If in doubt, bomb something? Or, What A Difference A Year Makes…

Way back in February 2011, Vogue ran a grovelling interview and photoshoot of Asma Al-Assad entitled A Rose in the Desert, which went out of its way to praise her 'wildly democratic' family and enlightened views (as well as her exquisite taste in designer clothes), pausing only to gently chide her country for not being as secular as Vogue might like (Vogue has a theological position: who knew?) while describing the murderous regime's state as 'the safest in the middle east'.

The first impression of Asma al-Assad is movement—a determined swath cut through space with a flash of red soles. Dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace. No watch, no jewelry apart from Chanel agates around her neck, not even a wedding ring, but fingernails lacquered a dark blue-green. She’s breezy, conspiratorial, and fun. Her accent is English but not plummy. Despite what must be a killer IQ, she sometimes uses urban shorthand: “I was, like. . . .”

The article has – amazingly – vanished without trace from that magazine's history (insert gag about make-up remover), but you can read a summary here and the whole thing here. Astonishingly, it turns out that a PR agency was paid lots of money to arrange the Vogue article. And there was me thinking that we could at least rely on the fashion press to uphold basic journalistic standards of integrity and incorruptibility…I'm not sure I can take many more of these disappointments.

The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls “active citizenship.” “It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.”

Well, I guess you could say that she achieved her goal: one way or another, millions of young compatriots are very actively engaged, often at the point of a gun. Things didn't work out quite so well for Asma and her husband Bashar. As well as being the other half of a seriously well-dressed woman, he was hereditary President of Syria, and for various complicated reasons connected with trying to look vaguely in favour of the Arab Spring at least when it turned on our enemies, the West decided to support the various rebel groups calling for (it appeared) freedom and democracy. Supporters of the aforesaid fighters for freedom and democracy included utopian, freedom-loving countries such as Saudi Arabia, so there was no doubt at all that this was a principled war of liberation. Anyway, it was about time for another little war in the area. Those countries have had it too easy for too long and besides, the West has spent a lot of money on desert camouflage in recent decades and we need to get full use out of it. Alright, some of those bearded Johnnies in the queue for guns and cash sounded a bit earnest about the old prayers-and-beheadings, but it was nothing that couldn't be sorted out by placating them with planeloads of hard currency and heavy weaponry. And in any case, we'd lined up Turkey and those lovely Kurds to help out. We know they've had their differences now and then but that nice Mr Erdogan could be relied on to do the decent thing in a tight spot, rather than take the chance to fix an election, murder his own Kurds and bomb the blazes out of our Syrian Kurdish pals. Couldn't he?

So there we were in August 2013, all set for another spot of dictator-biffing, having triumphantly brought about a soporific peace from Afghanistan to Iraq, when those damned conchie traitors in the Labour Party and their allies in the Conservatives conspired to vote against the government's plan to bomb Syria. Hard words were bandied around about Mr Miliband. 'Playing politics'. 'Giving succour' to a brutal dictator. Paddy Ashdown said he was 'sad' and 'a little ashamed' by Parliament's decision not to bomb Assad's forces.

And yet today, we have another chance. Parliament is voting today whether or not to bomb Syria. Hard words are once more being applied to the leader of the Labour Party. For opposing the bombing, Mr Cameron described Jeremy Corbyn (and any doubtful Conservatives by implication) as 'terrorist-sympathising'. That's right: bombing Assad's enemies now isn't giving succour to a dictator, while opposing Assad is 'terrorist sympathising'. What a difference a year or two makes…

There's one crucial difference: this time we're going to be bombing the rebels in support of Bashar Al-Assad's regime. That's right, the brutal one that uses chemical weapons, barrel bombs and torture on its freedom-loving people. Mr Cameron and his friends have suddenly discovered – only a few decades late – that not all the enemies of Western-backed dictatorships are members of the WI or the Liberal Democrats. Coming around very late to the policies of vultures like Henry Kissinger and Henry Jackson, he's decided that we're actually in favour of brutally repressive dictatorships because they keep the lid on millenarian fundamentalists who take the weapons we give them and use them on the streets of our capitals.

