growth in 2002. But the honcho of the Bank of China, Zhu Min, said that fantastic growth could slow to a crawl if China cannot solve its rural/urban problem. Currently 400 million Chinese are urbanites, and their average income is 16 times that of the 900 million rural residents. Zhu argued China must urbanize nearly a billion people in ten years!

The US economy is the primary drag on the global economy, and only a handful of nations have sufficient internal growth to thrive when the US is stagnating.

The WEF was overwhelmed by talk of security, with fears of terrorism, computer and copyright theft, assassination and global instability dominating almost every discussion.

I learned from American security and military speakers that: “We need to attack Iraq not to punish it for what it might have, but preemptively, as part of a global war. Iraq is just one piece of a campaign that will last years, taking out states, cleansing the planet.”

These WEF folks are freaked out. They see very bad economics ahead, war, and more terrorism. About 10% of the sessions were about terrorism, and it’s heavy stuff. One session costed out what another 9/11-type attack would do to global markets, predicting a far, far worse impact due to the “second hit” effect – a second hit that would prove all the world’s post-9/11 security efforts had failed. Another costed out in detail what this or that war scenario would do to spot oil prices. Russian speakers argued that “failed nations” were spawning terrorists – code for saying, “we hate Chechnya”. Entire sessions were devoted to arguing which poses the greater asymmetric threat: nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Finally, who are these guys? I actually enjoyed a lot of my conversations, and found many of the leaders and rich quite charming and remarkably candid. Some dressed elegantly, no matter how bitter cold and snowy it was, but most seemed quite happy in ski clothes or casual attire. Women wearing pants was perfectly acceptable, and the elite is sufficiently Multicultural that even the suit and tie lacks a sense of dominance. Watching Bill Clinton address the conference while sitting in the hotel room of the President of Mozambique – we were viewing it on closed circuit TV – I got juicy blow-by-blow analysis of US foreign policy from a remarkably candid head of state. A day spent with Bill Gates turned out to be fascinating and fun. I found the CEO of Heinekin hilarious, and George Soros proved quite earnest about confronting AIDS. Vicente Fox – who I had breakfast with – proved sexy and smart like a – well, a fox. David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a hug.

The world isn’t run by a clever cabal. It’s run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or (with) great personal power. A few have both. Many of them turn out to be remarkably naive – especially about science and technology. All of them are financially wise, though their ranks have thinned due to unwise tech-stock investing. They pay close heed to politics, though most would be happy if the global political system behaved far more rationally – better for the bottom line. They work very hard, attending sessions from dawn to nearly midnight, but expect the standards of intelligence and analysis to be the best available in the entire world. They are impatient. They have a hard time reconciling long term issues (global warming, AIDS pandemic, resource scarcity) with their daily bottomline foci. They are comfortable working across languages, cultures and gender, though white caucasian males still outnumber all other categories. They adore hi-tech gadgets and are glued to their cell phones.

***

The New York Times yesterday announced its opposition to war without UN sanction (The Sydney Morning Herald has yet to state its position):

Saying No to War

Within days, barring a diplomatic breakthrough, President Bush will decide whether to send American troops into Iraq in the face of United Nations opposition. We believe there is a better option involving long-running, stepped-up weapons inspections. But like everyone else in America, we feel the window closing. If it comes down to a question of yes or no to invasion without broad international support, our answer is no.

Even though Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, said that Saddam Hussein was not in complete compliance with United Nations orders to disarm, the report of the inspectors on Friday was generally devastating to the American position. They not only argued that progress was being made, they also discounted the idea that Iraq was actively attempting to manufacture nuclear weapons. History shows that inspectors can be misled, and that Mr. Hussein can never be trusted to disarm and stay disarmed on his own accord. But a far larger and more aggressive inspection program, backed by a firm and united Security Council, could keep a permanent lid on Iraq’s weapons program.

By adding hundreds of additional inspectors, using the threat of force to give them a free hand and maintaining the option of attacking Iraq if it tries to shake free of a smothering inspection program, the United States could obtain much of what it was originally hoping to achieve. Mr. Hussein would now be likely to accept such an intrusive U.N. operation. Had Mr. Bush managed the showdown with Iraq in a more measured manner, he would now be in a position to rally the U.N. behind that bigger, tougher inspection program, declare victory and take most of the troops home.

Unfortunately, by demanding regime change, Mr. Bush has made it much harder for Washington to embrace this kind of long-term strategy. He has talked himself into a corner where war or an unthinkable American retreat seem to be the only alternatives visible to the administration. Every signal from the White House is that the diplomatic negotiations will be over in days, not weeks. Every signal from the United Nations is that when that day arrives, the United States will not have Security Council sanction to attack.

There are circumstances under which the president would have to act militarily no matter what the Security Council said. If America was attacked, we would have to respond swiftly and fiercely. But despite endless efforts by the Bush administration to connect Iraq to Sept. 11, the evidence simply isn’t there. The administration has demonstrated that Iraq had members of Al Qaeda living within its borders, but that same accusation could be lodged against any number of American allies in the region. It is natural to suspect that one of America’s enemies might be actively aiding another, but nations are not supposed to launch military invasions based on hunches and fragmentary intelligence.

The second argument the Bush administration cites for invading Iraq is its refusal to obey U.N. orders that it disarm. That’s a good reason, but not when the U.N. itself believes disarmament is occurring and the weapons inspections can be made to work. If the United States ignores the Security Council and attacks on its own, the first victim in the conflict will be the United Nations itself. The whole scenario calls to mind that Vietnam-era catch phrase about how we had to destroy a village in order to save it.

President Bush has switched his own rationale for the invasion several times. Right now, the underlying theory seems to be that the United States can transform the Middle East by toppling Saddam Hussein, turning Iraq into a showplace democracy and inspiring the rest of the region to follow suit. That’s another fine goal that seems impossible to accomplish outside the context of broad international agreement. The idea that the resolution to all the longstanding, complicated problems of that area begins with a quick military action is both seductive and extremely dangerous. The Bush administration has not been willing to risk any political capital in attempting to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but now the president is theorizing that invading Iraq will do the trick.

Given the corner Mr. Bush has painted himself in, withdrawing troops even if a considerable slice remains behind would be an admission of failure. He obviously intends to go ahead, and bet on the very good chance that the Iraqi army will fall quickly. The fact that the United Nations might be irreparably weakened would not much bother his conservative political base at home, nor would the outcry abroad. But in the long run, this country needs a strong international body to keep the peace and defuse tension in a dozen different potential crisis points around the world. It needs the support of its allies, particularly embattled states like Pakistan, to fight the war on terror. And it needs to demonstrate by example that there are certain rules that everybody has to follow, one of the most important of which is that you do not invade another country for any but the most compelling of reasons. When the purpose is fuzzy, or based on questionable propositions, it’s time to stop and look for other, less extreme means to achieve your goals.

***

Voon C. Chin

Thank you for providing the Webdiary as effectively as you have in this time of international crisis. There is currently so much confusion in the media its hard to separate propaganda (both government and corporate) from the news. The Howard government has taken so many liberties with the Australian public that my only surety in this matter is in their dishonesty.

As a child I asked my father how I would ever be able to discern the truth from the media. He answered that Truth is a collage of facts. Each fact as true or as untrue as the other – depending on what you want to believe. But if you REALLY want to know the truth then place all the different pieces before you and the truth will present itself. If you don’t like what you see then you can be sure its the truth. Thank you for providing the canvass.

***

What is this new world order we’re watching develop, or should I say mutate, amid this terrifying chaos? Here’s Chris Murphy’s analysis.

Balancing hegemony: The real New World Order begins to emerge

by Chris Murphy

So what if the United Nations does fracture? Presumably the United States, having shown its contempt for the organisation by totally ignoring world opinion, will officially pull out, leaving the rest of the world to ponder the future of alliances.

My guess is that the vast majority of nations will decide to remain in the U.N. for two reasons – it offers support to the powerless, and it provides a global forum for the lesser powers to influence the powerless. Very soon the world will find itself divided into two camps, one governed by U.S. foreign policy, and the other most likely led by a European-Asian alliance.

Let’s be clear: The United States is not totally isolated in the United Nations. At the government level at least, it already has the support of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia and Japan to launch a “unilateral” attack on Iraq. And when the Security Council sits down this week to vote on the proposed U.S.-U.K. resolution, there are likely to be a number of other states willing to side with the Americans.

George W. Bush showed last week that he is willing to call the UN’s bluff. He may just be hoping that he can find the numbers, but in reality he is left with no choice. He must break through or break. Three of the permanent members of the Security Council – France, Russia and China – have indicated they are prepared to veto the proposed resolution. Bush knows, however, that he cannot abide by any U.N. decision disallowing an attack on Iraq. With 250,000 coalition troops biting at the bit on Iraq’s borders, he knows that to defer “decisive action” now would not only mean his own political suicide but the destruction of Republican neoconservative orthodoxy for decades to come, as well as a severe loss of face for the American nation.

Not going to war, therefore, is simply not an option for Bush. The question therefore must be: What happens if and when the U.N. has been ignored by the world’s only superpower?

Leaving aside the grave doubts that many now have about a post-war Iraq, the much broader concern must be with the structure of global politics if the U.S. abandons the U.N.

In very simple terms, I believe the world will be divided into those who are “with” the United States and those who are “against” it. After all, according to George Bush’s own simple view of the world, there can be nowhere in between.

There are very many reasons to question the need for a war, and certainly a war that puts a premature end to the gradual dismantling of Iraqi weapons programs via UN weapons inspections. These reasons have been expounded by those opposing the US in the UN, most notably France.

But, in the world of international politics, all is never as simple as it seems. As much as we know that the Americans are pursuing their own agenda in the UN for their own self-interested reasons, we can be absolutely certain that the the French and others are certainly pursuing a hidden agenda for their own reasons, too. And it has little to do with reasoned argument.

This is make or break politics. For the big players, the results may well be death or glory, in geo-political terms. If nine or more members of the UN Security Council support the proposal for war, then France will be effectively sidelined and diminished as a world leader. It’s sphere of influence will be severely deflated to a point where it encompasses little more than – perhaps – its close German ally and a short list of former French colonies.

The UN may also be saved, but only because the Americans will have won for themselves a very handy tool for endorsing any future foreign adventures.

However if the Security Council rejects the US-UK proposal for war and the “coalition of the willing” decides to go to war without UN endorsement, the UN will be seen to have “failed”. But, although it will be diminished as a truly international body, if US is opposed by the French, Russians, Chinese and others, then the remnants of a fractured UN will present quite a prize – a fully constituted international body just waiting for a new leader to emerge from the next round of international power politics.

My guess is that this is probably what recent French manoeuvring on the world stage has really been all about. And it has been no coincidence that the other dominant power in the European Union, Germany, has been fully supportive of the French. It may even explain the “suicidal” strategy of Tony Blair to support George Bush in the face of massive public opposition.

If the Security Council votes this week to oppose a United States-led war on Iraq, then we will all be almost certainly witnessing the next great moment in world history, one just as momentous as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.

Just as the start of the First World War signalled the beginning of the 20th century, this week’s imminent event will no doubt be seen to mark the beginning of the 21st century and how the world is shaped for the next 100 years.

One side of this split in world power can be clearly observed already. The US will obviously continue to wield immense military and economic power across the globe. Its philosophy will be simple – the spread of Western-style democracy and capitalism.

Yet the US will not be left unchallenged as it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In many ways this new balance of power will resemble the resumption of another Cold War, except this time the US will be opposed not by one ideology but by an alliance of democratic states and authoritarian regimes.

We will witness the emergence of an increasingly self-confident and strident European power sharing the stage with a staunchly authoritarian yet increasingly capitalistic China.

The “New Cold War” will not be a military stand-off but an economic one. The new race will not be waged in terms of arms or outer space but in terms of trading partners and resources.

The rest of the world will be left to choose – or be chosen – between these two alliances. To some extent, this has already happened. Clearly, Britain wants to be America’s main ally, sitting on the doorstep of Europe but looking firmly west for strategic guidance. Japan has signalled that it will remain strongly allied with the US, no doubt fully aware of its vulnerability in the face of an expanding and expansionist China. And Canada will be forced – for geographic reasons but somewhat reluctantly – to rejoin the American “team”.

On the other side, the (new) European Union will vie with China for leadership of the “anti-American” group. Who belongs to this group will be anyone’s guess.

But one thing is certain: Henceforth, international alliances will almost totally depend on the economic power wielded – and the benefits offered – by these two opposing spheres of influence. If they play their cards right, developing countries could be the main beneficiaries of this immense power play.

***

Max Phillips

Disclosure: Max is a member of The Greens

You say: “In the end, it gets back to whether you think the war will help or hinder world peace. In the end, pro and anti war debaters are focused on this question, and the moral arguments for and against war are subsidiary. In other words, we’re all thinking real politic here, whether we’re for or against the war, and for or against Australian involvement.” (A letter from the SAS?)

I disagree that we all believe that moral or ethical arguments are subsidiary to real politic in regard to the war. If you look at the slogans anti-war protesters carry on their banners, most are about ethics over any pragmatic real politic – “No Blood for Oil!”, “You Can’t Bomb for Peace!”, “How Many Children Per Litre?”. In fact many of us on the anti-war side would argue that ethics and real politic can not be divorced.

You write: “He [Wojdylo] seems to be saying that it doesn’t matter what the reason for the war is if its effect is to liberate the Iraqi people. I can go along with that, provided there are guarantees the peace will also be just.”

This seems to be the utilitarian argument – “the greatest good for the greatest number” and it seems that the pursuit of this goal legitimises discarding ethical considerations. Perhaps it can be condensed and expressed as: “If we kill 100,000 Iraqi children so that 400,000 can be saved from the long-term tyranny of Saddam Hussein then the price is worth it, the war is just.”

I’m no expert of philosophy of ethics, but I will try and have a go at why such thinking is wrong and will lead to bad decisions.

Let me pose some other utilitarian questions:

* If the genocide of 900,000 indigenous people of West Papua and the destruction of their culture would lead to the greater prosperity for 200 million Indonesians, is the price worth it?

* Is it OK to deny basic human and legal rights to the prisoners of Camp X-Ray because it pleases 100 million Americans?

* If the physical torture of John Wojdylo provides immense pleasure for 200 Web Diary readers, does this more than make up for the pain that John will feel?

* Can someone murder John Howard for what he believes is the greater good of 19 million Australians?

I don’t think it is acceptable, nor sensible, to make decisions on a solely utilitarian basis. To replace ethics with a ledger book in which we calculate a balance of human lives and happiness is a big mistake.

If we start calculating the justice of a war by the same methods we use to judge the prudence of a business deal or a chess move, then we have lost our humanity. It would be better to admit we are barbarians and are adhering to tribal loyalty than to pontificate about the ‘justice’ of murdering thousands of fellow human beings.

And exactly who should hold and administer the utilitarian ledger book? The mightiest power? The Security Council? The General Assembly? The media? The protesting public? John Wojdylo? I’m not sure anyone but God, if she exists, has that right.

Appealing to “real politic” pragmatism to justify the abandonment of ethical considerations is a recipe for disaster. Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther-King are just three prominent figures whose philosophy claimed that ethics and action must not be divorced and to do so will not solve a problem, only prolong it.

If we look at the spiral of violence in Israel/Palestine it is obvious that the many pragmatic moves by both sides do nothing to solve the situation, rather the lack of ethics on both sides only inflames and prolongs the whole conflict.

When less ethical people (war criminals and terrorists) are in power the conflict and suffering only deepens.

If we look closer to home, the ALP abandoned its ethics in the name of pragmatism when the MV Tampa sailed into Australian politics. Their pragmatic stance failed to win the election and the abandonment of ethics has cost both the soul and effectiveness of the party.

Conversely the ethical stance of the Greens has catapulted them from the fringe to a real force in Australian politics. Meanwhile the pragmatic Democrats flounder in their puddle of pragmatism.

Pragmatic but unethical actions might seem to solve a problem in the short term, it might create a sense of security, but it can never solve a problem in the long term. To really solve a problem it must be through ethical means. It must be with love not hate, cooperation not conflict, peace not war.

Basically what I’m struggling to say is that you can’t abandon ethics in pursuit of an ethical outcome. It is internally inconsistent. You can’t bomb for peace. You can’t kill one Iraqi child to save another. It just doesn’t make sense.

Margo: The argument John Wojdylo is making is that the Iraqi people have collectively decided that the deaths of some of their number are acceptable for the good of all. If anyone is qualified to make that decision it is they, and only they.

Tony Blair: The whole world’s in his hands

Hi. So the US will ask the Security Council to vote mid-week, and last Friday John Howard booked the National Press Club for a speech on Thursday, March 13. The US/UK/Australia deadline for Saddam to disarm is Monday week, March 17. Howard could well tell us we’re about to declare war on Iraq in the face of world opinion and in defiance of the UN.

 

Latest reports state that Bush and Blair will give Saddam a list of weapons he must destroy or account for within six days to avoid an attack. Today’s Observer (Blair sets out final terms to avoid war) states:

Britain and the US are to publish a set of disarmament ‘trip-points’ detailing specific weapons in his arsenal that the United Nations has listed in a private report to the Security Council circulated this weekend. With the international community seemingly split on whether the Iraqi dictator should be given more time to comply with resolution 1441, British officials told The Observer that the targets would be based on the UN report by Hans Blix, the head of the weapons inspectors.”

… It was clear last night that the international community was facing the final make or break week on Iraq. In a desperate plea for more time, France said yesterday it would not support the resolution and made an official appeal for a summit of world leaders to discuss the looming conflict. Russia also said it was opposed to any resolution that ‘authorised war’.

…The British and US ‘trip points’ will be based on a summary draft of Blix’s UN report circulated by Number 10 yesterday. The document demands that Saddam:

* accounts for Iraq’s al-Hussein missile system and 50 Scud Bs which the UN says ‘may have been retained for a proscribed missile force’;

* explains the illegal import of 131 Volga engines for its al-Samoud 2 missile system and why Unmovic, the UN inspections team, had later found 231 engines and documentation for a further 150;

* accounts for and destroys 550 mustard gas shells and 350 R-400 bombs, which are capable of carrying chemical and biological weapons, which are still outstanding;

* reveals the whereabouts of 80 tonnes of mustard gas as well as VX, Sarin and Soman gas.

It is likely that the resolution will be voted on by the middle of this week. If Britain and America succeed in getting the nine votes needed to pass the resolution then Saddam would have until 17 March to comply. If he did not do so military conflict would begin soon after.

Unlike Tony Blair, John Howard has played a dangerous, contemptuous political game to avoid public discussion and debate. He won’t talk about joining the Yanks in a strike until the Council decides whether to authorise it. This cuts off any discussion of the role we’d play after regime change. Any chance of debate about our rules of engagement in the invasion are similarly cut off – we haven’t decided whether to go to war, so we haven’t signed off on them yet.

Both Blair and Howard say their goal is not regime change. That means they’re joining a war led by a nation whose objective they oppose. How can we invade Iraq them walk away from the responsibilities of the occupation? How can we invade without agreeing to the US occupation plans? How can it be acceptable to invade a country but take no responsibility for the aftermath? The world will hold us accountable for actions and events in which we play no part. Without a UN sanction, we will be outcasts in the world community and completely reliant on the United States for our security in a region which sees us as the enemy. No wonder Howard now wants us to join the US missile defence plan.

It looks like he’s signed up to the Bush national security strategy of a US free of the constraints of international law and the UN, doing what it like for what it perceives to be in its interests. He just never told us, that’s all. (The strategy is published in Manifesto for world dictatorship, and bears striking similarities to the strategy of the right wing think tank ‘Project for the New American Century’ discussed in A think tank war: Why old Europe says no.)

John Howard has already walked away from Kyoto with the US and he wants to walk away from multilateralism in trade too and tie us to the US through a free trade deal which could see our foreign ownership restrictions on Qantas, Telstra and Woodside.

Howard appears to have decided he’ll go all the way with the Bushies. We’ll be with em, whatever happens; we’ll say yes, whatever they ask. Howard will put us in the eye of the storm. We’re becoming the 51st State, yet Howard has told us nothing of this tumultuous change in our foreign policy. History did indeed begin for Australia on September 11, 2001.

Maybe Howard’s devilishly clever, but stifling debate before the war leaves him way open to trouble if things go wrong. A war without UN sanction would unite the ALP and Simon Crean would go for broke against the war. Vietnam revisited, except that this time public opinion would be behind the peacemaker, not the warmonger, as Crean would start his campaign with the majority of Australians backing him. Howard – without Labor or, if public opinion holds, the majority of Australians – would have the blood of Australian casualties on his hands alone.

A Howard decision to go in with the Yanks without UN endorsement would trigger the most important security debate in Australia we’ve had for a long, long time after a debate Howard refused to have. Compared to the UK, we are grotesquely uninformed about the ramifications of what we’re doing.

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I recommend The Financial Times’ Bush’s future is in Blair’s hands by Linda Bilmes, who teaches public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and was assistant secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton.

She argues that Bush could not now go to war without Blair’s support, because it keeps US public opinion onside and the Democratic Party in check:

Opinion polls show popular support wavering for an invasion without international backing. Mr Blair’s stance allows the White House to maintain its “coalition of the willing” strategy, which will be politically essential if UN support is not forthcoming.

Second, Mr Blair is critical in maintaining bipartisan support for the war. He has a close relationship with Bill Clinton, the former president, and maintains a dialogue with likely Democratic contenders for the presidency, such as senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina. Most Democrats see him as “one of us”. This is a powerful factor in the Democrats’ public acquiescence in Mr Bush’s tough line.

She also paints a chilling picture of the war’s timetable, saying Bush wants the war over and the mistakes fixed before the 2004 presidential election year.

More important still are Mr Bush’s sinking approval ratings on the economy. CNN’s latest poll shows his support at 53 per cent – down from more than 80 per cent after September 11 2001 (and 20 percentage points lower than Mr Clinton’s support on the day he was impeached). Popular support for his tax-cutting stimulus package is also weak. Sooner or later the domestic political debate will move away from foreign policy and focus on jobs and the stock market. The Bush team knows full well that an end to war uncertainty, rather than tax cuts, is the most effective way to boost the flagging economy and create a rally on Wall Street.

So an early – and quick – war is critical to fit with the US political agenda. By contrast, Mr Blair has no such constraints. If the war were postponed six months to allow more inspections, it would strengthen his political position at home, which has been weakened by the prospect of a war without UN approval. Should he opt to shift his stance – say, to play the role of honest broker who forges a consensus between the Americans and the Europeans – that would almost certainly thwart the administration’s ability to invade Iraq this month. It would also reopen the war as a live political issue in Washington. In short, it would be bad news for Mr Bush. Mr Blair is the pivotal operator in ways that even he may not fully appreciate.

So Tony Blair, the third way man with visions of a multilateral approach to Kyoto and other intractable problems only the world acting together can address, the man who said September 11 was an historic opportunity for the centre-left to take charge of the future, could – if the UN says no to war now and he accepts the decision – destroy the fundamentalist, unilateralist, neo-liberal right-winger in control of the world’s superpower and save himself. Who’d be Tony Blair today?

In his post-September 11 speech to the nation, Blair said:

This is an extraordinary moment for progressive politics. Our values are the right ones for this age: the power of community, solidarity, the collective ability to further the individual’s interests.

…The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

Today, humankind has the science and technology to destroy itself or to provide prosperity to all. Yet science can’t make that choice for us. Only the moral power of a world acting as a community, can. “By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more together than we can alone”.

For those people who lost their lives on 11 September and those that mourn them; now is the time for the strength to build that community. Let that be their memorial. (Blair vision)

Is a US/UK strike on Iraq in defiance of the UN what Blair had in mind to build community? Will he save Bush’s skin – the man whose policies are inimical to progressive world politics? Will that be his legacy?

The Observer reports today that the British government has arrested an employee at the top-secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in connection with the leak of an American ‘dirty tricks’ surveillance sting on Security Council members yet to declare their position on war:

Officials at GCHQ, the electronic surveillance arm of the British intelligence service, were asked by the Americans to provide valuable information from ‘product lines’, intelligence jargon for phone taps and e-mail interception. The document was circulated among British intelligence services before being leaked (observer). See also The spies and the spinner and UN launches inquiry into American spying.

Today, a piece in this week’s Jane’s Defence Weekly forwarded by Scott Burchill on doubts in defence and intelligence circles on the wisdom of war, and Tim Gillon comments on the authenticity of the email I published Friday from someone who says he’s in Australia’s SAS and that Howard had already committed SAS troops to war (A letter from the SAS?). To end, reader George Crones’ first piece for Webdiary, a dialogue with the young writer of a column in the Herald last week waxing lyrical about the school kids march against the war.

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Scepticism mounts among defence and intelligence officials

David Mulholland, JDW Business Editor, London

Jane’s Defence Weekly, March 05, 2003

While Bush administration officials deride opposition to a war against Iraq as the usual “peacenik” reflex, Jane Defence Weekly sources say that dissenting views are now also coming from those who have traditionally supported military action.

Such opposition was witnessed on 26 February in the UK Parliament – one of the largest voting revolts in the past 100 years. It is also becoming clear that many military and intelligence officials in both the US and UK, who are not in a position to speak publicly, are deeply sceptical of the Bush administration’s apparent rush to war.

The fundamental questions of why now, and why Iraq, have not been adequately answered, intelligence, military and legislative sources in Washington told JDW.

Sources said that the Bush administration’s changing arguments for military action appear to confirm that none of them is sufficient to justify the use of military force.

One congressional source said that the arguments in favour of a war increasingly seem to be a “smokescreen” to hide the real reasons the administration is set on war.

Indeed, both the US and UK intelligence information supposedly justifying a war with Iraq raise serious questions. “[Chief of the UN weapons inspectors Hans] Blix’s criticism pokes holes in [US Secretary of State Colin] Powell’s intelligence,” said Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “And the UK’s intelligence dossier was shown to be a complete fraud.”

A US military source said that Bush and his inner circle seem to be suffering from what is known in the Department of Defence as incestuous amplification. This is a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation. An illustration of this was Bush’s address to the American Enterprise Institute – a right-wing think tank in Washington – last Wednesday on why military action was required.

“President George W Bush’s speech on Iraq is significant, mostly because it reveals that he long ago made a decision for war and has always viewed the inspection process as an impediment to war to be overcome, rather than a means to avoid war,” said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. “War was always his first option. The president paints a positive picture of post-war Iraq that is likely to prove wildly optimistic.”

Retired US Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, former head of the US Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, said the administration is ignoring public reaction in the Muslim world about a US invasion of Iraq. In October he said: “Anti-Americanism, doubts about this war, concern about the damage that may happen, political issues, economic issues and social issues have all caused the [Arab] street to become extremely volatile. I’m amazed at people that say that there is no street and that it won’t react. I’m not sure which planet they live on because it isn’t the one that I travel. I’ve been out in the Middle East, and it is explosive; it is the worst I’ve ever seen it in over a dozen years of working in this area in some concentrated way. Almost anything could touch it off.”

Another former Reagan administration official said that Bush appears to be set on the course of action he has already decided because he is out of his depth and is unable to understand the nuances of the arguments that oppose an immediate war with Iraq. “He just doesn’t have the experience to be dealing with these issues.”

This may have to do with Bush’s seeming inability to change course in reaction to changing circumstances, a congressional source said. “With the exception of attacking Afghanistan in response to [11 September 2001], something that Bush had no choice about, he has not changed one iota of his agenda despite it being formed during a time of strong economic growth and a different perception of security threats.”

Most sources interviewed for this analysis agreed that the Bush administration has backed itself into a corner and cannot reverse course at this point. It has now put too much political capital into a war. Backing out now would likely wreck Bush’s image as a strong leader and focus the US voting public on the faltering US economy and the lack of appropriate policy initiatives.

“There’s no going back,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “US credibility is on the line. The only possible outcomes now are either Iraq is disarmed or Saddam is deposed.” Cirincione said: “You can move a lot of stuff to the [Persian] Gulf without going to war, but once you start mobilising the [US Army’s] 101st Airborne, you are going to war.”

Several sources said that reports of special forces units being deployed to Iraq showed that real preparations for military action are already taking place. Many said that such actions do not take place until a decision to attack has been made.

Cirincione also said that war with Iraq was likely to be sooner rather than later because Bush’s popularity is drying up. “Backing for a war is falling,” he said. “Fifty-nine per cent are now in favour of giving the inspectors more time. That’s not very good considering that Bush has been focused like a laser on Iraq to the exclusion of all other foreign and domestic issues.”

Several sources said an attack would likely begin as soon as 14 March. O’Hanlon said that while there is a remote chance that action could be delayed until the autumn if there were enough pressure, ultimately an attack is inevitable because Bush’s self image would not allow him to change his mind.

2003 Jane’s Information Group

***

Tim Gillin in Sydney

I have a friend who is ex-SAS and an active member of the Australian commando and special forces veterans’ organisation. Last September he told me about meeting with SAS Afghan veterans who were quite critical of the performance of US CIA “cowboys” in Afghanistan. His uniformed informants said the CIA personnel provoked the prison uprising over there through their own unprofessionalism. This was well before media coverage of these events.

So the kind of critical views expressed in A letter from the SAS? do not strike me as unusual, although posting them to the press certainly is. The views are very similar to the opinions voiced by my veteran friend.

Similarly the discussion from your correspondent about the Australian SAS strategic recon skills twigs with what I have learned from my friend as well.

There is a myth that military personnel are all “gung ho” types. Most background books on the SAS, for example, describe the average trooper as intelligent and interested in world affairs, and widely read. Their is no reason to assume they live in some kind of warmongers’ hothouse.

In fact those leading the charge to war in Iraq more often than not seem to be denizens of civilian think tanks. In contrast, there has been a string of retired military leaders from the US, UK and Australia who have urged a more cautious approach. In fact one prominent and right wing US anti-war web site calls the current pro-war wave “The Attack of the Chicken-hawks” (antiwar).

