We all knew that the US forces and officials under the George W. Bush regime were torturing people not only at Guantanamo Bay but at other secret camps across the World. We knew that torture was used at the US-run Abu Ghraib in Iraq. We know now that the British Security Service, MI5 and even the Greater Manchester Constabulary were involved in driving torture in Pakistan. In recent days confirmation of what we believed and has been corroborated by released prisoners, has come in the form of high-level memos about torture techniques used by the US security services, notably the CIA. I have discussed before how the 11th September 2001 attacks on the USA gave its government the feeling that it had a free hand to carry out any activity it deemed as necessary, going far beyond the acceptable bounds of behaviour for any government let alone that of a democracy and self-vaunted 'Land of the Free'. It led the US government to criticise those countries it felt was not going far enough in violating civil liberties and so has damaged them not just in the USA but more widely across the World. In looking at George W. Bush's regime we must see that his the policy which has had most impact in the World has been to make abduction and torture acceptable. Did Bush never realise that he had lost the War on Terror the moment he made the USA a terror state? What is the point of fighting to defend liberty if you have already killed it in your own country?
It is good that the new US President Barack Obama has had the courage to make public the memos which expose how far the previous regime, and no doubt so many of the agents and officials still in power, went in adopting totalitarian, terrorist techniques. One important thing is that it vindicates those people who have been released and have spoken of torture. Many people remained sceptical, feeling these former detainees (they were not convicts as they were never convicted of a crime) had reasons to condemn the US and perhaps exaggerate their treatment. We now know that they had no need to exaggerate anything; the USA was constantly torturing people. I was stunned by a radio report today that said it had been revealed one detainee had been 'water boarded' effectively brought to the edge of drowning (the detainee is tied down and has cloth placed over their mouth and nose which is then soaked making it almost impossible to breath), far more times than had so far been revealed and in fact it had happened 186 times in one month. On my calculations that is 6-7 times every day. Try and imagine almost being killed repeatedly, many times per day, every day. In addition, this was just one among a wide repertoire of psychological and physical torture inflicted on the detainees. This is factory torture, it is a process that goes beyond what we know of many totalitarian regimes and a world that has had the Soviet system, Idi Amin's regime, the Nazis, China today, Pol Pot's regime, that is a difficult league to get into let alone to reach the top.
It is clear the torture was not being done to gain information, it was simply for Americans to exercise their fury at those they saw as responsible for daring to violate US society by terrorist activity. The rest of the World was rather sickened by the Americans whining on about how the 11th September 2001 attacks were so horrific and so exceptional. Many people across the World, including here in the UK, have been living with terrorism for over 30 years, what made the Americans so special? The constant torturing of detainees stems from the delusion that the Bush administration suffered from that across the World was this vast organisation called Al-Qaeda, with Osama bin-Laden sitting at the centre like Ernst Stavro Blofeld of SPECTRE in the James Bond novels. We know George W. Bush is not intelligent and it is clear that he was easily led to believe that fiction had become reality. There are Al-Qaeda operatives out there, but more than that the word 'Al-Qaeda' is a banner which lots of local Islamist terror groups use to scare people. These are at best cells and more likely, just disparate groups adhering to a title which they know will make them appear bigger than they actually are. You can torture detainees as much as you like but they are going to be unable to tell you details of Al-Qaeda because it has never existed in the form the US administration persists in believing. Al-Qaeda followers (and I use that word to distinguish from 'members') did have connections with the Taliban but certainly none with Saddam Hussain's regime in Iraq.
Now, unsurprisingly, Barack Obama has done the right thing in bringing all of this to light. He knows that the USA can never be safe if it is not seen to be a state that does not engage in terrorist activity itself. It will take many years to restore people's faith in the USA, and Obama is right to start by coming clean as early as possible. Of course it puts him in a difficult position as it has generated hostility from his own intelligence/security bodies. I hope Obama checked who was loyal to him among these bodies as it would be to the entire World's detriment if he happens to be assassinated by a 'rogue' US agent, probably an Arabic one in order to scare the US public back into fearing the 'threat' to their country. The officials are unrepentant, Obama was advised not to reveal the memos and former head of the CIA General Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey, Attorney General 2007-9 said it would undermine the moral of the intelligence services, invite scorn of the USA's enemies (whereas they have invited the scorn of the USA's friends) and certainly stimulate a 'faux outrage' about what had happened. This insults the World, there is nothing 'faux' i.e. forced or false about our outrage, believe me it is genuine, so much so it is painful. It is painful to see a country which lauds liberty and democracy not only pursuing terrorist tactics but also having shifted the sense of what is 'normal', let alone what is right, to the extent that they cannot understand why people are offended by such horrific behaviour.
Obama was told by Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA not to release the memos because they would give away techniques that the CIA might want to use again in the future. This echoes statements by Hayden and Mukasey. That in itself is scary, that the CIA is not only willing to draw a line at using torture but will not rule out using it again in the future. It also betrays an ignorance of the public. Anyone who wants to know torture techniques, as I have noted before, only has to watch popular television programmes. If you want to know more Amnesty International has been producing information on what governments have been doing for decades now. Panetta's concern is that the memos end the speculation, they show high-level approval for things we only suspected before were being used. Despite the popular perception that intelligence services have all the highest level high-tech equipment, they are very attached to old fashioned methods. I remember MI5 being unwilling in the late 1990s to allow documents produced in 1895 to come into the public domain because they said that the techniques mentioned were still relevant over 100 years later. How do they expect to apprehend anyone if they are using methods developed before aeroplanes and when the car and telephone were novelties and a mobile phone that that fitted your palm was a video camera and could send information to the whole world in seconds. The historian M.R.D. Foot pointed out that during the late 1980s he had been able to go to a small regional museum in the USSR and find many of the documents MI5 was unwilling to reveal to its own population.
The US administration under Bush under went that shift of perceptions that we see in all dictatorships. What is acceptable is altered. For example, in Nazi Germany, it became accepted that Jews were not people but vermin and so needed to be exterminated. In Stalin's USSR it became accepted that anyone could be suspect and deserved to be killed or sent to a gulag. In modern day China it became accepted that anyone who was deemed to be a landowner or an intellectual should be abused and nowadays that anyone from particular religious groups or asking for independence for Tibet or East Turkistan or for some freedom of speech should be suppressed and tortured. In these countries under those regimes, 'normal' shifted to what the bulk of the World sees as abnormal and horrific. The fact that the officials believe Obama only acted in order to garner media plaudits shows how far away they have got from normality. Obama did it because the memos revealed how evil agents of his own country had been and he felt that had to cease and not be done again.
With Abu Gharib, there was the excuse that low-level troops got out of hand and that though there was a permissive atmosphere from senior officers, there was no clear direction to use torture. With these memos we see that John Yoo and Jay Bybee were writing torture policy for Bush. Bybee, a Mormon, was Assistant Attorney General 2001-03; John Yoo was an assistant to the Attorney General and a law professor. Quotations from him about the legality of torture make you sick. On 1st December 2005 at a debate at Notre Dame University, Chicago, he even condoned the theoretical crushing of the testicles of the child of a detainee if that was felt necessary by the President to secure the information desired. Yoo wanted to have US forces exempt for war crimes prosecutions. Quite rightly given that he provided the so-called legal 'golden shield' for US officials carrying out torture the Spanish government is looking into trying him for war crimes. Yoo, of course, all along has believed that the USA is exempt from things like the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners. He also believes that the US government is exempt from its own constitution for example in regard to the 4th Amendment preventing surveillance of US citizens in the USA. With such people at the top of the administration actively embracing torture it is unsurprising that it was used vigorously by lower level officers/officials. Yoo is one of the 'Bush Six' which includes Bybee, former Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez; Douglas J. Feith, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; William J. Haynes II, former General Counsel to the Department of Defense and David S. Addington, former chief of staff and legal counsel to former Vice-President Dick Cheney and the man seen as co-ordinating the clear policy of adopting torture. Cheney has asked the CIA to declassify material showing the 'success' of torturing as if this will justify and excuse it. As Obama has noted this shows how far the US administration had lost its 'moral bearings'.
Since the 1984 United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the USA and China are among the signatories), it has been possible for any state to try someone for torture even if the activity has been carried out in another country. This is why Spain was looking to prosecute the Bush Six. These men have warned that if they travel outside the USA they are likely to be arrested on war crimes charges. Of course unlike the Guantanamo Bay detainees they will not find themselves abducted and turn up in a camp in Canada or Mexico or Spain to be tortured something of course their victims were not spared. I just hope they are extradited to the The Hague as happened to the war crimes perpetrators from the Yugoslav War. This will be an important step for the World to show the USA that it cannot simply behave how it wishes. Obama has said that the officers who actually carried out the torture will not be prosecuted, but Spain challenged this on the basis of the principle of 'just obeying orders' which was thrown out at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials 1945-6. Obama will find it very difficult to fight off criticism within the USA and so has sought to minimise the impact, tackling the men who drove the action rather than the men who carried it out.
