People
often look back in history for help when they are trying to make sense
of current problems. In recent weeks politicians have been comparing
the situation in Iraq with other events in history. Important figures
in the unfolding drama have been compared to past political leaders.
Saddam Hussein has been described as a new Adolf Hitler and Tony Blair
has been portrayed as acting like Winston Churchill.
(1)
In this activity you are going to be given the chance to compare Tony
Blair with figures from the past. Read the material and follow the
links. Then explain if you think Tony Blair is more like Winston Churchill,
Anthony Eden or Ramsay MacDonald.
(2)
Use the Internet to write a biography of Tony Blair. Is there any
other character in history that Tony Blair resembles?
Iraq
Saddam
Hussein
Ba'ath
Party
Tony
Blair as Winston Churchill
In
the 1930s Winston Churchill constantly complained about the behaviour
of Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany. He argued that it was necessary
for the rest of the world to join together to remove Hitler from power.
Some politicians believe that Saddam Hussein is as bad as Adolf Hitler.
Therefore, by trying to persuade the rest of the world to join with
him to remove Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair is acting like Winston Churchill
in 1939.
arguments
for:
Saddam
Hussein is like Adolf Hitler because he has invaded neighbouring countries,
gassed his political enemies and tortured his own people.
Tony
Blair, like Winston Churchill, is trying to form an international
coalition against a dangerous tyrant.
arguments
against:
Adolf
Hitler posed a far greater threat to the world than Saddam Hussein.
In his book, Mein Kamp, published in 1925, he argued "The
external security of a people in largely determined by the size of
its territory." If he won power Hitler promised to occupy neighbouring
land so that would provide protection and lebensraum (living space)
for the German people. Once he gained power Hitler he moved his armed
forces across international borders three times in three years: Rhineland
(March 1936), Austria (March, 1938) and Czechoslovakia (October, 1938).
Saddam
Hussein does not pose the same military threat as Adolf Hitler. In
1938 Germany had one of the most powerful armed forces in the world.
Iraq armed forces are very poor and had great difficulty defeating
its neighbour Iran in the war fought between 1980 and 1988.
Websites
Winston
Churchill
Adolf
Hitler
Mein
Kampf
Rhineland
Anschluss
Czechoslovakia
Lebensraum
Poland
Tony
Blair as Anthony Eden
On
26th July 1956 President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced he intended
to nationalize the Suez Canal. Anthony Eden, the
British prime minister, feared that Nasser intended to form an Arab
Alliance that would cut off oil supplies to the rest of the world.
Secret negotiations took place between Britain,
France and Israel and it was agreed to make a joint attack on Egypt.
It is therefore argued that by trying to overthrow
Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair is attempting to maintain oil supplies
to the rest of the world.
arguments
for:
Iraq has
the second largest oil reserves in the world.
Saddam
Hussein, like Gamal Abdel Nasser, realizes that the
industrialized world needs that oil. Anthony Eden, like Tony
Blair, believed that the best way to stop the cutting of oil supplies
was by taking pre-emptive action. That the occupation of Iraq will
enable Britain and its allies to take control of the country's oil.
Anthony Eden, like Tony Blair, also claimed that the attack was an
attempt to remove a dangerous dictator.
Arguments
against:
Tony Blair
is attempting to persuade the United Nations to support his attack
on Iraq. Anthony Eden took action without consulting the United Nations.
Gamal
Abdel Nasser took
control of the Suez Canal but that was located in his own country.
He did not plan to use weapons of mass destruction against the rest
of the world.
Websites
Gamal
Abdel Nasser
Anthony
Eden
Suez
Canal
Egypt
Israel
United
Nations
John
Foster Dulles
Dwight
Eisenhower
Tony
Blair as Ramsay MacDonald
In
1929
Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour Party won the 1929 General Election.
The election coincided with an economic depression and MacDonald was
faced with the problem of growing unemployment. MacDonald asked Sir
George May, to form a committee to look into Britain's economic problems.
When the May Committee produced its report in July, 1931, it suggested
that the government should reduce its expenditure by £97,000,000,
including a £67,000,000 cut in unemployment benefits. MacDonald,
and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, accepted the
report but when the matter was discussed by the Cabinet, the majority
voted against the measures suggested by Sir George May. As he did
not have the support of his party, MacDonald formed a coalition government
that included Conservative and Liberal leaders.
Arguments
for:
Ramsay
MacDonald lost the support of his own party and had to rely on the
votes of Conservative MPs to retain power. Tony Blair is currently
having to rely on the support of the Conservative Party to win motions
debated in the House of Commons on the Iraq Crisis.
Arguments
against:
Ramsay
MacDonald lost the support of his own party in the House of Commons
but a large number of people in the country agreed with him. In the
General Election held in 1931 a total of 556 pro-National Government
MPs won seats in the House of Commons, whereas only 46 Labour candidates
were elected. All the opinion polls suggest that the British public
do not support Tony Blair's policy on the Iraq Crisis
Websites
James
Ramsay MacDonald
1929
General Election
Philip
Snowden
Jimmy
Thomas
1931
General Election
SchoolHistory
Quiz on Iraq
(1)
Melanie Phillips, Daily
Mail (29th July, 2002)
The lazy haze of summer may finally have descended, but
in the distance the drumbeat of war grows ever more insistent.
According to weekend reports,
Tony Blair has told President George Bush that Britain will support
a war against Iraq, while British military planners are preparing
for hostilities that might start sooner than has been thought.
Such action might split
not just the Labour party but Britain itself down the middle. For
a rampant and ugly anti-Americanism is being allowed to make the British
political weather.
This prejudice can only
be countered if Blair does what he has so far been reluctant to do
and properly makes the case for war to Parliament. For it is Parliament
where the national consensus is forged.
Real concerns are being
expressed about action against Iraq, which the Prime Minister must
lay to rest. For these claims are all eminently implausible, wrong
and defeatable.
Take the argument mounted
by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that war against
Iraq is morally permissible only if backed by the UN. At best, this
assertion is dangerously naïve; at worst, morally blind.
