gutrot

wierd how selective your quotes are

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to
develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.
That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear.
We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction program."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal
here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear,
chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest
security threat we face."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times
since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.
Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate,
air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to
the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction
programs."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin,
Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass
destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he
has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass
destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that .. Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons
programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs
continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam
continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a
licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten
the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,)
and others, December 5, 2001

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a
threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the
mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction
and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical
weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to
deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in
power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing
weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are
confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to
build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence
reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority
to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe
that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real
and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively
to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the
next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated
the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every
significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his
chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has
refused to do" Rep.
- Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that
Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weap ons
stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has
also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members
.. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will
continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare,
and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam
Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for
the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal,
murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a
particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to
miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his
continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction
... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real
..."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
 

hello, anonymous. not weird at all really. i stuck to the chief salesmen and contrasted their spiel with the pre-9/11 comments from powell and rice.

there were no weapons of mass destruction to use - the remnants were destroyed in the early 1990's as duelfer's report for the iraq survey group eventually conceded.

as a former senior weapons inspector put it earlier this week:

"The ISG had accomplished its mission - not the search for WMD, but the establishment of a viable alibi. Its job done, the ISG slipped quietly away, its passing barely noticed by politicians, media and a public all too willing to pretend that no crime has been committed.

"But, through the invasion of Iraq, a crime of gigantic proportions has been perpetrated. If history has taught us anything, it is that it will condemn both the individuals and respective societies who not only perpetrated the crime, but also remained blind and mute while it was being committed."your citing of the discredited yellowcake story and hyped nuclear threat among your list of quotes suggests to me that you aren't exactly commenting in good faith; merely recycling the propaganda that characterised the push for war.

in which case, feel free to add to your long list, but don't expect another reply.
 

I didn't think Raoul was making a 'Clinton, Fuck Yeah!' comment.

Did you, Anonymous? Why, is the entire world divided into 'with us, or aganist us' in your view, with no shades, no nuance, only two opinions of incompatible difference?

I thought that he was simply pointing out that the people who were instrumental in making the case for war were to be found, only a year or so earlier, making comments entirely incompatible with the central tenets of their argument. Incompatible with a case for war, perhaps, but perfectly compatible with what appears to be the truth as revealed by events. Clearly, this change of mind must have come from somewhere. It appears that the 'evidence' should not have been enough to persuade anyone but the most radically gullible. I presume that you do not offer this defence of those who pushed for war. In that case, I suggest, politely, that those who made the case for war were able to 'bend' the truth.

By the way, Raoul, you need to make the cartoon smaller, it spoils how the page is seen, at least in Netscape.
 

thanks, andrew. hopefully the display problem's now fixed. all sorts of funny euro signs and the like keep cropping up too - none of them visible to me here. funny world, this blogosphere thingy.
 

'Anonymous' has spectaculary missed the point. This is not and was not anything to do with the miniscule difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. Both factions are massively culpable.

David Traynier
 

thanks, david. as andrew noted, "clinton, fuck yeah!" certainly wasn't the point.

i figured anonymous must be such a fan of team america that he/she'd been thouroughly seduced by the "dicks, pussies and assholes" speech gary johnston pulls off to piss all over the puppet peaceniks from the film actors guild. unfortunately, it doesn't make much sense when you substitute saddam hussein for the kim jong il marionette:

gary johnston (team america's great white hope): "We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate. And it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are a inch and half away from assholes. I don't know much about this crazy crazy world, but I do know this. If you don't let us fuck this asshole we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit."seems anonymous got his dicks mixed up with the wrong asshole. unfortunately it's the people of iraq who get shat on as a result. and madeleine albright already told us that was just fine by her and billy boy:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."-- 60 Minutes (12 May, 1996)
 

1. Don't get all sanctimonious when you're caught out dressing up whatever it is you object to as a right wing horror just because I pointed out that the left were just as culpable. (Traynier - you ought to read what's in front of your eyes before opening your gob. I agree with you - that's why I posted my list.)

Madeleine Albright was right. She was also right in Feb 98 when she was telling the UN that the US was prepared to invade alone.

If that isn't before 9/11, what is?

WMD never mattered and I couldn't, and never have cared less about them. The fact that he ever had them at all was good enough.

You medialens crowd ought to read what I've pasted below. Raoul has stubmled, in his blind left othodoxy, on the point. 9/11 did change everything.

Read this and give thanks that some people give enough of a shit to value a world that lets whiners like you do it outside a cell.

You don't know you're even born.

from http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P1421





Jan 29, 05 | 4:50 pm
The Worst

"3) WMDs were by no means the only reason to remove Saddam. Saddam was an avowed enemy of this country. He called for our destruction many, many times. He aided and abetted Islamic terrorists of every warp and woof. He built the Salman Pak terrorist training camp. He provided safe harbor to terrorist killers like Abu Nidal and others. He encouraged the murderous depredations of Palestinian suicide bombers by rewarding their surviving family members with large cash payments which morally amounted to a bounty on the heads of innocent Israeli civilians. He attempted to assassinate a former US President, and just because it happened to be one you on the Left do not like does not mean that we as a nation can afford to ignore it. He attempted many, many times over the course of more than a decade to shoot down American aircraft engaged in a legitimate and UN-approved mission. Just because you on the Left don’t like the military any more than you like the aforementioned US President doesn’t mean that we as a nation can afford to ignore that. It’s one thing to ignore a ruthless, bloodthirsty, and out-of-control tyrant like Saddam on 9/10/01; it’s another thing entirely to do so on 9/12. You on the Left are not seriously concerned about the defense of this nation, its citizens, and its military personnel. You are dead wrong, and you do not deserve to be taken seriously."
(Mike Silverman)

(phew)

This is nearly exactly correct. Read that again carefully. Word for word, that is nearly exactly correct.

I am being painfully precise about this because of stipulations that I must reserve before I could commit to the judgment of its being exactly correct in all the weight of its facts and implications. The stipulations are enormous; enough to widely separate me from the politics of its author in crucial aspects. (They include: 1] political allegiance to "a former US president" in all its implications; 2] the "we as a nation" collective premise -- played twice; 3] the value of of US military commitment to the UN, although I understand the value of it in the quoted remarks as a citation of commie hypocrisies in ignoring the venerated Pile on the Lower East Side when they find the ignorance convenient.)