The Nuremberg Trials were an international court which tried leading members of the Nazi regime who had not escaped or committed suicide before hand, including Albert Speer and Herman Göring who did kill himself subsequently. The trials gave body to the concepts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and so established the basis on which these things are still judged sixty years later. In addition, they removed the excuse 'just obeying orders' which many German officers had felt was a stronger imperative than being humane. These principles not just in the West but across the world have remained basically unchallenged, though some dictatorships such as Soviet USSR argued many of these issues are internal affairs and not an international concern and China has argued that the principles are embedded in a Western perception of ethics which is inappropriate to societies from outside that tradition. Interestingly, though it is argued that the Bush Six could find refuge in Israel (or Saudia Arabia), in the 1960s, the Israelis were most vigorous in applying the international nature of war crimes charges, most famously abducting Adolf Eichmann a leading SS officer and so called 'architect of the Holocaust' from Argentina in 1960 and putting him on trial for war crimes and executing him in 1962. On one hand this shows Israel's vigorous application of such indictments, but also that their methodology was similar to that used by the USA against suspects in Afghanistan. Of course Israel had the correct information about their suspect whereas in many (not all) cases the USA has abducted people with little or no connection to terrorism.
I am sceptical that we will ever see the trial of anyone over the US torture programme. However, in my idea world, we would see the Bush Six brought to a war crimes trial in The Hague. As the Nazi leaders, Saddam Hussain and Slobodan Milosevic all said, they will claim it has no jurisdiction over them and that somehow they are exempt from justice because of how important they once were. I think a minimum of 25 years imprisonment for creating a regime that promoted abduction and torture just in the way Nazi Germany did, is the starting point. It is ironic that anyone entering the USA has to declare that they were never a member of the Nazi regime or its agencies and yet you were entering a country where the attitudes of many of the government's leading lawyers were based on the same assumptions as those of Nazi Germany.
As for the frontline officers who carried out the torture, again we can draw on the pattern from the late 1940s. Between 1945-8 there was the process of Denazification. The Nuremberg Trials were part of this, but the process was also aimed at lower-ranking Nazis. They were graded after being investigated and received a range of penalties from terms of imprisonment to fines to being restricted to holding only manual labouring jobs and all were barred from holding any public office, most usually for 20 years. Certainly any officer who has been involved in torture needs to be expelled immediately from any of the intelligence or security services or the military and be barred from working in private security companies and from holding public office. There needs to be a root and branch exorcising of this evil which has penetrated right to the heart of the US government. If not it will infect US society for decades to come and give succour to those that the USA professes to be opposing.
The USA has severely lost credibility in the free world, because it has removed itself from that company by its actions and yet expects the world to back it actively or suffer its wrath. There needs to be a real understanding in the USA that 'freedom', 'liberty' and 'democracy' are not just terms that you define for yourself, they are objective standards that you must strive to attain. Civil liberties are not luxuries that only some nationalities are permitted to have.
I have been stunned by the number of online discussion groups in the USA dismissing the 'faux outrage' especially from abroad and also seeking to define what is torture. They have very strict discussions of what is torture and keep ruling certain practices as insufficiently horrific to be called torture. Even being locked in the boot (trunk for Americans) of a car is something most of us cannot bear and yet that is seen as one of the mildest forms of treatment being meted out to detainees. I suggest if they claim that then they should experience these practices for themselves, even for just an hour, let alone a month or months, then I know their definitions would change immediately. We have to admire the strength of spirit of those detainees to have withstood such horrific treatment. Henri Alleg was tortured by water boarding in 1957 by French forces and in his book 'The Question' (in English 2008) gives a graphic account of it. Malcolm Nance, advisor to the Department of Homeland Security has also been exposed to it and terms it torture. I do not advise anyone to try it, but simply believe from these men who know that it is torture and that the USA has been carrying out an extensive torture programme, only some of which has come to light so far.The USA has certainly lost its moral bearings and in so doing has made the World a far worse place. It cannot stand and criticise the other torturing regimes of this planet when it simply uses many of the same techniques, many of which originate from the Middle Ages not the 21st century. The hypocrisy is stunning. The inability of millions of US citizens to accept even that their government has behaved in an immoral, cruel manner is shocking. In these circumstances it does seem we are blighted with a new Dark Age. The only hope of washing away this evil is to have thorough trials. This has been done before and needs to be done again as quickly as possible.
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
When They Arrived - Short Story
Finding this story which is the last chronologically I realised that I have entirely lost another story which I wrote in 2005. It is ironic that I have stories going back over 20 years but two which have been produced in the last 5-6 years have gone. I blame this on moving between three computers and having one of them totally reconstructed recently. I might have been able to find this missing two stories just a couple of months ago, but now I fear they have gone for good.
Anyway, I do not know why I wrote this story. It may have come from re-watching 'The Men in Black' movies, but then if it did I feel guilty for putting that slant on what are serious aspects of contemporary politics and conflicts. I think I might have been envisaging some kind of analogy around the concept of 'alien invasion' not overly dissimilar to writers from outside Europe writing of voyages of discovery to modern-day Britain to remind many people that actually when the 'voyages of discovery' arrived in places in the 18th and 19th century, that those locations were of course already known by the local population who had no need of being discovered. On that basis this story looks at the concept of 'alien invasion' and 'alien induction' especially focusing on the US contribution given how much Americans talk about these things but do not reflect on whether they are sometimes the cause of them.
When They Arrived
I suppose we should have not been all that surprised that it was our village they picked. You always hear that they tend to go for remote areas and I guess that makes sense; you couldn’t land one of those things in the middle of a city.
I awoke to the sound of a child in one of the other houses screaming. Somehow it must have sensed what was coming before us adults truly heard it. In moments, though, its wail was blotted out by the sound of the engines and the so-very bright lights running up and down the streets as it came in to land.
On reflection, I guess the best thing would have been to run away or at least stay put in our house, but I imagine, when it comes to it, that’s not the behaviour of most humans. We have to be up and looking at whatever is occurring as closely as we possibly can. We are like the proverbial moths. As I pulled a jacket on and slipped into my shoes, I remember thinking how apt that analogy was, given the piercing white lights that seemed to be filling the sky over the village. Outside, it was the wind which was more intrusive: denting the crops, sending flurries of dust and debris off in all directions.
My wife and my two sons were close behind me and we gathered, with many of our neighbours, at the edge of the village to see the large craft, vehicle, I don’t know what you would properly call it, anyway, it was coming down in the fields nearest the houses. It was an ugly thing, appearing, as it landed with a bump, like a huge distended caterpillar. Then they were scrabbling out from it, heading in what seemed to be random directions, but now I realise they were just trying to encircle the village before anyone could escape. The running figures were enough to send a few of the crowd scurrying back to their houses but most of us stayed where we were, as if truly entranced by what was happening. There was that crazy man, Adnan, who started, as he does to any given excuse, bellowing about how we need to arm ourselves. He rushed off perhaps to get one of his guns, though I doubted, even then, that they would have had much effect given they were probably half full of grit from wherever he kept them hidden.
Then they were amongst the houses, seeming so alien but resembling us all the same. We could make out some differences between individuals and they were each designated by that backwards writing they use. Yet, for the moment the main impressions were that there were all tall and so very noisy, babbling away in terse, hard voices. The lead ones had faces concealed behind strange apparatus that gave them a cycloptic eye. The ones that followed looked more like us, but their faces were streaked with various dark shades like some tribal colours. They seemed to have no other volume bar loud and they appeared to equate noise with comprehension: the louder they were, the more they thought we would understand.
Those of us still at the village edge, held there by a strong mix of curiosity, fear and simple uncertainty as to what to do, now hugged the walls of the nearest houses, feeling that the less of an obstacle we made to the newcomers, the least each of us would suffer. Gradually the craft began to quieten as if they had killed the engines. I guess the fact that we had put up no hostile response, well little response at all except curiosity, meant they felt safe enough to bring it to a full halt. Though it was now quieter the village was still filled with noise and I looked back apprehensively as I realised they were going house-to-house. The cluster of us still at the end of the street had been surrounded by four or five of them. Though they stood there passively, almost bored even, the bulky squat guns clutched idly in their hands suggested what kind of reaction we would get if we tried to flee.
Then, of course, the old woman from two doors away started shrieking at them. She went up to the closest one, hammering him, I guess it was a him, they’re all pretty androgynous, anyway, she started pounding him on his chest and bellowing something about her sons. I doubt it did him any harm; they are heavily protected across that part of their bodies with armour, all in that mottled pattern they favour. The woman’s words were pretty much incomprehensible to me and I doubted the newcomers could make out anything from what she said. Fortunately they were confident enough in their strength not to see her as a threat and it was her daughter-in-law who finally made her way through to take her and pull her to the back of our group, out of the way; soothing her with soft words.
