What Price Democracy?

As the purported justifications for the invasion of Iraq prove one by one to be the baseless lies of leaders who had decided on conflict before looking for a reason, we are left with the sole excuse that the value of Democracy is worth the price paid in Iraqi lives.

I’m surprised that we consider ourselves in a position to judge the value of that transaction, and I am left wondering if Democracy is really worth such an exorbitant price.

For once, I am going to ignore that bloody handed despot on the other side of the Atlantic, and concentrate on my own beloved leader, Tony Blair. He led his country into war in the face of majority opposition from both his own party and his public. To do this, and to muster what slim support he could, it begins to look as though he or his agents summoned every flimsy scrap of evidence that they could lay their hands on, and twisted it as far as possible to argue their case. One by one his justifications are being shot down:
- there have been no WMDs
- it becomes clear that all the “intelligence” we had on them was flimsy, plagiarised guess-work, for the most part out of date
- during the war, British troops used cluster bombs on built-up civilian areas, making a mockery of any pretence of altruism toward Iraqi civilians
- no connection has been demonstrated between the Ba’ath party and Al Qaeda
- it is the opinion of experts both from within the UN and independently, that the threat of terrorism within Iraq and toward the Western nations has been significantly increased by the destabilisation of the area, and the violence done to the Iraqi people (Roust, Dec 2003)

In addition, any semblance of an altruistic justification for the invasion is turned into a sick joke by the support given by the “coalition of the willing” to other regimes engaged in far more hideous atrocities against their own people (eg Uzbekistan – see other threads for details), and by the late timing of our supposed outrage – Rumsfeld met Saddam in Baghdad after the gassing of the Kurds.

The following is an excerpt from a letter which appeared in the Guardian, 22/01/04

Quote:

War Crimes in Iraq

[…] “shock and awe” bombing raids indiscriminately killed 15 – 35,000 people and injured untold others. This is an offence under article 8, schedule 6 of the ICC statute, enacted by the UK in 2001, which outlaws: (a)(iii) “wilfully causing great suffering”; (a)(iv) “extensive destruction and appropriation of property”; (b)(ii) “intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects” and; (b)(iv) “launching an attack in the knowledge that it will cause incidental loss of life”.
Tony Blair admitted in parliament (Hansard, March 23 2002): “If there is conflict there will be civilian casualties”; proving he knew the attack would kill or injure civilians.
[discussion of the sanctions] Madeleine Albright proved genocidal intent when, told that 460,000 children had died as a result of the sanctions, she said: “It is a price worth paying.”
[…]

Michael Mansfield QC
Dr James Thring
Legal Action Against War

It is clear to me that the invasion of Iraq was both illegal and immoral. Whether, in the long term, the Iraqi people will be better off, I don’t know, but I refuse to believe that we had reached the point where no other solution but war was possible. Prior to the invasion, we saw the greatest peaceful demonstration that Britain has ever known, on the streets of London. Tony Blair engaged in this slaughter against the wishes of the people he supposedly represents, yet is still in power.

And what can we do about it? We are strangely powerless. We had no legal recourse whatsoever to stop him going to war. We could have armed ourselves, taken to the streets… but what difference is there between that and life under a dictatorship? One presumes that Tony Blair wouldn’t start gassing the home counties… but he could still have us all arrested, and held indefinitely without trial under suspicion of being terrorists. Many people were arrested for demonstrating peacefully – what would have happened if they had been trying just that little bit harder?

And after the bombing is over? Assuming that the Hutton inquiry doesn’t finish him off, Tony Blair looks set to stay in power up to the next election. And that is where my question lies. I swore that if Britain went to war, I would never vote Labour again. Yet now the Tory party seems strangely re-invigorated under Howard, and even more bloodthirsty and right wing than Labour. I am frightened that voting with my conscience (either Lib Dem or Green Party), along with similar votes cast by what used to be the Labour left, coupled with a swing from the centre toward the Tory party, will result in a Conservative government for the next four years – privatisation of universities, the reclassification of cannabis, and the hideous, inevitable backlash against those scapegoats of the new millennium, the asylum seekers.

So there we have it. In our oh-so-wonderful democracy, we have no legal way to stop our government from perpetrating atrocities in our name, and no legal recourse to condemn them in the aftermath. If we show our displeasure by voting against the party we hold to be responsible, we may well end up with something worse. We are powerless.

Is democracy really worth anything at all?

*Note – I am not saying that the removal of Saddam will not have benefits for the Iraqi people, or that there is no difference between our failed democracy and his open dictatorship. However, I think that his removal could have been accomplished through peaceful means, and I think that the mechanised slaughter that the “coalition of the willing” has conducted on the Iraqi people, coupled with the genocidal effects of the sanctions which preceded the invasion, can never be justified.

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