Politics
It is right to talk about Iraq, especially when unfashionable
Published 09 October 2006
Politicians and the mainstream media, usually perceived to be at odds, are more often than not in collusion. In the case of Iraq it was deemed some time ago that we had all "moved on". The bar was set so high that even the most horrific of incidents merited at best a passing mention. As for the decisions that led to the war, it was seemingly agreed that everything was known already and that, in any case, it had all become wearisome. Anyone who still expressed anger at the events was derided as anti-American or obsessive.
Sometimes it is worth standing back and taking stock. The story told so far about Iraq and the role of the British Prime Minister and US president is bad enough. Journalism is but the first draft of history. The full account, when historians, with the help of official documents and memoirs finally reveal it, will be far, far worse.
There is still no exit strategy for the occupying forces. When the Americans and British finally do go, they will leave behind a country in greater chaos than ever before, and a magnet for Islamic terrorism. Such is the wisdom of all 16 US intelligence agencies, as stated in the National Intelligence Estimates, parts of which the White House was forced to declassify and publish. The Iraq war, it said this past week, had helped recruit "supporters for the global jihadist movement".
As for the current violence, the facts speak for themselves: more than 100 Iraqis are being killed in sectarian battles each day. According to the UN, 7,000 civilians have died in the past two months. US troops are attacked roughly every 15 minutes.
Iraqi and US officials are pessimistic about the ability of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, to prevent full-scale civil war. Meanwhile, George W Bush talks doggedly of victory, while Tony Blair, in his party conference, makes the remarkable claim that foreign policy has had no bearing on terrorism.
A spate of recent revelations has cast further light on events. The American investigative journalist Bob Woodward reports in a new book that the US military denied the UK vital intelligence - even British pilots flying US fighter jets were denied access to classified manuals. Woodward, who has long enjoyed good access to both governments, demonstrates the full extent of the paralysis and absurdity inside the White House. Bush apparently tried to sack Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, but was rebuffed, frequently expressing his frustrations to Blair, while doing little to address the Prime Minister's meekly expressed concerns.
The most damaging set of allegations, however, comes from a man right at the heart of the so-called war on terror. As he has hawked his new book around US talk shows, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has claimed that a senior state department official threatened shortly after 9/11 to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if he did not co-operate in the invasion of Afghanistan. Musharraf also said that Pakistan had sold hundreds of stray Arabs to the Americans, for eventual shipment on to Guantanamo Bay. As Clive Stafford Smith points out (page 33), the memoirs provide further evidence of the flawed and dishonest processes that the US used to bring "terrorists" to justice.
And now there is Afghanistan, again. Misha Glenny's powerful cover story, on page 18, demonstrates the flaws at the heart of Nato's military and political strategy. Far from cleaning up the scourge of cheap heroin on Britain's streets, as Blair promised in 2001, the Afghan intervention has, Glenny argues, become a centre of organised crime and terrorism that nourishes insurgency groups, whose prime source of income is the opium trade.
Most of the British press rolled over in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. When they realised Blair was on the ropes, a number of editors did a volte-face and condemned him. We at the NS are proud of our consistency. We argued from the first that a military adventure founded on hubris and naivety would sow further discord around the world. It has once again become unfashionable to talk about Iraq. That is why we write about it.
Wise musings of Mr K Martin
In the spirit of compliance with new legislation governing discrimination on grounds of age, we summoned the ghost of the New Statesman editor Kingsley Martin, who would today be a sprightly 109, to pen a leader on the subject:
"Some of our older - we mean, of course, more experienced - readers will remember the great New Statesperson debate of 1975 when, following the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act, there was alarm that Manchester would become Personchester, history would become herstory and (would you believe people thought this way?!) postmen would become postal workers. (What, that happened? Our apologies.) They were tough times for a liberal weekly, but the New Statesman stuck to its guns - and its name - and continued to treat its typists with the respect they deserved (while acknowledging that the robust, inquisitive virtues of the male made him more suited to the rough and tumble of journalism).
"And thus it is with age. I have been old and I have been young - 33 when I became editor and 63 when I retired. Both ages were right for me and for the New Statesman. I didn't need legislation to tell me so. John Kay, writing in the Financial Times, gets closest to the truth when he points out that discrimination is frequently desirable and that 'women in lap-dancing clubs will still be young, men in boardrooms old'. Very wise, Mr Kay. You have to be quite experienced to get that wise."
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