Now I began wondering what it was that they were looking for. They were not stopping in each house long enough to be looting, so I guessed it was a person, and someone specific, otherwise why not simply take the old woman? This was followed by another thought, one that made me grateful for having no daughters: maybe they were looking for only those of us suitable for breeding; perhaps this was not an invasion, simply some kind of pleasure jaunt. I pulled my wife close to me, making sure her headscarf was pulled tight to her hair and pressing her down with a heavy arm across her shoulders so she looked older than she is.
Looking back, I guess I should have been more afraid. After everything I know has gone on in recent decades, all the stories you are told, I probably should have expected to be shot dead right there by a high-tech weapon. I suppose it was that I was still half-asleep or maybe it was that the whole thing was so peculiar, so unlike anything that goes on in this village in an average week or even a pretty odd week: heavily-armed visitors dropping out of the sky for a raid. How often do you see that?
Then it became clear that they had found what they were looking for. Of course, it was Adnan. They had him lifted off the ground, his hands bound behind him, his legs flailing and him shouting and screaming as if he was a bizarre kind of poultry being taken to be slaughtered. I knew it right then to be the truth that we would never see him again. Moments later I began to perceive him like some kind of tribute that we had to pay. Then I was grateful that it was no-one from our family or none of our friends. Since that night, however, I have worried whether next time they come back it will be for someone I do care about, and anyway, I know the village has lost something since Adnan was taken. He might have been a pain, but he was ours. In the quiet moments, I do cringe when I think about where he might be and what they are doing to him, you do hear such alarming things.
Whilst they were loading him aboard, still shouting and struggling, one of them came up to us. He took off his helmet and revealed a hairless, red-skinned head and face below, not that different from ours. He started explaining something about what was happening and why they wanted Adnan. He knew our language but had the strangest accent and got some words wrong. I guess it was not too bad given how far he had to have come. Then he seemed to think that what he said was enough, strapped his helmet back on and turned to leave. In a couple of minutes they were all streaming back like ants and then the engines were going again and it was all wind and dust and noise as it lifted off.
To be honest, we all stood around after that, half-deafened, dazed and certainly bewildered by what had happened. Then I saw my eldest coming back. With the concerns over my wife, I’d not seen him sneak off, but you can be sure I was glad he was returning unharmed. It was clear he had been playing the warrior, with a couple of his friends, seeing who could get closest to the intruders. I’m sure that I’d have done the same at their age, but you can be assured that I cursed him as strongly as my father would have done me. The funny thing is that he says that he got near enough to hear that they were playing that Bryan Adams track, you know, the one that the kids always had on their cassette player a couple of summers back. I suppose these days there are quite a few things that are common to everyone, no matter where they come from, though I doubt that wherever Bryan lives they fly down to pick up people in the middle of the night or perhaps they do, you tell me.
Anyway, I do not know why I wrote this story. It may have come from re-watching 'The Men in Black' movies, but then if it did I feel guilty for putting that slant on what are serious aspects of contemporary politics and conflicts. I think I might have been envisaging some kind of analogy around the concept of 'alien invasion' not overly dissimilar to writers from outside Europe writing of voyages of discovery to modern-day Britain to remind many people that actually when the 'voyages of discovery' arrived in places in the 18th and 19th century, that those locations were of course already known by the local population who had no need of being discovered. On that basis this story looks at the concept of 'alien invasion' and 'alien induction' especially focusing on the US contribution given how much Americans talk about these things but do not reflect on whether they are sometimes the cause of them.
When They Arrived
I suppose we should have not been all that surprised that it was our village they picked. You always hear that they tend to go for remote areas and I guess that makes sense; you couldn’t land one of those things in the middle of a city.
I awoke to the sound of a child in one of the other houses screaming. Somehow it must have sensed what was coming before us adults truly heard it. In moments, though, its wail was blotted out by the sound of the engines and the so-very bright lights running up and down the streets as it came in to land.
On reflection, I guess the best thing would have been to run away or at least stay put in our house, but I imagine, when it comes to it, that’s not the behaviour of most humans. We have to be up and looking at whatever is occurring as closely as we possibly can. We are like the proverbial moths. As I pulled a jacket on and slipped into my shoes, I remember thinking how apt that analogy was, given the piercing white lights that seemed to be filling the sky over the village. Outside, it was the wind which was more intrusive: denting the crops, sending flurries of dust and debris off in all directions.
My wife and my two sons were close behind me and we gathered, with many of our neighbours, at the edge of the village to see the large craft, vehicle, I don’t know what you would properly call it, anyway, it was coming down in the fields nearest the houses. It was an ugly thing, appearing, as it landed with a bump, like a huge distended caterpillar. Then they were scrabbling out from it, heading in what seemed to be random directions, but now I realise they were just trying to encircle the village before anyone could escape. The running figures were enough to send a few of the crowd scurrying back to their houses but most of us stayed where we were, as if truly entranced by what was happening. There was that crazy man, Adnan, who started, as he does to any given excuse, bellowing about how we need to arm ourselves. He rushed off perhaps to get one of his guns, though I doubted, even then, that they would have had much effect given they were probably half full of grit from wherever he kept them hidden.
Then they were amongst the houses, seeming so alien but resembling us all the same. We could make out some differences between individuals and they were each designated by that backwards writing they use. Yet, for the moment the main impressions were that there were all tall and so very noisy, babbling away in terse, hard voices. The lead ones had faces concealed behind strange apparatus that gave them a cycloptic eye. The ones that followed looked more like us, but their faces were streaked with various dark shades like some tribal colours. They seemed to have no other volume bar loud and they appeared to equate noise with comprehension: the louder they were, the more they thought we would understand.
Those of us still at the village edge, held there by a strong mix of curiosity, fear and simple uncertainty as to what to do, now hugged the walls of the nearest houses, feeling that the less of an obstacle we made to the newcomers, the least each of us would suffer. Gradually the craft began to quieten as if they had killed the engines. I guess the fact that we had put up no hostile response, well little response at all except curiosity, meant they felt safe enough to bring it to a full halt. Though it was now quieter the village was still filled with noise and I looked back apprehensively as I realised they were going house-to-house. The cluster of us still at the end of the street had been surrounded by four or five of them. Though they stood there passively, almost bored even, the bulky squat guns clutched idly in their hands suggested what kind of reaction we would get if we tried to flee.
Then, of course, the old woman from two doors away started shrieking at them. She went up to the closest one, hammering him, I guess it was a him, they’re all pretty androgynous, anyway, she started pounding him on his chest and bellowing something about her sons. I doubt it did him any harm; they are heavily protected across that part of their bodies with armour, all in that mottled pattern they favour. The woman’s words were pretty much incomprehensible to me and I doubted the newcomers could make out anything from what she said. Fortunately they were confident enough in their strength not to see her as a threat and it was her daughter-in-law who finally made her way through to take her and pull her to the back of our group, out of the way; soothing her with soft words.
Now I began wondering what it was that they were looking for. They were not stopping in each house long enough to be looting, so I guessed it was a person, and someone specific, otherwise why not simply take the old woman? This was followed by another thought, one that made me grateful for having no daughters: maybe they were looking for only those of us suitable for breeding; perhaps this was not an invasion, simply some kind of pleasure jaunt. I pulled my wife close to me, making sure her headscarf was pulled tight to her hair and pressing her down with a heavy arm across her shoulders so she looked older than she is.
Looking back, I guess I should have been more afraid. After everything I know has gone on in recent decades, all the stories you are told, I probably should have expected to be shot dead right there by a high-tech weapon. I suppose it was that I was still half-asleep or maybe it was that the whole thing was so peculiar, so unlike anything that goes on in this village in an average week or even a pretty odd week: heavily-armed visitors dropping out of the sky for a raid. How often do you see that?
Then it became clear that they had found what they were looking for. Of course, it was Adnan. They had him lifted off the ground, his hands bound behind him, his legs flailing and him shouting and screaming as if he was a bizarre kind of poultry being taken to be slaughtered. I knew it right then to be the truth that we would never see him again. Moments later I began to perceive him like some kind of tribute that we had to pay. Then I was grateful that it was no-one from our family or none of our friends. Since that night, however, I have worried whether next time they come back it will be for someone I do care about, and anyway, I know the village has lost something since Adnan was taken. He might have been a pain, but he was ours. In the quiet moments, I do cringe when I think about where he might be and what they are doing to him, you do hear such alarming things.
Whilst they were loading him aboard, still shouting and struggling, one of them came up to us. He took off his helmet and revealed a hairless, red-skinned head and face below, not that different from ours. He started explaining something about what was happening and why they wanted Adnan. He knew our language but had the strangest accent and got some words wrong. I guess it was not too bad given how far he had to have come. Then he seemed to think that what he said was enough, strapped his helmet back on and turned to leave. In a couple of minutes they were all streaming back like ants and then the engines were going again and it was all wind and dust and noise as it lifted off.
