It's strange how Iraq has faded from our media horizon. Since the end of "Operation Telic", which was the name given to British combat operations in Iraq, lasting from 19 March 2003, ending on 22 May 2011, and which cost 179 British lives, the media coverage has been somewhat subdued. The USA lost 4,487 military casualties, many other" coalition" countries lost men (Italy, for example, lost 33) and, of course, there were far more Iraqi casualties. One full set of casualty figures from all sides can be found HERE.
Some people might have thought that things had quietened down since the Iraqi Army took over security duties in their own country. Events this week have shaken that belief. Michael Moore, a persistent critic of the invasion of Iraq (see his film "Fahrenheit 9/11"), posted on Facebook today:
"So today, Mosul fell. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq. The Iraqi government we "installed", has now lost Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and other large swaths of the country we invaded at the cost of thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and a couple trillion dollars. (What could your school district do with a trillion dollars?)."
What, indeed! Future historians will struggle to explain why Iraq was invaded in the first place. Of course, it was post-9/11 when the invasion happened. Afghanistan was invaded with just about universal approval. But even at the time, people questioned the declared intention of George Bush and his supporter, Tony Blair, to invade Iraq. Rightly, it seemed to many that there was little sense in it. Iraq had never supported Al-Qaeda or harboured Osama Bin Laden, so what was the point? On 16 February, 2003, one million people (some say more) marched through London against the projected invasion. Worldwide, there were protests and influential voices raised against the war, and Blair and Bush were forced to defend their intended actions. What seemed remarkable to me (and still does) was the fact that Blair, in particular, did not seem to able to hear objections to the attack, even though he faced audiences that were highly critical of the planned incursion. This might be expressed in jargon as "Cognitive Unresponsiveness" (I made that up), ie, there's none as deaf as those that don't want to hear.
This last paragraph, I know, reads like so much written against the Iraq war; it might almost have been written by a member of the "Stop the War Coalition", which I am not. The fact that so many people were opposed to the invasion before it happened begs another question: what happened to the anti-war lobby? In Britain, at least, it ought to have been possible to build on that million strong turnout in 2003 and launch a massive movement to stop UK involvement in this whole sorry affair. Instead, the anti-war movement in the UK has dwindled, despite the length and ferocity of the war, to what one commentator has called a "left-wing rump". Future historians, again, will find that a taxing issue to resolve.
Yet, as Michael Moore points out, the present situation in Iraq is spiralling towards disaster. A country which never had any connection with Islamic terrorism eleven years ago, is now threatened by Islamic extremism. The US-led attempt at "nation building" has led to the destruction of a nation. And it need never have happened. That, I contend, is the tragedy and farce of Iraq.
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In a way, it was the very size of that demonstration, which was supported by many people who had never gone on a march in their lives, that precipitated the decline of the anti-war movement from that all-time high.
ReplyDeleteNot just the demo, but also every opinion poll was giving the same message: we don't want this war. Many people felt that if the biggest demo in British history cannot make the government - at the very least - pause, then what's the point? By dismissing the message out of hand, by saying, in effect, "I know better", Tony Bliar destroyed the faith of a lot of people in participative politics. Couple that arrogance with the lies about weapons of mass destruction and you have the perfect recipe for political disenchantment.
This was not a failure of the anti-war movement, although your one commentator who calls the current anti-war movement "a left wing rump" is quite wrong. Whether he or she is mistaken or lying I have no idea, but calling someone a commentator doesn't mean they don't have a political agenda of their own. Don't make the mistake of taking the media's ignoring of the anti-war message to mean that it doesn’t exist.
Never mind, Nev. The government seems to have learned some sense. See:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27809922
DeleteOr: once bitten, twice shy.
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