Your correspondent’s use of the little known term “Dev Group” is interesting. This is the unit name for US Navy SEAL’s maritime counter-terrorist unit, a name that is not widely used in the media. I suppose the one hint of skepticism I have about your correspondent’s letter is not so much his viewpoint, but his use of the term “SAS”. This is more of a media than a military convention. The more common labels are SASR or ASAS. However he may have been using the more common usage.

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For Whom the (School) Bell Tolls

by George Crones

A reply to Classroom struggle: school’s out for peace, unity and social justice by Lauren Carroll Harris in Thursday’s Herald (smh).

One thing I particularly admire about Webdiary is the level of informed argument that has taken place over the last few months about the situation in Iraq and the broader issue of the War on Terrorism. I have tried to maintain an open mind about both sides of the argument and am still in the process of making a decision as to which side I support.

I have generally refrained from making comments (other than supplying a few links of interest over the last week or so). However having read the opinion piece by Lauren Harris I felt it needed to be challenged on several of its points however. This is not a criticism of the anti-war position (which I am still deciding about) but rather a criticism of the demonstration and its “coverage” in Lauren’s article. If only Lauren had been reading Web Diary perhaps she would have done her position more justice!

I have included her text in bold italics, with my comments following.

March 5 was a historic day.

Yes it was. On March 5 in 1956 the United States Supreme Court upheld a ban on racist segregation in universities and schools. Now that is something worth celebrating.

Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech on March 5 in 1946. It is also the day that Joseph Stalin died in 1953 after 29 years in power. Its ironic that 50 years after his death, we witness a demonstration that effectively supports the continuation of another dictator.

Something tells me that March 5 will be better remembered for important events like this rather than a relatively small group of students missing an afternoons school.

It was the beginning of an international youth movement against war on Iraq.

Perhaps that is something better judged by history, but it certainly looks like it is going to be a short movement (if the movement exists at all). It might have been better for the organisers to set the movement up as against all wars that way at least they have something to do when the war in Iraq (if it happens) is over. I’m betting that the movement won’t last as it looks set to be a short war.

High school students, university students and other young people united to take a message loud and clear to world leaders: there is a better solution to this conflict, and we’re prepared to fight for it.

So the better solution is something worth fighting for? Hmmm.

The slogan? Books not bombs.

I am sure that world leaders – if they are even aware at all that a student protest occurred – are not going to be swayed by simplistic slogans such as this. I know I would be convinced if I saw someone carrying a piece of cardboard with a rhyming slogan written on it, but unfortunately I am not a world leader.

Students feel that the money which will be spent on the military would be better spent on upgrading educational facilities, public housing and hospitals. The Howard Government is unwilling to say just how much money will be devoted to the war, but it is sure to be in the billions. In comparison, $1.5 billion could restore public education funding to pre-1990 levels, or increase the number of available child care places by 10 times.

Ideally governments would have enough money for everybody to be kept happy. Governments make decisions about allocation of resources every single day and by their very nature some of those decisions could be wasteful. Depending on who you are and what you believe in you are obviously going to support some of these decisions and oppose others. Clearly, students have an interest in supporting increased funding for education.

Opposing the war in Iraq for the reason that it is going to cost money doesnt seem to be a particularly defensible position – at least morally – in light of this. Taking this argument to its extreme, then we probably shouldn’t have wasted money on East Timor either. Funnily enough I can’t recall too many people complaining about how much that cost us (or is still costing us for that matter).

History has unfortunately very rarely been without conflict of some kind. Whilst I am all for an end to military conflict, it is not particularly realistic and is different to saying that we don’t need a defence force. Whilst there are totalitarian regimes and dictators, we need the military. Whilst there needs to be peacekeeping forces sent around the world, there needs to be someone to send.

Ideally there won’t be a war. Saddam might voluntarily disarm, step down and go into exile, or he might be deposed by his own people. However if a war does eventuate and if we participate in it – a decision which John Howard already seems to have made without having the integrity to be upfront to the Australian people about it – then it would be more appropriate to estimate the costs after the event and not before.

The tactic? To encourage students to leave their classrooms, a walkout to show their opposition to Australian involvement in war on Iraq, UN sanctioned or not.

Students who are marching for or against something when the alternative is missing school are not particularly convincing. I would have been more convinced of their commitment to the cause if the protest had been on a weekend and they had to wear uniforms. Then at least you would know they were giving their own time up rather than just missing class.

As it is, taking an afternoon off from class to go wander through the city and wade in Hyde Park Fountain doesn’t strike me as showing opposition to anything but school. I will be following the NSW Education Department’s actions against those who missed school with some interest.

One thing that is confusing (and this is the case with most of the anti-war protests) is what everyone involved actually stands for. Thankfully Lauren has cleared things up nicely for me. Apparently, the protest was not actually about stopping the war in Iraq. Lauren and her fellow protesters have no problem with the US and the UK attacking Iraq (with or without sanction) – they just don’t want Australia to be involved. I would have respected the protest more if it had actually took a stance against the war, rather than just saying that they are happy for others to do our dirty work for us.

The reason for the protest? War is not the answer to terrorism…

Armed conflict by itself is definitely not the answer to terrorism. However, any war on terrorism is going to include conflict. If it were the only part then the war would be doomed to fail. To me fighting terrorism also means giving people access to things like education, health, welfare and basic freedoms – in other words winning the peace as well. If this happens then terrorist leaders will find it much harder to recruit people willing to kill and/or die for their causes in future.

(Incidentally, having access to these freedoms implies living in a democracy, which means that somehow or other regimes like that the one in Iraq have to be toppled.)

So far we have heard precious little about these things from George W Bush, which I find worrying. America has been good at resolving the military aspects quite quickly (and Iraq will probably be no different), but it is too soon to see how it does on everything else.

It would have been easier to accept that post-war Iraq would have a successful transition to democracy if the situation in Afghanistan was more settled by now (although I acknowledge that there are clear differences between the essentially secular regime of Saddam and that of the Taliban which make the situation harder to compare).

…and will only result in the senseless deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Aid agencies, including Oxfam, estimate that 80 per cent of war casualties will be civilians. Many students carried handmade banners and placards with slogans like “No war for oil – not in my name” and “How many lives for a gallon of oil?”

There are innocent deaths all around the world every day, which is a terrible tragedy. This is something definitely worth fighting to prevent, and I am looking forward to the day when we have a wars on hunger, poverty, illiteracy and disease, rather than just a war on terror.

Whilst I don’t accept that there will be hundreds of thousands of casualties as a result of the war, I can accept that there will be some innocent civilians who are going to lose their life. I could even accept that the Iraqi soldiers are not exactly willing participants but have no choice in the matter given that they serve a dictator – they too could be seen as innocents (in the sense that any death diminishes us).

If the war in Iraq leads to the end of Saddam’s regime and the beginnings of a democracy then the Iraqi people will be much better off. Aside from an end to his brutality, a successful war (if there ever is such a thing) will also mean an end to UN Sanctions.

From what I can gather, since beginning after the previous Gulf War, the UN Sanctions have directly led to the deaths of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis. Ending the sanctions means that these senseless deaths can hopefully be stopped. To me that is reason enough to go in and end Saddams regime. The UN has a lot of blood on its hands and it is time it started to make amends.

The students who attended were also protesting against other injustices and drawing links with other social issues. One speaker pointed out that refugees are the logical consequence of war, and that millions of Iraqis will be displaced. Another highlighted the plight of Iraqi women, questioning whether much will differ for them after a regime change.

Were the organisers of the protest clear and upfront to those who participated in the protest about what they were actually marching for? So far it has been about no Australian involvement irrespective of what anyone else does; war not being an answer to terrorism; innocent deaths in Iraq; refugees; and the plight or Iraqi women.

Some of these ideas seem to be contradictory. Not that a protest has to be about one thing only, but it should at least be consistent and people involved should know and agree about what they are marching for or against.

The mood? Passionate, exuberant, political and angry. Ten thousand young people filled Sydney with colour, music and chants as they marched from Town Hall to Hyde Park.

Ho hum. I have often wondered about the accuracy of crowd numbers at protests or events. I guess it is only natural for organisers to want their event to be seen as successful and, in the case of protests, this generally means bumping up the numbers who were present.

Yesterdays SMH reports that more than 3000 students mounted a rowdy protest, which I suspect is closer to the truth than the 10,000 suggested by Lauren. Not that that is unimpressive. Having 3000 students marching for something (assuming they know what it is) is worth taking note of.

Don’t belittle the importance of what you do by assuming that everyone will write you off if there aren’t huge crowds. (Having seen the number of people in attendance, it was impressive enough as is).

The demonstrators felt ignored and that their only choice was to vote with their feet by walking out of school and sending the urgent message: we have a war to stop.

So now the protest was about stopping the looming war on Iraq? I should have added that to the list above.

Many students remarked to me during the day that they had never seen anything like it. One University of Sydney student put it this way: “There are two superpowers in the world today – the US and the global anti-war movement.”

Well whilst the US is concerned with Iraq, perhaps the other superpower (*ahem*) could take care of North Korea for the rest of us.

The walkouts were likened to the mass moratoria against the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s during a period of mass youth radicalisation. In short, the protest was an empowering celebration of unity in the face of international warmongering and a climate of increasing fear and hatred.

Well at least the “youth of today” feel empowered.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the vast majority of young people don’t support this war. But the demonstrations on March 5 were only the tip of the iceberg of the mass anti-war sentiment that exists among our youth.

Not everyone supports the war, but that is a long way from suggesting that the vast majority don’t. If you arent careful, people will start to think you sound like a politician when you make that kind of claim. Next you will be saying that you have a mandate.

Since the start of the year, anti-war groups on high schools have blossomed, and more students have started to actively campaign in their schools against war. And these young people have the support of much of the broader community too. In the run-up to the demonstration, rally organisers received calls from parents who wanted to help their sons and daughters publicise the walkout by distributing leaflets and posters. Furthermore, some P&C Associations even encouraged students to join the demonstration.

Ah, I guess that is the mandate. I apologise for likening you to a politician when you clearly have the support of the people on this matter.

But the real question is: what are the next steps for the youth anti-war movement? In a move that contrasted sharply with the Australian Government’s commitment to war, despite overwhelming popular opposition to it, a proposal was put to the crowd as to whether another walkout should be called for 1pm, March 26 at Hyde Park.

Hmm, realising it isn’t that hard to get time off school, you then decided you want more time off?

Students voted enthusiastically and unanimously to protest again, and to take the campaign against war and racism back to their schools too. We hope that next time we are joined by other sectors of the anti-war movement – trade unions, teachers, parents, community figureheads and others.

I guess it is only fair that if students get time off everyone else should as well.

The demonstrations confirmed two things. This war is a cutting-edge issue in politics today and John Howard has failed to convince the majority of the population that Australia should be involved.

The demonstrations confirm nothing other than that there was a demonstration. Anything beyond that and you start to get into murky waters. Given that you can’t even decide what the protest was about, perhaps you should hold off claiming that you represent the majority of the population of Australia.

There is no democracy in this country until Howard submits to the will of the majority.

One of the wonderful things about living in a country like Australia is the fact that we live in a democracy unlike Iraqi. In a democracy you are allowed to express differing viewpoints to those held by the government of the day and you don’t have to worry about you or your family being taken away and tortured or shot unlike Iraqi.

If you disagree with John Howard (as many do) then feel free to protest and feel free to vote him out at the next election – unlike Iraq, John Howard doesn’t have 100% of voters in his country supporting him.

If you are looking for a pithy ending to your opinion piece then please don’t insult our intelligence and suggest that we don’t have a democracy in this country. Perhaps if you tried the alternative you might be better positioned to realise the difference.

A think tank war: Why old Europe says no

 

The arena of the angry bull. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies, www.daviesart.com

Reader Alun Breward writes: “I found this article on the website of German news magazine Der Spiegel this week. I thought it was one of the best pieces of journalism on the Iraq conflict I have read and so I translated it.” Thanks Alun! Here we go.

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This war came from a think tank

by Jochen Boelschespiegel

It was in no way a conspiracy. As far back as 1998, ultra right US think tanks had developed and published plans for an era of US world domination, sidelining the UN and attacking Iraq. These people were not taken seriously. But now they are calling the tune.

German commentators and correspondents have been confused. Washington has tossed around so many types of reasons for war on Baghdad “that it could make the rest of the world dizzy”, said the South German Times.

And the Nuremburg News reported on public statements last week by Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer to an inner circle in the US that war can only be avoided if Saddam not only disarms, but also leaves office.

Regime change is a condition that is in none of the barely remembered 18 UN resolutions. The Nuremburg News asked in astonishment whether Fleischer had made the biggest Freudian slip of his career or whether he spoke with the President’s authority.

It’s not about Saddam’s weapons

So it goes. Across the world critics of President Bush are convinced that a second Gulf War is actually about replacing Saddam, whether the dictator is involved with WMD or not. “It’s not about his WMD,” writes the German born Israeli peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, “its purely a war about world domination, in business, politics, defence and culture”.

There are real models for this. They were already under development by far right Think Tanks in the 1990s, organisations in which cold-war warriors from the inner circle of the secret services, from evangelical churches, from weapons corporations and oil companies forged shocking plans for a new world order.

In the plans of these hawks a doctrine of “might is right” would operate, and the mightiest of course would be the last superpower, America.

Visions of world power on the Web

To this end the USA would need to use all means – diplomatic, economic and military, even wars of aggression – to have long term control of the resources of the planet and the ability to keep any possible rival weak.

These 1990’s schemes of the Think Tanks, from sidelining the UN to a series of wars to establish dominance – were in no way secret. Nearly all these scenarios have been published; some are accessible on the Web.

For a long time these schemes were shrugged off as fantasy produced by intellectual mavericks – arch-conservative relics of the Reagan era, the coldest of cold-war warriors, hibernating in backwaters of academia and lobby groups.

At the White House an internationalist spirit was in the air. There was talk of partnerships for universal human rights, of multi-lateralism in relations with allies. Treaties on climate-change, weapons control, on landmines and international justice were on the agenda.

Saddam’s fall was planned in 1998

In this liberal climate there came, nearly unnoticed, a 1997 proposal of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that forcefully mapped out “America’s global leadership”. On 28 Jan 1998 the PNAC project team wrote to President Clinton demanding a radical change in dealings with the UN and the end of Saddam.

While it was not clear whether Saddam was developing WMD, he was, they said, a threat to the US, Israel, the Arab States and “a meaningful part of the world’s oil reserves”. They put their case as follows:

“In the short term this means being ready to lead military action, without regard for diplomacy. In the long term it means disarming Saddam and his regime. We believe that the US has the right under existing Security Council resolutions to take the necessary steps, including war, to secure our vital interests in the Gulf. In no circumstances should America’s politics be crippled by the misguided insistence of the Security Council on unanimity.” (clintonletter)

Blueprint for an offensive

This letter might have remained yellowing in the White House archives if it did not read like a blue-print for a long-desired war, and still might have been forgotten if ten PNAC members had not signed it. These signatories are today all part of the Bush Administration. They are Dick Cheney – Vice President, Lewis Libby – Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld – Defence Minister, Paul Wolfowitz – Rumsfeld’s deputy, Peter Rodman – in charge of ‘Matters of Global Security’, John Bolton – State Secretary for Arms Control, Richard Armitage – Deputy Foreign Minister, Richard Perle – former Deputy Defence Minister under Reagan, now head of the Defense Policy Board, William Kristol – head of the PNAC and adviser to Bush, known as the brains of the President, Zalmay Khalilzad – fresh from being special ambassador and kingmaker in Afghanistan, now Bush’s special ambassador to the Iraqi opposition.

But even before that – over ten years ago – two hardliners from this group had developed a defence proposal that created a global scandal when it was leaked to the US press. The suggestion that was revealed in 1992 in The New York Times was developed by two men who today are Cabinet members – Wolfowitz and Libby. It essentially argued that the doctrine of deterrence used in the Cold War should be replaced by a new global strategy.

Its goal was the enduring preservation of the superpower status of the US – over Europe, Russia and China. Various means were proposed to deter potential rivals from questioning America’s leadership or playing a larger regional or global role. The paper caused major concerns in the capitals of Europe and Asia.

But the critical thing, according to the Wolfowitz-Libby paper, was complete American dominance of Eurasia. Any nation there that threatened the USA by acquiring WMD should face pre-emptive attack, they said. Traditional alliances should be replaced by ad-hoc coalitions.

This 1992 masterplan then formed the basis of a PNAC paper that was concluded in September 2000, just months before the start of the Bush Administration.

That September 2000 paper (Rebuilding America’s Defences) was developed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby, and is devoted to matters of “maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests”. (RAD)

The cavalry on the new frontier

Amongst other things, this paper said, the USA must re-arm and build a missile shield in order to put itself in a position to fight numerous wars simultaneously and chart its own course. Whatever happened, the Gulf would have to be in US control:

“The US has sought for years to play an ongoing role in the security architecture of the Gulf. The unresolved conflict with Iraq provides a clear basis for our presence, but quite independent of the issue of the Iraqi regime, a substantial US presence in the Gulf is needed.”

The paper describes these US forces stationed overseas in the raw language of the Wild West, calling them “the Cavalry on the New American Frontier”. Even peace efforts, the paper continues, should have the stamp of the USA rather than the UN.

Gun-at-the-head diplomacy

Scarcely had President Bush (jnr) won his controversial election victory and replaced Clinton than he brought the hardliners from the PNAC into his administration. The old campaigner Richard Perle (who once told theHamburg Times about ‘gun-at-the-head diplomacy’) found himself in the key role at the Defense Policy Board. This board operates in close cooperation with Pentagon boss Rumsfeld.

At a breath-taking pace the new power-bloc began implementing the PNAC strategy. Bush ditched international treaty after international treaty, shunned the UN and began treating allies as inferiors. After the attacks of 11 September, as fear ruled the US and anthrax letters circulated, the Bush cabinet clearly took the view that the time was ripe to dust off the PNAC plans for Iraq.

Just six days after 11 September, Bush signed an order to prepare for war against the terror network and the Taliban. Another order went to the military, that was secret initially, instructing them to develop scenarios for a war in Iraq.

A son of a bitch, but our son of a bitch

Of course the claims of Iraqi control of the 11 September hijackers never were proven, just like the assumption that Saddam was involved with the anthrax letters (they proved to be from sources in the US Military). But regardless, Richard Perle claimed in a TV interview that “there can be no victory in the war on terror if Saddam remains in power”.

The dictator, demanded Perle, must be deposed by the US as a matter of priority “because he symbolises contempt for all Western values”. But Saddam had always been that way, even when he gained power in Iraq with US backing.

At that time a Secret Service officer from the US embassy in Baghdad reported to CIA Headquarters: “I know Saddam is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch”. And after the US had supported the dictator in his war with Iran, the retired CIA Director Robert Gates says he had no illusions about Saddam. The dictator, says Gates “was never a reformer, never a democrat, just a common criminal”.

But the PNAC paper does not make clear why Washington now wants to declare war, even without UN support, on its erstwhile partner.

A shining example of freedom

There is a lot of evidence that Washington wants to remove the Iraqi regime in order to bring the whole Middle East more fully under its economic sphere of influence. Bush puts it somewhat differently – after a liberation that is necessitated by breaches of international law, Iraq “will serve as a dramatic and shining exampled of freedom to other nations of the region”.

Experts like Udo Steinbach, Director of the German-Orient Institute in Hamburg, have doubts about Bush’s bona fides. Steinbach describes the President’s announcement last week of a drive to democratise Iraq as “a calculated distortion aimed at justifying war”.

There is nothing currently to indicate that Bush truly is pursuing democratisation in the region.

“Particularly in Iraq,” says Steinbach, “I cannot convince myself that after the fall of Saddam something democratic could take shape.”

Control the flow of oil, control your rivals

This so called pre-emptive war that the PNAC ideologues have longed for against Iraq also serves, in the judgement of Uri Avnery, to take the battle to Europe and Japan. It brings US dominance of Eurasia closer.

Avnery notes:

“American occupation of Iraq would secure US control not only of the extensive oil reserves of Iraq, but also the oil of the Caspian Sea and the Gulf States. With control of the supply of oil the US can stall the economies of Germany, France and Japan at will, just by manipulating the oil price. A lower price would damage Russia, a higher one would shaft Germany and Japan. That’s why preventing this war is essential to Europe’s interests, apart from Europeans’ deep desire for peace.”

“Washington has never been shy about its desire to tame Europe,” argues Avnery. In order to implement his plans for world dominance, says Avnery, “Bush is prepared to spill immense quantities of blood, so long as it’s not American blood”.

The world will toe the American line

The arrogance of the hawks in the US administration, and their plan to have the world toe their line while they decide on war or peace, shocks experts like the international law expert Hartmut Schiedermair from Cologne. The American “crusading zeal” that can make such statements he says is “highly disturbing”.

Similarly Harald Mueller – a leading peace researcher – has long criticised the German Government for “assiduously overlooking and tacitly endorsing” the dramatic shift in US foreign policy of 2001. He says the agenda of the Bush administration is unmistakable:

“America will do as it pleases. It will obey international law if it suits, and break that law or ignore it if necessary … The USA wants total freedom for itself, to be the aristocrat of world politics.”

Infatuated with war

Even senior politicians in countries backing a second Gulf War are appalled by the radicals in the White House.

Beginning last year, responding to the PNAC study, long-serving Labour MP Tam Dalyell raged against it in the House of Commons:

“This is rubbish from right wing think tanks where bird-brained war-mongers huddle together – people who have never experienced the horror of war, but are infatuated with the idea of it.”

Even his own leader got a broad-side: “I am appalled that a Labour PM would hop into bed with such a troop of moral pygmies.”

Across the Atlantic in mid February, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd (at 86 years of age the so-called “Father of the Senate”) spoke out. The longest serving member of that Chamber warned the pre-emptive war that the Right were advocating was a “distortion of long-standing concepts of the right of self-defence” and “a blow against international law”. Bush’s politics, he said “could well be a turning point in world history” and “lay the foundation for anti-Americanism” across much of the world. (Byrd’s speech is at A lonely voice in a US Senate silent on war.)

Holding the rest of the world in contempt

One person who is absolutely unequivocal about the problem of anti-Americanism is former President Jimmy Carter. He judges the PNAC agenda in the same way. At first, argues Carter, Bush responded to the challenge of September 11 in an effective and intelligent way, “but in the meantime a group of conservatives worked to get approval for their long held ambitions under the mantle of ‘the war on terror'”.

The restrictions on civil rights in the US and at Guantanamo, cancellation of international accords, “contempt for the rest of the world”, and finally an attack on Iraq “although there is no threat to the US from Baghdad” – all these things will have devastating consequences, according to Carter.

“This entire unilateralism”, warns the ex-President, “will increasingly isolate the US from those nations that we need in order to do battle with terrorism”.

That Obscure Thing Called Reality

I’d like to respond to Zainab Al-Badry (Iraqi Australians: War splits a family), first by addressing what she wrote and later by providing some excerpts from articles that include the views of many, many more Iraqis than Zainab and her circle of friends, both inside and outside Iraq.

But first I want to relate an email I received today from northern Iraq:

Dear John,

Thank you for your message. I am answering you by satellite from Sulaimania in northern Iraq. … I would like to say that the overwhelming majority of the people here in Iraq are eagerly awaiting their deliverance from Saddam Hussein. In fact the only anti-American opinion I have encountered has been from the foreign journalists. The reaction of everyone here who saw the marches against disarming Saddam on TV was total dismay that good people around the world would wish to consign the Iraqis to living in the mass concentration camp that Saddam has made this country…

Regards

Ahmed Allawi

Zainab Al-Badry and I have conversed in Webdiary a few times before. Zainab put forward her views in Saddam’s Will to Power and It’s about judgement, not belief, and I thought I’d answered her points pretty definitively in ‘Saddam’s Will to Power’ and Loving Hitler.

One thing I didn’t note then is that Zainab is clearly jaundiced against the Americans, whatever they do and however they go about things, even if it’s with a UN mandate. For example, here’s what Zainab said in An A-Z of War:

I am sure many people will say this is a different situation and we have no choice but to defend our country. I will say this to them, YES we do have choice and that is not blindly following the American path. All that we are going to get out of this war is the dead bodies of our beloved ones. The ends DO NOT justify the means.

Back then, Zainab was writing about the war in Afghanistan, which was sanctioned by the UN, and which liberated the Afghans from the Taliban. Life is undoubtedly better now in Afghanistan, despite the problems.

Nevertheless, Zainab hasn’t changed her tune, and is even using exactly the same words in the Iraq context.

In ‘Loving Hitler’, I explained why Zainab’s blaming the Americans for Saddam’s actions was factually wrong. I included a long excerpt from an eye-witness that demonstrated Saddam’s thinking about the start of the war against Iran. Saddam’s decision had nothing to do with the Americans (least of all the Republicans, which weren’t even in power then), and everything to do with Saddam’s megalomanic dream to control Middle East oil.

Yet Zainab persists with her historical falsification in her latest piece. She wants to remember history as she pleases, because the conspiracy theory suits her worldview. How much more of her view is something that is rationalised and imposed on reality, rather than based on reality?

She is simply against wars fought mainly by Americans, at all cost:

“I have one son and I want to say this: There is absolutely no reason in my mind that justifies sending him to war.” [A-Z of War]

Yet, in ‘It’s about judgement, not belief’, she agrees with me that if we don’t act now it “would give him the power to threaten us with unleashing the Holocaust unless we submit to his will”.

She states it very clearly: “I couldn’t agree more.”

What’s more, Zainab knows that Saddam has WMD and is very dangerous:

“Or maybe the US is absolutely sure that he in fact does not have WMD left. I do not believe this last theory, in fact the most terrifying scenario I could imagine is if Saddam found himself with his back to the wall. He would use whatever was in his hands, regardless of the consequences.” (It’s about judgement, not belief)

Moreover, in ‘Loving Hitler’, I argued very clearly and carefully why a democratic Iraq might be on the horizon if we act now, though the risk of failure exists; but if Saddam Hussein is allowed to win, a democratic Iraq will be impossible for decades.

So, all in all, Zainab seems to believe that all a dictator has to do to succeed in his mad grab for power is to take his entire population hostage, by acquiring WMD and threatening to use them against his own people; that we must submit to any tyranny as long as it is horrific enough; that once the dictator chooses this path, as soon as he threatens us with unleashing the Holocaust, nobody has any choice but to submit to his will.

Zainab’s stance is a formula for every dictator’s success.

What I find most saddening in Zainab’s stance is that she insults the intelligence of the Iraqis who are not like her, who are not free, and want liberty:

“I am fairly sure that most if not all the Iraqi people there see this coming war as their only chance for freedom, but also bear in mind that a sinking person clings to any straw to save his life.”

As if they’re so desperate that they cling to any hope unthinkingly. Zainab condemns any personal judgement they make in advance as a function of their interminable hunger for relief. Rational judgement is out of the question.

Using her analogy, Zainab wants to take the straw away from them and let them die.

But the way they lead their life is their choice, not Zainab’s. They see their choice differently than she sees it, for one reason or another. Zainab writes:

“People in Iraq do not see any of the consequences of this coming war except it might give them their freedom.”

This is not correct. The Kurds in the north understand the risks very well. (See the account of the Kurdish autonomous zone in Saddam Hussein’s Desire for Genocide).

Zainab, why have you ignored finding out what these people think? Why do you trivialise the serious choices that your countrymen are consciously making?

“Their death and the destruction of their country is a side issue for them – they are used to wars, they’ve been living in a continuous war for the last 23 years. Ask any one of them and the most they would say is, ‘What more could happen to us? If I die who cares, death is freedom?'”

“Ask any one of them?” Zainab hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been happening in her home country lately.

Zainab, enough of your countrymen desire liberty through democracy – and not the nihilistic liberty of death – to have made serious plans for Iraq’s future. These plans may or may not be realized, there is always risk – but why do you deny in advance that democracy is possible in Iraq? Are you prejudiced against democracy? Why do you give democracy no chance right from the outset? I have already explained this in ‘Loving Hitler’.

As I explained in ‘Will to Power’ and ‘Loving Hitler’, this view – shared by Noam Chomsky and the SMH’s Paul McKeogh, to name just two – is not an objective view.

Here’s the rub. The core of Zainab’s view is that one may never choose to risk life and property to earn freedom. Perhaps the one ruling influence in this view is fear – a fear that paralyses and allows the status quo to continue.

It’s not just Zainab’s husband that disagrees with her. So do the following prominent Iraqis:

* Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq’s most famous satirical writer: “Don’t these marchers know that the only march possible in Iraq under Saddam Hussein is from the prison to the firing-squad? The Western marchers behave as if the US wanted to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussein.”

* Awad Nasser, one of Iraq’s most famous modernist poets: “These people are mad. They are actually signing up to sacrifice their lives to protect a tyrant’s death machine.” (Comment about human shields.)

“Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the United States?” (Comment on antiwar marchers in London, who vociferously welcomed Tony Benn onto the podium, the day after he had appeared on TV to tell the Brits that his friend Saddam was standing for “the little people” against “hegemonistic America”)

* Fadel Sultani, president of the National Association of Iraqi authors: “I had a few questions for the marchers. Did they not realize that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent civilians are also forms of war? Are the antiwar marchers only against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?”

* Hashem al-Iqabi, one of Iraq’s leading writers and intellectuals: “The death and destruction caused by Saddam in our land is the worst since Nebuchadnezzar. These prosperous, peaceful and fat Europeans are marching in support of evil incarnate.”

He said that, watching the march in London, he felt Nazism was “alive and well and flexing its muscles in Hyde Park”.

* Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoi, Iraq’s foremost religious leader for almost 40 years, spoke of the “deep moral pain” he feels when hearing the so-called “antiwar” discourse: “The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured by a gang of thugs. The proper moral position is to fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for the torturers and total contempt for the victim.”

Khoi said he would say “ahlan wasahlan” (welcome) to anyone who would liberate Iraq.

