Shame on you Tutu

(First published in October 2011)

It is not often that one finds oneself being compelled to talk against someone as ubiquitously praised as Desmond Tutu. However his recent, frankly lazy and scurrilous defamations of Tony Blair are in need of the firmest of ripostes. The Archbishop, in early September, criticised the ex-leader as a 'playground bully' in supporting the US invasion of Iraq and claimed that the death toll from this action alone is a sufficient enough charge for him to be dragged in front of the Hague. He also went on to comment that Blair and his American allies 'have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand - with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us' and that 'the question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.'

Where to begin? Indeed it is very hard to know where once you sit back and begin to realize just how devoid of any ethical content Mr Tutu's arguments are. Though, if one is brave enough to make the plunge the question of casualties is a good place to start. It can only be assumed from Mr Tutu's comments that a just war is one in which nobody is killed or injured, as he neither offers to propose what the correct amount of casualties would have been to topple Saddam nor what is so extra legal about the amount so far accrued (somewhere in the region of 200,000). Mr Tutu's position is one of pacifism, which in practice throughout the history of the 20th century has proved to be, and by its very nature is, the acquiescence of evil. Has it perhaps occurred to Mr Tutu that pacifism is not the stance that is shared by his good friend Nelson Mandela who bravely took up arms against Apartheid. This is because it is a contemptible conviction that unless they can be talked out of power then dictators should be allowed to stay put because it would be simply unforgivable for somebody to get hurt trying to close a concentration camp. Mr Mandela even though forgotten by many was imprisoned because he faced up to the reality that when men can not longer use words to halt injustice then they must reach for their swords even though former are clearly by far the preferable instruments.

As for the comparison between the 'moral level' of Mr Blair with Saddam the facts, if people can be bothered and seemingly unfashionable enough to remember them, should speak for themselves. Saddam managed to commit arguably no less than two genocides during his reign of terror, one against the Kurds in the late 1980s using chemical weaponry and a second against the Shia in the early 1990s as well as persecuting the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. All totalling somewhere near 400,000 deaths by conservative estimates. Whereas Mr Blair prevented one from occurring in Kosovo in 1997 as well as helping evict Slobodan Milosevic and lest we forget, the British intervention in Sierra Leone's civil war which restored the country to peace whilst toppling Liberia's war lord Charles Taylor. Saddam's foreign interventions include the annexation of Kuwait in 1991 and his earlier invasion of neighbouring Iran which together costs over half a million lives. Instead if creating a police state like that which Iraqi historian Kanan Makiya has described as a torture chamber above ground and a mass grave bellow it, Mr Blair has managed to directly dissolve two such states in an attempt to replace them with at least the embryo of what can be called a free society in their place, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Mr Tutu's comparison has no counterpart in reality, unless his calculation was grounded in Michael Moore's film portrayal of Saddamist Iraq as a veritable land of milk and honey.

Thirdly, briefly covering the justification for the invasion of Iraq itself, which could and deserves a much more extensive coverage, Mr Tutu seems to come across as being quite ignorant about both the function and the realities of international law. As far as rogue regimes go Saddam's Iraq presents itself as a strong candidate for the title of 'playground bully'. Having been in breach of no less than 17 separate UN resolutions and in violation of just about every vital UN convention whilst escaping anything resembling serious reprisals jaw jaw had clearly failed and sadly had to give way to war war with no less than the credibility of international law at stake. Mr Tutu, along with the likes of George Galloway and Tony Benn, fails to realize that western armies can sometimes be used to confront evil which similarly should apply for the thugs in Syria and Iran that Tutu mentions so candidly and it seems that the future of the credibility of international law will rely on it.

So, needless to say Mr Tutu's claims can easily be demonstrated to be fatuous and as much as the list of facts above could be added to those so far presented if you havn't got the point by now then you most likely never will. And to end it would do no harm to remember that it was one of the last acts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn the great knight of opposition to Soviet totalitarianism to praise Vladimir Putin as a great leader of the Russian people showing once again that even moral giants can sometimes stumble, just as Mr Tutu has shown us once again that placing a religious title before your name can gain you immunity from what should otherwise be much needed criticism.   

For God's sake stop bashing religion

(first published Jan 24th 2012, in response to Tom Maksymiw's article 'True religious morality' http://thebeaveronline.co.uk/2012/01/18/true-religious-morality/      

I can only hope that, very much like myself, any atheist who read the article entitled, “True religious morality” in last week’s Comment couldn’t help but think that the worst atheism has to offer has once again reared its ugly head. If only such commentators could realise how deeply discrediting both their arrogance and ignorance is to the atheist and humanist movements with regards to the role of religion in society, then hopefully they would cease making such glib pronouncements about how awful and destructive systems of religious morality are to the world.

