Allgemein

The Middle Ground.

The Guardian “Backbencher”-newsletter (could not find a web address…) also believes in C-movie screenplays and goes on to explore the middle ground in the Galloway affair. This is what it might look like –

“The Backbencher approached Guardian security affairs editor Richard Norton-Taylor and asked him to untangle the web of intrigue surrounding George Galloway MP.

‘I think the documents relating to George Galloway from the Iraqi foreign ministry, found – fortuitously and by chance – by the DailyTelegraph (hardly a friend of Mr Galloway’s, by the way) were certainly genuine. They could have been found, I suppose, by British intelligence or someone who had an interest in smearing Mr Galloway and then deposited there and the Telegraph reporter pointed in that direction. It’s possible the box was planted, but unlikely, I think. Journalists bump into things and chance has a lot to do with such scoops.

“Having said that, what do they actually mean? Who is the person actually being protected and who is being accused? On the face of it, the documents say Mr Galloway took GBP300,000 plus out of the oil-for-food programme that Iraq had negotiated with the UN and that he wanted more. But did he himself know about the money, let alone get any of it? … Like intelligence people, in my experience, middle men often want money for themselves but blame a third party, in this case Mr Galloway. I think it is very possible that this money didn’t line his pockets at all, but went to these middle men.

There’s no evidence at all that he had it, no bank accounts in Britain or Switzerland, and I must say he’d be a bit of a fool to have taken any money – let alone over GBP300,000 a year – not just from Iraq but directly from a UN-sponsored food programme. I just can’t see that. Certainly, some of the money might have gone to his campaign, the Mariam Appeal, which started off protecting a young Iraqi girl from leukaemia who was given hospital treatment in Glasgow, but became a political campaign which Mr Galloway was very open about. If the money went to the campaign and not for his personal use, then I think he’ll have a very strong case.

Mr Galloway claims it is a smear campaign and that this stuff was planted, even forged. There’s no evidence for that. Now he has also commenced legal action. The question now for the paper is one of proving a negative, but you can’t have a libel case where you subpoena Saddam Hussein and others in the former Iraqi regime. The trouble for the Telegraph is that in such libel cases the burden of proof is on them.'”

Well, maybe we’ll know at some point. But whatever the outcome of the libel suit – or possible party sanctions against Galloway for this affair or earlier statements calling Tony Blair and GWB “Wolves” and urging British troops not to follow orders – this case proves an important rule: Don’t expect to return home with a clean shirt when you go mud catching with Saddam Hussein.

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Allgemein

Dead Man Walking.

In March last year, Ben Bradshaw (for whose Parliamentary Office I worked in 2001), then Junior Minister in the British Foreign Office, answered to the House of Commons in a debate regarding the British government’s stance on the then emerging war-on-Iraq-question. This House sitting even made it into the Bagehot column of the Economist – for it was suspended after a heated exchange in which the MP for Glawgow, Kelvin, George Galloway, accused the Minister of being a liar (which I think some say was a premier for the mother of Parliaments). The most important part is the following (from the Parliamentary Stationary Office) –

Mr. Bradshaw : … My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin made his familiar views known in his inimitable way. Some of the good points that he made on the middle east peace process would, I believe, carry more credibility if he had not made a career of being not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years.

Mr. Galloway : Why do you not give way on that slander?
Mr. Bradshaw : We are not discussing�
Mr. Galloway : The Minister is a liar.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. John McWilliam) : Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that statement.
Mr. Galloway : The Minister told a lie about me.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that statement.
Mr. Galloway : Why? The Minister told a blatant lie about me. What else could I do. What else can I call it? I demand that he withdraws the allegation against me.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw immediately.
Mr. Galloway : An allegation of dishonorable conduct has been made against me by the Minister. It is an assumption in the House that Members are honorable gentlemen and ladies. His imputation that I am a mouthpiece for a dictator is a clear imputation of dishonor. He is the one who should be withdrawing, not me.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I have no alternative, but to report this matter to the House. I must immediately suspend the sitting for 10 minutes.

Mr. Galloway later apologized to the Speaker and withdrew his statement, while Mr. Bradshaw apologized for applying to Mr. Galloway the phrase he had used (BBC). But according to the Daily Telegraph of March the 7th, 2002, –

Mr Galloway was incandescent. “If I truly was not just an apologist but a mouthpiece for a dictator, whom I was marching in the streets against before Ben Bradshaw had ever been heard of in politics, then I would be dishonourable.”

