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Last night I saw pictures of the Iraqi Ministry of Economic Planning in Baghdad burning, set alight by ‘looters’. Memo to the Iraqi People: If you want liberty, prosperity and a rational economic future, you now have a golden opportunity that you must not squander… DO NOT REBUILD THAT BUILDING!. April 12th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 Defences of US marines raising the US flag in Baghdad may have been missing the point. Before that statue fell, the topic was war. As soon as it hit the ground, the question is “What next?” There are some pretty major fights going on behind closed doors in Washington at the moment, it seems pretty clear. Tony Blair seems keen to side with American doves – and the views of France, Russia et al are even more predictable than they are irrelevant. The question is this: whose flag shall fly over the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance? At the moment US troops have that special diplomatic immunity that comes from firing big guns. But when things settle down a little, will they be subject to Iraqi law? Will there be a semi-permanent US forces base established in Iraq, under US jurisdiction? Will General Garner, the designated head of ORHA, be answerable to the Iraqi head of an Iraqi Interim Authority, or will it be the other way around? Most of all, will ORHA have a free reign to root out Ba’athists and stamp on ongoing corruption? → Continue reading: Flying the Flag, Part 2 April 11th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The news that Kirkuk, centre of the northern Iraqi oil industry, has fallen not to the coalition, but to US backed Kurdish Peshmerga has electrified the Kurds and horrified the Turks. I suspect that the Jash (pro-Saddam Kurds) are going to be cut to pieces unless they manage to find the few coalition troops in that part of Iraq to surrender to. The Turkish foreign ministry has said any attempt by Kurdish forces to take permanent control of Kirkuk would be unacceptable to them. They are claiming on domestic Turkish TV that the US has promised remove the Peshmerga from Kirkuk once order has been restored, and that Turkish military observers will be going there to make sure this happens. Firstly I do not for one minute believe a word the Turks are saying: I would be astonished if the USA was idiotic enough to make such a rash promise to the Turks, who frankly do not have all that much political capital to call on in Washington D.C. at the moment. The US would be insane to alienate the highly motivated Peshmerga, who it must be remembered have made great efforts to assist the lightly armed US forces in the north. What possible motivation does the US have to get in the middle of this? Secondly, what Turkey finds ‘unacceptable’ in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan is unlikely to impress or intimidate the Kurds any more. The usual internal Kurdish squabbles have been replaced by the PDK and PUK actually fighting along side each other in displays of uncharacteristic unity (yesterday on TV I saw a veteran BBC reporter marvel to see soldiers from the two groups coming out of the same bus!). The Peshmerga are not only better situated politically than any time in the last 25 years, they are also better armed, better organised and thanks to the US Special Forces, better trained. Once the Ba’athists are gone, the Kurds will be able to turn their undivided attention towards any Turkish incursions into Iraq and no prize for guessing who is scooping up all the heavy weapons and ammunition abandoned by the defeated Iraqi forces around Kirkuk. The facts on the ground are strongly in the Kurds’ favour. This problem was entirely predictable and is entirely of the Turkish state’s own making. As I have written before, I have no sympathy for them and it is hard to see how it would be in the interests of the US or UK to try and crush the legitimate desires of Kurds for self determination. April 10th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Egged on by their BBC interviewers, a number of pundits and Iraqi exiles have been criticising the use of the American flag as an “execution hood” over the statute of Saddam. It was “inappropriate” and it “should not have been done”. Voiceover commentary on News 24, as I type this article, added “Better judgement prevailed and the flag was removed”. To me, there seem to be three immediately obvious polite answers to such criticism:
But the overwhelmingly obvious response is not so polite: I’m just glad the Iraqi people in the street aren’t such ungrateful SOBs! April 10th, 2003 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Since I usually make a point of balancing jubilation with caution, and being somewhat cynical by nature, I cannot resist the temptation of drawing attention to the depressing synchronicity between British anti-gun phobia as it is practised at home and British anti-gun phobia as it is about to be practised in Iraq:
I concede that the very real risk of people taking pot-shots at British troops does cast a different light on the situation but I do hope Iraqis don’t finish up going to prison just for defending themselves. And, as an aside, ‘Captain Cliff Dare’! Is that a comic-book action hero name or what? April 9th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
