Lindsey's Blog

Spinning out of control

2009-07-14T14:08:00.007+01:00

The fall out from the eight deaths of British soldiers at the end of last week goes on. The debate about what the war is for, and whether it is the right thing to do, is at the centre of British politics, and looks like staying there for the time being. The worst argument I have heard is that it would be a betrayal of those who have already died to withdraw the troops. What a terrible justification for a war, which would logically mean opposing the armistice in 1918 because it would be a betrayal of the millions who had died.

This 'I've started so I'll finish' argument was also deployed in Iraq as the war and occupation became increasingly bogged down, defending a rotten and unpopular government, and facing growing resistance from a population suffering from the occupation.

Sound familiar? It doesn't stop them repeating the same errors in Afghanistan. The politicians are increasingly calling for more troops or more equipment. They sense the unpopularity of the war but don't have the honesty to call for a withdrawal. Instead, they peddle the line that a few thousand more troops or more helicopters will make all the difference. They will not admit that this war has failed in every one of its aims.

It was originally launched by George Bush and Tony Blair in order to capture Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Its other justification was humanitarian intervention, including Laura Bush and Cherie Blair calling for war to help liberate women. None of these aims has been even remotely successful. Bush had to stop talking about bin Laden in the later years of his presidency because it drew attention to his failure.

So now we have another series of spurious arguments: that we are protecting democracy in Afghanistan or stopping terrorism on the streets of Britain. These arguments might have more purchase if the war were a few months old, but it has been going on for eight years. Eight years where the Taliban has emerged stronger, where the war has spread and where the connection between terrorist attacks in Britain and the prosecution of the war on terror is palpable.

This is a terrible dilemma for the enthusiasts for the war. They really have no coherent argument. So they resort to exhortation and desperate hope that it will turn out better than they fear. Having lost in Iraq, Britain and America have to win over Afghanistan. But they aren't.

Hence the onslaught of spin, calls to patriotism and (apparently) the wearing of black ties by Sky presenters when the 8 soldiers died. Hence also the Guardian poll which showed a narrow majority opposed to the war, and a total of 56% who want the troops out by the end of the year, headlined as 'Public support for war is firm'. Another poll, from ITN which puts support for troops out at 59%, is described by Guardian political editor, Patrick Wintour, as 'contradict[ing] a Newsnight Guardian poll...showing increased support for the war. '

No it didn't...both showed a majority for troops out. And I reckon that's firm support.

The week the 'good war' turned bad

2009-07-11T16:33:00.005+01:00

It is said by the Guardian that the British government is very worried that the war in Afghanistan is becoming more unpopular. I don't know why ministers are surprised. Yesterday
the number of British troops killed there surpassed the total deaths of british troops in Iraq and is now, if the past week is anything to go by, rapidly heading to the 200 mark. Nearly all these deaths have occurred in the past three years, since the British went into Helmand province.

Indeed the deaths last year were only slightly lower than the most lethal year of the conflict in Iraq.

Defence Secretary John Reid said when he sent the troops in that he hoped they could leave again without a shot being fired.In this past long week in Afghanistan British soldiers were being killed at the rate of one day and where suddenly the death toll over one 24 hour period went up to eight. It adds up to 15 troops killed in the past ten days.

These figures have sobered up even the most gung ho media coverage, which has gone from triumph to tears in just a couple of weeks. Still, the banality of some of the reporting really takes your breath away. The worst day ever, they say. The bloodiest day. Agreed, for the British army. But maybe the Afghans feel a little differently after seeing film and photos of survivors from the airstrike on a village in May which killed over 140 people.
And here's the rub. This is a war, where Afghans will fight back against British or any other Nato troops who attack them. This is the 'good war' which has turned bad.

It seems to surprise some journalists. The embedded BBC reporter talked the other day about the Taliban standing their ground and fighting, as though this were somehow not playing by the Queensberry rules. There are repeated complaints that the Taliban use roadside bombs which are hidden. Yet this is an admission that the British army, one of the best financed and best equipped in the world, cannot deal with bombs made with mobile phones and improvised explosives from gas canisters.

Calls come from politicians for better protection, more money spent on vehicles and body armour. Of course it is hypocritical for politicians who bang the drum about the war to then fail to will the finances to pay for equipment. But this is not the central issue. The war is failing and will continue to fail because it is not about a noble cause, the protection of the Afghan people or _
most bizarrely _the protection of people in Britain.

It is about US and British control of a region which has long been the subject of inter imperialist rivalry. The Taliban are not the mortal enemies of the US _ their representatives visited Texas a decade ago to discuss an oil pipeline through the country, and as recently as last year there were secret talks with the Taliban to try to achieve peace.

The renewed fighting means another strategy is being pursued. In the course of that the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and the defence minister Bob Ainsworth, make a series of justifications which are straightforward lies. They say they are defending the Afghan government, but it is one of the most corrupt in the world. They say they are helping the Afghan people, but ten times as much is spent on military in the country as on reconstruction.
And they say they are protecting people here, all the while that they recognise the likelihood of future terrorism being fuelled by this war.

Gordon Brown said yesterday that 'there is a chain of terror that runs from the mountains and towns of Afghanistan to the streets of Britain'. Yet it is the war on terror that has increased terrorism and more and more people see Brown's arguments for the self serving ones that they are.

It is striking how, even among the friends and families of dead and wounded soldiers, there is growing unease about the war, and some outright calls for the troops to come home. They are right. Those who call for more troops to go there, or for more money to be spent, are not helping the troops but doing them a disservice.

Vietnam was the same: more troops were poured in, more politicians declared that this was the only way to maintain democracy and freedom. But the Americans lost, and who now justifies that war?

History will look back at the terrible cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and wonder what on earth the major powers thought they were doing in the 21st century creating a wasteland in one of the poorest countries in the world _ and why people put up with it so long. It's time to organise.

Protest: Monday 13th July, 5-7pm, Downing Street.

It's the war what's done it

2009-07-08T15:19:00.002+01:00

The connection between the Afghan war and prejudice against Muslims here is getting stronger. One of the main arguments put by defence minister Bob Ainsworth _ the latest in a line of Labour cheerleaders for the military and all its works _ is that this war is necessary to protect us in Britain from terrorist attack.

Think about it. There were no terrorist attacks in Britain before the war on terror began in 2001. There were no attacks before the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. In other words, any attacks on Britain took place after we were part of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Surely that points to the fact that the wars helped to worsen the terrorism, not the other way round.

It's impossible to list all that Britain and the US have done in the past eight years to exacerbate this threat of terrorism, but they include bombing and killing innocent civilians on a horrific scale; the torture at Baghram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay; support for the Afghan government, one of the most corrupt in the world; the concoction of evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; the vote for a war which the vast majority of the world's population opposed.

No wonder that some people around the world want to respond, in however misguided a way, by hitting back. In response, the level of repression in Britain and the US has increased. The terror laws are far more drastic than anything passed during the IRA bombing campaigns. There is growing evidence of torture, the latest and shocking case described by David Davies in parliament being where the British secret services effectively outsourced arrest and torture of a suspect to their counterparts in Pakistan.

And the latest calls to 'ban the burkha' are a direct attempt to link the war in Afghanistan (where most women wear burkhas) to Muslims here (where hardly any women wear the burkha). There is something of a deluge of stories about attacks on Muslims: an attack on an Islamic charity shop in Glasgow, on a mosque in Greenwich, an anti Muslim demo in Birmingham.

Most horrifying is the story of the Egyptian woman in Germany who took her Islamophobic neighbour to court, where he produced a knife and killed her. Her husband was shot by a security guard when he tried to protect her.

