• One war is dividing into two.

The anti- Iraq war movement is now, well and truly, trapped in a quagmire.

 

The second anniversary of the very big anti-war marches is upon us, and clearly a war is still underway in Iraq.  Yet, the anti-war movement, has effectively collapsed world wide.  In Australia it’s down to its base rump, of committed core activists, who could hardly organize to make a noticeable noise over the battle for control of Fallujah.  

 

As the saying goes, “People are beginning to talk”.  No wonder, when the current ‘peace movement’ is so openly involved in a scandalous relationship.  It’s not just that many of the leading lights of the movement ‘understand, while, not condoning’, the actions of the ‘resistance’, and, or the ‘insurgents’.  It’s more, that the movement organizes events with reactionary Islamists.  People who, among some of their more choice ideas, openly advocate that homosexuals and adulterous women be put to death!

 

As was plain from its inception, such a ‘peace movement’, could only ever divide and split after the fall of Baghdad.  There was always going to be one issue between the ‘radicals’ and moderates.  The moderate position would see free and fair elections held as soon as reasonably possible and then a systematic troop withdrawal.  The ‘radicals’, were always going to demand all foreign troops be immediately withdrawn, so that, the Iraqi people could ‘freely determine their own future’.   

 

This no-brainer, of a choice, was bound to leave the ‘radicals’ even more isolated, and reduce the numbers actively involved to fewer than one in twenty. That reduction in numbers further compounded the problem of the pseudo-left’s ‘scandal’.  The scandalous relationship became more obvious and embarrassing, as reactionary Islamists now comprised a far larger proportion of this moribund movement.

 

Each milestone development, such as the first stage elections in January, will bring about another split in both, of the still active remains, of the anti-war movement, and also in the much larger, and now almost silent groups, who have stopped their campaigning since the fall of Baghdad. 

 

Reflect on the direction of events as they’ve unfolded over the last year or so, and it becomes clear that one war, the war to remove Saddam and the whole Baathist structure, is seamlessly giving way to a second war, a war, to defend an elected democratic secular regime against terrorists. When the first war fully gives way to the second war, as it will, what then for the policies of Latham, and Garrett?

 

After one year of occupation, and reasonably thorough de-Baathification, Saddam was captured, bringing much joy to the vast majority of Iraqi’s.  Then the war took another turn and the head removers took to their grisly work.  This terror tactic, directed at scaring away volunteer foreign technical workers, and shaking the resolve of the American voting population was never going to be an endearing tactic to many people anywhere.  But it did reduce the amount of civilian aid workers and contractors.  It could however never shake the resolve of the US, or British governments, and didn’t manage to swing the vote either.  So, I expect we have seen the worst of this tactic from Iraq at least.  But blatant terrorism will continue in 2005, and beyond.   Even after an internationally supervised and recognized, democratically elected government is fully established.  So, what will become of Latham’s line on Iraq at that point?  Disaster that’s what!  

 

Elections will establish an indisputably legitimate, Iraqi political authority, and a new rule of law that flows from this.  The old war with its objectives will have finished and a new war, (actually no more than another front of the war on terror) will have begun.  This continuation of terrorism will demonstrate the dead end to the current ALP political line on Iraq. 

 

Latham can not deny the terrorism as it happens, and he could not fail to support the international effort to assist the Iraqi authorities.  People like Latham, and Garrett have said all along they have support the war on terror.  They have said the international community must work together.  Thus they abandoned opposition to Pine Gap and now support Pine Gap because in their word the war against terror is principally an intelligence gathering war!!  They have said that governments must work together.   If they refuse to acknowledge that the Iraqi Government and people would then be involved in the war on terror, and refuse to support them, then, the world working together line, is meaningless. 

 

A war of terrorists who can not win elections, but who can, and will, until they are stopped, commit horrible acts of violence against both the Iraqi people, and the international community then there is no longer any ‘noble war of resistance’.  Iraq thus becomes a war that Garrett et al have said they support.  A fatal position to be in, for people who have always thought that the war was really about oil!   Having conceded that a swamp creates terrorists, we are back to dealing with the terrorist mosquitoes of this world.  What we now appear to disagree about is what the swamp that creates them really is.  It’s not the opportunity for free and fair elections under a constitution that respects the rights of minorities, so, we can agree on that, at any rate.  