It's all rather Orwellian. In the space of two years the same Prime Minister has gone from wanting to bomb Assad to support the rebels, to wanting to bomb the rebels in support of Assad. The Russian role has moved from being reckless interventionism to principled foresight, and the Turks' genocidal treatment of the Kurds has quietly been forgotten about (this, at least, is continuity cynicism). In 1984, George Orwell wrote of the condition of unending war conducted between the great power blocs. I don't think he meant it literally, but history has a funny sense of humour and 'we have always been at war with Eastasia' has come true. In the novel, enemies become allies and allies become enemies over the course of Hate Week: the two years its taken to turn Assad from enemy to friend and Isis and co from friend to enemy isn't much less shocking. While we're at it, here's another ironic snipped from 1984 which you may find thought-provoking.

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however ofter Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.

 So here we are. Multiple murders in Belgium, Paris and less recently the UK have contributed to the feeling that we must Do Something. Or as Steve Bell put it:

Obviously I have it easy: I'm not my MP, wondering how to vote this time, nor a minister or security official. It's tempting, surveying recent history, to put my head in my hands and reply to 'what would you do?' with 'I wouldn't start from here'. It's the telescoped nature of this volte-face that really gets to me: two years from 'brutal dictator who must go' to 'essential bulwark against terrorism'. 

However, that's a more philosophical perspective. What about the 'something must be done' argument? Those in favour of bombing say that attacking ISIS isn't like the meaningless 'war on terror' because ISIS is effectively a state: it has territory, supply lines, administrators, an economy and so on.  I don't really buy it. For starters, Afghanistan is a country of sorts, and allied pacification seemed to involve an awful lot of bombing wedding parties, cattle-herders and other 'collateral damage' alongside driving out the Taliban. ISIS territory is packed with captive populations who didn't meet the requirements for genocide (i.e. being in a different ethnic and sectarian category to ISIS) but who aren't supporters. I saw the British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon explaining that British weapons can actually distinguish between terrrorists and innocent people and RAF bombing hasn't killed a single Iraqi civilian over the past years campaign and just wanted to weep at the cynicism fuelling that kind of blatant untruth. Let's not forget that the British police couldn't distinguish from a Brazilian man who was late for work and an Islamic terrorist with a bomb from a couple of yards away, let alone from 35000 feet or 3000 miles away.

I think the argument that bombing ISIS is a good plan fails for the obvious reason demonstrated by Iraq and Afghanistan – that repressing enemies requires long-term occupation alongside nation-building of a kind that we certainly haven't mastered – but also because the Brussels bombings can't be stopped by crushing head office. While ISIS has an administration in Raqqa and no doubt helps operatives commit crimes across the globe, defeating it in Syria/Iraq doesn't defeat the ideas and techniques which lead to bombings on the street. I tend to agree with the argument that ISIS is eagerly awaiting the drones and bombers. It will confirm to its supporters everywhere that they're fighting the war they want to fight: one to the death between its own religious purists and the West/Christians/enemies of its version of Islam. Bombing ISIS will simply encourage more disaffected people in the miserable slums to which they've been confined that an existential and theological confrontation is to be welcomed, and the result will be more, not fewer, atrocities. While not every bomber will be familiar with the very specific doctrines ISIS espouse, they will concur with the argument that the answer applied by the West to every outrage is to bomb brown people. 

I would take a different, perhaps harder tack. I would separate dealing with violence at home from global politics. Rather than bombing Syrians for the crimes of Belgians, French and British people, and tacitly elevating the perpetrators to the status of combatants, I would relentlessly pursue them through the criminal law. Very very sadly (I'm not sure yet) I'd be tempted to do nothing about ISIS where it is. We've tried bombing people into peace, freedom and democracy, and it hasn't worked. We've a long and shameful history of supporting brutal torture states: Israel and Egypt are only the most recent examples of the West deciding that stability is more important than human rights, so perhaps ISIS should be the next beneficiary of this familiar rejection of universal values. The problem here, though, is that al-Sisi wants to be left alone to murder his opponents while Netanyahu will be satisfied with crushing the Palestinians and taking their lands: they have specific, limited aims, whereas ISIS is expansionist, fuelled by the theological drive to impose their version of religion on everyone. Much like capitalism, actually. 