The fact of those "on the Left" is the worst.
 

thanks for a characteristically considered contribution, noserubber. if WMD never mattered, then why did bush and blair waste so much time telling us that they did? are you conceding then that they lied all along? also, if 9/11 changed everything, then hasn't the invasion of iraq been a gift to the jidahists of the world, while doing nothing to defend the united states? moreover, if 3,000 people died on 9/11, why does this give the u.s. the right to preside over the killing of tens of thousands of iraqis? finally, why do you think that people who disagree with you ought to be locked up? it suggests you have very little confidence in the weight of your own arguments.
 

Well Noserubber,

I should at least begin by congratulating you on having managed to construct a post without using the word ‘cunt’ once. That’s a sign of definite progress. Still, let’s not waste time applauding you for your gradual socialization; let’s deal with the substance of your argument (or rather Mike Silverman’s argument).

“WMDs were by no means the only reason to remove Saddam.”

I quite agree that there plenty of reasons to remove Saddam. WMD, however, was not one of them (since they did not and were known not to have existed since the early 1990s). Of course, that is an entirely separate question to that of who should remove Saddam and how. Still, I’m glad that Silverman and you (I assume) both concede that Bush and Blair were both liars when they said that Iraq could avert an invasion if they disarmed.

George Bush: "If we're to avert war, all nations must continue to pressure Saddam Hussein to accept this resolution and to comply with its obligations and his obligations."

Tony Blair: "Saddam must now make his choice. My message to him is this: Disarm or you face force," Blair said in a statement. (Elizabeth Neuffer, ‘Resolution on Iraq passes Security Council vote unanimous’ Boston Globe, 11th By, Globe Staff, 9th November 2002; http://www.boston.com/news/packages/iraq/globe_stories/un_110902_sc.htm )

You’re also conceding, effectively, that Blair and Bush are both sadists of a fairly high order for holding out hope to the Iraqi people that they wouldn’t be bombed if only they complied. Of course, we know that Bush and Blair were both lying and continually shifting the goal posts in order to invade Iraq for their own benefit, not that of Iraq.

You make another point, that Saddam was an ‘avowed enemy’ of the US. This is dramatic but plain wrong. Saddam has never considered the US a major enemy and the evidence of this dates back some considerable period of time. For example, to quote the Duelfer report,

‘Saddam did not consider the United States a natural adversary, as he did Iran and Israel, and he hoped that Iraq might again enjoy improved relations with the United States…’

Furthermore, according to Duelfer, Tariq Aziz, ‘pointed to a series of issues, which occurred between the end of the Iran-Iraq war and 1991, to explain why Saddam failed to improve relations with the United States: Irangate (the covert supplying of Iran with missiles, leaked in 1986), a continuing US fleet presence in the Gulf, suspected CIA links with Kurds and Iraqi dissidents and the withdrawal of agricultural export credits. After Irangate, Saddam believed that Washington could not be trusted and that it was out to get him personally. His outlook encouraged him to attack Kuwait, and helps explain his later half-hearted concessions to the West.’

Crucially,

‘These concerns collectively indicated to Saddam that there was no hope of a positive relationship with the United States in the period before the attack on Kuwait.’
Furthermore,

‘In a custodial debriefing, Saddam said he wanted to develop better relations with the US over the latter part of the 1990s. He said, however, that he was not given a chance because the US refused to listen to anything Iraq had to say.

In 2004, Charles Duelfer of ISG said that between 1994 and 1998, both he and UNSCOM Executive Chairman Rolf Ekeus were approached multiple times by senior Iraqis with the message that Baghdad wanted a dialogue with the United States, and that Iraq was in a position to be Washington’s “best friend in the region bar none.” (‘Regime Strategic Intent’, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, 30th September 2004, Volume 1 at http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html)

So no, not an ‘avowed enemy’ by any means – as was clear to the US throughout the 1990s.

‘He aided and abetted Islamic terrorists of every warp and woof.’

This is a pretty thin charge. Consulting the CIA’s ‘Pattern’s of Global Terrorism’ 2001, the last published before the invasion, we can see that CIA could find very little activity that conceivably posed a threat to the US. Indeed, the first paragraph is devoted almost entirely to Iraq’s failure to condemn 9-11. The rest of Iraq’s terrorist activity is largely confined to providing bases to groups like the ‘Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)’, the ‘Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)’, ‘the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)’, and the Abu Nidal organization (ANO) (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/html/10249.htm).

Now, the MEK are an anti-Iranian group and no threat to the US. The PKK had been on ceasefire since September 1998 and remained so until June of 2004) and, in any case, operated in Kurdish Turkey. The Abu Nidal organisation is an even more flimsy excuse for an attack, since Saddam had Nidal killed in 2001 (allegedly because of US pressure) and, in any case, even the Council on Foreign Relations concedes that some experts believe the group is ‘inactive and no longer poses much of a threat’ (http://cfrterrorism.org/groups/abunidal.html). Perhaps you’d make the argument that Saddam’s support of Palestinian groups was justification for an invasion and occupation that has killed more than 100,000 (I noticed that Silverman double accounts this charge) but, if so, then you should also advocate the invasion of the US. The US, after all, arms Israel in its illegal occupation and violates the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by arming an illegal nuclear state and, therefore, its own Constitution (which makes treaties the law of the land).

On the issue of Salman Pak, there’s little hard evidence to support the claim that it was a terrorist camp. If anything, it’s very likely that it was an +anti+ terrorist camp. To quote Seymour Hersh:
“In separate interviews with me, however, a former C.I.A. station chief and a former military intelligence analyst said that the camp near Salman Pak had been built not for terrorism training but for counter-terrorism training. In the mid-eighties, Islamic terrorists were routinely hijacking aircraft. In 1986, an Iraqi airliner was seized by pro-Iranian extremists and crashed, after a hand grenade was triggered, killing at least sixty-five people. (At the time, Iran and Iraq were at war, and America favored Iraq.) Iraq then sought assistance from the West, and got what it wanted from Britain’s MI6. The C.I.A. offered similar training in counter-terrorism throughout the Middle East. “We were helping our allies everywhere we had a liaison,” the former station chief told me. Inspectors recalled seeing the body of an airplane—which appeared to be used for counter-terrorism training—when they visited a biological-weapons facility near Salman Pak in 1991, ten years before September 11th. It is, of course, possible for such a camp to be converted from one purpose to another. The former C.I.A. official noted, however, that terrorists would not practice on airplanes in the open. “That’s Hollywood rinky-dink stuff,” the former agent said. “They train in basements. You don’t need a real airplane to practice hijacking. The 9/11 terrorists went to gyms. But to take one back you have to practice on the real thing.”
Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on April 6th. Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war.” (Seymour M Hersh, ‘Selective Intelligence Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?’, New Yorker, 12th May 2003)