 

The very rich Osama Bin Laden, used to just do terror, not threaten to do. Now he can’t do, so he resorts to threats.  Remember him trying to effect the Bush re-election, presumably trying for a Madrid effect?  He turned up on the TV to remind everyone that his mob, still have members (even new members) to be got after and defeated.  Well now   that’s Latham’s line, and remember, it applies to all terrorists.  There are a lot of mosquitoes after all.  Big bad OBL still has to be caught more than three years after 9/11, and that fact produces lots of tutt-tutting about the US spreading terrorism and breeding more terrorists.  Every time there is a new outrage there is lots of ‘I told you so’ talk.

 

People who claim to support the ‘war on terror’ by hunting down, and killing the mosquitoes, one by one, can have their view.  They can think Iraq is the wrong war, wrong place, at the wrong time, and diverts effort from the war on terror.  They can believe that invading Iraq has bred more terrorists and made the world a more dangerous place.   Fine, we can all now agree to disagree about that analysis and get ready to move on and assist the Iraqi people deal with that vital front of the war on terror.    

 

But now that we all agree there are things that breed terrorists, let’s turn the debate to ensuring those things are ended. 

 

The left view, has always been that the last sixty years of US Middle East policy, only further blocked the ‘river of human progress’, in that region  and helped create the swamp that we are dealing with today.  The right wing stance, is that the US, has always defended freedom and democracy round the world, or if it couldn’t it but pragmatically dealt with the lesser of two evils in a given situation.   Bush now says that the US wasn’t, strictly speaking, always doing that either.   We have to concede he might be lying about future intentions.  He may even be a deluded fool about future US intentions.  But in speaking out for more democracy, he is up to no bad thing. 

 

Peace movement, and ALP core activists are, a bit ‘shell shocked’ of late, having experienced the re-election of Howard, and Bush with increased majorities.  They find it difficult to understand how they could have lost ground, given how “obviously bad Bush and Howard are”.  So, just to remind everyone; there never was a moral high ground on the anti-war side, because all sides must have blood on their hands once the proposition of the Baathists as a bunch of killers is accepted i.e. Even the position of do nothing leaves killers, killing, so, the question became what is the best way forward through the killing, to put a stop to the killing and oppression?

 

The informed left, is aware of being descendants of the enlightenment.  They have an historical perspective.  If people are anti-American then they are objectively racists, and therefore not of the left.  If they are pro- Zionist, then they are objectively racists, and thus not of the left.  Free of anti- American prejudice it’s not hard to see that the US ruling elite has, in enabling the creation of this coming Iraqi government, returned to the bourgeois project.   The US elite, led by Bush, has returned to a long forgotten revolutionary tradition opposed to feudalism, medievalism and opposed to outright religious re-action.   None of this has even occurred to the right- winger, Mark Latham.

 

A war against insupportable terror definitely started, as of 9/11, we ought to know what side we are on, and we ought to all know that we must have a strategy towards a victory.  The endless killing of terrorists cannot be that strategy, so, we can therefore reject leaders like Latham outright.

 

People who identify as left, that remain involved in anti-war groups, once it is clear that the Iraqi people have democratically chosen their own representative government, must be described as something worse than pseudo- left’s.  Social fascist, seems appropriate to me.

 

Patrick 

Patrick wrote:
Peace movement, and ALP core activists are, a bit ‘shell shocked’ of late, having experienced the re-election of Howard, and Bush with increased majorities.  They find it difficult to understand how they could have lost ground, given how “obviously bad Bush and Howard are”.  So, just to remind everyone; there never was a moral high ground on the anti-war side, because all sides must have blood on their hands once the proposition of the Baathists as a bunch of killers is accepted i.e. Even the position of do nothing leaves killers, killing, so, the question became what is the best way forward through the killing, to put a stop to the killing and oppression?

I agree with Patrick's argument here (and the rest of his argument, too, for that matter - thanks for the analysis) but I think there is a large section of the population who evade the responsibility of the logic Patrick is presenting.

We could call this something like the principle of preferring the passive responsibility of doing nothing over the active responsibility of supporting doing something about an intolerable situation (fascism in Iraq) that also leads to the death of innocents and in the course of which the waters have been muddied further by incompetence, lies and war crimes like torture.  There is no blood on my hands because I am not supporting any action on my behalf, by my government, that will lead to the death of innocents and war crimes like torture. It is better to be humanitarian, decent, nice and peaceful (civilised) than support a messy, dirty war, there must be a better way.  I am saying that this position still has a lot of support - 56 million people voted for Kerry, after all.

