So, in lieu of any serious
reporting or analysis, here is the breaking news as it unfolded in the week of
Wednesday 6th of July.
Breaking news: War is avoidable.
Breaking news: Violence causes violence
Breaking news: Psychotic mass murderer unable to critically
assess own actions and consequences
Breaking news: Former prime minister even worse than we all thought
Breaking news: Case for prosecution makes opening remarks
Breaking news: Ambiguous memo reinterpreted by author
Breaking news: Mass murderer apologises for strategic errors
Breaking news: Anti-war campaigner apologises for war
Breaking news: War crimes committed “in good faith”
Breaking news: Culprit accepts “full responsibility without
excuse” before listing excuses
Breaking news: Aggressor exasperated at being reminded of
own crimes; would prefer to focus on crimes of others
Breaking news: War criminal pleads for nuanced view
Breaking news: Middle East Peace Envoy publicly admits committing
war crime; no prosecution planned
Breaking news: Saddam Hussein regime “worst in world” says supplier
of weapons to Saudi Arabia
Breaking news: Hammy actor delivers another lip-quivering
performance
Breaking news: Industrial scale violence causes mass
casualties
Breaking news: Some things are worse than dishonesty
Breaking news: “Before all other options were exhausted”
legalese for “before any other options were seriously considered”
Breaking news: Language is the first casualty of war
Breaking news: “International community” means “me and
whoever agrees with me”
Breaking news: “An extremely clever plan” turned out to be
the same plan Britain had in the nineteenth century
Breaking news: British public lose appetite for imperialism
Breaking news: “In good faith” and “believed at the time”
linguistic equivalent of putting fingers in ears and shouting “LA LA LA LA LA
LA!”
Breaking news: Being proved completely wrong doesn’t affect
former leader’s messiah complex
Breaking news: nineteenth century ideas of racial
superiority enforced with industrial-scale violence discredited and outlawed.
Breaking news: Military occupation and associated horrors
acceptable if perpetrators really believe they’re doing the right thing
Breaking news: War criminal pleads for bullshit
retrospective rationalisation to be taken seriously; BBC obliges
Breaking news: War criminal pleads with public not to
question his integrity
Breaking news: 179 casualties vs 1000000 casualties still
considered “war”
Breaking news: Former UK prime minister begins to resemble
Richard Nixon
Breaking news: 9/11 attacks conflated with Iraq again
Breaking news: The strong do as they will, the weak suffer as
they must.
Commentators will pore over the
2600000-word report, but will probably not come up with anything better than
the above. For me, the only revelation
that wasn’t entirely predictable was that Tony Blair really believes what he’s
saying. He believes in what he
does. He’s not a conman, he’s an
ideologue. He’s not Nixon, he’s Daesh,
he’s Brevik, he’s Rumsfeld. He’s
extremely dangerous.
Just in case it continues to be
omitted from the reporting on this, it’s worth pointing out the central issue: it
is morally reprehensible to kill hundreds of thousands of people who are no threat
to anyone and subject them to military occupation and all the associated
horrors. The attack on Iraq was a
dictionary definition of terrorism, as clear an example as we are ever likely
to see of the crime of Aggression, and the UK government’s decision to take
part makes us all culpable to some extent.
(It's worth remembering that the Nuremburg tribunals declared
aggression to be the worst war crime, “differing from others only in that it
contains the accumulated evil of all”.)
The crime is not mitigated by
any claim to moral authority, or a difficult situation – any criminal can claim
to be motivated by a high moral position, or in a moral dilemma. A crime is judged partly on the consequences;
it’s possible to argue that by putting a bomb in a building, the bomber was not
motivated by a desire to kill; but if the bomb kills people, the bomber can be
charged with murder, since their deaths were a foreseeable/likely consequence
of bombing a building full of people.
(This is especially true if lots of people are saying to the bomber, in
private and in public, that the bombing will lead to more bombings.)
Just in case this important
point is also missed (I’ve been following BBC coverage and it hasn’t come up
yet): the reason for the “weapons of mass
destruction” and UN fig-leaf in the first place was because it is
illegal to use violence to depose a government unless they are attacking
you. So, the claim that it was “right to
remove Saddam” is tantamount to an admission of guilt. If it was all about WMDs, why were UN weapons
inspectors recalled halfway through their work?
If it was all about removing a dictator, the UK government has committed
a massive crime for which it should be held to account.
The principle things the report
seems to confirm that most of us have known for years include:
Blair decided to take part in
the war a long time before it started
There then followed a year or so
of a massive PR/propaganda campaign to get people to support the war. It was totally dishonest, highly divisive,
offensive to humanity, and at best, a qualified success.
Blair acted as king, barely even
involving the cabinet in vital decisions.
Everything is way worse than it
was before. For everyone – except maybe
certain small terrorist groups, and perhaps the Russian government.
Parliament proved absolutely
credulous in all of this, with cross-party support for mass murder based on
“faulty intelligence”, ie, utter bollocks.
For pro-war MPs to wring their hands now and say “we were misled”, when
it was their job to hold the government to account, rings hollow, to say the
least.
There is a wealth of
evidence that will be useful to prosecutors.
No comments:
Post a Comment