I think, like many, I would quite happily join Tom Maksymiw and other secularists in a movement against religious extremism, whether it be the disgusting theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the genital mutilation of millions of women in the Islamic world or the more local outrage of the bishop of Carlisle who publically pronounced that the 2007 floods in Cumbria were God’s punishment against homosexuals. However, I have very little time for atheists who think that they are smarter and morally superior to religious people.

Not only do I think it is good manners to keep these kinds of thoughts to myself but I also cannot see any constructive use in doing so either. This is because, as easy as it is to thumb through the Old Testament and find both strange and horrific verses giving divine sanction to rape and genocide, it is disingenuous to then claim that these are beliefs and morals upheld by anyone except Christian fringe groups. In reality the vast majority of Christians don’t even know of the existence of such verses and, instead, believe in and practise a set of perfectly praiseworthy moral guidelines.

Admittedly this might sound to many like an absurd hypocrisy of cherry-picking from biblical verses but, if it makes people think about their actions and give generously to charity, then it seems like a hypocrisy worth having and certainly not worth disturbing. It is a hypocrisy which has inspired and empowered people to do great things, a favourite example of mine being Lech Walesa telling the Polish police that he did not fear them because the only person he feared was God.

History and contemporary experiences tells us that human beings are metaphysical animals in desperate need of a greater purpose and position in the universe. For many people it is understandably comforting to think that they are at the centre of a divine plan and it is a wonderful way to escape what can be the unnerving uncertainty of existence.

Even those who pertain to be non-believers reveal similar fears when they indulge in UFO stories, pay through the nose for homeopathy and spiritual medicine or align themselves with conspiracy groups such as the “9/11 truth movement.” Mr. Maksymiw quite boldly tells us that it is questionable if Christianity’s objective morality “is a basis on which a free society can function” but what he does not realise is that the society he wishes to create says and offers very little to human beings. Karl Marx once described religion as the flowers which mask and sit between the links in the chain of what is human misery and oppression and he subsequently called for man to remove the flowers in order to unmask and then break the chain.

However, it seems more sensible to say that in a liberal society we should hold out to people the opportunity and freedom to remove the flowers and break the chain but crucially we should not force them to do so as some people behave better with the flowers in place and some will find more absurd and harmful chains to wrap themselves 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

( first published 4th of March 2011)

North Africa and the Middle East are needless to say, in the middle of a once in a generation set of events that have already led to the downfall of two regimes with a third in Libya hopefully to follow. The most noted and quite rightly applauded characteristic of all of the recent uprisings is that they have been internal revolutions led by the people and the grass roots democratic movements of those countries. It seems finally that the masses have stood up to their tyrants with amazing results. Talk of a repeat of 1989 is featuring in the public domain and one wonders if more regimes fall how long it will be before commentators begin to reach into the attic dust off and then resurrect that all too fateful term ‘the end of history’.

Even if not everyone is getting quite that far ahead of themselves and sales of John Lennon’s Imagine aren’t making too dramatic a comeback, at least we can all agree on the point that US led Neoconservative style regime change has expired as a method of liberating the peoples of the Middle East from dictatorships which they are proving perfectly capable of doing themselves with many fewer casualties. Or can we?

Once the waves of euphoria die down and the situations in both Egypt and Tunisia are re-assessed we have to confront some disappointing truths. In both cases only the head of the regime has been removed and in its place has arisen the all too familiar faces of the close associates of Ben Ali and Mubarak. In the case of Egypt the new acting president, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, is a lifelong friend of none other than… you guessed it, Hosni Mubarak. The expert judgement of Robert Fisk on the situation has already forewarned of a short period of relaxed government followed by the introduction of emergency power acts and there is little so far in the history of the Middle East to suggest otherwise. Maybe this is where Roger Daltrey and The Who can be credited as being a superior musical accompaniment to these events, rather than Lennon, with their lyric ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’.

So if Robert Fisk is vindicated within the next year or so, we will still be looking at an Arab world with only one functioning democracy, that infamous neoconservative creation, known as The Republic of Iraq. This begs the question of whether removing more than just the head of a regime and restructuring the power institutions of the state, as the case of Iraq, is our most effective tool so far for bringing credible democracy to the Middle East than popular uprisings? Could a people’s revolution have succeeded in Saddam’s Iraq? The whole sale slaughter of both the Kurdish and Shia opposition during his reign and the forced dispossession of the Southern Marsh Arabs sadly suggests otherwise. Should we also have left Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Kuwait to the method of people’s revolution? And aren’t the Libyans currently deploring Western inaction?