To be honest, we all stood around after that, half-deafened, dazed and certainly bewildered by what had happened. Then I saw my eldest coming back. With the concerns over my wife, I’d not seen him sneak off, but you can be sure I was glad he was returning unharmed. It was clear he had been playing the warrior, with a couple of his friends, seeing who could get closest to the intruders. I’m sure that I’d have done the same at their age, but you can be assured that I cursed him as strongly as my father would have done me. The funny thing is that he says that he got near enough to hear that they were playing that Bryan Adams track, you know, the one that the kids always had on their cassette player a couple of summers back. I suppose these days there are quite a few things that are common to everyone, no matter where they come from, though I doubt that wherever Bryan lives they fly down to pick up people in the middle of the night or perhaps they do, you tell me.
Friday, 6 June 2008
The US Empire Expands - 19th Century Imperialism Lives On
Just when I thought we were beginning to witness a bit of maturity in US politics with the primaries for the Democratic candidate which seemed to suggest parts of the American public were putting aside some of the bigotry and narrow-minded attitudes that they have become renowned for, suddenly we find that with the last gasp of his regime George Bush is busily expanding the American empire. Of course the Americans have never liked to be categorised as imperialists because they feel they were the first nation to throw off imperial rule when they defeated the British in the American War of Independence. However, they were really no different from Japan which came from at least a degree of imperial control in the mid-19th century to begin carving out their own empire in China and elsewhere in East Asia. Of course a lot of people assume that imperialism is all about colonies with the country being totally controlled by the imperial power and settlement by that power. The old empires like the British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese did this across the world, but what people forget is that there are many forms of imperialism and it is some of these other forms that the USA carried out and is still, it seems carrying out today. Of course the USA still has clear imperial control over Guam in the Pacific and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean as those countries have their laws made in Washington, but the empire is expanding elsewhere in less controlling forms.
Before looking at different forms of imperialism, it is important to note one issue that I will come back to later that tends to be common to anywhere which is coming under any form of imperial control, that is 'extraterritoriality' which means that if you are from the imperial power or one of its friends, then you are immune to local laws no matter what you do in the country. This applies to all diplomats, but when there is imperialism going on it is extended to soldiers, business people and so on. This is always controversial as it means that people from the imperial state can commit what would be seen as crimes and get away with it or only be punished by the rules of their home country. Having extraterritoriality removed was a goal of Chinese nationalists and Communists right through the first half of the 20th century.
Imperialism breaks first of all into 'informal' and 'formal' imperialism. Informal imperialism is effectively economic dominance of a country and this was what tended to happen to developed societies in the 19th century for example in China, the Ottoman Empire and South America where states had shaken formal imperialism of Spain and Portugal by the 1820s only to come under informal imperialism from Britain and the USA. Informal imperialism is very common nowadays. Developing countries have their economies distorted so that they provide the resources that the Western world needs at cheap prices. Once it was things like fruit, sugar and coffee, increasingly it is becoming bio-fuels. Until they asserted their autonomy in the 1950s-70s even the rich oil countries of the Middle East were under such control. Interestingly like the Japanese 150 years ago, the Chinese are now turning from exploited to exploiters and carrying out informal imperialism not only in Africa but also Australia and Canada. The advantage of informal imperialism is that it is pretty cheap and does not look like imperialism, but this was the form that the British and the Dutch East India Companies began with in the 18th century in India and Indonesia, only later did it become more formal, state-run imperialism. The USA was carrying out informal imperialism in Central and South America from the 1820s onwards and moved into East Asia during the Cold War. Alongside states it ran informally there were ones like Cuba, Panama and the Philippines which it controlled more formally. In China whilst none of the colonial powers conquered the whole country in the 19th century they did rule directly over small areas or particular cities, especially the treaty ports, where their law rather than that of China prevailed.
Formal imperialism is when a country takes over the other country and runs its economy and foreign policy, though as I discuss below this may leave a lot of autonomy in the hands of local elites. There are various grades of formal imperialism.
Spheres of influence: with these you are not far away from informal imperialism. An example was Persia (now Iraq) in the 19th century and up to the end of the Second World War. Neither Russia/USSR or the UK actually took control of Persia but it was accepted that the Russians would be dominant in the North and the British in the South; Russian and British companies would be the ones getting all the contracts and in the case of trouble it would be the Russian or British who would intervene in their respective areas. To some extent the French still have this kind of relationship with much of West Africa and the French military intervenes if there is unrest. The British do this on a smaller scale, as with former colony, Sierra Leone. It is argued that during the Cold War Western Europe was effectively the US sphere of influence and Eastern Europe much more clearly the Soviet sphere of influence.
Dominions: this is a very British mode of imperialism and is often a legacy of tighter control. It is for countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, that were heavily settled by Europeans so that the indigenous cultures almost disappeared and they are now considered 'White' countries. These states though independent in domestic and foreign policy retain the British monarch as their head of state rather than having their own president and they refer
Dependent Territories: these can be defined differently and have a particular technical meaning when talking about the UK. These are countries, often small ones, which effectively cannot subsist without the economic input of the imperial power. They run their own affairs but are heavily dependent on trade with the imperial power and may be compelled to be guided on things like defence and foreign policy. They may also provide military bases for the imperial power. Ironically this is what Cuba had become for the USA before Fidel Castro pulled off the revolution in 1958 and even then the US base at Guantanamo Bay remains a legacy of that imperial relationship that even Castro could not remove.
Protectorates: this was a common form of imperial rule over much of the British and other European empires in the 19th century, notably the Netherlands over Indonesia. It is not as expensive as a full blown colonisation and in theory the protectorate enters into an agreement for protection though in reality it was generally forced. Some people use the supposed voluntary entry into being a protectorate to compare that form of imperialism positively compared to the formation of 'Mandates' by the League of Nations at the end of the First World War which was imposed on these countries when they were removed from control of Germany and allocated to other colonial powers. However, the treatment was much the same in both cases. What distinguishes protectorates and mandates from colonies is that local rulers stay in control, though they have to deal economically with the imperial power like dependent territories and have their defence and foreign policy and often many other policies determined by the imperial state. Large areas of India such as Mysore, Hyderabad, the Rajput States and Baluchistan (now inPakistan) were such protectorates, under local princes rather than direct British control like the rest of India.
Colonies: in the British Empire these became 'Crown Colonies' to designate that control moved from the hands of companies, notably the East India Company which lost control of its parts of India in 1858 and they were run by the British government. The Belgian and German governments were also obliged to take over colonies started by companies in Africa in the late 19th century as it proved impossible for anything less than a state to run colonies. As the name suggests, the aim was generally for settlers from the home country to colonise the imperial territory. This generally happened far less than was expected as people preferred to emigrate to the Americas. However, there were notable exceptions such as South Africa, Kenya, French Indochina and especially Algeria, where by the time of independence 1 out of 9 of the population was European. In colonies the imperial power ran everything replacing government of the country by governors and the military and large chunks of the economy came under direct control of the imperial state. In extreme cases, as with Algeria for France, the colony effectively became part of the metropolitan country; in 1945, 12% of the members of parliament sitting in Paris were elected from the colonies. Other countries did not engage so closely with their colonies, though there were discussions in the 1950s about Malta returning MPs to parliament in London.
Right, so with terms established, why do I think the American Empire is expanding. Well, we all know, as I was predicting last year, that it is in Iraq. This is a country which was under the Ottoman Empire until 1918 but the Germans were attempting informal imperialism there in the 1900s. After 1918 it became a mandate of the British until gaining seemingly gaining independence in 1945 when it became a full member of the United Nations. The British had re-invaded the country in 1941 to suppress uprisings and presumably fearful of the country's oil falling into German hands. As we know the USA invaded Iraq in 1991 following its recapture of Kuwait (a state Iraq had claimed sovereignty over as early as 1961) and then again in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It appeared that there were steps to Iraq again becoming independent, but it seems that it is not the level of independence it had up until 2003. Bush is negotiating for the USA not to just have a single military base in Iraq but 50 bases across the country. In addition US troops would have extraterritoriality but not simply to go about their business but to carry out arrests and military activities without referring to any Iraqi government. This is the kind of power Austria-Hungary asked Serbia to give in July 1914 and the Japanese demanded of China in 1937 which in both cases led to war. It is like the power foreigners had in Japan in the late 19th century which led to unrest in the country and a coup in 1867, the so-called Meiji Restoration. A new twist for the 21st century is that the USA wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 feet (about 9700 metres). In addition to all this, US companies since the war have been the key economic players in the country and will continue to be so even if this so-called 'Strategic Alliance' is not signed and you can guarantee that the US will have an effective monopoly on sale of Iraqi oil.
