Shawcross and his unfashionable views

This book, by William Shawcross, who is an intellectual and (kind of) a part of the Establishment in the UK - I know there are many who do not like his writing, but I do - was published rather a long time ago, after 9/11 and after the invasion of Iraq by the US-led Allies, but not long after. It took some work to track it down once I became aware of its existence. The views and ideas it contains were unfashionable at the time, and not only among the complacent chattering Guardianistas, who unfortunately are still with us, but broadly unfashionable in every sense, which is why the book sank without trace. I think I paid about a euro for it from some obscure book dealer, after Amazon tried to tell me it was unobtainable. A pity. I don't like buying second-hand books, especially if the author is still alive, as the creator of the work gets nothing from it, and Lord knows it's hard enough to get paid to write anything at all. But it is worth reading this book, I promise you, even if your prejudices, fully formed beliefs, intellectual worldview, whatever, compel you to think he is wrong.

It starts this way: "The Arab narrative of the 'Fallujah butchery is ... pernicious nonsense." About 270 were killed in Fallujah, almost all of them fighters, almost all of those former Iraqi army officers under Saddam. He quotes the Iranian journalist Amer Taheri on the killing of the American hostage Paul Johnson at that time: "Paul Johnson was killed by lies spread by Arab elites ... he was killed by the over 1,500 Arab lawyers who have volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein but who were nowhere to be seen when he was engaged in genocide against the Iraqi people." Shawcross says "Saddam may not have been an immediate threat but he was an inevitable one." He notes (in his preface to a later edition) that the Arab Spring had its harbingers here, in 2003.

UN weapons inspectors were banned from Iraq in 1998, and the Allies bombed Iraq that year. Remember that? Remember the millions marching against it? Nor me. One member of my local Labour Party at the time timidly approached me to express disquiet about the bombing of a sovereign nation. But only one. UNSCOM's final report on this, in 1999, said that vast numbers of WMDs could not be accounted for. Shawcross goes so far as to give the need to contain Iraq in the 1990s as the reason for the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia.

Shawcross is good on the humbug there is about the "neocons". At the time of that liberal hero JFK's presidency, in 1962, a legal opinion given by the Justice Department noted "the UN Charter does not prohibit the taking of unilateral preventive action in self-defence prior to the occurrence of an armed attack." No. It did not so prohibit then, and it does not now. Shawcross concludes "Surely everyone would agree that it would have been better if the United States had pre-empted 9/11 by confronting Al Qaeda and the Taliban before September 2001. There was ample cause." Yes.

Very few European intellectuals saw 9/11 as a threat. One who did was Ralf Dahrendorf (contrast the late Gunter Grass) who said that first, Western values do exist; second, power is needed to defend them; third, defence might have to be done by force of arms. Michael Ignatieff and Bernard Kouchner were two others who took this view.

"The Iraqis could not change their own tyrannical government; only outside intervention could do that. There was no better case in the world for such intervention. Tony Blair himself put the issue succinctly later when he told the House of Commons, 'When people say to me, why are you risking everything ... on this issue? I say I do not want to be the prime minister at whom people point a finger back in history and say: 'He knew perfectly well that the threats were there and he did not do anything about it.'"

I cite this book, and quote from it, to indicate that what "everyone" knows, and what "everyone" thinks do not really exist. What you think, and what I think, may differ. We may both find equally sound and convincing bases for our views, and argue them effectively. But a plurality of views there always is, and this must continue. At this time, soon after the savagery of the killings in Paris, and as I write in France under a state of emergency, there is a dismaying chorus of voices, at least in English, informing us what "everyone thinks" and what "everyone knows" - usually that such killings are the fault of "the West". That the Bataclan murders are France's fault for conducting air strikes on Islamic State. Leave them alone and they'll leave us alone. Idiocy. they have already declared war on "us". Hoping they'll leave us alone is like feeding a lion, in the hope that it will eat you last.

The West is at war,whether it wants to be or not. That war started a long time ago. It was formally declared much later, in the 1990s, and Bill Clinton did more or less nothing about it. It was stepped up in 2001, and it has been going on since. You and I cannot save ourselves from attack by Islamist terrorists. But if we shut up, if we blame the West for the attacks, if we say in Nick Cohen's ironic words "Kill us, we deserve it", we are complicit in the ultimate victory of the death-loving barbarians.