I sincerely hope that the argument of this article is proved wrong, but just in case of the unlikely event of history repeating itself, which has been known to happen, we should not be so quick to right off the neoconservative method. I am aware that this article might have a rather repulsive ‘the empire strikes back’ feel to it for most anti-war readers. However, they still have their work ahead of them if they wish to forge a viable alternative, splendid isolationism or shouting war criminal at heads of state not being options.

The poverty of pacifism

(first published 14th Feb 2012)

The EU embargo of Iran’s oil exports is, for many, the ominous sign of a march to war with Iran. However, in her article last week, Ekaterina Daminova explained that the embargo has started another march: the Stop the War Coalition. Once again, as in 2003, crowds have taken to the streets to protest against so-called “Western imperialism.” In my opinion, it is essentially a bull market for anyone who fancies themselves as a public speaker. So long as they can fit the words “blood” and “oil” into a sentence or, failing that, make a vitriolic pronouncement against Tony Blair or George Bush, then there is plenty of applause on offer.

Daminova concluded by praising the Stop the War coalition’s effort and wishing it well. However, I wish to explain why any morally responsible individual should actually be wishing them all the worst as their unrelenting brand of unconditional pacifism is not only morally bankrupt but also has a horrific historical legacy of which many seem blissfully ignorant.

George Orwell, in his tremendous essay entitled “Looking back on the Spanish Civil War,” does a fantastic job of laying bare the evils of pacifism as he explains how the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s brought him to the realisation that some forces, namely those of theocracy and totalitarianism, cannot be contained through compromise and tragically will only answer to force. Orwell came to this difficult and sobering decision when he went to Spain to fight against Franco. In a similar way, Nelson Mandela realised this in the 1960s when he opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Notably, Mandela and other activists turned to violent opposition after first trying to replicate the “passive resistance” practiced by Gandhi in India with disastrous and bloody consequences as, unlike the British, the apartheid regime did not welcome peaceful negotiations. Even though it is preferable to armed conflict, these events provide an important example of how pacifism is not universally applicable. If it is taken as an unconditional stance, pacifism can lead to greater bloodshed and misery than active opposition. One can only imagine the consequences if Gandhi got his wish in 1942 and the British had left India to oppose a Japanese invasion with “passive resistance,” which was Gandhi’s expressed desire.

So, coming back to the point in question, we have to recognise that Iran, despite signing agreements with the European Union, the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has broken every promise it has made in its continual pursuit of nuclear weapons. UN inspector Yukiya Amano is fast showing us that all of Iran’s pledges are worth less than the paper that they are written on.

Evidently, dialogue alone is not working and we have to make the decision between continued pacifism or the upholding of international law, particularly the non-proliferation of nuclear weaponry. If this decision is not already a no-brainer then one should also consider Iran’s continual backing and arming of terrorist movements in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan which is bound to increase if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. There does not seem to be much talk about a coalition to oppose these acts of war.

Now we must move on to tackle the inane and glib accusations made by members of the anti-war movement about “Western imperialism” and its thirst for oil. If the West is an oil-craving monster then why on earth is it putting an oil embargo on Iran, consequently endangering its own economic recovery? Furthermore, if the West is only led by its lust for oil then it would have been on the side of Gaddafi, who provided a steady supply of cheap oil, in the Libyan civil war instead of supporting Libya’s uncertain and potentially volatile ongoing push for democracy. Clearly there are more concerns at play in Western foreign policy than just black gold.

I believe that a striking and frightening parallel can be drawn between the Stop the War Coalition and the American anti-war movement of the Second World War which, right up until 1945, believed that fighting Nazism was none of America’s business and that the war was only fought in the interests of big corporations. Going back to Orwell, the fatuous figure that is Michael Moore has drawn inspiration from 1984 when describing the war on terror as a classic example of an endless war waged for political expediency. However, surely the most interesting insight that can be drawn from Orwell’s masterpiece is that the anti-war movement seems to have grasped the power to mask incoherence as it continues to fight its own endless war against the USA.

Next time they go on a march, let’s hope it rains.

