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TechnoratiThere Are Very Few Causes Worth Dying For - Iraq Is Not One of Them
The British are past masters of the speedy exit, as events in India 60 years ago show
Like being shot by a sniper on the western front at 10.59am on November 11, 1918, to die now as a British soldier in Iraq is its own special category of tragedy. What has he died for? Is Iraq a safer and more secure place? Is the rest of the world, including Britain, likewise? Is the Middle East more democratic, more optimistic of its future? But adjust these lofty aims: is the price of oil lower? The answer is not just that these things have stayed much the same; it is in all cases the incendiary opposite. Worse than all this futility, worse even than the bogus prospectus for the invasion that took him there in the first place, the dead soldier will know in the last days of his life that only a small number of his fellow citizens want him and his comrades to be there, and that his government, with what on the hottest Basra day must seem like glacial slowness, is trying to get him out.
Privates Scott Kennedy and Jamie Kerr, both of the Black Watch, died with a third soldier when a roadside bomb exploded near Basra on June 28. They were both 20 and came from West Fife. The prime minister, another Fifer, said, "My thoughts and prayers are with all the families of all the fallen soldiers, who died bravely serving their country."
That is one way of seeing it. Shortly before he died, suffused with homesickness and nerves, Jamie Kerr emailed his chatroom friends, "You ask why I am writing this [at 5am in Basra], well ... canny get any sleep and a want to go hame."
Why couldn't he be brought home? The British army no longer runs Basra, if it ever did. Troop numbers have almost halved from the 9,000 who were there in 2004 and the British effort now seems mainly dedicated to the protection of the British barracks and the airport: Rorke's Drift with air support. The only reason they remain, so far as one can tell, is to preserve an illusion of Brown-Bush solidarity on policy in Iraq, to spare diplomatic breaches and embarrassment, to "manage things well" - subtlely, ambiguously, without scaring the horses - until an American president can blame things beyond his control for his adventure's abject failure. There are very few causes to die for and this would not be one of them. The letters Gordon Brown sends to the bereaved must be hell to write.
Britain didn't always tiptoe towards the inevitable destination of military withdrawal in this life-wasting way, at least if the lives were British. In August, 1947, 60 years ago next month, it withdrew from a much larger and older project, British India, with a speed and directness that alarmed many Indians and with a purpose that stemmed in small part from America's then anti-colonial pressure on a country that was broke and badly in America's debt. India is far from a perfect analogy with Iraq, but in 1947 it offered some remarkably similar problems. Its politics had become lethally communalised - not Shia v Sunni, but Muslim v Hindu and Sikh. London attempted to preserve a one-nation India, but failed; by early 1947 there was still no form of Indian government to which power could be transferred. British troops in India, not counting British officers in the Indian Army, had dwindled from a prewar figure of 60,000 to no more than 12,000 two years after the second world war ended, and all of them were very anxious to come home. When Attlee's Labour government took office in 1945, withdrawal from India was no longer a matter of if, but when.
In Downing Street on the last day of 1946, a cabinet meeting pondered the wisdom of announcing a precise date when, to quote from the record, "we had no assurance that there would by then be a representative authority to whom we could hand over power." Still, the cabinet felt that a precise date might knock a few heads together and that withdrawal could be dressed up so as not to "appear to be forced upon us by our weakness" but instead the logical conclusion of policies pursued by successive British governments.
The truth is that a blunt document written in September by Lord Wavell, the penultimate viceroy, had scared them. "In India one must either rule firmly or not at all," he wrote. "With a largely uneducated and excitable people, easily moved to violence, it is essential that agitation and incitement to unbridled riot should be stopped at once." Britain lacked the will and means for the long haul. Wavell said Britain needed to quit no later than spring, 1948. In February, 1947, the government earmarked June, and then appointed Wavell's successor, Louis Mountbatten.
Mountbatten was a military nincompoop and one of stupendous vanity, with a boyish preoccupation with flags, medals, uniforms and orders of ceremony. But in India he and his cleverer wife, Edwina, charmed people, particularly India's most significant politician, Jawaharlal Nehru. For their day and class, they were remarkably free of racial condescension. A combination of charm, bluster, rashness and perhaps ignorance achieved a political settlement within months, though it meant the partition of India. By 1947, Indian politicians on all sides had begun to see the idea of Pakistan as inevitable, though neither Britain nor the US was particularly in favour of it. What may not have been inevitable was the slaughter that accompanied Pakistan's creation and for which Mountbatten's haste is sometimes held to blame; according to the historian Andrew Roberts, he should have been court-martialled when he got back to London. Somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million people died.
But slowness may only have postponed and aggravated the carnage. Hindu-Muslim killings were already a fact of Indian life - in 1946, 4,000 died in the Calcutta riots - and worsening every day. Mountbatten had few British troops to call on, and probably even fewer willing to risk their lives in the cause of communal harmony. And most politicians wanted the British out as soon as possible. Nehru had said, "I would rather have every village in India go up in flames than keep a single British soldier in India a moment longer than necessary." The one indubitable benefit, from a strictly British point of view, is that very few British soldiers died between the declaration of India's independence and the last troopship home - seven officers is one statistic.
