A revolutionary war (otherwise known as don't forget Iraq)

This piece was originally written on 17 April 2003, soon after “mission accomplished” was announced by Bush on a warship far from Iraq. Back then it all seemed like a sick joke. What are we supposed to feel now? Reading the BBC article detailed in the post below set off so many feelings that I thought it correct to resurrect this essay languishing in My Documents. As such, please excuse the mistakes and the length. Today I’ve added some notes throughout and a small postscript.

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The war has ended, or at least I think it has. Nearly. Just a few more bombs to drop on the pathetic rabble to finish off the liberation of Iraqi souls by the holy spirit of depleted uranium.

The headline in the World section of BBC news is entitled "Tough talk looms over Iraq oil". The money men and women are getting itchy-feet, the war is definitely ending. [Note 1: Whilst the war didn’t end the influence of money men is particularly relevant now. The Iraqi parliament is being heavily encouraged to pass a law that will give their oil over to British and American oil companies rather than retain state control. Guess who’s pressuring them to pass this law? Interestingly the law has not been passed before the summer recess, but it looks as it will as Saddam-esque legislation has been passed banning union activities - the main organised groups who are opposed to the oil law are secular workers’ and peoples’ representatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_oil_law_(2007)]

It was a good war wasn't it? That is what you feel isn't it? I feel the same. In the confused logic of Bush's new world order I can convince myself that because it was short (barely a month) it was good. How fucked up must the English language become to place "good" next to "war".

Wait a minute. Let's unpick this. Lest we forget why millions of people marched and argued and everyone got hot under the collar (except Dubya and Blair) about this war.

There was no justified reason for this war. Is it possible for something without a raison d'etre to be good?

We were told that there may be a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam. The link between the US (historically) and the Al Qaeda is stronger than the link between Saddam and the terrorist organisation. In fact the US has a stronger link with Saddam, than Saddam has with the terrorist organisation.

That phrase, terrorist organisation... in an ironic twist of language (this tale is very confusing, you've heard of the "fog of war", this is the atomic cloud of post-9/11 international relations) this phrase "terrorist organisation" has a romantic slant to it in the Western mainstream media... it used to be romantic for the radical left, think Che, think Mandela, think the black panthers, think the IRA (sexy for the Americans)... but now when the lackeys for Anglo-Western hegemony (the BBC and CNN) write or utter "terrorist organisation" they induce images of bearded men in caves across the world (from Finchley Park to the Khyber Pass) with masses of computer screen looking in to the lives of English speaking white people and Israeli's and drooling whilst they send kamikaze recruits to their spiritual liberation. And when the reality comes home to roost, specs of Ricin in a flat above a shop by some scared and hating folk, the media love to play it up - "terrorist link smashed". The right now find exciting exotic romance in terrorist organisations. For the left terrorist organisation has very little meaning. It is unfair to call the British and American administration terrorists, but it is also unfair not to call them terrorists. [Note 2: The Ricin plot never happened. There was no ricin - it was a big media and political hoax. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Green_ricin_plot.]

The next reason: weapons of mass destruction (WMD)… and furthermore (and this is the really vital bit) the high propensity to use them. (Remember, it is OK to have WMD, we, the Brits, have them remember, but we would not use them to destabilise world peace, would we Tony?) Well Saddam is a tyrant, no-one disagrees, but he’s been one very well behaved tyrant. In the face of extreme adversity (I'd say bombs a-falling on your head is a bit more offensive than a piddly little internal uprising), he is acting very responsibly not to let his hordes of WMD loose. They (our troops) are still looking for the WMD, I hear. [Note 3: Back then there was a small likelihood that WMD was still going to be found.]

Then we were told that there was a moral case for entering Iraq. Trust us, I heard. Trust us like you trusted us with Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Somalia, we had good intentions. Some people it seems did trust them. They obviously forget the farce that the US got embroiled in with Venezuela about 6 months ago. The US were shocked sideways when Chavez, a socialist general, won an election becoming president of that small and insignificant country (it is only the 6th biggest oil producer in the world). The US declared hostile relations with Chavez and upped its support for rightwing politicians. Was it because the elections were a fraud? (Yes, you guessed it; Chavez was elected with a greater majority than Bush.) Was it because Chavez was a brutal leader crushing his opposition? (In fact, Chavez, the first indigenous leader of Venezuela, has limited the powers of the police – notoriously gun toting cowboys who ran amok in the big cities – unique in our era of illiberal anti-terrorists bills.) Or was it because Chavez nationalized the oil industry and began trading Venezuela’s oil by bartering with other developing countries? I don’t know, but may be, the US felt a kick to its international economic sovereignty on two fronts. First, American companies lost profitable contracts. Second, the oil was not being traded on the traditional market; it was not being traded in dollars. Or maybe it was because Venezuela became friendly with Cuba, the Columbian dissidents and dare I say it Iraq?

So when there was a coup led by the big businesses and it was successful, the US rushed in to declare this coup as legitimate without a second thought! “Chile and Pinochet all over again”, I hear you cry, but you are wrong. It was the shortest coup ever. Without infrastructure and popular backing the US backed right-wing revolutionaries failed and Chavez was reinstated and the US has more egg on its face than Baghdad battery chickens. (Source: BBC – Newsnight May 13, 2002– OK so the Beeb aren’t all that bad.)

Kenneth Clarke, a man who was against the war, on BBC 1’s “This Week” TV programme, said he was convinced that the US went in to Iraq for sincere reasons, I laughed, or may be I cried, and thought that British American Tobacco trades in Burma for sincere reasons.

