Disarming A Tyrant

As the drums of war reach their inexorable logic, the citizen on our fragile and lonely planet can only feel rage and helplessness. Rage at the looming prospect of the free world being hijacked by a handful of right-wing Christian fundamentalists who, in the name of preserving civilisation and defending American values, are eager and willing to inflict incalculable bloodshed, misery, hatred and turmoil on humanity. And powerlessness (individual and collective) because nothing "the people" say or do will stop those determined to pursue unilateral military action.

Propaganda and indoctrination constantly remind us that in free and so-called civilised societies (where the ballot box is designed to circumscribe the conduct of those elected to govern), majority opinion is both sovereign and sacrosanct. We take immense pride in our democratic institutions, which are mandated to ensure that the will of the people, the will of 51 per cent that is, always prevails. Those not blessed with the gifts of universal adult franchise receive our lofty pity combined with an almost fanatical zeal to extend to the unfortunate the benefits of self-rule. Yet, what we see today is the naked, blatant and aggressive perversion of democracy, paradoxically, in the name of democracy. It reminds me of the American general who, during the Vietnam war, claimed he had destroyed a village in order to "save" it.

Thus, we watch in horror as one individual armed with a dubious election victory defies the opinion of his own people and almost the entire human race in order to satisfy some primitive revenge instinct (remember the "he-is-the-guy-who-tried-to-kill-my-dad" grudge) with global hegemony and absolute control of fossil fuels thrown in as additional motives. The old, discredited justification that the President of the United States had incontrovertible evidence, indeed the smoking gun, to prove that Iraq was in league with Osama bin Laden and possessed enormous piles of weapons of mass destruction lies in ruins. There is no casus belli, in fact there is little or no evidence of any kind. Except, of course, the firm and fixed conviction that monster Saddam Hussein is an imminent threat to the free world. He, along with the Iraqis, must be destroyed before he destroys upper Manhattan.

That Saddam Hussein is a tyrant is not in dispute, he has liquidated and tortured, with the active help of the cia, millions of his countrymen and countrywomen. The day Iraq is rid of this loathsome dictator, the world in general and West Asia in particular will be a safer place. If President Bush and his born-again Christian zealots were on a mission to free Iraq and other enslaved people worldwide from tyranny, it would be a different matter. That, alas, is not the case. Therefore, a plea to avoid war is not a plea to ignore or placate a murderous tyrant. Rather, it is a plea for eschewing humbug and it is a plea for the exercise of humanity. Is inflicting a full-scale war on Iraq and its innocent population the only way to remove Saddam Hussein and his yet-to-be-discovered weapons of mass destruction?

Opposition to military action should not be confused with anti-Americanism. Any sampling of opinion in the US, Europe, indeed India, will confirm that the majority of peaceniks are actually pro-US but anti-George Bush Jr. Naturally, some crude and residual anti-Americanism still survives among the protesters, but die-hard leftists and anarchists are in a minority. Those opposed to military action are people like me—profoundly and unapologetically pro-America but appalled and outraged that the one country which has to a significant degree championed freedom and democracy, the one country where public institutions are strong, effective and constitutionally inviolate, the one country where the citizen's voice is invariably sovereign, should itself be gearing up to wage a war that a majority of its people oppose.

Appeasement, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Sudatenland are the buzzwords coming out of the White House and Downing Street. It seems, if we fail to stop Saddam Hussein here and now, he will gobble up stretches of land all the way up to Alaska. World conquest is his ultimate goal and Alexander the Great is his proximate hero. Because simple-minded, naive, ignorant and ill-informed masses refused to recognise the threat in the '30s, Hitler's ambitions and resolve grew. Messrs Bush and Blair exhort us not to make the same mistake again.

Can they be serious? Leave alone world conquest, Saddam Hussein could not hold Kuwait. For the past 12 years he has been successfully encircled and reduced to impotence. He knows if he tries any funny business outside the already clipped borders of Iraq, he will not only be ejected but probably nuked. Saddam, we must remember, is homicidal, not suicidal. Why risk a global catastrophe in order to swat a fly?

The disarming of Saddam Hussein must, nevertheless, be pursued with vigour. In the last couple of weeks, Iraq has begun to show the kind of active cooperation the UN inspectors have been demanding. He could do more. With the international community, including France and Russia, pushing him towards full compliance of Resolution 1441, the disarming of Saddam Hussein is surely being achieved. Does it matter if the process takes another four or six months? The final denouement of this Greek tragedy will see the US bombing Baghdad at precisely the moment when the weapons inspectors are getting on with their job.

I ask myself if there is some sane argument for war which I have ignored or evaded. Is there some crucial piece of information which George Bush has and we ignoramuses don't? Even in a unipolar world, a world in which the sole superpower is allowed to pursue its own interests, a war on Iraq would be wicked, immoral, unjust and a travesty of what the United Nations stands for.