The equation of Muslim with extremist with terrorist is the one which creates an atmosphere where these vile attacks are able to flourish. Muslims become 'the enemy within' and become fair game for every racist and fascist. And the war in Afghanistan is fuelling these ideas.

Unrepentant empire

2009-07-07T16:22:00.006+01:00

The long shadow of the Iraq war still hangs over British politics.

Instead of assuaging worries about the government's role in the war, and drawing a line under it, Gordon Brown's announcement of an inquiry into the war rekindled all the opposition and discontent which led to the mass movement against the war in the first place.

Brown's own goal is quite remarkable. Just days after committing to greater transparency and democracy he announced an inquiry in secret, which would not apportion blame and would be conducted by four knights and a baroness.

One of the knights, Sir John Chilcot, sat on the Butler inquiry - widely regarded as a whitewash; another, Sir Martin Gilbert, historian of Winston Churchill, said George Bush and Tony Blair might be compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Churchill; a third, Sir Laurence Freedman, wrote Blair's Chicago speech on humanitarian intervention in 1999.

Hardly an unbiased bunch. Even Butler has now said that Brown is putting his interests before national interest. The military top brass have complained, and the Tories have tabled a parliamentary debate. None of these people objected to the war before it happened. But that
was then.

Why are they making a fuss now? First, Gordon Brown has hung on as prime minister but he has no real power. His government is at an all time low, with disastrous European parliament election results, a rash of ministers sacked or having resigned over the expenses scandal and
strong odds on a Tory government within the year. The second reason is the damage the war did to the establishment. The generals are worried that the military has been permanently harmed by the war and that a secret inquiry will do nothing to redress this.

The decision by parliament to vote for war in March 2003 produced contempt for politicians which only increased with the expenses scandal. So the Iraq war marks a political failure in Britain as well as in the Middle East.

This matters because the imperialist project remains intact, despite the departures of Bush and Blair. That was clear from Barack Obama's speech in Cairo last month. It was well received in some quarters and was heralded as a new beginning. Some of it had an appeal. After years of Bush promoting militant Christianity and talking of crusades, Obama's quoting from the Koran, defending women wearing the hijab and talking about the Muslim contribution to civilisation and learning was a welcome change.

However, the speech beyond the soundbites is a rather different matter. Obama mostly reiterated US policy formulated by Bush and Bill Clinton before him. He made it clear that "violent extremism" was the cause of many of the problems between the US and the "Muslim world" and that this justified the war in Afghanistan.

He stated, "America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable." Obama called for a two-state solution and criticised the settlements, but failed to mention, let alone condemn, the bombardment of Gaza which killed more than 1,300 in January. While his speech is credited with forcing an acknowledgement of a Palestinian state from right wing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel still proceeds with its settlements.

Obama also dealt with nuclear weapons, women's rights, democracy and economic development. Here the message was clear: the Middle East and south Asia could benefit from the modernity and free markets which the US is so eager to spread round the world.

He referred to misunderstandings between the US and Muslims. Strange that these "misunderstandings" began when the US started to take a greater interest in the oil-rich region of the Middle East.

US troops remain in Iraq and are being poured into Afghanistan. Obama claimed that the US had no desire for a permanent presence or bases in these countries. But there are very few countries invaded or occupied by the US where it has not maintained bases, and there are a string of bases across the Middle East and Asia.

There are now more British troops in Afghanistan than there were in Iraq. The rate of deaths of British soldiers there is increasing. But the war is not being won, with talk of it becoming a new 30-year war or a new Vietnam. The legacy of Iraq weighs heavily on the British ruling class and hampers its ability to fight this and future wars. Hence the need for closure on Iraq and why many top military figures and Tories are critical of Brown's proposal.

Brown is too weak not to make some concessions on this. Iraq just won't go away, and now we have a year's inquiry to remind people what their opposition to the war was all about.

Shutting the door on the poor

2009-06-29T16:24:00.002+01:00

After 'British jobs for British workers' we now have 'British homes for British workers'_brought to us yet again by a Labour government. Labour is claiming that it will give more local rights to people waiting on the housing list to get homes. Ministers want to allay fears, they say, that local people are being by passed by 'immigrants with large families [who] vault to the top of the council house list', as it's so quaintly put in the Daily Mail.

This is another example of Labour trying to appease its serious disgruntled voting base by aping the BNP. What won't be on offer, we can be sure, is the emergency housebuilding programme which could deal with the root of the problem.

Here are two statistics which tell us what that problem is: there are 1 million fewer council and housing association houses and flats than there were 30 years ago; and in that same 30 years the government has siphoned a total of £68.6 billion from council house rents and sales.

That has created the greatest housing crisis since the Second World War. The right to buy council houses has led to houses being allocated on the basis of the market - who can pay - rather than who most needs a house, a principle first developed around 100 years ago. So housing built for the poor and needy no longer is allocated on the basis of need.

And given there are a lot of poor and needy around - after all inequality has grown over the same period- it stands to reason that with far fewer resources many more will lose out. At present there are 1.6 million households (around 4 million people) on waiting lists, with only 170,000 homes available a year. Of these, it is estimated only 5 to 7 % go to 'immigrant families' (which doesn't include asylum seekers, who have no right to council housing).

As usual with this government, there is little change on offer. But this isn't about solving the housing crisis, it's about telling Labour supporters on the doorsteps that Labour is doing something to be tough on immigrants, so that it can compete with the BNP.

This racist bidding war is taking place across Europe around the Euro elections. That champion of women's liberation Nicolas Sarkozy is attacking Muslim women's right to wear veils and his counterpart in Italy has opined that Milan looks like Africa (really?). Racist scapegoating is the order of the day. On Friday I was a speaker at the launch of a new campaign to defend Muslims, called Kafa _Enough in Arabic.

Personally I already feel I've had more than enough of this racism. Time to do something about it.

Deeds not words

2009-06-04T13:07:00.002+01:00

Anyone expecting Barack Obama's speech 'to the Muslim world' to really alter the terms of debate round US role in the world looks like being disappointed. Obama makes some of the right noises: he greets the audience with 'assalaamu alaykum'; he praises advances in Muslim culture, science and education; and he quotes from the Koran.

But the core of the speech, carefully written and balanced by probably an army of speechwriters and diplomats, reflects the casual rejection of the concerns of millions _ both Muslim and non Muslims _who opposed George Bush and who continue to oppose Obama insofar as he follows Bush's policy.

The issues addressed are laid out in logical order: wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Israel and Palestine; nuclear weapons; democracy; religious freedom; women's rights and economic development and opportunity. It might seem a bit rich to many Egyptians, and those from elsewhere in the region, for Obama to stress 'all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind...confidence in the rule of law..government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people..the freedom to live as you choose'. After all they live in a country where democracy campaigners, lawyers, strikers ..and yes, Muslim activists, are regularly imprisoned, repressed or tortured under the rule of the arch ally of the US, Hosni Mubarak. Which rather helps to put into perspective religious freedom.

In every instance Obama is understanding, thoughtful..but defends the status quo. Western economic development is hailed as the way forward, without any acknowledgement that capitalist economic expansion has left whole parts of the world behind, not least in the oil rich Middle East.

Education for girls and more money for development are promised, but so they have been before, most publicly when, after the invasion of Afghanistan which cost 10,000 Afghan lives, Tony Blair promised that, 'we will not walk away' from the problems of rebuilding the country. Now, tens times as much is spent on the military in Afghanistan as on reconstruction _ and most of that never benefits ordinary Afghans, who live in one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

There is no mention of the history of the US and its allies, in backing Israel in the Middle East, in carving up Asia and the Middle East as part of the western empires.