Blair and Gaddafi's illicit affair

(first published 1st November 2012) 

As the dust begins to settle on the troubled country of Libya the dark secrets of the Gaddafi regime are fast being excavated. The all too inevitable and sinister accounts of torture and rape that surface after the fall of all totalitarian regimes has also been accompanied by the obscene and perverted truths about the private life of Colonel Gaddafi. The images of the regime’s discrete and oh so tasteful gold clad palaces have given us an insight into the fantasy world that invariably develops within dictatorships. And an interesting highlight amongst the information pouring out of Tripoli about the deceased dictator has been his supposed infatuation and crush on the former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

However it has been another one of the Colonel’s love affairs that has been the favourite expose of the media, as the now notorious photos of Tony Blair embracing Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent personify for many western corruption and collaboration with Middle Eastern despots and the hypocrisy and insincerity of our former prime minister. However if subscribers to such a view could be invited to put such visceral analysis aside for one moment and asked to evaluate the fine details of the deals struck by Blair behind those infamous photographs, then a more interesting and, dare it be said, admirable incite comes to light.

If we cast our minds back to December of 2003 and remember the extraordinary declaration made by the Libyan regime that it would renounce and dismantle its illegal and clandestine nuclear and chemical weapons programs along with its ballistic missile capabilities then we can start to gain a more informed knowledge of Libya’s relationship with the west. It was in the shadow of the fall of a fellow Arab tyrant for his failure to comply with the non-proliferation treaty that Libya’s dictator decided that breaking international law had its consequences. Notably Gaddafi decided to go to Mr Blair and President Bush to relinquish his stockpile of WMD and not to Kofi Annan, Jacque Chirac or Gerhard Schroder. Information gained from both the former Iraqi regime and the Libyan regime also led to the dismantling of the A.Q.Khan network which had supplied many of the regions dictatorships with illicit material. And in exchange for this little know triumph in the field of international arms control diplomatic relations were renewed with Libya and noted Bedouin tent photo-ops convened. Undoubtedly a small price to pay.

The discussed disarmament was all the more significant for those who remembered it when in February 2011 the Libyan people joined with parts of the army to rise up and overthrow their dictator in the bloody civil war which has only just come to an end. The haunting question that has to be asked is if Gaddafi had not been forced to relinquish his WMD in 2003 would we have seen a repeat of the horrors that we saw in 1991 after the first gulf war when Saddam Hussein gassed a similar rebellion into submission with truly horrific consequences. And secondly if Benghazi had been drenched in VX nerve gas and other such devices then would the international community have had the ability to intervene if Gaddafi possessed the chemical or nuclear deterrence combined with a ballistic missile capability which he was developing before 2003. Luckily such images will remain as counterfactuals but only thanks to those much despised figures Tony Blair and George Bush who made sure that Gaddafi’s WMD was in Oakridge Tennessee in 2011 and not falling on Benghazi. So with all this in mind shouldn’t our former prime minister receive some token of recognition or will it be left to historians to recognise him as a leader who was not afraid to recognise that the truly great moral questions facing the world are not black and white but instead uninviting shades of grey.

You decide

Why French intervention in Mali isn't just rocking the Casbah

Any British observer, such as myself, who hears the news that the French are deploying their forces into deepest darkest Africa should hopefully do so with a suitable measure of skepticism as to the motives of the Elysee palace, which history has shown can be on occasion less than reputable.

Now to clear any initial confusion its not memories of the clash at Fashoda or the battle of the Nile that are being referred to, as fresh as those events indubitably are in the British experience. Instead darker periods in France's colonial record come to mind. Let it certainly not be forgotten the million plus casualties inflicted throughout France's protracted and perfectly senseless conflict in Algeria. This conflict whilst being conducted alongside the pre-amble to the Vietnam war in French Indochina, firmly abolished the myth of the romantic image of the French legionnaire bravely traversing the unforgiving Sahara. The very same Sahara which the French government thought it proper to use as a testing ground for its nuclear weapon's program, this of course being before the heroic use of the French armed services in sinking the Rainbow warrior in 1985 for trying to interfere with further atmospheric tests in the Pacific Ocean. If one adds to this list the equally appalling Operation Turquoise which in 1994 saw the French army invade Rwanda during the country's genocide in order to prop up the government which was perpetrating those very massacres, then the point should hopefully be being conveyed.

