Dreamers and Idiots
by George Monbiot
George is an Honorary Professor at the Department of Politics in Keele and Visiting
Professor at the Department of Environmental Science at the University of East
London. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper in Britain and
is the author of numerous books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover
of Britain, Amazon Watershed and No Mans Land. He has been involved in
protests against road building, mahogany imports and genetic engineering. For
more on his work, visit <www.monbiot.com>.
Originally published in The Guardian November 12, 2003.
Those who would take us to war must first shut down the public imagination.
They must convince us that there is no other means of preventing invasion, or
conquering terrorism, or even defending human rights. When information is scarce,
imagination is easy to control. As intelligence gathering and diplomacy are
conducted in secret, we seldom discover - until it is too late - how plausible
the alternatives may be.
So those of us who called for peace before the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan
were mocked as effeminate dreamers. The intelligence our governments released
suggested that Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were immune to diplomacy or negotiation.
Faced with such enemies, what would we do?, the hawks asked, and our responses
felt timid beside the clanking rigours of war. To the columnist David Aaronovitch,
we were indulging...in a cosmic whinge [sic].(1) To the Daily Telegraph,
we had become Osama bin Ladens useful idiots.(2)
Had the options been as limited as the western warlords and their bards suggested,
this may have been true. But, as many of us suspected at the time, we were lied
to. Most of the lies are now familiar: there appear to have been no weapons
of mass destruction and no evidence to suggest that, as President Bush claimed
in March, Saddam had trained and financed ... al Qaeda.(3) Bush
and Blair, as their courtship of the president of Uzbekistan reveals, appear
to possess no genuine concern for the human rights of foreigners.
But a further, and even graver, set of lies is only now beginning to come to
light. Even if all the claims Bush and Blair made about their enemies and their
motives had been true, and all their objectives had been legal and just, there
may still have been no need to go to war. For, as we discovered last week, Saddam
Hussein proposed to give Bush and Blair almost everything they wanted before
a shot had been fired.(4) Our governments appear both to have withheld this
information from the public and to have lied to us about the possibilities for
diplomacy.
Over the four months before the coalition forces invaded Iraq, Saddam Husseins
government made a series of increasingly desperate offers to the United States.
In December, the Iraqi intelligence services approached Vincent Cannistraro,
the CIAs former head of counter-terrorism, with an offer to prove that
Iraq was not linked to the September 11th attacks, and to permit several thousand
US troops to enter the country to look for weapons of mass destruction.(5) If
the object was regime change, then Saddam, the agents claimed, was prepared
to submit himself to internationally-monitored elections within two years.(6)
According to Mr. Cannistraro, these proposals reached the White House, but were
turned down by the president and vice president.(7)
By February, Saddams negotiators were offering almost everything the US
government could wish for: free access to the FBI to look for weapons of mass
destruction wherever it wanted, support for the US position on Israel and Palestine,
even rights over Iraqs oil.(8) Among the people they contacted was Richard
Perle, the security adviser who for years had been urging a war with Iraq. He
passed their offers to the Central Intelligence Agency. Last week he told the
New York Times that the CIA had replied, Tell them that we will see them
in Baghdad.(9)
Saddam Hussein, in other words, appears to have done everything possible to
find a diplomatic alternative to the impending war, and the US government appears
to have done everything necessary to prevent one. This is the opposite to what
we were told by George Bush and Tony Blair. On March 6th, 13 days before the
war began, Bush said to journalists, I want to remind you that its
his choice to make as to whether or not we go to war. Its Saddams
choice. Hes the person that can make the choice of war and peace. Thus
far, hes made the wrong choice.(10) Ten days later, Blair told a
press conference, we have provided the right diplomatic way through this,
which is to lay down a clear ultimatum to Saddam: cooperate or face disarmament
by force...all the way through we have tried to provide a diplomatic solution.(11)
On March 17th, Bush claimed that Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation,
the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war.(12)
All these statements are false.