All the problems between the US and the Muslim world are explained as 'misunderstandings', or as due to the actions of 'violent extremists.' This doesn't explain why 'misunderstandings' have grown so substantially since the US became a major imperial power during the 20th century. The lack of empathy is shared not just by Muslim dominated countries but throughout Latin America, much of Asia and Africa and indeed in much of Europe. And where did the 'violent extremists' come from? Forty years ago, the main US enemy was the Vietnamese. Anyone who organises against the US is dubbed an extremist. 'Islamic extremists' have only developed since the increasingly aggressive foreign policy carried out by the US in the Middle East and south Asia.

The speech may contain fine words, but it promises nothing new that can address the real concerns of those who have heard US promises before, but who have seen very different consequences. Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and an end to the arming and funding of Israel, would do more to address these concerns than a thousand speeches.

French lessons

2009-04-07T14:06:00.002+01:00

I feel I've seen enough riot police in the past week to last me a lifetime. Strasbourg, where we went for the demo against Nato, was full of them _ complete with pads, shields, helmets, truncheons and an assortment of weapons. Last Saturday the city centre had police at every corner and a constant parade of police bikes, vans, water cannon and what looked like armoured cars. The smell of tear gas was in the air from early morning.

The assembly point for the demonstration was a car park on an island in the Rhine _ sounds idyllic but actually an industrial estate accessible only by bridges which were of course blocked by riot police. There was no local population to witness our march nor was it remotely near where the Nato summit was being held in the centre of town. It has to rank as the worst ever demonstration route I have been on.

Things kicked off early with various blockades which were pretty successful in delaying the start of the summit. Then it all moved to the bridges and the border with Germany. Around 7000 demonstrators assembled on the German side but were denied entry. As the morning wore on plumes of smoke started rising as the border post, an Ibis hotel and various other buildings were set on fire. The demo eventually marched to a blockaded bridge, turned round and was promptly attacked with tear gas.

This went on for hours, the demonstration was broken up and there was constant fighting between police and the Black Block. Bridges stayed blocked for hours, the police confiscated all banners (including our lovely new 'Jobs not Bombs' one) and there was absolutely no public transport so we got back to the city centre at 8pm.

A lot of criticism, from media and police but also from some march organisers, was reserved for the Black Block. Now I don't have a lot of time for them: I object to them throwing stones in a way which draws other demonstrators into being caught between them and the police; I don't see it's too clever to smash up telephones or bus shelters in working class areas; and I have a number of political criticisms of their ideas and behaviour. But it is also clear that they attract young people who are fed up with capitalism and want change.

The problem is that unless those criticising them can also attract those young people, they are in trouble. And the problem with the organisation of the main demo and the conference that went with it was that it didn't have a lot to appeal to those young people or other like them. The French authorities prohibited a march in the city centre but there didn't appear to be a serious political campaign against it. The conference organisers vetoed the attendance of a representative of the Lebanese resistance.

The movement has to try to be militant as well as broad. Incidentally, broad means engaging with wide sections of those who make up the oppressed and exploited, including the large Kurdish population of Strasbourg, and the Arabs and Africans who make up a big part of the population of the housing estates we limped through after the march. They were almost totally absent.

Here in Britain, the largely south Asian Muslims have been part of our mobilisations from the beginning. But here too, the police are resorting increasingly to repressive tactics, as we saw on our Gaza demos in January and again last week round the G20. True they don't have tear gas, but they are much more prone to using their truncheons and their practice of 'kettling' effectively deems demonstrations illegal. The death of Ian Tomlinson, last week reported as due to natural causes, now looks increasingly suspicious. I have been on two demos where people were killed _ in Red Lion Square in 1974 where Kevin Gately died, and in Genoa in 2001 where Carlo Guiliani died. I was ill in 1979 or otherwise would have been on a demonstration when the police locked down the largely Asian area of Southall to allow 100 fascists to march and where Blair Peach, a neighbour and comrade, was killed.

In all those cases, it was obvious by police behaviour and equipment that something terrible was likely to happen. And it was again last week. Civil liberties are under more threat than at any time I can remember.

Two torture Stories

2009-02-27T11:44:00.004Z

Another week, another torture story. In fact this week two torture stories.
Binyam Mohammed came back from Guantanamo with a dignified statement but a terrible tale of genital torture in Morocco courtesy of the US. And defence minister John Hutton has announced today that very sorry but yes Britain was involved in extraordinary rendition of two prisoners to the US who have now ended up in prison back in Afghanistan.

If you're one of the few still wondering whether you can believe a
word this government says, Jack Straw has just made your life easier
- by banning publication of the Cabinet minutes of its meetings in the
run up to the Iraq war.

You wonder what conflict of interests lies behind this _ after all J
Straw Justice Minister was J Straw Foreign Secretary back in those
dark days of 2003. What does he have to hide? What does Peter (now
Lord) Goldsmith, who mysteriously seemed to change his mind on the
legality of the war in the course of two weeks in March 2003, have to
hide? Or Tony Blair, rewarded for his role in supporting George Bush
in the war by becoming the 'quartet's' envoy for peace in the Middle
East?

Even if there is nothing to hide, and that's certainly possible given
the supine and gullible nature of the average Cabinet minister, what
an insult that Straw is hiding behind the 30 year rule on the
disclosure of minutes. He claims disclosure would damage the ability
of ministers to have serious discussions on such topics. More likely
it would highlight the lack of discussion -let alone debate -in
Cabinet.

The problem for Straw and his colleagues is that 2 million people who
marched in 2003 rejected the arguments for war, so did the vast
majority of people in Britain, yet the politicians (with some
honourable exceptions) forced us to go to war. We are all still living
with the consequences: the rendition and torture, the devastation of
Iraq, Israel's aggression, and the attacks on civil liberties here at
home.

Latest of these was the leaked document saying that the new definition
for an extremist would be someone who supported resistance abroad.
That's a hell of a lot of people. Others might say that the definition
of extremsist are those dogmatic enough to keep spending money on
weapons of mass destruction when the world is in its worst economic
crisis for 70 years; who recklessly allow the torture of young men;
and consistently support a government bent on attacking thode they
drove of their land in the first place.

Oh, that would be the British government then. Which is where we
began.

Obama will be making his first visit to Britain on April 1/2 as
part of the summit of G20 leaders.

Is the gilt coming off the gingerbread with Obama? There is some
evidence that on questions of war and imperialism it is. First it was
Gaza, an operation green lighted in the last dark days of the Bush
presidency in order at least partly to tie Obama's hands. It seemed to
succeed, with Obama's inauguration speech failing to include the words
'Israel' or 'Gaza'. The rightward shift illustrated with the Israeli
elections should in theory lead to conflict with the US, but both the
nature of Obama's advisers, including of course his secretary of
state, Hillary Clinton, who is pro Israel and anti Iran, make that
less likely.

Then there is Afghanistan. Rising death toll (up by 40 percent among
Afghans in the last year), growing discontent among Afghans, a
collapsing and corrupt government. Obama's solution is 17,000 extra US
troops and the increased bombing of Pakistan by drones.

There is, it is true, some excitement about possible diplomatic
engagement in Syria or Iran. But the closure of Guantanamo is being
compensated for by expanding the Baghram base in Afghanistan. All good
reasons to demonstrate on 1 and 2 April. At least it'll give them
something to talk about in Cabinet.