Iraq is already a dependent territory of the USA and the agreement would solidify that. The ongoing military presence and the extraterritoriality plus the supposed 'agreement' smacks very much of a protectorate being formed. One could envisage this being 1888 rather than 2008 with the USA having overthrown some local despot, restoring some local elites but effectively running the country as their own. Certainly the influence of any other power, notably Iran, is being excluded. The USA has seen the Middle East as to some extent in its sphere of influence since the Eisenhower Doctrine of the 1950s, but what we are now witnessing is not a kind of 'new imperialism' talked about during the Cold War, this is simply reheated 19th century imperialism. People argued that the Cold War was a natural development in history and when it ended a certain phase was concluded, but to me, it appears that the Cold War was an aberration and in fact there are more continuities between the world in 1908 and 2008 than there ever were between 1948/58/68 even 1978 and today. Predictions of American, Russian (notice their colonial moves on the seabed of the Arctic and the UK doing the same in the mid-Atlantic) and China as dividing up the world seem more accurate now than ever. Imperialism is not dead, we are witnessing it occurring this very moment.
Before looking at different forms of imperialism, it is important to note one issue that I will come back to later that tends to be common to anywhere which is coming under any form of imperial control, that is 'extraterritoriality' which means that if you are from the imperial power or one of its friends, then you are immune to local laws no matter what you do in the country. This applies to all diplomats, but when there is imperialism going on it is extended to soldiers, business people and so on. This is always controversial as it means that people from the imperial state can commit what would be seen as crimes and get away with it or only be punished by the rules of their home country. Having extraterritoriality removed was a goal of Chinese nationalists and Communists right through the first half of the 20th century.
Imperialism breaks first of all into 'informal' and 'formal' imperialism. Informal imperialism is effectively economic dominance of a country and this was what tended to happen to developed societies in the 19th century for example in China, the Ottoman Empire and South America where states had shaken formal imperialism of Spain and Portugal by the 1820s only to come under informal imperialism from Britain and the USA. Informal imperialism is very common nowadays. Developing countries have their economies distorted so that they provide the resources that the Western world needs at cheap prices. Once it was things like fruit, sugar and coffee, increasingly it is becoming bio-fuels. Until they asserted their autonomy in the 1950s-70s even the rich oil countries of the Middle East were under such control. Interestingly like the Japanese 150 years ago, the Chinese are now turning from exploited to exploiters and carrying out informal imperialism not only in Africa but also Australia and Canada. The advantage of informal imperialism is that it is pretty cheap and does not look like imperialism, but this was the form that the British and the Dutch East India Companies began with in the 18th century in India and Indonesia, only later did it become more formal, state-run imperialism. The USA was carrying out informal imperialism in Central and South America from the 1820s onwards and moved into East Asia during the Cold War. Alongside states it ran informally there were ones like Cuba, Panama and the Philippines which it controlled more formally. In China whilst none of the colonial powers conquered the whole country in the 19th century they did rule directly over small areas or particular cities, especially the treaty ports, where their law rather than that of China prevailed.
Formal imperialism is when a country takes over the other country and runs its economy and foreign policy, though as I discuss below this may leave a lot of autonomy in the hands of local elites. There are various grades of formal imperialism.
Spheres of influence: with these you are not far away from informal imperialism. An example was Persia (now Iraq) in the 19th century and up to the end of the Second World War. Neither Russia/USSR or the UK actually took control of Persia but it was accepted that the Russians would be dominant in the North and the British in the South; Russian and British companies would be the ones getting all the contracts and in the case of trouble it would be the Russian or British who would intervene in their respective areas. To some extent the French still have this kind of relationship with much of West Africa and the French military intervenes if there is unrest. The British do this on a smaller scale, as with former colony, Sierra Leone. It is argued that during the Cold War Western Europe was effectively the US sphere of influence and Eastern Europe much more clearly the Soviet sphere of influence.
Dominions: this is a very British mode of imperialism and is often a legacy of tighter control. It is for countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, that were heavily settled by Europeans so that the indigenous cultures almost disappeared and they are now considered 'White' countries. These states though independent in domestic and foreign policy retain the British monarch as their head of state rather than having their own president and they refer
Dependent Territories: these can be defined differently and have a particular technical meaning when talking about the UK. These are countries, often small ones, which effectively cannot subsist without the economic input of the imperial power. They run their own affairs but are heavily dependent on trade with the imperial power and may be compelled to be guided on things like defence and foreign policy. They may also provide military bases for the imperial power. Ironically this is what Cuba had become for the USA before Fidel Castro pulled off the revolution in 1958 and even then the US base at Guantanamo Bay remains a legacy of that imperial relationship that even Castro could not remove.
Protectorates: this was a common form of imperial rule over much of the British and other European empires in the 19th century, notably the Netherlands over Indonesia. It is not as expensive as a full blown colonisation and in theory the protectorate enters into an agreement for protection though in reality it was generally forced. Some people use the supposed voluntary entry into being a protectorate to compare that form of imperialism positively compared to the formation of 'Mandates' by the League of Nations at the end of the First World War which was imposed on these countries when they were removed from control of Germany and allocated to other colonial powers. However, the treatment was much the same in both cases. What distinguishes protectorates and mandates from colonies is that local rulers stay in control, though they have to deal economically with the imperial power like dependent territories and have their defence and foreign policy and often many other policies determined by the imperial state. Large areas of India such as Mysore, Hyderabad, the Rajput States and Baluchistan (now inPakistan) were such protectorates, under local princes rather than direct British control like the rest of India.
Colonies: in the British Empire these became 'Crown Colonies' to designate that control moved from the hands of companies, notably the East India Company which lost control of its parts of India in 1858 and they were run by the British government. The Belgian and German governments were also obliged to take over colonies started by companies in Africa in the late 19th century as it proved impossible for anything less than a state to run colonies. As the name suggests, the aim was generally for settlers from the home country to colonise the imperial territory. This generally happened far less than was expected as people preferred to emigrate to the Americas. However, there were notable exceptions such as South Africa, Kenya, French Indochina and especially Algeria, where by the time of independence 1 out of 9 of the population was European. In colonies the imperial power ran everything replacing government of the country by governors and the military and large chunks of the economy came under direct control of the imperial state. In extreme cases, as with Algeria for France, the colony effectively became part of the metropolitan country; in 1945, 12% of the members of parliament sitting in Paris were elected from the colonies. Other countries did not engage so closely with their colonies, though there were discussions in the 1950s about Malta returning MPs to parliament in London.
Right, so with terms established, why do I think the American Empire is expanding. Well, we all know, as I was predicting last year, that it is in Iraq. This is a country which was under the Ottoman Empire until 1918 but the Germans were attempting informal imperialism there in the 1900s. After 1918 it became a mandate of the British until gaining seemingly gaining independence in 1945 when it became a full member of the United Nations. The British had re-invaded the country in 1941 to suppress uprisings and presumably fearful of the country's oil falling into German hands. As we know the USA invaded Iraq in 1991 following its recapture of Kuwait (a state Iraq had claimed sovereignty over as early as 1961) and then again in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It appeared that there were steps to Iraq again becoming independent, but it seems that it is not the level of independence it had up until 2003. Bush is negotiating for the USA not to just have a single military base in Iraq but 50 bases across the country. In addition US troops would have extraterritoriality but not simply to go about their business but to carry out arrests and military activities without referring to any Iraqi government. This is the kind of power Austria-Hungary asked Serbia to give in July 1914 and the Japanese demanded of China in 1937 which in both cases led to war. It is like the power foreigners had in Japan in the late 19th century which led to unrest in the country and a coup in 1867, the so-called Meiji Restoration. A new twist for the 21st century is that the USA wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 feet (about 9700 metres). In addition to all this, US companies since the war have been the key economic players in the country and will continue to be so even if this so-called 'Strategic Alliance' is not signed and you can guarantee that the US will have an effective monopoly on sale of Iraqi oil.
Iraq is already a dependent territory of the USA and the agreement would solidify that. The ongoing military presence and the extraterritoriality plus the supposed 'agreement' smacks very much of a protectorate being formed. One could envisage this being 1888 rather than 2008 with the USA having overthrown some local despot, restoring some local elites but effectively running the country as their own. Certainly the influence of any other power, notably Iran, is being excluded. The USA has seen the Middle East as to some extent in its sphere of influence since the Eisenhower Doctrine of the 1950s, but what we are now witnessing is not a kind of 'new imperialism' talked about during the Cold War, this is simply reheated 19th century imperialism. People argued that the Cold War was a natural development in history and when it ended a certain phase was concluded, but to me, it appears that the Cold War was an aberration and in fact there are more continuities between the world in 1908 and 2008 than there ever were between 1948/58/68 even 1978 and today. Predictions of American, Russian (notice their colonial moves on the seabed of the Arctic and the UK doing the same in the mid-Atlantic) and China as dividing up the world seem more accurate now than ever. Imperialism is not dead, we are witnessing it occurring this very moment.
