Part Four - Playing Pontius Pilate: Why Shouting "End the Occupation" Isn't Helpful

(Please note that this section will soon be replaced by a revised and updated version. This is because the issues described in this section have been to a degree overtaken by events on the ground, such as the Fallujah uprising and the prisoner abuse scandals. Also, it is felt by the author that there is a more detailed critique of the Stop the War Coalition's response to post-war Iraq waiting to be written. Watch this space.)

“Of course, the US is morally compromised. I wish there were a pristine, perfect state with no oil interests and the military power to help the people of Iraq, but there isn't one. Remember: many people on the British left argued in the 1930s that Britain was too compromised by its disgraceful colonial occupation of India, and that our motives for joining the war were far from pure. They had some important points, but if they had prevailed, we would have squabbled among ourselves about our own immorality while Jews burned. We must not repeat that mistake.” - Johann Hari. (1)

What does a organisation called Stop the War do when the war has stopped? Since the war ended, the Stop the War Coalition has changed its placard slogans from “Don’t Attack Iraq” and “Stop the War” to “End the Occupation.” More recently, this has been supplemented in the wake of the Hutton Report by a campaign for a full judicial enquiry into the reasons Britain went to war, a campaign that I entirely agree with. However, I intend to argue that “End the Occupation” is a campaign strategy that is, at best, meaningless; at worst, it is counterproductive and dangerous.

Let’s go back to the debate that gripped and polarised us all so much in the run-up to the war. Those who argued in favour of war gave three justifications for invading Iraq:

1. that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

2. that Iraq had links to terrorist organisations such as al Qaeda.

3. that the cruelty of Saddam’s regime meant that the suffering of the Iraqi people in a war would be less than they would be forced to endure by allowing the regime to continue.

To those who opposed the war, including myself, these arguments simply didn’t convince. The first argument (that of weapons of mass destruction) looked shaky, to say the least. The intelligence presented to the public just wasn’t very impressive. It looked even less impressive when former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter came forward to say that the inspection teams that he had been part of the mid-90s had effectively dismantled the vast majority of Iraq’s WMD programmes, and there was a strong possibility that the invading armies would simply not find any WMDs to dismantle. (2) It looked less impressive still with the revelations of the “dodgy dossier”, hoovered off the Internet and passed off as intelligence reports, and with Mohammed el-Baradei unmasking intelligence documents of uranium exports from Niger to Iraq as crude forgeries. At times, the argument was so weak it was downright embarrassing. Those who are now claiming to feel “duped” by the government over WMD should remember just how cringingly insubstantial those claims were, and should start to examine their own critical thinking skills.

If the first argument was weak, the second (that of links to al Qaeda) was downright feeble, and appeared to be based on little more than rhetoric. The best efforts of US and British intelligence could find virtually nothing to connect Saddam, a secular tyrant once feted by the West due to his efficiency in killing Islamic fundamentalists, with an Islamic fundamentalist organisation that loathed Saddam and regarded him as an infidel. With arguments for war this feeble, it’s no real surprise that so many people joined the anti-war protests.

The third argument had rather more merit. Nobody could deny that Saddam’s regime was quite spectacularly cruel (if you want to deny it, you can stop reading this essay now. You probably have other, more basic issues to master first. Like tying your own shoelaces.) This is the only argument that ever made me feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about opposing the war. There were a number of figures, particularly among what came to be referred to as the “pro-war Left” who chose to ignore the issues of WMD or al Qaeda and focus purely on the humanitarian grounds for supporting war. Among those who followed this path were journalists such as Nick Cohen and Johann Hari, and the left-wing Labour MP Ann Clwyd. Nick Cohen justified his own position as follows.

“The opposition was meant to be principled, but what principle was it following?…Pro-Europeanism, opposition to American corporate power, opposition to Blair’s monarchical rule, patriotism, a yearning for honest government and a prudent fear of terrorist attack. Strong cases could be made for them, but they all had the ineluctable conclusion that the Iraqis must continue to live under a pitiless dictatorship. Stopping the war meant saving Saddam. The left in Europe, American and Australia had nothing to offer Iraqi liberation movements…When Iraqis showed a natural inclination to prefer the invader to a tyrant, the left had nothing to say to them.”(3)

Ann Clwyd MP, who had for years advocated Kurdish rights in Parliament, told the Commons of the accounts of Baathist cruelty that she had gathered from Iraqi refugees while visiting Kurdistan. One example was particularly wrenching, in which Clwyd told of a female prisoner who had given birth in prison. Despite her pleas, the guards refused to give her milk for the baby, and the baby died. Clwyd went on,