From liberation to warlordism, the west's plan for Afghanistan

2008-10-14T10:50:00.002+01:00

The headline of Max Hastings' article in today's Guardian reads 'Afghanistan's best hope is for controlled warlordism'. What an admission of defeat compared to the supposedly high ideals which accompanied the bombing and occupation of the country seven years ago. Then it was promises of democracy, modernisation and women's liberation. Now it's hanging on to what remains of the shambles the western intervention has become.

The problem is there already is a government of warlords, put in place and backed by the west. Corruption is rife in Afghanistan and goes right to the top of the Karzai government. This, and the increasing dependence on the opium crop, and the refugee problem, and the continued appalling situation of women, were all tolerated just as long as the Nato forces looked like they were on top.

Now they don't and there has been a change in western opinion. Already diplomats and top military have admitted the war can't be won and they must talk to the Taliban. Now the Financial Times editorial has joined the assessment. It's clear that everyone has given up on Karzai but no one knows what to put in his government's place, apart from a 'benevolent' dictator. And the economic crisis now hitting the world must raise questions about bankrolling failed wars and occupations when governments are having to bankroll the banks.

So more misery for Afghans, and Pakistanis. And that has a knock on here. Stop the War in Scotland are holding a protest to complain at the treatment of Afghan and Pakistani travellers going through Glasgow airport. They are often held 2-3 hours there, then asked to go for further questioning by Special Branch. Questions range from 'do you know where Osama bin Laden is ' to 'do you pray' to 'which mosque do you go to'.

It seems a bit unfair on Afghans travelling home for weddings or family visits to be asked the whereabouts of bin Laden, a question to which the world's biggest surveillance systems and agencies cannot find an answer. But hey. Tens of thousands have died, hundreds of thousands are refugees following the war over an issue which had nothing to do with ordinary Afghans. Why break the habit?

Losing the war in Afghanistan

2008-10-07T14:02:00.000+01:00

Gordon brown called it ‘the most noble cause of the 21^st century.’ But today the commander of UK troops in Afghanistan has presented a rather different assessment. According to Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith ‘we’re not going to win this war’ and that talks with the Taliban are the way forward.

His remarks follow on from leaked remarks attributed to the British ambassador in Kabul, the exotically named Sherard Cowper-Coles, that foreign troops were part of the problem and that what was needed was an ‘acceptable dictator.’

It’s seven years tomorrow since the British government, along with the US and its other allies launched the war on Afghanistan _ the first war in the war on terror. An estimated 10,000 died during that war, but since then things have gone even further downhill. Many thousands more have died, there is a mass refugee problem, there has been virtually no reconstruction, despite the extravagant promises of Tony Blair seven years ago that ‘we will not walk away.’

No wonder dictatorship is the favoured British option. The Karzai government is corrupt and holds little sway in the country. Free elections would not produce a pro western government. So what’s needed is someone who runs the country on behalf of the occupiers.

What a lesson in humanitarian intervention Afghanistan is. No women’s liberation…no reconstruction..no peace….no democracy…dependence on the opium crop. It’s like a Brecht play except there’s no interval and no end.

The blame game

2007-08-16T13:27:00.000+01:00

When the going gets tough, blame Iran. Defence Minister Des Browne told the Guardian that he had 'no doubt' that the Taliban was getting weapons from Iran. George Bush is poised to announce that the US is to treat Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a 'global terrorist' organisation. Deaths in Iraq are now routinely blamed on Iranian weapons, expertise and general interference in the region.

You wouldn't think that it was the US which has lost nearly 200,000 weapons, including lorry loads of AK47s, in Iraq. Nor would it be diplomatic to point out that blame for the siting of weapons in Afghanistan or Iraq can be more justly be laid at the door of the US or Britain than pinned on Iran, which cooperated with the US in 2001 over the launch of the war on terror and played no role in the Coalition of the Willing back in 2003.

But being wrong has never stopped Browne and his ilk from continuing merrily on regardless of facts which contradict them at every turn. His predecessor, John Reid, did after all predict not more than 18 months ago that British soldiers might well leave from their present tour in Helmand without a shot being fired in anger. Some prediction. Seven soldiers have been killed there in the past ten days.

Exit strategies are daily put forward for Iraq but none of them comes to very much. There are still troops in Basra palace, the central base in the city which is under attack constantly _ 300 rockets have been fired at it over the past two months_ despite predictions that all 5000 British troops would by now be at the airport base on the edge of the city.

Despite the very strong impression given by the British media that most violent attacks are between different groups of Iraqis, in Basra 90 percent of attacks are against British troops.

As Iraq proves intractable so Afghanistan is moving up the political and military agenda. There are now more troops there than in Iraq and the rate of deaths is increasing with over 70 in total dead. There is growing Afghan disquiet about civilian casualties, mainly caused by US airstrikes.

It must be slowly dawning on Des Browne, let alone the more perceptive Cabinet members, that not only are all options in Iraq fraught with difficulties but that their troubles will not end there.
Despite talk of a turning point and attempts to blame Iran or Pakistan for the problems, this looks like a war which will get worse before it gets better. It has all the makings of a long, colonial war with increasing casualties, loss of support from the local population and a growing sense domestically that it is unwinnable.

In Germany next month there is a major demo against the Afghan war, and there is political discontent in countries as far apart as South Korea, Canada and the Netherlands. Washington's response is typical: dragoon as many countries as possible to fight there, blame the Iraqis for not being able to run their own country, and step up the rhetoric against Iran.

Meanwhile Des Browne tells us that any 'drawdown' of troops in Iraq depends on agreement with the US. No change there then.

One out, all out

2007-04-27T12:04:00.000+01:00

Even the Daily Telegraph is saying Prince Harry shouldn't go to Iraq. It is too dangerous for the third in line to the throne to risk capture at the hands of the Iraqis. But surely if it's too dangerous for Prince Harry, it's too dangerous for the rest of the British army as well.

Testimony from British troops returning from Iraq paints a very gloomy picture. Private Paul Barton, who returned from his second tour of duty this week, spoke out almost immediately on his return, telling his local Tamworth newspaper: 'Basra is lost. They are in control now. It's a full-scale riot and the government are just trying to save face.' Barton was one of the soldiers based in the Shatt al-Arab hotel, now handed over to the Iraqi army. The Ministry of Defence quietly announced some months ago that the hotel and another base in central Basra were two of the three most dangerous bases in Iraq.

Barton confirms that: 'of 40 tents in the base only five were left at the end of his tour of duty. 'We were just sitting ducks...Towards the end of January to March, it was like a siege mentality. We were getting mortared every hour of the day. We were constantly being fired at. We basically didn't sleep for six months. You couldn't rest. Psychologically, it wore you down.' His conclusion is 'We have overstayed our welcome now....We should pull out and call it quits.'

Incredibly, this information - which tallies with much information from Iraqis over recent months- did not appear in the British press until Barton went public. Yet British journalists and politicians have visited Basra in recent months. The media, which cheered this war to the echo and the politicians who voted for the war, are remarkably quiet.

Instead, they throw up their hands and say, we must stay because to go will make things worse. But the presence of the troops is making things worse. Many of the assassinations and killings taking place in Iraq today are carried out by government backed death squads - that's the government supported by George Bush and Tony Blair and propped up by the occupation troops. The US is cementing sectarian division - quite literally with the building of a wall in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Adhamiya.

The wall and others like it are described as 'gated communities' for all the world as though they were properties on an Islington estate agent's books. They have more in common with the 'apartheid wall' erected in the Occupied Territories to keep the Palestinians penned in, and have the same purpose - to isolate areas of resistance.

