The Past, The Present and The Future
Let's take a look back in time and play a little 'what if' and see what we can learn about where we are today and where we are going.
Let's go back to Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security council. But this time, we'll be listening to Dominique de Villepin's speech:
To those who choose to use force and think they can resolve the world’s complex problems through swift and preventive action, we argue the need for determined action over time. For today, to ensure our security, we have to take account of the multiplicity of the many crises and their many facets, including their cultural and religious dimensions.
Nothing lasting in international relations can therefore be built without dialogue and without respect for the Other, without exigency and abiding by principles, especially for the democracies that must set the example. To ignore this is to run the risk of misunderstanding, radicalization and spiralling violence. This is even more true in the Middle East, an area of divisions, long torn apart by strife, whose stability must be a major objective for us.
So, let's imagine if we'd backed that instead of Powell's bollocks, and Blair knew it was bollocks at the time. Let's imagine that the decision to go to war regardless, hadn't already been taken.
Where would we be today?
Europe:
We missed a great opportunity to influence a pan-European policy. Blair's eagerness to ally himself with the neo-cons made a European response to the conflict, something he hasn't been forgiven for, indeed you can see the financial result when Blair was forced to hand over a large part of the UK Rebate in the recent budget negociations.
Tony once preached said that ""We should be leading the way in Europe, shaping the direction of Europe, participating in debates and working in partnership with the others for a more prosperous economy for our people". Well that dream is dead and Britain is about as important to Europe as the Falkland Isles.
International:
With the Iraq spin unravelling and the non appearence of WMD the UK's reputation in the world has never been lower. We could have been leaders in a principled objection to using force to achieve policy goals, but we just look like third-rate stragglers with no independent voice.
Home:
Just imagine what the estimated 3.1 Billion quid could have bought, and that's only what the M.O.D. have spent until March last year. This cost is likely to double, if not triple.
Public Trust:
The lies and deception over the Dodgy Dossier and the spin has destroyed public trust, not only in government, but in the systems of government. We've always had a healthy contempt for politicians, but New Labour have made being decietful and duplicitous the heart of how they operate and communicate with the electorate. The Civil Service have been tainted by association, indeed, after Hutton and the Kelly inquiry, who believes any official report?
The Dead:
We've played our part in the deliberately uncounted deaths of thousands of Iraqi's as well as over 100 of our soldiers sent on this fools errand. The figures for the wounded are much higher. Imagine if we hadn't had their blood on our hands.
Fear and Loathing:
Finally, we come to the way politics is conducted. The politics of fear, where civil liberties have to be surrendered, where precious freedoms held for millenia are taken away. without Iraq, we wouldn't waste a second on spending billions on ID Cards, on surveillence systems and databases to track the movements and doings of a innocent citizens.
Would we be involved in rendition, in torture, in secret prisons if we hadn't followed the Blair/Neo-Con agenda so thoughtlessly? Of course not. Neither would we be holding people without trial, without charge or evidence.
The real cost of Blair's desert adventure is incalculable, but we can get a bitter taste of the true cost of this needless war if we look on what might have been, what we have missed by this messianic and hubristic Prime Minister, a man so arrogant he believes UK policy should be geared to 'leaving his legacy'.
Mr Blair, your legacy is buried in the sands of Iraq. You could have led us to improve the world, to make the place a better place for the poor, the humble and the weak, instead, you will depart from office having made Great Britain into an international disgrace.
Shame on you and greater shame on your party who let you get away with it. Let's hope you and your kind never hold office again.
What we can do
We are stuck with a flawed electoral process, but we must use it. When elections come round, either national or local, we must vote and send out a clear message to those who have corrupted their office and our nation, and the message we have is simple:
Vote for Anyone But Labour
With the Iraq spin
With the Iraq spin unravelling and the non appearence of WMD the UK's reputation in the world has never been lower.
i think we have you beat, dudes. nb: that's 'we' as in US. :-(
REPOSTED Anon That's all
REPOSTED Anon
That's all very well in a kind of middle class Islingtonian view of the
world but what about the need to depose a mass mudering tyrant with
imperialist aims on his neighbours? I do mean Saddam Hussein btw not GW
Bush.
The trouble with all of you supposedly principled anti war mongers is
that none of you can explain how you would have stopped Saddam's
continued oppression and violence against his own people and the ethnic
minorities within Iraq. We can all see how well sanctions didn't work
and yet another toothless UN resolution would have really scared a
dictator with Saddam's track record ..... not!Anonymous
REPOSTED Anon Since when did
REPOSTED Anon
Since when did voting change anything?
Global revolution is the only option left to humanity
REPOSTED Tom Saddam Oh,
REPOSTED Tom
Saddam
Oh, where to start.
Saddam murdered more people when we were supporting him. Let's depose
his supporters outside Iraq, shall we. Step into my office, Mr.
Rumsfeld.
While he may have had designs on his neighbours, without a proper army
or air force they remained just that - designs. I fancy owning all the
gold in Fort Knox, but I doubt the FBI will make it Priority #1 to come
over and put me in jail. Intentions don't amount to much without
capabilities. Meanwhile, there are one or two countries that certainly
did have aggressive imperialist designs on Iraq, and additionally had
the means to carry that out (clue: two of them start with 'United' and
have leaders with surnames beginning 'B'). More deposing required in
their direction, please.
There are self-evidently highly motivated terrorists around the world
with both the intention and capability to attack Western targets. Thanks to our Iraq jaunt there are now more of them, they're better
motivated and have invaluable combat experience and a higher recruiting
profile, all of which we've just spent $2 trillion giving them, plus
we're busy reversing the result of the Iran-Iraq war, massively
increasing the power of Iran just as it turns its face towards
conservative theocracy, as a bonus ball. Terrific stuff.
Saddam was 66 and weakened by the loss of power and territory - even a
strong man leader can't hold it together for ever - seven years from
now he'll be 75 and if he'd been left in power I doubt the country
would be worse off - the death rate would be lower, large parts of it
would still be standing, there'd be more oil pumped and 101 British
servicemen would still be upright and breathing. We've managed to
achieve the impossible - making Saddam look like a better bet than
something.
I think what this waffle is trying to say is that justifying the entire
Iraq mess with the 'hey, at least we got rid of Saddam line' is like
getting rid of pubic lice with a flame thrower.
'Hey, at least we got the lice, now we just need to rebuild your meat
and two veg and fix the 90% burns and things will be just fine. By the
way, I've noticed you've got headlice and they appear to be developing
nuclear weapons, and while I've got the flamethrower out...'.Tom
Most comments focus on
Most comments focus on portraying the unfolding chaos and tragedy in Iraq as a sectarian civil war. Yet Iraqi society is very intermixed with inter sectarian marriages between sunnis, shiahs and kurds, much more so than was ever the case in Bosnia. Robert Fisk observed in an Australian ABC Lateline interview that Iraqi society is tribal rather than sectarian. He also pointed the finger at tthe Interior Ministry in Iraq, as the US has done, in running militias that target particular communities. To date it has been caught out in running death squads and torture sites and has proved ineffective in detecting suicide bombers before the act or protecting either mosques, communities, be it the ordinary people or the intelligentsia, from being targeted as victims. I do not want to argue the semantics of what constitutes a civil war, however, for anyone with the remotest interest in really rebuilding Iraq it seems an imperative to consider how to contain a civil war fought by tribal militias rather than by various Islamic sects. We do owe it to the cradle of human civilisation that evolved in the Euphrates-Tigris valley and Iraq whose literacy rates has fallen from 90% in in 1990 to below 50% today