Well, it looks like Ben Bradshaw was right last year and George Galloway is just that. If a story run yesterday by the Daily Telegraph turns out to be true, he was indeed a mouthpiece for the Iraqi regime, and a well paid one at that – according to documents allegedly recovered from the looted Iraqi foreign office by the newspaper’s reporter David Blair, his annual share of alleged deals with Saddam Hussein’s regime are said to have totalled about �375,000 (the documents are from early 2000).

Mr. Galloway is going to sue the newspaper for libel so an immediate (more politically motivated) expulsion from the Labour party will be difficult given a pending trial. And, of course, the source of the story as well as the circumstances of the documents’ appearance led to some questions about their credibilty. According to the Guardian –

Yesterday, MPs on the Labour left cast doubt about the validity of the documents, and voiced skepticism at the Daily Telegraph having found them in a bombed and looted room. “I think it’s a miraculous set of circumstances that the Daily Telegraph walks through all the rubble of Baghdad and manages to find a file on George Galloway,” said anti-war MP Jeremy Corbyn.

Galloway himself publicly claims that he is being framed by western intelligence services and the conservative media – he told the Daily Telegraph –

“Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?”

Well, who knows? He probably does. And some “intelligence experts” quoted by the Guardian apparently believe they do, too –

Most intelligence experts claimed yesterday that the documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph are probably the real thing.”

Journalists are always happy to have “experts” backing up their claims. It’s a bit like a footnote in a scientific paper – only very few people will actually question the validity of a reference, and even if, who can claim to have the definitive interpretation? And if “most” intelligence experts agree, that inescapably means “some” do not. Sure, these documents could be forged. But is that likely?

Why kill a dead man? Why try to get rid of the “MP for Baghdad Central” now that he lost his constituency (about which he is said to be happy ;-))? Why plant something like this now that the whole thing is over? If the British government is behind this, and all the evidemce is forged, why not find something intimidating before the war to discredit the opponents? The usual conspiracy-theory-suspects would have screamed then as they do now. Why do it in such a way that more people than necessary actually do contemplate about this possibility?

In think, this is a classic example of one of the sociological reasons for conspiracy theories – apparently we (read: human beings) have a tendency not to believe that important things in public life can happen by pure chance, despite our likely overwhelming personal experience that points to the opposite (or even chaos theory). If a reporter accidentally stumbles over a card-board box labeled “Galloway”, this reminds us of a James Bond screenplay. And in a movie, we do know that, things never happen by chance. Maybe we have all watched too many films to quietly accept that in real life even important events can be triggered by a strange coincidence.

Like it or not, sometimes life seems to follow a C-movie screenplay.

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Iraq, US Politics

Pride Goeth Before The Fall

Lillimarleen points to a Salon.com article by Arianna Huffington that begins with this quote from the Bible and deals with the increasing smugness of the Beltway neocons –

“From the moment that statue of Saddam hit the ground, the mood around the Rumsfeld campfire has been all high-fives, I-told-you-sos, and endless smug prattling about how the speedy fall of Baghdad is proof positive that those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were dead wrong.”

Ms Huffington, on the other hand, argues along the lines of the French political scientist Emanuel Todd – whose main argument regarding Iraq is that an increasingly weaker superpower (yes, he is thinking about ths US) chose to rethorically prop up a weak target to demonstrate its seeming military might – by saying that –

“[i]n fact, the speedy fall of Baghdad proves the antiwar movement was dead right.”

Well, I am not too sure about this conclusion – in fact there is no way to tell who was right and who was wrong. There’s enough reality for everyone to say “I told you so.”

So having heard why the anti- as well as the pro-war camp believe their world-wiew is right in light of the quick end to hostilities, let’s do a little thought-experiment: Imagine the war had lasted six months and there would have been thousands, if not tens of thousands more victims on either side, possibly killed by WMDs. Those in the anti-war camp would have said “see, we told you so”, war is horrible and there was no immediate need to let the genie out of the bottle, while the pro-war camp would have claimed “see, we told you so”, Saddam’s regime is in fact dangerous and it was the right decision to go in now. The sad truth for everyone looking for ex-post moral clarity is that right or wrong are just the wrong categories here.

But apart from failing to see this impossibility, Ms Huffington’s article makes the important point that, following the surprisingly quick and relatively unbloody fall of Baghdad, the neoconsevervatives’ “it was easy, we can do it again”-discourse should not remain unchallenged.