They are part of George Bush's 'surge' which - as with every other part of his strategy in Iraq - is not going to plan. The US and British military death toll is rising, with nearly 100 soldiers being killed in the first three weeks of April. The Iraqi death toll is rising much faster, with more than 160 killed with a single car bomb last week.

In the US, the Democrats have passed a bill in Congress called for withdrawal to begin this October. They know that the war is lost and is deeply unpopular with the majority in the US. George Bush is threatening to veto the bill. Meanwhile in Britain little stirs. Parliament says nothing on this central issue, and MPs drift towards the election of a new prime minister
seemingly in a trance.

Time for Harry to stay home but time too for a surge for peace which brings all the troops home.

The missing figures

2007-02-26T19:50:00.000Z

How can there be such a great discrepancy between the estimates of organisers of demonstrations and those of the police? Last weekend it happened again: the police put out a figure of 4-5,000, which they graciously upped to 10,000 by the end of the march. The organisers estimated 80-100,000.

You might say, you pay your money and take your choice. Except much of the coverage simply took the police figure ( and often the early figure) and didn't print the organisers' estimate. When that happens it begins to look like deliberate skewing of the figures to minimise the impact of the anti war movement. After all, if you really thought only 5,000 people turned out to oppose Trident and call for troops out of Iraq, then you would conclude the movement had declined so dramatically that it wasn't worth doing anything.

Whereas, back in the real world, most people on the march thought it was the largest for some time. Stop the War, CND and BMI gave out something like 5000 placards between them. Probably there were several thousand more placards from a variety of points of view on the march. Look at the pictures. The large majority of marchers were not carrying placards, hence the march was many times bigger than the 10,000 supposedly on it. Add to that a 20,000 capacity for Trafalgar Square (and it was full for 2 and a half hours with many people leaving or never getting to the square), the large number of coaches, the people still stuck in Hyde Park two hours after the front of the march left.

You figure it out. Even the police have admitted today that their estimate is now 20,000, which makes you wonder how they do it and why it takes so long. With all these revisions upwards, perhaps in a few days they'll agree with our figure.

Not because it's safe, but because it's dangerous

2007-02-22T20:24:00.000Z

Lord Hurd (originally plain Douglas Hurd, old Etonian and one time Tory cabinet minister) wants an inquiry into what went wrong when we decided to go to war in Iraq. Doesn't he know? It really isn't very difficult. Two million people in Britain got it at the time, when they marched through London demanding don't attack Iraq. They joined more than 100,000 others in Scotland and elsewhere.

Add to that 3 million in Spain, 2 million in Italy, 1 million in New York and millions more round the world. That's plenty of people who saw the war would make things worse, more unstable, more prone to terrorism.

The people who didn't get it sat in Westminster, the majority of MPs of both main parties who accepted lies, spin, false information and nods and winks about the 'intelligence' on weapons of mass destruction. The only inquiry should be into why the people we elect and pay handsomely to represent our interests were so wilfully incapable of doing so.

They're still at it. Last month, the futile debate on Iraq in parliament wasn't even graced with Tony Blair's presence and the front bench prevented any vote being taken. The LibDem policy for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq this year was met with derision. One newspaper sketch writer described their view as 'unpopular' by which he meant 'unpopular in the House of Commons' which isn't quite the same thing.

Now Tony Blair has announced substantial troop withdrawal. Now the MPs line up to support him, repeating a lie which matches some of the great lies that took us to war. They say the troops are going because Basra is safe. Mark Urban on the BBC's Newsnight gave the game away on that: two of the three most attacked bases in Iraq are, according to the Ministry of Defence, British bases in the centre of Basra.

So we're not going because its safe, but because it's dangerous.

The danger is, of course, not Tony Blair's fault, as he told us at length on the morning's Today programme (it is almost flattering that all his arguments are aimed at countering those of the anti war movement, until you remember that he faces so very little opposition in parliament).

So whose fault is it exactly? Perhaps Lord Hurd and his friends in parliament will find an answer. Or perhaps the same people who brought us disaster in Iraq will vote for the sequel disaster in Iran?

The demonstration this Saturday will probably be the last while Blair is in office, the last before a vote on the Trident nuclear submarine replacement, and the last before a possible attack on Iran.

Remember, the Italians marched in Vicenza last Saturday to stop the extension of a US base, and this week the government fell over its policy of sending troops to Afghanistan. So marches do make a difference.

Wild men of the right

2007-01-26T16:22:00.000Z

Fed up with wars committed in the name of freedom? Read an interesting article in today's Financial Times by Anatol Lieven. He points out that US President Roosevelt's 1941 speech calling for war against Germany and Japan famously lists 'four freedoms'. These are freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear (by which he meant abolition of aggressive war).

Missing from the list, Lieven points out, is the freedom to vote. He suggests this is for two reasons: that the Nazis were in fact elected, and their success stemmed in large part from the failure of the parliamentary system in Germany to deal with effects of inflation, unemployment and the onset of economic slump.

How differently the question of freedom is dealt with today. 'US official and semi-official rhetoric has too often reduced Freedom with a capital "F" chiefly to the right to vote. Even freedom of expression is usually taken to mean little more than unrestricted private media ownership.'

The recent Freedom House report, partly US government funded, treats, as Lieven says, the US 'as the embodiment of democracy and support for America as a key index of virtue.'

Roosevelt had his own reasons for putting forward his particular four freedoms. But they are still wanting today: freedom from want is a freedom lacked by millions, as is freedom from fear. Freedom of worship is denied or made extremely difficult in a number of countries. Freedom of speech and expression...in Saudi Arabia? in Egypt? even in the US, where dissent is all too often clamped down on?

If some one time liberal commentators had their way, there would be even more clamping down on dissent. Sent crazy by the failure of the imperial project on which they pinned all their hopes, Hitchens, Amis and Cohen sketch wilder and wilder plans for how to save the world. Hitchens 'Facing the Islamist Menace' (winter 2007 City Journal)ends with a ten point plan which looks to me a lengthy but infallible recipe for more wars, terrorism etc which Hitchens will then declare need even stronger remedies to defeat.

His plan includes an open alliance with India on all fronts against 'Muslim fascism', energetic support for all the opposition forces in Iran, and comes out with this gem: 'We should, of course, be scrupulous on principle about stirring up interethnic tensions. But we should remind those states that are less scrupulous _Iran, Pakistan, and Syria swiftly come to mind_that we know that they, too, have restless minorities and that they should not make trouble in Afghanistan, Lebanon or Iraq without bearing this in mind.'

He quotes Martin Amis at length from a Times interview. Martin (isn't he so like his father?) says he has an urge to say the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. His suggestions for suffering: 'not letting them travel. Deportation _further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan'.

At least we wouldn't have all that hold up at airports _or perhaps we would as they would be full of people being strip searched or deported.

Martin doesn't bat an eyelid at these tactics which would be familiar to anyone who lived under a dictatorship or even fascism. Which brings me to the third Musketeer, Nick Cohen. Cohen has out a new book on the left and the war. Apparently, he equates opposition to the Iraq war with support for Hitler. Is this arrested development (he came from a Communist family but clearly hasn't caught up with Communist opposition to war and imperialism)? Or has he just boiled his brain?

Eviction notice

2007-01-22T13:24:00.000Z

You might have expected more of a media fuss. No, not about Big Brother but about Alistair Beaton's The trial of Tony Blair. He is after all still the prime minister, yet this programme ended with Blair disappearing in a police van to be put on trial as a war criminal.

