Richard Calland (Contretemps, February 28), says that what united the peace marchers around the world on February 15 was the ”diversity of their reasoning”. But perhaps this is one of those coalitions whose support base is just a little too broad for comfort.
I wonder if Calland does not cringe at least a little when he hears some of the ”reasoning” favoured by some of his fellow peace marchers. How does it feel, for example, to be marching under the same banner as those whose rallying cry is ”Death to Jews” and ”Death to America”. Is it not a little bit discomfiting to, in the case of the London march, walk alongside a bunch of medievalists who remain unswervingly committed to the proposition that Salman Rushdie, too, must die?
And I hope that Calland would hold his nose when marching in Paris with neo-fascists (proud sons of Vichy), who hate Israel because it is Jewish, hate the United States because it is the puppet of the Jews and support Saddam because he is the scourge of both Jews and Americans? (Note well: it is not only in Europe that elements of the far right strenuously oppose an attack on Iraq. Patrick Buchanan, the American politician whose views on race are easily confused with those of the Ku Klux Klan, has also come out strongly against the war.)
Less loathsome than the crazies and reactionaries are your peace-loving liberals, the reliable mainstay of any Saturday march in Europe or North America. But let us not forget that many of these well-intentioned folk, who count as unforgivable each and every American action since 1945, also opposed the first Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that their policies would likely have left Kuwait under the heel of Saddam. Their squeamishness about the use of American power in the Balkans would have consigned the Muslims of Sarajevo and Pristina to the death camps of another fascist butcher, Slobodan Milosevic. More recently, the liberals’ reflexive pacifism (”war is never the answer”), would effectively have abandoned Afghanistan to the rule of the Taliban, and other loathsome fanatics convinced that their God demands that acid be thrown in the face of a women with the temerity to uncover it in public. (To his credit, the Archbishop of Canterbury has conceded that his prediction that an attack on Afghanistan would have catastrophic consequences — ”three million dead” — may have been misguided.)
Closer to home, I wonder what Calland thinks of the ”reasoning” of the African National Congress secretary general, who instructed marchers in Pretoria that we must oppose American aggression in Iraq because South Africa, with its mineral wealth, will be next on Washington’s hit list.
But let me freely admit that there is plenty of room for embarrassment on all sides of this issue. I believe that, all things considered, the world will be a much better place sans Saddam. I have no objection to his being overthrown by American force if, as seems likely, the job can be done without massive loss of life. But I am acutely aware that this puts me in the camp of a certain Texan moron, who happens to be leading the only campaign that seems likely to get rid of Saddam in the foreseeable future. I certainly do not relish the company of the sinister cast of characters — Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz — who now appear to be steering the befuddled George W Bush in the service of their bizarre fantasies of American omnipotence.
So, rest assured that although I would support a war to depose Saddam, I will not be seen at any pro-war march, in the unlikely event that such a thing is ever held. My support of the war will be cautious and critical and unaccompanied by the passionate certainty that animated those who marched on February 15.
Given that I find myself in bed with some very unseemly gentlemen, it is not for me to damn Calland by association. We know that Calland’s personal opposition to the war is not borne of any secret sympathy he harbours either for the Butcher of Baghdad, Saddam’s fundamentalist and fascist friends, or for the naive pieties of liberal pacifism. Rather, Calland tells us, he opposes the war because it is both ”self-defeating” and ”wrong” to tackle Saddam while ignoring Israeli atrocities in Palestine. Calland is quite correct to point out that Israel puts even Saddam to shame as a serial violator of United Nations resolutions. And the crass hypocrisy of the US’s human rights rhetoric is eloquently evidenced by its silence in the face of repression committed by the US’s allies around the globe, including Israel.
But these are not reasons to oppose the war. For there is appalling hypocrisy to be found on both sides of this argument. The peace marchers’ professed commitment to Palestinian freedom is vacuous. Note that the pro-Palestinian banners carried by the marchers in London were not accompanied by demands for the freedom of the Kurds. Nor for the Syrians, Saudi Arabians and Libyans, whose freedom to choose their respective governments is not significantly greater than that of the Palestinians living under the Israeli jackboot. Are Palestinians the only Arabs who deserve democracy? Would it intolerably cloud the moral clarity of their message if the peace marchers, having stopped at the US and Israeli embassies, also visited the Iraqi embassy and demand that Saddam be put on trial for war crimes?
Both Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Nelson Mandela have said they are willing to travel to Baghdad to be human shields against the impending US attack. Very admirable. But my respect for their courage would be all the greater if they, and the other human shields assembling in Iraq, were willing to stay on to protect the Kurd’s from Saddam’s next poison gas attack. (It is only the aircraft of the US and British imperialists that are now protecting the Kurds from Saddam’s murderous assaults.) If the peace marchers had their druthers, the no-fly zone imposed upon Northern Iraq would be lifted. And the Kurds would soon need whatever protection our brave human shields might be willing to afford.
My larger problem with Calland’s analysis is this: to oppose action against an acknowledged evil, because nothing is being done about some other evil, is the empty counsel of perfection. Consistently applied, it leads to paralysis. Consider that during the international campaign against apartheid it was always possible to object that some equal or greater evil elsewhere was being left unchallenged by the focus upon South Africa. Was it not counterproductive to isolate Pretoria while maintaining ties with Kinshasa and Addis Ababa? Was it not absurdly selective to impose sanctions on South Africa, while nothing was being done about, say, Chinese colonialism in Tibet? These kinds of questions will perpetually vex moral philosophers and fuel dinner-party debate. Yet we know that virtually all political action in the real world depends upon a pragmatic willingness to act decisively, even in the face of the difficult objections that a perfectly principled consistency will throw up.
And yes, we all know that the US is not acting out of altruism, but (gasp!) out of its own perceived self-interest. (In that the US is no different from all great powers always and everywhere.) We recall that Washington was quite happy to support Saddam when, as a secular nationalist, he was a useful counterweight to the Islamic revolution in Iran. But if you also believe, as do all but the loopiest of the marchers, that Saddam is one of the most gruesome dictators on earth today these considerations do not add up to a good reason to oppose the US’s war on him. (In fact, it might be argued that, having propped up the Iraqi dictator in the 1980s, the Americans have a special responsibility to make amends — by helping to get rid of him. Pity that France and Russia, who were equally culpable, are not willing to shoulder some of that burden.)
Calland says the way to deal with Saddam is not with force, but ”containment.” He may be right. But containment and the credible threat of force are two sides of the same coin. Even the limited ”containment” now being achieved, through Blix’s arms inspections, is a product of the US’s threats to invade Iraq last year that produced Resolution 1441. (Does anyone actually believe that Saddam, having expelled the inspectors in 1998, would have welcomed them back into Iraq without the US’s sabre-rattling?) And now that the inspectors are at work, it is only the continuing threat of invasion that produces the sullen acquiescence (still falling far short of the active cooperation demanded by Resolution 1441) that Iraq has lately been offering.
This is the paradox that Calland and the other advocates of containment must face: the ”peaceful” means of keeping Saddam in his place will work only so long as the American sword hangs a few inches above his black beret. Calland should recognise that fact. And not let the impossible demands of perfect consistency prevent him from supporting the use of the sword if necessary.
Michael Osborne is an advocate who practises in Cape Town