On The Eve
By: Andrew N. Wilson
I am 52 years old, and I cancan not remember a time in England quite like this. In a largely apolitical country, everyone has begun to listen to the news, to follow events from day to day, as our parents used to do in the 1930s. And the puzzle for most of us is - why? Why now? Why Saddam Hussein, rather than, let us say Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, another dictator put in place by a Western power, who subsequently made life hell for his won people?
The answers are by no means clear to us Europeans. From a purely selfish point of view, it seems very unlikely that poor beleaguered Iraq, its economy brought to breaking point by outside sanctions and by internal incompetence, could pose any threat to England. If the Western powers were looking about for a ‘nursery of terrorism’ to punish, they would surely look first to Saudi Arabia, or to Pakistan, both countries with proven links with terror. Or they would investigate the many suburbs of London where eccentric and disgruntled individuals from different parts of the globe plot outrages against civilians and airlines.
Even if Baghdad was shown to be, like London, Islamabad or some of the cities
of Saudi Arabia, to be harbouring known terrorist groups, would an aerial war be
likely to solve the problem?
In a busy week, of flying to Washington for talks with President Bush, and
flying to Brussels to beg his European partners to support the war, the British
Prime Minister Tony Blair spared a day to go to Ireland. Ireland has had a
problem of terrorism for the last 150 years. After thousands of civilian deaths,
and political deadlock, the two sides in the dispute, the Republican Catholics
and the Protestant Unionists have, partly against their will, edged towards
compromise and peace. There is still a long way to go, but it has been a case of
‘two steps forward, one step back’.
Tony Blair must be given the credit, together with President Clinton, of helping
this peace process along. In Ireland he has been able to see that it is very
easy to use the term ‘terrorist’ as a label for someone who had no other way of
making their political voices heard. If the Republican terrorist groups are now
slowly disarming, it is because their generations-old complaints are now being
heeded in the political mainstream. There had to be much swallowing of pride on
both sides, but little by little, it is happening.
It is nothing less than astonishing that Blair the peacemaker in Ireland
should take such a very different line in the Middle East. Although he says that
it is imperative to solve the Palestinian crisis, he shows every sign of caving
in to American and Israeli pressure. The refusal by the Israeli Government to so
much as allow Palestinian delegates to London to discuss the matter should have
created a diplomatic incident between Britain and Israel. It was passed over
with smiles.
If Blair applied to Ireland the principles which he is applying to Iraq, he
would now be preparing to bomb Dublin in an attempt to ‘disarm’ the Irish
Republican movement.
As an Englishman writing for readers far from London, I feel embarrassed. My Prime Minister is not a bad man. He is a clever lawyer who does not think things through. In the aftermath of the atrocity on 11th September in New York, in which many Britons were killed, he liked the idea of demonstrating solidarity with the Americans. Somehow, one suspects he has been ‘bounced’ into the extreme, rigid ‘hawkish’ position in which he now finds himself, and which, to my extreme distaste, he has placed my country.
The Americans and the British know that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons which have not yet been found by the UN weapons inspectors. How can they know this? The answer is simple: they sold him the weapons. I do not mean that Messrs Bush and Blair did so, but they know that in years past, it has suited Britain and America to pit Iraq against Iran. For a while, Saddam Hussein, now the monster was ‘our man’.
It is hard to be optimistic at the moment, but I will offer you my thoughts
as, with 1.5 million other people, I marched through the icy air of London to
protest against Anglo-American policy. Everyone, or almost everyone, knows that
Saddam Hussein was able to perpetrate deeds of horror against Iraqis, and
against his neighbors, with weapons purchased in the West. The oil-fields of
Iraq have always been a prize lusted after by Britain and America since the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
I do not think the peace march will stop the war. But I think it will be an
everlasting reminder to future generations of politicians that the arms trade
must stop. The Western powers can not continue to manufacture arms, give or sell
them to their friends in different parts of the world, and then, when those
friends turn out to be ‘evil’, fight wars against their innocent civilian
populations in order to ‘disarm’ them again.
The war is a declaration to the world that Britain and America see them as the world’s policemen, whose job is to tell other nations how they should be governed and how they should behave. This imperialist attitude is, to put it mildly, distressing to the vast majority of people in Europe. The wrongness of this war is obvious. The only cause for optimism which I can find is that it has brought the sheer injustice of the Palestinian situation to the world’s attention. It might be possible for a few newspaper-editors and some blinkered politicians to believe that Iraq deserves to be bombed because it does not comply with UN resolutions and because it does not co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But the world knows that Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East with a nuclear weapon. The world knows that Israel refuses to sign any non-proliferation treaties. The world knows that Israel refuses to allow weapons inspectors. The world can see what is happening in Palestine and the grotesque double standards being applied by the Anglo-American alliance vis-ŕ-vis Israel and Iraq has helped to focus world thinking. Moderate opinion in Europe and America will not any longer be content to let this thing be forgotten , whether or not Bush and Blair get their crazy way and choose to start the bombing raids on Baghdad.
Andrew Wilson is the author of 17 novels, and many works of non-fiction. His latest work is a history of The Victorians. He writes a weekly column in The Evening Standard
Note: The views of the article does not necessarily reflect the views of ICB