WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

It always seemed to me, innocent as I am in weapons technology and realpolitik alike, that if Saddam Hussein really did possess the famed “weapons of mass destruction”, he would be bound to use them against the allied forces massing on his borders ahead of the invasion. If not then, when? What other occasion would he have to use them? What point would there be in developing them if he weren’t going to use them against an enemy determined to overthrow him by whatever means? Did Bush and Blair send in their troops believing that there was a real risk that WMD would rain down on their heads? Or did they know full well that there was no such risk?

I always had difficulty understanding the basis for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush and Blair modulated the argument as they went along, personalizing the issue onto Saddam Hussein. What I call “the bogeyman theory of history” (or ‘boogieman’ in American) seems to me a facile kind of worldview. Demonize a country’s leader, call him a madman and despot and pretty soon you have a rationale for invasion, provided the country is much weaker than yours and your electorate are profoundly ignorant of that country’s history, culture and political system or of whom his successor might be ...

My greatest difficulty with the demonizing of Saddam Hussein was that every time an allied spokesman described a president who had not been legitimately elected, who flouted the will of the UN, who did not recognize the remit or indeed the very existence of international law, who invaded smaller and weaker nations, who imprisoned enemy troops without trial, who tore up treaties and who was developing more and more terrifying weapons of mass destruction, I thought he was talking about George W Bush.

This is no mere debating point. It is too easy to argue that the actions of our leaders are taken in full transparency and honour and good faith, while the other guy pursues the same policies out of malice and guile and bad faith. There is a fearsome irregular verb to be conjugated in description of what governments call ‘defence’: “I am a strong, moral leader who is developing his nuclear deterrent in order to protect the sovereignty of his nation and the greater security of the world; you are a leader who is not to be trusted with such a nuclear capability and who must reduce your stockpile of weapons; he is a mad despot to be disarmed by force of all his weapons of mass destruction”. If it is dangerous for the other guy to have nuclear capacity, how come it is merely prudent for us to have it? If we are powerful and responsible enough not to need to acknowledge the fears of other nations, why is he too foreign and wilful to be trusted?

Western diplomacy appears to believe its own propaganda and conducts itself as though the black-and-white world politicians depict for their electorates is just as simple in reality. Bush’s “axis of evil” may play in Peoria but appears merely foolish in Damascus, Tehran and Beirut and indeed in Moscow, Paris and Strasbourg. One woman’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter: that was always true. Those who believe that the ‘War on Terror’ is a comic-book struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ will never understand the complexities of the means by which peoples of different faiths, tribes and traditions hunker down and co-exist.

Tony Blair began to address these matters in a most significant speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles at the height of the hostilities between Israel and Hizbullah in the summer of 2006. After an implicit acknowledgment of President Bush’s child’s-eye view of the world – “there is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region” – he developed an argument that force alone was inadequate for “our strategy to defeat those that threaten us”.

Blair proposed that "we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world … tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity … This war can only be won by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative … Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade and, in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win … This is not just about security or military tactics. It is about hearts and minds, about inspiring people, persuading them, showing them what our values at their best stand for".

Much of the rest of the speech was a post hoc rationale of US/UK actions in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, crediting radical Islam with a long-term strategy of destabilization, a strategy which Blair considered “virtually obvious” despite the west’s unerring ability to play the role that the strategy assigned to it. "The purpose of the provocation that began the [present] conflict was clear. It was to create chaos, division and bloodshed, to provoke retaliation by Israel that would lead to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed, not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it".

This analysis begs virtually obvious questions: if the purpose of the provocation was so clear, why did the west allow Israel to play so readily into the hands of the wicked provocateurs? Does the west really embody “tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity”? Are western values “stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative”? Beyond the rhetoric, we must look at UK and US social policy, the execution of law and justice, immigration and asylum measures, the provision of health, of education, of housing and of benefits for the poor, control over trade manipulation and powerful vested interests and avoidance of sleaze. Is our culture so wholesome that we can offer it as a better way than that of radical Islam? Or is it all too easy for even a moderate imam to point to “western decadence” and warn against such a fate? If Mr Blair were ever to wade through all that I have written here, he will see that I – and those who agree with any of my thesis – have grave misgivings about the tenor of contemporary life in the western democracies. Who would want to import our culture? And remember that Blair sacked Jack Straw from the Foreign Office for his Muslim sympathies.

The ‘destruction’ – easier said than done – of movements that came into being because significant numbers of people feel aggrieved can never be achieved unless those grievances are addressed. The very existence of Israel is the most long running and intractable of such grievances. No politician will ever dare to alienate the numerous and powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States – that is, unless and until the Arab demographic exceeds the Jewish. But the Middle East will never be at peace unless an American regime is prepared to force boundary concessions upon Israel instead of continuously underwriting her occupied territories with a blank cheque.

Neither Hizbullah nor Hamas is listed by the UN as a terrorist organization, the USA, Israel and Canada dissenting. The EU, UK and Australia regard Hamas as terrorists but not Hizbullah. Hamas, which is a Palestinian, Sunni Islamist grouping whose name means ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’, won the 2006 election in Palestine and formed a government for the first time. Hizbullah, a Lebanese, Shi’ite Islamist grouping whose name means ‘Party of God’, was founded 25 years ago specifically to free southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. It was its capture of two Israeli soldiers that precipitated the sustained attacks on Beirut, Tyre and other Lebanese centres by Israel in 2006. Hizbullah’s resistance was more resolute than Israel had anticipated ...

to read the rest of this essay, see the chapter 'When Will They Ever Learn' in the book Common Sense by W Stephen Gilbert, available as an entirely free download by clicking on the link in the sidebar above:

COMMON SENSE: The BOOK