Cherie took the light bulbs from no 10 when they departed. A light bulb lit up above her head with the realisation that their new £3 million house off the Edgware Road put them slap in the middle of thousands of Lebanese _yet another group of people with a grudge against Blair.

But not a single voice raised in parliament, no outrage from angry viewers. Perhaps everyone is just hoping that life will imitate art and that Blair's next stop will be the Hague. Although judging by the investigation of cash for honours he may be facing domestic proceedings first.

The silence speaks eloquently of majority opinion on the war and the warmonger. But it rolls on inexorably. Yesterday the 130th British soldier was killed, as were 25 US soldiers. Today an estimated 75 Iraqis died in a market bombing. Little of it makes the headlines, and few believe that the extra US troops _21,000 as part of Bush's surge _will do anything but lead to further deaths.

One image that did get reported was that of soldiers tied to a helicopter trying to rescue, unsuccessfully, one of their number killed in Afghanistan. The war there is getting worse. The Nato troops are calling in airstrikes because they cannot win battles; the airstrikes are killing lots of people; more Afghans are turning against the troops and supporting the Taliban.

The outgoing Nato commander told the Guardian that he wanted one more year to defeat the Taliban. That's what the US has been saying in Iraq for nearly four years now. No wonder he's worried. Especially when you consider these facts: the Taliban has increased their area of operations more than four times between 2005 and 2006, and is now effectively running parts of the south and east; direct fire attacks nearly trebled to 3,824 between 2005 and 2006;suicide attacks increased from 18 to 116; attacks on Afghan forces incresed over 300%, and those on Nato forces by 270%.

The military expect a big offensive against them this spring.

War is stretching from Helmand province to the Horn of Africa, where Somalis is the latest victim of US intervention. The rhetoric against Iran is rising again. The long war _the war on terror rebranded _ at least is an accurate description.

Blair promises us war for a generation. He and Bush are both on their way out, but the Bush gang is determined to shoot it out on the streets of Baghdad rather than admit defeat.

Expect much blaming of Iraqis for the mayhem created by the occupation; expect too more attacks on the French (and Germans) for failing to pull their weight and sacrifice their troops in Afghanistan.

Expect also an escalation of anti war protest to match this surge: already the Washington demo next weekend looks like being one of the biggest ever against the war. Our date is 24th of February _ against Trident and for troops out of Iraq _ which also promises a good response.

So we shouldn't take silence as agreement. If 82% voted to evict Jade Goody from the Big Brother house, how many would do the same to see the back of Blair?

Is this what they mean by civilisation?

2006-12-31T11:49:00.000Z

His last words: 'Palestine belongs to the Arabs'. The executioner's last words to him: 'Go to hell'. Few will mourn Saddam Hussein, especially among those of us who opposed his policies from the very beginning. But that exchange alone means that in the Arab world at least he will continue to be remembered as someone who spoke up for justice for the Palestinians and who was one of the few rulers in the region who stood up to the Americans.

It wasn't always so. Saddam was brought to power with the blessing of the Americans, who provided intelligence to help him root out his Communist opponents, hanged by him as he was hanged yesterday. Iraq was encouraged to wage war against the new Islamic Republic of Iran. The US helped with arms and intelligence, including the provision of chemical weapons which filled its victims' lungs with blood. Throughout the 1980s these weapons supplies continued, and when the outcome looked too evenly balanced, the US intervened even more directly on Iraq's side. As the war neared its end, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft, killing 300 people 'by accident'.

Saddam stopped being a friend and ally when he went too far and invaded Kuwait, even though April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq, led him to think the US would not intervene.

Just as they were able to make him, they were able to break him too. War in 1991, bombing and sanctions for 12 years, another war and invasion, capture, trial and then execution. All made in America: the trial, imprisonment and execution had little to do with the Iraqis who had suffered so much under him. Saddam was 'handed over to the Iraqi authorities' from the Americans only at 5.30am; he died at 5.55am.

And what a gangster operation it was: the only man not hooded was the condemned man, the final exchanges were argumentative and insulting, the whole episode was filmed and all except the actual death shown on state televison.

Those who waged war in the name of enlightenment values will perhaps draw the parallels with the public executions where crowds lined what is now Oxford Street to watch the condemned on their way to Tyburn tree. It was regarded as a mark of civilisation that such executions were abandoned over 100 years ago, and any capital punishment more than 40 years ago. Yet we allow this barbarism to take place under the guise of punishing dictatorship.

Most dictators will not fear similar punishment: their countries are crucial staging posts in the increasingly frenzied trips by Tony Blair to find peace in the Middle East, any prosect of which has been destroyed by his and George Bush's policies.

Those policies are tearing the region apart, and increasing terror threats elsewhere in the world. Yet it was announced on the same day as Saddam's execution that John Scarlett, the man who sexed up the dossier to tell us the lie that Saddam's weapons could hit British interests in 45 minutes, is to be knighted for services to diplomacy.

George Bush is reportedly thinking of sending even more US troops into Iraq 'to finish the job' in a country which has been destroyed by the invasion. And while many of us might feel that a new year holiday in Robin Gibb's Florida villa comes pretty close to hell, Tony Blair remains unpunished and unaccountable for his role in the disaster.

So when are these criminals going to be caught?

Or does it explode?

2006-12-21T10:47:00.000Z

George Bush's latest reason for continuing the war in Iraq? 'One thing we cannot do is give up on the ordinary moms and dads across the Middle East'. The ordinary moms and dads do seem to have given up on him, however. The standing of the US and Britain has never been lower in the region, given a further ratchet downward by Tony Blair's pre Christmas crusade there.

Blair's preaching somehow made me think of the great poem by the black American Langston Hughes, 'Dream Deferred' which goes like this

What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up/Like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a sore-/And then run?/Does it stink like rotten meat?/Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?/Maybe it just sags/like a heavy load./Or does it explode?

The grievances of the Middle East towards the west represent such a dream deferred: the injustice to the Palestinians, the continuing crime of the Iraq war and occupation, the support for vile and dictatorial regimes such as Saudi Arabia, the many visible and invisible hurts of the old colonialism and its new counterpart.

Democracy in the region is preached but not practiced by the west, which turns a blind eye to imprisonment and torture, and only supports elections when the outcome is right. So the Hamas victory in Palestine has been undermined from day one, with the loser being promoted as the victor. The autocratic monarchs and unelected dictators are plied with arms and shielded from criminal investigation by the British prime minister.

Meanwhile Iran, which has seen in the past week real elections (where the president's supporters did badly) and real protests against the president, is back up there as part of the axis of evil.

No wonder ordinary moms and dads see this as doublespeak and hypocrisy. Silence should not be seen as acquiesence. And when there are explosions of mass protest across the region, no one should be surprised.

A spectre is haunting Westminster

2006-12-05T13:13:00.000Z

It is said that generals always fight the battles of the last war. The same could be said of the Labour government over Trident. It's back to the 1980s as far as they're concerned. The spectres of Michael Foot in his donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, of Thatcher and Reagan sneering at the disarmament movement, still haunt those whose greatest fear is being denounced by Rupert Murdoch.

How else do we explain the government plans to replace Trident, a system which can't even be used without US permission, designed to fight an enemy that doesn't exist, at the astronomical cost of £25 billion (and rising)? And it's been sold to us by Blair with the argument that it would give Britain greater independence from the US!