* The Iraqi grandmother who was refused the microphone at the London antiwar demonstration. Here’s part of the article by Amir Taheri, an Iranian journalist who also used to write for the Guardian (nationalreview). The authoritarian behaviour of protest organizers is scandalous:

‘Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?’ asked the Iraqi grandmother.

I spent part of last Saturday with the so-called “antiwar” marchers in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been to persuade the organizers to let at least one Iraqi voice to be heard. Soon, however, it became clear that the organizers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The Iraqis had come with placards reading “Freedom for Iraq” and “American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti tyranny!”

But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and distributed among the “spontaneous” marchers, were allowed. These read “Bush and Blair, baby-killers,” ” Not in my name,” “Freedom for Palestine” and “Indict Bush and Sharon.”

Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war.

The goons also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam’s forces gassed 5,000 people to death in 1988.

But the bulk of the crowd consisted of fellow travelers, those innocent citizens who, prompted by idealism or boredom, are always prepared to play the role of “useful idiots,” as Lenin used to call them.

They ignored the fact that the peoples of Iraq are unanimous in their prayers for the war of liberation to come as quickly as possible.

The number of marchers did not impress Salima, the grandmother.

“What is wrong does not become right because many people say it,” she asserted, bidding us farewell while the marchers shouted “Not in my name!”

Let us hope that when Iraq is liberated, as it soon will be, the world will remember that it was not done in the name of Rev. Jackson, Charles Kennedy, Glenda Jackson, Tony Benn and their companions in a march of shame.

***

The following article by Yousif Al-Khoei, director of the Khoei Foundation in London was published by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (irq).

The Shia Factor

Although previously betrayed by the West, ordinary Iraqis still look for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

For most of Saddam Hussein’s iniquitous rule, the Iraqi people have been caught between a rock and a hard place – the rock of Western support for Saddam, and the hard place of the Arabs’ silence about his atrocities. The West and the Arabs both bear responsibility for Iraq’s suffering. Both bear a measure of responsibility for the current calamity – the likelihood of fresh military action – in face of which the Iraqi people are quite powerless.

As Iraq once again braces itself for war, the mood of many Iraqis – even in Iraq itself – is not the same as the mood in the Arab and Muslim street. The Iraqi people have suffered so much at the hands of Saddam Hussein. They do not have the luxury of saying an unqualified “no” to war.

Nobody likes war. It would surely have been possible, if it were not for Western blunders, to get rid of Saddam without war. Military action will represent the failure of Western diplomacy and the West’s “civilised” institutions. But if Saddam stays in power, if he is let off another time, the damage would be enormous.

Ever since the creation of the modern state of Iraq, the Shias, who form the majority of Iraq’s population, have been marginalised. The marja’iyya – the highest acknowledged authorities of Shias worldwide – enjoy great influence among the Shias of southern Iraq, and in the Baghdad slums where Shias live in appalling conditions, but play no direct part in the running of government.

This has been the exclusive preserve of the Ba’ath party, through which Saddam rose to power, for the past 35 years. After its successful coup in 1968, the Ba’ath moved quickly to secure sole control of the country and lost no time in putting into practice a well-thought-out plan to weaken the Shia establishment. Some tribal leaders were lured with oil money and the infrastructure of Shia theological schools was destroyed. In the first of many blows to the spiritual leadership, Mehdi al-Hakim, son of Grand Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim, was accused of being a spy. In the following years, thousands of clerics said to be of Iranian origin were expelled to Iran.

The regime put its hand on Shi’ism’s most significant celebrations. It took vigorous measures to control Ashura, the re-enactment of the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson Hussein, by setting up roadblocks that interfered with pilgrims and penalising even government employees who visited the shrines.

In the Iraqi media, which is officially controlled, the Shias were conspicuous only by their absence. You could see a whole programme on Najaf – site of one of the two most famous theological colleges in the Shia world – without seeing a turban. Clerics were edited out of every clip unless they were there to praise the government.

In 1973, the Ba’ath broke new ground in its persecution of the Shias by executing five Shia clerics accused of belonging to al-Da’wa, the largest of the Shias’ underground political organisations. In 1975, the regime closed the handful of private schools owned by Shias in the name of “nationalisation”. Shi’ism has never been recognised in the educational system of Iraq. The national curriculum teaches only Sunni Islam.

Persecution escalated with the Iranian revolution of 1979, reaching a shocking climax with the execution of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr el-Sadr and his sister, Bint Huda, in 1980. Thousands of Shias were rounded up and any young person going to a mosque was immediately accused of belonging to al-Da’wa. Even Shias who became secular to avoid this persecution were targeted. Some were killed; others were expelled to Iran – among them the virtual entirety of the Shia merchants who dominated Baghdad’s central bazaar.

In the 1980s, Iraqi Shias found themselves fighting their co-religionists across the border in Iraq. When Grand Ayatollah abu al-Qasm al-Khoei refused to lend his support to the war, many of his closest associates were arrested. Saddam’s fight against his own Shias was cleverly confused with the fight against Iran: to oppose the war was unpatriotic, Saddam said, conscripting huge numbers of Shia youth.

After Saddam’s defeat in Kuwait in 1991, the suppression of the popular uprising against the regime in southern Iraq made clear, once and for all, Saddam’s hatred of the Shias. The tanks that crushed the uprising carried the slogan “No Shias after today.” Shia shrines were destroyed and the integrity of the Shia faith questioned. The old town of Kerbala was razed – homes, shops, shrines and religious centres. More than 100 of the Grand Ayatollah’s staff were arrested. The Grand Ayatollah himself was detained, at age 92, and taken by force to military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Three months after the uprising, when calm had been restored, a historic Shia mosque in the northern city of Samarra was bulldozed. Saddam was attempting to erase all traces of Shia identity – in every part of the country.

Today the number of Shia clerics in Iraqi jails almost certainly exceeds the number of clerics of any faith jailed anywhere in the world. More than 200 have been executed since the Ba’ath took power. Yet Saddam depicts himself as an Islamic leader. His son Odey Saddam Hussein, at the time when he was being touted as his father’s successor, went as far as to claim that he himself was Shia, in a transparent attempt to ingratiate himself with this potentially powerful group.

In 1991, President George Bush the father urged the Iraqi people to rise against the tyrant – and they did, both in the Kurdish north and Shia south. But after asking Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, America permitted Saddam to use his helicopters to crush them in the no-fly zone designed to protect them. It allowed him to kill the Marsh Arabs with his tanks after telling him he could not kill them with his planes. It watched, without reacting, the draining of the marshes and the destruction of their unique ecology.

Despite this terrible betrayal, most Iraqis will welcome the removal of Saddam Hussein. The Shias will certainly welcome the chance to play, at last, the role they should be playing in Iraqi national life. The Shias are frustrated and angry, but should not direct any of their anger towards Sunnis: in post-Saddam Iraq, Sunni and Shia must live, and work, together.

In 1991, the Shias showed maturity. They directed their anger not towards other ethnic or religious groups, but towards the regime. They did not kill Sunnis; they killed those who had worked with the regime.

Iraq lies at the very heart of the Arab world. Stability in Iraq is key to stability in the wider region. To this end Iraq needs a Marshall Plan to reconstruct the county and provide economic stability. It also needs to take control of its own political life. Iraq has many talented people and a strong middle class who will keep the country running. America will not be able to control Iraq by military means for long.

We will be grateful for the removal of Saddam Hussein. But our gratitude will not last if America wants to stay long.

***

When the Enemy Is a Liberator

By JOHN F. BURNS

New York Times, February 16, 2003

AMMAN, Jordan – Every day now, a flood of battered cars and buses arrives in this city, bearing migrants from Iraq. Many are men of military age who have driven across the open desert, or paid bribes to Iraqi guards at the border crossing 250 miles east of Amman, to escape being drafted into Saddam Hussein’s battalions. Crowding into lodgings on the hillsides of Amman’s old city, the Iraqis become wanderers in a no-man’s land, emerging by day to look for casual work, staying indoors after dark, all the time fearing Jordanian police patrols that hunt illegal immigrants and return them to the border.

Gathered around kerosene heaters in their tenements, the Iraqi men talk of a coming conflict, and what it will mean for them and their families. Since all gatherings inside Iraq take place in the shadow of Mr. Hussein’s terror, with police spies lurking in every neighbourhood, the talk in Amman offers a chance to discover what at least some Iraqis really think, and what they hope for now.

Almost to a man, these Iraqis said they wanted the Iraqi dictator removed. Better still, they said – and it was a point made again and again – they wanted him dead. The men, some in their teens, some in their 50’s, told of grotesque repression, of relatives and friends tortured, raped and murdered or, as often, arrested and “disappeared.”

But their hatred of Mr. Hussein had an equally potent counterpoint: for them, the country that would rid them of their leader was not at all a bastion of freedom, dispatching its legions across the seas to defend liberty, but a greedy, menacing imperial power.

This America, in the migrants’ telling, has enabled the humiliation of Palestinians by arming Israel; craves control of Iraq’s oil fields; supported Mr. Hussein in the 1980’s and cared not a fig for his brutality then, and grieved for seven lost astronauts even as its forces prepared to use “smart” weapons that, the migrants said, threatened to kill thousands of innocent Iraqis.

The men refused to accept that their image of the United States might be distorted by the rigidly controlled Iraqi news media, which offer as unreal a picture of America as they do of Iraq. But when it was suggested that they could hardly wish to be liberated by a country they distrusted so much – that they might prefer President Bush to extend the United Nations weapons inspections and stand down the armada he has massed on Iraq’s frontiers – they erupted in dismay.

“No, no, no!” one man said excitedly, and he seemed to speak for all. Iraqis, they said, wanted their freedom, and wanted it now. The message for Mr. Bush, they said, was that he should press ahead with war, but on conditions that spared ordinary Iraqis.

The conflict should be short. American bombs and missiles should fall on Mr. Hussein’s palaces and Republican Guards and secret police headquarters, not on civilians. Care should be taken not to obliterate the bridges and power stations and water-pumping plants that were bombed in 1991. And America should know that it would become the enemy of all Iraqis – and Muslims – if it prolonged its military dominion in Iraq beyond the time necessary to dismantle the old regime.

Although these Iraqis may represent a small sector of opinion – they fled their country in terror, after all – the conversations offered powerful clues as to how a war might play out across the wider Arab world. While polls in Europe and Asia show deep opposition to a war against Mr. Hussein, the mood among the 350 million people of the Arab states has been even more critical. Polls alone don’t capture how visceral anti-American feelings have become, spreading beyond traditional centres of hostility – mosques and other strongholds of conservative Islamists, Arab nationalists and others – across the spectrum of Arab society.

For years, mainstream politicians and other Arab leaders have conceded, at least privately, that Mr. Hussein is a monstrous tyrant whose ambition to acquire the most powerful weapons has made him, potentially at least, more of a threat to his neighbours than to Europe and the United States.

Two years ago, an Egyptian editor told a traveller back from Iraq that Mr. Hussein was “Israel’s best friend” in the Arab world, because the Arab failure to isolate and condemn him had the effect of blackening all Arab states in the eyes of the West.

But as the United States has ratcheted up pressure on Baghdad, Arab voices – politicians, intellectuals, businessmen and students – have remained largely silent about the miseries Mr. Hussein has inflicted on his people and the threat his weapons might pose. Instead, condemnation has been mostly reserved for the United States. How vitriolic it has become was clear in the way many newspapers treated the shuttle loss.

Along with militant imams who proclaimed the Columbia disaster to be God’s punishment for America’s “curses” on Muslims, there was this, typically, from a columnist in the Saudi newspaper Al Yaum: “The American view of the world crashed even before the Columbia. America, which sees itself as the symbol of freedom and justice, has become an arsenal of weapons in advance of a military campaign across the entire world. The world has become a map of targets for the American arrows represented by the trinity of war – Bush, Rumsfeld and Condoleezza, and behind them the famous ‘quiet’ man, Dick Cheney.”

On its face, the hostility promises only deeper trouble ahead for the United States. But there is another possibility, one that Arab leaders who are cooperating with the Americans are relying on as Mr. Bush’s moment of decision draws closer. These nations include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which allow American military bases, as well as Jordan, where American troops would man Patriot missiles against missiles Iraq might fire at Israel and mount pilot rescue missions into Iraq.

The leaders of these nations, all monarchies, know that if an American war bogged down, with heavy casualties on both sides, their own legitimacy, never strong, would be challenged by their own people in ways they might not survive. For these rulers, it is crucial that any conflict be short and inflict minimal casualties on Iraq’s civilians.

At least one of the rulers, discussing American war plans with his advisers, has concluded that Mr. Hussein’s regime is apt to collapse quickly as non-elite army units surrender or change sides.

But it is not the rapidity of an American victory alone that sustains the hopes of these Arab rulers. The pro-American Arab leaders are confident of something that invites mockery among the Europeans and Americans who oppose any war: that American troops would arrive in Iraq’s major cities as liberators.

When Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the American commander in the Middle East, visited one Arab palace in recent weeks, Western diplomats reported, the Arab ruler quieted his restive courtiers by predicting that American forces would be met in Baghdad by Iraqis lining the street in celebration.

If that happens, anti-American opinions in the Arab world might swing, these rulers hope. There would then be revelations about the extent of what Mr. Hussein has inflicted on his people in 23 years. Just as the worst abuses of the Taliban and Al Qaeda were revealed after they were chased from Kabul and Kandahar, the full horrors of Mr. Hussein may be known only after his downfall.

That, America’s friends in the Arab world believe, might yet be enough to remake Mr. Bush’s image in places where he is now vilified, as if Iraq’s miseries were his fault more than they have been Mr. Hussein’s.

***

The following excerpt is from a two-year-old article, “Assessing the Iraqi Opposition”, by Faleh A. Jabar, visiting fellow at Birkbeck College, London University (March 23, 2001, merip)

A SILENT MAJORITY?

Perhaps the best available measure of opposition to the regime is the staggering growth in pilgrimage to the Shiite holy shrines. According to official figures, more than two million pilgrims (almost 10 percent of the total population, and around 20 percent of the Shiite population) headed to Karbala to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in 1999. These figures should be read against the background of the activities of the late Ayatollah Muhammad al-Sadr, who was assassinated together with his two elder sons in Najaf in 1999. Al-Sadr was a handpicked government appointee, but he grew publicly critical of the Ba’th in his widely attended sermons. For the first time in a generation, a Shiite imam built vast networks of followers among the peasantry and the urban middle classes, and forged an alliance with influential urban merchants and tribal chieftains. Both urban merchants and tribal leaders have gained relative social power from the acute economic polarization that has accompanied ten years of war and sanctions.

***

Here’s another glimpse of what the general Iraqi mood might be. The article was written by Stephen F. Hayes, in The Weekly Standard.

Saddam’s Victims tell Their Stories

March 5, 2003

“Do you know when?” It is the question on all minds these days–those of stockbrokers, journalists, financiers, world leaders, soldiers and their families. When will the United States lead a coalition to end Saddam Hussein’s tyranny over Iraq?

The answer matters most to the tyrant’s subjects–like the man who asked the question of his friend in an early-morning phone conversation on Monday, February 24. The call came from Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, to the home of an Iraqi exile in suburban Detroit.

It used to be that Iraqis trapped inside their country would speak to each other and to friends outside in veiled language. For years, Saddam’s regime has tapped the phone lines of all those suspected of disloyalty, so an inquiry about the timing of a possible attack would be concealed behind seemingly unrelated questions. On what date will you sell your business? When does school end? When are you expecting your next child?

But few Iraqis speak in puzzles anymore. They ask direct questions. Here is the rest of that Monday morning conversation:

“Do you know when?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you coming?”

“Yes. I am coming. We will . . . ”

The second speaker, an Iraqi in Michigan, began to provide details but quickly reconsidered, ending his thought in mid-sentence. He says he was shocked by the candor coming from Iraq. “Never in the history of Iraq do people talk like this,” he said later.

“Why are you silent?”

“I’m afraid that you’ll be in danger.”

“Don’t be afraid. We are not afraid. This time is serious.”

“I am coming with the American Army.”

“Is there a way that we can register our names with the American forces to work with them when they arrive? Will you call my house at the first moment you arrive? I will help.”

For more than a year now, the world has been engaged in an intense debate about what to do with Saddam Hussein. For much of that time, the focus has been on the dictator’s refusal to get rid of his weapons of mass destruction, his sponsorship of terrorism, his serial violations of international law, and his history of aggression.

Those arguments have in common an emphasis on interests, on threats. Absent from this debate–or at best peripheral to it–is the moral case for ending the rule of a tyrant who has terrorized his people for more than two decades. It’s a strange oversight since, by some estimates, Saddam Hussein is responsible for more than 1million Iraqi deaths since he took power in 1979.

Advocates of his overthrow are fond of pointing out that “he gassed his own people,” but this often has the feel of a bulleted talking point, not an argument. Their opponents readily concede that “Saddam is a brutal dictator,” and that “the world would be better off without him.” But they usually grant these things as a rhetorical device, as if to buy credibility on their way to opposing the one step sure to end that brutality–removal by force.

Those who oppose taking action say we can safely ignore Saddam Hussein because he is “in a box.” Even if they were right and Saddam were no longer a threat, they would ignore this other urgent problem: the 23 million Iraqi people who are in the box with him.

No one wants war. “I am a pacifist,” says Ramsey Jiddou, an Iraqi American who has lived in the United States since the late 1970s. “But it will take a war to remove Saddam Hussein, and of course I’m for such a war.”

Iraqi Americans overwhelmingly agree with Jiddou. Many of them are recent arrivals who came here after the Gulf War left Saddam in power in 1991. And many are in regular contact with friends and relatives still trapped in Iraq.

The views of those Iraqis back home “are the same as the Iraqi Americans,” says Peter Antone, an Iraqi-American immigration lawyer in Southfield, Michigan. “They are not free to speak, so we speak for them.”

ONE OF MY HOSTS had another question for me as we walked up to a modest one-story home in Dearborn Heights on the snowy afternoon of Saturday, February 22.

“Do you know the decisionmakers?” asked Abu Muslim al-Haydar, a former University of Baghdad professor and one of three English-speakers in the group of 20 Iraqi Shiites assembling here to talk with a reporter about Iraq. His tone was urgent, almost desperate, as he repeated himself. “Do you know the decisionmakers?”

The Iraqi Americans who live in suburban Detroit, some 150,000 of them, are the largest concentration of Iraqis outside Iraq. That’s saying something, since according to the United Nations, Iraqis are the second-largest group of refugees in the world. Some 4 million of them have left their homes since Saddam Hussein took power–an astonishing 17 percent of the country’s population. Despite the size of the Iraqi-American population, and despite the fact that no one is better acquainted with the ways of Saddam Hussein’s regime, their voices have largely been missing from the national debate. In the course of dozens of interviews over the last two weeks, it became plain that this oversight is a source of endless frustration to this community. Iraqi Americans have a lot to say, and the decisionmakers, in both the media and government, are not listening.

As we approached the house in Dearborn Heights, I told al-Haydar that with luck, some decisionmakers would read my article. On the porch, I added my shoes to a mountain of footwear, which, with a winter storm raging, had taken on the appearance of a snow-capped peak. We stepped inside. The room to the right contained a big-screen television (wired to the satellite dish on the roof) and a sofa. The room on the left was furnished with overlapping oriental rugs and, on the floor along the wall, colorful cushions that would serve as our seats for the next two and a half hours.

The group was all male and all Shiite, primarily from southern Iraq. In other ways, though, it was diverse–ranging from farmers to religious leaders to a former general in Saddam’s Republican Guard. The ages went from early twenties to perhaps eighties. Some came dressed in three-piece suits, some in tribal robes.

I proposed moving clockwise around the room for introductions and brief personal histories, a suggestion that prompted much discussion, all of it in Arabic. In what could be considered a bad omen for a democratic Iraq, my ad hoc translator, a young man named Ahmed Shulaiba, explained that elders and religious leaders generally have the option to speak first. But after more discussion, the introductions proceeded according to the suggested plan.

One elderly man in a flowing brown robe, however, gave up his turn, saying he preferred to speak last and that he wanted to make a statement. When he did, he passed me his Michigan State I.D. card as he began speaking.

“I want to introduce myself and ask a question. Are you ready? I am Mehsin Juad al-Basaid. For many years I was a farmer in Iraq. I was involved in the uprising in 1991. American pilots dropped leaflets telling us to start an uprising against Saddam. And we did. We sacrificed. I lost three family members. Fifteen days later the American Army was removed from the South, and left us to face Saddam alone. Now, I’m willing to go with the American Army. But what happened in 1991 must not happen again.”

Nearly everyone in attendance had spoken of his own involvement in the uprising. It’s worth spending a moment on what happened at the end of the Gulf War, because it influences the way many Iraqis, particularly the Shiite majority, see the United States.

After the devastating U.S. air campaign, American ground forces made quick work of the few Iraqi soldiers who put up a fight. At the same time, the U.S. government dropped leaflets and broadcast radio messages urging all Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. Ahmed, my translator, who was 15 in 1991, told me how he had learned that the Americans wanted Iraqis to revolt.

“I remember George Bush said, ‘There is another way for the bloodshed to stop. It’s for the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military to take matters into their own hands . . . ‘”

I interrupted to ask him if he was quoting the former president.

“Yeah, I remember that’s what he said.”

I interrupted a second time to ask him if he remembered how the message was delivered–radio, leaflets? His response was terse.

“Yes. I’ll tell you after I finish.”

With that, he resumed his word-for-word recitation of the president’s exhortation:

“‘It’s for the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, comply with the United Nations Resolution, and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.’ That’s what he said.”

Many Iraqis, both in the largely Kurdish north and the Shiite south, took this advice. American pilots bombed Iraqi weapons depots, allowing the rebels to arm themselves. As the Iraqi Army withdrew from Kuwait and retreated towards Baghdad, the rebels made significant gains. The numbers are disputed, but at the height of the uprising, opposition forces may have controlled as many as 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

Just as the pressure on the regime intensified, however, American and Iraqi military leaders met near the Iraq-Kuwait border at Safwan to sign a cease-fire. As the negotiations drew to a close, the Iraqi representative, Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, had a request, recorded in the official transcript of the meeting. “We have a point, one point. You might very well know the situation of the roads and bridges and communications. We would like to agree that helicopter flights sometimes are needed to carry some of the officials, government officials, or any member that is needed to be transported from one place to another because the roads and bridges are out.”

General Norman Schwarzkopf, representing the United States, playing the generous victor, told his counterpart that so long as no helicopters flew over areas controlled by U.S. troops, they were “absolutely no problem.” He continued: “I want to make sure that’s recorded, that military helicopters can fly over Iraq. Not fighters, not bombers.” Lt. Gen. Ahmad pressed the issue. “So you mean even helicopters that is [sic] armed in the Iraqi skies can fly, but not the fighters?”

“Yeah, I will instruct our Air Force not to shoot at any helicopters that are flying over the territory of Iraq where we are not located,” Schwarzkopf replied, adding that he wanted armed helicopters to be identified with an orange tag.

This moment of magnanimity would prove costly. Saddam’s soldiers used the helicopters to put down the rebellion, spilling the blood of tens of thousands of Iraqis to do so. On the ground, allied troops had reversed course and were now taking weapons from any Iraqis who had them, including the rebels. In the end, it was a massacre, with conservative estimates of 30,000 dead.

“Along Highway 8, the east-west route that ran from An Nasiriyah to Basra, the American soldiers could tell that Saddam Hussein was mercilessly putting down the rebellion,” wrote Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor in The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, considered the definitive account of the war. “The tales at the medical tent had a common theme: indiscriminate fire at men, women and children, the destruction of Islamic holy places, in which the Shiites had taken refuge, helicopter and rocket attacks, threats of chemical weapons attacks.”

The men who gathered that snowy afternoon in Dearborn Heights, many of them from Nasiriyah, were among those attacked by the Iraqi military in 1991. Several spoke of their confusion as they looked up to see Iraqi helicopters strafing the masses of refugees, and above the Iraqi aircraft, American F-15 fighter planes circling in the sky but doing nothing to stop the slaughter. (These images have contributed, perhaps understandably, to numerous conspiracy theories discussed widely in the exile community. One propounds the preposterous notion that American aircraft escorted the Iraqi helicopters responsible for killing Iraqi rebels and ending the uprising. As that hypothesis goes, the United States wanted to keep Saddam Hussein in power as its puppet dictator. Put together American support of Saddam throughout the ’80s with these vivid memories, and from the perspective of the Iraqis on the ground, the theories don’t seem terribly far-fetched.)

When we ended our formal Q and A, one man handed me a photograph of his son, who was killed in the uprising. Others gave me photographs and handwritten, homemade business cards. Someone gave me a plan, in Arabic, for postwar Iraq. Several men passed me their Michigan drivers’ licenses and state ID cards. Six gave me letters or prepared statements, some in Arabic and others in English. Mohammed al-Gased, who speaks only Arabic, must have had help translating his letter:

My name is Mohammed Al Gased, my family and I are refugees in the United States of America. I lost my nephew Haydir Ali Abdulamir Al Gased (the spelling of the name may be different). He was a participant in the 1991 Iraqi Uprising against Saddam. On March 18, 1991, he was wounded in the battle against Saddam’s army. In the same afternoon of the same day, he was transferred to one of the American military units located in Talillehem in the governate of Annasriya in southern Iraq. He was treated there; then was taken by American Military helicopter for a further treatment. The location is still unknown for us. After the fail of the uprising, most of us were forced to flee our homes. When we arrived to Saudi Arabia as refugees. I wrote a letter to the Red Cross asking if they have any information about him, and we got no answer. I also wrote to the Saudi Ministry of Defense. My brother, his father, was tortured by Saddam’s secret police so viciously it caused his death. His mother and the rest of the family are now residing in Sweden as refugees. In the name of humanity, we are asking you to help us find out weather or not he is still alive and where his about.

With the letters and statements and photographs came torrents of additional charges meant to demonstrate the brutality of Saddam’s regime. One man insisted that he knew the precise location of a mass grave, and provided very specific directions. He urged me to give these coordinates to the U.S. government but not to report them, lest Saddam dig up the grave and repair the ground. He said that Iraqis are well aware of these mass graves and predicted they will be found throughout Iraq when the current regime is out of power.

It must be said that many of these claims, including that one, are unverifiable. But they are consistent with Saddam Hussein’s long history of violence. As the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iraq put it: “Extreme and brutal force is threatened and applied without hesitation and with total impunity to control the population.”

Of more immediate concern is the likelihood that Saddam will use civilians as human shields in the event of war, as he did during the first Gulf War. Bush administration officials are well aware of his willingness to sacrifice his own people, and they take seriously reports that he has begun preparations to do so.

One such account comes from Ali al-Sayad, an Iraqi American who reported to Defense Department officials a phone call he received last week from his cousin, a guard at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. The guard told al-Sayad that on February 11, Saddam’s agents began methodically moving thousands of prisoners from their cells to the dictator’s hometown of Tikrit, where many officials believe Saddam will take refuge when combat begins.

That’s a move that wouldn’t surprise Riadh Abdallah, a former general in Saddam’s Republican Guard. Gen. Abdallah served on Saddam’s personal security detail in Baghdad during the Gulf War. His brother, Abduli Alwishah, a member of the Iraqi parliament from 1984 to 1991 and head of a prominent southern Iraqi tribe, was a leader of the uprising at the end of the war. When Iraqi intelligence reported back to Baghdad that Alwishah had agitated against Saddam, Gen. Abdallah lost his position in the Republican Guard and was put on probation, then transferred to a teaching job and ordered to report to authorities once a week to show his face.

It could have been worse. Five other generals, including Barak Abdallah, a hero from the Iran-Iraq war, were executed for plotting against the regime.

By 1993, Alwishah and his family had left the Saudi refugee camp that they called home for 14 months and had resettled in the United States. That’s when his brother, Gen. Abdallah, was arrested and charged as an anti-Saddam conspirator and sent to a small prison in Baghdad for high-ranking officials accused as traitors. I asked him about the experience.

ABDALLAH: I was in jail for eleven months. There was no judge. They just put you in. If one was to be executed or put in jail, no judge. They put us in the same room as those five generals who were executed. And they were killed with big knives. Those people were killed with big knives hitting them on the neck. And the room had blood everywhere.

SH: Did you think you might be next?

ABDALLAH: Yes. I thought that they would do the same thing to me. Every day they told me that I will be executed.

SH: How long?

ABDALLAH: Eleven months. Intimidation every day. At that time they found out about a conspiracy by another person who was a big general, a doctor actually, from the same town as Saddam. His name was Raji al-Tikriti. It’s a very famous story in Iraq. And they made him a food for dogs.

SH: You were in prison when this happened? You heard about this?

ABDALLAH: They showed me these prisoners that were eaten by wild dogs. They made us–that was one kind of intimidation–they brought all of the generals and officers in the prison to watch it, to intimidate us. . . . They took us from jail and they put some blindfolds on our eyes and they took them off and we saw him. Before the dogs ate him we saw them read the judgment and they said why they were going to kill him. He was the head doctor for all the military, and he was the personal doctor for Saddam Hussein and for former Iraqi president Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

SH: Was he killed before this happened?

ABDALLAH: He was alive when these wild dogs . . .

SH: Do you remember what month this was?

ABDALLAH: It was the wintertime, but I can’t remember exactly because for 11 months I didn’t see the sun, nothing–I didn’t know what time. There was only spider webs in the room, so I didn’t know if it’s day or night. [Pause] Probably what you’re hearing is impossible to believe, but that’s what happened. And all that you’re hearing is nothing compared to everything else.

Abdallah later explained that Raji al-Tikriti was dressed in “prison pajamas” with his hands and feet bound when this was done to him. Abdallah and seven other prisoners were forced to watch. The five dogs, he said, “were like big wolves.”