Right or wrong, the neoconservative conception of preemption was never just about possible Iraqi-WMDs or about liberation of the Iraqi people. The whole adventure is probably really inspired by the desire to jump-start modern institutions of governance in the Middle East. This can probably be called neo-colonialist. But maybe there is just no other way to increase financial support to unprecedented levels without taking hierarchical control of the regions where the money is spent. Maybe this is the right way to reduce the risk of suicide terrorists exporting their societies’ 30-years-jihad to New York, Paris, or Frankfurt. Maybe there is no other way to solve-slash-control the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of the Arab nations’ tendency to scapegoat Israel for internal problems, continuing mutual violence destroying any remainder of trust between leaders as well as their peoples, and, of course, the fertility competition Jewish settlers and Palestinians are engaging in. Maybe. But probably not. Probably, there is no short cut to modernity.

I have repeatedly stated that I don’t believe their calculation is correct. But it is clearly one possibility. And the relatively swift conquest-slash-liberation has clearly made things significantly easier. Thus, Ms Huffington is clearly right to remind us that – even though things went a lot smoother than, I suppose, even most of the people who bet their careers on this war expected – the difficult times are still ahead. In her words –

“The unintended consequences have barely begun to unfold.”

Didn’t the Shiite opposition boycot yesterday’s meeting with the future Iraqi “viceroy”, Jay Garner? I’m just saying… Remember – pride goeth before the fall.

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compulsory reading, Iraq

More Reality Construction

Sorry I did not post that much interesting stuff this week. But, luckily, I have readers who do.

Sebastian Holsclaw commented on my analysis of Steven denBeste’s theory and points out that it only makes sense as long as one assumes that Germany and France never actually believed they could keep the US from pursuing a violent regime change in Iraq. He writes –

If they believed that Bush could be talked out of it, they could attempt to hide their theoretical arms dealings by making sure that the US did not go into Iraq. This interpretation gains credence because the French could have avoided the damage which has been done to the UN if they had known that the US was going forward against Iraq….

I don’t think preempting a US preemption would have really saved the UN’s authority. But that’s not the problem at hand, of course.

I agree that France and Germany might have believed that there was a possibility to solve the conflict peacefully, let’s say until the end of last year. But I argue they arranged themselves with the seeming inevitability early in 2003, predominantly for populist causes and in total disregard of the Steven denBeste argument.

I have argued before that I believe France and Germany could have stopped the imminent war within the last twenty-four hours of diplomacy in March by signing the British bullet point list, agreeing on a date with Blix, El Baraidei and Blair, and offering serious military and political support in case of a negative Blix-report in, say, July. It would have been very difficult – not to say impossible – to poltically justify the imminent war in light of such a proposition of international support. In case of a negative Blix report in July, the Iraqi weather might not have been ideal for war, especially given that most people believed the resistance would be stronger than it turned out to be. In autumn, it would probably have been too late for a US president who wants to be reelected, plus the problem of fighting during Ramadan. So, from this perspective, France and Germany might have actually have stopped the war by pledging military support, which would have also solved the Steven denBeste problem in my interpretation.

So why didn’t they do it? Some people I told this said they will not have thought about it. That is clearly a possibility, albeit one I tend not to believe, given that there are a lot of professional diplomats working for the Auswaertiges Amt as well as for the Quai d’Orsay.

The explanation I favour is political – all relevant players had invested too much personal political capital in the respective positions to switch in the last minute. Yet another explanation is – they could have cornered Bush in the last hours but decided against it because actually smugly demonstrating how the American eagle could be tied would have proven more complicated for the transatlantic relationship than quietly arguing “we could have”, so do what you think you have to do – and if it goes well, we’re in for a free ride.

See, lots of stuff for future phd candidates to write about ;-). For the rest of us, the comment Mitch left is probably the most appropriate way to think about it –

The whole WMD argument for going into Iraq has become irrelevent at this point. The American public has a very short attention span and will have forgotten all about what the reasons were by the end of the month, perhaps sooner. And they couldn’t care less about what the rest of the world thinks.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, Iraq, oddly enough, US Politics

Reality Construction.

One of the currently more popular theories of US-war-blogosphere regarding the German and French government’s opposition to the war is that they opposed it in order to conceal the extent to which they were involved in the built-up of Iraq’s pool of WMD. This theory has been prominently publicized by Steven DenBeste.

For all those who hold the opinion that no thinking human being could oppose the war for non-selfish reasons, DenBeste’s theory seemed to be a logic explanation of reality. But it has serious flaws. It is certainly not flawed to say that there is a certain possibility that a number of German and French companies (as well as companies from other nations…) sold suspicious stuff to Saddam’s regime pre-, but especially post 1991 in breach of UN sanctions. It is, however, flawed to argue that the French and German government’s opposition to the war must have been informed by this, including the possibility that the governments actually found out about such a breach by companies legally residing in the respective country. In fact, such a conclusion is actually illogical – although chances are, we will never find out, because whatever is or is not reported to be found in Iraq is entirely within the discretion of those in control of the area.