"For three days she held that baby in her arms and would not give the body up. After three days due to the 60-degree heat, the body of course started to smell, and [the woman] was taken away and killed."(4)

I suspect that there were many individuals who were utterly scornful of the US and British government’s WMD claims, but like Cohen, Hari and Clwyd, decided that the cruelty of Saddam was justification alone for going to war. I continued to oppose war because I was concerned that a ground invasion could cause more problems than it solved, destabilising the Middle East and fostering terrorism. My concern was that we could get into a quagmire that we couldn’t get out of.

The rest is, quite literally, history. The protestors were ignored and the tanks went in. So how do the three arguments for war now stand up?

The first argument now ends in more or less complete vindication for those who didn’t believe in the WMD claims. Only the occasional crackpot (e.g. Donald Rumsfeld) still seems to believe that there was an active WMD programme (or even WMD programme-related activities, to use Bush’s memorably tortuous phrase) in Iraq at the time of the invasion. Likewise, the claims of links between Saddam and al Qaeda look just as silly now as they did before the war.

This leaves the third argument. The case for removing Saddam on humanitarian grounds. When Tony Blair addressed the US Congress in July 2003, he insisted that, “If we are wrong [about Iraqi WMD], we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.” He continued,

“How hollow would the charges of American imperialism be when…[Iraq and Afghanistan] are and are seen to be transformed from states of terror to nations of prosperity; from governments of dictatorship to examples of democracy; from sources of instability to beacons of calm.”(5)

Well? Given that the US and British governments were wrong about WMD, will history forgive us anyway?

I don’t feel that this is a question that is answerable at this point in history. Much depends on what happens to Bush and Blair’s grand plan for rebuilding Iraq over the next few years. If, in 5, 10 or 20 years a visitor to Iraq were to find it prosperous, democratic and calm, then yes, the charges of imperialism probably will look pretty hollow, as Blair claims. If, on the other hand, one were to visit Iraq in 2014 or 2024 and find it a Somalia-like failed state, stricken by poverty, instability, terrorism and civil war, then history will probably be much more reticent in offering its forgiveness.

It’s certainly fair to say that the reconstruction of Iraq has gone less than swimmingly, but here’s the question; when it comes to turning Iraq into a safe, prosperous, democratic nation, do we want to be part of the solution, or part of the problem?

I earlier argued that the far left and the Stop the War Coalition have been making themselves part of the problem rather than part of the solution over Palestine. Likewise, through their “End the Occupation” campaign, they are equally part of the problem over Iraq, as I intend to demonstrate.

Rarely has a slogan been stated so often and so stridently, yet with so little elaboration as to how and when this should be accomplished. How should the occupation be ended? On what timeline? And what should it be replaced with? From conversations with Stop the War Coalition activists, it seems clear to me that many people within the coalition have wildly differing views on how the occupation should be ended. One could place at least three different views on what “end the occupation” could be taken to mean. These views are:

1. the immediate withdrawal of coalition troops and the international community to have no further part in the internal politics of Iraq,
2. an orderly and staged withdrawal of coalition troops as and when the infrastructure and government of Iraq has been rebuilt,
3. The handover of political control to an interim UN authority, and the coalition troops in the country to be absorbed into a multinational force.

If one is arguing for the second version of “end the occupation”, then the US and British governments might well retort that this has been their intention all along. The third option certainly has strong merits to it, but if this is what one is arguing, shouldn’t the slogan be “hand over power to the UN” rather than “end the occupation”?

The first view appears to be particularly common among those members of the extreme left that now overwhelmingly dominate the Stop the War Coalition. Put the troops on a plane, send them home, and leave the Iraqis to their own mess. What you might call the Pontius Pilate approach to post-war Iraq.

The problem with this is that, whatever the consequences of intervening in foreign events, playing Pontius Pilate and washing one’s hands of a situation also has consequences. In July 1995 Serb forces bore down on the town of Srebrenica, which had been declared a safe haven by the UN. The Dutch UN soldiers were ordered not to intervene, and 7000 civilians were massacred while the UN troops stood and watched. In April 1992, the city of Sarajevo was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces along with the Yugoslav Peoples Army, and 400,000 terrified civilians found themselves being subjected to artillery, mortar fire, sniper attacks and mass starvation. NATO’s air forces could have obliterated the besieging forces at any time, but even limited air strikes did not begin until May 1995, nearly three years later. In the meantime, over 10,000 civilians (1600 of them children) had been killed, 50,000 injured, virtually every building in Sarajevo had been destroyed or damaged and virtually every kind of human rights violation had been committed against its populace. The siege did not formally end until February 1996, making it the longest siege in the history of warfare. History has condemned world leaders just as often for the consequences of what they did not do as what they did do.

