Iraq War

NewsPolitics

The UK’s Iraq war inquiry just came to a damning conclusion: Ex-PM Tony Blair led the country into an ill-prepared war under false pretenses. The decision to blindly follow the United-States into Iraq in 2003 “went badly wrong, with consequences to this day,” said the long-awaited Chilcot Report, published Wednesday.

The war in Iraq killed 179 British soldiers, 4500 American ones and at least 150 000 Iraqis. It left the country without a proper army or government and riddled with rising terrorist militias. And according to Chilcot’s findings, it might be now considered an illegitimate act of aggression under the UN charter.

Key Findings

The independent inquiry was ordered by Blair’s successor Gordon Brown (Labour Party) in 2009 and was supposed to last two years.  Half a decade late and £10 million later, Chairman Sir John Chilcot published a 2.5 million word document eviscerating the launching and the planning of the UK’s military involvement from 2003 to 2009.

The report found that Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to gather support for a military intervention in Iraq. The claims that Hussein posed an imminent threat and that all peaceful options had been exhausted were found patently untrue.  Although the report heavily blamed the government for playing up what was actually very shaky intelligence about a possible nuclear threat from Iraq, it did not accuse them of knowingly lying.

Chilcot heavily critiqued the entire military operation. The risks were “neither properly identified nor fully exposed to ministers,” he wrote.  He was especially critical of the “wholly inadequate” planning for post-conflict Iraq. British troops failed to reach the objectives laid out in 2003 and ended up making “humiliating” deals with local militias to avoid attacks.

In a bewildering two-hour-long press conference, Blair expressed “more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know or can believe,” for his decisions, all while resolutely denying their horrible impact in the middle-east and declaring he would do it again.

He insisted that it was “better to remove Saddam Hussein” and does not “believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.”

He added “If I was back in the same place with the same information, I would take the same decision because obviously that was the decision I believe was right.”

Tony Blair Facing Trial?

Relatives of soldiers killed in action renewed their calls to prosecute Tony Blair.

“We want to see him in court,”  one father assured.

“There is one terrorist the world needs to be aware of and his name is Tony Blair; the world’s worst terrorist,” said Sarah O’Connor, whose brother died in the war. She was speaking at a press conference called by bereaved families after the report’s release.

The report stopped short of commenting the legality of Tony Blair’s action, but it might have opened the door to prosecution.  It stated that Blair called for an invasion of Iraq at a time when Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat, and that peaceful options to contain him had not yet been exhausted.

This makes the action an illegitimate aggression, according to the UN charter. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Tony Blair will face repercussions. The UN Security Council could apply sanctions, but since the UK and US both have permanent seats on the Council, this is a very unlikely scenario.

The international court, which deals with war crimes, does not have jurisdiction over “acts of aggression.” Bringing politicians or military leaders to court would require proving that

  • a) The army breached laws of war in Iraq and that
  • b) The leaders in question knew about it and did nothing to stop it

No western leaders have ever been indicted by the international court.

Lawyers representing the families of veterans are looking into bringing Blair to civil court on charges of “misconduct in public office.” This law, unused since the 19th century, was recently criticized for its vagueness.

Canada Should Take Note

The Chilcot report must singularly vindicate Jean Chrétien, Canada’s PM at the time. The question of whether or not Canada would join the US-led coalition had generated heated debates in the House of Commons and the population alike.

He and Blair both said that this was the hardest decision of their respective mandates. Chrétien made the right one. The Canadian population can claim partial credit for that. Anti-war protests had taken place across the country, uniting 1000 people in Montreal, 2000 in Toronto and 3000 in Vancouver.

To kill any temptation to feel smug about it, Canadians should remember how close we came to being an integral part of the disaster. You can watch Stephen Harper’s fervent plea for the invasion of Iraq, if you need a reminder. This was in 2003, only a couple of years before he took Chrétien’s place (and stayed there for almost a decade).

As it is, we should face the fact that while Canada avoided the international backlash, it did not do so with a clean conscience. Unofficially, it provided significant practical support to the war. Canadian troops escorted the US navy through the Persian Gulf. They also provided significant military expertise and training for our southern neighbours, as well as airspace and fuel.

Paul Cellucci, then US ambassador to Canada, admitted that “… ironically, Canadian naval vessels, aircraft and personnel… will supply more support to this war in Iraq indirectly… than most of those 46 countries that are fully supporting our efforts there.”

NewsPolitics

So, here we go again. Thirteen years after the tragedy at the World Trade Center on September 11, and eleven years after the beginning of the Second Gulf War, a coalition of the ‘’willing’’ is being put together to salvage the what remains of Iraqi democracy.

But let’s be clear here. There is nothing ‘’humanitarian’’ about this third intervention in Iraq, and neither will it resolve anything. Sorry Stevie.

When the lessons of the past aren’t learned properly, or when they’re thrown purposefully into the trash bin, the missteps of the past become the fatal mistakes of the future. As the saying goes: History repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce. But I don’t know what would it be the third time around. A comical apocalypse? The question that must be asked and yet isn’t being asked by the mainstream media is quite simple: Why? Why again? Why us? Why should we think this will help?

