TWO MINDS OVER WAR
Christmas sermons found churchmen reflecting on the evils of war, with much criticism of the politicians, and a plea for peace from the Pope. The religious objections are, perhaps surprisingly, strongest in the US, where the case against war enjoys support across the major Christian faiths.
Moral qualms over the war are hardly surprising, since the world leaders most closely associated with the campaign against Iraq have pointedly failed to make a coherent argument for it.
The underlying weakness of the US-British alliance's cause is evident in the nod-nod, wink-wink game they are playing with the media. Official statements insist that the decision for war rests with Saddam, and his willingness to cooperate with the arms-inspectors. But 'off-the-record' briefings all point to war sooner rather than later. The official statements are for the sake of niceties, it is implied, but real men know that Saddam has got to get his.
The problem for the alliance stems from the grotesque inequality in the balance of forces between Iraq and the allies. In the last war against Iraq western publics were prepared for the campaign with absurd over-estimates of this middle-eastern state's military capabilities - 'the fourth largest standing army in the world', the White House lied. In the event it was, as one US officer observed at the time, a 'turkey-shoot', with conscript Iraqis barely equipped and monstrously out-fired. Today everyone knows that Iraq is simply a target, with no capability of returning fire.
Yet, to justify the campaign, the allies are obliged to pretend that Iraq is the aggressor. The tiresome tricks dreamt up by US representatives on the UN security council, such as snap inspections, powers to deport Iraqi officials for questioning, and so on, are merely attempts to goad the regime into crossing an imaginary line, so that the West can claim Saddam has provoked them. But nobody is particularly interested in these schoolboy mind-games, more than adequately matched by even Saddam's propagandists, with their latest offer to let the CIA investigate Iraq's 'weapons of mass-destruction' ('a trick' according to President Bush).
The allies' confused rhetoric about making war to preserve peace often seems to have missed out the middle part of the argument, where the threat is justified. But that is because the threat is taken for granted. Post-September 11, the belief that the rest of the world is out to get the West has become a truism, though it has little basis in fact.
On the contrary, the overwhelming evidence is that most of the Third World admires western, even American culture and science, objecting if anything principally to the use of force in foreign policy. Ironically, the incidences of Islamic terrorism are more evidence of the collapse of popular anti-western movements in the Third World, leaving the struggle to a handful of unrepresentative - and therefore unconstrained - conspirators.
The anti-war movement, such as it is, is for the most part a reflection of the West's two-minds about the war. For those objecting to the war, though, fear of reprisal is a stronger impetus than the need to act. There is little sense that the anti-war movement is aiming for solidarity with the Iraqi people, only that they are more fearful that war will sow the seeds of future terrorism. It is in this mood that the war-mongers' party can claim to be the true defenders of Iraqi freedom, by hosting a rag-bag conference of oppositionists whose application for a grant to run a community centre in Hackney would be turned down.
Meanwhile, on a estate in North London, the family of Somali refugees placed in emergency housing three and a half years ago have their window broken for the fourth time in as many months, marked out for victimisation by the mother of the household's headscarf. The perpetrators are sad nobodies, teenagers, compensating for their lack of worth by picking on someone who fits the bill. George W Bush and Tony Blair do not have the same excuse.
-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'