Thus, depending on the US’ government’s intentions of how to involve Europe in the reconstruction of Iraq (that’s what denBeste calls the ‘blackmailing strategy’), the theory could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eamonn Fitzgerald today points to an article in the New York Times that illustrates this rather well – now that the US and the UK are actually in charge of Iraq and will soon be in control of whatever remains of the previous administration, they are unlikely to reveal information that would put blame on themselves for whatever remains of WMDs they may find down there. And I suppose they will find something eventually – they simply have to, after using the Iraqi WMD-threat as a pro-war-discourse element for so long. So it is very likely that the stuff they will acknowledge to have found will be of Old European production – French, I suppose – and, again, the amount of stuff revealed will probably depend on the development of the transatlantic relationship in the coming weeks and months.

Looking at the problem from this perspective, the DenBeste theory does not make much sense. Had Germany’s and France’s governments been involved in the military build-up of Iraq in a way they would have deemed necessary to conceal, the logical policy would have been to be as involved in the invasion as possible in order to retain as much control over what will be found and what will be published now. Being as closely allied to the US as possible is certainly a better way to achieve that than publicly angering the Pentagon’s PR people, don’t you think?

But even though the theory may be wrong, the result may eventually be close to what Steven DenBeste predicted. Some reality will be constructed, even though, in the end, no one will actually know what has been going on.

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almost a diary, Germany, Iraq, oddly enough

To Guard The American Poo

Ok, I know this place is getting progressively mono thematic. And I know there is a lot of note/newsworthy stuff going on that too many people, including myself, are forgetting about because the war in Iraq is requiring too much of our sensory bandwidth. But there’s hope: yesterday morning, for the first time in weeks, if not months, something not Iraq related – a bank-robbery-and-bus-hijacking in Berlin – was the number one news item in German media. But as no one died in Berlin today, Baghdad was back on top by 4pm. Isn’t that sending a message to all hijackers – “listen, perpetrators, the attention threshold has risen significantly. If you still want your fifteen minutes, try at least to hurt someone badly.”

Anyway. I just wanted to show you a funny good-night picture I found on www.totalobscurity.com where I was sent by Lillimarleen. I know what you think: Photoshop. I did too, but totalobscurity.com claims it is a real product…

To Guard The American Poo

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Germany, US Politics, USA

Too Big? Too Small!

I contend that the United States of America might be not powerful enough. And Henry Kissinger – whatever your personal take regarding his personal moral responsibility for doubtful US foreign policies, he is clearly someone with a certain grasp of international realities – would probably agree with me.

After all, it was he who once claimed that a lot of the problems of the 20th century resulted from the problem that Germany, as a nation state, was originally too big (in all relevant measures) to be just one state among European equals but too small to dominate the continent on its own. Seen from this perspective of geo-strategic Realpolitik the violence of the last century seems like a historical trap, almost inevitable – in order to overcome this disequilibrium of power the only possibility was an attempt to expand and dominate, which, upon failure, led to the second possibility. Much of the opposition to the German reunification in France and the United Kingdom was driven by the fear that Germany might inadvertently fall into that trap again.

While I am sure that geo-strategic prowess is likely to create an expansionary tendency, I do not believe that human history follows such gravity-like rules, even if they have been proposed by Henry Kissinger. However, assuming for a moment that the model he suggested in that quote were correct, what would his theory tell us about the current global situation? It would tell us that, on a global scale, the USA could be the 21st century’s Germany, however benign or not her intentions of global governance under a Pax Americana may be. It seems self-evident to me that –

The USA is too big not to influence every other state on this planet while she is too small to dominate it entirely.

But no one can wish for another Wilhelmine experience on a global scale. So let’s just hope that Henry was not entirely right.

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compulsory reading, Iraq, oddly enough, Political Theory, US Politics

A Tale of Perle and Pirls

So Baghdad sort of fell today. The Iraqi regime seems to have disappeared overnight. This is clearly a very good thing. I still believe that this war was unnecessary as well as unwise and I still believe that it is going to be far more costly – monetarily as well as in lives and in terms of international security – than the US administration seems to have reckoned in their calculations. And it is not over yet.

