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ISSUE #37 - 27th April 2003 [123]
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Richard DeLamarter, an American Fulbright scholar, has written a thought-provoking overview of the mixed feelings of many non-Americans over the liberation of Iraq and the prospect of its democratisation. It will shortly be featured in Sobota, a Slovenian weekly newspaper; meanwhile with the author's kind permission it has been published on this site here. As the war draws to a close, Mr DeLamarter discusses some of those who are especially uneasy and/or hopeful :
He outlines some of the dilemmas now facing many people in Iraq, the Middle East, the West :
Mr DeLamarter suggests that the curious opposition of many Europeans to seeing the US toppling Saddam and freeing Iraqis is founded on their own bloody and destructive history, where over the centuries European military power was used unambiguously to subdue conquered peoples. A well-intentioned invasion is perhaps a concept beyond their understanding. Added to this is envy at military might which Europe can never match, particularly since it rejects defence spending comparable to America's. Those who castigate American imperialism today are the same as those who refuse to acknowledge the left-wing evils of Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, whose murderous regimes they supported even as - until it fell - they supported Saddam's. Yet it was imperialist America
There are no straightforward answers. One is just left with a sense that, like it or not and despite the suspicions of many, we are forced to trust that America, a free people enjoying the fruits of liberty, wants simply to share these fruits with others. Only time will demonstrate the truth or otherwise of this, in the crucible that is Iraq.
Do you remember how the anti-warriors used to say that an Iraqi invasion would result in a never-ending Vietnam-style quagmire involving hundreds and thousands of civilian and military casualties, with Iraq, the cradle of civilisation, bombed back into the Stone Age ? Well, now that they have been proved so spectacularly wrong, their rhetoric has simply made a U-turn. Suddenly, the war was just a turkey-shoot of defenseless conscripts, a walkover for the Americans, not a proper war at all, a thoroughly unfair contest. No credit to military prowess whatsoever. And anyway, the real battle will be the rebuilding of Iraq where the Americans will fail. Of course, they are right about one thing. America's behaviour has been utterly unfair in not giving Saddam a sporting chance while depriving war-critics of ammunition. Think about it.
Shock and awe indeed. But where is the fodder for anti-US propaganda in all this ? It is all so deeply unfair.
Oops ! According to CNN, Dick Cheney, Bob Hope, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro are dead. They all died in 2001. On 16th April last, CNN issued the five obituaries on their website just long enough for a few people to grab them, before they were withdrawn in embarrassment, some 20 minutes later. As Mark Twain (not Will Rogers) once famously remarked, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
EU's Qualified Majority Voting Scam You really have to watch these Eurocrats. The Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, current President of the European Council, wrote a round-robin letter to several EU newspapers several days ago to welcome the new members of the EU. But he took the opportunity to slip in a remark that it is “imperative ... to extend further qualified majority voting”. Why ? Simply because this would make EU law-creation smoother for law-makers by allowing them to ignore pesky national vetos.
The EU has more than enough laws already - 97,000 pages of them, for goodness' sake. If the well paid Eurocrats want to make new ones, let them work harder to convince every member state, not just some. QMV is a scam. What is it that prompts women - and only women - to strip off their clothes to support hopeless causes such as the continued wellbeing of homicidal Middle East dictators ?
Now, happily, a three-girl Texas country-music group, the Dixie Chicks have joined the bandwagon. They got into trouble when one of them said, on the eve of war, “We're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas”. Fans were appalled, insults flew and album sales dropped 40%, so she later apologised.
I'm sure all right-thinking Muslims are delighted with all this prurient un-Islamic nudity. You don't find them parading up and down the streets of Kerbala with placards proclaiming “Not in my name”. Nevertheless, is it not curious that men never ever strip off to promote a political cause. Thank goodness.
From going naked to covering up ... The behaviour of the Chinese authorities was disgraceful in suppressing for so long the spread of the SARS virus in Guangdong province and other parts of the country, until the coughs and sneezes, not to mention deaths, became so rife that the disease became impossible to hide. At least now they are trying to do something about it. They have fired their health minister and the mayor of Guandong so that the newcomers to these posts can start with a clean slate, reliable statistics are being issued and suspected and actual SARS sufferers are now being quarantined.