This is not to say for one moment that British foreign policy towards Africa has been one without significant and often forgotten stains. However the unique nature of the French relationship with the continent is the country's strange persistence in taking an active role in maintaining French influence over and leadership in the Francophone world which it considers to be its power bloc and sphere of hegemony. Unlike the British who have somewhat gracefully overseen the decline of their presence in Africa the French still seem determined to cling on, this is recognised as being due to France's desire to still remain at the top table of world politics as a counter weight to the dreaded Anglo-Saxon threat. But another important key for understanding why French leaders arn't reluctant to flex their muscles in Africa is as the historian Gerard Prunier elucidates, because French Presidents realise that this is a part of the world in which still only a few hundred soldiers can command great power and can decide the fates of governments and civil wars. When such forces can be commanded under presidential authority and in the case of the Foreign Legion are more expendable than some, such interventions start to become quite attractive and cost effective.

Though this being kept in mind, and treading cautiously with the information we have so far, the intervention in Mali might perhaps be one of France's more productive African operations. The Libyan operation, though its lasting outcome still yet to be seen, was a fresh example of the ability of France and its NATO allies to use military power for more noble ends, which is a faculty which many liberal commentators fiercely deny any Western power could possibly ever posses. The comments of philosopher and public intellectual Bernard Henri Levi who worked on the ground throughout the conflict as a servant of the French government are particularly illuminating and speak to more noble motivation at the heart of the NATO effort. Levi who has been critical of the French political right and former  President Nicholas Sarkozy, being an outspoken leftist, has spoken and written passionately about how the French and British governments decisively seized the initiative to use their air forces to back the people of Libya in their struggle against the Gaddafi dictatorship.        

The intervention in Mali however might not be able to claim to be in the name of the promotion of multi-party democracy, which has been in trouble in Mali since the military coup of last year. Neither will another military conflict do anything for Mali's economic development with nearly half of its population living on less than one dollar per day. However crucially the French force of arms can and must prevent the country from falling foul of a severe threat which has made itself manifest in other parts of Africa and the Middle East, devastatingly so. This is the spectre of militant Islamism. Millions of Africans have already perished by the sword of such forces in the Sudan, Algeria Somalia and Nigeria which have sought to follow the Taliban Afghanistan model of destroying all semblances of civilisation in these countries. Needless to say the brand of Islamo-Fascism which the French are halting the advance of into the south of Mali not only claims mountains of victims both dead and alive but completely retards any chances of progress of economic and social development that such countries may have. From this angel saving 50% of the population of Mali from becoming sexual chattel and therefore further accentuating and cementing the problems the country already has with slavery, is vital if Mali and its neighbours are to have any hope of a future in which, like Asia and Latin America, they join the globalised world and economy which would unquestionably be to the benefit of everyone involved. The practical aspirations of the mission therefore, even though being quite minimal and largely defensive and preventative in nature, go further than just security concerns of allowing a client nation of international jihad to form.

This is too often the forgotten argument which vibrates to the neo-conservative reasoning that it is ultimately in the West's interest to stop the advance of the forces of reactionary Islam not just to stop repeats of 9/11. If we ever want Africa and the Middle East to become more than just the poor and neglected relation of the developed world then it is of the up most importance that such movements are not allowed to succeed wherever they might raise their ugly head.  Even though as it is often commented, especially in relation to Hamas, that such movements are the result of poverty like any extreme political movement such as European fascism, their power to needlessly perpetuate and deepen such poverty and misery must be firmly recognised and that it is in nobody's interest to let them do so.

It is with these concerns in mind that the British population should be less sceptical  and begrudging of the use of small amounts of British logistical support to aid the French effort. Just as moans of reluctance and discontent met the decision to topple the Libyan dictatorship which in turn mirrored the fabulous amount of indignation produced by the idea British troops might be being used to get rid of Saddam Hussein and to help the Iraqi people make a bid at transforming their country into a somewhat more liberal entity. Such short sighted indifference has always proved to be throughout history a much more destructive force than zealots with AK-47s and RPGs. When the Chamberlain whine about the unwelcome impact of small countries far away about which we know little becomes our first touch stone in our public discussion about British foreign policy then the results of that policy are bound to be less than encouraging. Indeed it seems necessary that Pascal Bruckner's tremendous book 'The Tyranny of Guilt' which highlights the evil of the influence of moral relativism and anti-Americanism on the attitudes of the liberal left receives an accompanying volume on the equally dangerous and prevalent tyranny of apathy.

So as much as it is always vital to keep in mind the dark potentials of French military manoeuvres in Africa the Mali operation, even though not quite being the vanguard of the ideas of 1789, might well be more inspired than some. As the Belgians say about the French you never know what 'the Camembert' is going to do next but at least for now the outlook is positive.