[Reader-list] Tariq Ali - 'The UN has Capitulated' (The Guardian, 5/24)

[Avishek Ganguly]

Tariq Ali - 'The UN has Capitulated'

 
Business as usual

The UN has capitulated. Now let the north's plunder of the south
begin again

Tariq Ali
Saturday May 24, 2003
The Guardian

Unsurprisingly, the UN security council has capitulated completely,
recognised the occupation of Iraq and approved its re-colonisation
by the US and its bloodshot British adjutant. The timing of the mea
culpa by the
"international community" was perfect. Yesterday, senior executives
from
more than 1,000 companies gathered in London to bask in the sunshine
of
the re-established consensus under the giant umbrella of Bechtel,
the
American empire's most favoured construction company. A tiny
proportion of the loot will be shared.

So what happened to the overheated rhetoric of Europe v America?
Berlusconi in Italy and Aznar in Spain - the two most rightwing
governments in Europe - were fitting partners for Blair while
the eastern
European states, giving a new meaning to the term "satellite"
which they
had previously so long enjoyed, fell as one into line behind Bush.

France and Germany, on the other hand, protested for months that
they were
utterly opposed to a US attack on Iraq. Schröder had owed his
narrow
re-election to a pledge not to support a war on Baghdad, even
were it
authorised by the UN. Chirac, armed with a veto in the security
council,
was even more voluble with declarations that any unauthorised
assault on
Iraq would never be accepted by France.

Together, Paris and Berlin coaxed Moscow too into expressing
its
disagreement with American plans. Even Beijing emitted a few
cautious
sounds of demurral. The Franco-German initiatives aroused tremendous
excitement and consternation among diplomatic commentators. Here,
surely,
was an unprecedented rift in the Atlantic alliance. What was
to become of
European unity, of Nato, of the "international community" itself
if such a
disastrous split persisted? Could the very concept of the west survive?

Such apprehensions were quickly allayed. No sooner were Tomahawk
missiles
lighting up the nocturnal skyline in Baghdad, and the first Iraqi
civilians cut down by the marines, than Chirac rushed to explain
that
France would assure smooth passage of US bombers across its airspace
(as
it had not done, under his own premiership, when Reagan attacked
Libya),
and wished "swift success" to American arms in Iraq. Germany's
cadaver-green foreign minister Joschka Fischer announced that
his
government, too, sincerely hoped for the "rapid collapse" of
resistance to
the Anglo-American attack. Putin, not to be outdone, explained
to his
compatriots that "for economic and political reasons", Russia
could only
desire a decisive victory of the US in Iraq.

Washington is still not satisfied. It wants to punish France
further. Why
not a ritual public flogging broadcast live by Murdoch TV? A
humbled petty
chieftain (Chirac) bending over while an imperial princess (Condoleezza
Rice) administers the whip. Then the leaders of a re-united north
could
relax and get on with the business they know best: plundering
the south.
The expedition to Baghdad was planned as the first flexing of
a new
imperial stance. What better demonstration of the shift to a
more
offensive strategy than to make an example of Iraq. If no single
reason
explains the targeting of Iraq, there is little mystery about
the range of
calculations that lay behind it. Economically, Iraq possesses
the second
largest reserves of cheap oil in the world; Baghdad's decision
in 2000 to
invoice its exports in euros rather than dollars risked imitation
by Hugo
Chavez in Venezuela and the Iranian mullahs. Privatisation of
the Iraqi
wells under US control would help to weaken Opec.

Strategically, the existence of an independent Arab regime in
Baghdad had
always been an irritation to the Israeli military. With the installation
of Republican zealots close to Likud in key positions in Washington,
the
elimination of a traditional adversary became an attractive immediate
goal
for Jerusalem. Lastly, just as the use of nuclear weapons in
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki had once been a pointed demonstration of American might
to the
Soviet Union, so today a blitzkrieg rolling swiftly across Iraq
would
serve to show the world at large that if the chips are down,
the US has,
in the last resort, the means to enforce its will.

The UN has now provided retrospective sanction to a pre-emptive
strike.
Its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations, at least had
the decency
to collapse after its charter was serially raped. Analogies with
Hitler's
blitzkrieg of 1940 are drawn without compunction by cheerleaders
for the
war. Thus Max Boot in the Financial Times writes: "The French
fought hard
in 1940 - at first. But eventually the speed and ferocity of
the German
advance led to a total collapse. The same thing will happen in
Iraq." What
took place in France after 1940 might give pause to these enthusiasts.

The lack of any spontaneous welcome from Shias and the fierce
early
resistance of armed irregulars prompted the theory that the Iraqis
are a
"sick people" who will need protracted treatment before they
can be
entrusted with their own fate (if ever). Such was the line taken
by David
Aaronovitch in the Observer. Likewise, George Mellon in the Wall
Street
Journal warns: "Iraq won't easily recover from Saddam's terror"
- "after
three decades of rule of the Arab equivalent of Murder Inc, Iraq
is a very
sick society". To develop an "orderly society" and re-energise
(privatise)
the economy will take time, he insists. On the front page of
the Sunday
Times, reporter Mark Franchetti quoted an American NCO: "'The
Iraqis are a
sick people and we are the chemotherapy,' said Corporal Ryan
Dupre. 'I am
starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin'
Iraqi.
No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him.' " No doubt
the "sick
society" theory will acquire greater sophistication, but it is
clear the
pretexts are to hand for a mixture of Guantanamo and Gaza in
these newly occupied territories.

If it is futile to look to the UN or Euroland, let alone Russia
or China,
for any serious obstacle to American designs in the Middle East,
where
should resistance start? First of all, naturally, in the region
itself.
There, it is to be hoped that the invaders of Iraq will eventually
be
harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to
the
occupation regime they install, and that their collaborators
may meet the
fate of former Iraqi prime minister Nuri Said before them. Sooner
or
later, the ring of corrupt and brutal tyrannies around Iraq will
be
broken. If there is one area where the cliche that classical
revolutions
are a thing of the past is likely to be proved wrong, it is in
the Arab
world. The day the Mubarak, Hashemite, Saudi and other dynasties
are swept
away by popular wrath, American - and Israeli - arrogance in
the region will be over.

· Tariq Ali's new book, Bush in Babylon: Re-colonising Iraq,
will be published by Verso in the autumn



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"In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." - Foucault 

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