So in the end, I don't have an answer and don't know what to do. But I do know that bombing for the sake of it is no answer either. 

Boiling over

… and not just because it's unseasonably warm.

Today is Tony Blair's turn to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. Perspicacious as Mr Leveson and Mr Jay are, I hold out no hope at all of honest or clear answers from the former Prime Minister. Tony Blair is an enigma, one of the most unpleasant and dangerous public figures of recent years.

I have no doubt that if he'd seen an opportunity in the Liberal or Conservative parties in the early 80s, he'd have joined them. Ideologically, he is the ultimate zipless politician, to adapt Erica Jong's phrase. His ideology stretches as far as allowing the rich and powerful - in business and in politics (and since he left office, himself) - untrammelled freedom. Never has it been truly said of anyone that Blair never met a rich man he didn't like. As last week's revelation that he believed middle incomes to be £50-60k per year and preferred his intuition to facts showed, he is not any kind of democrat.

His politics is entirely personal: he appealed to the public to trust his intuition; to trust him because he was 'a pretty straight kind of guy' and to replace social justice with verbless aspirations: 'equality of opportunity', 'education, education, education', 'your NHS safe in our hands': slogans which assumed that every citizen was a pushy confident bourgeois, and which opened up the public sector we voted for to the depredations of free market capital.

Blair's appeal was a kind of Teflon postmodernity: being a 'nice guy' replaced gritty political hard work; shiny corporations were automatically better than tired public services; financial speculation was better than hard work; dissenters would be punished with ASBOs and benefit cuts (at home) and bombed into submission (abroad). A general disposition towards social progressivism (such as being 'cool' with homosexuality, something I of course favour) replaced a serious social determination to rebuild Britain's social structures in favour of equality - hence the massively widened social and economic gap between the rich and poor, and the indifference towards life's losers.

Nick Cohen, a formerly leftwing war-hawk, famously supported Blair's wars on the basis that democracy is a universal right which can and should be imposed by force of arms. His Observer column this week, 'Blair's Moral Decline and Fall Is Now Complete', Cohen finally admits that Blair's massively profitable (and 'tax-efficient', as they say) work on behalf of Kazakhstan's foul dictatorship is the end of Blair's moral superiority.

Nick: what kept you? I always distrusted Blair's hard-right moralism, which seemed calculated to please The Sun (and let's not even go into Blair's craven regard for Murdoch). More specifically, I and anyone with a brain saw the Iraq war not as a democratic necessity to liberate that country's oppressed citizens, but as the reflex action of a man who knows which way the wind blows. Cohen quotes Blair to demonstrate why the Prime Minister had his support:

Blair: "There is global struggle in which we need a policy based on democracy, on freedom and on justice…" 

Blair replied in admirably plain language. His commitment to democracy and human rights was absolute. Moreover, it was universal: if free elections are good enough for Britain, they are good enough for Iran and no weasel words about theocrats having their "own" version of democracy can be allowed to pass uncontested.

By necessity, Blair was also an internationalist, because, as he said in his Chicago speech of 1999, which was by some measure his finest: "We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not… we cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure." 

Fine words. But a highly-paid political columnist really should have a little more nous. Blair's commitment to 'democracy and human rights' is not and never was 'absolute'. Next to Iraq is Saudi Arabia. This is the country which forbids women to appear in public without a male relative. Women can't drive or vote. Some men have recently been given the chance to vote for a pointless assembly. Religious belief is harshly policed. There are no rights pertaining to democracy: no political campaigns, no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no union rights. Torture is the state's major tool to maintain the status quo.

