War and Peace: Iraq and Idealism

NCF SECRETARY GENERAL PRIVATE REPORT:
Sunday, 10 July 2005
London

These personal notes are not for general circulation

War and Peace, Iraq and Idealism

Let's talk Iraq. The trouble with Iraq is that there's too much conversation, too much analysis, and we don't get on with the job. As they say in Cornwall, "You don't make a pig fatter by weighing it all the time."

One of the problems with Iraq is that people still address the Iraq issue as if they lived in the modern age. Those days are over. The modern era lasted 200 years from the fall of the Bastille in 1789 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

During that modern age we lived in a world where differing ideologies and hegemonies jockeyed to maintain a balance of power. Now we live in an era in which the hegemonic power of the Western hemisphere is total with the Anglo-American alliance doing a Tonto-Lone Ranger act and dispensing justice from the barrel of a gun, as was once done in the days of the Wild West before the marshals came. And as the hideous events of 7/7 in London indicate, there is no shortage of dehumanised men of evil to stand up against.

In which context: What is our policy in Iraq? What are its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Number one: we are in Iraq for the long haul. Blair made that clear in his pre-war Chicago speech when he re-drafted the criteria for a just war. He was not looking for a quick fix. The Blair-Bush alliance has the another three years to run, until they both hand over the reins of power. Blair will hand over to Brown no later than (and not much earlier than) January 2009 when Bush hands over to his successor. Then you will have Brown in the UK working hand in hand with a probable Hilary Clinton presidency in the USA. Well that's what an outsider would suppose. In reality as the NCF's friend John Mroz of the EastWest Institute in New York is swift to point out, "It's not a slam dunk that Hilary will win". Especially with the US Democratic Party tearing itself apart as its Chairman, Howard Deane, rips its heart out. Very reminiscent of the UK Tory party actually, which is going through much the same anarchic self-destruct process. It is not even certain that Hilary will win the democrat selection. And who will be the President if the Republicans win the election? Well yes, could even be a woman either way . . . is Condi Rice the one to watch? Stranger things have happened. Anyway, whatever, at that point, there will be far fewer Western troops in Iraq and our new leaders will then have to consider how they intend to play their own version of the Tonto-Lone Ranger act.

Next: the other strength of the Western alliance is that they do not care about enemy casualties, nor do they care about civilian collateral damage. These are not issues for the West. Look at Fallujah, a city of somewhere approaching half-a-million souls and about the size of Edinburgh. Not since the bombing of Dresden have we seen total attrition of this kind. Our attack on Fallujah was of almost Mediaeval barbarity (we even cut the city's water supplies for the duration of the siege) and we are still suffering the backlash in terms of a reinvigorated insurgency.

Again, the Blair Chicago speech re-drew the "just war" parameters in such a way as not to include the constraints over the manner in which a war is conducted. To regard Blair as a pragmatist is to completely misread the man. He is an idealist, as in their different ways were Mrs Thatcher and Mahatma Ghandi. Idealists have always been dangerous. Often, one wonders whether it is the tail that wags the dog when it comes to policy on Iraq. Blair is no poodle. More a Cardinal Richelieu.

Tony Blair's just war

We all have short memories. An aside might be valuable here. It was Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologicae, who presented the first detailed outline of what became the just war theory (based on an original concept by St Augustine, the Tunisian who also invented original sin). Aquinas discussed not only the justification of war, but also the activities that are permissible in war. Aquinas' thoughts became the model for later theologians and jurists to expand. Over time they evolved into the following (paraphrased):

Principles of the Just War

• A just war can only be waged as a last resort.
• A war is just only if a legitimate authority wages it.
• A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered.
• A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success.
• The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace.
• The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered.
• The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants.

All this got knocked off track by the Tolstoi/Ghandi/Luther-King/Lennon trend. At the dawning of the new post modern era there were still whispers of the heady idealism of the sixties that needed nailing down. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair was the man for the job. In a seminal speech in Chicago he redefined the just war concept. He said that the choice on whether to intervene involved five major considerations. I paraphrase but in doing so I use his words as he spoke to the Chicago Economic Club defining his "Doctrine of the International Community" on 22 April 1999:

• First, are we sure of our case? War is an imperfect instrument for righting humanitarian distress.
• Second, have we exhausted all diplomatic options? We should always give peace every chance.
• Third, on the basis of a practical assessment of the situation, are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake?
• Fourth, are we prepared for the long term? In the past we talked too much of exit strategies. But having made a commitment we cannot simply walk away.
• Finally, do we have national interests involved?