This is also supported by Knight Ridder’s Washington Bureau who, in a special report, point out that, while ‘Iraqi defectors alleged that Saddam's regime was helping to train Iraqi and non-Iraqi Arab terrorists at a site called Salman Pak, south of Baghdad,’ an allegation that appeared in a September 2002 white paper issued by the White House, as of March 2004 the US military had found ‘no evidence of such a facility.’ (Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott ‘Doubts cast on efforts to link Saddam, al-Qaida’, http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/8089829.htm )

Of course, none of this addresses the issue of whether having a terrorist training camp justifies an invasion. One could make that argument, I suppose, but I’m sure that you’d want to avoid the charge of hypocrisy and also admit that an invasion of the US would also be justified: in response for the US’s continued support of Fort Benning/School of the Americas which has engaged in terrorist/counter-terrorist training for years the bloody results of which we have seen in South America (George Monbiot, ‘Backyard Terrorism: The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it’ in The Guardian, 30th October 2001).

On the issue of the alleged assassination plot against Bush One, it’s worth noting that this has always been questionable and has become even more questionable with the passage of time. As long ago as 1993, Seymour Hersh investigated and found the case ‘flawed’. According to Hersh, ‘none of the Clinton Administration officials I interviewed over a ten-week period this summer claimed that there was any empirical evidence—a "smoking gun"—directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt.’ The case against Iraq was ‘circumstantial.’ (Seymour M Hersh ‘A Case Not Closed’ in The New Yorker, November 1st 1993).

The story has now become even more implausible in light of the Duelfer report, which makes clear that, not only was Saddam engaged in negotiations with the UN and attempted negotiations with the US but that he was convinced that his entire security apparatus had been penetrated by the CIA. To quote the former State Department analyst Gregory Thielmann, speaking of the Duelfer report, ‘From the report, Saddam seems to be not a madman, but someone who would understand very well the consequences of an assassination… If his top priority was getting the [UN economic] sanctions lifted [as indicated by the report], then it doesn't follow that he would try to kill the president of the United States," (quoted in Jim Lobe, ‘So, Did Saddam Hussein Try to Kill Bush's Dad?’, Inter Press Service, October 19th 2004, http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=25915 )

Even assuming that, in spite of the evidence, Saddam really did plot to assassinate Bush, the plot amounted to very little and, again, is no justification for an invasion a decade later (I shan’t even bother with raising the issue of US hypocrisy when it comes to attacks on foreign leaders like Castro).

Regardin the matter of Iraq shooting at US-UK planes – I assume that Silverman is referring to the ‘no-fly’ zones. This is too easy. The no-fly zones were not ‘legitimate and UN-approved’. There was never any Resolution establishing or legitimizing the NFZs. They were, in fact, enforced by the US and UK (and France initially). Kofi Annan is on the record that the NFZs are ‘not Security Council policy’ (Paul Kerr, ‘UN Weapons Inspections Begin in Iraq’ Arms Control Today, December 2002 at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_12/iraq_dec02.asp ).

Moreover, since member states are forbidden from unilaterally interpreting Security Council Resolutions, whether or not they were a good idea (I happen to think they were) they were +totally illegal+ and an aggressive action against a sovereign state. As such, Iraq’s attempts to shoot down US-UK aircraft were justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which permits self-defence. They were, therefore, neither a moral nor a legal justification for the invasion.

If the best you can do is rely on this Silverman character, you’d be better off staying quiet. Silverman doesn’t have case and he makes schoolboy errors of fact. In his words, he does not ‘deserve to be taken seriously’.

BTW: Have you considered changing your monicker to ‘Nose Rubbed’?

David Traynier
 

can't be arsed. everytime i have looked into medialens fuckwits claims of "little evidence", "suspect grounds" I find tons of evidence and no suspicion. Undoubtedly the same here. I know who i'd rather listen to and its not rabid anti USA merchants and deeply propagandised proto totalitarianists like you.

Go and read some Hayek and Hernando de Soto and work out why properisty = freedom, you utter cunt.

Raoul - I didn't say you should be locked up - I said if it weren't for people taking wankers like Hussein out, the world would quickly become the sort of place where you would be locked up.

God bless America - 70% + estimated turnout in Iraq today - what a beautiful result - that's what noserubbing is, fool.
 

Noserubber,

You’re not any relation to that other endearing human cartoon, ‘Mr. T’, are you?

As usual, you say nothing of interest. Your reading advice about Hayek is sound enough –although it has no relevance to the matter at hand.

Your rejoinder to Raoul is interesting because it betrays either massive ignorance or massive self-deception. One could easily say that if it wasn’t for governments supported by people like you, a great many countries would not have become places were people are locked up for speaking their mind. Hussein’s Iraq is one example – a despot brought to power and maintained with the assistance of the very people you now so slavishly support. Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is another, more contmeporary, example: a tyrant who boils his oponents alive. Nor should we forget Saudi Arabia –the most fundamentalist regime on earth and firm client of the US. So, even if one did accept (and I do not) that people like Raoul and I are responsible for preventing the removal of tyrants, the much stronger charge can be levelled at you: you support those who install them in the first place.

The rest of your post is a rant and I’ll treat it as such. You have no arguments, only spittle-soaked rage. As such, you have entertainment value but little else.

David Traynier
 

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

http://www.freedomhouse.org/pdf_docs/research/freeworld/2004/map2004.pdf

noserubber (slave to freedom)
 

http://www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/funders.htm

Philip (slave to mirth)
 

so fucking what?

classic medialens brianwashed socialist
 

1. Is the Iraqi vote a bad thing?


2. Freedom


It makes us more prosperous:

"Nearly nine-tenths of the world’s economic output comes from free countries even though they account for just under half the world’s total population. Freedom is spreading – 30 years ago 29% of countries were free, now 46% are."

The above quote is from the FT magazine, August 9 2003, they identified the source as www.freedomhouse.org
 

Noserubber (I assume),

I don't particulary want to reach in and drag you out of incoherence, but what exactly is your point? That freedom is a good thing? If so, true enough; but it'll take more than mouthing platitudes to convince most thinking people that US policy in Iraq has anything to do with freedom (for anyone other than foreign investors).