On December 3 1982, a UN
resolution which was opposed by the US and the UK but supported by
a number of European countries proclaimed the legitimacy of resistance
against foreign occupations ‘by all available means including
armed struggle’ – a euphemism for terrorism.
The UN’s human rights
commission consists of some of the most flagrant abusers of human
rights in the world: Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria. Syria,
indeed, is now a member of the UN security council, an incredible
development considering that Syria is a principal state sponsor of
terrorism.
The UN has deplored the
fact that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights
abuses and terrorism. It has not deplored the worldwide assaults on
synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Jewish individuals overwhelmingly
promulgated by Muslims.
It has not deplored the
torrent of anti-Jewish hatred and medieval blood libels pouring out
of Muslim countries, and their incitement to mass murder against Israelis
and Jews. Instead, it has repeatedly castigated Israel for seeking
to defend itself against terror, and sponsored, moreover, the obscene
‘anti-racist’ Durban conference which turned into a disgusting
carnival of anti-Jewish vilification.
(2)
Robert Kagan, Washington
Post (31st January, 2003)
To appreciate fully the unparalleled political and moral courage of
Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and the other six European leaders who
called for solidarity with the United States in a statement published
in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, you really have to live in Europe
and feel the mood out here. Never mind that Blair, Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi,
et al. planted themselves at the side of President Bush in the coming
confrontation with Iraq - at a time when polls in Britain, Spain,
Italy and elsewhere around Europe show opposition to American policy
running at 70 percent or higher. And never mind that they insisted
America's war on terrorism must be Europe's war, too - at a time when,
as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana recently conceded, most Europeans
do not feel the slightest bit threatened by international terrorism
and, indeed, fear Bush more than they fear Osama bin Laden.
This was nothing compared
with the unabashed pro-Americanism of their declaration. The eight
European leaders actually wrote of "American bravery, generosity
and farsightedness" in setting Europe free from Nazism and communism
in the last century and in keeping the peace in Europe for the past
six decades. By using the word "generosity," they even implied
that Europeans might now owe the United States a little generosity
in return. Such sentiments are pure heresy these days in Europe, where
anti-Americanism has reached a fevered intensity. I live in Brussels,
famed "capital of Europe," and have traveled across the
continent over the past year, speaking with intellectuals, journalists,
foreign policy analysts and government officials at the endless merry-go-round
of highbrow European conferences. The settings couldn't be nicer;
the food and wine couldn't be better; the conversations couldn't be
more polite. And the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States
couldn't be thicker.
In Europe, this paranoid,
conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon.
It's the mainstream view. When Gerhard Schroeder campaigns on an anti-American
platform in Germany, he's not just "mobilizing his base"
or reaching out to fringe Greens and Socialists. He's talking to the
man and woman on the street, left, right and center. When Jacques
Chirac and Dominique de Villepin publicly humiliate Colin Powell,
they're playing to the gallery. The "European street" is
more anti-American than ever before. Even in the 1960s at the height
of the anti-Vietnam War protests or in the early 1980s at the height
of the "nuclear freeze" movement, European anti-Americanism
was always more than counterbalanced by European anti-communism. Most
Europeans believed the real problem was the Red Army and Soviet totalitarianism,
not Nixon or Reagan, and the United States, whatever its flaws, was
defending them from those twin evils. When Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher
and even Francois Mitterrand stood with Reagan in the waning years
of the Cold War, theirs was a courageous and vitally important but
not a politically risky stand.
(3)
Ian Kershaw, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is among those who have looked
to the mistakes of the past to justify the present policy against
Iraq. It would be repeating the disastrous appeasement policy of the
1930s, it is said, if we were not now to act against Saddam Hussain.
But this is no more than a spin on history. The parallels are as good
as non-existent.
The US
was then isolationist, largely uninterested in Europe. Stalinist Russia
was isolated for other reasons. Britain had to take the concerns of
a world empire into account. France was petrified about the growing
danger on the other side of the Rhine. The threat was indeed in the
very heart of Europe, and unmistakably real. Britain's very existence
was at stake. No weapons inspectors were needed to see whether Hitler
was building "weapons of mass destruction". Everybody knew
he was doing this illegally even before he openly announced it. He
then used military might and bullying tactics to force changes to
state borders within Europe. The annexation of what was left of Czechoslovakia
in 1939, without any pretext of uniting ethnic Germans, finally convinced
the government to take a stand, at the risk of a war they did not
want.
Today, there is no self-evident
threat from Iraq. There is no invasion of a sovereign territory (as
in 1991) to repulse. We have to take it on trust that Saddam is building
weapons of mass destruction. Even if he has them, he is unlikely to
use them against Britain or America - seemingly bent on war and towing
Britain in its slipstream.
(4)
Andrew Roberts, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
This is not another Suez crisis, for the obvious and straightforward
reasons that the west is not today trying to recapture anything for
itself, that Egypt posed no military threat to the Nato allies in
1956 and that the British government is pursuing its ends openly through
the UN, at least initially, rather than through collusion. Moreover,
the people of Egypt were fully in support of Nasser, whereas the moment
a US-led invasion of Iraq is successful, the full extent of the Iraqi
people's fear and hatred of Saddam will immediately become evident.
No, the
situation is far closer to the late 1930s, when a fascist dictator
stealthily acquired weapons of mass destruction - the Luftwaffe's
bombing arm - and attempted to acquire nuclear weapons, too. That
totalitarian dictator later invaded his neighbour (as Saddam did),
gassed his political and racial enemies (as Saddam has) and brutalized
and tortured his own people (as Saddam does.) The League of Nations,
on the morning after Poland was invaded, had on its urgent agenda
the standardization of European railway gauges. Today's United Nations
is fast shaping up to be equally ineffectual.
(5)
Richard
Evans, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
History never repeats itself, so anyone looking for parallels between
the present situation and past events is likely to be disappointed.
Not that there has been any shortage of such parallels drawn in the
past few weeks by politicians seeking to encourage their supporters
or discredit their opponents. But all of them are specious in one
way or another.