As I write there is a hostage crisis in Bamako, Mali. It is taking place at the Radisson Blu hotel in that city, whose guests are not that likely to be Malian farmers or workers. There are signs that it is about to be resolved without the bloodletting we saw in Paris a week ago. I hope so. But hey, that's only over there in Africa.

Christopher Meyer is wrong

well, he generally is. I read his book about his time as ambassador in Washington before the second Iraq war, and it was fascinating - also adding some factual wisdom to the torrents of slime from the pro-slaughter commentators, of the "Don't Attack Iraq" and other wings. He has this to say in The Times this morning (£):

"As Putin knows, the US and Nato are not going to war to stop Russia turning Crimea or the eastern Ukraine into another South Ossetia – nominally independent, but under Russian control. To quote former US Secretary of State Jim Baker, speaking in the 1990s about the Balkans, “We ain’t got no dog in this fight.”

No, the US and NATO are probably not. As they did not in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, a sovereign nation, to maintain South Ossetia as its puppet. Nor, arguably, should they have done then, and should they do now. But the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and other international bodies tied themselves in knots rather disgracefully on South Ossetia at the time, when a moment's thought makes clear that the invasion of a sovereign nation by another is to be justified on only very few grounds. One of those grounds is Responsibility to Protect. Which, for those who may be struggling to keep up, is broadly this:

1. A state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.
2. The international community has a responsibility to assist the state to fulfill its primary responsibility.
3. If the state manifestly fails to protect its citizens from the four above mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.

While R2P is a norm and not a law, it is firmly grounded in international law, especially the laws relating to sovereignty, peace and security, human rights and armed conflict.^[6][7] 

Meyer, by contrast, says this about foreign policy in this context:

Foreign policy is not an edition of Radio 4’s Moral Maze. It should be based on a cold calculation of national interest.

Really? British national interest was not served by intervention in Sierra Leone. Does that make it wrong? Christopher? Christopher?

Russia did not invoke R2P in South Ossetia in 2008, and is not doing so in Ukraine now. The people of Ukraine are not being slaughtered, it would appear. Not now that Yanukovych has been ousted, and is under Russian protection in Rostov-on-Don in Russia, it is believed, leaving Ukrainians to count his chandeliers and marvel at his private zoo. But it remains a fact that one sovereign nation has invaded another. Now I do not expect there to be marches against Russian imperialism in Western cities, because those anti-imperialist marches only happen when it is the US doing the imperialism. I do not expect a NATO task force to go steaming into the Black Sea. But I do expect Russia to account for its actions. I do expect Russia to explain internationally precisely why Crimea needed its presence. Who was killing the people of Crimea? Who was threatening to do so?

In the meantime, I feel sorry for the paralympic athletes who will not have international support for the Games due to take place in Sochi.

Mother Russia, tell us what you want and why you are doing this. You know you must. Vladimir Putin, if you ever were a world leader you have lost that privilege. You are a dictator lashing out at apparent erosion of privilege.

Central African Republic - a good intervention?

as you might expect, the Central African Republic is a lot better known in France than it is in other European countries. This piece gives a good rundown of what has been going on. Although it does have some yes-buttery, namely that France is doing it (the intervention) for uranium, that the Americans are behind the intervention (as if Obama's America would have the balls) because they want the deposed pro-Western president Bozize reinstalled - the usual stuff. The facts are these though - Bozize was kicked out in a chaotic kind of coup, and now Muslim militias are killing and terrifying the population, with Christian militias springing up in resistance and using similar terror tactics. About 15% of the population is Muslim. Sudan is known to be providing covert support for some of the Muslim militia outfits. France already had some troops there, and now it has a lot more. The UN has been talking about a peacekeeping mission, but no decision has yet been made as to whether there will be one.