This was just war theory honed to the bare minimum and polished for the purpose in hand - and by a Christian too. Note the dropping of the old doctrines of proportional violence and the abandonment of the distinction between combatants and civilians. This doctrine is tough. But Blair says we should always give peace a chance. Do we? Only on our terms. Do you remember the Rambouillet Peace Talks in the run up to the Yugoslav War? They were proximity talks. That means that first the Kosovans talked to the West, then the Serbs talked to the West. They were not permitted to talk to one another at Rambouillet lest they strike a deal that was not to our liking.

Back to Iraq

Enough of this digression. What are our weaknesses then? Our principal weakness is that we are trying to re-make Iraq in our Western image. We wish to leave a legacy of MacDonalds and MTV, which would be fine, as long as you are happy to see us impose one world culture.

After all, the modern adage has some merit: when indeed have two nations that both have MacDonalds gone to war?

But it's the way you do these things. When you toured the hospitals of Baghdad pre-war you wept as you watched the babies die for lack of medical supplies. Today, when you tour the hospitals of Baghdad you weep as you watch the babies die for lack of medical supplies. Why now? Well, we've privatised the medical supplies section of the health service. And the private sector is not good at delivering medicine in a war zone. Sorry to be repetitive but the issue is important.

Our other weakness is that we don't like to deal with Kurds and Shiites. Why? It's impossible to answer. Perhaps the Kurds are too tribal and the Shiites are too religious. Anyway the Sunnis are more like us. The trouble is the Iraqi Sunnis were the people we defeated. Their day is over now. Yet we struggle to prop them up. The Sunnis don't thank us but instead have thrown themselves into the insurgencies with ever-greater vigour in one last-ditch attempt to create all out civil war.

Wherein then lies the opportunity?

The opportunity is democracy. Often we are pretentious enough to regard ourselves as dispensing democracy to the Third World. The reverse is true in the Middle East. From Algeria to Palestine, from Iran to Sudan, we have opposed democracy lest forces of which we disapprove take power.

And after all, we don't any longer have a democracy in Britain or America. Not in the true sense. Our party political systems have become too strong. We are developing elected dictatorships in which one man or woman gets absolute power for a four-year stretch.

But democracy is Iraq's opportunity. The people would love democracy. At the first election we were alleged to have tried to manipulate the count - and alleged to have succeeded. Grounds for that perception must never be given again - let them have their democracy. They will build it well. The constitutional referendum is due on October 15th to be followed by full elections in December. Let's help them this time, not screw it up again by trying to dictate whom can or cannot stand, or allowing ourselves to be perceived as having adjusted the counting of the votes simply because we couldn't properly monitor the elections.

And the threat?

The threat is the near certainty that Iraq will split into three pieces. Kurdish northern Iraq wants to go its own way. It has peace. Not one US soldier has been killed in Kurdistan since liberation. - Shiite Southern Iraq and Central Iraq want freedom from Sunni dominion. And why not? Sunni northwestern Iraq wants to escape the vengeance of the Kurds and Shiites. And who can blame them? So Iraq may break apart. A weakness? Perhaps that too is an opportunity.

We need to take time for a little lateral thinking here.

Surely we can agree with General Sherman who said, bluntly, "War is hell." Let's do whatever it takes to get done with it. We need to be out of Iraq, yesterday. Despite our caution in our dealings with Shiites, Iraq's Shiite leader, Ayatollah Sestani, has belatedly come to be regarded as an ally. Walter Russell Mead of the US Council on Foreign Relations describes him as "A bulwark against the USA's true enemies". Let's simply hand over. Give the Shiites the unconstrained political power a democracy will bequeath them, with the Kurdish Peshmarga fighters as their armed forces. Problem solved. Which is actually likely to be the policy we will adopt. Let's get on with it.