If the US government, who you apparently believe is a great force for good in the world and believes in freedom, really does want to 'liberate' the peoples of the world, presumably they'd start by not helping to oppress them. That's just obvious: before stopping anyone from committing a crime, you first stop committing it yourself. So let's test that for a moment and take one of your Freedom House approved examples of a country that isn't free: Saudia Arabia. If you're correct, we should be able to learn a lot from the US attitude to a country it doesn't regard as free.

Presumably, your freedom-loving US government would be doing everything it can to 'liberate' the miserable people of the dictatorship of Saudi. It has 'Zero suffrage'; is 'governed according to Shari'a (Islamic law)'; and 'no political parties [are] allowed', according to the CIA World Factbook 2003.

This supported by Amnesty USA's Report for 2003 (http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/saudi_arabia/document.do?id=E2F0751B1FE3A68780256D2400379405):

“Gross human rights violations continued and were exacerbated by the government policy of "combating terrorism" in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the USA. The violations were perpetuated by the strictly secretive criminal justice system and the prohibition of political parties, trade unions and independent human rights organizations. Hundreds of suspected religious activists and critics of the state were arrested, and the legal status of most of those held from previous years remained shrouded in secrecy. Women continued to suffer severe discrimination. Torture and ill-treatment remained rife. At least 48 people were executed. Over 5,000 Iraqi refugees continued to live in Rafha camp as virtual prisoners. International non-governmental human rights organizations were denied access to the country and the government failed to respond to any of the concerns raised by AI during the year.”


Obviously simple moral logic would demand, from any country that claimed the right to use deadly force to liberate another country, that it would first stop supporting such brutal and murderous regimes. Anything else would just be grotesque hypocrisy –indeed, hypocrisy to such an extent that such a country, and its apologists, just could not be taken seriously when they professed to being ‘slaves to freedom’. What instead do we find?

US arms sales to Saudi for fiscal year 2003 (in thousands of dollars): 1, 112 503 (Source: Official US figures from annual 655 report, available at http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/655-2003/6552003.html#FMS ). And that's just scratching the surface. ‘A secret CIA memo circulated at the National Security Council and State Department that was leaked to the press in the spring of 2002 noted how the "culture of royal excess" in Saudi Arabia "has ruled over the kingdom with documented human rights abuses. . . Democracy has never been part of the equation."’

‘Support for the family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia has been a prevailing theme of U.S. policy for several decades. In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abel-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Arabian kingdom that now bears his family's name, and forged the alliance that remains to this day: in return for open access to Saudi oil, the United States would protect the royal family from its enemies, both external and internal.’

‘This policy has remained in force under both Democratic and Republican administrations. For example, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan declared "I will not permit [Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran," referring to the successful uprising that had ousted the U.S.-backed Shah two years earlier. Under Reagan, American trainers provided direct assistance to Saudi National Guard (SANG) units that crushed a popular uprising.

‘The SANG, whose primary function is internal security, is almost entirely armed, trained and managed by the United States, largely through a network of military contractors. It is noteworthy that Al-Qaeda's first terrorist attack, a November 1995 bombing in Ryadh that killed five American servicemen, was targeted at a U.S.-operated SANG training center.’ (Stephen Zunes, ‘Time to Question the US Role in Saudi Arabia’, May 20th, 2003 at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0520-05.htm )


'Slave to freedom' indeed.
 

I should probably get a Blogger account but the above post is mine.

David Traynier
 

I can never understand why you medialens types always turn to "....but the US/WEST/Baddies put these tyrants in, so its all their fault." Actually, I think I do understand - its the basic Marxism in all of you that causes you to get hung up on history, coupled with the standard hard left propogandist blinkered vision that makes eveything fit the class / poverty / property struggle line.

Here are some words from the devil in chief that I hope will make you sleep better. After all, if Bush himself admits the error of past ways, then is the new election, the new approach, the new freedom, a bad thing?

Presunambly, in your view, yes, abything form Amercia ia a bad thing - including the free air you breathe and the fact that you speak English and not German.


"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.

Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.

The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind."
 

Labour Friends of Iraq

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January 29, 2005
The Worst Advertisement: The Socialists and the Iraq Election by Alan Johnson
‘As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents’ (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937)

Alan Johnson gives a personal and scathing assessment of how “much of the left has backed itself into an incoherent and negativist ‘anti-imperialist’ corner. It has lost touch with democratic, egalitarian and humane values long-held on the democratic socialist left and argues that “The decent left will emerge as a political force by turning each negative refusal into a positive policy and campaign. For each refusal of ours does carry a positive charge: pro-human rights above all, pro-international solidarity with the victims of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, pro-worker, pro-feminism, pro-gay rights, pro-democracy, pro-liberty, pro-social justice. A decent left politics in the post-cold war world will define itself positively as the pursuit of these values and not as a negative coalition of ‘antis’. On such values we can build a culture not just a political movement.”

1. ‘looking straight into the eyes of the enemies of democracy’

Today, January 30, Iraq holds its first election. 15 million eligible Iraqi voters will go to the polls to elect a 275-member Transitional Assembly. The Assembly will choose a government, draft a constitution, and supervise fresh elections in December 2005. After thirty years of totalitarian dictatorship, bacchanalian tortures and abuses, mass graves, wars, sanctions and continuing occupation, it would be foolish to expect Iraq’s torment to be ended by one election. But the importance of the poll is clear enough. Abdullah Muhsin, Foreign Representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, spoke for all democrats when he said “Elections certainly offer the best hope of a secure Iraq and will legitimise the current UN-sanctioned political process, which is aimed at producing a national sovereign transitional assembly and a government mandated by the people. This view rests its legitimacy on international law - UN resolutions 1483, 1511 and 1546 - and the engagement of the majority of Iraqis and their key political parties across Iraq. Surely Iraqis, after all their struggles and sacrifices, have won the right to hold elections. Democracy is not given freely, but won, and to achieve it we shall walk, with heads held high, looking straight into the eyes of the enemies of democracy”.

