America and Britain, on their own and opposed by the rest of the world,
are attempting to destroy a country, and it isn’t often you can fall about
laughing when considering such a tragic and evil situation.  The
opportunity for mirth was provided by London’s foreign secretary, the
Westminster garden gnome, Robin Cook, who is as detached from reality as
one might suppose his twitching little beard to be.

In March a journalist called John Pilger presented a television
documentary about the relentless siege of Iraq and consequent death of
thousands of children through malnutrition and disease.  Pilger made a
compelling case against the US and the UK, whose leaders are treading on
very thin ice as regards a charge of attempted genocide.  The funny part
of it is that the gnome Cook, a foolish, indecisive, cowardly little man,
was offered the opportunity to explain his side of things, but said he
would do so only if he could vet the film and have ten minutes at the end,
unedited, to make his points without any awkward questions or indeed any
questions atall.  The notion of a politician that he could first censor
and then rebut the content of a television documentary is a novel one in
Britain, but it is always good to have some real, belly-deep mirth from
time to time, even when the basic subject is the ruthless and wicked
destruction of generations of children. For this is what is taking place
in Iraq, and it is more than time that other countries stood up and told
these bossy criminals to stop their illegal and inhumane assaults on an
entire people by a combination of sanctions and bombing.

Britain and America are being run by the first wave of soap-opera and
video-game politicians. These slick and savvy individuals have few, if
any, principles and their only aim is to enjoy and extend their personal
power. I remember the main comment by Britain’s deputy prime minister, a
confused and incompetent fellow, on the day after the last election.  He
was asked what the government wanted to do, and I sat back expecting a
list of principled and humane objectives.  He said the party would
concentrate on winning another term in office.  That aim is well
exemplified by Britain’s vacuous foreign policy which is intended to
improve the prime minister’s popularity rather than contributing to global
tranquillity.  The soap-opera, video-game approach is evident in their
fumbling of international problems which they imagine can be solved by a
combination of bogus touchy-feely compassion and a
bomb-the-hell-out-of-them aggression.  The latter sits as well with the
soccer-hooligan reputation of new cool Britannia as it does with the
arrogant United States, whose foreign policy objectives have been confined
for eight years to the desperate but unachieved ambition of its president
to forge a place in history as a world leader rather than as a pathetic,
amoral liar.

I wish the pilots of the Royal Air Force and the USAF no ill, but observe
that if Iraq had an effective air defence system and managed to shoot down
a plane, the bombing would stop.  The American and British public would
not stand for the death of a pilot in circumstances totally unconnected
with the security of their own nation.  But there is no opposition, and
the pilots are safe enough, just as they were when bombing bridges and
television stations in Yugoslavia.  In the past eighteen months British
strike aircraft have dropped 80 tons of bombs on Iraq. (The US total is
much greater.) The reason for the increase in the number of strikes and
bomb-weight given by the ministry of defence was that "we’ve been shot at
and threatened far more since December 20, 1998, than in the previous
period."  This bland statement deserves examination.  Why were British
aircraft shot at?  Because they were flying over Iraq.  Why were they
flying over Iraq? Well, now, we come to the difficult question.  No wonder
Robin Cook wanted to dodge this one.

America and Britain set up ‘no-fly’ zones covering half the country in
order, they said, to protect Kurds in the north and Shia Muslims in the
south.  (France joined up to begin with, but wisely decided to quit.) They
have killed over 200 civilians in their attacks.  There is no approval by
the UN of their action.  In fact UN Security Council Resolution 687
established a cease-fire in Iraq, which legally put an end to all hostile
activity by coalition forces, but the US and the UK ignored their own
resolution and began bombing on their own initiative.  The ‘Memorandum of
Understanding between the United Nations and the Republic of Iraq’ of
February 23, 1998 states at paragraph 2 that "The United Nations
reiterates the commitment of all member states to respect the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of Iraq," which would seem a plain enough
statement, but one that has been ignored by Clinton and Blair.  Perhaps
they imagine that bombing a country is showing respect for its territorial
integrity.  The memorandum also recorded that "The lifting of sanctions is
obviously of paramount importance . . . and the secretary general
undertook to bring this matter to the full attention of the members of the
security council."  And a fat lot of good that did.

Four highly-respected UN international civil servants have resigned in
disgust at the sanctions regime (see my piece in The News, ‘An Honourable
Man,’ of March 15), but this was not enough to persuade the video-game
warriors that their cowboy campaigns are wrong and senseless. They refused
to acknowledge the observations of experienced people with first-hand
knowledge of the situation in Iraq.  They not only scorned what they said,
but indulged in a campaign of vilification against them, giving public and
‘background’ briefings about the character and alleged partiality of the
these officials in a manner that would have excited the admiration of the
late Joseph Goebbels.  Denis Halliday resigned in September 1998 after 13
months as co-ordinator for the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq, saying
simply that the sanctions were futile and that they "damage the innocent
people of the country," and that they were incompatible with the UN
Charter, UN conventions on human rights, and the rights of the child.
But America and Britain ignored the words of this dedicated man who left
the UN after 30 years of outstanding service, driven out by blind
intransigence on the part of two countries whose approach to the Iraq
problem is one of vicious thuggery.

Few deny that Saddam Hussein is an evil man.  But there can be few who
would deny that the death of 4000 children a month because of the
"breakdown of water and sanitation, inadequate diet, and the bad internal
health situation" is evil, too.  The clever people in Washington and
London who are so unfeeling as to say "We have always said the plight of
the Iraqis is in the hands of Saddam Hussein" are not just callous
monsters, they are criminals who ignore or brush aside reports such as
those from the UN Children’s Fund, which recorded a year ago that under-5
mortality more than doubled in five years.  Its Director, Carol Bellamy,
said that sanctions "should be designed and implemented in such a way as
to avoid a negative impact on children" but the pitiless and relentless
men—and women—of the governing coteries in Washington and London are deaf
to pleas that their savage policy of sanctions and bombing be
reconsidered.

Neither foreign minister Cook nor secretary of state Albright is
celebrated for a compassionate stance on world issues (the ‘ethical
foreign policy’ of the former has become a sick joke), and one would
expect from them only a rigid attitude of uncaring misanthropy. On the
other hand, Clinton and Blair claim to be ‘family men’ having, we are
assured by their public relations psychological warfare apparatus, all the
benevolence that goes with that happy, voter-friendly state; but we do not
see much evidence of their caring compassion as regards the brain-damaged
and stunted children of Iraq.  The Vietnam war slogans chanted by students
in the 60s were particularly evocative and indeed effective, so perhaps a
new slogan is needed:  ‘Hey, hey, Tony and Bill, How many kids have you
managed to kill?"  As both of them are concerned with their public image
to the exclusion of all else, this might make them sit up and take notice.

At the beginning of August the French foreign minister said that sanctions
are "cruel, ineffective and dangerous."  China’s official stance is that
"bombings have caused suffering" and in June Russia delivered "a bristling
critique of the sanctions, the air patrols and the [security] council’s
overall failure to solve the Iraq crisis after 10 years."  What is needed
at the ‘Millennium Summit’ of the UN next month is a concerted effort by
the rest of the world to convince Clinton and Blair that they are pursuing
indefensible and inhumane policies regarding punishment of Iraq.  These
men lack the moral courage to admit they are wrong, but they could be
forced to stop their cruel crusade by a vote in the General Assembly that
would show, at long last, that the UN is not a plaything of Washington and
London, to be used by them when convenient and at other times to be
ignored and despised, but is a force for justice in the world.