Francois Hollande's France (and the tail end of the Sarkozy regime before it) has a pretty good record on intervention, unlike David Cameron's Britain, and especially unlike Obama's America. The rest of Europe are pussies by comparison. Bring back Tony, I say. But then I've been saying that since 2007.

pic: alJazeera

the hand-wringing has to stop

says Tony Blair in The Times today (£). He is writing about Syria of course. Although the window of opportunity to achieve peace, stop the killing and prevent the various murderous death-lovers from dividing up the territory has long closed, largely because Barack Obama has been a TOTAL PUSSY, the line-ups of child body bags are embarrassing even him. Barack Obama is the leader of the free world. That phrase is rather unfashionable these days, but it is still true - perhaps more so, as during the Cold War, when half of Europe was under dictatorship, those dictatorships, while they locked up dissidents, told the world they were freedom-loving democrats. The likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, and worse, say no such thing. Osama bin Laden once said "We love death" and he spoke the truth. Tony Blair spoke of hand-wringing, but I haven't seen much of it. Indifference, yes. Hand-wringing is coming from people like me, I suppose, and I am powerless here. I have tried to test this notion on a few occasions recently, by raising the subject of the terrible slaughter in Syria with people who do not identify as political or interested in world affairs, and with whom I do not usually discuss such things. Without exception there has been a brief pause and then a change of subject. Almost pathological. What is going on here? It seems to indicate that a lot of people shut out what they know is happening, because, I suppose, they don't want to think about it, or feel guilty for doing and saying nothing. But they don't appear to articulate that to themselves. People who do articulate such things, often Americans, have been saying things like "This is not our war" - but even they have shut up a bit lately.

The excellent Terry Glavin puts it excellently:

"If NATO had leapt to this tremendous opportunity at the outset, Al Qaida's affiliates in Syria would have been smashed, Hezbollah would have been smashed, Assad would be gone and "the west" would have its best friend in the so-called Arab world, a new and embryonic democracy besides. Instead, more than 100,000 Syrians dead, Assad still in power and gassing his own people, Tehran is laughing at the U.S., Russia is ascendant, America is a laughing stock. A lovely new world, isn't it. "The tide of war is receding," as Obama likes to say."

The leadership of my adopted country of France, while it is f***ing up big time on retirement and the economy (another story) is saying, and in some cases doing, the right things internationally. Big up Francois Hollande. I might even card up for the Parti Socialiste again if this carries on. The UK is making the right noises. Even Angela Merkel has now said she would countenance action. Get in there. Do it now. The slaughter in Syria shames us all.

Iraqi heroism

in the struggle against the dark forces that sought to overthrow the people after 2003, and which offered not a better future but only death, has not been recognised enough, according to Paul Wolfowitz in this article. Highly recommended. Thanks Julie Anna for bringing it to my attention. Now I look forward to positive debate about the future for the region. Anyone? anyone? *sound of tumbleweed*

Syria, and betrayal

Robert "make it up, they'll never notice" Fisk has a splendid piece in the Independent on Syria and "the West". It's barely coherent even by his standards. At a certain point I thought I was hallucinating when he started going on about Churchill and Potsdam, which obviously has everything to do with the war in Syria. Part of it is below, and it deserves - well, perhaps here it should be called an Eponymous-ing.

I sniff treachery. Because – let’s be frank about it – something is going very wrong with the narrative of the Syrian war. Whose narrative? Our Western lords and masters we live in democracies in these countries and elect our leaders – as untrustworthy today as they were when they sold Poland to Stalin at Yalta what's Poland and Churchill got to do with Syria today? – have started to talk much less about their visceral desire to destroy Bashar al-Assad they never talked about that in the first place and much more about their fear of the corrosive presence of al-Qa’ida within the rebel forces fighting to remove the Syrian president. well, der, if you don't intervene you get the medieval barbarians As the Syrian tragedy deepens, so our moral Western policy you what? meaningless towards the damned of this ghastly war has turned into a betrayal of its people. not intervening was the betrayal

... While claiming that Britain had not lost faith in the Arab revolutions – Churchill said as much about his fidelity to Poland after handing the country to Stalin Churchill again - he's been dead for well over 40 years, and the world, and the Middle East, have changed a bit since– William Hague said that Syria was the most serious case of a revolt being “hijacked” by militants. The country, he claimed, was “the No 1 destination for jihadists anywhere in the world today”. And your problem with that is?