But the author, General Mirza Aslam Beg, the former Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, did not realise it at the time. I particularly liked:
Read and laugh April 9th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Oi, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Will Self, Clare Short, Robin Cook, Tony Benn, Margo Kingston, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, the Dixie Chicks, Susan Sontag, Maureen Dowd, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Robin Williams, Harold Pinter, Vanessa Redgrave, Clare Short, the entire BBC and all the rest of the ‘Not In My Name’ mob, would you kindly cop an eyeful of this:  Just how many messages can be gleaned from this glorious photograph? Loads I imagine but three that readily spring to mind are the fall of a murderous thug regime, the utter contempt of its victims for the moral cripples, dunderheads and sixties re-treads that tried so hard to prevent it and, strangely no less stirring to me, the hilarious and highly appropriate public appearance of the ‘W’ word. Seems that we did not just British soldiers to Iraq, we also sent British expletives and, to their credit, the Iraqis have wasted no time whatsoever in adopting it and employing to maximum effect. The image proves that not only have the Iraqis learned the word but they also know exactly what it means. I like to think that we Brits have now added yet another component to the rich tapestry of Middle-Eastern culture and it reinforces my belief that the pithy, seductive quality of this word will continue to fuel its steady but relentless conquest of the Anglosphere, the Middle-East, the World and, who knows, maybe even beyond. It is at times like this that all the speculation about possible encounters with alien species from other planets comes to mind. I am not sure that such an event will ever come to pass and I am quite positive that I will no longer be around to witness it even if it does. But I am willing to bet green money in the here and now that, within weeks of that first, portentious, epoch-making encounter, said aliens will be calling each other ‘wanker’. April 9th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
It has been liberated. I have just watched live on TV via SkyNews as US soldiers used an armoured recovery vehicle to pull down the huge statue of Saddam Hussain in the very heart of Baghdad, surrounded by a crowd of Iraqis quite literally leaping about with joy Thousands of jubilant Iraqis danced in the square and when the statue fell, they rushed forward, ignoring desperate attempts by the US soldiers to keep them back for fear the still unstable structure would crush them… but this was a moment they would not be denied and they quite literally danced on the huge fallen monument to one man’s insane monomania. The cost in blood and misery must never been forgotten and there will be hardships, disappointments and trying times ahead but now is the time to celebrate what has been achieved. These moments do not come often in life, so savour them whilst they last. Enjoy. Update: The people at SkyNews’ website are fast! They already have an article up only minutes after I watched it live on television (the article took them 12 minutes to put up (almost as fast as me!)… Way to go, guys!). April 9th, 2003 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The following entry was put in our comment section by G. Cooper in response to Natalie Solent’s post The Floodgates of Anarchy. I thought it was sufficiently interesting to warrant a post of its own (as it saves me from writing one myself as I was thinking much the same thing):
Well Mr. G. Cooper, I suspect very few of the people who found themselves on the wrong side of history, or to be more accurate, on the wrong side of objective reality, will acknowledge that they were wrong not just publicly but even to themselves. Some who opposed the war on grounds which had nothing to do with Iraq (but rather domestic issues of cost, encroachment on civil liberties at home, etc.) will be unmoved in their views by the success of the war, and that is entirely logical. That ‘the good guys won’ is frankly an irrelevance if the basis of their opposition was an antipathy to the growth of the state at home (a concern which I share in spite of my support for this war of liberation). However those whose opposition was based on the ‘welfare of the Iraqi people’ or the ‘doomsayers’ (“impregable defences of Baghdad” anyone?)… these people are the willful blind and deaf, walled off from seeing anything which does not fit their distorted subjective world views. So it falls to you, and us, and everyone else who values the truth, to keep blowing on the trumpets until the walls come crashing down… and then keep blowing a little longer anyway just to be sure! April 9th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