The consequences of turning Pontius Pilate and evacuating the coalition troops from Iraq are not hard to imagine. A weakened state, with only a flimsy shell of a government, its country’s infrastructure crippled by decades of war and sanctions, numerous local militias springing up, and everywhere the shadowy menace of the guerrillas, popping up occasionally to massacre another crowd of the people they claim to be fighting to liberate. It’s difficult to imagine any other result of withdrawing the coalition than social collapse and civil war, bringing more bloodshed and more misery on a people who have spent the past two decades being blasted by the bombs and bullets of Iran and the West, starved by sanctions and tyrannised by their own leader. If the Stop the War Coalition are motivated by compassion for the Iraqi people, then the Iraqi people could do without that kind of compassion.

Critics of the occupation point to the manner in which the Iraqi interim authorities have been pushed down a neoconservative agenda by the US occupiers, with mass privatisations and accusations of profiteering by American corporations, especially Halliburton. There’s merit to a lot of these criticisms, but there’s also a fairly obvious retort. Iraq rebuilt as a flawed democracy, left in near-permanent hock to the US government and corporations, is hardly an ideal outcome; but to suggest that such an outcome is actually worse than Iraq becoming a new Somalia is sheer lunacy. Like it or not, Iraq now has a far better chance of achieving democracy and social justice by following the path of George W. Bush than the path of George Galloway. I don’t like that fact and I certainly don’t like Bush. I even broke my vow of having no further involvement in the StW Coalition to join the protests against Bush’s state visit to London, and if I were a US citizen I would be out on the streets right now campaigning for John Kerry, but that is the situation Iraq is now in.

There’s another argument against the “end the occupation” campaign slogan, and it cuts right at the very heart of the StW Coalition’s claim to speak for the people of Iraq.

The people of Iraq want the occupation to continue.

Since the end of the war, a number of opinion polls and surveys have been carried out in Iraq, gauging public opinion of the war and occupation. If the failure to find WMDs has made those who supported the war feel uncomfortable, these opinion polls have the ability to make those who opposed it equally uncomfortable.

On September 24th 2003, the first ever rigorous, scientifically-conducted opinion poll ever to be held in Iraq was conducted by Gallup. Fittingly enough, the first question of the first ever such poll was “Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the US, Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam was worth it or not?” 62% said yes, it was worth it. Only 30% said that they felt it was not. (6) Subsequent opinion polls have shown overwhelming public support for the coalition troops remaining in the country for the time being. In another Gallup poll from October 2003, only 26% of Iraqis said they believed that US and British troops should leave within the next few months. An overwhelming 72% said that they felt the troops should stay longer than this. The reasons why they wanted them to stay were fairly obvious. 85% of Iraqis said that they agreed with the statement that “if the US were to pull out its troops any time soon, Iraq will fall into anarchy.” (7)

The opinion polls also make for uncomfortable reading for those, such as Tariq Ali, who have attempted to characterise the guerrillas in Iraq as a national liberation movement. Only 19% of respondents said they viewed the attacks on US troops as somewhat or completely justified. 17% said that the attacks “sometimes can be justified, sometimes cannot be justified”. By contrast 66% described the attacks as somewhat or completely unjustified. (8) In a poll in January 2004, 66% of Iraqis agreed with the statement “The attacks emphasise the need for continued presence of coalition troops in our country”, while only 35% agreed with the statement “The attacks are an effort to liberate Iraq from US and coalition occupation.” (9)

If the guerrillas are fighting to liberate the Iraqi people, then a clear majority of Iraqis are impudently ungrateful to their “liberators”. It seems obvious that the guerrillas, like so many guerrilla organisations that have been hailed by the extreme left over the years (e.g. the IRA, ETA, Shining Path, FARC etc) are nothing more than a gang of thugs resented by nobody more than the very people they claim to be fighting on behalf of.

