As I’ve said before, I hate being conned. Looking back over my archives in the period leading up to the Iraq war, I realise that I consistently underestimated the likelihood of war, and that the main reason for this was that I thought Blair was fundamentally honest about what he was doing. Of course, there was the dodgy dossier and the 45 minutes claim to show that the spin doctors were hard at work, but I nevertheless accepted that Blair had made an independent decision to support action against Saddam, based largely on his record of crimes against humanity, and that he took the UN process seriously.

It’s been obvious for some time that this wasn’t true, but for some reason the latest revelations from a leaked Cabinet Office briefing dating back to July 2002, along with the Downing Street memo have really hit home. They make it clear that Britain’s policy was entirely determined by the fact that the Americans were going ahead regardless, and that US reliance on British bases meant there was no option of abstention[1]. Everything done thereafter was designed to find a pretext for an action the British government knew to be illegal. The appeal to the UN was a cynical ploy – there was never any chance that war would be avoided.

What’s also clear is that Blair knew there were no proper plans for the postwar period, making the chaos that actually ensued entirely predictable. This fact completely undermines his stated humanitarian concerns, but it makes sense given that the central object of US policy was to pursue a vendetta against Saddam, and that the British government had decided it had no choice but to go along.

fn1. It’s not clear that this was correct. The Iraq war relied heavily on bases in Germany, but that didn’t stop the German government opposing the war. Still, in this context, it’s what the British believed that matters.

Pro-war left site Harry’s Place links to a rather equivocal piece by Christopher Hitchens on the Bush Administration’s backing for the Uzbekistan dictator Karimov, and picks out the following quote, among others

The United States did not invent or impose the Karimov government: It “merely” accepted its offer of strategic and tactical help in the matter of Afghanistan.

This sounded familiar, and I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if “Karimov” was replaced by “Saddam” in a Google search.

No exact matches, but “US did not create Saddam” pulls up a bunch of links from sites like Martin Kramer and billhobbs.com defending or downplaying the Reagan Administration policy of support for Saddam during the 1980s, when his foreign wars and internal oppression killed vast numbers of people. “Did not install Saddam” gives more, and no doubt other variants can be found.

Even now, I doubt that Hitchens would accept “the US did not invent or impose Saddam” as a justification for the aid and warm embraces (literal and metaphorical) given to Saddam in the 1980s. But, given his current trajectory, I think it’s only a matter of time.

I am disappointed though, that Harry’s Place, which has generally taken a principled line of opposition to all dictatorship,s should give a favorable link to this weaselly piece, which is more concerned with scoring points against Hitchens’ former allies than in advocating any particular response to Karimov.

PS: Mark Bahnisch is a little kinder, calling Hitchens “confused”.
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Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff has attracted a lot of attention for his “Good news from Iraq” posts. Not only has he had a piece in the New York Times, but he’s been at the centre of a lengthy debate between Media Watch and the Australian (covered here by Tim Dunlop)

One problem with good news, though, is that it tends to be announced, reannounced and then re-reannounced for good measure. During the Boer War, Lloyd George caused a stir in Parliament when he did the sums and found that, according to the body counts announced by the British Government, they had killed more Boers than the entire Boer nation contained. According to Orwell, Arthur Balfour rose to his feet and shouted “Cad!”

Tim Lambert applies the same metric to electricity, finding that, despite nearly continuous good news, electricity generation is lower now than in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, and far below the level prevailing in 1991.

That’s the time-series approach. I thought I’d take a different tack, and look at the bits of bad news that can’t be concealed, even when, like Chrenkoff, you are looking exclusively for good news. That is, I’m doing what Chrenkoff does, but in reverse, using his news stories as the source.

Here’s a selection from Chrenkoff’s April 25 edition. Remember this is all supposed to be “good news”:

“The State Department has ordered a major reevaluation of the troubled $18.4 billion Iraqi reconstruction effort, blaming problems on early decisions to hire US companies for major infrastructure projects.”

“In a report to Congress last week, the State Department said reconstruction officials will cancel several planned water and electricity plants”

“The three-story hospital in downtown Fallujah sits empty and abandoned”

“Most of Iraq’s schools are still run down and out of date. According to the Ministry of Education, 5,000 additional schools are needed, and repairs are required at 80 percent of existing ones.”

” The Baghdad Police College says it has no shortage of recruits. In a country with unemployment well over 50 percent, a police paycheck — about $200 a month — is simply too tempting.”

“The stock exchange may be one of post-war Iraq’s few success stories”

” Production from the southern oil fields has recently reached 1.1 million barrels … The rate is close to what the company produced before the war …”

Why bother hammering the bad news? The obvious reason is that, until the failure of existing policies is recognised, there’s no chance of any better policies being adopted. The whole history of the occupation has seen the US persisting with policies long after they were obviously doomed, from radical economic reform, to the “regional caucuses” plan, from Chalabhi to Allawi, from Najaf to Fallujah and beyond.

According to the People’s Daily

China firmly supports Uzbekistan’s moves to crack down on the “three evil forces” of terrorism, separatism and extremism, and maintain domestic and regional stability for peaceful development, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Beijing Tuesday

To the extent that the Chinese regime has any coherent foreign policy, its primary principle is opposition to any intervention in the internal affairs of dictatorships. The more brutal the dictatorship, the happier China is to lend its support, and of course, the better the Chinese regime looks by comparison. Sometimes, this principle brings China into conflict with the Bush Administration, as in the case of Iraq. In other cases, as in that of Uzbekistan, the two see eye to eye.