It is easy
enough to brand the opponents of an invasion of Iraq as "appeasers",
but this is another specious parallel with the past. Britain and France
did not declare war on Germany in 1939 because Hitler was maltreating
his own people, but because Hitler invaded Poland, and because his
invasion of Poland followed his invasion of Czechoslovakia earlier
the same year. Even so, the allies did not invade Germany in 1939.
Instead, it was Hitler who ended the "phoney war" in 1940
by invading France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway.
(6)
Avi Shlaim, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
Eden thought that he was applying the lessons of the 1930s in dealing
with Gamal Abdel Nasser and the result was a fiasco that brought his
own career crashing down. Eden demonized Nasser, personalized the
issues, and went to the length of colluding with France and Israel
with the aim of knocking Nasser off his perch. The chiefs of staff
had deep misgivings about the war. One senior officer exclaimed: "The
prime minister has gone bananas. He has ordered us to attack Egypt!"
Britain attacked Egypt without the authority of the UN and it was
roundly condemned for its aggression.
(7)
Tony
Blair, interviewed by Jackie Ashley of The
Guardian (February)
He doesn't want to
make glib comparisons with the 1930s, but suggests that despite many
obvious differences, there are some similarities.
One is that "although
with hindsight the decision that this was a real threat we had to
confront was obvious, at the time it wasn't so obvious".
"A majority of decent
and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler
and that those who did were war-mongers. When people decided not to
confront fascism, they were doing the popular thing, they were doing
it for good reasons, and they were good people ... but they made the
wrong decision."
Hitler's appeasers, he
suggests, were also saying, like today's anti-war protesters: "Well
look, this is ridiculous. OK, this is a long way from us, why on earth
should we be involved in it."
Yet, history had proved
them wrong, and clearly, in this case too, Mr Blair believes history
will judge him right.
(8)
Kenneth Morgan, historian, The
Guardian (1st March, 2003)
As a historian, I
worry about the crude use of history, particularly our old friend
the 1930s. Time and again we hear that this crisis is the 1930s come
again - what nonsense. Saddam is not another Hitler. Where is his
Mein Kampf? Where is his dream of universal conquest? George Bush
is certainly no Churchill; it would be a calumny on the reputation
of that great man to suggest it. It is a facile argument, and it disturbs
me that Downing Street produces it, all the more because I taught
one or two of them. My efforts were clearly in vain.
Tony Blair is a brave man
who prides himself on being another Churchill. He must be wary of
being another Ramsay MacDonald. This is said to be a listening government;
one that listens to the people. They should listen - not to transatlantic
ideologues but to the wisdom, humanity and decency of the British
people.
(9)
Robert Kagan, Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New
World Order (2003)
The Iraq crisis has
cast transatlantic differences in an especially harsh light, but the
gulf had been opening for some time. After the cold war, Europeans
and Americans no longer share a common view of the world. On the all-important
question of power - the utility of power, the morality of power -
they have parted ways. Europeans believe they are moving beyond power
into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation
and cooperation. Europe itself has entered a post-historical paradise,
the realisation of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace. The US, meanwhile,
remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian
world where international rules are unreliable and where security
and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession
and use of military might.
Europe's relatively pacific
strategic culture is the product of its relative weakness in military
terms, but it is also the product of its profound and admirable aspiration
to escape its war-like past. Who knows the dangers of Machtpolitik
better than a French or German or British citizen? The EU is a monument
to Europe's rejection of the old power politics. As the British diplomat
and senior EU official Robert Cooper has noted, Europe today lives
in a "postmodern system" that does not rest on a balance
of power but on "the rejection of force" and on "self-enforced
rules of behaviour". Raison d'état has been "replaced
by a moral consciousness". The new Europe has succeeded not by
balancing power but by transcending power. And now Europeans have
become evangelists for their "postmodern" gospel of international
relations. The application of the European miracle to the rest of
the world has become Europe's new mission civilisatrice. If Germany
can be tamed through gentle rapprochement, why not Iraq?
This has put Europeans
and Americans on a collision course. Americans have not lived the
European miracle. They have no experience of promoting ideals and
order successfully without power. Their memory of the past 60 years
is of a world saved from Nazism chiefly by American power and of a
cold war struggle that was eventually won by strength and determination,
not by the spontaneous triumph of "moral consciousness".
As good children of the Enlightenment, Americans believe in human
perfectibility. But Americans from Donald Rumsfeld to Colin Powell
to Madeleine Albright also believe that global security and a liberal
order depend on the US - that "indispensable nation" - wielding
its power in the dangerous, Hobbesian world that still flourishes,
at least outside Europe. Especially after September 11, most Americans
remember Munich, not Maastricht.
Can the gap be bridged
or at least narrowed? Tony Blair has long believed it can, and he
is probably the only person on either side of the Atlantic with a
strategy for bringing the one-time transatlantic partners back on
to common ground.
The theoretical basis for
Blair's approach to Europe has been set forth most powerfully by Robert
Cooper, once a top official in the Foreign Office. A year ago, Cooper
wrote that although "within the postmodern world [ie, today's
Europe], there are no security threats in the traditional sense,"
nevertheless, throughout the rest of the world - what Cooper calls
the "modern and pre-modern zones" - threats abound.
If the postmodern world
does not protect itself, it can be destroyed. But how does Europe
protect itself without discarding the very ideals and principles that
undergird its pacific system? "The challenge to the postmodern
world," Cooper has argued, "is to get used to the idea of
double standards." Among themselves, Europeans may "operate
on the basis of laws and open cooperative security." But when
dealing with the world outside Europe, "we need to revert to
the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, preemptive attack,
deception, whatever is necessary". This is Cooper's principle
for safeguarding society: "Among ourselves, we keep the law,
but when operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the
jungle."
Cooper's notion of an international
double standard for power would seem to lie at the heart of Blair's
global strategy. On the one hand, he has tried to lead Britain into
the rule-based, Kantian world of the EU. And he has pursed the European
interest in trying to convince the US, which stands outside that Kantian
world, to respect its norms. But Blair has also tried to lead Europe
back out into the Hobbesian world, where military power remains a
key feature of international relations.