Abdullah’s inspiring words reminded me of those spoken by the black freedom fighter Frederick Douglas in 1857: "Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform’ said Douglas. “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

2. The Totalitarians and the Elections

But the democrats have their opponents. The word ‘farce’ was first used to describe the Iraq elections in an Al Jazeera report, 21 November 2004, The pro-resistance Association of Muslim Scholars “describe the forthcoming elections under US occupation as a farce”. On 31 December, Middle East Online ran the headline ‘Radical Iraqi groups call democracy a farce’. MEO reported that ‘Ansar Al-Sunna, Islamic Army in Iraq, Army of the Mujahedeen…said in an Internet statement Thursday they considered democracy "farcical and un-Islamic" and warned that no-one who took part in next month's polls would be safe. “Those who participate in this dirty farce will not be sheltered from the blows of the mujahedeen…Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit…This (vote) is a mockery by the enemy to grant legitimacy to the new government which serves the crusaders. Participating in these elections . . . would be the biggest gift for America, which is the enemy of Islam and the tyrant of the age."

True to their word, on January 19 The Ansar al Sunnah Army posted today an internet video showing the killing of two Iraqis who were working for a an internet company that Ansar al Sunnah claimed was involved in preparations for the Iraqi elections. The statement read “We say to all who support the forces and have anything to do with the elections farce: Repent now and stop your disbelief so that you save your souls, or accept the hollowness of your fate as was the fate of these, as Allah is my witness. And may Allah grant peace and greetings to our prophet Mohammad and to his family and his friends. The military organization of the Ansar Al Sunnah Army, 9 Dhu'l-Hijjah 1425 / 19 January 2005.

And we have seen election workers and candidates murdered, polling stations bombed and voters intimidated. Nadia Selim wrote to the Independent (18 January) to tell of how thugs had prevented her family from exercising their democratic right to vote. “My family still live in Hay Al Jamia, which is a middle-class suburb in west Baghdad and has a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni population. In spite of the risks involved, my family were planning on voting in the Iraqi elections that are due to be held at the end of this month. Yesterday, they were visited by one of their local shopkeepers. He asked them to hand over their ration books to him for "temporary safe-keeping". It is by means of these ration books that voters will be identified when they cast their ballots on 30 January. He informed them that he had been visited by masked men carrying guns, who told him that they would be back. The gunmen had ordered him to collect the ration books from his neighbourhood, and said that if he failed to do so, he and his family would be killed. It was when the shopkeeper came back to call on my family a second time, sobbing and begging them not to condemn his children to a certain death, that they reluctantly handed over their ration books. They will now, like many others I am sure, be unable to cast their votes at the end of this month.”

With the stakes so high, and the democrats under murderous assault from a fascistic enemy, what has been the reaction of the socialists?

3. The Socialists and the Elections (with some Iraqis butting in)

I apologise for asking the reader to plough through the catalogue that follows. But as you do, please understand it is but a small selection. I really could have put together a list ten times the size. After each socialist sneer I have inserted a voice from Iraq about the elections, brave, joyful, determined and democratic. These Iraqi voices are taken from either Norman Geras’s blog at http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info/ or from Friends of Democracy: Ground Level Election News From the People of Iraq at http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info/ .

* Seamus Milne (Guardian, January 13) argued the elections would be ‘at best irrelevant’.

(“Ahmed Khudayer beamed as he described his experience on the stump: "We drove round the streets last Sunday with a motorcade led by a white school bus with the roof taken off and garlanded with flowers to get attention. It went on for four hours. People were crying with joy. They remembered the past," he said. He is campaign manager for a coalition of secular parties called the United Democratic Forces”.)

* The Australian Green Left Weekly (January 26) declared the election “a sham”.

(“I'm proud to vote for the election," Shimon Haddad, one of the first to cast his ballot, told French news agency AFP.)

* Noam Chomsky thinks the January 30 Poll is "a poor joke" (Independent January 24).

(“We have been looking forward to this time for the last 50 years, actually, so it is a very exciting day for Iraq citizens.")

*Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) the 2004 left-wing Presidential candidate, dismisses the poll as ‘a farce’.

("When I look at the ink on my finger - this is a mark of freedom," Kassim Abood told Reuters news agency.)

* Felicity Arbuthnot (CommonDreams.org, January 18) goes one better, declaring the vote, ‘a farce of historic proportions’.

(“For 35 years we haven't had free or democratic elections. There was voting for just one person, the dictator Saddam. I am going to vote and no one can threaten me because I am loyal to my country and I will not stay at home. If there really is a guy called Zarqawi I will still vote, even if it takes my life”).

* Socialist Worker sees ‘nothing but a fraud’ (29 Jan).

(“I will vote in the election... This is a very important time for us, it is a time of freedom, something new for the Iraqis that we never had before”.)

* The esteemed historian (and long-time Communist Party of Great Britain member) Eric Hobsbawm, while admitting that democracy is ‘rightly popular’ (quite as if he was talking about Sunday opening or the 4-4-2 system) is not really convinced it is meant for Iraq. He seems to think the idea of Iraqis enjoying democracy is premised on the silly assumption that “If gas stations, iPods, and computer geeks are the same worldwide, why not political institutions?”

(“I will vote and I am not going to be scared by Zarqawi's threats... The future is not just the responsibility of our government but our's also. We are always depending on our governments to do everything and this is not good...”)

* And then we have Terry Eagleton. Eagleton is a man who is moved to anger by the chocolate chip cookie (it’s American and decadent or something) but is capable of a sympathetic and playful aesthetic appreciation of the suicide bomber. ‘Suicide bombers…are out to transform weakness into power. Because they are ready to die while their enemies are not, they score a spiritual victory over them’ [they also murder ‘them’ don’t they, the little kids I mean, the people who just got on the bus, or had the coffee, and Jews as Jews, but lets not get in the way of Eagleton’s art criticism –AJ ] There is a smack of avant garde theatre about this horrific act. In a social order that seems progressively more depthless, transparent, rationalised and instantly communicable, the brutal slaughter of the innocent, like some Dadaist happening…” And so on and so on. When Eagleton is not lecturing the left on the useful social role suicide bombers play in rescuing us from our depthless and instantly communicable social and aesthetic experience he is lecturing us on the need to embrace Aristotelian virtue ethics. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

(“I will vote and I'm not scared by Zarqawi. Every single Iraqi should vote. Zarqawi is not God. His people are acting just like the Ba'athists did and they are saying anyone who plays any part in the election will be executed”)

Sorry, but we haven’t really got started yet.