SARS is not only an unpleasant and sometimes deadly virus, but one that is already costing affected economies millions of dollars. And of course it wasn't just a foul communist dictatorship that concealed it. There is a liberal western democracy that did exactly the same, but for even longer, and with millions at stake. SARS symptoms first appeared in September of last year, during an intense examination of a potential sufferer. After two days of close scrutiny, it became clear that he was not exhibiting the classic SARS symptoms. But what was concealed for a long time was that another man seated nearby in the waiting area was clearly a sufferer, unable to control his coughs and sneezes. It then slowly emerged that vapours in his coughs were so toxic that they were causing mental derangement in the original suspect, whose thought processes simply seized up. He couldn't tell Berlin from Paris, a megatron from a gigabyte. His wife, who was close by, was also affected, primarily evidenced through her eyeballs which would switch back and forth and roll uncontrollably in their sockets. The authorities were so alarmed by all this that they paid the original suspect a massive seven-figure sum to go away, though later had second thoughts and took it back. Meanwhile, the record of the curious two-day interview was kept well hidden from all but a few prying eyes while officialdom tried to figure out exactly what had been going on. It was only after China made its full confession about covering up its SARS, that Britain - yes, for that was the liberal western democracy - owned up to its own coughing and sneezing scandal, and Her Majesty graciously decided to provide the three suspected sufferers with 12-18 months of quarantine at her generous expense. In a 1½-hour televised exposé last week, the truth was finally released. The coughing and sneezing SARS sufferer turned out to be a university lecturer, using the alias Tecwen Whittock. His virulent coughs had caused not only derangement in the original suspect, a retired Army major Charles Ingram, but also deafness because the good major says he is unable to hear coughs. His wife Diana still seems to suffer from the eye-switching. It is believed the various symptoms will have disappeared by the end of the trio's well-earned year-plus of quarantine. Of course, this is not the first time that Her Majesty has had a brush with a deranged Charles and a Diana with out-of-control eyes ....
Quote : "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability" “Gorgeous” George Galloway, British Labour
anti-war pro-Iraq MP,
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ISSUE
#36 - 13th April 2003
[172]
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The UN Must Re-earn its Right to be Involved In a stunning military performance of unparalleled virtuoso by America and Britain, the Iraq war is now virtually over, and with an unprecedentedly small number of their own and of non-combatant casualties, regrettable though each of these is. What now needs immediate resolution is who is going to take responsibility for rebuilding Iraq, physically, humanitarian-wise and institutionally. Most people, in their hearts, and all things being equal, would probably want this to be led and undertaken by the international community as a whole, namely the United Nations, until such time as Iraqis themselves can take over. The UN exists for just such a purpose. But, of course, things are not equal. In the recent few months, as in the past decade or so, the UN has shown itself unequal to meeting its responsibilities - unless they are easy. This incompetence has killed innocent people in the hundreds of thousands. In Somalia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, to name just recent examples. At least in the latter two, American firepower came to the rescue to stop further carnage - against the UN's wishes. And of course UN incompetence has prevailed in Iraq, where for 12 years it failed to deal with Saddam beyond issuing 17 high-minded Resolutions, which it then failed to implement. As a result, Saddam was able to continue murdering his civilians at a rate of 5,000 per year as well as financing every suicide bomber in Israel and hanging on to his WMD. The final UN resolution, 1441, declared that he was already in material breach and if he didn't immediately disarm “serious consequences” would follow. When he didn't disarm, the UN pretended that “serious consequences” didn't mean war - in other words it meant more resolutions, more inspections, more troops on the border with orders not to invade. This dereliction of resolve meant that the USA has once again had to go to war to rescue others, with the aid of Britain, as it has been doing since it rescued Europe from the Kaisar and the Ottomans in 1918. Three decades later, after a six-year war, America, with Britain and its allies, overthrew totalitarian regimes in Italy, Germany and Japan, replacing each with model democracies that prevail to this day. The United Nations was then established, in 1946, to prevent future wars, which had been previously been the function of the defunct and discredited League of Nations that had failed to prevent WW2.Since then, the UN has risen to the challenge of difficult military action just twice - and with success. It approved war, led by America :