I look forward to a possible future when only democratically-elected governments are regarded as legitimate. That doesn’t mean support for the Bush doctrine that any external enemy who wants to overthrow such a government by force should be free to do so. But it would mean suspension from the UN and all similar bodies, in the same way as currently happens in the event of a military coup in a Commonwealth country, as well as embargos on any form of military contracts or arms sales. The critical requirement for such a future is a democratic China. As I’ve written before, I don’t think this is as impossible as it seems. The apparent solidity of the Chinese regime conceals the erosion of its foundations in Communist ideology, and in the historical legitimacy of past generations of leaders. It’s a statue with a golden head and feet of clay.

The NYT has survivors’ accounts of the massacre in Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, on last night’s ABC News, I saw the commander of the US base in Uzbekistan interviewed. He said something like “The host country military are doing a wonderful job protecting the base and we have had no trouble from the disturbances”. That’s the same host country military that was murdering hundreds of its own people a few days earlier. I can’t find a link to this on Google news, so I’d be grateful to anyone who can point me to a transcript.

Bush’s friendly relations with the Uzbek dictator Karimov have been unshaken by this, and any stated opposition to Karimov’s use of torture and murder is meaningless: it’s an open secret that a good deal of it is being done on behalf of the Administration, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition.

The blogospheric right has mostly been either silent or supportive, along with much of the pro-war left. But some cracks are emerging. Here’s a piece by Stephen Schwartz and William Kristol from the Weekly Standard. And on the pro-war left, there are some good pieces from Eric the Unread and Harry’s Place.

Update JF Beck offers a defence of the Karimov dictatorship, ending rather lamely with the weasel words “Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not supporting the Karimov government or its actions. I’m simply pointing out that the “wanton murder” scenario being pitched by the left is open to question”. For Beck, and the rest of the RWDB crew, the important thing is to support Bush and attack the left on every possible occasion, even if it means giving someone like Karimov the benefit of the doubt.

Today’s Fin ReView section (alas, subscription only) has a great article by Peter Manning, reviewing Ridley Scott’s film Kingdom of Heaven but also spelling out what a terrible crime the Crusades were, and how they are still affecting both the West and the Islamic world after nearly a thousand years. Manning is particularly good on the issue of just war doctrine, and the relationship between jihad and crusade.

Among the few good things to come out of our current trials is the fact that the word “crusade” is finally getting the evil connotations it deserves. A few years ago, George Bush was using the term “crusade” to describe the struggle against terrorism, and the US was about to build an artillery system called the Crusader. Now, just about the only time you hear the term is pejoratively, from bin Laden and like-minded jihadists.

Whether you call it crusade or jihad (or, for that matter, revolutionary communism), holy war is the worst of evils.

In January 2004, Tim Blair linked to Martin Roth, demanding a retraction from Australian teachers unions, which had said in an advertisement before the war “War on Iraq will kill tens of thousands of innocent children and their families. Many more Iraqis will suffer disease, hunger and homelessness.” (Roth cited an estimate of “only” 5000 deaths.)

But now Tim is reporting favorably on a study which estimates 24000 civilian deaths in the first year of the war. The Tims Tim[1] likes this number because it’s so much less than the widely cited estimate of 100 000 excess deaths published in the Lancet last year[2].

Still, given that Tim B. now agrees that the teachers unions were right to predict tens of thousands of deaths (and in fact it seems likely that tens of thousands of deaths had already occurred when he wrote his post), it’s time for a retraction of his own criticism. Self-correcting blogosphere and all that.

These fights about numbers are unedifying, but necessary. Supporters of war as a policy instrument need to be reminded that the policy they advocate will cause the deaths of many innocent people. Sometimes this is necessary to prevent even worse calamities, but war ought always to be a last resort.

fn1. This seems to a be a Tim-magnetic topic. There’s some further comment from Tim Worstall who wonders why the report hasn’t received more attention.

fn2. I’ll leave to Tim Lambert to explain in more detail the differences in time periods covered and concepts of “excess death”.

The news on the massacre in Uzbekistan is sketchy, but it seems clear that troops fired on a protest meeting, killing dozens.

The massacre followed violent protests in which government buildings were taken over, and prisoners, including alleged members of Islamist groups, were set free, but it appears that the protestors were simply listening to speeches when the troops attacked them .

The best information seems to be at Registan, which I found through the relatively new system of Technorati tags

The US currently has an air base and around 1000 troops in Uzbekistan. They can’t be regarded as neutral, and their presence clearly supports the mass murdering and torturing dictator Karimov, someone who appears indistinguishable from Saddam circa 1980. A literal reading of Administration rhetoric would suggest that the US should use its power to overthrow Karimov , but there’s zero possibility that this will happen (the official US response is an appeal for restraint, directed mainly at the protestors). But the troops should be withdrawn immediately, and all ties with this evil regime broken.

Via Senator Andrew Bartlett, I see that The Independent is campaigning for electoral reform in the UK, following Labour’s re-election with only 36 per cent of the vote.

Leading opponents within the government are named as John Prescott and Ian McCartney and the story also mentions that Many union leaders also fear it will lead to coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, and prevent Labour from governing again with an absolute majority.

I imagine that the opponents regard themselves as hardheaded realists, but it would be more accurate to view them as reckless gamblers.

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