So far in Iraq, 159 British troops have died and 3,611 Americans (current rates are about 100 a month). Iraq's own parliament is bitterly and hopelessly divided, as far from reconciliation as Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was from joining hands with Nehru. Iraq has no Gandhi to heal and inspire. Perhaps what Gordon Brown needs is that unlikely thing, a touch of the Mountbattens. He could set a date. How about tomorrow? Tomorrow would be good.
© 2007 The Guardian/UK
8 Comments so far
Show AllGandhi: thank you for the informed explanation on India's past history (and its parallels with US/UK aggression in Iraq).
Cmichaelg49 says, "Perhaps that particular challenge is one that will yield not to conventional politics, but rather only to a spiritual awakening." I agree with this, however, as we note the giant corporations acting like nation states answerable to no sovereign people in their rabid call to resource depletion (a/k/a profit), a related uprising of laboring people everywhere must emerge. As economics continue to grant the rich the status of pharaohs, as the laborers resemble slaves (add this to food and water shortages directly attributable to global warming) and it will be PAIN that acts as catalyst to some from of worldwide revolution. Hungry people generally has less time to muse over their spirituality (although every sect has some born with truly spiritual traits).
What troubles me most in seeing the clash not of civilizations but of classes, is the types of weapons and the forms of surveillance now in the hands of those that would oppress. The scale of murder performed by private armies or mercenary forces (aimed at dissidents), the capacity to build prisons (and the "war on terror" as rationale behind this) and the movement towards cutting "the people" out of true representation taken together chill the mind. We're talking Orwell on steroids... crossed with the power trespasses of history's worst offenders.
Not until that Iraq oil bill is signed, sealed, and delivered to the American oil companies who authored it is there a snowball's chance in hell that American troops will come home. "The Iraqis are understandably concerned about the draft law because oil is Iraq's economic lifeblood: It accounts for nearly 70 percent of GDP and more than 95 percent of government revenues. But the draft oil law would take over three-fourths of Iraq's oil fields out of the hands of the Iraqi government and put them in the pockets of Western companies. These companies would not be obliged under the new law to meet minimum standards in partnering with Iraqi firms, hiring Iraqi workers or investing profits in the Iraqi economy. The law also allows for production-sharing agreements, corporate-friendly deals that have been rejected by every other country in this region, and with good reason: They grant foreign firms control of resources and profits for as long as 20 to 30 years, or an entire generation" (Editorial, Daily Star, 9 July 07).
gandhi,
My impression is that Jack is not preaching to the choir but writing in a mainstream British newspaper hoping to reach a larger audience. As a piece of persuasive writing designed to have a positive impact on foreign policy in a country with long history as imperial colonizer ("the sun never sets on the British Empire", "the pink bits" and all of that), Jack has put forward an argument that is both pragmatic and reasonable. However distasteful you may find it, it is more likely to persuade those who stand in need of, and who may be open to, persuasion than would a condemnatory broadside.
As I noted earlier, it is a pragmatic argument for prompt change of a wrong-headed policy that is killing Iraqis, Brits, Americans, and others, and which threatens to further destabilize the entire region. Again, we have to start somewhere.
Britain needs to get out of Iraq the same as the U.S. As far as all of the "colonization" stuff, The british and americans would be crazy to WANT Iraq. Let the Iraqies fight it out among themselves. Either they will settle their differences, the country will split into three or more states, or a new Saddam like dictator will appear to suppress anyone that steps out of line.
cmichaelg49
I do understand the thrust of the article. But the reasons he gives for "getting out" are outragious. He is putting the blame squarely on the VICTIM for the present situation in Iraq. He wants UK and US to "get out" because their soldiers are dying. No mention of innocent Iraqis who were killed by the INVADERS. No mention of war crimes committed by both US and UK soldiers. No mention of accountability from the leaders of these countries for the ILLEGAL INVASION of a sovereign country violating all international laws. Aren't they accountable to the people of Iraq and of the world for their war crimes???
For me, the thrust of the article seems to be it is ok to invade another sovereign country as long as UK and US soldiers do not die. No matter how many innocent citizens of the invaded country die in the hands of the INVADERS.
About partition of India into two countries (India and Pakistan), he should know the facts as to who were the creators of that situation. The same plan the INVADERS of Iraq are using in Iraq to divide the country into three separate countries by supplying arms to one faction and arousing the divisive passions, so that they can continue to benefit by DIVIDE and RULE policy.
That is why this article is a colonizer's crap.
gandhi,
No argument from me about the colonialist crimes of the UK and the US based on exclusivist and racist attitudes--promised land/chosen people ideology underwritten by Old Testament theology embraced enthusiastically by so-called Christians and writ large across the pages of history in Africa and the Americas as well as Asia as colonialism and interventionism.