(10)
David Boll, The
Guardian (3rd March, 2003)
When it is pointed
out that Tony Blair won the commons vote on Iraq, it is worth remembering
that Chamberlain won the vote in May 1940 in consequence of which
he resigned as prime minister, making way for Churchill. In a vote,
a prime minister can call upon the constitutionally established loyalty
of those who hold office under him, as well as that of normal party
members. What he cannot legitimately do is lead a deeply divided Commons
and country in war, as Chamberlain knew perfectly well.
(11)
Judy Dawson, The
Guardian (3rd March, 2003)
While I agree with
Kenneth O Morgan's disapproval of the Bush world view, and share his
concerns about civilian deaths in a war with Iraq, I think it's unfair
to insinuate that Blair is merely spinning: the PM clearly believes
passionately in the moral position of his case.
I would also question Morgan's
own "crude use of history" to support his position. The
analogy that can be made is not with September 1939 but September
1938, when Chamberlain accepted Mussolini's tempting suggestion to
prevent war by agreeing to the Munich conference, and returned home
to popular acclaim after betraying Czechoslovakia. Like Hitler, Saddam
is a tyrant - he has already killed over a million.
International relations
are a messy business, motives often mixed, bed-fellows often strange.
Had there been no build-up of force, would inspectors be in Iraq now?
There are sound moral arguments on both sides. But Blair was right
over Kosovo, Sierre Leone and ousting the Taliban: I'm inclined to
trust him on Iraq too.
(12)
Dr. Andrew Newby, The
Guardian (3rd March, 2003)
He may be displaying
increasing signs of megalomania, but Tony Blair showed that he far
from stupid in his comment that "history will be my judge".
It is also, however, far from a brave statement. It may be a cliché
that "history is written by the winners", but it is nonetheless
accurate - witness how few critical accounts of recent campaigns (Afghanistan,
Kosovo, Iraq) are allowed to penetrate the public consciousness. Those
who do deconstruct the official versions of events, Chomsky, Pilger
and the like, are usually treated with suspicion, or downright hostility.
Given that the prevailing images of leaders such as Cromwell and Churchill
are overwhelmingly positive even to this day, Blair can be sure that
there will be enough historians ready to back him up, either through
ideology or a desire for a knighthood, to ensure that Judge History
passes a favourable verdict.
(13)
Roger Squires, The
Guardian (3rd March, 2003)
Our prime minister
thinks he is Churchill, bravely lining up with the Republican gang
that has hijacked the world's only superpower to make pre-emptive
strikes on Iraq. Most of us see in Blair rather the misguided resolve
of an Anthony Eden determined to sort out a rogue Arab state in a
coalition of the willing (Israelis and French, as it happened). If
he wishes to be Churchillian, he should rather defy that aggressive
power whose subversion of democracy and respect for international
institutions has indeed some resemblance to that of Hitler.
(14)
Alan Dockree, The
Guardian (3rd March, 2003)
History will be a
poor judge of Tony Blair's action because it will show at most only
half the story, probably less. We shall probably never know how many
Iraqis are killed, injured, bereaved or made homeless. We shall definitely
never know what would have happened if we had not gone to war. Blair's
opinion is clearly that things would have been worse in the long run,
but that will never be proved right. Even if they would, are we really
entitled to decide that the lives of thousands of Iraqi citizens are
worth sacrificing to make us feel more safe? Every one of us is entitled
to decide that a cause is so important that we should sacrifice our
lives for it, but who are we to make that decision on behalf of others?
It's that verb again: I am firm, you are obstinate, he is expendable.
(15)
Martin Amis, The
Guardian (4th March, 2003)
Tony Blair must have
known that war was inevitable more than a year ago, when Bush started
talking, with vulgar levity, of "taking Saddam out". In
the past Blair has been consistently tough on the Iraq question, just
as France has been consistently, and venally, lenient. More generally,
perhaps, he feels that British interests are better served by continuing
to ride on the American elephant, even as it trumpets its emancipation
from the influence of Europe; and that the total isolation of Washington
would only heat Bush's internal brew of insecurity and messianism.
There are two rules of
war that have not yet been invalidated by the new world order. The
first rule is that the belligerent nation must be fairly sure that
its actions will make things better; the second rule is that the belligerent
nation must be more or less certain that its actions won't make things
worse. America could perhaps claim to be satisfying the first rule
(while admitting that the improvement may be only local and short
term). It cannot begin to satisfy the second.
We contemplate a kaleidoscope
of terrible eventualities: a WMD attack on Israel, and a WMD response
(conceivably nuclear); civil war in Iraq. and elsewhere, together
with all manner of humanitarian disasters; fundamentalist revolutions
in Egypt and Jordan; and, ineluctably, an additional generation of
terror from militant Islam. Meanwhile, common sense calmly states
that an expanded version of the present arrangement (inspectors, monitors,
full exposure to world opinion) is sufficient to contain and emasculate
Saddam until pressure builds for a coup; and that the "war on
terror" can start only with the dismantling of the settlements
in the territories occupied by Israel.
(16)
Mark Curtis, The
Guardian (6th March, 2003)
From 1965-90, Britain
cast 27 vetoes in the UN security council, mainly in support of the
racist regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa. This was twice the number
cast by the Soviet Union. Britain has always blocked the UN acting
when it wants to, while pledging its undying support for it when it
needs it. Tony Blair is merely the current proponent of the deceit.
(17)
Richard Dawkins, The
Guardian (6th March, 2003)
The distorting mirror
of Munich and appeasement is held up with irritating regularity George
Bush is said to admire Churchill, but the comparison is vain. Bush's
zig-zagging around the US on September 11th 2001 has been defended,
somewhat lamely, against the obvious charges of cowardice and panic.
Well, maybe. But can you imagine Churchill doing it?
Turn it round. Who is the
petulant bully, the "bloodthirsty guttersnipe" today? On
February 16, the Observer reported that the Pentagon had been ordered
by Donald Rumsfeld to impose sanctions to punish Germany for leading
international opposition to a war against Iraq. "We are doing
this for one reason only: to harm the German economy." Yesterday
you quoted Colin Powell as warning that time is running out: "Either
the international community's will has meaning or does not have meaning."