Incredible. This might almost have been a speech by Bashar al-Assad himself Ah, we see who has been repeating this for almost two years about “al-Qa’ida terrorists” in Syria. Even putting aside the fact that Mali was supposed by whom? to have assumed the mantle of “terror centre” less than two months ago, that's not why France intervened this was an extraordinary statement for the pitiful Hague to make. except it's true

He babbled on about UK and other European extremists in Syria, then added: “They may not pose a threat to us when they first go to Syria, but if they survive, some may return ideologically hardened and with experience of weapons and explosives. The longer the conflict continues (in Syria), the greater this danger will become.”

Ergo, I suspect, let’s bring this war to a close. except that that's not being done. Fisk just made that bit up. Why else are Hague and Lavrov now talking about “dialogue” between rebels and regime? 

Did you know that in Fisk's book on Lebanon he wrote that Jesus was born in Jerusalem? Yes, he really did.

genocide

my eye fell on this post by Robert Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow. A man whose name I have heard quite a bit lately. He asks, whose story today is the most similar to that of the Jewish people, in terms of persecution, marginalisation, genocide and revival? The answer might surprise you, he says. But the answer was immediately obvious to me, and no surprise. The Kurdish people. Their homeland, if they can really be said to have one, is in Iraq, and Turkey, and neighbouring places. They have in effect their own nation now in Iraq, built on the mass graves dug by Saddam's slaves. In this context I would highly recommend Michael J. Totten, who, unlike so many who pontificate about the region, has actually spent a lot of time there and talked with many of the major figures. There is to be a debate in the House of Commons on recognition of what was done to the Kurds as genocide. The debate is to take place on 28th February. If I were in London I would be in the Strangers' Gallery to hear it. As I am not, I hope person or persons will live tweet it for my benefit. Oh and Robert Halfon, if you are ever in Strasbourg, let me buy you a cup of coffee or a glass of the finest Alsace pinot blanc, and shake you by the hand.

lack of intervention leads not to peace but war

in Syria, of course.  The shameful lack of intervention to stop the slaughter of Syria's people by its government has had regional repercussions which were not hard to foresee.  I speak of course of the Kurdish issue.  Turkey's brutal suppression of its Kurds is well known, and Syria has previously been helpful in this, booting the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) leader Abdullah Ocalan out of Damascus and enabling him to be arrested and extradited to Turkey, where he remains, serving a life sentence which will never be commuted.  But now, as the regime in Syria becomes increasingly savage and desperate, the various Kurdish groupings in the region, most of which do not trust each other or work together, are mobilising, to Turkey's dismay.  There have already been shootings and shellings across the Turkish-Syrian border, and there will be more.  With each Turkish life lost the rattle of the sabres is louder.  But NATO is deaf to it.  Turkey invoked the NATO charter this week, but was more or less ignored.  You can read a good piece by the excellent Michael Weiss here.

NATO's geopolitical reasons for its unwillingness to support its member state, Turkey, are for it to explain.  But it is worth noting that the only place in the wider region where the Kurds live at peace, not much repressed, and with a measure of self-determination, is Iraq.  And it was intervention that gave them that.

occupation?

 some silly Stoppers and similar have been tweeting that the USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games because the Soviets were occupying Afghanistan, and that - you're ahead of me - it is the USA which is occupying Afghanistan now.  Well, it's perfectly true that the US has changed sides on Afghanistan - in the 1980s they deemed it right to give covert support to the Taleban - but they were of course right to change sides, and are on the correct side now.  The Soviet Union is long gone, and the world has changed.  That said, I was a strong supporter of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979-80.  If something isn't right, it's wrong.  Blowing up girls' schools, with the girls inside them, is wrong. Come to that, banning music is wrong, but I wouldn't invade a country for that.  Under the Soviets, girls went to school and the literacy rate climbed.  There were women in professional and public life.  They were all sent home when the Taleban, so beloved of the keffiyeh-wearing Guardianistas, came back.  But there is a whole generation of Afghan women, now in their forties and fifties, who are mothers and grandmothers, and influential in their families if nowhere else, who can read and write and who keep hope alive for Afghan girls and women. That's a good thing, hein?  Stay and finish the job, say I.  If the Taleban can be smashed for ever as the evil they are, good.  If not, help to keep a regime in place which is strong enough to ensure that those barbarians never get the chance to run the show.  Oh, and nationalise the poppy fields while you're about it.  Tankie, much?