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Prince Harry's Tour of Duty
Now before I launch into this post I must state a vested interest first, which is that I believe having a royal family is only a bad thing for the UK. They are expensive and the are part of the non-democratic political system that we have in this country. I do not see that happening to be the only available Protestant family in 1714 deemed fit enough to rule Britain qualifies you for being anything of use in 2008. That aside we come to more current issues. The British Royal Family have long had connections with the military. All of the mature members are colonels-in-chief of at least one regiment and they regularly visit naval and airforce units too. This is part of the military-nobility-Anglican clergy complex we have in the UK, because the Queen is also head of the Church of England and the senior noble in the country. Whilst monarchs have not led units to war for almost three hundred years, their children have seen action. One of the Queen's uncles died in an aircraft crash while in the RAF and her husband saw action in the Second World War; her second son, Prince Andrew was in the Falklands Conflict of 1982 where in fact given how badly things went for the British at some stages he could have been killed. One of her grandsons, second in line to the throne, Prince William was barred by the military from going to fight in Iraq as they apparently feared that he would make his unit a particular target, though given the regularity of death among British soldiers in Iraq they would still have faced a great risk with or without him. Now it turns out his younger brother, so third in line to the throne, Prince Harry had been serving for 10 weeks in Afghanistan but since the story broke was brought home.
Now there are so many things wrong with the whole incident. The first one is that the government gagged all British media to prevent it from reporting that the prince was serving in Afghanistan, naively believing that if the bulk of the British population did not know then somehow terrorists would not either; surely if they are as strong as we are told they have infiltrated every British newspaper, radio and television company. If al-Qaeda actually existed or were as sophisticated as the US government makes out, they would have known about Harry's destination before he left the UK let alone by the time he reached Afghanistan where Osama bin-Laden is supposed to be hiding and the Taleban that the British are fighting are supposed to be his ally. Anyone with minimal skill could get his picture from the internet and see him on patrol in Afghanistan. (Personally I think bin-Laden is tucked up safely in a nice discreet palace in Saudi Arabia protected by his wealthy family and friends). The gagging or probably more accurately, bribing as the media was promised exclusive coverage when he returned, was more about keeping it secret from the British public for fear of comment.
One reason why the British government does not want such attention is that they are receiving growing criticism. So, most of the British population accepted fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, though many did not, but there was an expectation from all that the British Army was professional and had the latest equipment. Yet at inquest after inquest we find that British vehicles have insufficient armour, British military police lack bullet-proof vests, that British soldiers are sent into night battles lacking even basic night vision equipment. We are trying to police the world on the cheap. I expect Prince Harry got all the equipment he needed, but if his mother had married some different man than the Prince of Wales, he or his equivalent could quite easily be killed by a poorly armed local guerilla just like scores of other British men and women.
The second problem is why was he brought back? Either he is a soldier and should serve as all other soldiers do or he is not and he should be kept for ceremonial activities like his grandmother. He cannot be a proper soldier and yet not be a proper soldier. It seems clear that he relishes the normality of service, but at the end of the day he is very different to his comrades just because of the bed he was born in. What would happen if you or I had a son or a daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan and I decided that it was a bit too dangerous for them, could I simply have them sent home? No. I would have to leave them there to get killed and maimed while serving in an ill-equipped force acting with no clear objectives. I do not wish any ill-will to Prince Harry or anyone in the Armed Forces, but what difference do you think it would make to British policy if he was killed or injured? It is sickening that the fate of one man could swing things in a way that the death of hundreds of 'ordinary' people cannot.
What this whole debate seems to have been around is the fate of a single man. What it should be about is what light that discussion throws on British involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq and why the British government feels it has the right to censor coverage of issues that are impacting on so many families both in Britain and the countries we have invaded.
Now there are so many things wrong with the whole incident. The first one is that the government gagged all British media to prevent it from reporting that the prince was serving in Afghanistan, naively believing that if the bulk of the British population did not know then somehow terrorists would not either; surely if they are as strong as we are told they have infiltrated every British newspaper, radio and television company. If al-Qaeda actually existed or were as sophisticated as the US government makes out, they would have known about Harry's destination before he left the UK let alone by the time he reached Afghanistan where Osama bin-Laden is supposed to be hiding and the Taleban that the British are fighting are supposed to be his ally. Anyone with minimal skill could get his picture from the internet and see him on patrol in Afghanistan. (Personally I think bin-Laden is tucked up safely in a nice discreet palace in Saudi Arabia protected by his wealthy family and friends). The gagging or probably more accurately, bribing as the media was promised exclusive coverage when he returned, was more about keeping it secret from the British public for fear of comment.
One reason why the British government does not want such attention is that they are receiving growing criticism. So, most of the British population accepted fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, though many did not, but there was an expectation from all that the British Army was professional and had the latest equipment. Yet at inquest after inquest we find that British vehicles have insufficient armour, British military police lack bullet-proof vests, that British soldiers are sent into night battles lacking even basic night vision equipment. We are trying to police the world on the cheap. I expect Prince Harry got all the equipment he needed, but if his mother had married some different man than the Prince of Wales, he or his equivalent could quite easily be killed by a poorly armed local guerilla just like scores of other British men and women.
The second problem is why was he brought back? Either he is a soldier and should serve as all other soldiers do or he is not and he should be kept for ceremonial activities like his grandmother. He cannot be a proper soldier and yet not be a proper soldier. It seems clear that he relishes the normality of service, but at the end of the day he is very different to his comrades just because of the bed he was born in. What would happen if you or I had a son or a daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan and I decided that it was a bit too dangerous for them, could I simply have them sent home? No. I would have to leave them there to get killed and maimed while serving in an ill-equipped force acting with no clear objectives. I do not wish any ill-will to Prince Harry or anyone in the Armed Forces, but what difference do you think it would make to British policy if he was killed or injured? It is sickening that the fate of one man could swing things in a way that the death of hundreds of 'ordinary' people cannot.
What this whole debate seems to have been around is the fate of a single man. What it should be about is what light that discussion throws on British involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq and why the British government feels it has the right to censor coverage of issues that are impacting on so many families both in Britain and the countries we have invaded.
Friday, 18 January 2008
Removing One 'Wrong' Does Not Automatically Put A 'Right' in its Place
It is always interesting listening to apologists of something who know that general consensus about what they are saying will be hostile so they wrap up their statements in conciliatory phrases especially if they are eating in your house at the time, but then with rather veiled statements proceed to make outrageous statements. In the UK it is not the done thing to say to them 'your views are entirely offensive stop', society requires you smile and admit they have a point. I would support this view, because I heartily support the view that whilst I may disagree with someone they have the right to express any views they choose and if I tried to prevent them then I would be behaving as badly as the views they outline. As noted in a recent post, some will see that as a weakness of the liberal humanist approach, but in fact in line with a comment I saw in a newspaper recently referring to the BNP (British National Party the main UK fascist party) 'given them enough string [i.e. not even rope] and they will hang themselves' as typically bigots show themselves up as stupid and hateful far better themselves that we could ever hope to do.
Now, in this context, I had a white former South African woman in my house last week. She is 28 so was born in 1980 when apartheid was in place but still only a teenager when it finally ended in 1994. Like people interested in the country she has seen the difficulties with crime, violence, poverty and AIDS that have plagued it since and she now argues that many Blacks in South Africa would prefer a return to the apartheid system because it at least had stability. To some degree that is a rather rosy view of the 'stability' of South Africa especially in the 1970s and 1980s with its economy suffering spiralling inflation and heavily armed police riding around beating and shooting people and internicine murders between different Black factions. It is clear that many Whites who grew up during the period were oblivious to the severity of events going on. They say the British had exaggerated information, but it is clear that having a free press we did not have to have exaggerated reports to see how bad the situation was. South Africa had no television broadcasts before 1977 to help keep people in ignorance and even then news was heavily censored. The one incident that they are most suprised to hear about the attack of the extreme AWB against the ANC conference in 1990 which almost triggered a civil war.
Apartheid South Africa was a society divided on racial grounds denying people access to areas and facilities such as schools and hopsitals based on their racial categorisation, something that had only otherwise been seen in Nazi Germany, hardly a good role model. The woman knew I had been in the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which for liberals in the UK was almost assumed and I recognise now I could have been much more active than I was. Anyway, she said to me, had I been to South Africa and I said no (partly because flights there are beyond my income) but I also said because I knew how violent and crime-ridden the country was. She ridiculed me saying well, surely those were the people in control that I had campaigned to liberate. Of course that is a foolish statement but you can see why Whites in South Africa see a direct connection between the end of apartheid and the rise on social problems. This, however, is a very simplistic view and is similar to the difficulties in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is right to campaign against dictatorships but you cannot assume that simply removing them will create peace and democracy; that is actually the harder job than removing the dictatorship and yet it is the one people pay least attention to.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigned not to create a South Africa which was crime-ridden and violent, it aimed for a state which did not have a divisive social and political structure and gave the majority a voice but in the context of freedom for all people no matter what their ethnic background. It also gave people the freedom to be criminals and to be violent in a way that they have that freedom (and use it) in the UK, USA, France and so on. There are some points to note. Democracy does not suddenly manufacture a feasible economy. As in the USSR before its collapse, a distorted economy of the kind which is prevalent in Africa and was also in the Communist state is going to leave certain people in poverty to an even greater extent than they are in the democracies, because the authoritarian state can restrict their movement to find work and to protest against conditions in a way democracies cannot do. So in Russia and South Africa you still have the weak economy from before but people can take action to improve their situation and the easiest way is always to commit a crime. In addition creating democracy does not overnight erase social inequalities and whilst Blacks and Coloureds are now in a position to become prosperous in South Africa, the richest people there are still White as they were in previous decades. This will also take time to change and the Mugabe model in Zimbabwe has proven itself to be the wrong way to go about it.
