My observation that “One of the most striking features of the war so far has been the fact that, on a wide range of issues, Iraqi official statements have been a more reliable source of information than those of the US and allied governments” drew some derision from my friendly nemesis, Jason Soon, though he did not give any counterarguments. Following the same line, Catallaxy contributors Heath Gibson and Jack Strocchi reproduced as fact British reports of an uprising in Basra, despite denials not only from Iraqi officials but from the much more credible Al-Jazeera. The same reports predicted an imminent British assault in support of the rising.

A day later, the British defence minister, Geoff Hoon is quoted as saying the situation is ‘unclear’, and there has been no move to assist the putative rising with ground troops, as opposed to shelling. Either the Shias have been left in the lurch yet again or, as seems more likely, the original reports were bogus, just like:

The crowds cheering the liberation of Safwan
The Scud attacks on Kuwait
Saddam’s death
The effortless victory at Umm Qasr
The effortless victory at Nasariyah
The chemical weapons factory at Al Najaf
The surrender of entire Iraqi divisions
The 8000 prisoners taken in the first two days

This would be bad enough if these falsehoods were the product of deliberate propaganda aimed at shoring up public support. The worst of it is that the Coalition leaders believe them and act on them, producing yet more disasters.

And as I write this comes the news of a Coalition hit on a crowded market in Baghdad – shades of Sarajevo.

The story of a chemical weapons plant found at Al Najaf received wide coverage, the subsequent Pentagon statement that claims were ‘premature’ received a bit less, and this item seems to have run only in the Financial Times so far.

Department of Defense officials said on Monday that no evidence of chemical weapons production had been found at a facility close to the southern Iraqi town of Najaf occupied by US forces on Sunday

. It’s still possible that Saddam has some chemical weapons stashed around Baghdad for a last stand. But if so, it’s clear that, even in these extreme circumstances, deterrence is still working. The claim that Saddam’s weapons presented an imminent danger to the US or to Iraq’s neighbours has already been refuted by events.

In military terms, the Coalition setbacks of the past few days don’t appear very significant. But this is essentially a political war and politically things are going very badly. There is little sign that the Coalition forces are regarded as liberators, even in Southern Iraq where it was expected that they would be welcomed with open arms by the mainly Shia population. While the anti-war camp can say ‘I told you so’, this is scant comfort. We will all have to live with the consequences of a war which is rapidly becoming one of conquest rather than liberation.

The only thing that could make the situation much worse is large-scale civilian casualties. These are most likely to arise, as they have in the past, not from the direct impact of bombing but from starvation and disease. Such an outcome is already threatened in Basra where the water supply to much of the city has been cut off following the destruction of the power plant at the main water supply station. So far, there has been no serious response from the Coalition leaders to this potential disaster.

If there is to be any chance of a successful peace, the Coalition must take all necessary measures to ensure that water supply to Basra is restored, even if this means lifting the siege of the city.

I haven’t seen any comment on this rather troubling item. The Bush Administration is confiscating frozen Iraqi funds and demanding, with the threat of exclusion from the US banking system that others do likewise. The concern is that countries such as France will seek to use the money to repay debts, rather than giving it back for the benefit of the Iraqi people. But the Administration is keeping $300 million to settle suits brought by US citizens against Saddam Hussein’s regime. As with the announcement that only US firms will be permitted to tender for reconstruction work, there are defences that can be offered for this inconsistent treatment. But a pattern is starting to form, and it’s not looking good.

I’m shocked and it’s awful

One of the biggest concerns opponents of war with Iraq have raised is that the arguments used by the US constitute a precedent for any country that feels like attacking any other country that might represent a hypothetical threat. Ken Parish points to a piece by Eugene Volokh attempting to refute this argument. The main burden of his argument is the standard lawyer’s trick of distinguishing precedents. That is, Volokh takes a series of possible wars (China invading Taiwan, India invading Pakistan) and argues that an attack on Iraq isn’t really a relevant precedent. I think he’s missed a number of possible examples, most obviously the adoption of an even more aggressive stance by Russia in relation to Chechnya, Georgia etc. And retrospectively, the Bush doctrine could have been used by Saddam himself to justify his war with Iran as a pre-emptive strike.

But what really struck me in Volokh’s piece was the following

We might be slightly more troubled if democracies become slower to condemn non-democracies that act based on trumped-up claims of threat. Still, … the essence of sound foreign policy is distinguishing real threats from fake ones; most of the time, democracies will know when another country’s supposed justification for pre-emptive attack is well-founded.

The majority of the population in nearly all democratic countries has formed the judgement that the supposed justification of the US is not well-founded, but the attack is going ahead anyway.

This brings me to one final point. There’s been a lot of discussion of the inadequacies of the UNSC, its unrepresentativeness etc, and in a sense all of this is true. The fact remains that the UNSC has responded to the considered opinion of the majority of the world’s population, while the ‘coalition of the willing’ has not.

For some time, the Canadian government has been floating ideas for a new UN resolution consisting of a set of specific demands with which Saddam would have to comply or face war. This is the kind of thing I’ve been advocating for some time. It would get away from the fatal ambiguity of 1441, which turns on the interpretation of words like ‘active compliance’ and ‘serious consequences’.