But in all the other major international confrontations with totalitarian regimes, the UN has shirked its responsibilities and left the dirty work to America while simultaneously disapproving and trying to prevent it. By such machinations, the UN has demonstrated that it is simply incompetent to deal with difficult situations and therefore cannot be trusted to take the lead in the reconstruction of Iraq, liberated thanks only to the blood, military prowess, determination and money of America and Britain. Only America has the ability to lead and co-ordinate this reconstruction, and - through war - the authority to do so. The UN can serve a worthy and useful rôle by offering to America its services, such as humanitarian assistance. But as US Vice President Dick Cheney brutally put it, “we don't believe that the United Nations is equipped to play [the] central role.” An understatement. Nevertheless, the better the UN performs, the more responsibility it should be given in the months and years ahead. And who knows, at some point in the (distant ?) future, it might once again be trusted to take a leading position in a delicate and difficult international situation. But not yet. It must re-earn its spurs. The governments of Russia, France and China, who did most to destroy the competence of the UN over Iraq, should take heed.
From the Letters page.
Among the most heart-warming television images last week was the sight of looters rampaging through Basra and parts of Baghdad on Wednesday 9th April, the day that Baghdad fell.
Oh, and in east Baghdad, though the French Embassy was under French military protection, the unprotected German Embassy and French cultural centre were, according to the New York Times, “stripped of furniture, curtains, decorations, and anything else that could be carried away. At the French cultural centre, where looters burst water pipes and flooded the ground floor, books were left floating in the reading rooms and corridors, and a photograph of Jacques Chirac, the French president, was smashed”. I wonder why. It has also been amusing to see the beleagured and intellectually defeated anti-warriors in the West seize on looting as a new and welcome cause célèbre. The soldiers should, they say, stop chasing the regime immediately and chase the looters instead, to avoid - yes, once, again - a humanitarian disaster. The lack of humanitarian disaster is, of course, a source of deep disappointment for the anti-warriors, as well as for the UN aid agencies and countless NGOs. The Americans and British will complete their rout of the ancien regime in the remaining days of this war. There will be plenty of time after that to enforce civil law and order under the replacement regime. In the meantime, let the looters enjoy themselves. Long live the looters.
When the UK Labour party's Gordon Brown became Chancellor in 1997, he did two things that secured the markets' and the nation's trust in Labour's ability to manage the economy competently. Having inherited a booming economy from the Conservatives,
Prudence was his favoured word through six annual budget speeches of economic probity, but it was uttered through gritted teeth. For at heart, Mr Brown is an old-labour tax-and-spend socialist, masquerading as a New Labour believer in market forces. He is convinced that problems are solved and the poor made rich by throwing taxpayers money at every problem. Last week, at last, he felt secure enough to let his socialist principles shine through. He divorced Prudence and married Reckless. He built his entire budget around his growth forecast of 3-3½% for both 2004 and 2005. This is pretty adventurous compared to last year's 1.8% and the 2% that most economists are predicting for this year. He is, in short, gambling on another boom just round the corner and is spending the proceeds now. Yet
His growth forecasts are fantasy. And when they fail to materialise, this year's £24bn borrowing requirement - forecast to drop by £3bn next year - is more likely to jump by that amount. Mr Brown will then raise taxes, because his socialist soul will not let him cut public spending. This will exacerbate the drag on growth and revenue further. A truly vicious circle. In the light of the unfounded optimism of yesterday’s performance, it is no wonder that the stockmarket shrugged off the good news from Baghdad. Left to his own devices, Mr Brown's continued abandonment of Prudence will cause the unnecessary downward spiral that will result in Labour's defeat at the next election. But by whom ? There's no-one else !
