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.
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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.
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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.