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PUBLISHED IN THE YORKSHIRE POST 30th December 2006 By David Howell
After Saddam
Does it make any difference? Will the execution of Saddam Hussein draw a line under events – in that overworked phrase so beloved of politicians – and let Iraq move on? Probably not. The old tyrant was already a forgotten piece of flotsam in the blood-soaked path of events in Iraq. A judicially ordered ending of a life is always a terrible thing, even when the victim is a monster. But Saddam has paid the penalty so often paid by fallen dictators in the past and justice of a kind has been done. So perhaps one should not shed too many tears. After all, round the world it is a regrettable fact that human beings are being put to death daily, sometimes with far more brutality than Saddam suffered. In Florida a convicted murderer recently took half an hour to die. No-one really knows how many criminals are executed daily, and without appeal ,in China. By those standards Saddam received more mercy than he ever gave. Not only did he gas and murder on a massive scale. He had a nasty habit, so we are told, of throttling or personally shooting his dismissed Ministers – always quite chilling for an ‘ex’ like myself, having been given the heave-ho from past Cabinets but seeming to have survived quite cheerfully! So I am not too sad at the passing of this serial killer. But whether his ending will help unite poor Iraq is another matter. There is first the argument that as long as he lived he would have been a rallying point for plans to overthrow Iraq’s elected Government. That, it will be remembered, was the ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ argument. She had to get the chop, so Queen Elizabeth’s advisers insisted, otherwise she would go on being the rallying point for endless plots against the state. But in this case the assaults on Iraq’s fragile statehood will continue anyway. There are just too many forces at work determined to pull the place apart, and humiliate America and its allies in the process, to worry about Saddam and his fate. What is more, these various murderous groups probably reckon that they are succeeding. The remorseless daily bloodshed has turned opinion in the USA against the whole Iraqi project, leaving the American Administration confused and weak. Here in Britain it’s the same. On all sides the calls are getting more frequent to bring the troops home , with the Archbishop of Canterbury, a godly man, publicly agonising as to whether he should have done more to stop the Iraq invasion – an ‘unjust war’ he believes – in the first place. But it’s a bit late for that now. And the widespread belief that we can somehow just pull out and leave the whole region to carry on destroying itself without dragging us further down is unrealistic, too. It is time for cool heads to make an assessment of the whole ugly scene – the plusses as well as the minuses – and work out first how the dangers to us all can be contained , particularly the dangers of vast terrorist escalation and nuclear proliferation , and second , who is best placed to do the job. This last point is central. Because it is gradually dawning on the western allies, in both Washington and London, that America, for all its enormous military weight, may no longer be the key player in the region. So disastrous has been its loss of influence (dragging down Britain’s influence with it) and so rapidly has Pax Americana crumbled all round the world, that all the policy-makers and wise men in Washington wondering about ‘ a new strategy’ for America in the Middle East may just be wasting their time. The recent Iraq Study Group, set up by the U.S.Congress under the chairmanship of former Secretary of State James Baker, is a good example of what is wrong. The report was certainly critical of the mess into which George Bush and the neo-cons had led the country. But it was shot through with the assumption that the USA, with all its carrier fleets and arsenals of missiles, was still the power in the region that could put things right. These great figures seemed as oblivious as the President himself of the fact that America is no longer in charge. It is not in charge in the Middle East, where Iran, freed if its old Iraqi antagonist Saddam is riding high. It was not in charge in the Lebanon, where, along with Tony Blair and the Israeli military, it completely misread the consequences of pulverising that tiny state. And it may not even be in charge on the Israel-Palestine front, where it is sensible Israelis inside the country, rather than their misguided allies in the Jewish lobbies back in New York and Washington, who are beginning to see what is necessary for Israel to survive and live in harmony with at least some of its neighbours. The reality is that, partly to do with the impact of modern technology in dispersing power into other hands, partly to do with the rapid rise of the great Asian powers and partly to do with the clumsiness of the whole American ‘go-it –alone’ approach, the sheer size and economic might of America no longer counts the way it did. In containing and calming the Middle East chaos and ridding the world of nihilist Islamic extremism the Americans, and we ourselves, have to make new friends such as the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians and the Japanese. And this means not lecturing them as though they were upstarts but approaching with them with respect and a good dose of humility. There are more horrors to come in Iraq and in the Middle East region. But it is just possible that working with these new powers , whether we like all their ways or not, the very worst conflagrations and disasters in the region can be averted and a new and prosperous Middle East at last arise out of the ashes. But it will take more than the execution of a tyrant, and more that all the supposed ‘re-thinking’ going on in The White House, or in 10, Downing Street, to set things in the right direction, or free us from the Western follies and dismal policy errors of the last few years. Ends David Howell www.lordhowell.com
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