I recently came across this statement by David Isenberg (who, by the way, is a very smart and knowledgable person when it come to talking about computer networks):

But worse, we have a failure of empathy. It is a
failure of our human ability to understand that when a
human being dies, their family feels loss just as
acutely whether they're Iraqi or New Yorkese. The
best scientific study claims that over 100,000
innocent civilian bystanders have been killed by the
U.S. war in Iraq. These people are just as innocent
as the people who died on September 11, 2001. Their
loss is just as tragic and much, much larger. Saddam
killed people too, to be sure, and I am saddened and
angered by that. And the anti-occupation fighters in
Iraq kill people too, and this is grievous too. But
these killers are not representing me when they do it,
in contrast to the current war, so the current war
bothers me more. I think every day about the human
side of death in Iraq. They have the Tigris and the
Euphrates; they don't need denial.

But here's the worst thing for me: torture. I know
that net-net, bombings and shootings cause more
personal suffering than the tortures inflicted in Abu
Ghraib, Guantanamo and dozens of other locations that
are secret even though we know they exist. Every
April 15, when I pay my taxes, part of that money is
used by my government to torture people. I pay for
some normal person ( see http://www.prisonexp.org/ )
who has been told by his superior military officer
that Alberto Gonzalez and his Commander in Chief have
a written interpretation of international law that
makes it OK for them to inflict certain forms of
deliberate, measured, prolonged pain upon other human
beings. This is not OK. It makes me nauseous, so
most of the time I do not think about it. That is, I
need to be in denial about this wretched U.S. policy
so I can function. And when I think about it, I am
scared spitless that when Gonzalez is confirmed as
U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Citizens will legally
endure certain forms of deliberately inflicted pain.
I wonder whether senior U.S. officials can even
imagine enduring deliberately inflicted pain. I doubt
it. Do you think Dick Cheney or Karl Rove can imagine
himself naked in prison in a “stress position” for
hours at a time? I think the failure of empathy in
the United States is profound indeed.
http://www.isen.com/archives/041206.html

As I said I was interested and also dismayed by Isenberg's comments because he is a very insightful person when it comes to other topics such as computer networks and he doesn't mind mess and disruption when it come to analysis in that area.  I'll talk more about that in the progress, technology and culture thread.

Yeah, I agree, and i like the extension made by Bill to the question of responsibility.  Personally, I think that anti-Iraq-war people, not only do not have the high moral ground, but that they are correctly classified as morally bankrupt, and smugly self 'satisfied'.    So, I would have put it stronger than Patrick...

Overall, one thing that struck me as being obviously wrong with Isenberg's view, (see kerrb's post) is that he said he didn't think that leading politicians had thought about themselves dying a horrible/untimely death.   It seems obvious that the leaders of state/political parties are executed/assassinated by the opposition at a rate greater than members of the general public, not associated with either politics, or organised crime.  

For example, Donald Rumsfeld the politician has far more enemies than Donald Rumsfeld the private citizen.    And, what is more you do not need to be paranoid, or delusional to think that some of them might really want to get you.  ie take you out .   So, to say that high profile politicians have not thought about death by misadventure, is plainly cynical in the extreme and wrong.

At best, it is extremely naieve to think that the American ruling class were not deeply personally affected by seeing the twin towers go down; and then hearing of the attack on the Pentagon; and then hearing of the  foiled attempt on the White House.   Now, if you are sitting in your oval office and see a wing tip close by, you know your number is probably up, the survivors of those attacks however are now thanking their God for a second chance at life.   (We are talking about Americans)   9/11 was an extraordinary act of war, but we now know that something equally catastrophic could occur on any day until Muslim Jihad groups are defeated.  Political minders and security personnel hanging around motorcades know why they are there, and that is to make it difficult for snipers/suicide bombers  and the politicians know why they are employed.
At the very basic level, all political activists know that speaking out/leading political marches etc.,  places one in the direct firing line, when the state hits back.   This dynamic does not change with the political circumstances, ie from activist to Parliamentarian.   The higher up you get politically, the more enemies potentially accrued.

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, was in the US on 9/11, and he could well have been at an official function when that plane, (which thankfully did not make it) hit its target, the white House.    It is not surprising therefore that John Howard is an unwavering supporter of the need for international support. 

Lots of other people (not just politicians) are thinking how grateful, or sad they are, about not being on their high rise, factory floor on that day.   Just now, the radio is saying "he realised it could have been him".   In this case, a British security force officer, telling of being on duty in Ireland with the possibility of needing to take someone out, or of being taken out himself  by an IRA bomb, or bullet.    If politics is war by any other means, then the President/Prime Minister is not the Commander in Chief for nothing!   Soldiers know they will be shot at, and so do politicians.