One might have hoped that the will of the international community
would mean whatever emerges from the deliberations of the UN. Apparently
it means the unilateral will of the current US government. Most chilling
of all, you report that Bush himself has warned Chirac "he will
neither forgive nor forget if France continues to oppose the resolution".
Where should we look for
our Chamberlain? Jack Straw warns that Washington would abandon the
UN and Nato if Europe refuses to fall into line: "What I say
to France and Germany and all my other EU colleagues is take care,
because just as America helps to define and influence our politics,
so what we do in Europe helps to define and influence American politics
... And we will reap a whirlwind if we push the Americans into a unilateralist
position in which they are the centre of this unipolar world."
If that is not appeasement, I'd like to know what you call it.
(18)
Richard Perle, speech in New York on Iraq (13th February, 2003)
It is to the credit
of Prime Minister Blair that despite that antiwar sentiment, he is
leading in the direction that he believes is right for his country,
and this president is leading the United States in the direction that
he believes is right for this country. The lesson of history is if
leaders don't lead and if they simply follow sentiment, terrible mistakes
can be made. The sentiment in the United Kingdom before the last war
was so hostile to military action that it even became hostile to military
preparations and we saw the result of that. So I make no apology for
the fact that public opinion is not solidly behind the thinking of
the American president or the British Prime Minister, or (Prime Minister
of Italy, Silvio) Berlusconi or (Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria)
Aznar and others. There is leadership in Europe and there is a failure
of leadership in Europe, if I could put it that way.
(19)
Joint letter to The
Guardian by Prof Ulf Bernitz, Dr Nicolas Espejo-Yaksic, Agnes
Hurwitz, Prof Vaughan Lowe, Dr Ben Saul, Dr Katja Ziegler, Prof James
Crawford, Dr Susan Marks, Dr Roger O'Keefe, Prof Christine Chinkin,
Dr Gerry Simpson, Deborah Cass, Dr Matthew Craven, Prof Philippe Sands
and Prof Pierre-Marie Dupuy (7th March, 2003)
The UN charter outlaws
the use of force with only two exceptions: individual or collective
self-defence in response to an armed attack and action authorised
by the security council as a collective response to a threat to the
peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. There are currently
no grounds for a claim to use such force in self-defence. The doctrine
of pre-emptive self-defence against an attack that might arise at
some hypothetical future time has no basis in international law. Neither
security council resolution 1441 nor any prior resolution authorises
the proposed use of force in the present circumstances.
Before military action
can lawfully be undertaken against Iraq, the security council must
have indicated its clearly expressed assent. It has not yet done so.
A vetoed resolution could provide no such assent. The prime minister's
assertion that in certain circumstances a veto becomes "unreasonable"
and may be disregarded has no basis in international law. The UK has
used its security council veto on 32 occasions since 1945. Any attempt
to disregard these votes on the ground that they were "unreasonable"
would have been deplored as an unacceptable infringement of the UK's
right to exercise a veto under UN charter article 27.
A decision to undertake
military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation
will seriously undermine the international rule of law. Of course,
even with that authorisation, serious questions would remain. A lawful
war is not necessarily a just, prudent or humanitarian war.
(20)
Gary Younge, The
Guardian (10th March, 2003)
He could have chosen
anything. With such a huge majority and so little coherent opposition
in parliament, there have been no end of issues on which Tony Blair
might have taken a moral stance and shown leadership against either
popular opinion or powerful vested interests over the past six years.
He might have faced down
the tabloids and made a stand against the scapegoating of asylum seekers,
or resisted the pressure from the markets and raised taxes to fund
increased investment in public services.
But the issue on which
he chose to set himself against the wishes of the country and his
party has been international law; if necessary, to embark on military
action to secure cheap oil supplies for the world's wealthiest nation.
It is difficult to find
a nation that supports a US-led war against Iraq, and difficult to
find a nation where people do not think it is inevitable. Every time
we turn on the news it is like watching a juggernaut heading towards
a crowded playground in slow motion. We can see the catastrophe coming,
but feel powerless to stop it.
Take the "key allies"
with whom Bush will bomb regardless. Only 39% of Americans, 22% of
Australians, 15% of Italians and Britons, 13% of Bulgarians and 2%
of Spaniards back a war without UN approval. So much for the "coalition
of the willing".
(21)
Martin Peter, Die Presse, Austrian newspaper (8th March, 2002)
Seventy-six per cent
of Britons say a UN mandate is necessary. So Mr Blair's fate may be
decided in the African bush next week and not in local elections in
2005. That is, if security council member Cameroon is awkward about
the war plans. If Britain goes it alone with the US then many of those
party members who allowed Mr blair a moderate influence on Mr Blair
a moderate influence on Mr Bush will turn away from him.
Not since the protests
against Margaret Thatcher's poll tax in 1988 has such indignation
over prime ministerial arrogance been felt by all levels of society.
Mr Blair would not be the first war victim in British history: Herbert
Asquith fell during the First World War, Neville Chamberlain's appeasement
of Hitler proved his undoing and Anthony Eden was defeated during
the Suez Crisis.
(22)
New York Daily News (9th March, 2003)
Mr. Blair's Britain
is an ally in the truest sense of the word. Not a French ally, gone
when the going gets tough. Not a Turkish ally, in for the best deal,
political and economic. Britain is there for Ameriva despite the pressures,
despite the political risks. Because the threat is real. President
Saddam must be disarmed. And the world, whether it admits it or not,
is depending on that happening. Depending on that happening. Depending
on two loyal friends to make it happen.
(23)
Rupert
Murdoch owns more than
175 newspapers and magazines on three continents. He publishes 40
million newspapers a week and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain,
Australia and New Zealand. In an interview published in the
Sydney Daily Telegraph in March, 2003, he explained why his
175 editors around the
world were backing the war with Iraq.
We can't back down
now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam...
I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he
is going to go on with it... I think Tony (Blair) is being extraordinarily
courageous and strong... It's not easy to do that living in a party
which is largely composed of people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism
and are sort of pacifist. But he's shown great guts as he did, I think,
in Kosovo and various problems in the old Yugoslavia.