They don't seem to have noticed that life has moved on. The Cold War has gone, we are deeply embroiled in unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and large numbers of people believe that the US and President Bush present the greatest danger to our security. And at a time when hospital closures, student tuition fees and housing shortages are all presented as the only alternative because the money isn't there and because governments can no longer spend on public services, the money for Trident seems all the more obscene.

The people who sold us WMD, the 45 minute claim, the legality of the war and the dodgy dossier are at it again. They find a willing and credulous audience among MPs. Cabinet ministers tell us that we need Trident to combat North Korea and Iran. Really?

After the debacle of Iraq there is really no reason why this spin should be listened to nor why Labour MPs should follow their government into the voting lobbies. Public opinion is divided on the issue, but is much more heavily against Trident when the cost is raised. MPs made a very big mistake in voting for the Iraq war, as many now recognise. They are in danger of repeating that mistake.

The British parliament now has the record of being the most supine among the belligerent powers. Even in the US, there is much more official inquiry into what went wrong. Tomorrow James Baker's Iraq Study Group is due to report. There has been much talk about whether US troops should withdraw or in George Bush's words should make a 'graceful exit'. Disgraceful exit might be more like it.

Whatever the conclusions of the report, it will tacitly acknowledge that the US has lost in Iraq and that the occupying powers have presided over an ever worsening situation. It's a shame our parliament can't even muster a debate on the subject.

Don't even think about it

2006-11-16T15:42:00.000Z

I took my degree at the London School of Economics in the early 1970s when it was unusual for having a very high number of overseas students. They came from all parts of the world, and many of them were in political exile: from apartheid South Africa and white minority rule Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); from Franco's Spain, the colonels' Greek dictatorship; from Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Shah's Iran (it was estimated that one in three Iranian students in Britain was a spy for his secret police, SAVAK).

I have thought about many of those people this week as I hear more and more stories about students facing the prospect of the authorities spying or allowing spying on 'suspicious' students who might be attracted to terrorism. A meeting organised by the students' union at the University of East London on Tuesday spelt out opposition to this approach. A thought police in the colleges was unacceptable, and would lead to people being demonised on grounds of race or religion. Students doing certain courses would be more open to suspicion. Students regarded as 'extremists' would be singled out.

Back then, we assumed that there would be people informing these repressive reginmes on individuals. But we never dreamt that college authorities, encouraged by a Labour government, would be talking about spying on students.

If that had happened in the 1970s, political exiles would have had a very hard time, would have been thrown out of colleges and perhaps deported to sometimes torture and even death. It would also have created a climate of fear where we would have found it impossible to discuss in a free and open way, which should be an essential of any university.

Many of them were branded terrorists, extremists and subversives. Some undoubtedly now are middle aged pillars of the community in countries whose politics have changed dramatically in 30 years. They had to fight for their rights then, and we are having to defend democracy now, by resisting the incursions into college political life.

Our People's Assembly this weekend has students, trade unionists, Muslim activists, Stop the War members, coming together to discuss the relationship between war, Islamophobia and the attacks on civil liberties. It's followed on Monday by a big rally in Westminster called by the British Muslim Initiative on religious freedom.

They couldn't come at a better time, as we face open season on Muslims where 'radicalism' = 'extremism'='terrorism'. Where do we draw the line? Are people who understand the grievances of terrorists the same as terrorists? Are those who attend anti war meetings or marches 'extremists' or merely people expressing their political opinions?

Support is coming from new and sometimes unexpected quarters. Claudia Roden's books on Middle East cookery and Mediterranean cookery have been regular companions of mine over the years and I have found out a lot about the region as well as the food by reading them.

She describes the People's Assembly as a 'community bridge-builder,' and says, 'As an Egyptian Jew who was born and lived in a Muslim world where there once reigned harmony and respect between religious communities, as a Jew who feels deeply hurt when Jews are demonised and who knows what that has led to in the past, I feel very sad and worried that we have come, in Britain, to demonise a religion that I respect and people who are my friends'.

With her, actors Prunella Scales and Timothy West, academics, MPs and trade union leaders, the Muslim community is gathering support which it desperately needs to organise a fight back.

Halloween in the House of Horror

2006-11-01T16:29:00.000Z

What will it take for Labour MPs to vote against the Iraq war? Clearly more than 655,000 Iraqi dead, a disastrous occupation, and polls which show 62% of people in Britain want the troops pulled out immediately.

Yesterday, Margaret Beckett, in a speech which must amount to an insult to her own intelligence, let alone everyone else's, claimed that the time was not right for an inquiry, that any vote for such an inquiry would give succour to terrorists, and that Iraq was heading towards democracy.

No wonder there are problems imposing democracy on the Middle East when we base it on our model. Because yesterday was an appalling day for democracy. The government won not because of the superiority of its arguments, not because most of its own supporters even believe those arguments, but because Labour MPs meekly trot into the division lobbies to vote along party lines, regardless of the consequences.

Calling it a debate gives the wrong impression. Most of the time the chamber is pretty empty, filling up at the beginning and the end, when suddenly the various ministers and other members of the payroll vote appear, vote as they're told to and go off for other more important business.

The parties which tabled the debate, Plaid Cymru and the SNP, should be congratulated for getting it onto the agenda and for uniting so much opposition behind them. They managed to win all the parties apart from Labour and forced the pro war Tories to oppose the government, however pathetically. Their arguments were good, but simply not answered.

Perhaps the most idiotic question to them was what did Iraq have to do with the people of Scotland and Wales? The best known anti-war MP, George Galloway, was not even called to speak.

All credit, too, to the 12 Labour MPs who joined the opposition. But why so few? Some abstained, although this only helped the government. No doubt many will say they could not go into the lobbies with the Tories. But Labour MPs went into the lobbies with the Tories when they took us to war.

The truth is, those MPs who voted with the government this time have let the anti-war movement, and the majority of their constituents, down. Just like those who voted for war three and a half years ago. Except this time, there really isn't any excuse.

Only bad options

2006-10-23T09:05:00.000+01:00

'The week the war unravelled' was Saturday's headline on the Independent. It's still unravelling. The director of public diplomacy(sic) in Washington's bureau of near eastern affairs has retracted his weekend claim that the US 'failure' in Iraq stemmed in part from 'arrogance and stupidity'.

The US has admitted that it can no longer continue its operation of trying to control Baghdad. The town of Amara, handed over by British forces in the summer, has once more erupted in fighting between the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army.

George Bush has now compared the war on Iraq with Vietnam, which can't be a great idea two weeks before an election where the Republicans look like getting pasted over the war.

Ever since General Sir Richard Dannatt's bombshell two weeks ago, the ground has been cut from beneath the feet of the pro war lobby (itself an ever dwindling group of people reliant on the indefatigable Christopher Hitchens to keep it in good heart).

The problem for the war party is there is a momentum here which may be unstoppable, even if Donald Rumsfeld is sacrificed, as is now being talked about.

I am frequently confronted by journalists and military who say 'we have to stay and finish the job'. Or, in the words of Margaret Beckett and Tony Blair, we 'have to hold our nerve' (as if the occupation of Iraq was a trapeze act at the circus). There's one simple flaw in this argument: it isn't getting any better. In the words of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who helped run the occupation in Iraq, 'there are only bad options for the coalition from now on.'

There is no job being done here apart from occupying a country the majority of whose population want the troops to leave. There is no reconstruction, no improvement in people's lives.

Even most pro war elements now understand this. When you have Dannatt and Greenstock both saying things can only get worse, you know that Blair is pretty much last man standing in Whitehall.

The solution isn't, however, sending in more troops _ or asserting that if only more troops had gone in three and a half years ago then things would have gone swimmingly. The problem here is not implementation but the principle involved. When you occupy someone else's country you are going to find the population against you.

