A-Infos (en) Freedom 6404 22 Feb, 2003 - Flaws undermine timely account

[Worker <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>]

 ________________________________________________
      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
        http://ainfos.ca/index24.html
 ________________________________________________

War Plan Iraq by Milan Rai (Arrow Publications, £12)

Besides being a contributor to this newspaper, Milan 
Rai is the founder of Voices in the Wilderness UK and 
a consistent critic of Anglo-American policy towards 
Iraq. His book, subtitled 'Ten reasons why we 
shouldn't launch another war against Iraq', is published 
by Active Resistance to the Roots of War (ARROW). It 
contains useful material on the historical background 
to current events, particularly regarding the weapons 
inspections that followed the last Gulf War.

It also details western attempts to manipulate the 
Iraqi opposition through military and intelligence 
operations Ğ a policy which, Rai concludes, isn't 
focused on political reform at all, but only on replacing 
Saddam Hussein with someone more accountable and 
obedient to western control.

Rai provides persuasive evidence for his claim that 
"Washington has consistently undermined both the 
democratic Iraqi opposition and the UN weapons 
inspectors" throughout the last twelve years, "while 
paying lip service to both".

Although Rai's style and presentation of facts serve his 
arguments well in these sections, his more basic 
arguments are lost in the organisation and structure of 
the book. Many different pieces of the puzzle are 
presented, but there is no central thread to link them 
together. Without clear transitions, he leaps from an 
analysis of British policy on Iraq to excerpts from the 
families of September 11th victims, to a claim that the 
Taliban in Afghanistan agreed to extradite bin Laden 
to the US.

This lack of connection also renders much of the book 
somewhat difficult to read, as the reader is immersed 
in a constant stream of quotations, statistics, names 
and dates. War Plan Iraq considers many different 
angles, but in doing so it ultimately fails to expose 
with any force the true 'roots of war'.

By opening with 12 pages devoted to the tangled 
positions of Labour Party politicians and the response 
to Blair's support for war, Rai risks directing attention 
away from deeper questions that need to be asked. 
Political dissent may or may not be enough to avert an 
invasion of Iraq for the moment, but plans for war will 
always reappear unless its underlying causes are 
addressed.

Ironically, much of the information needed to draw 
these larger conclusions is present in the historical 
accounts Rai presents. The true motives for going to 
war - geopolitical manoeuvring to gain control over the 
Middle East, economic interests in militarisation and 
the region's oil, the use of fear as a method for 
controlling populations in the wake of September 11th 
- all these are mentioned in various places but never 
singled out.

Despite including the following quotation from his own 
earlier work, Chomsky's Politics, Rai unfortunately 
seems to have forgotten its message: "That a careful 
reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it, with 
diligence and a sceptical eye, tells us nothing about 
whether that fact receives the attention and the 
context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to most 
readers or whether it was effectively distorted or 
suppressed."

Like its beginning spotlighting the British political 
situation, the book's end points to its own underlying 
structural weaknesses. The final section, entitled 'Last 
words', is written by Robin S. Theurkauf, whose 
husband was killed on September 11th. "All societies 
rely on the use of force to maintain order and permit 
individuals to pursue the widest possible goals", she 
writes. "When the activities of one violate societal 
norms the police are empowered to legitimately 
intervene, with force if necessary, to restore order". 
This does in fact represent the basis of current society, 
but what is needed is to look beyond this reality and 
see whose interests are served by the actions of the 
state. Inevitably they are those of the wealthiest and 
most powerful members of society.

Ultimately, the book opts to oppose any war on Iraq for 
pragmatic reasons rather than because of any 
deep-seated opposition to state acts of violence. 
Strangely, Rai mentions the risks inherent in this 
pragmatism without appearing to pay  heed to its 
warning. He describes liberal American historian 
Arthur Schlesinger, whose opposition to the Vietnam 
War was based on his judgement that the USA was 
"unlikely to be able to defeat the Vietnamese 
resistance at an acceptable cost, not on a question of 
principle". He goes on, "Mr Schlesinger and his fellow 
'doves' played an important role in reinforcing the 
unspoken assumption that the United States (alone of 
all nations) should enjoy the right to impose political 
arrangements on other societies by force". Most of War 
Plan Iraq still seems to adhere to this assumption.
The book's second flaw is its lack of focus on the 
people who stand to suffer the most, the people of Iraq 
themselves. This is especially unfortunate in the light 
of Rai's own longstanding and personally risky 
campaign on their behalf. He demonstrates  
humanitarian concern, but he doesn't emphasise the 
need for autonomous self determination for the Iraqi 
people.

Nor does he adequately distance his argument, to my 
mind, from the kind of western paternalism described 
by Edward Said. Rai ends the book's introduction by 
asking, "will we use our freedom to help protect the 
peoples of Iraq? Or will we leave them to their fate?" 
While doing all that we can prevent war with Iraq, it is 
imperative that we don't portray the Iraqi people as 
helpless victims in need of western aid.

Noam Chomsky's 'Terror and a Just Response' is 
reprinted in War Plan Iraq. Chomsky summarises our 
current situation when he writes that "more generally, 
the atrocities of 9-11 serve as a dramatic reminder of 
what has been long understood: with contemporary 
technology, the rich and powerful no longer are assured 
the near monopoly of violence that has largely 
prevailed throughout history. Though terrorism is 
rightly feared everywhere, and is indeed an intolerable 
'return to barbarism', it is not surprising that 
perceptions about its nature differ rather sharply in 
the light of sharply differing experiences, facts that 
will be ignored at their peril by those whom history has 
accustomed to immunity while they perpetrate 
terrible crimes."

There's an opportunity today to hold to account all 
those who commit crimes against the people, but one 
must look beyond the arguments of War Plan Iraq to 
realise it.
B.E.A.

War Plan Iraq is available from Freedom Press, price 
£12 (please add £1.20 p&p in the UK, £2.40 
elsewhere).

*******
                       ********
       ****** The A-Infos News Service ******
      News about and of interest to anarchists
                       ******
  COMMANDS: lists@ainfos.ca
  REPLIES: a-infos-d@ainfos.ca
  HELP: a-infos-org@ainfos.ca
  WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca/
  INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org

-To receive a-infos in one language only mail lists@ainfos.ca the message:
                unsubscribe a-infos
                subscribe a-infos-X
 where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language code)