Daily Times

History corrects the judgment too late. The correction does not help the victim and does not absolve their executioner

—Herbert Marcuse

The ever-intensifying trauma, a class crisis, continues to inflict the British ruling elite. The Brexit, the brazen attack of Blairites to restore their hegemony on Labour [party], and now the once-mystified charismatic Blair finding himself standing officially condemned for the war crimes in Iraq are the plagues afflicting them. This spilling of the Pandora’s box carries lethal repercussions for the ruling class whose nefarious designs and democratic farce stand exposed to the public. The outcome of referendum has piqued its narcissism. Its hegemony is eroded. Cameron is an immediate casualty, Labour as party could be the next.

In the Chilcot commission there was nothing that could be described as a Eureka moment since whatever it revealed was already in public knowledge. From its very inception neither the nature nor the objectives of that aggression were hidden even from a person of an ordinary vision. In 1998, Denis Halliday’s resignation over Iraq sanctions made this crime against humanity explicitly evident. In February 2000, Hans von Sponeck and Jutta Burghardt resigned from their posts, citing the same reasons. They implicated the permanent members of the UN of committing an act of genocide in Iraq. Long before these eventful incidences Martti Ahtisaari, the then UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, sent to Iraq after 1991 Gulf war, had unequivocally expressed his opinion about this savagery by stating “…that coalition’s air campaign…had bombed Iraq back to a pre-industrial state.”

What these people figured out became a judgement, a historical verdict, an indictment not of individuals alone but the denunciation of the new coercive mode of imperialism that was casting aside abstractions of democracy and freedom. They sensed and quite rightly so that modern colonialism had transcended the cosmetic liberal slogans, and hence felt no inhibitions to reveal itself in its real shape an outright aggressor.

The genocide of the people of Iraq was a premeditated and organised act. Prior to the declaration of war, sanctions and embargoes had already initiated a holocaust. Those impositions brought an unheard of perdition on the innocent civilians of Iraq, leading to a situation that fatally starved nearly 500,000 Iraqi infants, more than the number killed in Hiroshima. Not by any stretch of imagination could these victims be labelled as enemy combatants, yet for representatives of hegemonic empire this massacre was justified, according to Madeline Albright “a price worth paying.”

The destruction of the countries belonging to MENA (Middle East and North Africa] was one of the oldest dreams of US imperialism. Eqbal Ahmed writes, “When the Ottoman Empire was picked apart by the British and by the French, the [Arab] tribes were given flags and were kind of turned into imperial petrol pumps.” Beside this, the creation of two theocratic states, Saudi Arabia and Israel, became the cornerstone of the imperialist policy. On February 14, 1945, Roosevelt embraced Abdul Aziz with his brigade on US cruiser Quince. The marriage of convenience took place immediately. In return for his recognition by the US, Aziz had already revoked his claim on other “oil-producing tents,” the miniature territories such as Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE. Immediately after this meeting, the “holy” state opened its gateway to General Electric, Bechtel, AWT, and the oil corporations. Since then capitalism continues to be the vanguards of this state.

In another strategic move the greater Syria, which included northern Iraq, was gifted to a Hashemite; with nominal powers Fasil bin Hussain was designated as the king of Syria and Iraq. His agreement with Weizmann provided the much-needed legitimacy to the infamous Balfour declaration, a dagger pushed in the back of Palestinians. In reality, Britain and France — discarded or reinstated these proxies at their will — remained the real power wielders.

Fast forward to the era of Saddam Hussain when he was let loose on Iran, the fate of the Middle East had already been sealed. According to William J Astore, “That’s what the Carter Doctrine of 1980 was about: it defined the Persian Gulf as a US ‘vital interest’ precisely because, to quote Paul Wolfowitz’s apt description of Iraq, it floated on a sea of oil.”

After a disastrous war with Iran, the sole beneficiary of which was the military-industrial complex of the US, Iraqi economy had plunged into an abyss. Desperate to find an alternative Hussain looked to his wartime allies. Reagan administration with other designs in mind immediately obliged by giving “Iraq roughly four billion dollars in agricultural credits to bolster it against Iran. Saddam’s Iraq became the third-largest recipient of US assistance.

Yet the falling oil prices, massive output by Kuwait, the war-torn economy forced Hussain to invade this tiny oil-rich state. On July 19, 1990, the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met Hussain. Her consent to the invasion turned out to be the turning point for Iraq that removed the last stumbling block in the course of war. What happened thereafter is no secret.

Two gulf wars destroyed the remaining infrastructure of Iraq, once the most modern country in the whole of the Middle East. The sanctions further crippled the already devastated economy. The narrative of weapons of mass destruction, the Al-Qaeda link and similar excuses were mere fabrications, only a pretext to attack Iraq. It was not only Bush-Blair nexus, but almost every Republican, Democrat, MPs of Tory and Labour joined this chorus, knowing fully well what they were up to. Yet this “coalition of willing” lacked the will of the masses.

For any catastrophic aggression, framing charges against an individual is something very convenient. It acts as a red herring concealing the actual beneficiaries that in this case are multinationals such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, and Blackwater, which actually made a fortune out of this one-sided war. And not to forget the oil giants such as BP, Total, and Exxon Mobil and Shell, which ultimately divided Iraqi oil between them. It wasn’t an individual or a lone scapegoat who was responsible for this carnage; it was the New World Order, the script of which was written by neo-liberalism. And which has its subterranean roots in the very system that is commonly familiar to us as capitalism.

Leaving NATO, Pentagon, military-industrial complex of the US aside — which overtly or covertly played their part in this crime against humanity — convenience and hypocrisy demanded the blame to be heaped on Bush and Blair. By tainting the truth they did play their role assigned to them but they did not kill 800,000 to 1.3 million people with their hands, or forced four million Iraqis to flee from their homeland, or threw the depleted uranium that probably is causing more victims of cancer than that of Hiroshima. They were instrumental in creating these conditions that led to these fatal consequences. What if these conditions are the product of the system?

Leaving Iraq burning, the imperialist forces went ahead to torch Libya and Syria. The destruction of the states situated in MENA is neatly accomplished. For hegemonic forces Iraq has passed into oblivion. It probably does not exist but for its citizens the reality remains awfully different. The fire that the US and its coteries triggered ceases to stop. The dance of death continues unabated. Iraq that once floated over oil now burns due to the same oil. For Iraqis in the words of Nietzsche “existence is an imperfect tense that hardly becomes present.” But who cares? After all, the threat of Saddam Hussain has ceased to exist, and the world according to Blair “is now a safer place” to live in. Adorno writes, “The glorification of the underdog is no more than the glorification of the system.” If this statement gratifies the truth then the condemnation of an underdog must be no more than the condemnation of the system that makes him so.

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com