Abdallah returned to teaching after his surprising release from prison. He taught with other senior military officials who, he said, ran terrorist training operations at Salman Pak and Lake Tharthar. The activities at Salman Pak are well known. Satellite images show an airplane, and defectors have revealed extensive training in terrorist operations–including hijacking–that have gone on there for years. Lake Tharthar, however, is new. Abdallah calls it the “Salman Pak of the sea,” where terrorists were instructed in “diving, how to wire, how to put charges on ships, how to storm the ships, commando operations.”

I asked him if the facility was used primarily for military training or terrorist training. “Terrorist. Not for the military. They were not Iraqi. They were all from other countries–maybe just a few Iraqis. And it’s very confidential.”

Tharthar is the largest lake in Iraq, constructed on the site of the Great Dam. That dam regulates a waterway that connects the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Tharthar is also the site of one of the largest of Saddam’s numerous palaces. In 1999, at a celebration of the president’s 62nd birthday, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan opened a resort on the lake for the regime’s VIPs. The complex came at a cost estimated at hundreds of millions, and includes luxurious accommodations, several beaches, and an amusement park, complete with a merry-go-round and a ferris wheel.

Saddam Hussein and his allies blame the United States for the “genocide” caused by 13 years of U.N. sanctions. They claim that these sanctions, and the resulting shortages of food and medicine, have led to the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis. Even leaving aside the vast resources Saddam has used to rebuild and conceal his deadly arsenal, the resort at Lake Tharthar helps put those charges in context. As Taha Ramadan noted at the resort’s ceremonial opening, “This city was built in the age of Saddam Hussein and during this period of sanctions. . . . This shows our ability to build such a beautiful city and to fight as well.”

A resort city, terrorist training camps, and a hungry population–all of this, says Abdallah, makes Saddam Hussein “the father and the grandfather of terrorists.”

THE DAY AFTER my meeting in Dearborn Heights, some 300 Iraqi Americans gathered at the Fairlane Club in suburban Detroit to hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and, finally, tell their stories in the presence of a high U.S. official. Wolfowitz had been invited by the Iraqi Forum for Democracy, a nonaligned, anti-Saddam, pro-democracy association of Iraqis in America. Television cameras–I counted nearly 20–lined the room. A handful of print reporters were there, too. Signs on the wall declared “Iraq United Will Never Be Divided” and “Saddam Must Go–Iraqis Need Human Rights.”

Wolfowitz is viewed as something of a hero here. Several Iraqi Americans I spoke to were aware that he was wary of Saddam Hussein as far back as the late ’70s, and remained so even as the U.S. government embraced the Iraqi dictator in the ’80s. Others credited Wolfowitz with expediting U.S. rescue operations when the Iraqi government put down the 1991 uprising.

“The U.S. Army had orders to leave Basra,” recalls Ahmed Shulaiba. “We were going to be crushed by the Iraqi Army, and we heard that one man from the press–we don’t know who he is–he called Paul Wolfowitz and told him about 30,000 people will be crushed if the American military leave them. And he [Wolfowitz] called [Secretary of Defense] Dick Cheney and they helped move us to the camp of Rafha [in Saudi Arabia].”

Wolfowitz later confirmed this account, though he downplayed his role. “The rebellion had basically been crushed,” he said. “It was a Sunday afternoon and I got a call at home from a reporter. I think it’s okay to name him, it was Michael Gordon [of the New York Times]. One of my kids answered, told me who it was, and I regretted the day I’d given him my unpublished number at home. I said, ‘Tell him I’m not interested in talking to him.’ My kid, whichever one it was, told me that Gordon was calling from Safwan [Iraq], and he says it’s important.”

Gordon told Wolfowitz that he had been interviewing U.S. troops in southern Iraq. Saddam’s forces were continuing to brutalize the Iraqi people. American soldiers, says Wolfowitz, “had been ordered not to do anything about it. Gordon said it was breaking their hearts.” Wolfowitz called Cheney and, after overcoming some internal resistance, they arranged to have allied forces expedite the refugees’ journey to camps in the Saudi desert.

Now, addressing those gathered in suburban Detroit, Wolfowitz spoke of the coming liberation of their country. It was a well-crafted speech, packed with details about the expected conflict and postwar Iraq (available on the web at http://www.defenselink=.mil/news/Feb2003/t02272003-t0223ifd.ht=ml ). He was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause, including several standing ovations. At one point, the audience broke into song, in Arabic, to celebrate the imminent end of Saddam’s rule. The Iraqi farmers who the night before had handed me photographs of their dead relatives were dancing with local religious leaders.

When Wolfowitz concluded his remarks, it was the Iraqis’ turn to speak to the world. Some spoke in English, some in Arabic.

“My name is Abu Muslim al-Hayadar. I used to be a university professor back in Iraq, but now I am working in social services to help refugees. I want to assure you and all other people around the world that we suffered so much and we are willing to work towards democracy as we are–most of us want to work in two phases. The liberation phase and the rebuilding phase. So please, please take it seriously, and we want it fast. Fast, as fast as you can. Thank you. Liberate Iraqi people please.”

Moments later, a man named Ahmed al-Tamimi stepped to the front of the stage with a young boy.

“I welcome you here. You are here in Dearborn and next month we welcome you in Baghdad and Iraq.

“In every heart here, in every person here, there is a scar on our hearts. But we can’t show the people in the world our scars on our hearts, but we can show the scars on the face of this young guy. He was, in that time in 1991, just one year. He was a child, and this is the father and his uncle, they participated in the uprising. . . . They beat the father, his father, his mother, and his wife. While they are beating the family they hear the cry of the child and they say who is the child? The wife said this is my child. They start beating him with their boots until the blood was all over and he had brain damage, partly brain damage.

“When [the father] came from Saudi Arabia to America, the first thing he did, he took the phone and talked to his wife and he said I want to talk to my son. And she started to cry. And she told him he is not talking, he is not talking. What happened? She told him, something happen in 1991. I can’t tell you. After that he find out what happened to his son.”

The program ended and the crowd gave Wolfowitz another standing ovation. They rushed to the stage and surrounded the speaker, a former academic unused to being treated like a rock star. It was a moving scene–perhaps a foreshadowing of the greeting American troops will get when Saddam Hussein is gone–but few people saw it.

Although several major newspapers covered the event, television networks mostly took a pass. Why? Certainly the language difficulties made live television coverage all but impossible. But the reactions of a producer for a prominent international broadcast network suggest another possible explanation. She said the event was “weird” and thought the Iraqis seemed “uncomfortable.”

“It was a pre-selected audience,” she inaccurately claimed. “Everyone here agrees with the administration.”

Pro-war propaganda, she concluded–never once considering the possibility that Iraqi Americans might actually be near-unanimous in their desire to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

It should be noted, however, that there were at least two Saddam sympathizers in the crowd. Before the speech, as TV crews checked their microphones and Arabic-speaking Iraqis studied translated copies of Wolfowitz’s prepared remarks, one Iraqi pointed out two men he said were “Saddam’s agents.” Regardless of whether that much is true, they plainly were not enjoying themselves. Each time their fellow Iraqi Americans saluted the dictator’s coming demise, these dour fellows sat expressionless.

After the meeting with Wolfowitz, journalists were asked to leave the room as the Iraqis met privately with representatives from the Pentagon for perhaps an hour. Defense officials explained to the Iraqis the various ways they can participate in the coming conflict. Many will accompany U.S. troops, serving as intermediaries between the Iraqis and their liberators. Others will join something the Pentagon is calling the “Free Iraqi Force,” a unit that will support combat operations inside Iraq. Still others will focus on a post-Saddam Iraq.

Later, Wolfowitz returned to the room and spent another hour talking with individual Iraqi Americans, answering their questions, and most important, listening.

One Iraqi American had a message he hoped protesters would hear:

“If you want to protest that it’s not okay to send your kids to fight, that’s okay. But please don’t claim to speak for the Iraqis. We’ve seen 5 million people protesting, but none of them were Iraqis. They don’t know what’s going on inside Iraq. France and whoever else, please shut up.”

Another, Hawra al-Zuad, is a 16-year-old student at an Islamic academy in suburban Detroit. Her sky blue headscarf seems to coexist comfortably with her marked Detroit accent. Although she doesn’t remember her family’s flight 12 years ago, she is eager to return to her native Iraq. “I’ll go visit right away,” she says. “I want to go see how it is over there. I forgot everything about it. I want to see my house, where I used to live when I was little.”

A good way to spend summer vacation, I suggest. She quickly corrects me.

“Spring break. I hope it’s spring break.”

A letter from the SAS?

Hi. George Bush’s final countdown press conference today threw up a statement I hadn’t heard before. He said:

“I’m convinced that a liberated Iraq will be – will be important for that troubled part of the world. The Iraqi people are plenty capable of governing themselves. Iraq is a sophisticated society. Iraq’s got money. Iraq will provide a place where people can see that the Shia and the Sunni and the Kurds can get along in a federation.” (The transcript of today’s press conference statement is at whitehouse.)

As recently as late last month the US promised Turkey it would not allow a federation in Iraq: “The guarantees are meant to ensure that an independent Kurdish State – or even an autonomous Kurdish entity within an Iraqi federation – does not emerge along Turkey’s borders after (a US invasion).”(charlotte)

This deal was made just before the Turkish Parliament vote, which unexpectedly went down. Is Bush’s mention of a federation a threat designed to get that vote reversed?

What next? Will the world cave in? Bush certainly thinks it still might. He said today:

“If you remember back prior to the resolution coming out of the United Nations last fall, I suspect you might have asked a question along those lines – how come you can’t get anybody to support your resolution? If I remember correctly, there was a lot of doubt as to whether or not we were even going to get any votes, much – well, we’d get our own, of course. And the vote came out 15 to nothing, Terry. And I think you’ll see when it’s all said and done, if we have to use force, a lot of nations will be with us.”

Is he right? Your predictions, please.

In the devilishly complicated set of arguments for and against invading Iraq, one of the big sticking points is the morality of the war.

The US didn’t pretend the war was about liberation at first. The anti-war movement focused on civilian deaths as a moral argument against war, to which the US and the UK replied that the Iraqi people were prepared to suffer casualties to be liberated, so it was a just war as well as a necessary one. But the US/UK (Australia just mouths whatever Bush and Blair say first) do not go the next step to argue that the war is BECAUSE it is just. Indeed, Bush said today he hoped that Saddam would disarm or leave the country, in which case he wouldn’t invade. No liberation there.

John Wojdylo has carried the just war argument in Webdiary, and he’s convinced me on that point. I’ve just published Against Human Rights in Iraq, where he berates Jack Robertson for checking out of his obligations as a member of Amnesty International to protect human rights:

Now some questions to Jack Robertson. In Controil, you explain why oil is strategically important, and assert that this is the only reason for American action worth knowing. But you have not explained why liberating Iraq, as well as stopping Saddam Hussein, which would be byproducts of the war, are not worth knowing, so you haven’t made the case against war.

You’re fixated on American projection of power. But if you believe in human rights – as you should, because of your position as a leading member of Amnesty International in NSW – then you should at least explain why the Iraqis are wrong when they say that the only way to improve human rights in Iraq is by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis want the Americans to invade, and they don’t care if the Americans control the oil afterwards. Why aren’t you putting the human rights of the Iraqis first?

I’ve also just published That Obscure Thing Called Reality, his reply to Iraqi Australian Zainab al-Badry’s plea for peace in Iraqi Australians: War splits a family.

We seem to be getting mixed up between the purpose of war and the effect of war. For me, John has won the argument about the morality of invading Iraq. He seems to be saying that it doesn’t matter what the reason for the war is if its effect is to liberate the Iraqi people. I can go along with that, provided there are guarantees the peace will also be just. There aren’t, at the moment anyway, and US history in the region gives no cause for complacency on the point.

But John’s point doesn’t mean Jack’s opposition to the war is wrong. In the end, it gets back to whether you think the war will help or hinder world peace. In the end, pro and anti war debaters are focused on this question, and the moral arguments for and against war are subsidiary. In other words, we’re all thinking real politic here, whether we’re for or against the war, and for or against Australian involvement.

I’d like John to address the question of whether war on Iraq is likely to make more people in the world free, and accorded more basic human rights, or less. If there’s a world war over this, if countries around the world are destabilised and strife breaks out, for example between the Kurds and the Turks, the Iranians and Muslim Iraqis, mightn’t the loss of life be more horrific than an invasion of Iraq?

This is a core disagreement between the United States and France. As Jacques Chirac said in his Time interview:

“I simply don’t analyse the situation as they do. Among the negative fallout would be inevitably a strong reaction from Arab and Islamic public opinion. It may not be justified, and it may be, but it’s a fact. A war of this kind cannot help giving a big lift to terrorism. It would create a large number of little bin Ladens. Muslims and Christians have a lot to say to one another, but war isn’t going to facilitate that dialogue. I’m against the clash of civilisations; that plays into the hands of extremists.”

The other core disagreement is about the role of the UN and the unilateralism of the US. The Washington Post today sets out the French case on this matter. An extract:

French See Iraq Crisis Imperiling Rule of Law

Concern Focuses on Future of International Order

By Keith B. Richburg

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, March 6, 2003; Page A19

PARIS, March 5: As the Iraq crisis moves closer to war, France finds itself fighting a battle that officials see as far more important than what happens to a dictator in Baghdad. The issue now is the rule of law in international affairs and the danger that one country will exercise unchecked power over the world, French leaders say.

“There’s never been any doubt in our eyes that the Iraqi regime constitutes a threat to peace in the region and beyond,” Alain Juppe, leader of President Jacques Chirac’s ruling party, told Parliament last week. But he added: “Only the United Nations has the legitimacy to decide on the use of force to enforce its resolutions.”

In recent weeks, France has led resistance at the United Nations and in world forums against U.S. pressure to begin war against the government of President Saddam Hussein. Today its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, issued a new challenge to Washington, coming together with his counterparts from Russia and Germany to declare that their governments will block a pro-war resolution in the U.N. Security Council.

“This is not about Saddam Hussein, and this is not even about regime change in Iraq or even the million people killed by Saddam Hussein or missiles or chemical weapons,” Pierre Lellouche, a legislator who is close to Chirac, said in an interview. “It is about what has become two conflicting views of the world.

“It’s about whether the United States is allowed to run world affairs and battle terrorism and weapons proliferation essentially with a small group of trusted allies,” or whether many nations should have a say, he said.

***

I received this email today from ‘Brian Dabeagle’, who says he’s an Australian SAS officer. I have no idea if it’s genuine – perhaps readers with knowledge of the SAS can give me their judgement. Brian sent this email to Bob Brown and me:

I am a currently serving soldier in Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) and believe me it has taken weeks, if not months of agonised soul searching as I have tried to decide whether to make my views public or not.

As you can understand, if my identity is revealed, my career (in a job that I love) is finished and as such I have taken some steps to protect my identity. However, some of the information that is in this email is not on the public record (but not vital to operational security) and can be checked to confirm my bona fides. I write this because I am sick of John Howard and the Federal Government’s lies about our position re Iraq and our role within the coalition.

By the time that you read this, it is quite possibly too late to influence the outcome of events regarding our involvement, but at the very least maybe one of you guys may have the courage to make the public a little more aware of what really is happening regarding our (the SAS) role in this conflict.

John Howard stated that we had only recently started preparing for this looming conflict. Bullshit! We, that is, 1 SAS Squadron (please refer to it as One SAS Squadron, not 1st SAS or anything else) were given orders to prepare for a war with Iraq around July 2002.

The Australian Special Air Service Regiment was specifically asked for by US planners after they had observed our performance in Afghanistan, where we demonstrated a capability that had been neglected by other Special Forces units who until recently had deemed it obsolete. Our skills in what is termed Strategic Reconaissance (SR) are unsurpassed by any other Special Forces unit in the world. This includes other so called Tier 1 (a system of rating free world Special Forces units devised by the yanks – Tier 1 being the highest rating) units, including the Brit SAS, US Delta and US Dev Group units.

What happened was we were initially deployed into areas deemed ‘clean’ by the coalition as we were viewed by the US command as really just a token gesture made by the Australian Government (as was our deployment to Kuwait in 98). We were also viewed as an ‘unknown’ quantity as our last real operational deployment working with the yanks was Vietnam. But, because we had maintained the skills of remaining ‘behind the lines’ for much longer periods without resupply or external support, we started to find things that had remained un-noticed by the coalition. Taliban & al Qaida forces started to reappear in the areas we operated in, thinking the area was secure. And, we started to find things that had been missed by the coalition as they passed through. Our discoveries led to some of the coalition’s biggest successes and suddenly the US planners started to realise that we were providing a service that they no longer had the capability to provide AS EFFECTIVELY.

Consequently and as a result of our operations in Afghanistan the relationship between the Australian SAS and our US counterparts is closer than at any time in our history. It is because of our ability to provide a service to the US effort that CANNOT be as effectively carried out by US forces that we were specifically asked for by the Pentagon right at the start of planning. Our role in this conflict is crucial to the outcome and there is no way that we can be taken out of the conflict without seriously affecting the US operational capability. Our planning was at such an advanced stage that whilst the parliamentary debate was raging, we were already into advanced planning of specific targets (not just general planning, but actual targets and operations) … quite contrary to what John Howard was stating. Without going into too much detail (for obvious reasons) what we will be doing is absolutely vital to the successful prosecution of the war. There is no way we are going to be withdrawn. This is nothing like Kuwait in 98, back then we were “untested” in the eyes of the yanks, now we are crucial to their plans.

So why am I sending you this? Because I am proud to be a professional soldier (not a nazi as I felt on the Tampa) and relish the job that I do, but I am concerned that as a human being that the war we are about to embark on is wrong. As important is the fact that I think that Howard is pandering to the will of that redneck Bush, without considering the long term consequences of this action, not just for Australia but for the whole world. He is lying to Parliament, he is lying to the people of Australia and no doubt he will lie to the dependents of any of us who don’t come back. This Government has a history of the latter as Kylie Russell, Jerry Bampton and the next of kin of the Blackhawk disaster can attest to.

As I mentioned at the start of the email, I think that maybe it is too late to do anything to affect our deployment, but at least if the truth as to our build up and deployment is made public, maybe it will give the parliament and the people of Australia food for thought.

 

***

Scott Burchill recommends Britain’s dirty secret in The Guardian. It begins:

A chemical plant which the US says is a key component in Iraq’s chemical warfare arsenal was secretly built by Britain in 1985 behind the backs of the Americans, the Guardian can disclose.

Documents show British ministers knew at the time that the 14m plant, called Falluja 2, was likely to be used for mustard and nerve gas production.

Senior officials recorded in writing that Saddam Hussein was actively gassing his opponents and that there was a “strong possibility” that the chlorine plant was intended by the Iraqis to make mustard gas. At the time, Saddam was known to be gassing Iranian troops in their thousands in the Iran-Iraq war.

But ministers in the then Thatcher government none the less secretly gave financial backing to the British company involved, Uhde Ltd, through insurance guarantees. Paul Channon, then trade minister, concealed the existence of the chlorine plant contract from the US administration, which was pressing for controls on such exports. He also instructed the export credit guarantee department (ECGD) to keep details of the deal secret from the public.

The papers show that Mr Channon rejected a strong plea from a Foreign Office minister, Richard Luce, that the deal would ruin Britain’s image in the world if news got out: “I consider it essential everything possible be done to oppose the proposed sale and to deny the company concerned ECGD cover”.

The Ministry of Defence also weighed in, warning that it could be used to make chemical weapons. But Mr Channon, in line with Mrs Thatcher’s policy of propping up the dictator, said: “A ban would do our other trade prospects in Iraq no good”.

Scott also recommends Independent Iraqis oppose Bush’s war in The Guardian.

Iraqi Australians: War splits a family

Hi. No movement on the impasse, so we watch the growing turmoil around the world and wait until the war begins or our ‘leaders’ find another way.

On Monday in Unreal Reality, I asked if the Iraqi people really did want to be invaded to be free, and quoted Webdiary’s only Iraqi contributor, Zainab Al-Badry, who wrote last September:

Like any Iraqi, nothing is dearer to my heart than to live long enough to witness the day my country and my people are set free from this dictator and his regime. However, can anyone blame us if we do not trust the US and back its efforts to oust Saddam? I have been in Iraq during the Gulf war and witnessed how the American troops abandoned my people and left them to the mercies of Saddam and his thugs. Why would I trust the US again? I have no doubt now that the US wants to get rid of Saddam – what I don’t accept (and indeed I find it insulting to my intelligence) is someone telling me (or the whole world for that matter) that the US is doing so for all the good reasons in the world, or that oil is a “secondary factor”. Would the US or any of its allies send their armies and incur all those heavy expenses if Iraq didn’t happen to float on oil?(Saddam’s will to power)

Zainab was inspired to reenter the debate, and detail a split in her family on the question:

I am still here and alive (God only knows how). I haven’t stopped following the Webdiary, in fact I became addicted to it, however I chose not to write for more than one reason. First, what’s the point? No matter how much we said and did, the ‘super power’ of the world had made its mind and there is no way back.

Second, I feel I am restricted by my ‘limited English’ – I can never put my thoughts in words the way I want them.

And third, to my deepest appreciation and relief , I often find that there are many many people who can and are expressing very similar opinions to mine on Webdiary.

However, I feel now that I have to say something as an Iraqi, views which are shared by everyone I know here except my husband!! But I will come to that later. I just want to remind everyone who is advocating war as the one and only solution that for decades the Iraqi people have suffered under this regime. Millions of Iraqi as well as non-Iraqi people have been tortured or died for one reason only, and that is to to keep Saddam in power because he served the West’s and especially the US’s interests. And now, just because he is not good enough for them any more, the Iraqi people have to pay the price again with their lives to get rid of him. Now how fair is that?

You wanted to know what the Iraqi people think of this coming war. For myself I believe that since I live here so far away from my country and enjoying the freedom and security of this wonderful society I have no right in imposing my views on them. Yes, I lived there for 31 years and all my family is still there but also I’ve been away for the last eight years. I haven’t shared their miserable lives and harsh circumstance (things are only got worse since I left back in 1994).

I oppose this war because I cannot comprehend the outcome – for me the ends do not justify the means in this case. Saddam must be removed but I cannot accept the horrible price that my people have to pay for it. Mind you I am fairly sure that most if not all the Iraqi people there see this coming war as their only chance for freedom, but also bear in mind that a sinking person clings to any straw to save his life.

People in Iraq do not see any of the consequences of this coming war except it might give them their freedom. Their death and the destruction of their country is a side issue for them – they are used to wars, they’ve been living in a continuous war for the last 23 years. Ask any one of them and the most they would say is, ‘What more could happen to us? If I die who cares, death is freedom?’

For us here it is different. We know the full story, we are exposed to the whole picture, we live in a democracy where, as you very rightly said, we elect our leaders to find solutions, not to demand them from us. If the only solution our leaders can come up with is war, then God help us.

I know many people will jump at me and say, ‘What is the alternative if we don’t go to war?’ I don’t know, but I do know that the masterminds who put Saddam in power and kept and fed him for all those years are surely capable, if they are willing, of coming up with a different solution to spare people’s lives.

Lastly, it makes me really sad to see my husband as one of the people who thinks that war is the only solution, not because he accepts wars but because he sees no other way to get rid of this regime. And that’s where we differ. As I said, I’m sure there is another solution. The problem is ‘they’ don’t want it.

***

I received this from a friend today on the state of play in Turkey. The idea of American pressure to reverse a vote of Parliament is frightening. Surely it risks the Turkish people turning to a more fundamentalist Islamic party than the moderate regime now in power? I hope this isn’t true:

The following is from a message from a Turkish colleague: You must have heard about the refusal of the Turkish Parliament to deploy US troops to attack Iraq. The usual mechanisms (bribery, threat, blackmail) are under way to revert the decision. This morning I received a message from a colleague who has attended a teleconference organised by Moody’s Turkish banks. In the conference Moody’s EXPLICITLY demanded the revert of the decision, OR ELSE the credit rating of Turkey would be decreased. They were also functional in triggering the 1994 crisis here. Stephen Little, Manchester.

Today, a report on how South America views the war from Australian journalist Miriam Taylor in Columbia. Then Brian Bahnisch’s predicts the aftermath of war and Justin Bell argues that containment is the only ‘solution’.

To begin, Scott Burchill sends this piece from today’s The Guardian and asks: “Where is the federal government’s legal advice?” He’s referring to the government’s constant claim that it has a “different view” to the vast majority of legal experts that a unilateral US invasion of Iraq would be illegal, and to the question of whether the US-sponsored second resolution would authorise war.

I’ve experienced the government’s attitude to legal advice before, and it’s rancid. During the Wik debate, the overwhelming majority of legal experts wrote opinions and gave evidence to committees that the Wik bill was racially discriminatory and in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. The government said it had contrary advice but steadfastly refused to reveal it. Attorney-General Daryl Williams intervened in the Senate committee process to ban the Australian Law Reform Commission giving evidence on the matter. Finally, a scrap of the government’s advice was leaked. It did not back the government line, but still Williams refused to release the advice. The government releases legal advice when it suits, refuses when it doesn’t, and has no compunction in lying about the advice it has. On at least one matter of national importance, it refused to brief its top legal officer, then Solicitor-General Gavan Griffith QC, because it feared the advice it would get. On this, as in many matters, this government has proved itself utterly untrustworthy.

Fresh resolution ‘gives no authority for war’

Matthew Tempest, political correspondent

Wednesday March 5, 2003

The Guardian

 

Tony Blair’s political dilemmas over a possible military attack on Iraq increased today, with reports that the government’s attorney general may resign if Britain goes to war without clear authorisation from the United Nations.

Legal opinion varies on the basis for war under resolution 1441, but yesterday Cherie Booth’s own legal chambers, Matrix, advised there was no authority for war without an unambiguous fresh resolution.

Now it has emerged that there are fears within the government’s legal service about the exact provisions of international law for a US-UK attack. The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has already flown to Washington on an unpublicised trip to discuss the legal ramifications with the US attorney general, John Ashcroft.

Lord Goldsmith’s job is to advise ministers on the legality of all their actions, but his office has refused to divulge his opinion on a future war with Iraq. This morning he was forced to deny to the Financial Timesrumours that he may resign if bombs are dropped without a second UN resolution.

His office is quoted as saying this scenario was “not something he recognises”, but the FT quotes an unnamed mandarin as saying: “Civil servants are meant to respect the law. There will be lots of resignations from the government legal service. Lord Goldsmith could go.”

The FT reported last year that the attorney general warned the cabinet any war designed primarily to remove Saddam Hussein would be illegal. However, the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, said last week he was unworried by the legal debate.

He said: “As a lawyer myself, I have always taken the view that if the law was so clear, you wouldn’t need my profession. So I accept there are going to be differences of legal opinion.”

Yesterday the Green party, CND and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade obtained a ruling from Matrix chambers that the draft wording of the US-UK second resolution – that Iraq had “failed to take the final opportunity” of 1441 and the UN remained “seized of the matter” – was not sufficient authority for military action. It has already argued that resolution 1441 does not in itself constitute grounds for war…

***

Recommendations

Simon Mansfield recommends defenselink, a US department of defence briefing, with slides, on “U.S. military practices and procedures to minimize casualties to non-combatants and prevent collateral damage during military operations”.

Max Phillips: “If the UN Security Council vetoes the US attack on Iraq and the US still makes its war, there is one measure that UN can still take – under a procedure called “Uniting for Peace” the UN General Assembly can demand an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal.” There are no vetoes available to any country in this motion, just a straight vote by all members of the UN. Such a procedure has happened 10 times, notably in response to the 1956 Suez invasion of Egypt. See zmag.”

***

Activism

The planned US invasion of Iraq has sparked what might be the world’s biggest mobilisation of artists against the war – film and stage actors and directors, painters, documentary makers, you name it. Yesterday was the international day of poetry against the war. Brian McKinlay recommends poetsagainstthewar.

Lesley Pinson sends this request from the moveon group:

We’ve launched an emergency petition from citizens around the world to the U.N. Security Council. We’ll be delivering the list of signers and your comments to the 15 member states of the Security Council on THURSDAY, MARCH 6. If hundreds of thousands of us sign, it could be an enormously important and powerful message – people from all over the world joining in a single call for a peaceful solution. But we really need your help, and soon. Please sign and ask your friends and colleagues to sign TODAY at moveonemergency.

We can stop this tragedy from unfolding. But we need to speak together, and we need to do so now. Please ask your friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances – anyone you know who shares this concern – to sign on today. As the New York Times put it, “There may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” The Bush Administration’s been flexing its muscles. Now let’s flex ours.

Denise Parkinson: “There’s a WOMEN FOR PEACE march and rally on Sunday 9th March, an action endorsed by the Walk Against the War Coalition. If you can, bring an empty stroller to symbolise the Children of Iraq facing death and devastation in this catastrophic war. 2.00 pm: peaceful assembly of women of Sydney, including women with children and women with empty strollers, at the Parade Ground, Government House, Botanic Gardens. Enter by Garden Gates, immediate left of the Conservatorium, Macquarie St.”

***

Oiled by Distance

by Miriam Taylor in Bogota, Columbia

Iraq is a long way from South America, both in distance and in culture. Yet, the link between many South American nations and the USA is the same as for Iraq. Oil.

Colombia and Venezuela have high oil production, and succour transnational oil companies. Venezuela competed with Arab nations in oil output until the Chavez Presidency induced massive strikes in the industry.

National and international oil companies pay substantial amounts of money to the large armed revolutionary groups in Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia, to keep the oil lines free of bombs. The Canon Limon oil line of Occidental Petroleum in Colombia suffered 200 bomb attacks in 2001. The bribe dollars buy armaments to fight governments supported by the USA. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two Colombian television and radio networks blatantly calculate the financial benefit for the oil industries of South America should the USA attack Iraq and destroy their oil production. The oil industry is pragmatic. War on an oil nation is good news for them.

Many military and social aid dollars flow into South American nations, particularly Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. The money comes from blocs which support intervention in Iraq – principally the USA and the European Union. You don’t bite the hand that feeds.