Last week, a bunch of unemployed national presidents, prime ministers, princesses and other dignitaries from Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Finland, the European Commission, the European Foundation Centre and la Fondazione Romaeuropa, wrote a round-robin letter, titled “Promoting European Culture”, to a dozen European newspapers. The only English-language version is in the Irish Times (the UK was excluded) and since this is subscription-only, you can read a transcript here. These eminent personages inform us, in the main message of the letter, that, “the essence of a consciousness of common European identity is culture. To protect and promote culture is one of the most important tasks in Europe today.” It isn't. It's just one more excuse to skirt around completing the one task that will do most to improve the quality of lives of citizens of the EU. The EU politicians, bureaucrats, would-bes and has-beens should direct their energies towards removing the remaining protectionist, poverty-creating barriers to the free trade that is the essence and overwhelming success of the EU. Start with the Common Agricultural Policy, continue with insurance, pharmacology, etc. The list is long, difficult and unglamorous. But it will do far more good than fluffing around with such things as culture, a constitution, a single foreign policy and so on, which Europe's great and good seem to enjoy so much. To my surprise, the Irish Times published my insulting reply along the above lines.
To be anti-war, you must want it to stop immediately, which as I pointed out last week means you want defeat for America, victory for Saddam. However being anti-war is not simply to hate Bush and love Saddam. You must also hate European rugby. For all the biggest and best demos have been cunningly timed to coincide with major rugby matches.
So would-be protestors have had to choose : rugby or Saddam. Is rugby really that bad ?
It has a wonderful name, www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com. You've got to have a look. Meanwhile, on 12th April Irish radio revealed a little-known anecdote about his compatriot, Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as Chemical Ali, who is believed to have been killed last week. It seems his son is working as a consultant doctor in Dublin's Beaumont Hospital. In chemotherapy, perhaps ?
“We don't make it our business to steal other people's wealth and occupy their real estate.” US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld
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ISSUE #35 - 6th April 2003 [106]
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From the outset, I have found the reportage of the Iraq war to be pretty abysmal. Much as our TV screens have been filled with images of
it has been very difficult to get an objective view of overall progress. Each reporter reports as best he can what he sees. But the majority see only what they're allowed to see. Moreover, they have no idea of the significance of what they are seeing (is it a big important battle or a minor skirmish ?). And with no access to their counterparts elsewhere in the theatre, they cannot judge where it fits into an overall picture. Therefore, all they can provide is a thousand pinpoints of light, with no lines to join them up and form an overall picture. There are three main categories of reporters on the ground in Iraq.
So in summary, what we are learning from the media is only what the armed forces on both sides allow us to know. And to that extent we might as well just tune into the official news conferences in Baghdad, Kuwait and Doha and make our own minds up about the fact-to-propaganda ratio. The reporters on the ground add very little. But there is a fourth category of intrepid reporter. The BBC has recently had much fun telling us about Radio Swaziland's Baghdad correspondent Phesheya Dubede. He has been risking life and limb to file daily reports about the bombings and other goings on in Baghdad, while his radio host back in Swaziland has been giving him earnest warnings, such as “please find a cave somewhere to be safe from missiles”. Except that eagle-eyed Swazi MPs recently spotted Mr Dubede strolling around the parliament building in downtown Mbane, the capital. It seems he simply relayed to his listeners information he gleaned each morning from CNN, Reuters, the Internet etc. From a broom cupboard as one wag put it. His audience seemed happy enough, though, since the quality of his reporting was no worse than that of, say, BBC's own “Scud Stud”, the ever-cool Rageh Omaar in Baghdad. It illustrates my point about how poor is the quality of reportage.