The greatest thing to come
out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil.
That's bigger than any tax cut in any country. Once it (the Iraq War)
is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which
will be a bigger stimulus than anything else.
(24)
Melanie Phillips, Daily
Mail (10th March. 2003)
If the Security Council
fails to agree on a second UN resolution on Iraq, Mr Blair will be
left dangling from the cliff by his fingertips.
This is full of irony.
For Mr Blair is far closer to his rebellious comrades than might be
appreciated. Like them he is a believer in the UN and in the sanctity
of supranational institutions and international law. Far from tamely
poodling along behind President George Bush, he has been trying to
act as a bridge between the US and the appeasers of Europe.
Indeed, Mr Blair himself
is largely to blame for his own entrapment at the hands of the UN,
since it was he and the US Secretary of State Colin Powell who persuaded
President Bush that he had to get the UN on side.
But the truth is that the
UN has long been part of the problem, not the solution. It is not
merely a corrupt bureaucracy that cannot even enforce its own resolutions.
It has also become an accomplice to terror itself: dominated by despotic
or tyrannical regimes, presiding over refugee camps that have turned
into terror factories under its nose, conducting a genocidal anti-Jewish
hate-fest in Durban under the obscene banner of anti-racism.
(25)
Jimmy
Carter, New
York Times (9th March, 2003)
For a war to be just,
it must meet several clearly defined criteria.
(1) The war can be waged
only as a last resort, with all nonviolent opinions exhausted.
(2) The war's weapons must
discriminate between combatants and non-combatants.
(3) Its violence must be
proportional to the injury we have suffered.
(4) The attackers must
have legitimate authority sanctioned by the society they profess to
represent.
(5) The peace it establishes
must be a clear improvement over what exists.
In the case of Iraq, it
is obvious that clear alternatives to war exist. These options - previously
proposed by our own leaders and approved by the UN - were outlined
again by the security council on Friday. But now, with our own national
security not directly threatened and despite the overwhelming opposition
of most people and governments in the world, the US seems determined
to carry out military and diplomatic action that is almost unprecedented
in the history of civilised nations. The first stage of our widely
publicised war plan is to launch 3,000 bombs and missiles on a relatively
defenceless Iraq population within the first few hours of an invasion,
with the purpose of so damaging and demoralising the people that they
will change their obnoxious leader, who will most likely be hidden
and safe during the bombardment.
(26)
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian (12th March, 2003)
The trouble is, the
louder the prime minister stresses his conviction, the more it paradoxically
emphasises the weakness of his position. That crystal certainty is
constantly undermined by daily reminders that his fate and the conduct
of this crisis is not in his hands.
What better example than
yesterday's announcement that every single contract to reconstruct
Iraq will go to US companies? It shocks Europe and the world to the
core that Iraqi oil will pay US companies to repair the damage done
by US bombs. With Halliburton's snout deep in the trough, vice-president
Cheney holding millions of its shares in his blind trust, Britain
was not even considered. Downing Street was left yesterday explaining
lamely that when the bidding notices went out a month ago, only US
companies had US defence department security clearances to qualify.
Yet again, Blair is left alone to explain to the rest of the world
the gross deformities of the Bush brand of capitalism.
In this miasma of conviction,
the prime minister ignores the damage done already, before a soldier's
life is lost. The plunging stock markets, soaring oil price, vanished
US tourists, decimation of pensions, destruction of the UN and the
EU are prices too high to pay. Is it grubby to talk of money? The
costs of the war are already astronomic: Britain could have built
renewable wind and solar energy to make us green and self-sufficient
for ever on the price it has cost us already.
(27)
New York Daily Post (13th March, 2003)
In the spirit of
Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, Blair is a leader willing
to speak the truth in the face of international evil, regardless of
the cost.
(28)
Correlli Barnett, The Guardian (15th March, 2003)
We must not let ourselves
be deceived by Downing Street's false argument that UN resolution
1441 justifies an Anglo-American attack on Iraq without the need for
a further resolution. Last October, Washington originally put forward
a resolution specifying that failure by Saddam Hussein to fulfil UN
demands for his disarmament should be dealt with "by all possible
means" - code for automatic use of armed force. This was totally
rejected by France, Russia and China. In November, after six weeks
of haggling, the present resolution 1441 was passed, stating that
a material breach by Iraq would entail "serious consequences"
- not code for automatic war. Moreover, France, Russia and China,
in accepting resolution 1441, formally stated that they did so only
on the clear understanding that it did not carry with it any automatic
recourse to war without a further security council decision.
Therefore, Bush and Blair's
war will be contrary to resolution 1441. It will also breach the UN
charter itself, which reserves decisions over peace and war to the
security council except in cases of self-defence against attack. But
neither America nor Britain has been attacked, or even threatened
with attack, by Iraq.
Of course, the cold-eyed
warmongers of Bush's Washington don't give a damn about any of this.
But we might have hoped that Tony Blair would have felt some scruples
about embarking on a war which will be illegal, as well as opposed
by a majority of the British nation.
(29)
Robin Cook, statement issued when he resigned as a member of Tony
Blair's government on 17th March, 2003.
I have resigned from
the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour's
foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international
community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply
set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to
us.
I cannot defend a war with
neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the
determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to
secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in
failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of
no importance.
In recent days France has
been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However,
it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany
is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have
we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution.
We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to
military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President
Chirac.
The harsh reality is that
Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any
of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not
Nato. Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such
diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and
the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider
and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History
will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly
to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
Britain is not a superpower.
Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by
multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight
the international partnerships most important to us are weakened.
The European Union is divided. The security council is in stalemate.
Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being
fired.
The threshold for war should
always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians
in the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing
campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that
casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq's
military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the
last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces
are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim
his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that
the war will be over in days.
We cannot base our military
strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify
pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a seri ous threat. Iraq
probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood
sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered
against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological
toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since
the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then
British government built his chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent
that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity
that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And
why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition
to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of
UN inspectors?