The voices of these governments support any USA strategy, but it is a silent consent. The mainstream press of South American countries report the daily thrusts of the intervention plan as if through a veil, being mostly non-committal and if critical, then gently so. However, their enthusiastic reportage of the recent world-wide anti-war protests sparked many editorials in support of peace.

Venezuela is struggling to meet its promises to resume oil exports to the USA. Chavez, who sees himself as the second Bolivar, does not resile from condemning the imminent war on Iraq, seen by the Venezuelan press as a fait accompli.

The Bolivian government of President Sanchez de Lozada is beset by a different intervention, that of the International Monetary Fund. The Bolivian cabinet is falling apart under the weight of massive pressures, including that of increasing its oil exports to the USA. Its media are too obsessed by these concerns to be troubled by the parallels with Iraq.

The Argentinian President Duhalde is similarly beset, but this week he openly criticised the IMF’s role in Bolivia’s current hardships. Argentinian editorials call on the EU to take a stand for what is morally right, non-intervention. A tinge of the same sentiment runs through Brasilian newspapers.

Chile’s left-wing papers call for courage from the EU to stand against a USA-led war on Iraq. They state what the other national medias imply, that this is an oil war, nothing more, fueled by Bush.

Given the long histories of Spain and Portugal in this continent, South American media look to their former colonists for their stances on any international issue. The equivocations of the EU are seen as the last light of hope in preventing the war on Iraq.

As I write this, I am listening to one of the national Colombian talk-back radio shows. The last caller said, “La paz por toda la vida” or ‘Peace for all living, all our lives’. Wearied by 40 years of war the people on my streets here in Bogota say leave Iraq in peace.

***

Brian Bahnisch in Brisbane

The invasion will happen – Bush and co won’t pack up and go home and their troops apparently ‘degrade’ rapidly if left out in the desert. I’m told heat doesn’t matter, as initially it will happen at night when there is no moon ie later this month. After the initial blitz the word is that medium force will be applied and it will take about 2 months.

Now here’s the downside. Iraq may well prove ungovernable, terrorism will be greatly boosted and the risk of dispersal of WMDs into the hands of terrorists in the chaos after ‘victory’ will be overwhelmingly high.

Prior to all that, however, there is a fair bet that Saddam will actually kill a few hundred thousand Iraqis with WMDs either directed at the advancing enemy or actually directed at his own people. This is in addition to the civilian casualties, refugees and displaced people inside Iraq from the ‘friendly’ fire.

Saddam is likely to set the oil wells on fire. Each one needs to be put out separately and whereas in Kuwait each took about 2 or 3 days, in Iraq each could take about 2 to 3 weeks, according to the experts. If this happens the environment will be seriously fucked with oil entering the groundwater in the Mesopotanian basin.

Under these circumstances ‘muscular containment’ is the only ethically acceptable way to go. Therein lies a huge problem, because the Yanks are the only ones who scare Saddam, and if they don’t attack they may just go home. That is why in the end they will attack.

Nevertheless, I should have a suggestion on what to do without the Yanks, but I really do have to go and cut grass. Old ladies are depending on me! Sorry!

***

Justin Bell

I am an Aussie graduate student living in Seattle. This is my go at tying together the emotional American cultural impetus behind Bush administration policy.

There are four general strands apparent in arguments about Iraq that cut across traditional left-right ideological lines.

The pro-war left argues that the war will liberate the oppressed peoples of Iraq and permit democracy. The anti-war left argument says the war will kill more people than Saddam and that war is primarily about liberating oil for the United States.

The pro war right argument as developed by the Bush administration started with the argument that after 9/11 it is too dangerous to leave the world’s worst weapons in the hands of the world’s worst dictator, and has since tacked on a sort of nouveau domino theory in reverse – that the implementation of democracy in Iraq will inevitably lead to a more stable Middle East.

The anti war right argument applies the tried and true economic rationalist cost benefit analysis to the problem and suggests that all but the most optimistic projection of war and its aftermath will mean a net downside for the US.

Both the left and right versions of the pro war implementation of democracy positions are flawed because there is insufficient weight given to the interconnectedness of church and state in all Arab nations. None are democracies in the secular, Western sense, but all harbour populations bristling with deep-seated distrust, jealousy, anger and religious intolerance toward the the US.

An overarching unilateralist democratic imperialism doctrine that propounds the imposition of democracy in Iraq has much in common with the thinking behind the discredited domino theory that saw the US send William Calley, Agent Orange and carpet bombing to Vietnam in a vain attempt to save that country and impose democracy.

Saddam has none of the romantic appeal of Uncle Ho, but the critical failure of both theories lies in the attempt to apply an overarching geopolitical theory to a particular nation and leader without adequate consideration of the appeal of nationalistic sentiment and each leader’s capacity to harness such sentiment. Both the domino theory and the nouveau domino theory are drawn from US policy making that has a tendency to see issues in black and white terms; Communism v Democracy; Despotism v Democracy.

The suggestion that Iraqis will welcome American troops is misguided when you consider Saddam’s capacity to appeal to nationalistic sentiment. Any leader able to launch and maintain an offensive war against a neighbour that lasted 10 years, incur horrendous casualties, and then persuade his military to take on 28 allied nations in 1990-91 is a leader with a proven ability to appeal to nationalistic sentiment.

While it is true that the Iraqi military was overrun in the first Gulf War, it is not true that Iraqi units refused to fight. Many elements of the Iraqi army fought very hard – and not just Republican Guard elements. In Gulf War Redux, we ought to expect nothing less – and neither ought we impute the stupidity to our foe that is implicit in suggestions that the military will be overrun again.

Saddam learnt from his mistakes in the war with Iran. He has had 12 years to ruminate about tactical mistakes made in the first Gulf War. This rematch will not be fought on battlefields that favor American technological superiority – it will be a bloody urban mess.

As for the ‘worst weapons, worst dictator’ argument, this is the foundation for a position that because Saddam or other dictators could possibly give weapons to terrorists, the US has no choice but to remove Saddam and his ilk from power. There are at least three responses:

1. The logical extension of this strategy would see the global cop US busting down the doors of all countries that could possibly give weapons to terrorists. Countries such as Libya; Iraq; North Korea; Iran; Cuba, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc would be on this list. If the criteria is any dictator that COULD give weapons to terrorists, then the list of countries to invade is very long indeed, as would be the casualty lists for the US military and the draft lists that would be needed for replacements.

2. If the aim of the policy is to prevent WMD getting into the hands of terrorists, there is no reason to restrict the policy to dictators who may put WMD into terrorist hands. There would also need to be pre-emptive elimination of any person who could do so. This class of persons is wide indeed – members of the Russian military with questionable personal lives, religious Pakistani generals etc. The ramifications of implementing such a wide ranging global cop policy could include a withdrawal of international co-operation with broader US foreign policy or law enforcement, as the policy gives no quarter to namby-pamby considerations of respect for national sovereignty.

3. The consequences of broad pre emptive invasions would be a terminal case of imperial overreach, bringing about the precipitous decline of an American empire bankrupted by loss of financial, human and political capital. No American ally (and the word has a looser meaning of late precisely because of the overreaching, impractical nature of proposed Bush administration policy) would go along with such a policy. As it stands, the US has a very isolated coalition of the willing that does not even include Canada, or a single nation with a population that is behind this war – and this is before it has invaded Iraq.

In a textbook world, with an assumption of unlimited US military resources and unlimited international goodwill for the US, the pre-emption policy might be worthwhile. The US has neither unlimited military resources, nor does it have an inexhaustible reservoir of international goodwill. The failure of the world’s worst rationale for action is that it incorporates an simplistic and unrealistic view of American power – a belief that America can just invade the Middle East and not suffer blowback in terms of terrorist consequences and America’s aspirations to world leadership.

However the anti-war left argument it is facile, though well meaning. This position is a sandwich of gullibility and pacifism, with a healthy pinch of conspiracy theory. It would be great if everyone decided that there would be no more wars, but outside the confines of the EU there are nasty little tinpot dictators like Saddam.

Given the militaristic history of humanity we can’t cling to the hope that we will see an end to war in this millennium. The ‘No blood for oil’ mantra is just another way of saying no war, ever. Saddam has demonstrated no compunction in engaging in war for material gain, as he did in the invasions of Iran and Kuwait. The logical extension of the no blood for oil argument would be to allow Saddam take any of his neighbour’s oil fields.

The close ties between the present administration and the oil industry are a matter of public record. Although its ham handed and incompetent foreign policy and playing domestic corporate favorites give us no reason to love the Bush administration, there are no grounds to see an overt conspiracy between the administration and the oil industry to divvy up Iraqi oil in the wake of an invasion, not least because they know there will be so many left leaning detectives looking for such a conspiracy.

However, the Christian fundamentalist background of the president and of his administration, combined with ties to the oil industry have led the President and the US into the error of seeing the Iraq issue in stark black and white, good v evil terms, and has caused Bush to overestimate the relative benefit to the US of freeing up Iraqi oil compared to the costs of invasion.

That leaves us with the economic rationalist anti war argument that, after weighing the potential costs and possible benefits, it’s just not worth it. Projections for the pure money cost of the war vary between $60b and $400b. The human cost will likely be far greater than the toll exacted on 9/11. Unless we imbue Iraqi soldiers with a hitherto unknown passion for democracy, and their leaders with the stupidity that would be a necessary concomitant of again taking defensive positions in the desert, we are about to enter into a bloody, dirty urban warfare scenario. This means American, British and Aussie soldiers dying in Baghdad – not hundreds, but thousands of body bags. This will occur unless the US decides to impose democracy in Iraq by razing Baghdad to the ground.

The costs to America’s capacity to lead world opinion will start with the complete dismantling of a Western accord with Europe and with serious, even permanent damage to the US alliance with the UK. President Sheriff Bush has sidled up to the international poker table and, calmly trusting in his faith, has risked all of America’s political capital and alliance chips in a game where the potential payoff will be to the elimination of the two-bit player Saddam Hussein.

Other costs will be the unintended consequences of striking the invasion match in the powder keg of the Middle East, including the facilitation of the very consequences the US hopes to avoid – use of WMD by Saddam, the sparking of a wider Arab-Israeli war, or dissemination of WMD to terrorists by, for example, religious fundamentalists within the Pakistani government.

Faced with what religious fanatics will no doubt perceive as unholy American intermeddling in Arab lands, is it not logical to expect such fanatics in positions of power to aid terrorist organisations to strike back at America? This scenario is at least as likely as the domino theory in reverse situation where the Middle East would become a terrestrial sea of tranquillity in the aftermath of a US invasion.

What would be the benefits? The only real benefit that one could point to would be the removal of Saddam from power. Chances are his successor would be a more polite international citizen. The administration regularly cites Saddam’s support for Palestinian terrorists, and this would be eliminated after Saddam were removed from power. However, most Arabs do not see Palestinians as terrorists, they see them as freedom fighters.

That leaves us with what to do with Saddam – deterrence or containment. Neither option is particularly appealing. Both options are better alternatives than a unilateral US/UK/Australian invasion.

For cultural reasons, Americans have been sold by the can do attitude of the Bush administration, because an American believes it unpatriotic to do nothing in response to a threat. Unfortunately, the costs of doing this something will be much worse than the continued attempt to contain Saddam within the framework of a loose international coalition.

This invasion is the ultimate in fuzzy foreign policy – a policy driven by emotions of fear, anger and exasperation at having been smoked out of an isolationist stance by 9/11. Unilateral invasion of Iraq is a policy that would never have been seriously considered pre- 9/11, and since there is no credible link between al-Qaeda terrorists and Iraq, there ought not to be an invasion now.

Against Human Rights in Iraq

According to the Amnesty International website, its core values are:

Amnesty International forms a global community of human rights defenders with the principles of international solidarity, effective action for the individual victim, global coverage, the universality and indivisibility of human rights, impartiality and independence, and democracy and mutual respect.

The webpage also states Amnesty’s policy on women and children:

Children are routinely denied the basic rights that most of us take for granted – … freedom from torture…. Children’s rights are the blocks with which we build a human rights culture in societies and secure human rights for future generations…

Its policy on torture:

We campaign to end torture in all its forms. Our members act immediately to stop torture which is in progress and lobby vigorously for a full investigation into all allegations of torture perpetrated by government agents…

Its policy on political killings and forcible “disappearances”:

…We also lobby for changes in military, security and police actions that may lead to human rights violations….

Its policy on executions:

…no state is ever justified in killing its own citizens. Our members lobby hard… to have individual death sentences commuted. Ultimately, all Amnesty International’s research and campaigning aims to affect the lives of individuals. Their faces, names and stories are at the heart of our work. Amnesty International members campaign for all kinds of victims, under all kinds of governments, everywhere in the world, whether they be in the media’s spotlight or forgotten in a secret prison…

Now some questions to Jack Robertson. In Controil, you explain why oil is strategically important, and assert that this is the only reason for American action worth knowing. But you have not explained why liberating Iraq, as well as stopping Saddam Hussein, which would be byproducts of the war, are not worth knowing, so you haven’t made the case against war.

You’re fixated on American projection of power. But if you believe in human rights – as you should, because of your position as a leading member of Amnesty International in NSW – then you should at least explain why the Iraqis are wrong when they say that the only way to improve human rights in Iraq is by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis want the Americans to invade, and they don’t care if the Americans control the oil afterwards. Why aren’t you putting the human rights of the Iraqis first?

You have said nothing new, except that the discovery of further oil reserves has not changed what Hitler already knew in the 1940s. As I explained in Saddam’s Will to Power, oil is inextricably bound in the problem: It is unavoidable to think of oil when thinking about Saddam Hussein and American strategy against him. The Americans know this, and so do the French oil companies, and so does Saddam Hussein.

Why do you focus on American strategic interests while ignoring the improvement in human rights that eliminating Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian regime would achieve? Or do you doubt the latter? Please state your position clearly.

It seems that you’re jaundiced against explicit projection of power by the Great Satan, or against any achievement of human rights if it would mean some parasites profit from it. Underlying your worldview is nonexistent world – literally, a Utopia – in which human rights for all can be achieved without recourse to power.

But the inability to use power responsibly means that you give the green light for dictators to establish their brutal regimes at will. Most importantly, and I stress that this is the main point of this Webdiary note, you have failed to consider the viewpoint of the Iraqi people. Since when has Amnesty presumed to know better than the people themselves what’s good for them?

Amnesty is supposed to be focussing on the individual, but neither you nor Amnesty are doing this. Instead, you are obsessed by American projection of power, and in so doing split the world into two: human rights for yourself, and human rights for Iraqis. Human rights are evidently divisible, at least in the minds of “the people”.

Iraqis overwhelmingly believe that American projection of power is the only way of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and of improving human rights under all the categories listed on the Amnesty website. Why have you not bothered to find out what the Iraqi people think before involving yourself in actions that would influence their fate?

The truth is that Iraqis seeking liberty have become an abstraction to you – you’re preoccupied with your own concerns, in your self-centred world, despite the lip-service you pay to noble ideals.

Like the antiwar people I wrote about in Why the people’s instinct can be wrong and I felt liberated when I saw the bombs falling, you’re clearly imprisoned by the rationalisations inside your head, by this self-obsession, and have lost the ability to see the world outside, the world of another person – particularly the world of the Iraqi desiring liberty.

In other words, you’ve just provided more proof of my main thesis in those Webdiary pieces.

* * *

I can’t believe the “racism” we’re seeing. In Australia, too. SIEV-X and Tampa all over again. Is this embedded distance somehow programmed into people’s minds?

Maybe the secret underlying all this, particularly in the Australian case, is that Australians don’t have a memory of totalitarianism. We have never had to face the choice of fighting for our liberty at the expense of our innocence. We have had liberty handed to us. It’s all so easy. If we stuff up or not is entirely up to us. We do it to ourselves. We have never had to deal with evil.

The following article is a glimpse outside the prison of the self-obsessed Western mind. A glimpse at what the Iraqi people have to say. Their spirits are flying in expectation of imminent liberation. Why can’t my fellow Australians feel this? Why is liberty so alien to you? The article was written by Stephen F. Hayes, staff writer at The Weekly Standard. And no, the Iraqis were not bought off by Murdoch or by Big Oil. The article describes the way it is, not the scorched earth of leftist rationalisation.

***

Saddam’s Victims tell Their Stories

March 5, 2003

“Do you know when?” It is the question on all minds these days – those of stockbrokers, journalists, financiers, world leaders, soldiers and their families. When will the United States lead a coalition to end Saddam Hussein’s tyranny over Iraq?

The answer matters most to the tyrant’s subjects–like the man who asked the question of his friend in an early-morning phone conversation on Monday, February 24. The call came from Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, to the home of an Iraqi exile in suburban Detroit.

It used to be that Iraqis trapped inside their country would speak to each other and to friends outside in veiled language. For years, Saddam’s regime has tapped the phone lines of all those suspected of disloyalty, so an inquiry about the timing of a possible attack would be concealed behind seemingly unrelated questions. On what date will you sell your business? When does school end? When are you expecting your next child?

But few Iraqis speak in puzzles anymore. They ask direct questions. Here is the rest of that Monday morning conversation:

“Do you know when?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you coming?”

“Yes. I am coming. We will . . . ”

The second speaker, an Iraqi in Michigan, began to provide details but quickly reconsidered, ending his thought in mid-sentence. He says he was shocked by the candor coming from Iraq. “Never in the history of Iraq do people talk like this,” he said later.

“Why are you silent?”

“I’m afraid that you’ll be in danger.”

“Don’t be afraid. We are not afraid. This time is serious.”

“I am coming with the American Army.”

“Is there a way that we can register our names with the American forces to work with them when they arrive? Will you call my house at the first moment you arrive? I will help.”

For more than a year now, the world has been engaged in an intense debate about what to do with Saddam Hussein. For much of that time, the focus has been on the dictator’s refusal to get rid of his weapons of mass destruction, his sponsorship of terrorism, his serial violations of international law, and his history of aggression.

Those arguments have in common an emphasis on interests, on threats. Absent from this debate–or at best peripheral to it–is the moral case for ending the rule of a tyrant who has terrorized his people for more than two decades. It’s a strange oversight since, by some estimates, Saddam Hussein is responsible for more than 1million Iraqi deaths since he took power in 1979.

Advocates of his overthrow are fond of pointing out that “he gassed his own people,” but this often has the feel of a bulleted talking point, not an argument. Their opponents readily concede that “Saddam is a brutal dictator,” and that “the world would be better off without him.” But they usually grant these things as a rhetorical device, as if to buy credibility on their way to opposing the one step sure to end that brutality–removal by force.

Those who oppose taking action say we can safely ignore Saddam Hussein because he is “in a box.” Even if they were right and Saddam were no longer a threat, they would ignore this other urgent problem: the 23 million Iraqi people who are in the box with him.

No one wants war. “I am a pacifist,” says Ramsey Jiddou, an Iraqi American who has lived in the United States since the late 1970s. “But it will take a war to remove Saddam Hussein, and of course I’m for such a war.”

Iraqi Americans overwhelmingly agree with Jiddou. Many of them are recent arrivals who came here after the Gulf War left Saddam in power in 1991. And many are in regular contact with friends and relatives still trapped in Iraq.

The views of those Iraqis back home “are the same as the Iraqi Americans,” says Peter Antone, an Iraqi-American immigration lawyer in Southfield, Michigan. “They are not free to speak, so we speak for them.”

ONE OF MY HOSTS had another question for me as we walked up to a modest one-story home in Dearborn Heights on the snowy afternoon of Saturday, February 22.

“Do you know the decisionmakers?” asked Abu Muslim al-Haydar, a former University of Baghdad professor and one of three English-speakers in the group of 20 Iraqi Shiites assembling here to talk with a reporter about Iraq. His tone was urgent, almost desperate, as he repeated himself. “Do you know the decisionmakers?”

The Iraqi Americans who live in suburban Detroit, some 150,000 of them, are the largest concentration of Iraqis outside Iraq. That’s saying something, since according to the United Nations, Iraqis are the second-largest group of refugees in the world. Some 4 million of them have left their homes since Saddam Hussein took power–an astonishing 17 percent of the country’s population. Despite the size of the Iraqi-American population, and despite the fact that no one is better acquainted with the ways of Saddam Hussein’s regime, their voices have largely been missing from the national debate. In the course of dozens of interviews over the last two weeks, it became plain that this oversight is a source of endless frustration to this community. Iraqi Americans have a lot to say, and the decisionmakers, in both the media and government, are not listening.

As we approached the house in Dearborn Heights, I told al-Haydar that with luck, some decisionmakers would read my article. On the porch, I added my shoes to a mountain of footwear, which, with a winter storm raging, had taken on the appearance of a snow-capped peak. We stepped inside. The room to the right contained a big-screen television (wired to the satellite dish on the roof) and a sofa. The room on the left was furnished with overlapping oriental rugs and, on the floor along the wall, colorful cushions that would serve as our seats for the next two and a half hours.

The group was all male and all Shiite, primarily from southern Iraq. In other ways, though, it was diverse–ranging from farmers to religious leaders to a former general in Saddam’s Republican Guard. The ages went from early twenties to perhaps eighties. Some came dressed in three-piece suits, some in tribal robes.

I proposed moving clockwise around the room for introductions and brief personal histories, a suggestion that prompted much discussion, all of it in Arabic. In what could be considered a bad omen for a democratic Iraq, my ad hoc translator, a young man named Ahmed Shulaiba, explained that elders and religious leaders generally have the option to speak first. But after more discussion, the introductions proceeded according to the suggested plan.

One elderly man in a flowing brown robe, however, gave up his turn, saying he preferred to speak last and that he wanted to make a statement. When he did, he passed me his Michigan State I.D. card as he began speaking.

“I want to introduce myself and ask a question. Are you ready? I am Mehsin Juad al-Basaid. For many years I was a farmer in Iraq. I was involved in the uprising in 1991. American pilots dropped leaflets telling us to start an uprising against Saddam. And we did. We sacrificed. I lost three family members. Fifteen days later the American Army was removed from the South, and left us to face Saddam alone. Now, I’m willing to go with the American Army. But what happened in 1991 must not happen again.”

Nearly everyone in attendance had spoken of his own involvement in the uprising. It’s worth spending a moment on what happened at the end of the Gulf War, because it influences the way many Iraqis, particularly the Shiite majority, see the United States.

After the devastating U.S. air campaign, American ground forces made quick work of the few Iraqi soldiers who put up a fight. At the same time, the U.S. government dropped leaflets and broadcast radio messages urging all Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. Ahmed, my translator, who was 15 in 1991, told me how he had learned that the Americans wanted Iraqis to revolt.

“I remember George Bush said, ‘There is another way for the bloodshed to stop. It’s for the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military to take matters into their own hands . . . ‘”

I interrupted to ask him if he was quoting the former president.

“Yeah, I remember that’s what he said.”

I interrupted a second time to ask him if he remembered how the message was delivered–radio, leaflets? His response was terse.

“Yes. I’ll tell you after I finish.”

With that, he resumed his word-for-word recitation of the president’s exhortation:

“‘It’s for the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, comply with the United Nations Resolution, and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.’ That’s what he said.”

Many Iraqis, both in the largely Kurdish north and the Shiite south, took this advice. American pilots bombed Iraqi weapons depots, allowing the rebels to arm themselves. As the Iraqi Army withdrew from Kuwait and retreated towards Baghdad, the rebels made significant gains. The numbers are disputed, but at the height of the uprising, opposition forces may have controlled as many as 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

Just as the pressure on the regime intensified, however, American and Iraqi military leaders met near the Iraq-Kuwait border at Safwan to sign a cease-fire. As the negotiations drew to a close, the Iraqi representative, Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, had a request, recorded in the official transcript of the meeting. “We have a point, one point. You might very well know the situation of the roads and bridges and communications. We would like to agree that helicopter flights sometimes are needed to carry some of the officials, government officials, or any member that is needed to be transported from one place to another because the roads and bridges are out.”

General Norman Schwarzkopf, representing the United States, playing the generous victor, told his counterpart that so long as no helicopters flew over areas controlled by U.S. troops, they were “absolutely no problem.” He continued: “I want to make sure that’s recorded, that military helicopters can fly over Iraq. Not fighters, not bombers.” Lt. Gen. Ahmad pressed the issue. “So you mean even helicopters that is [sic] armed in the Iraqi skies can fly, but not the fighters?”

“Yeah, I will instruct our Air Force not to shoot at any helicopters that are flying over the territory of Iraq where we are not located,” Schwarzkopf replied, adding that he wanted armed helicopters to be identified with an orange tag.

This moment of magnanimity would prove costly. Saddam’s soldiers used the helicopters to put down the rebellion, spilling the blood of tens of thousands of Iraqis to do so. On the ground, allied troops had reversed course and were now taking weapons from any Iraqis who had them, including the rebels. In the end, it was a massacre, with conservative estimates of 30,000 dead.

“Along Highway 8, the east-west route that ran from An Nasiriyah to Basra, the American soldiers could tell that Saddam Hussein was mercilessly putting down the rebellion,” wrote Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor in The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, considered the definitive account of the war. “The tales at the medical tent had a common theme: indiscriminate fire at men, women and children, the destruction of Islamic holy places, in which the Shiites had taken refuge, helicopter and rocket attacks, threats of chemical weapons attacks.”

The men who gathered that snowy afternoon in Dearborn Heights, many of them from Nasiriyah, were among those attacked by the Iraqi military in 1991. Several spoke of their confusion as they looked up to see Iraqi helicopters strafing the masses of refugees, and above the Iraqi aircraft, American F-15 fighter planes circling in the sky but doing nothing to stop the slaughter. (These images have contributed, perhaps understandably, to numerous conspiracy theories discussed widely in the exile community. One propounds the preposterous notion that American aircraft escorted the Iraqi helicopters responsible for killing Iraqi rebels and ending the uprising. As that hypothesis goes, the United States wanted to keep Saddam Hussein in power as its puppet dictator. Put together American support of Saddam throughout the ’80s with these vivid memories, and from the perspective of the Iraqis on the ground, the theories don’t seem terribly far-fetched.)

When we ended our formal Q and A, one man handed me a photograph of his son, who was killed in the uprising. Others gave me photographs and handwritten, homemade business cards. Someone gave me a plan, in Arabic, for postwar Iraq. Several men passed me their Michigan drivers’ licenses and state ID cards. Six gave me letters or prepared statements, some in Arabic and others in English. Mohammed al-Gased, who speaks only Arabic, must have had help translating his letter:

My name is Mohammed Al Gased, my family and I are refugees in the United States of America. I lost my nephew Haydir Ali Abdulamir Al Gased (the spelling of the name may be different). He was a participant in the 1991 Iraqi Uprising against Saddam. On March 18, 1991, he was wounded in the battle against Saddam’s army. In the same afternoon of the same day, he was transferred to one of the American military units located in Talillehem in the governate of Annasriya in southern Iraq. He was treated there; then was taken by American Military helicopter for a further treatment. The location is still unknown for us. After the fail of the uprising, most of us were forced to flee our homes. When we arrived to Saudi Arabia as refugees. I wrote a letter to the Red Cross asking if they have any information about him, and we got no answer. I also wrote to the Saudi Ministry of Defense. My brother, his father, was tortured by Saddam’s secret police so viciously it caused his death. His mother and the rest of the family are now residing in Sweden as refugees. In the name of humanity, we are asking you to help us find out weather or not he is still alive and where his about.

With the letters and statements and photographs came torrents of additional charges meant to demonstrate the brutality of Saddam’s regime. One man insisted that he knew the precise location of a mass grave, and provided very specific directions. He urged me to give these coordinates to the U.S. government but not to report them, lest Saddam dig up the grave and repair the ground. He said that Iraqis are well aware of these mass graves and predicted they will be found throughout Iraq when the current regime is out of power.

It must be said that many of these claims, including that one, are unverifiable. But they are consistent with Saddam Hussein’s long history of violence. As the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iraq put it: “Extreme and brutal force is threatened and applied without hesitation and with total impunity to control the population.”

Of more immediate concern is the likelihood that Saddam will use civilians as human shields in the event of war, as he did during the first Gulf War. Bush administration officials are well aware of his willingness to sacrifice his own people, and they take seriously reports that he has begun preparations to do so.

One such account comes from Ali al-Sayad, an Iraqi American who reported to Defense Department officials a phone call he received last week from his cousin, a guard at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. The guard told al-Sayad that on February 11, Saddam’s agents began methodically moving thousands of prisoners from their cells to the dictator’s hometown of Tikrit, where many officials believe Saddam will take refuge when combat begins.

That’s a move that wouldn’t surprise Riadh Abdallah, a former general in Saddam’s Republican Guard. Gen. Abdallah served on Saddam’s personal security detail in Baghdad during the Gulf War. His brother, Abduli Alwishah, a member of the Iraqi parliament from 1984 to 1991 and head of a prominent southern Iraqi tribe, was a leader of the uprising at the end of the war. When Iraqi intelligence reported back to Baghdad that Alwishah had agitated against Saddam, Gen. Abdallah lost his position in the Republican Guard and was put on probation, then transferred to a teaching job and ordered to report to authorities once a week to show his face.

It could have been worse. Five other generals, including Barak Abdallah, a hero from the Iran-Iraq war, were executed for plotting against the regime.

By 1993, Alwishah and his family had left the Saudi refugee camp that they called home for 14 months and had resettled in the United States. That’s when his brother, Gen. Abdallah, was arrested and charged as an anti-Saddam conspirator and sent to a small prison in Baghdad for high-ranking officials accused as traitors. I asked him about the experience.

ABDALLAH: I was in jail for eleven months. There was no judge. They just put you in. If one was to be executed or put in jail, no judge. They put us in the same room as those five generals who were executed. And they were killed with big knives. Those people were killed with big knives hitting them on the neck. And the room had blood everywhere.

SH: Did you think you might be next?

ABDALLAH: Yes. I thought that they would do the same thing to me. Every day they told me that I will be executed.

