Tony Blair’s recent announcement that he will hence-forward account only to God for the Iraq war makes perfect sense. Every secular reason he has concocted has turned out to be the reverse of the truth: there were no weapons of mass destruction, we are less safe from terrorism, the Iraqi people do not want the British in their country. No more of his excuses stand an earthly chance of being believed.
In the aftermath of the third anniversary of the calamity, the final argument used by the remains of the army of pro-war punditry has gone belly up. Far from preventing a civil war, the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is provoking one. It is doing so through its divide-and-rule strategy, which has inflamed the Sunni-Shia divide, and through its refusal to afford Iraqis national sovereignty, which is the only framework for overcoming such differences.
There is scarcely even a pretence that Iraq is permitted such sovereignty at present. Both the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the US ambassador to Baghdad have recently been instructing the Iraqis as to what sort of government they must form — three months after the supposedly decisive national elections took place.
And all this to the accompaniment of unabated violence. Estimates for civilian deaths under the occupation range well over 100 000. The director of the Baghdad morgue had to flee the country after revealing that more than 7 000 people had been killed by officers of the US-supervised Interior Ministry.
The pledge that all this suffering would at least assist a solution to the Palestinian question has proved hollow, with the Israelis ram-raiding a Palestinian prison in Jericho — just like British troops in Basra. But still the war junkies seem to believe one more hit — this time against Iran — will lead to the breakthrough to the docile Middle East they desire. Almost every Iranian agrees that aggression will consolidate support for the regime in Tehran. It will certainly cost more lives and inflame Muslims everywhere.
None of this was unavoidable. The worldwide anti-war movement has been vindicated in its estimation of the unjustified nature of the war and the consequences of an occupation of Iraq. And Britain has reaped the consequences. Most people understand that the terrorist threat “over here” is a consequence of what we are doing “over there”. The denial of that connection has damaged civil liberties and community cohesion in Britain.
This was not a war the British -people wanted. To put it in language the British prime minister understands: vox populi vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God). The time for accounting is now. — Â