I have heard it said that
Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience
is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242 called
on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
We do not express the same
impatience with the persis tent refusal of Israel to comply. What
has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that
if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore
had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops
to action in Iraq.
I believe the prevailing
mood of the British public is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam
Hussein is a brutal dictator. But they are not persuaded he is a clear
and present danger to Britain. They want the inspections to be given
a chance. And they are suspicious that they are being pushed hurriedly
into conflict by a US administration with an agenda of its own. Above
all, they are uneasy at Britain taking part in a military adventure
without a broader international coalition and against the hostility
of many of our traditional allies. It has been a favourite theme of
commentators that the House of Commons has lost its central role in
British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong
than for parliament to stop the commitment of British troops to a
war that has neither international authority nor domestic support.
(30)
Bill Clinton, The
Guardian (18th March, 2003)
The veto threat did
not help the diplomacy. It's too bad, because if a majority of the
security council had adopted the Blair approach, Saddam would have
had no room for further evasion and he still might have disarmed without
invasion and bloodshed. Now, it appears that force will be used to
disarm and depose him.
A s Blair has said, in
war there will be civilian was well as military casualties. There
is, too, as both Britain and America agree, some risk of Saddam using
or transferring his weapons to terrorists. There is as well the possibility
that more angry young Muslims can be recruited to terrorism. But if
we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years
of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons
will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than
will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.
I wish that Russia and
France had supported Blair's resolution. Then, Hans Blix and his inspectors
would have been given more time and supprt for their work. But that's
not where we are. Blair is in a position not of his own making, because
Iraq and other nations were unwilling to follow the logic of 1441.
In the post-cold war world,
America and Britain have been in tough positions before: in 1998,
when others wanted to lift sanctions on Iraq and we said no; in 1999
when we went into Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing. In each case, there
were voices of dissent. But the British-American partnership and the
progress of the world were preserved. Now in another difficult spot,
Blair will have to do what he believes to be right. I trust him to
do that and hope the British people will too.
(31)
Sami Ramadani, a political exile from Iraq, The
Guardian (18th March, 2003)
My wife, who is
Kurdish from Sulaimaniyah, fled Iraqi Kurdistan in the mid-1980s,
risking her life in the process. I am also an exile and cannot go
back to Iraq because of my resistance to Saddam's tyranny.
The Iraqi people need it
much more than Bush and Blair could ever understand. But democracy
for Iraq will not be achieved by bombing and invading the country.
It cannot be trusted to George Bush. The US will not accept a democratic
verdict which is not to its liking in a strategically important country,
possessing the world's second largest oil reserves. They strangled
just such a verdict in Congo in the 1960s and in Chile in the 1970s,
and they are working hard to reverse it in Venezuela today.
In Iraq, the US record
speaks for itself: it backed Saddam's party, the Ba'ath, to capture
power in 1963, murdering thousands of socialists, communists and democrats
of all shades; it backed the Ba'ath party in 1968 when Saddam was
installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran in
1975 to crush the Kurdish nationalist movement; it increased its support
for Saddam in 1979, the year he elevated himself to president, helping
him launch his war of aggression against Iran in 1980; it backed him
throughout the horrific eight years of war (1980 to 1988), in which
a million Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtered, in the full knowledge
that he was using chemical weapons and gassing Kurds and Marsh Arabs;
it encouraged him in 1990 to invade Kuwait when the Arabic-speaking
US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, told him on July 25 1990
that the US had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts" when
she knew that Saddam's forces were only one week away from invading;
it backed him in 1991 when Bush suddenly stopped the war, exactly
24 hours after the start of the great March uprising that engulfed
the south and Iraqi Kurdistan (US aircraft were flying over the scenes
of mass killing as Iraqi helicopter gunships were aiding Saddam's
forces crush the uprising); and it backed him as the "lesser
evil" from March 1991 to September 11 2001 under the umbrella
of murderous sanctions and the policy of "containment".
Then, having caused the
death of about half a million Iraqis, mostly children, through sanctions,
Bush and Blair declare that containment and sanctions are not working
after all. Blair must reconcile his strongly and suddenly found conviction
that war is better than containment with the fact that the US hawks,
now prominent in the Bush administration, have been advocating a war
on Iraq for the past 12 years - not to liberate the Iraqi people,
or to protect the world from weapons of mass destruction, but to impose
US hegemony on a strategically important country. September 11 gave
them their opportunity. Blair's "sincerity", and his sympathy
for the Iraqi people are, alas, nothing but grist to Rumsfeld's mills
of war.
If allowed to run its course,
the Blix programme of inspections would have emboldened the Iraqi
people to challenge Saddam's regime in the knowledge that Saddam would
not be using chemical weapons to crush future uprisings. This would
have been particularly likely if the inspections and monitoring regime
had been combined with strict military and diplomatic sanctions, while
lifting the economic sanctions, which have not only caused so much
death and pain for the people but also strengthened Saddam's hand
against them. If all this had been coupled with an international campaign
to aid the Iraqi people to remove Saddam and establish democracy,
we are confident that they would have succeeded; their past heroic
struggles were always hampered by US, wider western and Soviet backing
for Saddam's regime.
The acceleration of war
plans coincided with Blix's announcement of active Iraqi cooperation
and his demands for a few months to complete his work. The US administration
was clearly panicked by the prospect of a peaceful disarmament of
Saddam. They are fearful of the prospect of seeing the Iraqi people
taking on the tyrant and his dictatorial state.
Much is made of Tony Blair's
courage. We are told that he is being brave in his deafness to majority
opinion in Britain and the world. The truth is that he is mesmerised
by US power, convinced he will be on the side of the victors and bask
in the glory of their might once they raise the US flag in Baghdad,
that beloved city of my childhood. But Blair's glory, even if it comes
to pass, will be short-lived.