The idea had no hope while Bush thought he could get a resolution that effectively authorised war. It’s been revived by what initially seemed a clever move on Blair’s part – an ultimatum modelled on the 1914 Austrian demarche to Serbia, written so that Saddam couldn’t possibly accept it (the only important element was the first one, that Saddam should admit to having the weapons he has so far denied having). The difficulty for Blair is that he did not of course, admit that his proposal was designed to fail. Hence, he will find it hard to reject proposals for an ultimatum that incorporates many of his key demands, such as out-of-country interviews with scientists, but doesn’t contain anything guaranteed to be rejected. The ‘middle six’ countries are obviously keen for something like this, and the French are already hinting that they could be persuaded to accept a specific ultimatum backed by the threat of war, as long as it didn’t give the US the right to make a unilateral judgement that the conditions had not been met.

Blair’s big problem would then be persuading Bush to go along with such an approach. All the evidence is that Bush would refuse, but the arguments in favor are strong. Assuming Saddam is hiding weapons, he might reject the ultimatum, in which case Bush would get everything he wants – UNSC authorisation, British participation and almost-certain access to Turkish bases. Alternatively, out-of-country interviews might produce the long-sought ‘smoking gun’, again giving Bush a legitimate case for war.

On the other side of a coin, the alternative looks unattractive. Unless he could stop a vote altogether, Bush would be in the position of vetoing a UNSC resolution which would wipe out any pretence of a legal basis for the war and (if the opinion polls are right) leave him without majority support even in the US itself.

By far the best outcome for the world would be another six months of stepped-up inspections, during which time the great powers could turn their attention away from Iraq to the much bigger problem of North Korea. (Ideally, they’d do something about Israel/Palestine as well, but that would take the scenario from highly optimistic to totally fantastic).

There’s a growing controversy over the role of a group in the Administration that is generally described as “neoconservative” and “strongly pro-Israel”, and which is pushing for war with Iraq. The leading figures are Perle and Wolfowitz – like the majority of neoconservatives, both are Jewish. Criticism of this group naturally raises the spectre of anti-Semitism, leading to a good deal of consternation about how, if at all, their role can legitimately be discussed Kevin Drum at Calpundit asks

What I’d like to see are some reasonable guidelines for discourse, guidelines that suggest which lines of attack on neoconservatism are reasonable and which ones aren’t, and what kinds of criticism of Israel are legitimate and which ones aren’t. If there were any consensus on this, it would make both criticism and defense of neocon theology a lot easier and a lot less polemical. It would make it a lot easier for me, anyway.

I begin with the observation I’ve made in my own defence against accusations of anti-Americanism

A government, even a democratically-elected one, is not the same as the country it governs. Both citizens and non-citizens can oppose the policy of a government without being hostile to the country it governs

With this point in mind, it’s easy to see that “pro-Israel” is not a very accurate description of the neoconservatives. Most people in most Western countries are pro-Israel in the sense of supporting Israel’s right to exist within secure boundaries and hoping that Israelis and Palestinians will reach a peaceful settlement of their differences. What distinguishes the neocons is not their support for Israel, but their support for the Likud Party, its leader Ariel Sharon and its policy of aggression. A few neoconservatives are unconditional supporters of whatever Israeli government holds office, but the majority are active partisans for Likud, and welcomed the failure of the Barak-Clinton peace initiative (due to a piece of unconscionable bungling on Arafat’s part).

The worst thing about the Perle-Wolfowitz group is not their support for war with Iraq per se, but their advocacy of a strategy in which an American-controllled, but nominally democratic Iraq is supposed to pressure the Palestinians and their supporters into a peace with Israel on terms acceptable to Likud. These haven’t been spelt out, but Sharon’s past performance shows that it will mean a Bantustan-style state with Israel annexing much of the West Bank and probably maintaining some sort of hegemonic right to intervene.

This policy is wrong, and it’s doomed to failure. Hence, it’s bad for Israel.

More importantly in the short run, of all the conflicting agendas that will emerge following an American conquest of Iraq, this is the one that will do most to ensure a disastrous outcome. The idea of a democratic Iraq involves a lot of wishful thinking, but, as Daniel Drezner argues, it might just be possible given a strong US commitment to nationbuilding. The idea of a democratic, pro-Likud, Iraq is a chimera.

Until the prospect of war with Iraq came up, I avoided commenting on the Israel-Palestine situation since it’s complex, emotionally charged and didn’t directly involve Australia. But Australia is now involved and our troops are likely to be enmeshed in attempts to implement a disastrous policy.

My final point is the converse of all the others. Suppose that instead of pursuing the policy he’s actually adopted, Bush had acted first to impose on both Sharon and Arafat a peace settlement along the lines of the Clinton-Barak plan, with US peacekeeping forces to ensure that both sides adhered to the settlement, then demanded international support for the removal of Saddam as a quid pro quo. Would anyone in the Arab world or in Europe have resisted him? I doubt it.

Update Ken Parish and Gary Sauer-Thompson both have useful, and independent, contributions on this topic. As Ken notes the BlogGeist is at work
Update 15/3Maybe Bush is attuned to the BlogGeist. He announced a new (but v sketchy) initiative on this topic today.

The assassination of Zoran Djindjic, Prime Minister of Serbia and the leader of the democratic forces there, apparently by paramilitaries/mobsters (the two groups are much the same) is bad news. The NYT gives pretty good coverage. Hopefully the people of Serbia won’t let the mobsters win.

According to the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England, I have been nominated as International Man of the Year. I join such luminaries as Professor Emmanuel Bosanquet, formerly (I am not making this up!) Senior Lecturer at the University of Outer Mongolia Astronomy Research Department.

There’s no prize money, but the commemorative plaque and medal are excellent value at $US580. This should be no problem as I expect shortly to receive a substantial commission for a transaction involving the export of gold from Nigeria.