British troops in Basra are still struggling to impose a degree of law and order and have been in the odd position of rescuing a Saddam loyalist from being beaten to death by a mob of enraged locals. It seems likely that what the British are encountering in Basra a few days after largely crushing overt resistance will be fairly similar to the situation US forces will find in Baghdad over the next few days as the last vestiges of Ba’athist Socialism collapse. A CNN reporter on the spot was recounting how he saw one man shoot another dead over looting spoils and obviously the US forces will have to get a grip fairly quickly to prevent things getting completely out of control. It will be interesting to see how the scenes of celebrating Iraqis in the area of Baghdad called ‘Saddam City’ will be reported on local television across the Islamic world. Who knows, maybe a few meta-contexts will actually be shaken loose from their moorings. …as the last vestiges of Ba’athist Socialism collapse. Sorry, I just have to write that again… as the last vestiges of Ba’athist Socialism collapse. Ahhhh. That feels good. April 9th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Turn on your TV now. If you are in Britain ITV is the right station to watch – never mind missing Bob The Builder on BBC2 – just do it, OK? You have just missed the sight of a Baghdad citizen in traditional Arab dress hitching up his robe to make a universally comprehensible pelvic gesture towards a picture of Saddam Hussein, said picture held up by another guy who has just finished whacking it with his shoe – oops, no, he hasn’t finished, more whacking left to do. They don’t think he’s coming back. I gather the minders didn’t turn up at the press hotel today; like the rest of the Iraqi state apparatus they have melted away. Now the whole of Baghdad looks like the world’s worst organised car boot sale. Horns honking, people smiling, waving, jumping, shouting and looting every official building in the city. I just saw a lady carrying off a vase almost bigger than she is. Chairs seem to be popular, as do tyres. One practical-minded lad has gone for a large bottle of olive oil. Heavens, is nothing sacred? One reporter said that the mob had nicked all the UN vehicles and were driving them around. I tell you, it’s anarchy out there! Only – ahem- not our sort of anarchy. I am a minarchist most of the time, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays I am an anarchist, and I am a little bit worried about our good name. I can certainly cheer on the guys who have doused a mural of Saddam with petrol and set it alight; deconstructive art, I call it. Nor do I begrudge most of the looters their spontaneous redistribution of the ruling kleptocracy’s wealth back to the people. But it’s not all innocent fun: reports speak of shops being cleaned out as well as palaces, and that will be hard for those whose wealth and lives were tied up in those shops. Expect also to see the pent-up anger of the people bursting out into mob violence which will harm the innocent as well as the guilty. When a drug addict undergoes the “cold turkey” cure, he will sometimes go into convulsions. This is the anarchy of cold turkey. April 9th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yesterday was Ba’ath party anniversary. The Iraq Press, opposition press agency, notes that for the first time in 35 years it was ignored as there were no authorities to force Iraqis to mark the founding anniversary of the ruling party in the traditional manner.
This year, for the first time in 35 years, Iraqis will be not be “forcibly bussed to his hometown of Tikrit for an orchestrated demonstration to show the world how the Iraqi people loved their great leader.” I do like the sound of these words:
The western public will never understand the full horrific impact of a personality cult. They may see the prisons, torture chambers and hear the disturbing discriptions of individual tragedies. But they will not be able to comprehend just how pervasive propaganda of a regime built around an individual can become. My impression is that people imagine it is more of a public affair and if you do not read the newspaper or watch TV, you can more or less ignore it. A sort of celebrity craze that you can laugh off in the privacy of your home. Or filter it out, like the bias of western media. But it is not like that, regime propaganda is everywhere, at work, in public and communal life. It follows you home, interferes with all aspects of your life – making sense of the world, relating to your family, bringing up your children. It employs personal and innocuous images, hijacks most wholesome and normal features of your life – celebrating birthdays, dating, having fun, making friends with your neighbours… The coalition forces and western journalists ought to have in mind, when they encounter the locals, the regime’s ‘mind control’ techniques used on the population and habitually backed by force. They should remember that these people have been subjected to Saddam’s propaganda machine for the last three decades. Their way of thinking is not going to change in 20 days although the reality around them will have done. It will take a long time for them to learn to appreciate the kind of freedom we take for granted. I do not wish to insult Iraqis by suggesting that they will not rejoice at the absence of oppression and appreciate their new found freedom. It is their understanding of individual rights as applied to everyone, not only those who can enforce them for themselves by violence or connections, that may take a generation or two to sink in. But for me that is the whole point of liberating Iraq. April 8th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
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