At 08:37 31/08/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Keith, the point I was making was not about Blair or Bush, it was about Britain and the US as collectives. As such, they made certain decisions via the highest offices of their lands. Those decisions, at the time, were popular.
Hold on! I'm not the one who's confusing things. If Bush's and Blair's decisions were popular because they misinformed the public, then if the public lose confidence in them later then the latter are quite likely to call for the return of the troops, particularly if they're getting shot up, and if the occupation troops can't restore security or minimum basic services such as water, electricity, etc.
That the end result has been something of a disaster does not permit the US or Britain to deny their responsibility toward the people of Iraq as a collective.
Once again, there's a confusion here. You can't switch the responsibility from Bush and Blair to the people when the latter were misinformed. The people of the US and UK may, or may not, feel a sense of responsibility to the Iraqi people. I think the chattering classes (say the top 20-30% in income and education) probably do feel synmpathetic to a limited extent because Bush and Blair belong to their 'set' as it were, but the rest of the population is largely indifferent because they're normally largely indifferent to anything that happens abroad. Most newspapers carry hardly any foreign news because of this. Most people buy lottery tickets and gamble at the bookmakers. They don't support international aid charities. I'm not making any sort of moral or elitish point here. This is human nature. The in-group/out-group syndrome -- as humans have been for at least 100,000 years. I'm talking simply about reality.
They made a mess and, regardless of who becomes President and Prime Minister, they have to fix it up, or at least demonstrate leadership in doing so. If sincere and genuine leadership were shown, other nations would probably join in. But, IMHO, to say oops, sorry and walk out is not an acceptable option.
Of course, any responsible leadership in the US or the UK ought to shoulder a great deal of responsibility for trying to put things right. But they won't do. Politicians seldom do.
There are two entirely different points involved here:
1. Don't expect the majority of the populations of US and UK to feel any sense of responsibility at all apart from *fleeting* sympathy when some unique tragedy, usually involving children, occurs;
2. It took someone as brutal as Saddam to bang the heads of the Kurds, Sunnis and Shias together (and killing many of them in the process) to bring about a country that was gradually making progress towards becoming a nation with a cultural identity. The Americans and British don't have a snowflake's chance in hell of producing a government that will work unless they're just as brutal as Saddam and remain so for at least another 30/40/50 years. That's my opinion, but the evidence is already plain to see. I don't just mean the increasing terrorist incidents (largely of Saddam cronies), but I mean the impossibility of producing a provisional government of these disparate political/national/religious groups. Time and again, a new provisional council has been announced, and then it's collapsed. It's happened about four times already since the invasion, and each time it happens, one party or another will raise the ante afterwards. For example, until the latest provisional council had collapsed a week or so ago, the Shias were in agreement with the Americans that a constitution-forming committee should be formed -- without any provisos except the reasonable one that such a committee should represent all shades of Iraqi opinion. It's now the case that the Shias (even the moderate ones) will not agree to a constitution-forming council until it's been elected by the people. In other words it will be Shia-dominated. All the time it's one step forwards and two steps backwards.
Since the latest Ayatollah assassination, the position now is that even if Saddam is captured and all his henchmen terrorists rounded up, the Shias (or the Sunnis, or the Kurds) will start to become terrorists. Have you noted that the Ayatollah's coffin in procession today was surrounded by armed Shias? This is an entirely new manifestation of a worsening situation.
The fact that the Americans and the British have produced a social, health and economic catastrophe, and the fact that Bush and Blair have a moral responsibility towards the Iraqi people are both now beside the point. They happened to have resurrected age-old enmities that only they (the Iraqis) can sort out -- that is, if the Americans and the British insist that Iraq must remain what is basically a conglomeration of three different nations hastily put together by the British many decades ago. It was a stupid decision then, and it remains a stupid decision today to hold these parties together unless you're prepared to tolerate a tyrannical regime which will oppress them long enough (two or three generations) until there's a gradual cultural merging between them.
The Americans have failed totally in Afghanistan -- only a portion of Kabul is secure now by means of 3,000 American-paid mercenaries armed to the teeth who follow the President around 7/24. The countryside is now divided much the same as before with warlords and tribal chiefs. Afghanistan is now a major producer of drugs. The only difference between now and before the Americans bombed them is that the Taliban is now (as it was originally) just one of those factions and is holed up in one particular part of Afghanistan (together with Osam bin Laden, of course).
The Americans failed in Afghanistan.
The Americans are going to fail in an even more difficult situation -- namely Iraq.
Before the invasion I was writing on FW that the only thing that the Americans would be able to achieve would be to guard the oil fields and get the oil out. It would seem that they can't even do that now. As the oil starts to flow, the pipeline is sabotaged.
Even the 'greedy' oil corporations which, in my naivete, I previously thought would go into the Iraqi oilfields with alacrity are having nothing to do with them becaue they know that any putative 'contracts' with the American occupation authorities will not stand up in court in later years and they would have to pay back any gains they might make.
This has been the most egregious mistake the Americans have ever made. At least in Vietnam they gave their honest reasons for going in.
There is absolutely nothing that the Americans can do to produce a peaceful society and a provisional government that will be agreed and obeyed by all parties. I don't know how long they will stay in Iraq but it's my judgement that the American people will be calling for an end to it within 12 months. Please let us not talk about morals or responsibility -- they're not words in the normal politicians' lexicon, least of all in Bush's and Blair's as they've already shown by the deaths they've imposed on thousands of Iraqi citizens and the thousands to follow because of insanitary conditions and lack of services. What will be more to the point is political expediency -- and such things as the unemployment rate in America, the size of the budget deficit, and whether Bush's team can invent a reason for getting out of Iraq 'with honour', as it were, (which, of course, they are quite capable of doing), etc.
Keith
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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