Sometimes the only way to spread peace is at the barrel of a gun.
March 26, 2003, Wednesday
SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 1126 words
HEADLINE: SOMETIMES, THE ONLY WAY TO SPREAD PEACE IS
AT THE BARREL OF A GUN;
WHEN IT EVENTUALLY EMERGES THAT THE IRAQI PEOPLE
WANTED THIS WAR,
BYLINE: JOHANN HARI
BODY:
Kenneth Joseph is a young American pastor who was so
convinced that the current war would be waged against
the will of the Iraqi people that he travelled to Iraq
to act as a human shield. He was convinced that he
would be welcomed by the Iraqis as a hero. Yet this
week Joseph was explaining that his trip had "shocked
him back to reality".
The Iraqi people told him that they saw the war as
desirable, despite the inevitably high cost of
civilian deaths. (Saddam's thugs are still murdering
"dissidents" who question the regime, so they were
risking their lives to tell him this.) They said - in
footage he recorded on a hidden camcorder - that "they
would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start.
They were willing to see their homes demolished to
gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They
convinced me that Saddam was a monster."
Every single anti-war protestor should - on the basis
of this evidence and similar material I have offered
in previous columns about the real wishes of the Iraqi
people - reconsider their view. This is not "pro-war
propaganda": Joseph was as anti-war as the most
vehement members of the Stop the War coalition, but he
was also an honest man who could not disregard the
evidence of his own eyes.
Who are the real imperialists here: those who want to
carry out the wishes of the Iraqi people, or those who
want to ignore them in the name of a non-existent
peace? And, yes, it was non-existent. There is no
peace if, at any time, people can be captured,
tortured, burned or raped. Read the Amnesty reports.
This was the everyday reality of Saddam's Iraq. Only
the dishonest can say that British and American
soldiers are interrupting "peace"; they are
interrupting a decades-long war, waged by Saddam
against the Iraqi people, to bring it to an end. Do
not weep that this happening; be proud.
Of course George Bush is unpleasant; of course oil is
a factor. They know this, too, but they back the war
anyway because it is the only way to get rid of
Saddam.
If you honestly oppose the war and think you can
defend your stance to the people suffering under
Saddam, dial 00964 and then guess an 11-digit number.
Ask the civilians there what they want to happen. Go
on. Tell them that you oppose the war, and see what
they say.
Zainab al-Suwaij, the executive director of the
American Islamic Congress, a nonprofit Iraqi exile
group, says: "I was shocked at first to hear his
relatives criticising Saddam over the telephone . It's
very dangerous. All the phones are tapped. But they
are so excited." Listen to their excitement, and tell
them why they are wrong.
So why, you might ask, are the Iraqi armies still
fighting? Why have they not surrendered? Saddam's
propaganda channels have been reminding the Iraqis of
the 1991 betrayal, when the first President Bush told
them that if they rose up against Saddam the US would
support them. They did as he asked, and they were
gunned down. The streets of Mosul and Basra are still
studded with the bullet-holes from that terrible
month. Saddam leaves them as a constant reminder of
the danger of resisting him and of trusting America. I
have seen those holes, and noted how Iraqis glance at
them with a pale, chastened look. This time, the
Americans will not walk away from the Iraqis'
suffering - but the troops have yet, understandably,
to be convinced of this.
Once Iraqis are certain the Americans will not back
off and leave them to the mercy of Saddam, they will
explain why they wanted this war. This is not idle
speculation: it is already happening. In Safwan this
weekend, Iraqis called out to US and British troops:
"You're late. What took you so long? God help you
become victorious." Another person said: "I want to
say hello to Bush, to shake his hand." One woman
stated: "For a long time we've been saying: 'Let them
come.' Last night we were afraid, but we said: 'Never
mind, as long as they get rid of him, as long as they
overthrow him, no problem.' " This was reported in one
of the most anti- war newspapers in Britain.
Those who still deny all this evidence will know soon
enough, once the war is over, what the Iraqi people
thought all along. When it emerges - as I strongly
believe, based on my experience of the Iraqi exile
community and the International Crisis Group's survey
of opinion within Iraq - that they wanted this war,
will the anti-war movement recant? Will they apologise
for appropriating the voice of the Iraqi people and
using it for their own ends?
Confronted with the evidence of Iraqis' feelings, many
of the anti-war critics will, I fear, change the
subject. They will say that, whatever the Iraqi people
desired, the damage to international law was too
great. In offering this argument, they fail to
acknowledge a key flaw with international law as it
now stands. The foundations for the present system
were built in 1945, when the greatest threat to human
life and dignity was war between nations. Its
structures are designed solely to prevent conflict
between states and to secure peace in the
international arena - and in this respect, they have
been phenomenally successful.
What international law cannot do, however, is secure
peace within nations. The governments of, say, Burma,
Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe may be judged
"peaceful"under international law, while they are
butchering and terrorising their populations. There is
no peace for people living under tyranny.
International law must be changed to allow democracies
to act where there are reasonable grounds (as in Iraq)
for believing that the people of a country wish it,
and where the regime is systematically breaching human
rights on a massive scale.
Some people, such as the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman
Shirley Williams, have voiced the perfectly
understandable fear that the alternative to
international law is "the law of the jungle". Yet
people living under a tyranny like Saddam's live under
exactly that chaotic "law" - and international law
forbids others to act to end it. To focus solely on
the international order at the expense of the level at
which people actually live - the national - is to
write off the most desperate and needy people alive.
It might seem perverse to seek to spread peace at the
barrel of a gun; but the peace we enjoy here in Europe
exists only because we (along with the Americans)
acted with weaponry to banish tyrants. The Iraqi
people want and deserve the same. If their wishes - as
reported unambiguously by Kenneth Joseph and many more
like him - are not compatible with international law,
then an urgent priority once this war is over must be
to reconstruct international law to make it encourage,
not hinder, the overthrow of tyranny.
NOTE, written 25th Spetember 2003: It transpires that Kenneth Joseph was probably a bullshitter, and that his claimns were false. I should have checked his story out more rigorously before I used it. The full details of the Joseph affair can be found at the excellent Counterpunch website.
It should also be noted that the wider argument - that the Iraqi people wanted and needed the invasion - was entirely vindicated by the opinion polls following the war, which found majorities in favour of the conflict among the Iraqi people. See the YouGov and Zogby polls available on-line.
