WORLD AFFAIRS
Decline and fall of Iraq
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`Tariq's book is an uncomfortable account emphasising the organised violence of the West... It is consistently humorous and judicious and a fine contribution to our contemporary nightmare of history.'
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THE United Kingdom and Australia chirped the same tune as their master who had begun to realise that the sanctions against Iraq after the First Gulf War had failed in containing Saddam. Over a million had died because of the denial of basic necessities of existence; the soil contaminated by the use of poisonous warheads, lack of necessary chemicals led to water pollution and dysentery on a nation-wide scale. The economic sanctions had reduced the country to the "poorest society on earth". To add to it, the United States waged a war giving all the wrong reasons.
Tariq Ali draws attention to the report in the New York Times of February 2, 2003 in which John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have argued that if we were to look at the track record of Saddam, he has never given any reason to believe that he was a "reckless aggressor who cannot be contained". Saddam had invaded Iran in the early 1980s because of the serious provocation when his officials had come under the threat of assassination from Iran's revolutionary government. And Kuwait came under his attack because of the problem of debts and the conflict over the lower price of oil which Kuwait had begun to charge in the international market. These two wars indicate that he was certainly not an expansionist and that the United States had nothing to fear in view of the fact that "Iraq has never gone to war in the face of a clear deterrent threat".
All reasons for going to war therefore were misplaced. The sanctions along with the subsequent war have only led to a strong resentment in the mind of the common Iraqi who now wants the occupation to end. The second Gulf War against the Western coalition has in reality begun now; the cake walk that the western forces had while taking over Iraq was seemingly an illusory victory. A handful of American soldiers are killed every day. The first Gulf War had ended the "Vietnam Syndrome" which made America delude itself into thinking that the easy victory would send a formidable message to the rest of the region of the fatal risks involved in opposing Washington. A war in the Gulf, felt both the father and son, would end all wars. And the British Prime Minister, as Tariq humorously writes, "seems to regard the posterior of the U.S. President as his natural habitat. To stop this place being usurped by some other European justifies lies, deception, war, etc."
The "axis of evil", therefore, is the target; if you do not take orders or fall out of line, you have had it. Iraq, Iran and North Korea have to, therefore, be punished. Iran is next in line while Iraq has already been punished. The Geneva Convention can go to hell. Saddam, the bloodthirsty monster, had to be eliminated. A tyrant who had used chemical warfare against his own people could now be a threat to the whole world. But were the Kurds his own people? And was it not Bush Sr. who had allowed the use of poisonous gas against the Kurds and given enough military aid? Did Saddam not go to war against Iran at the instigation of the U.S.? And was he not more of a menace just after the Gulf War when Bush Sr. backed him in ruthlessly putting down a Shiite uprising in the south?
I have yet to come across a more vivid account of Iraq's chequered history compellingly narrated through its poetry as well as the various anecdotes that illustrate its inherently revolutionary strengths together with its self-inflicted blunders that have brought her to a new level of economic and political crisis. The literary and historical history of Iraq comes across vividly indicating the bad farce of the much-vaunted ideals of democracy put forward by America and her side-kick Britain gone sour in West Asia. For the White House, like his previous book The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Tariq's book is an uncomfortable account emphasising the organised violence of the West which is as grave as that of the Islamic opposition. It is consistently humorous and judicious and a fine contribution to our contemporary nightmare of history. Ali is more lyrical and engaging than Hiro who recently wrote a book on Iraq, probably because his keen interest in telling his story through literary allusions makes it more passionate. To understand Iraq one has to understand the historical perspective with ideological clarity that can give honesty to the interpretation of culture and politics of Islam and its foe. Along with Tariq's book, Hiro's Iraq supplements graphically the condition of Iraq today and boldly questions the U.S. for reasons of attacking a country that was already fully disarmed.
The "Ministry of Truth", one of the organs of the police State in Orwell's 1984, in coordination with the "Thought Police" work on the public to demolish their independence of mind. In Orwell's world, the State resorts to violence, whereas the Chomsky/ Herman propaganda model operates without any violence. It is a non-Orwellian machinery, according to their thesis presented in Manufacturing Consent, that indoctrinates through the accompanied market forces which, unlike the "thought police" of a totalitarian State, brings people under its ideological control without the use of force. And in this enterprise the State government is aided by the various institutional pressures such as the intellectuals, the media, the corporate world, all of which are "assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives", and offer various privileges that tempt the public to fall in line.
This model aptly works in the case of justifying a war against Saddam. The propaganda machinery over the last few months went into top gear to exhibit the presence of Western soldiers and high technology symbolising forces of change and new democratic beginnings. Private Jessica Lynch's heroism was an outright concoction defrauding the world into believing the legitimacy of a war against a tyrant using weapons of mass destruction against peace-loving humanity. Iraq is deemed to be one of the three countries which have been termed as the "axis of evil", a rhetorical expression used by Bush that harks back to the Nazi era. Chomsky rightly argues that if "you want to scare people, you talk about evil". Historically and logically, Iraq, Iran and North Korea do not form an "axis" for the reason that Iraq and Iran fought the longest war against each other, whereas North Korea is the odd one out having nothing to do with the other two countries; probably Bush has added North Korea to the axis to give a false picture to the world that the West is not gunning only for the Muslims. Misrepresenting evidence is hardly new in the annals of war. Justifying a war on the grounds of a world-wide threat from Saddam was a misleading notion. The war was a scramble for the control of the second largest oil reserves in the world and a move to establish its imperial hegemony.
And this is possible only if a puppet undemocratic government is installed in Iraq. The world must not mistake the designs of the U.S. in Iraq; it is credulous enough to see that any move towards a democratic rule would initiate the rise of Shiite dominance, leading to closer ties with Iran, a development Washington is allergic to. On the other hand, in a democratic Iraq, the Kurds would demand autonomy which would drive Turkey up the wall, and in turn, the U.S. Even Thomas Friedman, a right wing journalist has predicted an "iron-fisted military junta" in Iraq which would be at the beck and call of the White House. The CIA is busy interviewing the Iraqi Generals in exile to see who would tow the U.S. foreign policy.
Bush in Baghdad can only be a harbinger of another undemocratic Saddam at the helm, a type of a Sunni dictatorship that would keep the popular will in check and allow profits from oil to flow back to the West. Let us be clear that a free Iraq would never allow an alien control over its oil. The sermons about introducing democracy and protecting human rights or the search of WMD are fraudulently an eyewash. And where is the evidence for Iraq's linkage with Al Qaeda? Has not George W. Bush made a mark where bin Laden failed in provoking a clash of civilisations? The pre-emptive attack on Iraq was ill-conceived and wide off the mark. And now Saddam has departed. Baghdad stands recolonised in the hands of the local jackals and their Western masters.
SHELLEY WALIA
Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq, Verso, 2003, p.214, Pounds 13.
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