A-statue-of-Saddam-Hussein-is-pulled-down-in-Baghdad-on-9-April-2003.-Photograph-Jerome-Delay-AP
Soldier looks as Saddam Hussein’s statue is toppled.

Once again, at a frantic pace, the Conservatives and the Liberals are trying to turn the debate regarding the Canadian intervention in Iraq into a Manichean argument, a choice between good and evil: Either you’re for boots on the ground, or you’re with the terrorists! Anything less than military intervention is, apparently, unthinkable. For them, the roots of Islamic terrorism have to be “bombed out,” and obliterated.

But then one must wonder: Isn’t this the same strategy that was also used or attempted in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria? Didn’t the international community, through their sponsorship of radical Islamic organizations, ease the toppling of several governments in the region? Didn’t Western governments, de facto, pave the way for the chaos and massacres that are currently unfolding? Yes, absolutely!

Using the same strategy, with the same problematic actors, yet still expecting a different outcome is insanity.

Blatant, disingenuous hypocrisy fuels the Conservative government’s foreign policy, especially when it comes to the so-called “war on terror.” This is the same hypocrisy employed by the Bush administration, which thought that terror could root out terror, that torture could save the world from cruelty, that bigotry and racism could shun bigotry and racism. Unfortunately, this ideology of fighting fire with fire has left the whole of Middle East in blazes.

Stephen_Harper_and_George_W._Bush_July_6_2006

The Guantanamo Bay strategy, using brutal and cruel tactics to fight against brutality and cruelty, has utterly failed in the past and will utterly fail again, but this time around Canada will have indelible blood on its hands.

So, this is the non-strategy that the Conservative government and their Liberal allies are offering us on the silver platter of media: Military intervention with no timeline; no real notion of how many Canadian troops will be sent or what role they might serve; no strong local allies except for the dysfunctional Iraqi government, whose lack of legitimacy is the reason behind the current crisis; and no exit strategy.

As for the rhetorical fallacy of acting as “military advisors,” let’s remember, that back in the 1960s, US president Lyndon B. Johnson promised Americans, that the US’s role in Vietnam would only be an advisory one; we all know how that story turned out.

Maybe, deep down inside, Harper is waiting impatiently for his “Bushian moment.” Maybe he has developed some sort of a Bush complex —something that within the neo-conservative ranks is similar to the Napoleon complex — and this is the moment he has been waiting for all of his life?

How many lives will it take for his folie de grandeur to be exorcised?

PoliticsQuiet Mikes Mumblings

In the information age that we live in, I find it only fitting to know that there is a whistle-blower organization out there in cyberspace releasing classified documents. WikiLeaks released 391,832 reports last Friday documenting the war and occupation of Iraq, from January 1st, 2004 to December 31st, 2009. The reports come straight from a top source: soldiers in the United States Army.

WikiLeaks’ brave founder Julian Assange

The founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange claims the publishing of the Iraq War logs was an attempt to show “intimate details” of the conflict in an effort to reveal the truth, much like Daniel Ellsberg did when he leaked the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971. It revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war in Vietnam by bombing Cambodia. The most damaging revelation was that four Presidents, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions.

So far, analysis of the Iraq War Diaries has revealed a bigger scope in the number of overall casualties than the US government had been letting on, with an estimated 15,000 more civilian deaths previously unidentified. The documents also reveal further prisoner abuse by the Iraqi army long after the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. The US military was apparently fully aware of human rights abuses and torture carried out by the Iraq Army up until the end. Saddam Hussein‘s habits in fact did not die with him.

With the war in Iraq “officially” over, unlike the Vietnam War when the Pentagon Papers were published, I don’t think the Iraq War Diaries will have the same effect. With the midterm elections coming up next week, it doesn’t even seem to be a blip on the American media’s screen, but I don’t think that makes it any less important. With all the false media out there these days on the internet, on the radio or television, it’s more important than ever to get the truth out there. “We the people” after all have a right to know.

Daniel Ellsberg Faced Legal Battles for leaking the Pentagon Papers

Since the release of these files, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have come under tremendous fire from the governments of the US, Britain, Australia, etc. A Fox news contributor has said that the people at WikiLeaks should be declared ‘enemy combatants’ and American politicians have said that WikiLeaks has blood on their hands (ironic coming from supporters of the war). They all claim that releasing all this information further puts coalition troops in harm’s way.

Of course, they said the same thing about the Pentagon Papers and more recently about the 70,000 pages about the Afghan War WikiLeaks released in the summer. Both of which proved to have no impact on the risk to soldiers, the Pentagon even confirmed as much. The only thing these governments (and people) are trying to protect is their nation’s reputation, although America’s reputation is already in tatters.

While the Iraq War now seems to be an afterthought in the minds of many Americans, I would encourage all of them and everyone else to read some of the entries and look into what happened during those five years. BlackWater, torture, unnecessary killings and thousands of minute, but life taking incidents. The more we know of war, the less and less likely we are to accept it.