So let's not occupy countries and pretend we are doing them a favour, or that the morass we find ourselves in is 'progress'.

In Afghanistan there is still a lot of talk about finishing the job. But the occupation has presided over the demise of the Taliban, the election of a pro western government, the rise of the Taliban, and the growing unpopularity of the pro western government. Meanwhile no women's liberation, no reconstruction.

Doesn't that mean it's going backwards?

The fashion and thought police

2006-10-16T15:22:00.000+01:00

The war on terror has created some unlikely allies. When George Bush told us he was bombing Afghanistan in order to liberate women, many found that particularly hard to take. One of the more distasteful features of the wave of attacks on Muslims in recent weeks has been the sight of feminists lining up to support Jack Straw in his demand that women should not wear the veil in his presence.

Women who claim they believe in liberation really should know better. The women’s movement of the 1960s was anti racist, coming out of the civil rights and anti war movements in the US. It was against cultural imperialism for the same reasons. Indeed, many African Americans turned to traditional dress to reject western culture and to assert their identity.

Why are people who espouse their ideas today attacking some of the most oppressed women in the name of liberating them? Why are they backing a privileged man who is in a much more powerful position than his constituents by supporting his version of 'What not to wear'? New Labour's very own equivalent of Trinny and Susannah no doubt has many delightful versions of integrated outerwear. But shouldn't we be telling him it's none of his business?

Some feminists assume that any Muslim woman who wears the veil or the hijab does so because of social and family pressure. Even when Muslim women assert in the strongest possible terms that this is not true and that they have made this choice themselves, they are not believed. The term for that is patronising. It's bad enough to be patronised by a man like Jack Straw but when others join in you could forgive most Muslim women for thinking that they are not being treated as serious human beings but as the goods of their husbands and fathers.

A pretty sexist assumption when you come to think about it.

Another unlikely ally is General Sir Richard Dannatt. It's a once in a lifetime thing when you think about it for the head of the army to denounce a war in which his soldiers are engaged. But that's what he's done and there's nothing Tony Blair can do about it. The US wanted to tell Dannatt off but even Blair couldn't allow that.

So vindication for the anti war movement. But the more they lose on the war the more they attack Muslims. That's true of Dannatt as well, who clearly thinks it's all been downhill since the 1950s and who fears the 'Islamist threat' in Britain.

The latest twist in the war against Muslims is the announcement that the Department for Education wants university lecturers and staff to spy on Muslims or people who are 'Asian-looking', and report them to Special Branch. This government document claims those from 'segregated' backgrounds are more likely to be radical than those who have 'integrated into wider society'.

How can they tell? I take that to mean if you wear the veil or hijab you can expect to be spied on or reported to the authorities. So it's What not to wear with a nod to McCarthyism. Nothing like destroying democracy in the name of saving it.

Straw should hide his face in shame

2006-10-05T18:04:00.000+01:00

What's more despicable than a foreign secretary who takes us into an illegal war and then tries to distance himself from it for electoral reasons? What about a former foreign secretary who attacks Muslim women wearing the veil for electoral reasons?

Jack Straw has added his unwelcome voice to the bidding war over who can make the most headlines by attacking Muslims. He had a hard act to follow with John Reid, whose bid for the Labour leadership is based on ratcheting up the attacks on civil liberties and on the Muslim community.

Even David Cameron at the Tory conference, oh so liberal on gay marriages, doesn't think there should be Muslim only 'parallel' areas (actually there aren't), and that Muslim schools should accept one quarter non Muslims, in the name of ...well, in the name of not being exclusively Muslim. Next they'll be saying mosques should reserve places for non Muslims as well.

With this political background, I'm not surprised that a Muslim owned dairy in Windsor has been attacked by thugs. When the main political representatives in the country declare that it's open season on Muslims, no wonder those who want to attack them see it as a green light.

Let's examine this argument a minute. Jack Straw has told Muslim women who wear veils that they should take them off ...in the interests of getting a good look at their mouths and noses. When Jack Straw went on the Today programme today we couldn't see his face but his odious message was all too comprehensible.

Surely rather than attacking the victims of racism, the government should be defending them. It is up to the women themselves to choose what they wear and when they wear it. If Muslim women in veils are good enough to vote for Jack Straw, they are good enough to speak to, however they are dressed.

The difference between the government attitude today and five years ago is palpable. Then, government spokespeople went out of their way to attack the scapegoating of Muslims and to preach race harmony. Five years, three wars and two military occupations later, the last refuge of these scoundrels is to scapegoat Muslims for the consequences of the war.

Jack Straw should cover his face in shame.

Heads and tales

2006-09-28T11:11:00.000+01:00

Mozart was used to rows over his operas, but not ones like this. The German opera company, Deutsche Oper, looked like abandoning its production of Mozart's Idomeneo because it contained a scene depicting the severed heads of, among others, Jesus and the prophet Mohammed. The company were advised by police that this might lead to demonstrations of the sort seen round the Danish cartoons or, more recently, the Pope's pronouncements on Islam and violence.

There doesn't seem to have been any evidence that this was likely to have happened. But clearly now Muslims are fair game for being accused of supposedly irrational or violent behaviour. Nor was there any alleged threat from irate Christians protesting at Jesus being shown in this way (even though there must have been far Christian protests outside theatre and cinemas than Muslim ones _ remember The Last Temptation of Christ and Jerry Springer the Opera).

In fact there was no threat from anyone at all. The sensible course of action should have been for the show to go on, with those offended by it being able to react in one of two ways: not going to see it (still the most popular form of protest against art), or organising peaceful protests outside it to make a point.

That is now what is happening, but not before the damaging intervention of the German government in the form of its Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel, who heads up a grand coalition of right and left, is desperate to make her mark on the world stage and is trying to join the so far exclusively boys' club of warmongers. Her foreign policy is increasingly lining up Germany with Bush and Blair.

Merkel has stepped in to denounce 'self censorship', claiming that it plays into the hands of terrorists and extremists. Except this wasn't self censorship, nor was the opera threatened, even in the wildest dreams of the Berlin police, by terrorists. But Muslim bashing, in a country where there are 2.6 million of them, and where the far right made gains only last week in Merkel's home state of Mecklenburg Vorpommern on an anti immigrant platform,is just too tempting for any of that to matter.

Which brings me to our own dear leader, who can make a better speech than Gordon Brown. Not difficult. He told us on Tuesday that the war on terror will last a generation. It won't be his grandchildren who are dying if that is the case.

There must have been hollow laughs around the Middle East when he announced that he wanted to achieve peace there by next May. There is the small question of his bloody record, but a man of Blair's ignorance shouldn't be allowed anywhere. He stated once again that 9/11 predated the Iraq war, so underlining the supposedly irrational and crazed nature of Islamic terrorism. Except bin Laden made clear after 9/11 he was reflecting three widely held grievances: the injustice to Palestinians, sanctions and bombing of Iraq, and the presence of foreign (US) troops on Saudi soil.

There are foreign troops now in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon _and across the region,we have occupied Iraq, and the Palestinians are worse off now than then. That's why 50,000 of us marched at the start of Labour's conference in Mancehser _even the police have upgraded their figure to 30,000.

That protest more accurately reflected opinion than the unthinking hysteria inside the hall on Tuesday. Don't they know there's a war on? But then, denial always works until you can't deny it any more. They all leave their parallel universe today to find a reality where 16 US agencies say Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism and where the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq deteriorates by the day.

That's the real future facing Tony Blair.