Democracy itself (let alone a fair society and despite many Americans' views the two are not necessarily linked) takes a long time to establish. In the UK it took centuries and as yet we are still not a truly democratic state as half of our parliament is unelected. In France it took centuries and a bloody revolution. In Germany it took two world wars and the Nazi regime before enduring democracy was established. The USA had a colonial war, a vast civil war, rioting and unrest to even establish its current form of democracy, again taking centuries. So why does anyone think that democracy can really truly be established in South Africa, Russia (which had never even tried democracy before the 1990s), Iraq, Afghanistan in the space of a few years and peacefully, when the bulk of the lauded democracies had to go through decades and decades of bloodshed to get to often quite imperfect democracy now.
It is a human tragedy that when dictatorships end it takes so long to establish some degree of stability, even to reduce the 'normality' of violence to an extent when it becomes exceptional rather than taken for granted. However, this is no excuse to say, well as democracy is so violent and unstable in the first few decades then we should not bother and stick with authoritarian regimes instead. This is like saying a woman should not let the baby out of her womb simply because it is going to be a painful process often needing lots of input from doctors and nurses. When things change you need to look forward. No-one fights to help criminals prosper, they fight for all the ordinary people, the bulk of South Africans and Iraqis who simply want to be able to go work in the morning, feed their families, come home, eat and go to sleep; to not be stopped and checked all the time, not to be arrested with no cause, to disappear, to be tortured or shot. In addition, they would like to be able to shape the government in the direction which fits with their values (though most people are quite happy if it just leaves them alone) and to be able to protest freely when things upset them. These are the people that anyone opposing a dictatorship is campaigning for. Yet, everyone, especially governments must remember, that taking away the dictatorship is not the end of the process rather it is just the brief introduction to a process that will stretch over the following decades.
Now, in this context, I had a white former South African woman in my house last week. She is 28 so was born in 1980 when apartheid was in place but still only a teenager when it finally ended in 1994. Like people interested in the country she has seen the difficulties with crime, violence, poverty and AIDS that have plagued it since and she now argues that many Blacks in South Africa would prefer a return to the apartheid system because it at least had stability. To some degree that is a rather rosy view of the 'stability' of South Africa especially in the 1970s and 1980s with its economy suffering spiralling inflation and heavily armed police riding around beating and shooting people and internicine murders between different Black factions. It is clear that many Whites who grew up during the period were oblivious to the severity of events going on. They say the British had exaggerated information, but it is clear that having a free press we did not have to have exaggerated reports to see how bad the situation was. South Africa had no television broadcasts before 1977 to help keep people in ignorance and even then news was heavily censored. The one incident that they are most suprised to hear about the attack of the extreme AWB against the ANC conference in 1990 which almost triggered a civil war.
Apartheid South Africa was a society divided on racial grounds denying people access to areas and facilities such as schools and hopsitals based on their racial categorisation, something that had only otherwise been seen in Nazi Germany, hardly a good role model. The woman knew I had been in the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which for liberals in the UK was almost assumed and I recognise now I could have been much more active than I was. Anyway, she said to me, had I been to South Africa and I said no (partly because flights there are beyond my income) but I also said because I knew how violent and crime-ridden the country was. She ridiculed me saying well, surely those were the people in control that I had campaigned to liberate. Of course that is a foolish statement but you can see why Whites in South Africa see a direct connection between the end of apartheid and the rise on social problems. This, however, is a very simplistic view and is similar to the difficulties in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is right to campaign against dictatorships but you cannot assume that simply removing them will create peace and democracy; that is actually the harder job than removing the dictatorship and yet it is the one people pay least attention to.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigned not to create a South Africa which was crime-ridden and violent, it aimed for a state which did not have a divisive social and political structure and gave the majority a voice but in the context of freedom for all people no matter what their ethnic background. It also gave people the freedom to be criminals and to be violent in a way that they have that freedom (and use it) in the UK, USA, France and so on. There are some points to note. Democracy does not suddenly manufacture a feasible economy. As in the USSR before its collapse, a distorted economy of the kind which is prevalent in Africa and was also in the Communist state is going to leave certain people in poverty to an even greater extent than they are in the democracies, because the authoritarian state can restrict their movement to find work and to protest against conditions in a way democracies cannot do. So in Russia and South Africa you still have the weak economy from before but people can take action to improve their situation and the easiest way is always to commit a crime. In addition creating democracy does not overnight erase social inequalities and whilst Blacks and Coloureds are now in a position to become prosperous in South Africa, the richest people there are still White as they were in previous decades. This will also take time to change and the Mugabe model in Zimbabwe has proven itself to be the wrong way to go about it.
Democracy itself (let alone a fair society and despite many Americans' views the two are not necessarily linked) takes a long time to establish. In the UK it took centuries and as yet we are still not a truly democratic state as half of our parliament is unelected. In France it took centuries and a bloody revolution. In Germany it took two world wars and the Nazi regime before enduring democracy was established. The USA had a colonial war, a vast civil war, rioting and unrest to even establish its current form of democracy, again taking centuries. So why does anyone think that democracy can really truly be established in South Africa, Russia (which had never even tried democracy before the 1990s), Iraq, Afghanistan in the space of a few years and peacefully, when the bulk of the lauded democracies had to go through decades and decades of bloodshed to get to often quite imperfect democracy now.
It is a human tragedy that when dictatorships end it takes so long to establish some degree of stability, even to reduce the 'normality' of violence to an extent when it becomes exceptional rather than taken for granted. However, this is no excuse to say, well as democracy is so violent and unstable in the first few decades then we should not bother and stick with authoritarian regimes instead. This is like saying a woman should not let the baby out of her womb simply because it is going to be a painful process often needing lots of input from doctors and nurses. When things change you need to look forward. No-one fights to help criminals prosper, they fight for all the ordinary people, the bulk of South Africans and Iraqis who simply want to be able to go work in the morning, feed their families, come home, eat and go to sleep; to not be stopped and checked all the time, not to be arrested with no cause, to disappear, to be tortured or shot. In addition, they would like to be able to shape the government in the direction which fits with their values (though most people are quite happy if it just leaves them alone) and to be able to protest freely when things upset them. These are the people that anyone opposing a dictatorship is campaigning for. Yet, everyone, especially governments must remember, that taking away the dictatorship is not the end of the process rather it is just the brief introduction to a process that will stretch over the following decades.
Friday, 4 May 2007
Oil, what's it good for? War!
There are a lot of people blogging about current events in the Gulf region of the Middle East so I thought I would add my view. Thinking over it, my perspective now seems pretty old fashioned, probably back to the late 1910s, though surfing around it seems that in the age of globalisation, such ideas are coming back in fashion.
So, here is my take on why the USA invaded Iraq in 2003 was not for defeating terrorism (more on how and how not to respond to terrorism in later postings) nor to overthrow a dictator (the USA has put in place and sustained so many dictators it seems perverse to pick one to remove, or maybe like Noriega in the 1980s he just came up in this decade's 'who shall we depose' lucky dip at the White House), but to get control of the 5th largest oil reserves in the world. US interest in the Gulf region goes back to before the First World War, when battleships moved from being coal to oil powered, but US policy only really began to be directed that way (a few decades after the British) with the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957. That was in the context of the Cold War and it was supposedly about defending the Middle East from Communist intervention, this was not simply about ideology, it was about a time when the USA's own oil was becoming expensive to extract and drying up and yet US fuel consumption was rocketing in the prosperous 1950s. Whilst the doctrine's aggressive approach was shelved in 1959 recently it seems to have been dusted off. To some extent the increase in Venezuelan oil which is short haul to the USA made it unnecessary. Venezuela under dictator Juan Vincente Gomez and later the pact between the AD and COPEI parties from 1958 onwards which meant a safe supply of oil for the USA.
The big shock to the western world over oil came in 1973 when Middle Eastern oil producers quadrupled prices as a way to put pressure on the USA and certain European countries not to back Israel, which despite expectations was proving hard to rub out. The price rise ended the post-war economic boom and led to the inflation and unemployment of the 1970s. The fear was that most of the oil came from 'unstable' states in the Middle East and Africa (notably Nigeria which had suffered a bitter civil war). Fortunately for the Americans they got on well with the owners of the largest reserves, Saudi Arabia and stability was soon returned to the region. They supported what was basically a monarchical state medieval in outlook, as they and the British do today. Though the vast oil company profits were reduced a little and more money went to the Saudis and other Middle Eastern leaders, the oil companies remained richer than many countries in the world.