In the build-up to the Iraq war, people across the world expressed their views, for and against the prospect of war, with extraordinary passion and the antis staged many outstandingly successful public demonstrations. This debate extended to the politicians and parliamentarians, most famously in the spat between Jacques Chirac (Chiraq ?) and Tony Blair. The only area of broad agreement was that the Saddam Hussein regime was vile. Assuming they were following their consciences, or at least what they felt was their national interests, these people were right to behave so, and thank God lived under regimes that permitted them to. My own observation was that the pros argued with more reason than passion, the antis the other way round, and in my view that is because it was very hard for the antis to make a coherent case. In the end, the pros won the contest, the antis lost, and the war was launched. Naturally, many antis are still unhappy for one can hardly expect them to change their views overnight. However the environment of the debate has now changed dramatically and for the first time placed responsibilities and consequences on both sides. For no-one any longer has the luxury of saying, as most antis have been, that “I'm against the war and against Saddam.” Quite simply, to say you are against the war is to to advocate that the war be stopped forthwith and the troops brought home, as UK ex-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook extraordinarily (and treasonably) did. This, in turn, is to state quite clearly that you want Saddam to win. For if the troops do stop and leave, not only will Saddam interpret this as a famous victory, but it will be a famous victory. Saddam will, unequivocally, have defeated America and its coalition partners. And he will never ever be removed. And when he dies (he is 65), his odious sons will take over, just as Kim Jong Il took over on the death of his evil father Kim Il Sung and perpetuated the dangerous Stalinist regime in North Korea to this day. So, those who are genuinely against this war but don't love Saddam should stay silent and eschew public protests. They should keep it to themselves; say nothing, write nothing, do nothing. Otherwise, every utterance or action will provide comfort to Saddam, discourage his people from rebelling, demoralise the coalition troops. And as such it will lengthen the war and increase the casualties. But those who want Saddam to continue in power, should by all means say so, and accept the associated opprobrium. The stark choice facing all of us is :
There is no longer any middle way. Anti-war = Pro-Saddam.
Where did Saddam Hussein get his weapons ? The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute tells us that over the period 1973-2002, Iraq, under Saddam's rule, imported its arms :
The full data are neatly illustrated by another blogger who calls himself the Dissident Frogman. Clearly, defeat of Saddam will mean an end to this arms industry gravy train for the three big naysayers. But that's not all. Dr Nimrod Raphaeli, a respected Egyptian economist, advances other economic reasons - particularly centred around the oil opportunities they will lose - why the war is bad for the economies of Russia and France, as well as Germany. So that familiar cry that the war is “all about oil” may be close to the truth - for it is the opposition of the anti-war countries that is largely “all about oil”. As it is “all about arms”. There is little morality, integrity or humanity about the anti-warriors' stance.
You know the world is going crazy when
The Vatican seems to go out of its way to alienate members of the Roman Catholic Church. It's just issued a new dictionary and uses the opportunity to have another go at gays. The dictionary calls homosexuality a condition “without any social value”. And it counsels against “stigmatizing” as homophobic those who raise questions about homosexuality. That's like saying don't “stigmatize” prelates who protect paedophile priests. The sin is not the sin; the exposure of the sin is the sin. The new lexicon reflects Vatican teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered”, and Pope John Paul has said such acts are “contrary to natural law”. As I commented
last October, Monsignor Andrew Baker
of the Vatican's Congregation of Bishops has made extraordinary
statements regarding homosexuality, essentially painting it as a
curable disease. Like leprosy. Nevertheless, the Church also tells us that gays and lesbians should be treated with compassion and dignity, having repeatedly made the case that they deserve neither. They are the only group in the Church for whom celibacy is mandatory who have not taken a vow of celibacy.
Let Your Credit Card Protect You According to the Motley Fool, an online investment adviser, credit cards do more than allow you to buy on credit. Under UK law, when you use it for goods of between £100 and £30,000, your contract is with both the trader and issuer, who therefore have equal liability for anything that goes wrong. Very useful if your purchase is faulty and the seller goes bust, disappears or is just plain awkward. Card issuers hate this provision and try to keep it secret and to deny it, but don't allow yourself to be fogged off. It applies even for a part-purchase (eg paying a deposit) and for items bought from a UK supplier over the Internet. The Office of Fair Trading says it also covers transactions abroad. Therefore,
However, debit and charge cards don't count - only credit cards.
"If they fly they die. They know that" US Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks
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