By any standards, Saudi Arabia was worse than Iraq and approached the condition of North Korea. I was personally inspired by Tony Blair's commitment to universal democracy and human rights. So I wrote to my New Labour MP, Rob Marris, asking him to let me know when the invasion of Saudi Arabia was scheduled, explaining my concerns about the country and my hopes for a democratic future. His reply consisted of two lines, the salient words being 'totally different', though he failed to explain why.

I know why. Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil. We depend on it. In return, they buy a lot of British weapons (mainly for show, but partly to use against their citizens), and they don't get too upset about western support for Israel, despite their obsessive anti-Semitism. Democracy is for our enemies - many of whom were our friends when their human rights abuses were less important than their preference for NATO bribes over Soviet Union ones: Saddam Hussein is a case in point.

This is Blair's 'absolute' commitment to democracy: it disappears when money and geo-politics appear, both in office and out. None of this should be a surprise. Nobody's shocked when a Tory enunciates the brutality of realpolitik. The point about Blair is that he moved the political debate away from substance towards appearance: his carefully-constructed persona was that of the modern, cool guy at ease with celebrity culture and lifestyle politics, but his few political instincts were as hard-right as any Tory. Global hegemony and casino capitalism formed the bedrock of his beliefs - anything else was negotiable. The origins and purpose of his party were embarrassing relics, quickly discarded. As he repeatedly demonstrated, 'newness' was the only signifier which mattered to him - he would constantly attack 'the forces of conservatism', by which he meant the civil service, his own party members and those they represented - not on any serious structural level, but because they were in the way of his autocratic sense that he should be able to ordain a new order without discussion, consultation or objection. Democracy at home was, to him, a drag on wealth creation and political leadership: his massive self-belief led him to assume that his every instinct (as in the average wage anecdote) was correct and any alternative view was simply obstructive for the sake of it. This is why - as his testimony at Leveson admirably demonstrates - his linguistic discourse consists of 'look' and 'y'know': he cannot and never could take scrutiny: such quirks are signs of his frustration at being questioned on anything.

Cosying up to the Murdochs of this world wasn't a burden: it was a pleasure for him, because the only people who mattered were life's winners, however they got there.

A Bad Day on Mount Olympus

What an amazing Friday. Shadow Chancellor resigns yesterday and the personal stuff starts coming out. Tony Blair being grilled on his little evasions and lies to the Iraq Inquiry, and now Andy Coulson, David Cameron's criminal press advisor resigns - he says it's because he's become the story, but I suspect it's really because his fingerprints are all over the News of the World's illegal phone-hacking. You don't, as an editor, receive scoops week after week without wondering if there's any connection between them and the large amounts of money you're paying an expert in phone-hacking. To put it mildly.

The only problem with all this is that there won't be proper coverage of all of them, especially Blair, whose Messianic Manichaeanism deserves the full glare of public contempt. No doubt the principals of all these stories are very relieved. Nobody looks very good this morning.

PS. I nicked the title of this post from the excellent Marilyn Todd short story. Highly recommended.

Plus ça change…

I don't think I need to comment on how the Establishment works, do I? There's no point anyway - no amount of outrage from someone like me would ever make a difference.

 A senior army officer described by high court judges as an unreliable witness, and allegedly accused of asking his staff to lie on oath, has retained a top post within the military police, the Ministry of Defence confirmed today.

Colonel Dudley Giles was a key MoD witness in a military police investigation that dismissed claims that British soldiers mutilated and murdered civilians in Iraq. A review by Greater Manchester police subsequently concluded the investigation failed to collect forensic evidence and ignored key Iraqi witnesses.

The MoD said today that Giles would keep his rank of Deputy Provost Marshal – second in command of the Royal Military Police – despite withering criticism last year from high court judges, but he will no longer be responsible for investigations. Were he to again appear as a witness in similar proceedings, the judges said: "It is our view that any court seized of those proceedings should approach his evidence with the greatest caution."

