February 1998

Coming soon to a TV near you in full colour and digital stereo so good you could almost believe it was really happening:

Why is it we're wanting to bomb Iraq? President Clinton tells us it's because Iraq is 'defying the will of the international community', yet Britain and Kuwait are the only countries who readily backed the idea of military action, and so the American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has been jetting around the world on a bullying mission to getting the others to sign up. Three countries isn't much of an 'international community'.

Maybe Mr Clinton means that Iraq is not conforming to UN resolutions. If that's so, does this mean they'll be bombing Israel for the invasion of sovereign states and the murder of their citizens in their continuing occupation of the Golan Heights, instead of just ignoring it? Does this mean they'll be doing the same against Indonesia for the continuing occupation of East Timor, or at least reconsider whether giving them weapons and training their officers is really in keeping with our shiny new 'ethical' foreign policy?

If it's contravening UN resolutions that's so intolerable as to warrant mass murder, then maybe they should bomb India, Israel, Pakistan and all the other countries making illicit nuclear weapons. And, while they're at it, they can bomb themselves for covertly supplying arms to Iran in the 80s.

What is all this 'will of the international community' stuff? The US is the one country that vehemently maintains pressure to continue economic sanctions against Iraq. Over a million people have died because the sanctions leave even the most basic foods and medicines in short supply.

Come to think of it, isn't this the same US that invaded Grenada, Korea, Vietnam? The same US who, for no real reason other than a personal dislike of Colonel Gadaffi, bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in 1986? That attack killed Gadaffi's baby daughter and also 'accidentally' bombed the embassy of the French government who'd denied the use of their air space for the raid.

Isn't this the same US who openly funded the Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua, terrorists fighting the democratically elected government? At the time President Reagan justified it because Central America is 'our back yard'. Doesn't that logic make Kuwait Iraq's back yard? How about Poland as Nazi Germany's back yard?

And that's all just the stuff we know about. The US also runs the CIA, the biggest terrorist organisation in the world.

They pretended the last Gulf War was about sovereignty, the right of a people to self-determination, but they reinstalled a Kuwaiti regime that gives a vote to less than 10% of its people. But the real proof of this hypocrisy is not to look at the last Gulf War, it's to look at what's been done elsewhere.

In the four decades of China's occupation of Tibet, the intelligentsia and religious culture have been decimated and immigration from China enforced. Today, a third of the people in Tibet are Chinese. So are the entire police force. The traditional nomadic way of life has been outlawed, and land is being turned to desert by intensively growing cash crops. This is seriously silting seven rivers that irrigate the land that supports nearly half the world's population. So do they threaten to bomb China? No, the EU gives them the 'development' grants that do it. That's our money doing that.

The starkest illustration of the respect for sovereignty is how they treat Indonesia. In 1974, Indonesia invaded East Timor, since when they've killed over 200,000 people. At over a third of the population, it is proportionally the biggest act of genocide in history. Ten UN resolutions have unreservedly condemned it. Do they bomb Indonesia? No, they've sold them the very weapons that do the killing. Their officers are trained in the UK. One of Robin Cook's first actions after becoming Foreign Secretary was to institute an 'ethical foreign policy'. One of his next deeds was the renewal of export licenses to British Aerospace to sell the Hawk jets that Indonesia uses as its front line attack aircraft in East Timor. A year ago the worst thing Labour had to worry about was Daily Mail headlines. Now they're ready to further their careers by killing total strangers. I'm sure that's in keeping with Tony Blair's Christian faith, I'm sure if Jesus were here, he'd be indiscriminately blowing people to pieces for cash and popularity.

So lets recap on what we do when a country attacks or invades a neighbour:

China: pay them
Indonesia: arm them
Israel: ignore them
Iraq: bomb them

As recently as 5^th February, Robin Cook was asked about the difference in responses. He said 'there is no double standard.' I think he's right. By my count it's at least quadruple.

But there's something important I've missed out so far; there's no sovereignty involved with Iraq. In 1990 there was invasion. This is about UN inspection teams. And let's be clear on this, it is not the stubborn fight that our media pretend it is. There have been UN weapons inspectors working in Iraq throughout this time. What Iraq's unhappy about is access to certain sites, and the domination of one team by Americans, including Gulf War veterans. Might it not be insensitive for a supposedly global body like the UN to put people in these teams who were personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis?

I don't think Saddam Hussein's a nice man, he's clearly a vicious and dangerous one. But it must be clear that most world leaders could put that on their CV too, and that our government and media have exaggerated and lied. In 1990 President Bush was calling Hussein 'the most dangerous man since Hitler'. Meanwhile, British aircraft carriers are sent to 'help persuade' Iraq. Would an aircraft carrier sitting a few miles off Dover be only 'helping to persuade' us? Over 60 years ago, George Orwell said that every war is 'portrayed not as a war, but as an act of defence against a homicidal maniac'. And it's still the truth.

So if it's not about the UN or sovereignty, what's it all about this time? In a word, showbiz. The US have to reassert their self-appointed position as The World's Good Guy. It's a kind of Global John Wayne shootin' them there injuns, it's Batman punching The Joker on the nose, Superman roughing up Lex Luther. They can't look like the Good Guy if they don't have a Bad Guy. It re-asserts Clinton's authority and stops us worrying about where he might have put his cock. It's about prestige and esteem. As Bill Hicks said, 'what kind of people need a war to feel good about themselves? May I suggest, I dunno, sit-ups? Six to eight glasses of water a day?'

And, of course, a high-tech military blow-off helps the weapons industry to survive (the people who, together with drugs and oil, have every government by the balls, even the good old US of A). It gives them a chance to show off the new toys they've invented since the last war, and afterwards the government will have to buy a whole load of new ones to replace them.

I know this bombing is about the showbiz and the economics and the politics (Clinton and Cook have very obvious reasons for wanting there to be something else for people to talk about). These things are always about those things. I know it's not generated by any benevolence or commitment to 'regional stability' or any other altruistic stuff. It's power games and that's all: the power of the US on the world stage, the power of Clinton within the US. This war will not be a war fuelled by a passion for justice. It's playground politics, it's simply a war of ego and greed. The US has no moral superiority: if they were this side of the Atlantic, they wouldn't be allowed to join the Council Of Europe because of their capital punishment record—we'd exclude them on grounds of human rights! What is it that gives such petty and dangerous people the right to set themselves up as the world's police?

Calling these governments bad humanitarians is rather like calling the Pope a bad Protestant. But they do claim humanitarian integrity, so they do lay themselves open to it. I know that (again, as Bill Hicks said) all governments are liars and murderers, and so maybe it's wrong to expect anything better from them. But I can't believe it's wrong to hope for better, to want for better, to believe it could and should be better than this.

And, perhaps by the time you read this, people are going to watch their friends and families die.