So why did we go in? Beats me. The argument for oil is a strong one. However, I heard many times that if the US wanted to have some of Iraq’s oil it could – after all she used to be friends with Saddam. These tend to be (generally pro-war Labourites and the rabble of the Tory party) the same people who deride the protest movement for having “no understanding of the complexity of international relations”. I’ll let you finish this paragraph for yourself. …In fact no I won’t. The gall of the pro-war vigilantes to at once attempt to moralise the argument (utterly unconvincingly, type “US hypocrisy” in Google and press “I’m feeling lucky” and then realise some bugger in the world certainly isn’t) and then patronise the anti-war movement, with simplistic arguments about international relations.

But oil may still be nothing to do with it, I’m happy to accept that. In this atomic cloud my eyes are watering and I cannot see clearly. The atomic cloud stretches everywhere. So perhaps the US administration was also blinded and they had no logical reason for going to war? Perhaps the decision was built around an irrational force such as racism? Wolfowitz talks about hopping around the Middle East leaving democracies in the US’s wake. I imagine an adolescent soldier convinced of this nonsense (CNN reports that 42% of the American public believe that Saddam is directly responsible for 9/11) scrawling on his Syria/Iran bound 5000lb missile “Kiss my explosive ass and love the sweet smell of democracy in the morning!”

Racism and stereotyping are immensely powerful. They prevent people communicating on an equal level, which leads to ending communication all together, which leads to unnecessary and false barriers being created and next thing you know you are occupying another people’s territory shooting women and children because you fear they may be a kamikaze nut, but shit, they were just driving the car a bit fast.

But may be I’m wrong. May be there is no racism at all. After all, the administrations of America have been friends with, supported and traded massively with the administrations of the Middle East. At the expense of Arabs citizens, America has supported many brutal dictatorships in the Arab world. In fact, may be Bush senior is experiencing pangs of guilt about his past record. Perhaps he sits with Bush-junior on his knee and says “we’ve done some bad things to the Arab people. We need to make amends. We have the power to make amends.” Bush junior (who remember was not interested in international politics when he forced his way into power asks “why does it have to be us?”. Daddy responds “because these people only understand military force, and no-one has the force that we have”.

I have still failed to understand the reason for this war. But wait a minute; was it even a war at all? Or is this what (post)modern war is? There is no question of who will win before the war, there are not any major battles and there is no stated believable aim to the war…

The rich and traditional English speaking white world have hated post-modernism. It’s virtually a dirty word in the US and the UK. Mention Derrida and they’ll deride, mention Foucault and they’ll run screaming the “Fuck the French!” But they’ve created the post-modern war. Baudrillard, in a typically French gesture, said the first gulf war was a virtual war. This is even more relevant this time. War is not even the right word.

When the colonising countries of Europe went into Africa, Asia and the Americas these were not called wars. They “went in” and took the land – through genocide, through slavery, through bribery, through religion, justified by racism and greed. Sometimes there was opposition to the colonial trajectory. These were not called wars. They were massacres. Guns versus guile. Guns win (in the short term). They were not called wars because they were not wars.

The attack on Iraq is not completely similar to the brutality of colonialism, but as an act of historic cowardice it resembles it closely. Spend twelve years to bring a country to a standstill, using the UN as your foil, and then when the military might has completely dissipated, attack! In the words of Arundhati Roy:

“Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don’t think so. It’s more like Operation Let’s Run a Race but First Let Me Break Your Knees.” (Guardian, April 2, 2003)

This is nothing like a war. It is more like police going in to the “local rogue’s” flat in an ex-mining sprawling estate with 70% unemployment and where the playground looks like Beirut. The rogue puts up a chase but the police are waiting in the garden. The rogue manages to land a couple of punches on a copper’s kidney. But the games up. In fact there wasn’t ever a game. He’s arrested, taken away and temporarily order can be reinstated. Perhaps they put a “nice family” in the vacated flat and hope that this family will bring some good vibes to the estate? (And the police will install CCTV everywhere and make sure the people on this estate behave well.)

And so the US will place a “nice guy” in the top job in Iraq. And there will be a military presence placing an imperial order on Iraq for some time. The UN will be brought in to do the chores (health, education, food and water). But in Iraq, like the estate, there will be new rogues and new problems and, like the estate, the police/army will get fed up and leave them to rot, especially if the media and politicians forget about them… [Note 4: Back then I believed that we would be out and forgetting Iraq much quicker. But then I never imagined it would become such a hellhole.]

So the US and the UK did something (for it wasn’t a war) for no obvious reason. Thousands of people died. [Note 6: Hundreds of thousands.] The future hope however comes in the knowledge that millions of people participated in confronting the incoherent might of the single remaining super-power. Millions of people became more informed and more involved in politics of global peace, human rights, freedom and equality. [Note 7: As the British went on to vote Blair again this hope has become another false dawn. The hope is in fact in the US where an opposition to Bush is real and will lead to electoral change.]

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Postscript – 07 August 2007

I publish this essay as Brown leads the British Government with new vigour, but has illustrated no direction for the region. Bush continues to be at the helm of the "evil empire", but is now a lame duck. So where do we go? Where now? Do we rip ourselves apart with guilt?

How about forgetting instead? The arguments in this essay are largely forgotten. But history won’t forget this neo-imperialistic horrific adventure. But remember one thing, this war had no liberal basis to it and cannot be confused with humanitarian intervention.