The same thing happened before the war with Afghanistan. On September 20th 2001,
the Taliban offered to hand Osama bin Laden to a neutral Islamic country for
trial if the US presented them with evidence that he was responsible for the
attacks on New York and Washington.(13) The US rejected the offer. On October
1st, six days before the bombing began, they repeated it, and their representative
in Pakistan told reporters we are ready for negotiations. It is up to
the other side to agree or not. Only negotiation will solve our problems.(14)
Bush was asked about this offer at a press conference the following day. He
replied, Theres no negotiations. Theres no calendar. Well
act on [sic] our time.(15)
On the same day, Tony Blair, in his speech to the Labour party conference, ridiculed
the idea that we could look for a diplomatic solution. There
is no diplomacy with Bin Laden or the Taliban regime....I say to the Taliban:
surrender the terrorists; or surrender power. Its your choice.(16)
Well, they had just tried to exercise that choice, but George Bush had rejected
it.
Of course, neither Bush nor Blair had any reason to trust the Taliban or Saddam
Hussein: these people were, after all, negotiating under duress. But neither
did they have any need to trust them. In both cases they could have presented
their opponents with a deadline for meeting the concessions they had offered.
Nor could the allies argue that the offers were not worth considering because
they were inadequate: both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were attempting to
open negotiations, not to close them: there appeared to be plenty of scope for
bargaining. In other words, peaceful resolutions were rejected before they were
attempted. What this means is that even if all the other legal tests for these
wars had been met (they had not), both would still have been waged in defiance
of international law. The charter of the United Nations specifies that the
parties to any dispute...shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation.(17)
None of this matters to the enthusiasts for war. That these conflicts were unjust
and illegal, that they killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians, is irrelevant,
as long as their aims were met. So the hawks should ponder this. Had a peaceful
resolution of these disputes been attempted, Osama bin Laden might now be in
custody, Iraq might be a pliant and largely peaceful nation finding its own
way to democracy, and the prevailing sentiment within the Muslim world might
be sympathy for the United States, rather than anger and resentment. Now who
are the dreamers and the useful idiots, and who the pragmatists?
References:
1. David Aaronovitch, 16th November 2001. Stop trying to stop the war.
Start trying to win the peace. The Independent.
2. Throughout the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, the Telegraph ran a column
on its leader page entitled Useful Idiots, dedicated to attacking
campaigners for peace.
3. George Bush, 6th March 2003. National Press Conference in the White House.
<www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html>
4. James Risen, 6th November 2003. Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute
Deal to Avert War. The New York Times; Bill Vann, 7th November 2003. Washington
rejected sweeping Iraqi concessions on eve of war. <www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/iraq-n07.shtml>;
Newsweek Web Exclusive, 5th November 2003. Lost Opportunity? On the eve
of the invasion of Iraq, Defense officials were offered a secret, back-channel
opportunity to talk peace with Saddam. <www.msnbc.com/news/989704.asp>;
Julian Borger, Brian Whitaker and Vikram Dodd 7th November 2003. Saddams
desperate offers to stave off war. The Guardian.
5. Julian Borger, Brian Whitaker and Vikram Dodd, ibid.
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
8. Newsweek Web Exclusive, ibid
9. James Risen, ibid.
10. George Bush, 6th March 2003, ibid.
11. Tony Blair, 16th March 2003. Press Conference with George Bush and Jose
Maria Aznar, the Azores.
12. George Bush, 17th March 2003. Remarks by the President in Address to the
Nation.
13. Luke Harding and Rory McCarthy, 21st September 2001. Bush rejects
Bin Laden deal. The Guardian.
14. Julian Borger, 3rd October 2001. White House rejects call for proof;
Taliban ready to negotiate. The Guardian.
15. Julian Borger, ibid.
16. Tony Blair, 2nd October 2001. Speech to the Labour Party conference, Brighton.
17. Article 33, Charter of the United Nations. The full text of this article
reads: 1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely
to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first
of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration,
judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful
means of their own choice. 2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary,
call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.