When the history of the Iraq War is written, my view is that it will be regarded as one of the most contradictory wars in history. Was it fought on a false premise? Yes, it was. Did it end the reign of one of the most vicious tyrants of recent times? Again, yes. Did create as many, if not more, problems as it solved? Yes, that too. The Stop the War Coalition helped to highlight the flawed justifications of a war that Britain seemed to be sleepwalking into. It may yet play a useful role in forcing a proper enquiry into the dubious claims of WMD programmes. However, where the StW Coalition claims to be speaking on behalf of the Iraqi people, they are in fact speaking only for themselves.

Let’s draw things to a conclusion by listening to the words of an Iraqi. Before the war an anonymous Iraqi man calling himself “Salam Pax” began keeping a web diary to keep in touch with his friend Raed. The diary turned into a chronicle of the Iraq War and became famous across the world. Salam Pax’s diary is, in my view, the first great work of literature ever to have been created via the Internet. In February 2004 a US soldier e-mailed Salam Pax to ask him if he felt the war had been worth it. Salam Pax posted an open reply to the soldier via his weblog. He replied,

“It is pointless to debate what should have been done. There was a war almost a year ago and we have to deal with its consequences, there was time for debate much earlier. The powers that be made their decisions, whether right or wrong, at that time. I am a very pragmatic person, Raed’s nickname for me was [Salam the PragmaPig] I deal with the shit as it happens, never a moment of regret – well almost. But for the sake of debate…Saddam is gone, thanks to you. Was it worth it? Be assured it was. We all know that it got to a point where we would have never been rid of Saddam without foreign intervention; I just wish it would have been a bit better planned. Does this mean that I will be wearing a (I [heart] Bush) t-shirt? NO, because I don’t believe there is any altruism in politics and the way he sees the world scares me.
What I do really and sincerely hope for is that the day you and other soldiers and US civilians here don’t have to stay behind those high concrete walls isn’t too far away; and that you feel safe walking in the streets without those hard and heavy flak jackets, so that we can sit and talk about these things in a Karrada Street tea shop.
There are many challenges Iraqis have to face now, so please stick around a bit longer and try helping us get thru them. One of the more serious challenges is the fact that Iraq has become a sort of an open playground for many political and religious factions who are using Iraq as a fighting ground.”(10)

The Iraq War was fought for reasons that were at best flimsy, and at worst downright lies, but it is a war that has now been fought and cannot be unfought. The future of Iraq lies in the hands of the multinational community. We now need to think like Salam the PragmaPig, working out how best to find a positive outcome to the current situation. It’s time to jettison the IdeoPigs of the Stop the War Coalition and avoid campaigning along the principles of hopelessly outdated ideologies such as Stalinism or Trotskyism, or cheap, simplistic models of imperialism and class warfare. Instead, we need to campaign on the principles of democracy, humanism, respect for human rights and making use of the practical situation as it stands. The war polarised the nation between pro-war and anti-war camps, but those camps now need to come together. The pro-war people need to admit that they were wrong when they said Iraq was a threat to the West. The anti-war people need to admit that they were wrong when they said that the Iraqi people don't want our help. This done, we can then come together to try to work towards a positive future and some sense of closure for the tragedy-strewn nation that is Iraq.

Go to Part Five

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Notes 1. Hari J. (7th February 2002) Stop the war? Try telling that to the tyrannised people of Iraq http://www.therazor.org/oldroot/Winter03/stopthewar2.htm
2. Rivers Pitt W., Ritter S. (2002) War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know. New York: Context Books.
3. Cohen N. (2003) Pretty Straight Guys. London: Faber and Faber. 112 4. Wintour P. (27th February 2003) Ann Clwyd: 'I support the government. It's doing a brave thing' The Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,903809,00.html
5. Blair T. (18th July 2003) Prime Minister's speech to Congress http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page4220.asp
6. Burkholder R. (24th September 2003) Ousting Saddam Hussein “Worth Hardships Endured Since Invasion”, Say Citizens of Baghdad. The Gallup Organisation. http://www.cpa-iraq.org/audio/20031109a_Gallup-ousting-saddam.pdf
7. Burkholder R. (14th October 2003) Baghdad Views US Troops: Protectors or Justifiable Targets? The Gallup Organisation. http://www.cpa-iraq.org/audio/20031111_Gallup-how-long-stay.pdf
8. Ibid.
9. Office of Research Survey. (6th January 2004) Iraqis Say Coalition Troops are Vital Now, But Prefer Handoff to Own Security Forces. http://www.cpa-iraq.org/polls/handoff.pdf
10. Pax S. (12th February 2004) Where is Raed? http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_dear_raed_archive.html#107660057407559034 1 

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