But Jack's article seems to be more about getting out, a pragmatic and prompt rejection of colonialism and interventionism. It is obvious that many of the pressing problems faced today by the peoples of lands that were once subject to colonialism, and most of the problems of peoples who are yet subject to the interventionist whims of Western governments and the multinational corporations and international institutions that do their bidding, are the legacy of colonialism and the evidence of a resurgance of racist colonialist attitudes in the form of renewed interventionism by the West. But again, the thrust of Jack's piece seems to be about how to bring this resurgance to a halt in Iraq, in order that Iraqis, and by extension other peoples who have suffered under colonialism, can find their own way, free of Western intervention.
Given current political, religous, social, economic, technological, and environmental realities, one wonders how civilization, such as it is, will avoid a potentially catastrophic crash and continue more or less uninterrupted development in coming decades, but this much is certain: The ruling classes everywhere are going to find it increasingly difficult to wield illigitimate power over the masses.
To some, the best hope for civilization seems to lie in the possibility of progress beyond organization at the level of the nation-state (and the attendant virus of nationalistic fervor that has invariably inspired war, after war, after war, since the era of organization at the level of the tribe, of which the nation state is but an extension) in favor of a democratic world government of all mankind. Getting there, while avoiding racially suicidal wars with weapons of mass destruction, seems to be the great organizational challenge. Perhaps that particular challenge is one that will yield not to conventional politics, but rather only to a spiritual awakening.
In any case, we have to begin somewhere, and calls to end war and bring the troops home seem as good a place to begin as any.
This is rubbish. He seems to "sell" what his leader tried before the invasion. It is also surprising that he tried to find parallels between India and Iraq. He should read the history that the divisions between Hindus and Muslims in India in 1947 and that between Shias and Sunnis are the colonial creations. It is good to read history whether Indian leaders were already prepared with a plan for the transition from a "colony" to a sovereign country. He also seems to project India as a "violent" country. This is a colonial crap. Coming to the evident parallels: British colonial power colonized India and Iraq to plunder these countries. The aggressive imperialism combined with inherent racial supremacist worldview has led Britain to acts of savagery against the owners of the land, blinding its eyes to the inherent value and worth of human life and to its real "image". The irony is this is considered as the unique British values. Tony Blair in 2000 talking about the British unique superior values described them as "qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self-improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities and an outward-looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history." As someone elsewhere rightly commented: "This "delusion" is shared in large part by the general public in Britain. Its hallmark is a curiously uncritical set of double standards typically expressed in an affronted tone of self-righteousness. It was this schizophrenic evangelical worldview with a hubristic belief in the SPECIAL ROLE of the US and the WEST for the good (?) in the world that has led to slave trade, colonization," and the present invasion of Iraq.
The "drain" of India's wealth to Britain (India's diamond "Kohinoor" stolen by the British colonial power, which is still with British queen, is an evidence of that) and the political oppression is well documented. Do you remember Amritsar massacre on the 13th of April 1919, where the British colonial butcher Dyer ordered his soldiers to shoot at a large gathering of Indians celebrating Punjabi festival "Baisakhi" at Jallian Wala Bagh in Amritsar. The soldiers fired into the gathering 1650 rounds killing hundreds of innocent people and wounding thousands. After that Dyer reported to his superiors that he was confronted by a "revolutionary army" and so he was forced to teach them "a moral lesson". Do you see parallels between what British colonizers did to India and what British "liberators" are doing in Iraq?
Tony Blair along with Bush lied openly to the entire world and invaded Iraq presenting himself as a "liberator". He "sold" his malicious plan in the name of democracy and freedom. The world is well aware that the UK and US have invaded Iraq to plunder its natural resources. For this they are butchering innocent Iraqis, thus creating Iraqi holocaust. Now "the liberators" are no longer talking about "liberation of Iraq" but "victory in Iraq". That means passage of new Iraqi oil law. Under the proposed law, Iraq's immense oil reserves would not only be opened to foreign oil exploration, but the executives of the transnational oil companies such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum and the other Western oil giants would actually be among the board of directors of the new Federal Oil and Gas Council that would control all of Iraq's reserves. The Iraq's own national oil company would become just another competitor. The new law would grant the council virtually all power to develop policies and plans for undeveloped oil fields and to review and change all exploration and production contracts.
Do you see the parallels: LIES, MASSACRE, and PLUNDER.
So British and Americans in Iraq are dying in this process.
The sad part is the the Iraq war is succeeding, as far as the architects of the war are concerned. Non-Iraqi corporations (read US and UK) are moving in to the kill, as they are getting closer to taking ownership of the oil. Yes, they are a devious bunch, forcing the Iraqi parliment to authorize it, against the interests of the Iraqi people.
ahhhh, I'm glad nothing has changed and that the injustices of the last thousands of years continues, the injustices that cause suffering to the masses and financial gain for the few.
Life in beautiful, a different look at Iraq -
http://www.wordsareimportant.com/lifeisbeautiful.htm
peace, justice, and human rights for all.