* Edward S Herman links the Afghan and Iraq elections in this way: ‘What makes these elections unfree is not so much the technical failures and fraud in the use of the electoral machinery, sometimes substantial, as the fact that each election is being imposed from without by a party with an axe to grind and does not come from indigenous sources. Its source is the needs of a superpower…’ Did you notice the election ‘does not come form indigenous sources’? That is it a mere ‘Theft-Rationalization Election’, nought but a mere ‘staged election in the rubble’. In fact even Alex Callinicos admits that “of course it’s true that the elections were forced onto Bush and Bremer by the mass protests that the Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called just under a year ago” (12 January 2005). Herman claims the resistance, however, is ‘a legitimate and understandable response to aggression’.

(“... a man in his early 50s, wearing an old blue jacket and a pair of torn brown trousers. His shirt is buttoned up and his grizzled hair laid flat on his head. Thick glasses rest on his nose. His hand is clutching a thick bundle of papers. "Vote for the People's Alliance," he says to people as he hands them the fliers.
..... A couple of children follow the man for a couple of blocks and every time he hands out a leaflet they run in front of him asking for more. "Do we have to vote for you if we take some of these?" asks one of the kids. "No, no," says the man, waving his hands. "It is up to you to choose who you vote for.")

* Writer Juan Cole predicted the Iraq elections would be ‘a disaster in the making’. (25 Sept 2004)

(“Even if there's a bomb in my polling place... I will go in it." "When people finally taste freedom, this country will turn around [.]" "It's the most important pillar in building a free country.")

* Corey Oakley in Socialist Alternative, an Australian socialist group, is clear enough on where she stands. “We can say this. The call by many of the leading resistance and political groups to boycott the elections are fully justified. The resistance is right to try to disrupt the elections, and right to continue its attacks on the US occupation rather than participate in an exercise designed to reassert faltering American control of Iraq… participation presupposes collaboration with the US occupation, something that the resistance has emphatically opposed”.

(“Some Baathist guy once came to our house and told my family we didn't have to go to the trouble of filling out our ballots - he'd do it for us," he said, referring to Mr. Hussein's party. "This time," Mr. Ali said, "I'm marking my own box.")

* A group of leading Quebec leftists has released a statement that the election has “nothing to do with democracy or the promotion of human rights. On the contrary, its purpose is to legitimate, in Iraq, the structures imposed by the American military occupation”. You can see how the anti-election left neatly gets you each way. While Felicity Arbutnot says the elections are a ‘farce’ because, amongst other things, there are not enough electoral observers the Quebec leftists think the Canadian election observers are a farce. Now that’s neat, you have to admit. While Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, has described his mission as an aid to the Iraqi people ('The participation of international actors in a country undergoing democratization or that wishes to consolidate its democratic foundations plays a fundamental role of legitimation at many levels.”) the Quebec leftists just grab the word ‘legitimation’, twist its meaning and pretend they have caught Kingsley in a confession. They tell us Kingley’s “fundamental role is to legitimate…the murderous invasion and occupation suffered by that country!"

(“Addressing a gathering of families who had lost their loved ones during the poison gas attacks, he [Barham Salih] proclaimed: "I am not a guest in Halabja. I am from Halabja, as all Kurds and all decent humane people around the world are from Halabja .....These elections could not be more serious. If we miss our chance now, we could miss our chance for another 80 years.")

* Perhaps, for getting it all ways up, we can’t beat Farooq Sulehria, a freelance journalist based in Sweden, who wrote, ‘The Iraq elections, no matter how fair and free, will remain a farce’. Note that, no matter how free and fair, the elections will be, despite that freedom and that fairness, just, still, a ‘farce’.

* Carsten Kofoed is the Spokesman of the Danish Committee for a Free Iraq. We need to dwell on Kofoed for a little while because he in being so candid he expresses the thinking of quite wide layers of the ‘anti-globalisation’ left. He is not just for “boycotting the election farce” (January 22, 2005). Also in his sights are the softies who appeal for participants in the election (election workers, party activists, voters) not to be murdered. This is an unacceptable concession to Imperialism/Empire. Wait, you’ll get it. Listen up. ‘Firstly, Allawi is participating in the election fraud, as he is running for “president”, and he is an Iraqi…Allawi, his regime and all the parties being a part of it, all these Quislings, who together with the occupiers bear the responsibility for all the crimes of the occupation, the killings, torture and destruction, traitors, who have just hailed the massacre on Fallujah [are] …all legitimate targets of the Iraqi resistance. Secondly, and as regards ordinary Iraqis, the resistance, being the flesh and blood of the Iraqi people, does not want to hurt any innocent Iraqi father, mother or child, which is exactly why the resistance has been warning all Iraqis not to participate in any way in the illegal sham elections. Trying to destroy the US election farce, which has the purpose of legitimizing the occupation by “electing” a new religiously and ethnically based US puppet regime and of driving Iraq further towards civil war, is an inherent part of the strategy of the resistance, just as it has been the objective of the resistance to smash the whole US-imposed “political process” in order to hinder the establishment of a stabile pro-US regime in Iraq, a goal that has been reached up until now”.

And what about the socialists and the free trade unionists? Does the Spokesman of the Danish Committee for a Free Iraq spare even these Iraqis? Well, you know the answer. Any appeal to spare would be ‘completely wrong and extremely dangerous, because they blur the line between patriots and collaborators in Iraq, between those who are in the camp of the resistance and those who are the lackeys of the occupation, which includes people claiming to be “Communists” and “trade unionists”’.

(“Registration lines are starting to get more like shopping lines. In Baghdad, the rates of registration have been inconsistant, but on my way back from work today I saw a good number of people at the local governmental office taking part in the registration process. This only means that people are losing their fear of the terrorists” This from Husayn at his Democracy in Iraq blog)

* The international network titled ‘the anti-imperialist camp’, after attacking ‘the faked elections in Iraq’ have organised a demonstration ‘in Support of the Iraqi Resistance’ in Porto Allegre on January 30.

* The Trotskyist ‘Fourth International’ claims the election is nothing but ‘a subsidiary pretext for the Bush administration in its drive to seize control of the crucially strategic area stretching from the Arab-Persian Gulf to Central Asia’ (Ashcar, Jan 05).

(“As is happening every day, [election] posters were being torn off and replaced quickly by similar ones or by posters with a new design”.)

* Socialist Worker in the USA thinks it has travelled back in time to 1916 and Zimmerwald. Sharon Smith, as Lenin, advises, ‘The antiwar movement must not lose sight of the fact that its main enemy is at home--any resistance to that enemy deserves our unconditional support…If we are waiting for the “ideologically pure” movement--assuming the unlikely scenario that all those opposed to the war could agree on one--we could be waiting forever.’ (Sharon Smith, Socialist Worker, US, January 25). Well, let’s just back the beheaders and socialist-torturers then.

