Hiroshima Mon
Amour
By John Chuckman
15 Feburary, 2005
Countercurrents.org
A
few columnists and commentators who questioned or opposed the invasion
of Iraq, now say, having been touched by pictures of Iraqis bravely
casting ballots, that George Bush was right.
Such is the persuasive
power of positive propaganda, which works by focusing on true details,
ignoring their ugly context, and such is the wisdom imparted by need-to-get-a-column-out
thinkers.
First, much as I
admire the Iraqis who voted, any human being's sense of fear or horror
is relative to his or her circumstances. People do become inured to
horrible conditions. That is how they survive wars, plagues, slavery,
and even death camps.
And George Bush's
Iraq is a pretty horrible place. Not just a bloody invasion but civil
chaos have worked to make it so, and Iraqis were already hardened to
horrors by the decade-long American embargo and the devastation of the
first Gulf War.
Second, the Iraqi
election was only a tiny step in a long and highly uncertain journey
through an uncharted land. No one knows whether democracy will become
established soon in Iraq. It is possible to make a strong argument that
the invasion will prove to have delayed the ultimate coming of meaningful
democracy to Iraq. Before the first Gulf War, Iraq was the most advanced
and thriving of Arab states. There was a growing, educated middle class
who would certainly have shed absolute government before very long.
Much of what they achieved lies in ruins today.
Third, democracy,
even if it should be achieved in Iraq, does not imply a magical state
of human freedom. It matters in a democracy who writes the rules, who
has the vote, and what are the attitudes and intentions of the majority.
Democracies have demonstrated time and again they are just as capable
of brutality and injustice as other forms of government. The original
intention of the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution was to
protect minorities against the will of a malicious majority, but in
a number of terrible examples it failed utterly to do so for two centuries
because it was simply ignored.
Many democracies
have not had even paper protections for individuals. There could be
no written protections for British subjects under the Empire. How could
you define freedoms for those living under colonialism? Israel doesn't
have a Bill of Rights. How could you have a meaningful one in a country
where religion pretty much defines citizenship? Apartheid South Africa
was a democracy for those qualified to vote but could afford no broad
protections to its residents.
Fourth, the enthusiastic
participants in the Iraqi election were Kurds and Shiites. The motivating
interests of each of these groups today does not necessarily reflect
conditions for stable Iraqi democracy.
The Kurds, roughly
20% of the population and non-Arabic Sunni Moslems, have an intense
desire for independence, a fact the U.S. has used to exploit this unfortunate
people more than once into supporting its aims. But Kurdish independence
is not possible. When modern Iraq was created by the British, the northern
(Kurdish) area was included because it had oil, because it grew grain
for much of what is modern Iraq, and because it had no natural defensive
barriers. Independence for the Kurds also would be intolerable to Turkey
whose own sizeable population of Kurds has caused much civil unrest
and would be inflamed by the possibilities of such an event.
Shia Moslems, people
with a strong Arab identity in Iraq, are the majority of Iraq's population.
They were suppressed by Hussein, but his behavior was not unique. The
Ottomans (Sunni Turks) ruled the area more than a century ago and did
not trust the Shia. Local Sunni were given the important posts under
the Ottoman Empire. The British followed the same practice, and Hussein
only continued a long-established policy.
The great dilemma
for the Shia today is that if they wish to govern and overcome their
history of being suppressed, they must do so under the shadow of American
power. So we have to ask how a government representing about 60% of
the national population, ruling under the sufferance of foreign occupation,
can be meaningfully democratic? Does the situation not parallel in many
respects the rule of the Protestants in Northern Ireland under the power
of Great Britain? How stable has that been?
Although the Shia
of Iraq have a different ethnic identity than the Shia of Iran, they
necessarily share many interests and sympathies. Hardly a day passes
that Bush's government doesn't threaten Iran over weapons or the supposed
movement of agents and volunteers into Iraq.
The most profound
reason for rejecting favorable judgment of Bush's policy comes from
a brief thought-experiment. Iraqi losses have been convincingly measured
at a hundred thousand dead. Hundreds of thousands more were maimed or
wounded. Millions were reduced to no means of earning a living. The
total loss and devastation are comparable to America's dropping of an
atomic bomb on Hiroshima and likely exceed it.
Those who say Bush
was right are telling us that it was a sound decision to drop an atomic
bomb just to change the government of Iraq, a government that was no
longer a threat to anyone outside its borders.
Now consider the
American government encouraged by such facile judgments. It consists
of an almost cult-like group of rich and arrogant people who cannot
spend money fast enough on their military, despite the country's having
no seriously-threatening opponents. It even is funding a new generation
of nuclear weapons, sometimes described as "useable." The
members of this cult-like group generally themselves avoided military
service and show little concern for the welfare of others, even the
ordinary people of their own land.