SH: How long?

ABDALLAH: Eleven months. Intimidation every day. At that time they found out about a conspiracy by another person who was a big general, a doctor actually, from the same town as Saddam. His name was Raji al-Tikriti. It’s a very famous story in Iraq. And they made him a food for dogs.

SH: You were in prison when this happened? You heard about this?

ABDALLAH: They showed me these prisoners that were eaten by wild dogs. They made us–that was one kind of intimidation–they brought all of the generals and officers in the prison to watch it, to intimidate us. . . . They took us from jail and they put some blindfolds on our eyes and they took them off and we saw him. Before the dogs ate him we saw them read the judgment and they said why they were going to kill him. He was the head doctor for all the military, and he was the personal doctor for Saddam Hussein and for former Iraqi president Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

SH: Was he killed before this happened?

ABDALLAH: He was alive when these wild dogs . . .

SH: Do you remember what month this was?

ABDALLAH: It was the wintertime, but I can’t remember exactly because for 11 months I didn’t see the sun, nothing–I didn’t know what time. There was only spider webs in the room, so I didn’t know if it’s day or night. [Pause] Probably what you’re hearing is impossible to believe, but that’s what happened. And all that you’re hearing is nothing compared to everything else.

Abdallah later explained that Raji al-Tikriti was dressed in “prison pajamas” with his hands and feet bound when this was done to him. Abdallah and seven other prisoners were forced to watch. The five dogs, he said, “were like big wolves.”

Abdallah returned to teaching after his surprising release from prison. He taught with other senior military officials who, he said, ran terrorist training operations at Salman Pak and Lake Tharthar. The activities at Salman Pak are well known. Satellite images show an airplane, and defectors have revealed extensive training in terrorist operations–including hijacking–that have gone on there for years. Lake Tharthar, however, is new. Abdallah calls it the “Salman Pak of the sea,” where terrorists were instructed in “diving, how to wire, how to put charges on ships, how to storm the ships, commando operations.”

I asked him if the facility was used primarily for military training or terrorist training. “Terrorist. Not for the military. They were not Iraqi. They were all from other countries–maybe just a few Iraqis. And it’s very confidential.”

Tharthar is the largest lake in Iraq, constructed on the site of the Great Dam. That dam regulates a waterway that connects the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Tharthar is also the site of one of the largest of Saddam’s numerous palaces. In 1999, at a celebration of the president’s 62nd birthday, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan opened a resort on the lake for the regime’s VIPs. The complex came at a cost estimated at hundreds of millions, and includes luxurious accommodations, several beaches, and an amusement park, complete with a merry-go-round and a ferris wheel.

Saddam Hussein and his allies blame the United States for the “genocide” caused by 13 years of U.N. sanctions. They claim that these sanctions, and the resulting shortages of food and medicine, have led to the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis. Even leaving aside the vast resources Saddam has used to rebuild and conceal his deadly arsenal, the resort at Lake Tharthar helps put those charges in context. As Taha Ramadan noted at the resort’s ceremonial opening, “This city was built in the age of Saddam Hussein and during this period of sanctions. . . . This shows our ability to build such a beautiful city and to fight as well.”

A resort city, terrorist training camps, and a hungry population–all of this, says Abdallah, makes Saddam Hussein “the father and the grandfather of terrorists.”

THE DAY AFTER my meeting in Dearborn Heights, some 300 Iraqi Americans gathered at the Fairlane Club in suburban Detroit to hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and, finally, tell their stories in the presence of a high U.S. official. Wolfowitz had been invited by the Iraqi Forum for Democracy, a nonaligned, anti-Saddam, pro-democracy association of Iraqis in America. Television cameras–I counted nearly 20–lined the room. A handful of print reporters were there, too. Signs on the wall declared “Iraq United Will Never Be Divided” and “Saddam Must Go–Iraqis Need Human Rights.”

Wolfowitz is viewed as something of a hero here. Several Iraqi Americans I spoke to were aware that he was wary of Saddam Hussein as far back as the late ’70s, and remained so even as the U.S. government embraced the Iraqi dictator in the ’80s. Others credited Wolfowitz with expediting U.S. rescue operations when the Iraqi government put down the 1991 uprising.

“The U.S. Army had orders to leave Basra,” recalls Ahmed Shulaiba. “We were going to be crushed by the Iraqi Army, and we heard that one man from the press–we don’t know who he is–he called Paul Wolfowitz and told him about 30,000 people will be crushed if the American military leave them. And he [Wolfowitz] called [Secretary of Defense] Dick Cheney and they helped move us to the camp of Rafha [in Saudi Arabia].”

Wolfowitz later confirmed this account, though he downplayed his role. “The rebellion had basically been crushed,” he said. “It was a Sunday afternoon and I got a call at home from a reporter. I think it’s okay to name him, it was Michael Gordon [of the New York Times]. One of my kids answered, told me who it was, and I regretted the day I’d given him my unpublished number at home. I said, ‘Tell him I’m not interested in talking to him.’ My kid, whichever one it was, told me that Gordon was calling from Safwan [Iraq], and he says it’s important.”

Gordon told Wolfowitz that he had been interviewing U.S. troops in southern Iraq. Saddam’s forces were continuing to brutalize the Iraqi people. American soldiers, says Wolfowitz, “had been ordered not to do anything about it. Gordon said it was breaking their hearts.” Wolfowitz called Cheney and, after overcoming some internal resistance, they arranged to have allied forces expedite the refugees’ journey to camps in the Saudi desert.

Now, addressing those gathered in suburban Detroit, Wolfowitz spoke of the coming liberation of their country. It was a well-crafted speech, packed with details about the expected conflict and postwar Iraq (available on the web at http://www.defenselink=.mil/news/Feb2003/t02272003-t0223ifd.ht=ml ). He was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause, including several standing ovations. At one point, the audience broke into song, in Arabic, to celebrate the imminent end of Saddam’s rule. The Iraqi farmers who the night before had handed me photographs of their dead relatives were dancing with local religious leaders.

When Wolfowitz concluded his remarks, it was the Iraqis’ turn to speak to the world. Some spoke in English, some in Arabic.

“My name is Abu Muslim al-Hayadar. I used to be a university professor back in Iraq, but now I am working in social services to help refugees. I want to assure you and all other people around the world that we suffered so much and we are willing to work towards democracy as we are–most of us want to work in two phases. The liberation phase and the rebuilding phase. So please, please take it seriously, and we want it fast. Fast, as fast as you can. Thank you. Liberate Iraqi people please.”

Moments later, a man named Ahmed al-Tamimi stepped to the front of the stage with a young boy.

“I welcome you here. You are here in Dearborn and next month we welcome you in Baghdad and Iraq.

“In every heart here, in every person here, there is a scar on our hearts. But we can’t show the people in the world our scars on our hearts, but we can show the scars on the face of this young guy. He was, in that time in 1991, just one year. He was a child, and this is the father and his uncle, they participated in the uprising. . . . They beat the father, his father, his mother, and his wife. While they are beating the family they hear the cry of the child and they say who is the child? The wife said this is my child. They start beating him with their boots until the blood was all over and he had brain damage, partly brain damage.

“When [the father] came from Saudi Arabia to America, the first thing he did, he took the phone and talked to his wife and he said I want to talk to my son. And she started to cry. And she told him he is not talking, he is not talking. What happened? She told him, something happen in 1991. I can’t tell you. After that he find out what happened to his son.”

The program ended and the crowd gave Wolfowitz another standing ovation. They rushed to the stage and surrounded the speaker, a former academic unused to being treated like a rock star. It was a moving scene–perhaps a foreshadowing of the greeting American troops will get when Saddam Hussein is gone–but few people saw it.

Although several major newspapers covered the event, television networks mostly took a pass. Why? Certainly the language difficulties made live television coverage all but impossible. But the reactions of a producer for a prominent international broadcast network suggest another possible explanation. She said the event was “weird” and thought the Iraqis seemed “uncomfortable.”

“It was a pre-selected audience,” she inaccurately claimed. “Everyone here agrees with the administration.”

Pro-war propaganda, she concluded–never once considering the possibility that Iraqi Americans might actually be near-unanimous in their desire to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

It should be noted, however, that there were at least two Saddam sympathizers in the crowd. Before the speech, as TV crews checked their microphones and Arabic-speaking Iraqis studied translated copies of Wolfowitz’s prepared remarks, one Iraqi pointed out two men he said were “Saddam’s agents.” Regardless of whether that much is true, they plainly were not enjoying themselves. Each time their fellow Iraqi Americans saluted the dictator’s coming demise, these dour fellows sat expressionless.

After the meeting with Wolfowitz, journalists were asked to leave the room as the Iraqis met privately with representatives from the Pentagon for perhaps an hour. Defense officials explained to the Iraqis the various ways they can participate in the coming conflict. Many will accompany U.S. troops, serving as intermediaries between the Iraqis and their liberators. Others will join something the Pentagon is calling the “Free Iraqi Force,” a unit that will support combat operations inside Iraq. Still others will focus on a post-Saddam Iraq.

Later, Wolfowitz returned to the room and spent another hour talking with individual Iraqi Americans, answering their questions, and most important, listening.

One Iraqi American had a message he hoped protesters would hear:

“If you want to protest that it’s not okay to send your kids to fight, that’s okay. But please don’t claim to speak for the Iraqis. We’ve seen 5 million people protesting, but none of them were Iraqis. They don’t know what’s going on inside Iraq. France and whoever else, please shut up.”

Another, Hawra al-Zuad, is a 16-year-old student at an Islamic academy in suburban Detroit. Her sky blue headscarf seems to coexist comfortably with her marked Detroit accent. Although she doesn’t remember her family’s flight 12 years ago, she is eager to return to her native Iraq. “I’ll go visit right away,” she says. “I want to go see how it is over there. I forgot everything about it. I want to see my house, where I used to live when I was little.”

A good way to spend summer vacation, I suggest. She quickly corrects me.

“Spring break. I hope it’s spring break.”

Controil

Since September 11, even their best friends – the American oil industry – have taken to calling Saudi Arabia the ‘Kernel of Evil’. It doesn’t take an Einstein to recognise why Iraq is suddenly so important. A unilateral Saudi cut of even a few million barrels a day now – or the total overthrow of the government by extremist Muslim students and clerics, a revolution of the kind many current Bushies experienced up close in the friendly oil pump of Iran back in 1979 – would be globally, economically catastrophic.

Webdiarist Hamish Tweedy asked me a while ago to explain what I meant by ‘control’ of Iraq’s oil. I started with a few paragraphs about production rate manipulation and the irrational amplifying effect of oil marketplace paranoia since 1973. Then I started reading more deeply into the oilier Bushies, and before I knew it I had a major X-Files thesis on my hands, in danger of paranoia-overspeed myself. When you start to doubt that the Bilderberg Group really is just a bunch of rich guys who happen to get together once a year for a bit of harmless fun, you know you’re in serious need of spiritual guidance.

There is no doubt that the Bush oil men are mostly obnoxious berks who operate fast and loose commercially and who clearly don’t give a hoot about Middle Eastern and Caspian Sea Basin democracy, Human Rights, WMD or terrorism sponsorship, except as it might effect their oil operations. But as I’ve argued before, the way in which this invasion and occupation of Iraq is ‘all about oil’ is no Big Oil conspiracy. In fact, as this invasion looms, many Big Oil players are even growing anxious; having spent so much time and money championing the Bushies, it’s now as if they can’t quite believe, at this late hour, what kind of grand, crazy oil misadventure they have actually helped set in motion – not that it is stopping them from jostling and clawing for the best of the commercial spoils.

But the truth is this global oil-energy crunch was always going to happen; in the end, it simply comes down to the runaway freight-train of Western globalisation, the awkward matter of who owns the oil that is fuelling its charge, and how the irresistible force of the former has now come hard against the immovable object of the latter.

The people involved are irrelevant, really. It’s the oil, and the global oil numbers, that matter. So I’ve largely ditched the Machiavellian side of the story except for some general observations about neo-conservative economics as a postscript. Sorry about the delay, Hamish, and the hideous length of this fairly dull reply. But a fairly dull reply is, alas, the only way to answer your question properly.

Here is why and how I think this invasion and occupation is about controil.

LET THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE GLOBALISING WORLD FLOW ‘FREE’

‘Whoever’s in power, the oil will flow.‘ Global Oil industry mantra

Oil is the most traded commodity on the planet in both volume and value. It is impossible to overestimate its importance to the globalised economy, in the same way that it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the English alphabet to the complete works of William Shakespeare. The global oil market is globalisation; industrialisation – ‘economic development’ – means little more than increased oil use. All markers of world economic health, as we in the West define it, stem from the state of the oil trade. Control it to a greater extent than anyone else, and the choice fruits of tomorrow’s crop are yours.

The Global Oil Marketplace

But there are two oil markets, in truth, and this is where the battle for ‘control’ of the world’s oil is fermented. The global oil marketplace is where the polite game is publicly played out; a commercial network of oil-producing countries, oil-using countries, production, exploration, support, refining and distribution companies, financing and trading enablers, regulatory bodies, analysts, commentators, research and development sectors, and consumers.

Although this marketplace is built upon regional and domestic marketplaces, the ubiquity and fungible nature of oil, the sophistication of information and transport networks, the break-down of some trade barriers and the multinational flavour of the major corporate players makes this marketplace truly a globalised one, albeit far from truly free. Oil and oil products are bought and sold daily, via thousands of trades on many different forums, in an ongoing and essentially worldwide auction. The biggest market forums are in New York, London and Singapore; the global oil trade is hellishly complex, but broadly, there are three key buying and selling arrangements.

Most oil changes hands via contracts – term bulk supply deals between producers and oil companies, suppliers, refiners, all combinations and permutations in between. Contracts differ, but payment is now invariably tied to the daily marketplace; while terms are agreed at time of contract, it’s by linkage to a fluctuating price marker, usually a crude benchmark spot price. Thus, all global oil exchange, the vast bulk of which is predictable in volume and rhythm, is exposed to short-term marketprice fluctuation. The oil may flow and flow, boy, but the price jigs about like a drunk at a hoedown; if you have the shootin’ irons to fire bullets at its feet, then you have a powerful economic lever at your disposal. This is why this invasion and occupation is ‘all about oil’.

Spot trading is the daily buying and selling of individual amounts of oil, and is what determines the marketplace price of oil. Theoretically, spot trading smooths out short-term imbalances in the underlying (real) oil market supply-and-demand equation; companies with a short-term excess of regional supply (relative to their own output market demand) sell it to those who have a short-term shortfall. Check out a website like http://www.platts.com to see the oil cargoes being traded daily.

There are also ‘merchant refineries’ who trade solely as third party middlemen in such transactions. Reduce global oil trade to an oil pump at one end and a gas station at the other, and spot trading should represent the station manager’s fine-tuning of bowser pressure according to where the cars are lining up. Spot trades are made for prompt delivery (real time), and also on a ‘forward’ basis; buying and selling of spot oil that will be available in the short future. The state of the marketplace spot price – rising, stable, falling – is supposedly an indication of the underlying (real oil market) supply-and-demand equation. Sometimes it is.

Futures trading is a purely financial mechanism via which oil marketplace whizzkids can take a lot of the risk out of the oil trade, and/or speculate profitably from it. Buyers and sellers make 1,000 barrel+ oil deals up to eighteen months in advance; a futures trade is an agreement to exchange a certain amount of a certain oil product at a certain time and place for a certain price, although the deals are rarely actually effected, just continually on-traded. Using this mechanism, though, real oil traders can lock in a futures deal profit-loss hedge to offset loss-profit against the oil they buy on a contractual or spot basis, as a way of minimising exposure in volatile times, and making their financing more predictable. The futures market has become another supposedly important indicator of underlying (real) oil market trends. And sometimes it is.

Key oil marketplace spot price benchmarks are Brent Crude (European markets); West Texas Intermediate (sweet light crude, American markets); and Dubai Crude (Eurasian and Asian markets). Another important price indicator is the OPEC Basket Price, an average of seven OPEC crude spot market prices, which that organization supposedly uses to determine production policy. And sometimes they do. OPEC’s aim is to maintain basket price a $22 – $28 per barrel. It’s hovered well above $30 for some time now.

Until recently, the trading price was not marketplace-determined as such, but ‘posted’ (quite literally on a noticeboard at the well-head in the early days) by oil companies, and later OPEC. Now spot price is king, but it’s still not truly market-determined; the price of oil has always been controlled, and we’ve always paid far too much to the producers and suppliers, relatively too little to the refiners and retailers, and generally almost nothing to the proper owners. The oil marketplace is not really a commodity marketplace. It’s more like a speculative one. Except that there’s no risk at all if you have a big enough stake in it.

The Underlying Oil Market

This is the underlying global oil equation, the ‘rational’ one where over time supply-and-demand principles should apply. Sometimes they even do.

Global Oil Supply: The crude oil pumped from the ground by the oil-producing countries on a daily basis, plus existing oil stocks worldwide (see below).

Global Oil Demand: The crude oil used by the world on a daily basis for refined products: engine fuels, heating oils, lubricants, and feedstock for chemicals, construction materials, dyes, paints, industrial catalysts, all the synthetics, plastics, and general muck.

Global Oil Stocks: The crude oil that exists at any given time in the refining, transport, storage and reserve movement chain, and which, with spot trading, helps in smoothing the oil market supply-and-demand pressures. Oil stocks rise and fall, especially seasonally, but are estimated at up to 7-8 billion barrels of oil at any given time. Most is held in commercial storage, only some is discretionary (ie it can easily take up the slack), and some, as in the US and Japan, is held in official government strategic reserves. This last is the ‘backs-to-the-wall’ public oil weapon net importers now have to combat the oil-producers’ production weapon. The International Energy Agency (see below) states that its member countries now hold about 4 billion barrels in oil stocks (public and commercial), or about 115 days of IAE country net imports.

US Public Stocks: The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve salt-domes currently hold 599.3 million barrels, the most ever. In November 2001, President Bush directed the SPR to begin filling to maximum capacity, which is 700 million barrels. It’s arguable that at this point America had already decided to invade and occupy Iraq. The current level represents 53 days inventory import protection. With commercial stocks (which are now at a long-term low), total US import protection is still currently about 150 days.

Some extra-marketplace players

OPEC: Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, an oil cartel founded in 1960 and headquartered in Vienna, now consisting of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Qatar, Nigeria, Indonesia, Libya and Algeria. It aims to co-ordinate action to safeguard joint and individual member advantage, including oil revenues, market share and price stability, and OPEC power.

OAPEC: Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates. More of a squabble forum than a useful cartel up to now.

OPEC Plus: An informal description used to note recent decisions of non-OPEC producers like Mexico, Norway, Russia and Oman to participate in OPEC-led production cuts, to counter enduring low prices following the Asian economic collapses of the mid-nineties.

IEA: International Energy Agency, a twenty-six member anti-cartel energy organization formed by the OECD in 1974, and based in Paris, to safeguard the energy interests of members. In particular, each member maintains minimum crude oil stocks equivalent to 90 days’ imports (based on previous year’s import rate), and agrees to mutual ‘oil shock’ relief activity in direct embargo supply crises. Australia is a member.

How the two oil markets interact

You can, I think, summarise this in the same way that William Goldman once described the art of screenwriting: ‘Nobody knows anything.’ Some general comments can be made, though. Most importantly, oil is a price-volatile commodity. This is a reflection of several things, including the near-monopoly nature of oil production, the profound artificiality of oil price, the paranoia of the oil marketplace since 1973, and the symbiotic and thus unpredictable nature of the underlying oil use supply-and-demand rhythms.

Oil, more and more quickly than any commodity, reshapes its own marketplace, way beyond the mere reactive correcting of imbalances: expanded oil use itself creates expanded oil use, and vice-versa. The time lag between marketplace price changes and underlying market supply-and-demand pressures is where all the economic fun arises. Balancing short-term oil profit an/or national revenue against long-term market maintenance and growth has always been a tricky affair, and since the chaos of the seventies and early eighties, achieving marketplace price stability has been impossible.

There are two interlocking components to ‘control’ of the oil market. Short-term control, still up for grabs, depends on the ability to control or influence marketplace price, and is now a matter of production power. Long-term control is a matter of total reserves and production expansion potential, and the ability to direct future investment and oil market growth.

Brief history of global oil price v. global market forces

Before 1973, the big global oil companies had always held the actual and psychological cards in the global oil pricing game. In the simple beginning, annual oil royalties were paid to governments or rulers for ownership, via concession, of the oil in their ground.

US, British and European companies invested in and developed foreign fields, and sold the oil they extracted, posting a price, a controlled one usually arising from some level of de-facto company cartel liaison. All were constantly guided by those oil market considerations of making profit versus expanding this new oil global market; production patches were staked out, and although there was some competition, especially between the Europeans and the US companies in the Middle East, as non-US production grew in ubiquity and market power, the internationalised companies – the so-called Seven Sisters (BP, Shell, Texaco, Exxon, Gulf, Socal and Mobil) – colluded increasingly well to keep price a matter of collective control.

These global giants had fallen into the box seat; when Eisenhower had to introduce import quotas to defend the US domestic industry, it was clear that Middle Eastern oil especially, cheap to produce and plentiful as it was, would be, in a global market sense, unbeatable.

Over the post-war years, producer-countries began demanding, and receiving, a cut of the growing downstream profits in addition to fixed royalties, but since the companies still ‘owned’ the oil through the concessions, and still had the upper hand in investment, technical development and expertise, they maintained strong control of contractual price mechanisms.

Mexico had tried to nationalise its industry as far back as 1938, and were promptly cut out of the nascent global marketplace by investment starvation. Venezuela and the Arab countries won major contractual improvements in 1948 (including introduction of the kind of 50-50 profit-share deals that American oil-bearing land owners took for granted).

Iran’s new socialist leader Mossadeq went too far: He had the hide to nationalise oil completely in 1951. The CIA flexed its new muscles and helped the briefly-exiled Shah regain control of the country, and thus the West its oil industry – which with the departure of the Anglo-Persian Company (later BP) had collapsed. America had a new, if temporary, Persian Gulf friend.

Through the fifties, global oil demand soared but was outpaced by rapid production expansion. The Gulf countries awarded more concessions, more oil flooded onto the market, and marketplace forces started to bring the price down independently of the global companies.

Since companies still posted prices – fixed ones upon which contracts with countries were based – but couldn’t control how many new concessions countries awarded (production), the downstream marketplace price fell, and it was the companies who began to bear the weight of the difference. In the late fifties, they began cutting posted prices dramatically, which obviously cut oil producing country profit-share revenue.

The consumer was flexing his muscles, and neither company nor producer-country wanted to cop the pain; some major latter ones responded to the cuts in post price by forming OPEC, in 1960, and coordinating aggressive posted price negotiations with the companies. At this stage, US domestic production was still import-protected and Russia was Russia, so as producers, both were peripheral to the global price control battle between countries and companies.

Still, throughout the sixties, since both demand and production capacity were ballooning, there was plenty of consumer dough around for everyone, and although bickering over contracts and posted price was a constant feature, things didn’t come to a head until the seventies. On the one hand, the countries controlled total production (through the ability to award new concessions); on the other, the companies still set posted price, and had to get oil onto the market profitably. So long as overall global supply (production) exceeded overall global demand (use), the downward marketplace price pressures meant producer-country oil market power and oil company oil market power’ were working appositely, cancelling each other out, which suited the fast-developing global economy and the average American Graffiti-esque consumer.

The companies wanted to keep posted prices lowish (closer to the true marketplace); the countries wanted them highish (maximising contractual profit share) but helped lower downstream marketplace price by increasing production/supply (with more new oilfields). This combination fuelled the explosive Western industrial growths of the post-war era. It’s also a reminder of why secured Western control of tomorrow’s oil price is so important.

However, the balance shifted in the seventies when booming global oil demand began outstripping supply, or production expansion rate – a kind of slingshot effect (sell a desert island one car and then flood it with enough cheap oil and investment dough to justify their own car factory, and next thing you know, everyone there wants your oil).

Downstream marketplace price now started to exceed posted (contractual) prices, and so the companies began to make money at the expense of the countries. That is, they’d pay fifty-percent of a low posted (contractual) price profit to the oil owners, and make fifty percent of a high marketplace price profit for themselves. Once again it was a bit like the early days of fixed royalty payments, when owner countries had been cut out of marketplace profits.

This is when a second round of oil industry nationalisations began, and by this time, the heavyweight countries had a) a far greater established global market share, b) the formal OPEC framework, and c) the inclination and excuses to introduce global politics explicitly into the global oil market, where it has remained ever since.

The 1973 oil embargo

The trigger for the 1973 oil shock was the Yom Kippur War, but the true causes were the underlying supply-and-demand imbalance and marketplace over-reaction. By the early seventies, the OPEC nations wanted a bigger piece of the high marketplace price action.

Libya’s new socialist leader Khaddafi gave everyone big ideas by demanding, and receiving from the companies his oil fields hosted, major improvements in his contracts (20 percent increase in fixed royalties and a ’55-45′ profit share arrangement). Other OPEC countries followed suit, and some began formally nationalising their industries, forcing agreements for gradual transfer of Western assets.

Then, as OPEC nations began to recognise their power as ‘swing-up’ producers in a tightening oil market – those who alone could expand production in response to global demand – some members began to urge it be exercised. For the first time, Saudi Arabia, the OPEC leader and key producer, traditionally US-friendly, grudgingly agreed to mix politics and oil.

When Nixon announced a big military aid package supporting Israel at the 1973 war’s outbreak, a lot of simmering tensions came to a head. Routine negotiations with companies over posted price broke down, and OPEC assumed unilateral control of it; in late 1973, OPEC lifted posted price from about $3.00 to $11.65. Production cuts followed , direct embargoes were imposed on Israel-friendly countries, inflation ballooned, and the world went into a deep recession.

This last point is the real one. The fierceness of the recession had less to do with the crisis aspects of the oil shock – the embargoes, the production cuts, and arguably even the unilateral price hikes in themselves – and more to do with the underlying oil market imbalance and the tight oil market, giving rise to gross over-reaction on the part of a charging, oil-fuelled world economy that had come to take the ever-flowing provision of more oil for granted.

It was the global economic heart attack that resulted not from ill-health, but more from a huge fright. There was an imbalance, yes, but no real, sudden ‘oil shortage crisis’ in terms of underlying supply-and-demand. What really happened in 1973 is that the OPEC nations unilaterally ‘took back the profit slack’ from the oil companies, scaring the daylights out of the cosy Western oil market, inspiring domestic economic policy desperation tactics, and sending investment running.

The newly oil-fuelled world economy demonstrated for the first time that if the global swing producers sneeze, everyone gets the flu even if there’s no bug actually going around. Including the swing producers themselves, as OPEC soon discovered.

The Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war

Between 1974 and 1979, oil price was relatively stable at around $13-$15 a barrel, as OPEC and non-OPEC countries nervously eyed each other off. OPEC had frozen posted price and lifted embargos quickly in early 1974, doubtless a bit alarmed by the power they suddenly realised they had over the world economy, and also recognising that prolonged global recession would hit them as much as anyone else.

What did happen as a result of 1973 was that non-OPEC countries began channelling big money into non-Middle East oil exploration and development. The IAE was formed as a defensive de-facto cartel. Populations in OPEC countries realised just how crucial was their oil, too, and began examining the relationships between companies and their own mostly corrupt rulers and musing over why shared national assets hadn’t translated into better lives for all. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was an early, and to date, unique result.

The Shah’s Iran had, since 1953, been a reliable and West-friendly producer, and was by this time the world’s second-largest exporter. During the OPEC production cuts of the 1973 crisis, it actually increased production – nominally in protest against OPEC’s failure to take even stronger anti-Israel measures, but in effect easing the impact of production cuts.

But in 1979, Iranian students and clerics, following the lead of striking oil workers, kicked out the thoroughly disgusting Shah’s regal regime. The US embargoed Iranian oil in response to the hostage crisis; Iran responded by banning exports to any American company.

Soon after, secular Iraq invaded newly-theocratic Iran – just as alarmed by the Ayatollah as the US – and Iraqi production soon dropped radically, too. The net result was about 15 percent of the global supply being removed from the global equation. Posted OPEC price rises were even larger than in 1973 – opportunistically this time, that is, member countries taking advantage of these marketplace price-spooking events.

Saudi Arabia tried to hold the formal OPEC posted price down but other countries just kept lifting individual posted prices to cream dough from a scared global marketplace, so OPEC did too, eventually. The marketplace was paranoid enough to cop it sweet for a while; between 1979 and 1981, OPEC price was hiked to $34, and individual OPEC producers kept adding to that, selling their oil to companies for as much as $46 dollars a barrel.

By this time, though, new non-OPEC production was coming online – the North Sea, Alaska – so the ‘shock’, while far larger in price terms, was less damaging to the global economy, at least for the developed countries.

By late 1981, global (total) production power began to dominate OPEC’s posted price and the marketplace price fell; OPEC responded by cutting their production in an attempt to keep that price high. There was a global recession, but it was less dramatic, because the non-OPEC oil industry was ready for the second oil shock.

The major effect on the global oil market was to dramatically erode OPEC market share; as the marketplace dragged prices down determinedly, OPEC, rather than dropping posted price, just kept cutting production, in a futile attempt to defend their high posted price. They dropped from 27 million bpd in 1980 to 13.7 million bpd by 1985.

By the time the Saudis convinced everyone to cut OPEC’s posted price, it was too late; the world was awash in non-OPEC oil, global demand had fallen (The Greens, fuel-efficient cars, and natural gas were ‘in’), and nobody was buying theirs.

By 1985, Saudi production was as low as 2 million bpd – they’d agreed to act as ‘swing producer’ inside OPEC during this new price-control experiment by adjusting to meet agreed OPEC total production output. Still the global market price fell, and OPEC belatedly recognised that global production diversification made production control useless in what was effectively now a real supply-and-demand glut – a situation not helped by some OPEC producers also cheating on their agreed quotas.