* Romantic nonsense about the resistance is not confined to the US left (though the US left really does seem more than a few pages short of a full shooting script). In England, the Weekly Worker reported that at a public meeting in Sheffield on November 23 2004. ‘The Labour MP Alan Simpson…stated of Iraq: “If I was there, I would be in the resistance.”’ http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/555/stwc.htm. Alan Simpson denies he said this. Writing to clarify the WW claims he points out ‘My comments were roughly that "it is wrong of the press to describe the fighters as foreign militants. Most are now Iraqis who simply oppose the occupation of their country. It is not for us to tell Iraqis what they should do. They will make these decisions themselves. But we should understand their resistance. In similar circumstances, many of us would be involved in active resistance to a foreign power that took military occupation of our own country."’ (16 December 2004).

(“Iraq's first electoral debate was sponsored by Friends of Democracy in Samawa, Al Muthanna province. Our correspondent Kasem covered the event. The first two debaters were Mr. Mouhammad Al Zayadi from list No. 185 of the Al Mathna block and Mr. Hakem Khazal from list No. 118 of the middle Euphrates block”).

* George Galloway, leader of the Respect Coalition, interviewed by the BBC, said, “Actually, the Iraqi Resistance does not target its own civilians, but the people that are being fought by the Resistance in Iraq are the people who are working for the occupation (…) Our county in 1941 stood alone when the Americans were watching the war on newsreel. Hitler was at the Channel Ports and might have crossed. If he had crossed he might have occupied our country. If he had occupied our country there would have been a British Resistance. And no matter how hard up a family was the idea that they should join Hitler’s occupying police force and not become a target of us, the British Resistance, is preposterous.” His interlocutor, John Harris, asked, “Do you think there is a moral equivalence between Hitler’s Nazi occupation of Europe and the British and American Occupation of Iraq?”. Galloway replied, “…There is no difference at all.”.
(For an analysis of Galloway’s interview see ‘George Galloway’s Brechtian Solution for Iraq’ (http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000181.html)

(“The city of Amara woke up today to find dozens of young volunteers from different parties sticking large posters on walls and shop windows. The last four days of the campaign are expected to witness an invasion of advertising material’)

* Walden Bello, a long standing Fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI), has opposed attempts to question the resistance. “What western progressives forget is that national liberation movements are not asking them mainly for ideological or political support. What they really want from the outside is international pressure for the withdrawal of an illegitimate occupying power so that internal forces can have the space to forge a truly national government based on their unique processes. Until they give up this dream of having an ideal liberation movement tailored to their values and discourse, U.S. peace activists will, like the Democrats they often criticize, continue to be trapped within a paradigm of imposing terms for other people.”

However, on December 7 2004, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) placed Waldon Bello, along with other Filipino activists, on a death-list as "counter- revolutionaries". Some on the list have been shot. Of course Bello must be defended. But to do so we will have to reject his views about being ‘trapped within a paradigm of imposing terms for other people’. Indeed the Appeal Letter issued by Bello’s comrades begins ‘ASSASSINATION AND VIOLENCE HAVE NO ROLE IN CIVIL SOCIETY’. So it seems there are times when it is acceptable to push one’s own ‘values and discourse’.

(“Here is the Communist Party list, written on a wedding ring! There is list No.169, for the Unified Iraqi Coalition, plastering the walls with a new poster bearing the photo of Mr. Abdel Aziz al Hakim, and a second one with the photo of Mr. Mohamad Baker Al Sadr. Pink and green-colored pamphlets were also given out).

* Arundhati Roy, the novelist and activist, has argued that “It is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists (…) Like most resistance movements, [the Iraqis] combine a motley range of assorted factions. Former Baathists, liberals, Islamists, fed-up collaborationists, communists…But if we were to only support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity. Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, non-violent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allied governments to withdraw from Iraq.” (Who are these ‘liberals’ in the insurgency? Communists, far from lining up with the former ba’athists and Islamists, are being tortured and shot).

(“Nobody wants History to repeat itself. Nobody wants to see a new Saddam addressing “the great people of Iraq” on television, while at the same time crushing and humiliating them. Iraqis will not accept being ruled by a man whose intentions and goals are obscure, or by a leader not chosen by them. The times of suspicious coups are over, and the eyes of the Iraqis will remain open to any attempt that might put Iraq in peril. Iraqis will bear their historical responsibility towards God and future generations. If not, eternal curse will fall upon them. The first step along this Holy road is elections”).

* Alex Callinicos, leader of the SWP, philosopher, revolutionary Marxist, author of many works about the leading role of the working class in the victory of international socialism from below, dismissed as a ‘hullabaloo’ the international trade union condemnation of the torture and killing of Hadi Saleh, international officer of the IFTU. After all, pointed out Callinicos, Hadi Saleh was “an Iraqi Communist Party leader who supports the occupation”. Oh, well, that’s alright then, and let’s hope his killers got the IFTU membership files, yes, Mr Callinicos?

(“The campaign platform for the Coalition of the Independent Sons of Missan, a group of independent professionals running for the Missan governate council [includes] Point 1-Serving the people of the governorate in cities and rural areas with total honesty, integrity and sincerity, without any discrimination based on class, tribe or confession”) .

Enough. Orwell’s point is made. The socialists really are the worst advertisement for socialism. Why has it come to this?

4. Another Left is Possible

Much of the left has backed itself into an incoherent and negativist ‘anti-imperialist’ corner. It has lost touch with democratic, egalitarian and humane values long-held on the democratic socialist left. This has come about because the ‘anti-imperialist’ left – guided by the likes of Callinicos - has reduced the complexity of the post-cold-war world to a single Great Contest: ‘Imperialism’ or ‘Empire’ versus ‘the resistance’ or ‘the multitude’. Today’s ‘anti-imperialist’ left is griped by the same manichean world-view and the same habits of mind that dominated mush of the left in the Stalinist period (from apologia to denial, from cynicism to grossly simplifying tendencies of thought, from the belief that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ to the abandonment of workers who get on the wrong side of the ‘anti-imperialists’). The consequence of this Manichaeism, in the Stalinist period and again today, is political and moral disorientation and a Grand Dumbing-Down of the left. At the extremes the ‘anti-imperialist’ left actually lends its support to vicious sub-imperialisms such as Milosevic and Saddam.

