- They are at it again. Despite the unfinished business
in Afghanistan, the Iraqiphobes have lost little time in trying to whip
up support for their long-desired cluster-bombing of Baghdad - or nuclear
bombing, if our 'humanitarian' Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is to have
his way.
-
- 'Unlike Peter Rabbit, Easter Bunny felt quite at home
in Mr McGregor's garden.'
-
- In the countdown to military action we must brace
ourselves
for the usual round of Saddam scare stories which inevitably signal that
an attack on Iraq is imminent. Super-guns, killer agents and anthrax in
our reservoirs: whatever it is, rest assured that those dastardly Iraqis
will be planning it in the weeks and months ahead.
-
- Before the B52s set off and the propaganda war goes into
overdrive, it is surely worth considering a little more closely why on
earth all this is happening. Why is a 'regime change' in Baghdad considered
so desirable, even at the extent of risking a major Middle East war
?
-
- Not even the most hardline hawks now bother to argue
that Iraq has to be attacked because it was somehow behind the events of
11 September. Instead the Iraqiphobes have fallen back on their favourite
casus belli: Iraq has to be dealt with because it possesses weapons of
mass destruction that threaten not only the Middle East but also the whole
of Western civilisation.
-
- 'Iraq has a whole cocktail cabinet of chemical and nerve
agents,' claimed the ubiquitous former UN weapons inspector Richard Butler
in a recent interview, despite not having set foot in the country for more
than three years. Butler's allegations differ quite radically from those
of his erstwhile fellow-inspector Scott Ritter, who rates the Iraqi threat
as 'zero'. The British government's dismissive reaction to the Iraqi's
recent offer of immediate access to a British weapons inspection team only
adds to the suspicion that the Iraqiphobes would rather bomb first than
see Ritter's analysis confirmed.
-
- With the powerful interests ranged against it, it is
of little surprise that Iraq struggles to get a fair hearing. Opec members
are desperate to see Iraqi oil reserves, the second biggest in the world,
stay off the world market indefinitely. Yet strong reasons exist why
Britain,
far from bowing to such interests, should instead be radically rethinking
its policy towards Iraq. The moral argument that in lifting sanctions we
would be saving the lives of about 600 children a month is surely reason
enough. But even leaving this aside, there are sound realpolitik reasons
why Britain should change course.
-
- Iraq is a country with umbilical links to Britain. It
was Britain who helped free the peoples of Mesopotamia from the Ottoman
yoke, and Britain who gave the country its modern name. The Baghdad funeral
of the traveller Gertrude Bell, who had dedicated her life to the creation
of an independent Iraq, was attended by thousands. Generations of Iraqi
politicians, government officials and civil servants have been educated
in Britain, and for years English was the compulsory foreign language for
all Iraqi university students. These factors put Britain in pole position
when it came to developing commercial interests in Iraq, something
successive
trade secretaries, up to and including Alan Clark, were not slow to
exploit.
Weapons sales were admittedly part of the trade, but so too were medical
supplies, school and university textbooks, and hospital equipment.
-
- Ten years of slavishly following the Washington line
on Iraq has seen all these advantages vanish. Britain is now universally
despised in Iraq, and it is the French and the Russians who are the first
in the queue for reconstruction rights and oil concessions. Unless Britain
changes course quickly, the enormous commercial opportunities in helping
to exploit the second largest oil reserves in the world will be gone for
ever.
-
- Broader still, by restoring diplomatic links with
Baghdad,
Britain would be acknowledging at long last the key role that Ba'athist
governments have to play in Middle East security as a bulwark against
Islamic
fundamentalism. Like it or not, the most likely alternative to the secular
regimes of Assad in Syria and Saddam in Iraq would be militant Islamic
ones. For all its lack of 'Western freedoms', Iraq has had for the last
20 years a practising Christian as its deputy prime minister. In no other
Islamic country in the region has a non-Muslim risen to such prominence.
If Lady Thatcher sincerely believes militant Islam to be the 'new
Bolshevism',
then she has chosen a rather strange target in Iraq.
-
- While certain sections of the Labour party seem to
understand
the need to build new relationships with Syria and Iraq, the Conservative
party seems stuck in a 'firm action' mindset. 'What has happened to
Conservative
England's distrust of America?' Matthew Parris asked in these pages a few
weeks ago. He was right to do so. Eleven years ago, in the parliamentary
debate before the Gulf war, arguably the most powerful and impassioned
speech against military action was made by a Conservative, the former
Foreign
Office minister Lord Gilmour of Craigmillar. Today, the Tory benches chime
the 'Bomb, bomb, bomb' mantra in unison. 'How can any intelligent person
be expected to believe that a country of 19 million people, mostly
impoverished
desert dwellers, poses a threat to world peace?' asked the arch-Tory
sceptic
Auberon Waugh in 1998. On Waugh's analysis, one can only conclude there
to be a singular lack of intelligence on both government and opposition
front benches.
-
- Exasperating as the present Blair/Duncan Smith axis may
be, the prize for the most crackpot reason to attack Iraq must go to a
'liberal', Geraldine Brooks, the former Middle East correspondent for the
Wall Street Journal. Not even bothering to claim that Iraq threatens world
peace or has any links with al-Qa'eda, Ms Brooks argues that the country
should nonetheless be bombed 'for the sake of the Iraqi people', to help
free them from the 'bleak and terrible regime of Saddam Hussein'. It really
does seem that modern humanitarian imperialism knows no limits. Today
Baghdad,
tomorrow Beijing? We await Ms Brooks's call.
-
- After ten years of the most savage economic embargo of
modern times - not to mention the sporadic bombing raids to enforce the
absurd no-fly zones - it is time to say enough is enough. The Iraqis, a
proud and hospitable people, have surely paid too high a price for the
crimes of their leader. Let us hear no more of the 'weapons of mass
destruction'
nonsense, no more of sanctions, and certainly no more of planned bombing
campaigns. The best way to ensure peace throughout the whole region, for
Arab, Christian and Jew alike, is to welcome Iraq back, unconditionally,
into the international community. Britain, whether on grounds of morality,
or pure self-interest, should lead the way.
-
- http://www.spectator.co.uk
|