With oil revenues low, and even non-OPEC producers dropping posted prices to chase the market, Saudi Arabia summarily linked to marketplace spot price, and increased production markedly to grab a share of (falling) global oil revenues huffily threatening a price war. The spot price duly plunged to about $10 a barrel.

It was clear that the oil market was now effectively fully globalised, and from then OPEC essentially became the world’s swing producer. Western car designers, bored with Jap midget cars and wussy engine size, doubtless began musing about SUVs way back then.

Where the second oil shock was really felt was in the poor developing countries. During the post-embargo seventies, the OPEC nations were awash with cash from the new high prices, and much of this was injected, via the international banks, as investment into the undeveloped Third World. These economies planned to expand domestic industry with the aim of paying back loans via subsequently-enhanced export capacity, as the developed economies had developed through the fifties and sixties, but part of the kindly developed world economy’s response to the second oil shock was towering interest rates. This plunged these fragile new domestic oil-economies smack into the disastrous Debt Crisis of the eighties.

Many countries like Mexico, which had effectively accepted the West’s invitation to join the oil-fuelled global economy, saw their early gains evaporate and their citizens temporarily-improved standards of living plunge. (Again, this is a key to grasping the importance of control of the oil marketplace to the future, and what might perhaps lie ahead for all these newly ‘globalising’ US-friendly Eastern Europeans, too. ‘Globalisation’ is just a nice word; it can’t control where hard-nosed global investors invest, how deeply, and at what price. Democracy, freedom and stability must come before commerce.)

An uneasy truce

Since the two shocks of the seventies, there has been an uneasy truce in the oil market wars. Direct price setting as a cartel tool is a thing of the past; now it is production control alone that gives OPEC whatever power it does or doesn’t have over the global marketplace price. Although OPEC has had neither the will nor the co-ordination to fully exploit this control so far, that the marketplace price remains as sensitive as ever to what goes on in its swing supply regions is a clear indication that the power is there.

During the first Gulf War, marketplace price spiked from $15 to nearly $40 dollars before Saudi Arabia’s decision to increase production by a 3 million bpd helped calm it quickly back below $20. More recently, an ill-judged OPEC quota increase in 1997 (2.5 million bpd) just after the Asian economic collapses, along with Iraq’s modest production return (initially under 1 million bpd) via the oil-for-food program, and two warm winters added to a glut, and the drastic fall in the global marketplace price (dropping it briefly under $10 by 1999).

In response to that, OPEC production cuts through 1998 (total 4.3 million bpd), helped marketplace price rise sharply to up to $30 by 2000 again. President Clinton releases 30 million barrels of oil from the SPR in 2000; in 2001, marketplace price falls radically again, supposedly due to a US recession and OPEC overproduction. The price dropped to $15 after the S11 attacks due to fears of a global economic downturn, and has now risen above $30, thanks at least partly to OPEC and OPEC-Plus production cuts in early 2002.

All prices above are nominal (dollars-of-the-day), so it’s hard to get a real handle on the last thirty years of fun, but the wacky and symbiotic relationship between oil price and inflation is part of the point. Deciphering how much oil really ‘costs’ an oil-growth economy at any given moment in a deregulated, oil-fuelled global-growth marketplace is profoundly meaningless. You pay whatever the highly unstable marketplace price says at any given moment, and everything else adjusts to that, and so we bounce along; that marketplace price instability is not remotely matched by underlying supply-and-demand instability, although the industry will invariably try to pretend it is.

Rather, it is a reflection of the inherently artificial price of oil as a tradable product, of its all-encompassing economic role as a ‘development commodity’, of marketplace corporate memories of the roller-coaster ride of the past, and of a nervous recognition on the part of the oil-using world that one day our mighty con trick on the people who really own the oil we all exploit is going to be thoroughly rumbled.

OPEC SWING PRODUCTION POWER – THE OIL MARKETPLACE BIG STICK

Since the 1970s non-OPEC producers and some OPEC ones have pumped oil at more or less maximum capacity. By this I mean that short-term flexibility has been limited. Over time and changing marketplace price and thus investment conditions, new fields can be found and opened, inefficient or uneconomic ones shut down, but there is little fat that can be used in an economic swing capacity outside of the Middle East. In fact, since what affects the globalised spot price is (perceptions of) net changes in global production, there is none, since Middle East production flexibility dwarfs all others and Saudi Arabian flexibility dwarfs OPEC.

OPEC quotas

Twice a year, and often more, OPEC meets to decide how much oil they are going to officially produce based on the prevailing marketplace spot prices. Their stated aim is basket price stability in a band $22 – $28; each country is allocated a quota designed to ensure a total OPEC output that will achieve the best on-going balance between market share and oil revenue.

OPEC has become more sophisticated since the 80s, but there are still price hawks and doves within OPEC; generally the smaller producers, especially those with large populations to feed (Nigeria, Venezuela) prefer high prices, while the bigger producers with small populations (Saudi, Kuwait) prefer lower prices, since this ensures a more stable market share in the longer term.

OPEC is far from united; bickering, stand-offs, and especially cheating by the smaller producers, is rife. Cheating – a cartel member selling more oil than it has agreed to to snaffle extra revenue – is strategically good for the non-OPEC producers though, since it erodes collective cartel power. (Quota cheating is why Saddam invaded Kuwait. Iraq, a big producer broke after the ten year war with Iran and desperately needing oil revenue to rebuild its economy and pay war debts, had never-the-less toed the OPEC quota line to help it recapture long-term market share lost in the eighties. Next door, however, Kuwait was grossly and provocatively exceeding its quotas, helping keep marketplace price down, which hit Iraq’s revenues further. Saddam complained repeatedly to OPEC and threatened invasion unless Kuwait ceased. They didn’t, and so he did. Saddam, as hateful as he is, is not, or at least was not then, an irrational leader. The Iran invasion was a serious misjudgement – although the US didn’t think so at the time – but the Kuwait invasion was a rational act, even arguably justified. Put it this way: If you regard America’s coming invasion of Iraq as a justified, rational act, then you should regard Saddam’s of Kuwait in the same light, since both will have been done for essentially the same underlying economic reason – protection of oil price control power. On issues like human rights and democracy there was little difference between Iraq and the dictatorial Kuwait that America so nobly rescued. And Iraq certainly has more historical claim to disputed, oil-rich Iraq-Kuwait border territory than America has to Kirkuk.)

Since the second oil shock, the non-OPEC crowd has naturally pushed for marketplace hegemony – long live the ‘free’ global market – except that this has now inevitably bought them up against their fundamental problem: They ultimately don’t have much natural market power. That is, they don’t have much bloody oil. Oops.

Current OPEC quotas: Algeria – 1.2 million bpd; Indonesia – 800, 000 bpd; Iran – 3.5 million bpd; Iraq – no quota (currently producing 2 million bpd under UN supervision); Kuwait – 2 million bpd; Libya – 1.3 million bpd; Nigeria – 2 million bpd; Qatar – 600, 000 bpd; Saudi Arabia – 8.5 million bpd; UAE – 2.1 million bpd; Venezuela – 2.8 million bpd. Total – 25.2 million bpd.

Saudi Arabia can probably produce up to 10-11 million bpd right now. Of the other significant countries, Nigeria and Venezuela are effectively ‘maximum’ producers. Iran and Iraq are chronically under-developed and investment-starved; they alone are the two countries with any potential to match Saudi’s production capacity and range, and probably only Iraq ever can.

Right now, only Saudi Arabia has the capacity to dramatically reduce global production as a matter of policy. Right now, they are the world’s singular swing producer. Right now, the oil marketplace is tight, and in a tight market the swing producer has enormous power. Of course, oil revenue, global politics, market-share and field health matters affect production policy. It’s not simply a matter of ‘turning off a tap’.

But since September 11, even their best friends – the American oil industry – have taken to calling Saudi Arabia the ‘Kernel of Evil’. It doesn’t take an Einstein to recognise why Iraq is suddenly so important. A unilateral Saudi cut of even a few million barrels a day now – or the total overthrow of the government by extremist Muslim students and clerics, a revolution of the kind many current Bushies experienced up close in the friendly oil pump of Iran back in 1979 – would be globally, economically catastrophic.

Oil industry analysts always underestimate non-economic factors. That mantra – whoever’s in power, the oil will flow – is an article of faith. They never explicitly predict strikes, wars, terrorism, revolutions or political upheavals. Many industry studies have been written on ‘resource wars’ and ‘supply dislocations and disruptions’, and what strikes you about them all is their deep, almost childlike, optimism that the oil will always flow.

It’s mostly because they can’t afford to think otherwise publicly, lest they send the marketplace price soaring. But everyone knows, and has known for a long time, that Saudi Arabia is a ticking time bomb. Unemployment is now high; for all its natural wealth, the domestic economy is a mess. The young men, of which there are very many, are angry, idle, deeply anti-Western and in awe of Osama bin Laden. The powerful Wahabbi clerics who control the country socially are all uncheerfully beserk. Some of the Saudi Royals, of which there are now 8,000 (nearly all of whom are suavely-repellent thugs), are also secret admirers of bin Laden, and active financial backers of Al-Qaeda.

The Saudi oil princes have lately been trying, and mostly failing, to attract private investment back into their regal oil franchise. That no-one in the West has wanted to go there is a shrewd market indication that the Big Oil men have been holding off, knowing that even mightier – and commercially safe – oil contracts await in Iraq. What sane Western investor would put money into Saudi infrastructure, when he’s known for nearly ten years that Iraq’s oil industry, so ripe for expansion, will need a whole lot of investment very soon, and that it will all be safe-guarded by American military might?

This global oil market production power showdown was always going to come. American oil industry leaders – George W. Bush’s dad especially – have spent lifetimes cultivating the increasingly-vulnerable Saudi Arabian Royals. American Oil has bribed them, flattered them, divided-and-ruled them, ‘educated’ them in the attractive ways of the West, threatened them, grown rich from and with them, protected them and lately, tolerated them.

As in any mutually-beneficial but fundamentally-dishonest commercial relationship that has long past its use-by date, American Oil and Saudi Arabian Royalty now thoroughly hate each others’ guts. Since September 11, all the past tactics have at last been ditched. When George W. Bush talks about military action as the ‘last resort’ in the struggle for disarmament he’s not talking about Iraq’s WMD, he’s talking about the Saudi Arabian oil market weapon.

HOW DID WE GET OURSELVES INTO THIS MESS?

It is impossible to assess the real, the underlying state of the oil supply-and-demand balance at any given time. Figures are notoriously slippery. OPEC producers cheat on their official output quotas and fib about production totals. Non-OPEC producers and users also blur their numbers. Drilling companies trumpet high new field production rates and downgrade them in a mumble later. Governments obfuscate national demand statistics for security and political reasons. Commercial suppliers constantly balance transport costs and stocks storage costs and refinery costs against spot price changes; drawn-down stocks can reflect not just (or even) higher underlying ‘demand’, but also (or simply) a desire to on-sell last yesterday’s cheaply-purchased oil at today’s higher prices. The industry tells lies about why prices are high as a matter of course. US commercial stocks are currently drawn way down! There’s a bad winter! The Venezuelan strikes! Middle Eastern tension! The underlying market is ‘tight’! Demand is ‘high’!

But is it really? Are you using more petrol? Can a winter be so unexpectedly bad? Of course not. And there’s still supposedly eight billion barrels of oil floating around the planet somewhere, and probably more. Even an instant production cut of 10 million bpd is not going to grind the world’s engines to a catastrophic halt; just the world’s thoroughly-artificial ‘oil-economy’. This is the nub of it; though consumers always pay the price, it’s not you and I who rush to fill our swimming pools with petrol every time OPEC looks like sneezing, not you and I who risk giving the global economy triple pneumonia – it’s the oil marketplace. It’s been paranoid since 1973, and who knows, maybe the paranoia is justified this time.

Meanwhile, the real oil market insiders – industry leaders, financiers, Oil Ministers, some Heads of State, diplomats, dictators, assorted oil mercenaries – who do know what is going on play very close hands. Industry annual reports, new market growth rates, oilfield analyses, data collations and hard-eyed studies cost thousands of dollars. The last thing the oil industry wants is for politicians and punters to get at the inside numbers in real time. So how much oil do we daily use, or need, or globally, economically depend upon? How sensitive to those piddly supply hiccups should price really be? Is it the West’s fault for using ‘too much oil’? Is it the Yanks’, with their big guzzling SUVs? The answer to the last three questions are: not very sensitive at all; not really (not yet), and not at all.

Global Demand Big Picture

Oil demand 2002: According to the IEA, global oil use in 2002 averaged 76.4 million barrels per day (bpd).

Projected demand 2003: This is projected to rise to 77.6 million bpd in 2003. Projected major single country user will be the US, at 20.2 million bpd.

Projected long-term demand: The IEA forecasts global oil use to rise to 94.8 million bpd by 2010, and 111.5 million bpd by 2020. Most growth will be in developing economies: China, the sub-continent, Asia, Eastern Europe. If the West gets its way, maybe in reverse.

Major net importers: The US is still overwhelmingly the largest net single importer of oil in the world, importing twice as much as the next largest importer (Japan) in the first quarter of last year. Major import supply regions for the US in 2002 were (approx): Middle East (25%), Central and South America (22%), Canada (15%), Mexico (12.4%), Africa (14.4%). (NB: In 1995, US imports from the Middle East were about 17% of the total imports.) Other major net oil importers for Q1 2002 were Japan, Germany, Korea, France, Italy, Spain, China, India and the Netherlands.

Global Supply/Production Big Picture

Supply 2002

The top twelve producers in 2002 were (million bpd, 11-month average): Saudi Arabia (7.6), Russia (7.4), US (5.8), North Sea Offshore (5.7), Iran (3.4), China (3.4), Mexico (3.1), Norway (3), Venezuela (2.8), UK (2.3), Canada (2.1) and Nigeria (2.1). Under the food-for-oil program, Iraq produced 1.4-2.0 million bpd. Despite being the third largest producer for 2002, the US was still the highest net importer.

Puts those production output changes into perspective, doesn’t it. Given the amount of oil reserves and oil stocks the world retains, it’s absurd that ‘production’ is such a big stick. Blame the oil marketplace for its brain-dead stupidity. But then the ‘market’ is never wrong, is it. Just very jumpy, and this year, it has reasons to be especially so.

Supply 2003

Here’s some production factors to consider for 2003. Firstly, Venezuelan production dropped away to almost nothing in late 2002, and while Chavez’s government is now claiming that production is up to over 2 million bpd again, the main oil strike is still in fact in progress and the key oil union leader has said that true production is closer to 1 million bpd. Most agree that production won’t be fully restored (to around 3 million bpd) for four or five months.

Secondly, the Iraq invasion will likely shut down all production in Iraq again, quite possibly for years if Saddam goes apocalyptic, in which case he might even take down other Middle East production capacity, too.

Thirdly, there is also a sensitive oil strike situation simmering away in Nigeria.

Fourth, in 2001 the Trans-Alaska pipeline (1 million bpd flow) was shut down for over two days by a single bullet-hole, which doubtless will have given terrorists ideas if they hadn’t already had them.

Finally, there are many Muslim regions important to global oil supply which may respond disastrously to the Iraq invasion, including Aceh, North Africa, Chechnya and other Caspian Sea Basin areas.

Supply projections mid-term

Mid-term and beyond it’s a bit more meaningful to talk about production in actual supply-and-demand terms. The North Sea and US capacities will soon decline sharply, and new non-Middle East field expansion remains a very expensive proposition. And while the Saudis greatly increased short-term production (+ 3 million bpd) during the first Gulf War to settle down the marketplace price and have recently declared they will lift production by up to 1.5 million bpd this time if necessary, it is foolish, given the post-S11 climate and the unambiguous challenge to their oil market power that this Iraq invasion and occupation represents to expect lasting generosity in the future. If the US invasion runs into disaster – say the Iraqi oilfields are torched – why should they keep oil prices low solely to help a deadly-serious, future marketplace challenger become economically viable? Skyrocketing global oil prices during a chaotic, prolonged and militarily-unstable US-Iraqi economic reconstruction effort would be crippling.

True, OPEC has very recently raised production as a response to the Venezuelan problem, but this is as much to take advantage of the high prices they know will be sustained until the Iraq crisis is resolved as any attempt to bring the price down. The Saudis are playing very close cards now, and it’s simply daft to assume co-operation in the event of the Iraq operation going badly wrong in the longer term.

Some analysts are suggesting a possible glut (and fast-falling prices) later this year and next year, with the invasion going swimmingly and Iraq coming back online, Chavez and the Venezuelan masses kissing and making up, and Saudi Arabia reprising Gulf One, blah blah blah. One has to say: ‘Well, they would pretend that, wouldn’t they?’

The real oil market truth is that the world is entering a period of unprecedented production instability and everyone is secretly shitting bricks. Big Oil is now in fact alarmed, realising that the nuttier ‘Manifest Destiny’ Bushies they helped put in the White House are actually going to do this. Be careful, as they say, what what you casually wish for.

Supply projections long-term

Here we enter the realm of fantasy, hype, wishful-thinking, guesswork and, for the non-Middle Eastern countries, harsh, ugly reality. An IEA broad projection in 1996 predicted that the total world supply capacity would develop thus (mbpd): 1996 (62.7), 2010 (79), then a drop by 2020 (72.2). The break-up they suggested is more relevant: Middle East OPEC producers – 1996 (17.2), 2010 (40.9), 2020 (45.2), while for the Rest of the World (which includes OPEC producers Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico, Libya, Algeria, and Indonesia and major non-OPEC producers America, Canada, Russia, the FSU and the North Sea) – 1996 (45.5), 2010 (38), 2020 (27). The relative picture is crystal-clear: Everyone knows, and has known for decades, that the Gulf is where tomorrow’s oil market power will lie.

If you can’t control directly or influence with rock-solid reliability a significant wedge of Gulf production, you’re at the mercy of those who can. September 11 – perhaps more precisely, the Bushies’ superheated rhetoric since – effectively ensured that only a strong physical presence in the Gulf could in future guarantee this for the West.

WHO OWNS THE WORLD’S OIL AGAIN?

Short-term or long-term, it all comes down, as it always should have, to where god buried all those dead dinosaurs in the first place. It wasn’t in our back yard, it wasn’t in the North Sea, it wasn’t in Alaska, and it wasn’t in the fine state of Texas. It wasn’t even really in the sunken treasure chests of the Caspian Sea Basin, as Dicks Cheney, Armitage, Perle and their sundry oily friends discovered over the wilderness Clintonian years, a frustrating decade spent making grand oily plans with the various ex-Politburo thugs who now run the former Soviet Republics, generally with brutal iron fists that make Saddam’s look soft.

Listening to Cheney speak so nobly of democracy and human rights for Iraq lately, his old Azerbaijan mate Heydar Aliyev must be laughing fit to bust. Perle’s stern calls for the West to smash states that sponsor Islamic terrorism must make the Chechnyan rebels he once called on the West to back (against ‘Russian neo-Imperialism’), smile wryly. And hearing George W. Bush wax unlyrical about Iraq’s puny WMD will doubtless raise an oily smirk from whoever in the former Soviet Union is sitting on the large number of Soviet nukes that no-one can quite account for.

Nope, god put all the serious oil in the Persian Gulf. That’s why the West is setting out to steal some real estate there, at last.

Proven reserves – oil that has been located and hasn’t been sucked up yet

There are endless nuances – possibles, probables, shades of recoverability – which tend to bounce these numbers around a bit. Exploration innovations, improved drilling techniques and investment climates do too (you can extract a barrel of oil from most places if you spend enough money to do so).

The whole world has about one trillion barrels of proven reserves. This estimate has been stable since the eighties; what we’ve extracted has been roughly matched by amended proved estimates and new discoveries. The following numbers are not a bad break-down:

Main OPEC: Saudi Arabia (260 billion barrels), Iraq (112 billion), Kuwait (95 billion), United Arab Emirates (95 billion), Iran (92 billion), Venezuela (66 billion).

Of note, again, about Saudi Arabia, Iraq and to a lesser degree Iran is that all three have potential for further discoveries. Exploration in Iran and Iraq has been neglected for nearly two decades, hampered by war and Western sanction. Most industry analysts don’t reject Iraqi claims that at least another 100-200 billion barrels exist in the undeveloped Western Deserts of the country. Saudi Arabia might have as much as a trillion barrels of reserves in its own right, but Iraq might have even more than that. The other factors are that Gulf crude is by far the cheapest to extract ($1-2 a barrel), and generally of high quality.

Main non-OPEC: Caspian Basin (60-‘200’ billion barrels), Russia (49 – 90? billion), Mexico (27 billion), China (24? billion), America (23 billion), Kazakhstan (14+ billion), Norway (10 billion).

Many of these non-Middle East fields are expensive (off-shore oil costs $13-$20 a barrel to extract), and/or poor quality, and/or in politically unstable areas, and/or above all else, running down fast. Other fields – in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Arctic Circle, the West African deepwater reserves – can show all the promise they like, but future oil market power keeps coming back to size, efficiency of production, and potential for cheap expansion.

There’s simply no way around it: In a matter of years, no non-Gulf producer can hope to compete with whoever controls production in the five major Gulf producers, and especially in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, where the biggest growth of all awaits. (See http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil-gas/petroleum/analysis-publications/oil-market-basics/Sup-image-Reserves.htm.)

SUMMARY – THE STRATEGIC STAKES ARE HIGH

Why does Iraq’s oil matter so much to tomorrow’s global economy? And if it does, why don’t the Americans simply do oil deals with Saddam? Why risk radical disruption to the global supply equation now, in the post-S11 terrorist climate, of all times?

The answers are:

a) It shouldn’t, but that’s the way the oil market has set itself up. Because it’s always been a protected global marketplace, short-term production changes – marketplace supply-and-demand perceptions – count. Iraq and Iran have the only potential to match future Saudi Arabian production scale and flexibility, and successful invasion and occupation of Iran is unthinkable, un-doable, and un-sellable (for now).

b) Access to another country’s oil reserves means nothing in a globalised marketplace; effective control of significant production is what matters, because that means at least some continued artificial control over price, and that in turn means control over the world’s future globalisation patterns – where the big investment bucks go, what political disposition and strategic stance that economic development fosters, who becomes friends with whom. (Look at the US-Turkey fancy-dancing going on at the moment, for God’s sake.)

Russia is trying hard to get its relationships with the Former Soviet Union Republics stabilised; Pakistan is globalising; above all else, China is stirring industrially. These countries are far better naturally placed to develop effective, sustainable global oil market relationships with the Gulf producers in the future. Not just for geographical reasons – Eurasia is the future centre-of-gravity of the world – but also because most Middle East populations are increasingly estranged from what they see as the fat, greedy, exploiting and globally peripheral West.

c) This unique strategic window of opportunity in the Persian Gulf won’t stay open forever. Saddam opened it ten years ago by invading Kuwait, but Osama bin Laden has now almost closed it.

What price controil of our childrens’ tomorrow?

The heart-breaking tragedy is that it would be far easier, far more moral, and above all else far less doomed to failure for the West to secure our oil-market relationships with the Gulf in an altogether different, more controllable way. What we are probably about to do is deal ourselves out of the globalisation future, not retain our place in the gentle lead.

My objection to this invasion and occupation is based not simply on the obvious fact that it is all about oil; rather, that it is all about oil in the worst possible way – violent, self-defeating conquest – and in the hands of the worst possible leaders.

An essential truth: Crude oil is now the ultimate price-controlled and controlling product. Its market ubiquity and worth is based entirely on refined (and indeed non-oil) products, and yet all the big industry profits lie at the production end, which, once your field is yielding, is laughably cheap and easy in comparison to distilling petrol or designing and producing a big, sexy SUV.

Of itself, crude oil is almost useless; you can theoretically burn it for warmth and light – the Egyptians did – but its true saleability lies in the ubiquity and thirst of the downstream applications. What’s more both supply and demand are effectively limitless until we run out of oil. You can just keep drilling wells, if you’ve got the oil to begin with. (OPEC reckons they can produce at current rates for another 80 years.) Crude oil use itself generates increased crude oil use, and most agreeably for the lucky crude oil producers, there is no limit to how much that use can increase. Until we run out of oil.

The true product ultimately consumed is oil-energy – whether directly, or that oil-energy inherent in other products, which means everything that we in the developed economies now consume.

‘Consuming oil-energy’ doesn’t just mean driving a car, heating a home, using electricity or buying a plastic toy. We consume oil-energy when we read a book, go to school, debate democratically in Parliament, read Webdiary, argue over Iraq and lie naked in a grassy field protesting war.

It’s all time and human energy we’re not having to spend hunting, collecting or growing food, finding water or making shelters. In our era, all that spare time and human energy – that freedom – is created by oil-energy.

And while the resulting freedom has been almost all ours to burn in the West, the underlying oil-energy has itself been provided by someone else. We’ve enjoyed the freedom enormously, and good luck to us, but we just haven’t taken enough care to make sure those someone elses got some freedom in return, too. Spare time and human energy with which to develop, for their kids, the same levels of dignity and comfort that we can now give to ours.

This is the critical abstract concept to grasp, since the most important benefit of control of the oil marketplace is, always has been, and will remain, the capacity to control just how, and with whom, the spoils of the world’s always developing, ever-globalising oil-economy are shared around.

We can use our oil-energy freedom to design and market ourselves another electrically-warmed toilet seat, or we can use it help ensure that Saudi Arabian children get to read books other than religious ones which teach them to kill Jews and Christians.

We can design ourselves a spiffing new SUV, or we can build another 100 old-fashioned water purification plants in Nigeria.

I can watch my cricketing heroes play in the World Cup on a snazzy, oil-energy-guzzling plasma TV, or I can choose to listen to the game on a cheap radio instead, so that maybe some young Pakistani hothead will get the chance to do the same. If that happens tomorrow, maybe I’ll enjoy the game more without having to listen to the drivel of the Channel Nine commentators anyway, while maybe he’ll be inspired enough by a Saeed Anwar century to put down his box-cutter and pick up a cricket bat instead.

It all depends on the global price of eggs. Sorry, oil. Rupert Murdoch reckons it should be about twenty bucks a barrel. Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, has said he’d like to see it soar to $144. Only time, and the way we choose to controil globalisation after this invasion and occupation of Iraq – which is all about oil – will tell.

***

Postscript – the Bushies, AKA Thatcher’s Ordinary Men

Oh yes. Our global oil-economy’s current glorious leadership. I nearly forgot.

The Yanks rediscovered oil in Pennsylvania in 1859. They first figured out how best to exploit it, first invented machines that used it, first put it to mass-production work, first started buying and selling it in meaningful quantities. So obviously they created the first domestic production and marketing environment, too.

And after 1911, when the Standard Oil monopoly was busted up, it wasn’t a bad one for an oilman with big ideas and loads of drive. The American domestic industry (biggest producer in the world and a net exporter for yonks) was competitive, diversified, tough, feisty, fertile, and for a fair while, a pretty level playing field.

It was also based on a genuine recognition of the landowner’s ongoing ownership of the oil in his patch of dirt. Unlike the early days of foreign production, that landowner was dealt into the market profit equation by way of a company oil lease, rather than being annually bought out of the market action via a concession. A large wad of cash upfront always looks attractive if you don’t know what sort of goldmine you’re actually sitting on, I s’pose. But even the most Beverly Hillbilly Yank – America uniquely being a nation nurtured on the brilliant triple-whammy of individual aspiration, market capitalism and democratic freedom – was too shrewd and free to be stiffed out of the untapped oil profits he was lucky enough to own.

Even today, when the bigger oil boys have long since clubbed together, there remains hundreds of thousands of individual stripper wells and well groups throughout America – small but still-going concerns pumping marginal quantities of oil which together account for up to 30% percent of US production. Their romantic histories often make them touchstone political issues in the oil-rich states, and they’re usually now heavily-subsidised in some way, eking out their profits when the global price of oil allows it, shutting down temporarily when the climate becomes impossible. They are the local corner shops of the multinational oil supermarket industry, and such creatures exist nowhere else in the world, nor should they still exist in America, either, because a truly free global oil market wouldn’t let them. Yet it was (and in certain ways still is) exactly this highly autonomous have a go domestic market fertility which fermented, sustained and provided the launch pad for the export of all the technical, theoretical, support-industry, capital-procurement and ‘visionary’ elan that has subsequently produced such a rigidly-controlled global market.

As is so often the case with exported American genius and vision, what’s good in practice for them at home is merely what’s good in theory for the rest of us abroad. A similar process is observable in the way the US computer/software industry began as a fast-and-frisky ‘merit product’ industry, and yet became the slothful Microsoft behemoth it now is in its global maturity.

Steel. Farming. Energy. Weapons. So many American industries are moribund, wasteful, cosseted, retrograde, taxpayer-sustained market slugs at home – and still dominate abroad by sheer size and global market power alone.

This year Congress will approve $15 billion to combat AIDS overseas, and probably $150+ billion to wage war there, effectively subsiding the artificially-sustained American arms industry still more. Is it any wonder globalisation isn’t working out very nicely, when the American – the Western – people have so little control over how our wealth and genius for innovation is directed? If Bush put that $150 billion into the hydrogen car, instead – in the way that JFK put serious money into reaching the moon – I reckon we’d have one in two years.

But this is the fundamental and unsustainable self-contradiction at the heart of ‘competitive’, ‘global’, ‘free’ market economics: Once healthy and fertile open competition has selected its early winners, those winners crush all future healthy and fertile open market competition.

The people of the world – we consumers – have shown recently that we just don’t want all that Western money invested in war, in weapons, in exported death. We as a ‘global market’ simply don’t ‘demand’ it. Nor, increasingly, does the Greening West ‘demand’ loads more dough be invested into the further expansion of the world’s oil-economy. (Invent a cheap hydrogen car, instead, Exxon – we’ll BUY IT, and so will the Chinese, too, in their billions.)

