The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Warped reality of the occupiers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 22, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Warped reality of the occupiers

By Gary Younge

Two years on, the occupiers justify the Iraq war by embracing the irrelevant and ignoring the inconvenient.

THIS IS a tale of one war, two anniversaries, three different demonstrations — and contradictions and civilian deaths that are too numerous to count. On April 18, 2003, tens of thousands of Sunni and Shia protesters took to the streets of Baghdad to call for the Americans to leave Iraq.

Two years later, the U.S. is still there. The anti-American protest was hailed in the White House as a vindication for the U.S. strategy of bombing and then occupying the country. "In Iraq, there's discussion, debate, protest — all the hallmarks of liberty," said President George W. Bush that week.

On February 22, 2005, tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters took to the streets of Beirut to call for the Syrians to leave the country. Within a week, the Syrians announced indefinite plans to leave. Front covers of magazines carried pictures of pretty young Lebanese women waving flags proclaiming a "cedar revolution" and "people power." The protest was hailed in the White House as a vindication for the U.S. strategy of bombing and occupying Iraq. "By now it should be clear that authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future," said Mr. Bush.

On March 8, 2005, 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters took to the streets of Beirut to oppose U.S. and European interference. The demonstration was backed by Hizbullah, which the U.S. has branded a terrorist organisation. People carried banners saying "Death to America." It was several times bigger than the first anti-Syrian protest. Here too people waved Lebanese flags. But they did not appear on the front pages of the news magazines. Their protest was not hailed in the White House. In fact, its existence was barely acknowledged.

So it is on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, where the occupying powers are still so desperate to create a moral framework to justify the war, that embracing the irrelevant and ignoring the inconvenient has become the only viable strategy left to them.

Two years on, the death toll keeps rising, the size of the "coalition" keeps shrinking and global public support for this reckless occupation has maintained its downward spiral from a low base. Indeed, the only thing that changes is the rationale for starting the war, where the sophistry of the occupying powers keeps plumbing new depths and selective amnesia has attained new highs.

Most recently, we have been told to believe that the limited and as yet untested moves towards democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the thawing in Palestinian-Israeli relations (largely the result of Yasser Arafat's death) and the proposed withdrawal of Syrian troops (prompted by an outcry over the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri) all justify the bombing.

As further proof they point to January's elections in Iraq. This was a vote that the Americans wanted to postpone, in which many people could not participate, that produced a victory for Islamists with close ties to Iran who want the U.S. troops out as soon as possible. If all of this amounts to victory, I would hate to see what their idea of defeat looks like.

The truth is that you cannot even begin to make a justification for the war unless you take into account the lives of innocent Iraqis lost as a result of it. The simplest way to deal with that is to pretend that these deaths do not exist. The only other defence is that their deaths are a price worth paying and that good things can come from bad acts — a claim every bit as offensive and wrong-headed as arguing that 9/11 was a price worth paying for waking America up to the consequences of its foreign policy.

But the Iraqis are not the only ones to have suffered these past two years. While the occupiers have been busy failing to export democracy abroad, they have been busy undermining it at home. All of them lied to their electorates about the reasons for going to war. And through their anti-terrorist bills and patriot Acts they have removed some of the most basic legal rights of their citizens and criminalised the most vulnerable.

The elections last year in Spain and recent events in Italy are encouraging. They show that while the anti-war movement failed to stop the war, it has maintained a sufficiently effective presence to make a crucial difference at key moments to disable and discredit it.

In the meantime, the department of irony will keep moulding its own version of reality until it is sufficiently warped to fit its own agenda.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

RESTORING THE BALANCE

NO SAVINGS FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

On improving the quality of democracy

Warped reality of the occupiers

Legislature & judiciary

Visa row

Challenge to sovereignty