All this has been the inevitable product of the central choice made last autumn, which was to opt for a mainly military solution to the challenge of Islamist terrorism. That was a recipe for failure. By their nature, terrorist or guerrilla campaigns which have deep social roots and draw on a widespread sense of injustice – as militant jihadist groups do, regardless of the obscurantism of their ideology – cannot be defeated militarily. And as the war on terror has increasingly become a war to enforce US global power, it has only intensified the appeal of ‘asymmetric warfare’ to the powerless.
The grievances al-Qaida is able to feed on throughout the Muslim world were once again spelled out in bin Laden’s latest edict. But there is little sign of any weakening of the wilful Western refusal to address seriously the causes of jihadist campaigns. Thus, during the past year, the US has armed and bolstered Pakistan and the central Asian dictatorships, supported Putin’s ongoing devastation of Chechnya, continued to bomb and blockade Iraq at huge human cost, established new US bases across the Muslim world and, most recklessly of all, provided every necessary cover for Ariel Sharon’s bloody rampages through the occupied Palestinian territories. In most of this, despite Tony Blair’s muted appeals for a new Middle East peace conference, Britain has played the role of faithful lieutenant.
Now, even as ‘phase one’ of its war on terror has been seen to have failed, the US shows every sign of preparing to launch phase two: its long-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perhaps some of the intensity of the current warnings about terrorist threats is intended to help soften up public opinion for an unpopular war. But what is certain about such an act of aggression is that it will fuel terrorism throughout the world and make attacks on those countries which support it much more likely. If such outrages take place in Britain, there can no longer be any surprise or mystery about why we have been attacked, no point in asking why they hate us. Of course, it wouldn’t be the innocents who were killed or injured who would be to blame. But by throwing Britain’s weight behind a flagrantly unjust war, our political leaders would certainly be held responsible for endangering their own people.10
(21/11/02)
AGGRESSION, OCCUPATION AND DELUSION (2002–05)
The US–British invasion and occupation of Iraq on a false pretext was the most devastating outcome of the neoconservative project to reorder the Middle East in the American image. But it also proved to be its spectacular undoing. The failed attempt to legitimise an unprovoked attack against a broken-backed oil state on the basis of deception fatally undermined the credibility of the Blair government – while the plan to create a Western regional bridgehead out of what rapidly became a catastrophic occupation was derailed by the scale of Iraqi resistance. What was intended to be a demonstration of unassailable global power turned into its opposite. And the US administration’s promise of democracy, it was once again rammed home, would only apply to the right kind of leaders and states.
They are fighting for their independence, not Saddam
The Anglo-American war now being fought in the Middle East is without question the most flagrant act of aggression carried out by a British government in modern times. The assault on Iraq which began a week ago, in the teeth of global and national opinion, was launched without even the flimsiest Iraqi provocation or threat to Britain or the US, in breach of the UN charter and international law, and in defiance of the majority of states represented on the UN Security Council.
It is necessary to descend deep into the mire of the colonial era to find some sort of precedent or parallel for this piratical onslaught. However wrong or unnecessary, every previous British war for the past eighty years or more has been fought in response to some invasion, rebellion, civil war or emergency. Even in the most crudely rapacious case of Suez, there was at least a challenge in the form of the nationalisation of the canal. Not so with Iraq, where the regime was actually destroying missiles with which it might have hoped to defend itself only a couple of days before the start of the US-led attack.
But there is little reflection of this reality, or of Anglo-American isolation in the world over the war, in either the bulk of the British media coverage or the response from most politicians and public figures. Little is now heard of the original pretext for war, Iraq’s much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction, and regime change – that lodestar of the US hawks which Tony Blair struggled to dissociate himself from for so long – is now the uncontested mission of the campaign.
Having lost the public debate on the war, Blair has demanded that a divided nation rally round British troops carrying out his policy of aggression in the Gulf. And under a barrage of war propaganda, the soft centre of public opinion has dutifully shifted – in the wake of those MPs who put their careers before constituents and conscience once Blair had failed to secure UN authorisation. Many balk at criticising the war when British soldiers are in action, but it’s hardly a position that can be defended as moral or principled when the action they are taking part in arguably constitutes a war crime. And whether public support holds up under the pressure of events – such as yesterday’s civilian carnage in a Baghdad market – remains to be seen.
Events have, of course, signally failed to follow their expected course. The pre-invasion spin couldn’t have been clearer. The Iraqis would not fight, we were told, but would welcome US and British invaders with open arms. The bulk of the regular army would capitulate as soon as they saw the glint on the columns of American armour. The war might only last six days, Donald Rumsfeld suggested, in a contemptuous evocation of the Arabs’ humiliation in the six-day war of 1967. His hard-right Republican allies insisted it would be a ‘cakewalk’. British ministers, as ever, took their cue from across the Atlantic, while the intelligence agencies and US-financed Iraqi opposition groups reinforced their arrogant assumptions.
But Rumsfeld’s six days have been and gone, and resistance to the most powerful military machine in history continues to be fierce across Iraq – in and around the very Shi’ite-dominated towns and cities, such as Najaf and Nasiriyah, that the US and Britain expected to be least willing to fight. Nor has the Iraqi army yet collapsed or surrendered in large numbers, while regular units are harrying US and British forces along with loyalist militias. One senior US commander told the New York Times yesterday that ‘we did not put enough credence in their abilities’, while another conceded: ‘We did not expect them to attack.’ The International Herald Tribune recorded dolefully that ‘the people greeting American troops have been much cooler than many had hoped.’
There was little public preparation for the resistance that is now taking place. Third-world peoples have after all been allocated a largely passive role in the security arrangements of the New World Order; the best they can hope for is to be ‘liberated’ and be grateful for it. There has been little understanding that, however much many Iraqis want to see the back of Saddam Hussein, they also – like any other people – don’t want their country occupied by foreign powers. No doubt Ba’athist militias are playing a coercive role in stiffening resistance. There are also those who cannot expect to survive the fall of the dictatorship, and therefore have nothing to lose. But the scale and commitment of the resistance – along with reports of hundreds of Iraqis attempting to return from Syria and Jordan to fight – suggest that it is driven far more by national and religious pride. Most of these people are not fighting for Saddam Hussein, but for the independence of their homeland.
To fail to recognise this now obvious reality is not only condescending, but stupid. But then we have been subjected to such a blizzard of disinformation in recent days – from the reported deaths of Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein to the non-existent chemical weapons plant and Tuesday’s uprising in Basra – that it should come as no surprise to hear everyone from British and US defence ministers to BBC television presenters refer to Iraqis defending their own country as ‘terrorists’.
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