(32)
David Clark, The
Guardian (11th April, 2003)
Those who have promised
to transform Iraq into Switzer land-on-the-Euphrates seem to forget
that Saddam was a product of his country's violent and bloody past,
not its cause. Of all the analogies that have been offered to explain
what might lie ahead, it is the example of the Lebanon that must therefore
strike greatest fear into the hearts of British and American policy
makers. The spate of suicide bombings provides one indication that
the coalition's victory might give way to the same explosive cocktail
of political factionalism, religious extremism and foreign occupation
that resulted in hundreds of American deaths and a hasty withdrawal
from Beirut 20 years ago.
The repercussions of this
war will not be confined within Iraq's borders. The idea of an international
community based on multilateral rules and institutions lies in ruins
as the prospect of a world dominated by the hegemonic preferences
of a solitary power hoves into view. The real tragedy will not lie
in the imposition of American authority on an unwilling world as much
as in the embittered response of those who refuse to submit to it.
The Arab world has been
inflamed by this war and will draw the conclusion that since American
power cannot be confronted on its own terms, it must be dealt with
asymmetrically. Like the young Catholics who signed up to fight for
the IRA after Bloody Sunday, young men from Cairo to Amman will now
beat a path to the door of anyone able to provide them with the means
to hit back. As of today, that door is Osama bin Laden's. The dividing
line between Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, once so
clear, has become even more dangerously blurred as a result of our
actions.
(33)
Editorial in the Al-Quds newspaper (10th April, 2003)
With the fall of
the capital of Arab capitals, the hopes the (Palestinian) nation pinned
on Baghdad's steadfastness and fight against the aggressors have been
shattered ... The fall of Baghdad is a catastrophe, but it will not
be the last one. The Anglo-American victory will encourage the colonialists
to swallow more Arab capitals and shape the Arab world politically,
culturally and socially in a way that satisfies Washington and London.
They will thus manipulate Arab and Islamic culture into a distorted
image of the west's materialist culture.
(34)
Ahmad Hamadah Al-Thawrah, speech in Syria (10th April, 2003)
This is a turning
point in the lives of the Iraqi people. The invading forces are encouraging
anarchy in the cities, villages and farms ... What kind of freedom
is this, in the midst of the chaos, damage and destruction that surrounds
the Iraqi people? What kind of democracy is it that tries to destroy
the future of the Iraqi people?... What kind of liberation is it,
when the new curriculum that the US has prepared for the children
of Iraq omits everything that points to pan-Arab feelings?"
(35)
William Shawcross, Wall Street Journal (10th April, 2003)
April 9 - Liberation
Day! What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion - one that
will live in legend ... Once again the US, together with the British,
thank goodness, has shown itself to be on the side of freedom. All
those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his
idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people
- they will have to think again...
"What this whole Iraq
story shows is how extraordinarily selfish and inward looking the
EU has become ... The much derided 'neocons' in Washington have been
shown to be far more correct than all the sneering sophisticates of
the EU."
(36)
Editorial in the Daily Telegraph
(10th April, 2003)
Tony Blair ... has
restored Britain's standing in the world to a position that it has
not held since the Berlin wall came down, and he has won the right,
which should be denied to all other major European leaders except
for Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, to help create the new world order
that George Bush Sr promised, but that George Bush Jr is delivering.
In the past month, Britain
has proved its political and military independence, its global reach
and its capacity for decisive action. These are huge benefits, not
to be squandered on 'multilateralism' and assuaging the hurt feelings
of the EU and the UN."
(37)
Editorial in Pravda (10th April,
2003)
Although there are
celebrations on some streets, albeit by limited numbers of people,
there were other, legal ways to bring about this change ... Mr Bush
and Mr Blair should go down in history as the duo that flouted the
norms of international law, setting in action a process in which civilians
were murdered by their armed forces. This has not been a heroic military
campaign, it has been a massacre, the school bully picking on the
weakest boy and setting upon him with a viciousness ... as horrific
as the savaging of a poodle puppy by a pack of famished and enraged
rottweilers.
(38)
Fawzi Ibrahim, The Guardian
(11th April 2003)
The celebrations
in areas of Baghdad at the toppling of Saddam's regime is a pale shadow
of the jubilation that greeted the fall of another tyrannical - and
British backed - regime in Iraq in 1958. Not only hundred of thousands
of Baghdadis took to the streets, but there was no looting, no shouts
of Allah Akbar and no religious gestures of breast beating made potent
by the followers of Osama bin Laden. These are very ominous signs
that bode ill for the future of Iraq.
If the Shi'as in the east
of Baghdad consider Saddam to be the enemy of God, the mind boggles
at what they think of the infidel invading army.
Declaring that the US army
cannot keep law and order in the city was an open encouragement for
widespread looting to take place. It is not that the US armed forces
cannot ensure law and order. It is a deliberate policy to create lawlessness
and mayhem. It will remind the population of Baghdad of the Farhud
in June 1941, when the return of the the British-backed Regent who
was to replace a Nazi group that took power in Baghdad for a short
period of time, was delayed by three days during which there was no
government and no one was in control.
The word Farhud denotes
the breakdown of law and order, where life and property are in peril.
A frenzy of looting and murder by fascist gangs ensued mainly against
the Jewish community in Baghdad.
(39)
Joe Conason, The
Guardian (14th April 2003)
It doesn't denigrate
Blair to note that the analogies to Churchill sound slightly overblown,
like the hyped comparisons of Saddam Hussein with Hitler. Terrible
as the Iraqi dictator has been, he didn't storm across a continent,
and his decrepit army wasn't the Wehrmacht. Nevertheless, to American
conservatives who still revere Churchill as the stalwart icon of the
second world war and the cold war, Blair's unhesitating toughness
in the war on terrorism was inspirational. For anyone convinced that
the US is called to defend the values of western civilisation in a
worldwide conflict, the Anglo-American alliance carries an almost
anthemic resonance.
Americans longing for an
echo of Churchill also heard it in Blair's lonely and rather defiant
appeals to his divided cabinet, his furious party, his reluctant fellow
Britons and Europeans. In ways that Bush never could, he provided
a high-minded tone to the drive for war. While the president and his
advisers have displayed an unseemly eagerness to manipulate public
fears for political gain, especially during the midterm elections
last autumn, the prime minister appeared ready to sacrifice his career
for moral principle.