Why then in the 2000s was all of this insufficient? Well, instability from the US perspective is spreading. In 1979 they lost the pro-western Shah's government in Iran. Iraq remained an ally during the Cold War, but when that ended it was no longer necessary; in addition it has three as yet untapped oil fields. Saudi Arabia What has changed in particular in the last decade is the increased demand, especially from China which has a population four times larger than the USA and its demand for fuel is rising. China has been making investments in raw materials across the world from Australia, Indonesia (also a big oil producer), Canada (also has certain oil reserves) and into Africa, buying influence and the fuel it needs.
Another US policy doctrine was the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 which said that Central and South America was out of bounds for any other Power, bar the USA and over the years the Americans have contested intervention there, especially from the USSR. Since the start of the Cold War the policy has been focused on keeping out 'outside' ideologies as well as other countries, notably Socialism and Communism or even local nationalist flavoured populism which seems to offer the people a little something and can be tarred with the Communist brush. Now, Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1998 he began moving the country down a left-wing path. In the past as in Guatemala 1953-4 and in Chile 1973 the US government and US corporations such as United Fruit and ITT has intervened in Latin American countries to head off nationalisation of their assets through staging coups. Chavez has faced general strikes an approach tried in Chile to oust Allende in 1973, in that case they were successful and led to Allende's death and a period of dicatorship under General Pinochet. Experts behind US interventions in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s had been advising those who tried to pull off a failed coup in Venezuela in 2002. Anyway, with a left-wing government in Venezuela which is unsurprisingly unsympathetic to the USA, the Americans are concerned that another prime oil supply is going to be limited or cut off for them.
President George W. Bush effectively admitted this need for oil in April 2005. The USA still has domestic fuel prices lower than much of the world (half what we pay in the UK) and yet huge vehicles are increasing and demanding more. A rise in fuel would shoot inflation up very rapidly and there is the spectre of a depression hanging over Bush's shoulder, especially given its budget deficit, so as in the 1920s a depression or fuel price rise affecting the rest of the world will also come to haunt the USA even if it avoids a local depression.
At the top I said these ideas date to the 1910s and this is because of Vladimir Lenin's book of 1916 'Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism' though the man who lay down the foundations was J.A. Hobson in 'Imperialism, a Study' (1902) though he tends to get forgotten. Anyway, the argument was at the start of the 20th century there were very few countries outside Europe which were not ruled either formally or informally by one of the European powers, the USA or Japan. Even supposedly independent states like Argentina, had their economies run by other states, in this case, the UK. So the portrayal of the world was that there would be completing blocs of power across the world with developed nations taking raw materials from their imperial territories and selling manufactured items back to them. Of course the blocs would shift over time and in the 1900s it was the USA, Germany and Japan who were rising in power to challenge the more established British, French and Russians. The argument is 100 years on little has changed. The Cold War provided an interlude when military power over-ruled economic power, but things are now back to the early 20th century system with economic penetration the key weapon. Germany, Britain and France are all part of the EU itself a bloc, the USA, Japan and to a lesser extent Russia are still there. China is shaking off its status as a territory for colonial penetration and becoming an economic power to match the military power it built up during the Cold War. So, the war in Iraq is rather like a move on a game of 'Risk' done simply to secure resources (and markets too, as many US companies are making millions rebuilding Iraq too). The tragedy is that it is not plastic pieces or a computer graphic eliminated in the 'play' rather people's lives and futures as they are used like atoms on the pawns that are their countries.
So, here is my take on why the USA invaded Iraq in 2003 was not for defeating terrorism (more on how and how not to respond to terrorism in later postings) nor to overthrow a dictator (the USA has put in place and sustained so many dictators it seems perverse to pick one to remove, or maybe like Noriega in the 1980s he just came up in this decade's 'who shall we depose' lucky dip at the White House), but to get control of the 5th largest oil reserves in the world. US interest in the Gulf region goes back to before the First World War, when battleships moved from being coal to oil powered, but US policy only really began to be directed that way (a few decades after the British) with the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957. That was in the context of the Cold War and it was supposedly about defending the Middle East from Communist intervention, this was not simply about ideology, it was about a time when the USA's own oil was becoming expensive to extract and drying up and yet US fuel consumption was rocketing in the prosperous 1950s. Whilst the doctrine's aggressive approach was shelved in 1959 recently it seems to have been dusted off. To some extent the increase in Venezuelan oil which is short haul to the USA made it unnecessary. Venezuela under dictator Juan Vincente Gomez and later the pact between the AD and COPEI parties from 1958 onwards which meant a safe supply of oil for the USA.
The big shock to the western world over oil came in 1973 when Middle Eastern oil producers quadrupled prices as a way to put pressure on the USA and certain European countries not to back Israel, which despite expectations was proving hard to rub out. The price rise ended the post-war economic boom and led to the inflation and unemployment of the 1970s. The fear was that most of the oil came from 'unstable' states in the Middle East and Africa (notably Nigeria which had suffered a bitter civil war). Fortunately for the Americans they got on well with the owners of the largest reserves, Saudi Arabia and stability was soon returned to the region. They supported what was basically a monarchical state medieval in outlook, as they and the British do today. Though the vast oil company profits were reduced a little and more money went to the Saudis and other Middle Eastern leaders, the oil companies remained richer than many countries in the world.
Why then in the 2000s was all of this insufficient? Well, instability from the US perspective is spreading. In 1979 they lost the pro-western Shah's government in Iran. Iraq remained an ally during the Cold War, but when that ended it was no longer necessary; in addition it has three as yet untapped oil fields. Saudi Arabia What has changed in particular in the last decade is the increased demand, especially from China which has a population four times larger than the USA and its demand for fuel is rising. China has been making investments in raw materials across the world from Australia, Indonesia (also a big oil producer), Canada (also has certain oil reserves) and into Africa, buying influence and the fuel it needs.
Another US policy doctrine was the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 which said that Central and South America was out of bounds for any other Power, bar the USA and over the years the Americans have contested intervention there, especially from the USSR. Since the start of the Cold War the policy has been focused on keeping out 'outside' ideologies as well as other countries, notably Socialism and Communism or even local nationalist flavoured populism which seems to offer the people a little something and can be tarred with the Communist brush. Now, Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1998 he began moving the country down a left-wing path. In the past as in Guatemala 1953-4 and in Chile 1973 the US government and US corporations such as United Fruit and ITT has intervened in Latin American countries to head off nationalisation of their assets through staging coups. Chavez has faced general strikes an approach tried in Chile to oust Allende in 1973, in that case they were successful and led to Allende's death and a period of dicatorship under General Pinochet. Experts behind US interventions in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s had been advising those who tried to pull off a failed coup in Venezuela in 2002. Anyway, with a left-wing government in Venezuela which is unsurprisingly unsympathetic to the USA, the Americans are concerned that another prime oil supply is going to be limited or cut off for them.
President George W. Bush effectively admitted this need for oil in April 2005. The USA still has domestic fuel prices lower than much of the world (half what we pay in the UK) and yet huge vehicles are increasing and demanding more. A rise in fuel would shoot inflation up very rapidly and there is the spectre of a depression hanging over Bush's shoulder, especially given its budget deficit, so as in the 1920s a depression or fuel price rise affecting the rest of the world will also come to haunt the USA even if it avoids a local depression.
At the top I said these ideas date to the 1910s and this is because of Vladimir Lenin's book of 1916 'Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism' though the man who lay down the foundations was J.A. Hobson in 'Imperialism, a Study' (1902) though he tends to get forgotten. Anyway, the argument was at the start of the 20th century there were very few countries outside Europe which were not ruled either formally or informally by one of the European powers, the USA or Japan. Even supposedly independent states like Argentina, had their economies run by other states, in this case, the UK. So the portrayal of the world was that there would be completing blocs of power across the world with developed nations taking raw materials from their imperial territories and selling manufactured items back to them. Of course the blocs would shift over time and in the 1900s it was the USA, Germany and Japan who were rising in power to challenge the more established British, French and Russians. The argument is 100 years on little has changed. The Cold War provided an interlude when military power over-ruled economic power, but things are now back to the early 20th century system with economic penetration the key weapon. Germany, Britain and France are all part of the EU itself a bloc, the USA, Japan and to a lesser extent Russia are still there. China is shaking off its status as a territory for colonial penetration and becoming an economic power to match the military power it built up during the Cold War. So, the war in Iraq is rather like a move on a game of 'Risk' done simply to secure resources (and markets too, as many US companies are making millions rebuilding Iraq too). The tragedy is that it is not plastic pieces or a computer graphic eliminated in the 'play' rather people's lives and futures as they are used like atoms on the pawns that are their countries.
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