When Giles was asked last year why he had not referred in a witness statement to a document that disclosed British soldiers had detained between 10 and 12 Iraqis, Giles told the high court that he did so to avoid prejudicing any future prosecution. "When this assertion was examined, it became obvious that it was wholly without foundation," the judges said. Rabinder Singh, QC for the families of the Iraqis, told the high court: "[Giles] did not tell the truth".

Emails, subsequently leaked, allegedly show that Giles told his staff to change their witness statements

Meanwhile, on Planet Iraq

A very rightwing figure is giving evidence to the Iraq War Enquiry this morning: Eliza Manningham-Buller, who was head of MI5, Britain's internal secret service.

Is she saying the war was a brilliant idea, punishing the Iraqis and making the world safer, as Tony Blair said?

Er, no. In fact, she's rather clear that the war made us all a lot less safe, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that the Americans were in no mood to listen to such obstructive whinging. I know that the case for war has been repeatedly demolished, but it's amazing listening to someone so authoritative dismiss every single claim made by our lying leaders (on every side).

Manningham-Buller remembers flying up the eastern seaboard [the day after the 9/11 attacks in the US], seeing the smoke and wondering how Americans would react: "It never occurred to me they would go into Iraq."

As US and UK forces were preparing to invade, she asked, "Why now?" She said it "as explicitly as I could. I said something like, 'The threat to us would increase because of Iraq.'"

Most Iraqi CB terrrorist attacks have been assassination attempts against individuals, often emigres ... Iraq used chemcial weapons during the Iran-Iraq war and also against civilian Kurds in 1988, but there is no intelligence that Iraq has hitherto planned or sought mass-casualty CB terrorist attacks. As with conventional terrorism, we assess that Saddam would only use CB against western targets if he felt the survival of his regime was in doubt. In these circumstances, his preferred option would be to use conventional military delivery systems against targets in the region, rather than terrorism.

Manningham-Buller says MI5 regarded the threat from Iraq as "low".

Sir Lawrence Freedman asks about suggestions that Iraq gave support to al-Qaida.

Manningham-Buller says she did not give any credence to this. There was no "credible intelligence" to suggest a connection. That was the judgment of the CIA as well, she says.

There were only "tiny scraps" suggesting contact.

Those "tiny scraps" were given a weight that was not there.

To her mind, Saddam had "nothing" to do with 9/11.

She says this view was not accepted by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary.

How significant a factor was Iraq compared with other things used by extremist terrorists to justify their actions?

It undoubtedly increased the threat.

Arguably we gave Osama bin-Laden his Iraqi jihad.

The decision by the Americans to sack the Baathists was "an error", she says.

On a visit to the US, she was asked to speak to Paul Wolfowtiz, the US deputy defence secretary, about this. She tried to persuade him it was "not sensible".

Lyne asks if she converted Wolfowtiz. "Not a hope," Manningham-Buller replies.

Manningham-Buller says there was a correlation between the war and the increase in the number of threats.

What Iraq did was produce a fresh impetus of people prepared to engage in terrorism.

 

Respect My Authoritah

Blackwater, now Xe, is the most dubious of the privateer operations the US allowed to conduct armed operations in the countries it invaded. Lots of civilians were murdered by their employees.

Turns out that the company was helping itself to hundreds of US army weapons without permission - and giving them to employees who shouldn't have been carrying any sort of weapon.

Who signed the paperwork? Somebody calling himself 'Eric Cartman'. Which rather fits their attitude in the field.

We are a charitable lot

In the middle of another story, here's an astonishing statistic, if true:

The number of students prevented by their parents from attending sex education classes increased during the Iraq war, when many Muslim families immigrated to Sweden. The Scandinavian country, with 10 million inhabitants, granted full refugee status to 24,799 Iraqis between 2003 and 2007, compared with 260 by Britain.

How astonishingly mean-spirited. The UK invades a country on a false pretext, having previously armed and encouraged its dictator, wreaking havoc and a concomitant civil war, then found room to accept only 260 individuals, despite the immense hardship. Meanwhile a much smaller country with no global pretensions and no responsibility for the war opens its doors to a much greater proportion of refugees.

Förlåt, Sweden!