For the post Communist world cannot be reduced to a manichean struggle between “Imperialism” and “Anti-Imperialism.” There is no “anti-imperialist camp” in which the working class and the democrats merge their forces with General Galtieri, the Mullahs of Iran, the Serb chauvinism of Slobodan Milosevic, Ba’athists, or Islamic fundamentalist forces. The latter, especially, can indeed become a magnet for the poor and oppressed, as a reaction to Great Power imperialism, but so, in its day, could Stalinism. Socialists cancel themselves out if they support such forces. Politics involves more than just putting a plus sign where the U.S. State Department puts a negative, to paraphrase Trotsky.

If “anti-imperialism” is defined as whatever, at any given moment, is in conflict with the U.S., then one’s politics are defined negatively, but decisively, by the actions of the U.S. An independent democratic socialist judgement on events is impossible.

When John Pilger says the left ‘should not be choosy’ but should back the fascistic Iraqi ‘resistance’, we refuse. When the left says 9/11 was simply ‘blowback’ for the crimes of US imperialism, we refuse. When Michael Moore asks us to believe that pre-war Iraq was a country of happy kite-flying children, we refuse. When Michael Moore writes ‘there is not terrorist threat, repeat after me, THERE IS NO TERRORIST THREAT’, we refuse. When a warm welcome is extended by the ‘left-wing’ Major of London, Ken Livingstone, to the Fundamentalist cleric, Dr Al-Qaradawi, an anti-semite, and a proponent of the killing of homosexuals and wife-beating, we refuse. When the left fails to rouse itself to oppose Crimes against Humanity in the Balkans, or in Zimbabwe, or in the Sudan, or in North Korea, because to oppose ‘the resistance’ of Slobodan Milosevic or Robert Mugabe or Kim Il Sung is to support ‘imperialism’, we refuse. When the left apologises for the suicide bombers who blow up Jews in coffee bars in Tel Aviv on the grounds that the ‘resistance’ must be supported, and the ‘Zionists’ opposed, we refuse (even as we seek a secure Palestinian state). And when a leader of the Stop the War Movement (and the SWP) John Rees, argues that ‘Socialists should unconditionally stand with the oppressed against the oppressor, even if the people who run the oppressed country are undemocratic and persecute minorities, like Saddam Hussein’, we say enough is enough.

The decent left will emerge as a political force by turning each negative refusal into a positive policy and campaign. For each refusal of ours does carry a positive charge: pro-human rights above all, pro-international solidarity with the victims of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, pro-worker, pro-feminism, pro-gay rights, pro-democracy, pro-liberty, pro-social justice. A decent left politics in the post-cold war world will define itself positively as the pursuit of these values and not as a negative coalition of ‘antis’. On such values we can build a culture not just a political movement.

We remain partisans and artisans of the great reforming project of Kant and Marx.

Democracy is impossible in Iraq while the country is occupied. We work for a speedy withdrawal of US and UK troops through the political process, as Robin Cook outlined in a thoughtful article in today’s Guardian.

But – and it is not always clear Cook understand this point or feels the need to act urgently on it - there are many fights to wage now in order to achieve that withdrawal in a way that strengthens the forces of democratic and progressive Iraq and not the theocratic or secular authoritarianisms. For security. For an economy that serves the people of Iraq and has social justice not private profit at its core. For women’s rights against the Islamist militias issuing Fatwas in the south. For jobs, and for labour rights. For an international reconstruction that would deserve the name Marshal Plan for Iraq. For freedoms of speech and association. For the right to vote.

The polls open in a few hours. I do not think we will not be talking about a ‘farce’ when they close. The anti-election left will be proved wrong. And we will be reminded of these lines from Euripedes, ‘Those self-important fathers of their country / Think they’re above the people. Why they’re nothing! The citizen is infinitely wiser’ Rooted in that wisdom a decent left can grow

Alan Johnson

noserubber.

so fuck all you medialens totalitarian cocksuckers - wrong, anti- american, anti-freedom and plainly don't like it up you


http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000203.html
 

Noserubber,

two quick points as I have to be doing other things this morning.

1 Your accusation that some Marxist tendency in me (I'm not a Marxist, incidentally) forces me to harp on about the past might hold more water if you'd addressed my point about the US’s +contemporary+ policy towards Saudi Arabia. It rather undercuts Bush’s contention that ‘the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.’ You accuse me of being ‘anti-freedom’ because I oppose what the US is doing in Iraq. Yet you regard Bush as a champion of freedom while he supports the brutal dictatorship of the Saudis.

It’s precisely my argument that nothing has changed –only the rhetoric. Incidentally, do you really believe such statements by Bush and Co.? They say that they are fighting to bring freedom to the world, so it appears you just swallow it. Just as a thought experiment, can you imagine them ever saying +anything else+ - regardless of what they were doing? Rhetoric like that in Bush’s speech (and the speeches of plenty of others) carries virtually zero informational value – one judges by their actions and their record (which is why people like you don’t want us to get ‘hung up’ on history –because you don’t like what it reveals).

2 The Alan Johnson article is an interesting screed but, if I wanted to read it, I could have gone to the LFI site. It has no relevance to the discussion at hand, anyway. Perhaps you’ve missed the point of what’s been going on in this thread but the idea is that you construct your +own+ arguments and support them with evidence where necessary. This +isn’t+ a competition to see who can make the longest post.

So far, your posts have considered either of cutting & pasting wholesale from someone else’s work or swearing at people. From that, I can only conclude that you have no arguments of your own. This must be why you are so consistently angry and abusive. As a result of that, I can’t see that I’m going to spend much more time replying to you either here or at Lenin’s Tomb ¬– until you bother to construct your own arguments, it’s really not worth anyone’s time.

David Traynier
 

You are right. I am wrong. I don't have any arguments. The Iraq affair has been an unmitigated disaster, which is why the election has been almost 100% boycotted - the masses there are simply too proletarian and backward to know what they want.

I showed up for a couple of days to see how the medialens cunts were handling the Iraqi election - its been a joy - what a great day for freedom!!

Please, PLEASE tell me that the Iraqi elections were a bad thing...go on...you know you want to, you hypocritical twat.

I'm off... Fuck you and the murderous socialist ship you came in on, and GOD BLESS AMERICA AND GEORGE W BUSH
 

Yes, I think I'm content to end this exchange here. It's been revealing.