But I am ready to admit that I was moved by the Iraqi people welcoming the US troops – and I felt reminded of the tales my parents told me about US soldiers handing out chocolate to starving German toddlers after WW2. Whatever the regime that will follow on the US military government will be like, whether authoritarian, in order to handle the ethnic clashes and distributive conflicts that will in all likelihood arise now, or possibly truly democratic – as Paul Wolfowitz said today, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, a government of the Iraqi people, by the Iraqi people, for the Iraqi people – life in Iraq will in all likelihood be better in the future than it was in the past. And not just because of the “tax refunds” some Iraqis claimed today in the form of previously administration-owned furniture.

However, for the time being, I still do not share the US neoconservatives’ assessment that the American Prometheus can indeed bring good governance and enlightenment to the middle east. Certainly not within a few years. And that’s a huge part of the problem. The Saudis welcomed the US in 1990. Four years later, they were already regarded as semi-occupiers of Islamic holy land. Candy for kids is not going to modernize the region by itself. Just as Brad DeLong notes today –

… we could still turn operational victory into strategic defeat, and harm the national security of the United States. The story the world needs to tell itself is that the United States overthrew a cruel dictator and gave Iraqis a much better life, not the out-of-control United States bombed and invaded a small country because President Bush wanted to get his hands on its oil.

I suppose, there is indeed a tiny, tiny chance that social modernisation by tank could work. And it remains tiny, even though the professionalism of the allied troops that made this war a short campaign without too many civilian victims has clearly increased it significantly. But however minuscule it is, the US has – against the will of many – committed itself and the rest of “the west” to embark on this adventure.

I contend I do not believe it will work. But this is a problem where I would love to be proven wrong in the end. If all goes well, I am hereby inviting Richard Perle to publicly lecture me in, say, 15 years about the right attitude in international relations with the following fable. It was, interestingly enough, part of the recently published “The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study” (PIRLS) which assessed a range of reading comprehension strategies of ten year olds in 35 countries. I thought about adapting it to “Weasel heralds the War!” but then decided against it – after all, it is a fable that is very likely to remain just that.

Hare Heralds the Earthquake
by Rosalind Kerven

There was once a hare who was always worrying. “Oh dear,” he muttered all day long, “oh deary, deary me.” His greatest worry was that there might be an earthquake. “For if there was,” he said to himself, “whatever would become of me?”

He was feeling particularly anxious about this one morning, when suddenly an enormous fruit fell down from a nearby tree – CRASH! – making the whole earth shake. The hare leaped up. “Earthquake!” he cried. And with that he raced across the fields to warn his cousins.

“Earthquake! Run for your lives!” All the hares left the fields and madly followed him. They raced across the plains, through forests and rivers and into the hills warning more cousins as they went. “Earthquake! Run for your lives!” All the hares left the rivers and plains, the hills and forests and madly followed. By the time they reached the mountains, ten thousand hares pounded like thunder up the slopes. Soon they reached the highest peak. The first hare gazed back to see if the earthquake was coming any closer, but all he could see was a great swarm of speeding hares. Then he looked in front but all he could see was more mountains and valleys and, far in the distance, the shining blue sea.

As he stood there panting, a lion appeared. “What’s happening?” he asked. “Earthquake, earthquake!” babbled all the hares. “An earthquake?” asked the lion. “Who has seen it? Who has heard it?” “Ask him, ask him!” cried all the hares, pointing to the first one. The lion turned to the hare.

“Please Sir,” said the hare shyly, “I was sitting quietly at home when there was a terrible crash and the ground shook and I knew it must be a quake, Sir, so I ran as fast as I could to warn all the others to save their lives.” The lion looked at the hare from his deep, wise eyes.

“My brother, would you be brave enough to show me where this dreadful disaster happened?”

The hare didn’t really feel brave enough at all, but he felt he could trust the lion. So, rather timidly, he led the lion back down the mountains and the hills, across the rivers, plains, forests and fields, until at last they were back at his home.

“This is where I heard it, Sir.” The lion gazed around – and very soon he spotted the enormous fruit which had fallen so noisily from its tree. He picked it up in his mouth, climbed onto a rock and dropped it back to the ground. CRASH! The hare jumped. “Earthquake! Quickly – run away – it’s just happened again!”

But suddenly he realized that the lion was laughing. And then he saw the fruit rocking gently by his feet. “Oh,” he whispered, “it wasn’t really an earthquake after all, was it?” “No,” said the lion, “it was not and you had no need to be afraid.” “What a silly hare I’ve been!”

The lion smiled kindly. “Never mind, little brother. All of us – even I – sometimes fear things we cannot understand.” And with that he padded back to the ten thousand hares that were still waiting on top of the mountain, to tell them that it was now quite safe to go home.

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