We only still use so much oil-energy in the West because we have no free market choice, and we have no choice because the Western-led oil market remains so ruthlessly self-protecting. The period of artificial competition’in the global oil market since the oil crises of the seventies, which created ‘competitive’ non-Middle East producers like Canada and the North Sea, is proof.

There is only one possible way to be a truly competitive producer in the global oil marketplace now, and that is to be Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, perhaps Kuwait or the UAE. This invasion represents little more than the next ratcheting-up of the means of artificial protection by which open oil-energy market competition is crushed.

What America, inventor of the global oil market, is about to do to Iraq would be akin to Pennsylvania, driller of the first US oil well, summarily invading and occupying Texas. You can imagine how the Bushies would feel about that.

The oil and oil-energy men in Bush’s team are steeped in the history of the global oil market. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice and Clay Johnson and Don Evans and James Baker and Steve Ledbetter and Bill Gammel and Jack C. Vaughan Jnr and Ken Lay and Anthony J. Alexander and Tom Hicks and Steve Remp and A.R. ‘Tony’ Sanchez and Bob Holland Jnr and every one of the President’s oily backers would have grown up hearing their fathers and grandfathers bitching about Arab oil.

Their entire corporate lives have been one long exercise in seeking ways around America’s natural oil market inferiority; to observe them all so studiously avoiding the ‘o’ word in relation to Iraq – except in reactive, indignant passing – is not only comic, it is an insult to the intelligence. To hear them opportunistically braying pious words like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and ‘global security’ instead is merely sickening.

But I recommend you read about such people for yourself and draw your own conclusions about their motivations, their past business dealings, and their desirability as leaders of the globalisation of our world. As I’ve said before, personal fortunes made and careers propelled don’t interest me as such. I say good luck to Dick Cheney for the millions he got from Halliburton yesterday, and the millions more he’ll probably receive in eventual retirement as thanks for all the Iraq infrastructure contracts that company will win. I congratulate Ken Lay on his personal financial acumen. I think that an oil tanker named Condoleeza is a charming concept. Good luck to them all. No doubt they’ll give generously to charity, as is the American way.

It’s the bigger picture that matters, the globalisation crunch-point this invasion represents. Oil, oil, and more oil is what feeds and directs that ravenous economic beast. To date, we in the West haven’t been paying a fair price to the poor peoples who own it, the peoples who rightfully should control it but never have.

It’s up to the rest of us now to change the way Iraq’s enormous oil wealth gets shared around, because ‘free market forces’ haven’t been fair to date, and neither will these men, in the post-Saddam future, unless we push them hard, hard, democratically hard. Nor will the dainty intellectual theorists and strategic visionaries who have championed these kinds of men so very far, sanitising their baser instincts with a sophisticated sheen, seeing economic ‘rules’ and ‘forces’ and ‘logic’ where there is really only human greed, thus propelling the rough likes of the Bushies to global prominence and power, and now the gentle, democratic West to the brink of aggressive Darwinian war.

You can find the oily thinkers – the ‘maddies’ – as easily as you can find the oily ‘fixers’. The Project for the New American Century. The Council on Foreign Relations. ‘The Grand Chessboard’. ‘The Threatening Storm’. ‘The Clash of Civilisations’. The American Enterprise Institute. The Heritage Foundation. The average, garden variety war-blogger. Just too many bored, clever, privileged Western men with too many late-night, brandy-fuelled delusions of grandeur.

But to call the rise and rise of the neo-conservative accord either a conspiracy or a three-decade revolution in intellectual thought is to flatter that ad-hoc but relentless erosion of the liberal tradition with an assigned cohesion and purpose that, for all the think-tanks and networking and strategic economic bombast, simply doesn’t exist.

There was no ‘Thatcherite revolution’, no ‘vast, right-wing conspiracy’, no visionary early leadership or generational second-wind. There was simply a collective tumble down the path-of-least-resistance to the grasping, grubby swamp in which we now flounder.

Opportunism, ambition, misplaced neo-idealism, post-Vietnam resentment and a general Revenge On The Sixties have all played their parts, but in the end, we are now slouching towards Bethlehem for no grander reason than that it simply turned out to be the least bothersome road for the straight men of the West to follow.

Just as John Howard became Prime Minister by default, it would have taken George W. Bush far more effort to avoid becoming President than to accidentally occupy the White House as he has, while Tony Blair’s well-meaning ‘Third Way’ is no more than sheer consensual laziness by a sniffier, Pommy name.

A deep fear festers in the ordinary hearts of such ordinary men, all these ordinary, natural-born followers who find themselves leading us from the rear, backwards into prehistoric history, backwards via polls and ‘public opinion’ and the deadening of language, onwards ever backwards through our very ordinary times.

It’s a fear that is now driving the West in historical reverse at accelerating speed and that fear is the fear of losing control of the world they have made. Losing control of who comes to live next door. Losing control of who comes to their country. Losing control of the global marketplace. Losing control of what someone writes in their newspaper, or says about them in public, or knows about their bank balance and their fat executive payout. Losing control of their children’s beliefs when their children are young and idealistic, losing control of what they might find on the internet, losing control of what drugs they might (or might not) be tempted to try. Ultimately, losing control of what their children will do with them, as they grow frail and old and powerless.

Always frightened by change unless they are the ones forcing frightening change upon others, these ordinary, Left-and-Right-and-Third Way neo-conservatives are now terrified, because the world they thought was finally under their control revealed itself, eighteen months ago, as wild, and brutal and still far beyond their reach, armed with all the world’s weapons though they now are.

They are like all deeply frightened men; cocooned in their certitudes, narrow in their outlook, profoundly anxious, aggressively bereft of humility lest we see how scared they really are. Our contemporary leaders are small human beings frozen in the spotlight of big history like rabbits, quivering yet rigid, cornered, ready to lash out, or bolt, or die of fright altogether at the first sign of movement beyond the light. Yet never once thinking to step boldly into the darkness, with a friendly, vulnerable and gentle call.

This invasion and occupation of Iraq is just another futile attempt to win, by brute force a supremacy over what might happen in the world tomorrow, a ‘full spectrum dominance’ that these men and their frightened, ‘pragmatic’ kind have never once managed to claim in the past.

This attempt will fail, too, and we will shed more bitter tears, because the men leading us into it are, as usual, ordinary cowards and small arrogant fools, while the future will always remain far, far beyond our control.

Unreal reality

Now Turkey says no! This people power thing is really picking up steam.

Today, your thoughts on the state of play.And again, sorry in advance if your piece hasn’t got a run – I’m overwhelmed with war emails and can’t even read all of them. If I’ve missed a pearler, please resend.

I’ve been thinking about John Wojdylo’s statement that the Iraqi people want to be liberated, regardless of the cost in human life. Is this true? Some refugees exiles seem to think so, although they, of course, aren’t at risk, and others are against the war. The only Iraqi voice so far on Webdiary is Zainab Al-Badry, who wrote in Saddam’s will to power last September:

“Like any Iraqi, nothing is dearer to my heart than to live long enough to witness the day my country and my people are set free from this dictator and his regime. However, can anyone blame us if we do not trust the US and back its efforts to oust Saddam? I have been in Iraq during the Gulf war and witnessed how the American troops abandoned my people and left them to the mercies of Saddam and his thugs. Why would I trust the US again? I have no doubt now that the US wants to get rid of Saddam – what I don’t accept (and indeed I find it insulting to my intelligence) is someone telling me (or the whole world for that matter) that the US is doing so for all the good reasons in the world, or that oil is a “secondary factor”. Would the US or any of its allies send their armies and incur all those heavy expenses if Iraq didn’t happen to float on oil?”

If John is right, then there is a moral case for war. It’s hard to imagine a people wanting to be invaded to be liberated, but after reading John’s several pieces on Saddam’s brutality, I can believe it. But we would need to be sure it’s true before we’d go in, and you’d think the Iraqi people would want some assurances that civilian casualties would be minimised.

The ten most read Webdiary entries in February were:

1. Disrobe to disarm, Feb 4

2. Anti-Gravity and us, January 28

3. Murdoch: Cheap oil the prize, Feb 13

4. Sydney walks in numbers too big to ignore, Feb 16

5. The D’hage report, Feb 16

6. Spiders spread in all directions, Feb 20

7. Do you believe George Bush? Feb 27

8. Collecting the debris, Feb 3

9. Waiting for war, Feb 10

10. Shroud over Guernica, Feb 5

The top five referring websites were dailyrottenclothesfreeyahoonewsantiwarmovementtimblairblogspot and whatreallyhappened.

Correction: I stuffed up the other day when I said I couldn’t link to the Wall Street Journal for John Howard’s comment piece called ‘You Can’t ‘Contain’ Saddam’. The link is wsj

Recommendations

Daniel Frybort: “I’m a big fan of Webdiary and your bold, straightforward style and this is the first time I’ve written you. I wanted to recommend this article in The Observer – proof that the US government is spying on and bugging the smaller security council members to gain influence in their decision on the Iraq decision. It shows the sly underhandedness of the US government, trying to gain information illegally at the same time as bullying these countries with economic might. I think this story should come out as loud as possible – it’s not often the NSA puts their foot in it and leaks a significant spying story like this.” Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war – plus the full text of the leaked memo.

Lynette Dumble: “Michele Landsberg’s latest column in the Toronto Star is another of her gems: Highlights the abysmal failure of US-designed operations in Afghanistan; provides viewing details for the premiere of Sally Armstrong’s latest documentary The Daughters of Afghanistan (CBC Newsworld at 10 PM, Sunday March 2); and offers some excellent advice to one of Bush Jnr’s media lapdogs, The National Post, re the oily motivations of American wars in Central Asia and the Middle East. star.

Peter Kelly: See latimes for the Russia angle. It’s an example of how the coalition of the “willing” is built. Coercion, bribery and blackmail – all the qualities of “freedom”.

George Crones: Here’s something for everyone to keep track of no matter what their position is on the looming war: iraqbodycount. Not sure how accurate it will end up being, but it is an interesting concept.

Scott Burchill recommends Michelle Grattan’s piece A powerful group of advocates! on the personnel of a new backbench committee to spin for Howard on the war.

Sarah Moles recommends William Rivers Pitt’s Blood Money, which sets out the ideological underpinnings of Bush’s speech last week.

Jon Moore: “Here is an interesting little quiz for your readers edification that was sent through the Quaker Peacenet by an American Quaker (jesuschristians).”

Do you know enough to justify going to war with Iraq?

1. What percentage of the world’s population does the U.S. have? 6%

2. What percentage of the world’s wealth does the U.S. have? 50%

3. Which country has the largest oil reserves? Saudi Arabia

4. Which country has the second largest oil reserves? Iraq

5. How much is spent on military budgets a year worldwide? $900+ billion

6. How much of this is spent by the U.S.? 50%

7. What percent of US military spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the world, according the the UN? 10% (that’s about $40 billion, the amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack on Afghanistan).

8. How many people have died in wars since World War II? 86 million

9. How long has Iraq had chemical and biological weapons? Since the early 1980’s.

10. Did Iraq develop these chemical & biological weapons on their own? No, the materials and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britain and private corporations.

11. Did the US government condemn the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? No

12. How many people did Saddam Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988? 5,000

13. How many western countries condemned this action at the time? 0

14. How many gallons of agent Orange did America use in Vietnam? 17million.

15. Are there any proven links between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? No

16. What is the estimated number of civilian casualties in the Gulf War? 35,000

17. How many casualties did the Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War? 0

18. How many retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the front? 6,000

19. How many tons of depleted uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? 40 tons

20. What according to the UN was the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? 700%

21. How much of Iraq’s military capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991? 80%

22. Is there any proof that Iraq plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self defence? No

23. Does Iraq present more of a threat to world peace now than 10 years ago? No

24. How many civilian deaths has the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack on Iraq in 2003? 10,000

25. What percentage of these will be children? Over 50%

26. How many years has the U.S. engaged in air strikes on Iraq? 11 years

27. Were the U.S and the UK at war with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? No

28. How many pounds of explosives were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999? 20 million

29. How many years ago was UN Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq’s imports and exports? 12 years

30. What was the child death rate in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? 38

31. What was the estimated child death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)? 131 (that’s an increase of 345%)

32. How many Iraqis are estimated to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN sanctions? 1.5 million

33. How many Iraqi children are estimated to have died due to Sanctions since 1997? 750,000

34. Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? No

35. How many inspections were there in November and December 1998? 300

36. How many of these inspections had problems? 5

37. Were the weapons inspectors allowed entry to the Ba’ath Party HQ? Yes

38. Who said that by December 1998, Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history? Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.

39. In 1998 how much of Iraq’s post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? 90%

40. Is Iraq willing to allow the weapons inspectors back in? Yes

41. How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? Over 65

42. How many UN resolutions on Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+

43. How much does the U.S. fund Israel a year? $5 billion

44. How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? 8

45. How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got? 0

46. How many nuclear warheads has US got? Over 10,000

47. Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? The US

48. How many nuclear warheads does Israel have? Over 400

49. Has Israel ever allowed UN weapons inspections? No

50. What percentage of the Palestinian territories are controlled by Israeli settlements? 42%

51. Is Israel illegally occupying Palestinian land? Yes

52. Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.? ????

53. Who said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

***

Mr M Mercurius in Summer Hill NSW

Words or deeds? How activist are Web Diary readers and writers?

Webdiarists (and, I presume their readers) seem to me a pretty impassioned, committed lot, at least on paper. But I would like to know what else Webdiarists do to pursue the positions they espouse through other forms of activism? This is not to belittle the written word, as writing to Webdiary is a public act and a form of activism in itself. Rather, I am interested to know how we complement our words with action.

This question arises from a personal belief that, if I hold a particular view, I should take practical steps to back it. I should get my hands dirty, lest Paddy McGuinness brand me a member of the chattering classes. And I am active on a range of issues, although not in the high-profile, public manner of marches and speeches. I prefer grass-roots activities and I espouse the think global, act local philosophy. I hope that the little contribution I make as an individual improves the world a little, and makes my life more meaningful than just being a passive receptacle for events.

Activism can take many forms, some public, like marches or writing to Webdiary. Others require privacy and secrecy to be effective. I cite the French Resistance or the so-called underground railroad that smuggled Negro slaves out of southern U.S. states.

Activism can also be more, or less, direct. There are direct forms, like lobbying, working in a soup kitchen, or chaining yourself to a tree. Then there are less direct forms, like donating to causes you like, sponsoring a child through a program, etc.

Would other Webdiarists like to share how they pursue their causes and why they think the particular form of activism they take is worthwhile? I’m not asking you to out yourself as belonging to any particular group or lobby, especially if this would compromise the effectiveness of what you are doing – merely hoping you will describe whether (and how) you back up your Webdiary writings with other kinds of action. Conversely, if you don’t act, why not?

I would like to return to this point, via a meandering path that touches on the arguments of Why the peoples instinct can be wrong. (An aside – congratulations to John Wojdylo and David Makinson on their latest contributions. They are always must-reads for me and I find myself agreeing with about 95% of what both have to say, so I don’t know why they continue to find themselves in conflict)

A reflection on John W’s piece. Of course the people can be wrong, nobody ever said they were infallible. A person is clever, but people are stupid. I delight in the quote of the unknown statesmen of ancient Athens, who asked “Have I said something foolish?” upon being cheered by the crowd!

But seriously, there is the inherent danger for a democracy to become in effect a tyranny of the majority. The simplistic idea of majority rule is indistinguishable from might makes right. The Westminster system anticipates this risk, which is why our democracies are so successful, so lasting, so garrulous, so prone to delay, so susceptible to lobbyists, splinter-groups and farce. Because we dont allow a simple fast-track of whatever the people want.

Now to illustrate what the people might do with the knowledge they are, or were, wrong. The German people, for example, have taken ownership of how wrong they were from 1933-1945. Their ability to recognise, own and remain mindful of their wrongdoing finds its physical manifestation in the Holocaust Museum.

There is yet to appear in Australia any comparable edifice to house the Australian peoples recognition of our own First People. The National Museum of Australia comes closest, but even now is facing review and downsizing of its indigenous peoples display. How long will it take to heal this amnesia in our national psyche?

And although I did not join the anti-war marches, largely for the reasons outlined by John W, I nevertheless rejoice that so many Australians marched for anything at all. I delight in the unruliness and untidiness of popular activism, because I find it preferable to a passive and inert populace, and the clinical hyper-rationalism of modern political discourse. I want to see as many people marching, reading, writing and acting as possible, on as many issues as possible, especially if I disagree with them, because such is the vigour on which our democracy thrives. I will always march or write or act in opposition if I disagree.

Existentially, the only way to know if something is worth doing is to ask yourself whether it would still be worth doing even if nobody else ever knew about it. This automatically excludes all public forms of activism (including writing to Webdiary), but it reaches to the heart of the private, personal choices we all make on a daily basis. From the soft-hearted anonymous donations we make from our comfortable homes, to the bravery of political prisoners who suffer torture and die because they wont give up their cause, yet are utterly forgotten by the outside world.

The whole edifice of human rights has been centuries in the making, and is comprised of countless unknown and unsung actions by forgotten individuals. Only by acting to preserve and add to this inheritance can we honour their deeds. Now, which brick in this wall are you?

***

Alan Kelley

Your comment piece in Incompatible Values seems to be incompatible with reality. Some time ago, those who currently control US policy decided that they wished to attack, invade and then either occupy Iraq or set up a compliant regime. The American forces will be accompanied by those of its two vassal states, Britain and Australia.

The UN is almost certainly unable to prevent this action, but to endorse it, I believe, would be folly.

If the Security Council does give the seal of approval to the US invasion of Iraq it will change nothing. It will still be the US invasion of Iraq. The military will not be under UN control. The war will be no kinder. There is no reason to think the number of dead will be fewer. The fact of UN compliance will do little to minimise or placate the Arab response.

And the ability of the UN to materially influence what the Americans do afterward will be minimal. Your What if? in relation to the idea of trading UN support for war with a genuine US support for a Palestinian state is simply fanciful, and your confidence in the Bush speech rather naive.

For a succinct comment on that I’d refer you to Robert Fisk’s latest, America Uses Israel’s Words To Justify Occupation.

It’s essential that what happens next should be seen by the World and by history as America’s war and Blair’s war – and, to the extent that the atrocious little man is actually remembered by history, John Howard’s war.

***

Daniel Maurice

What do I think og George Bush’s speech? I don’t think Bush Jnr is any brains trust, but the left liberal view of him as evil, mad and/or a creature of his dad’s Texas oil cronies is also overblown.

Is the world better of with a dominant power or not? It depends. For all its faults the US is a startlingly open and vibrant political, economic and cultural system (which is why it got to be the world power it is today in the first place). I think that having the USA as the dominant global power is better than just a gaggle of pint size nation states which will always be a rabble of conflicting self interests and back-room deals when it comes to dealing with major international issues.

I’d also vastly prefer an American superpower to a world dominated by the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or modern day China, India, Britain, France or any Islamic state (the latter because of Islam’s subjugation of women and its aggressive and profound intolerance of other societies and values).

Clearly Bush is articulating an heroic and ambitious view of a post-Saddam world because of the international community’s sceptical response to earlier arguments put for Saddam’s removal, as well as the perceived need to counter the loopy left’s paranoia about his (and the USA’s) “real” agenda. The latter will, of course, never change their views as they are blinded by self-righteous hatred of their political opponents.

However I’m prepared to take at face value that Bush truly does want democracy and liberation for the Iraqi people and that he perceives the opportunity for a change in Iraq to provide a circuit breaker in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. Could this happen? Yes, but you wouldn’t put money on it.

The strength of the Jewish vote in the US (combined with a lingering sense that the West “owes” the Jews because of their extraordinary suffering in WW2), the absolute intransigence of both Israel and the Palestinians/Arabs and the legacy of atrocities on both sides makes it just about impossible to see how this problem will be solved for generations.

But this is not a reason to resile from military action against Saddam. I agree with Bush that any realistic outcome of such action will leave ordinary Iraqis (and the world generally) better off. There is no alternative, unless you believe in fairy stories, and I don’t.

Finally, I thought that Bush’s remarks were very powerfully crafted. Depending on how things go in Iraq, I share your assessment in Bush vision that it truly could become one of the defining speeches of the new century.

***

Rod Lever

Do we not see that George W Bush is simply dumber than dumb? He is being played for a sucker by Saddam. The longer those 250,000 troops hang around the Gulf with nothing to do the more it’s costing the US and the more restive and bored they will become. He has to start the war, and soon. The moment he does trouble will break out elsewhere, probably Afghanistan. A massive assault on Kabul, say, by the re-emerging warlords.

But by then Bush will have lost all his credibility and world opinion will have hardened even more against the US. Osama bin Laden announced in one of his audio tapes a while back that his next assault would be on the US economy. A fine way to do this is to split his war machine and make him keep moving it around the world. This is not to say that Osama and Saddam are necessarily working together. They just have similar objectives.

***

Chris Munson

So the US topples Saddam and relaces him with a “friendly” government. then what? What happens afterwards when there is an internal uprising, or the Iraqis vote for a non secular government? Will the US continue to impose the standards it espouses today?

As a beginning of the New World Order, the “Alliance of the Willing” or “Fellowship of the Ring” will install freedom and a new government (but perhaps not democracy) in Iraq after it removes Saddam from power.

But I wonder, what does the Fellowship do, when another Iraqi political or military group topples the new leadership in one or two or five years time – Does the Fellowship invade again?

The argument of “change of government for world peace” simply cannot hold up over time. They (or we) cannot forever topple governments which are judged by remote western standards as being “unjust” or “belligerent”, or perhaps The Fellowship may simply not like that country for assisting rebellious groups, just as Cuba, Libya and China assisted Nelson Mandela.

I also wonder which country is next? Perhaps The Fellowship will continue along the axis of evil, and then settle all the other contentious world issues. No, I don’t think so, not while Israel still refuses to comply with 20 or so UN orders and the US stands back and says nothing.

But now, I’ll stop wondering for a while, because I think there may be another reason behind this Iraqi invasion scenario. I’ll let you know when I find proof.

***

Barry Preston in Europe

It was France who supplied all the tech’ know-how for Iraq’s nuclear ambitions 20 years ago at Tamuz. All Saddam’s neighbours must be bloody happy that Isreal broke all the rules by blowing it to pieces. The French are still waiting to be paid millions of dollars by Iraq! That’s why Chirac is keeping sweet by vetoeing the any new UN moves: He hopes Saddam will appreciate the French treachery and pay the long overdue bill.

***

Colin McKerlie in Perth, Western Australia

As usual the compliant media has avoided insight in favour of sensation and compliance with their bosses in the “analysis” of what is happenning in Iraq. While the ridiculous comparison of Saddam to Hitler is daily repeated, the more apt role model is carefully ignored.

There is no modern leader more like Saddam than Tito, and Tito’s Yugoslavia is the historical forerunner of what is about to play out in Iraq. Of course Tito ruled Yugoslavia during an age when world leaders were trying to avoid wars rather than start them, so he was left alone.

For forty-five years, Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron fist, and so successful was his rule the before he died Western tourists were making the economy of Yugoslavia viable. Once his iron grip was lost, the ethnic divisions which had been kept in check were quickly inflamed.

There are now four armies based on ethnic groups in Iraq either already in the country or waiting in Iran for the opportunity to sweep into Iraq and take power in the chaos which will follow an American invasion. Only a fool would have any hope of peace in post-war Iraq.

If Saddam Hussein is deposed by an American invasion, Iraq will be plunged into a decade of warfare which will make the bitter wars in the Balkans look tame. The weekend’s debacle at the Arab League meeting shows us there is no Arabic NATO to control what will happen in Iraq.

The Americans have almost never taken on the role of peacekeepers in any country. They put troops into Somalia, until they took a few casualties, and they did take control of Granada and Panama, but those tiny dots of countries are nothing like an ethnically diverse Iraq.

Tito was never portrayed as an “evil dictator” by the West, but a dictator he was and his capacity for brutality demonstrated during the War against the Germans and the Chetniks was what gave him the power to rule an artificial country created by the great powers, just like Iraq.

While in every other country on Earth, groups like the Kurds in the north or the Shia armies already in Iraq or on the Iranian border would be declared terrorist groups, the new universal tag for the people many would still call freedom fighters. But in Iraq, America arms them.

It is interesting in itself trying to find words for the Axis of Anglo Evil now formed by the three countries willing to launch an illegal invasion of Iraq. Exactly how do you characterise this group. You can’t call them “Western” or “English speaking” or “NATO” or even “Anglo”.

America, Britain and Australia constitute a very strange little group that defies classification, not because of any characteristic they share, but because so many other countries refuse to join them. There are many Western, English-speaking, Anglo countries who aren’t there.

But then, if you take Canada out – polluted by all those French Canadians, and if you leave out Ireland and New Zealand – too small to matter, and if you regard South Africa’s English speaking status as questionable, given all those Afrikaaners, “Anglo” is about right.

We are very close to creating a situation where all the hatred and all the terror which will be generated by an invasion of Iraq will be focussed on the three Anglo countries which now have troops in the Gulf. Being Australian is going to become a very dangerous status.

We are going to be at the centre of the great revival of racism in the 21st century. Being white, speaking English, with a Union Jack on our backpacks, Australians make exceptionally easy targets. Being an Aussie will become like being an Israeli. Bombings will become standard.

***

Tony Kevin

To the Ambassadors to the United Nations of France, Russia, China, UK, Bulgaria, Cameroun, Guinea, Mexico, Syria,Angola, Chile, Germany, Spain, Pakistan: Email dated 3 March 2003 from former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin.

Your Excellencies:

Very large numbers of Australians do not support Prime Minister John Howard’s reckless and unthinking support for the US and UK preparations to make war on Iraq. We do not believe the case for war has been made.

A design fault in a missile allowing it to make a strategically irrelevant 33 km overflight beyond the UN-permitted 150 km range is a derisory pretext for a war that will kill 500,000 Iraqi people and render 900.000 homeless. The stated political objectives of this war are not comrnensurate with the huge human suffering it will bring to the Iraqi people, which cannot be compensated by any restitution afterwards. One does not make peace through making war. The risks to our own children’s security will be greatly increased if Australia takes part in this unprovoked aggressive war.

Such views are shared not only by ordinary respectable Australians of all ages but also include leading community figures like former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, retired senior Australian military leaders eg former chief of the defence forces General Peter Gration, retired former senior diplomats like former Foreign Affairs head Richard Woolcott and former ambassadors Richard Butler, Ronald Walker and myself, and senior members of Mr Howard’s Liberal Party. There is a remarkable consensus against this war spanning all parties and war veterans’ groups, that I have not seen in my lifetime and I am 60.

The UN Security Council must maintain the integrity of its responsibilities under the Charter. If this unprovoked aggression goes ahead no country will be safe from great power bullying in future. I am no defender of Saddam’s regime but the UNSC must look to its global responsibilities for peace and security. Please advise your governments not to be browbeaten by the US and UK into giving any kind of endorsement to this war. Stand firm on the wisdom of the UN Charter, and make these powers wear the full opprobium of being aggressors in this war. The precedent is vital for world peace in future.

And please understand that the Australian Ambassador Mr John Dauth, who I am sure is doing a diligent professional job of lobbying your Excellencies in support of the Anglo-American position under Mr Howard’s instructions, does not represent the majority views of the Australian people.

I have no doubt – and opinion polls in Australia support this – that if there was a referendum on whether Australia should join an Anglo-American attack on Iraq without a clear UNSC endorsement, the referendum would produce a decisive No vote. There is still time for sanity to prevail. Please urge your governments to stick to the UN principles and defend the only international system of peace and security that the world has.

As to my credentials, I was Australia’s First Committee (peacekeeping and disarmament) representative at the UN from 1974 to 1976, under Ambassadors McIntyre and Harry . For the first year, Australia was on the Security Council. I was an Australian diplomat for 30 years and retired honourably in 1998, after six years as Ambassador to Poland Czech Republic and Slovakia, and finally to Cambodia.

***

Max Phillips

Disclosure: Max is a member of the greens

You wrote: “The thought of a US attack without UN sanction scares me to death. I’m desperate for a resolution to this nightmare which doesn’t split the free world, gives Muslim nations cast iron assurances that it’s not a war on Islam and that the US isn’t guilty of appalling double standards, and reassures the Iraqi people that freedom is a real prospect.” (Do you believe George Bush?)

I think the problem would be if the UN rubber stamped a US attack (which most intelligent, openminded person – not necessarily the great vacilators of Webdiary – must agre is unjustified and aggressive). If the UN capitulated to US bullying then it really would lose its credibility (exactly the opposite of what Bush’s doublespeak!), especially in the eyes of the Islamic populations.

As for the “free world”, I’m not sure what that is? Sounds like a simplistic Dubya propaganda phrase. Perhaps he’s referring to the masters as opposed tothe slaves?

The great irony is if the UN actually stops the Anglo imperial war it might actually strengthen its role and importance!

Check out the background of your beloved Blair’s Spanish friend at Aznar: Bush’s Best Friend in Continental Europe. Not very pretty. I guess today’s holocaust deniers and “reformed” facsists are also the saviours of democracy and human rights? An extract:

Aznar himself is a son of a prominent Francoist family and during the fascist dictatorship was a member of the fascist party. When democracy was reestablished in Spain, Aznar advocated against approving the new Democratic Constitution. In the right-wing press, he once criticized the Basque town of Guernica (destroyed by Nazi aviation, as immortalized in the Picasso painting that carries its name) for renaming its main square: newly democratic municipality changed the name from Caudillo Franco’s Square (the name every Spanish town had to give to its main square during the fascist regime) to Liberty Square. Aznar accused the Guernica municipality of revenge. He wanted the main square to retain Franco’s name and Franco’s statue. Aznar has never condemned or even criticized the Franco regime, and his cabinet also contains several ex-members of the fascist party – who also have never denounced that regime.” (Margo: For an analysis of why the UN took down Picasso’s Guernica masterpiece on the horrors of war before Colin Powell addressed the security council, see buzzflash.)