We need Hutton plus!
August 1, 2003
Tomorrow Tony Blair will make history. The first British Prime Minister to be grilled in a courtroom about what his office did, or did not, do concerning the tragic death of Dr Kelly.
Tony Blair can hardly welcome the ever more revealing copies of e mails and messages that have emerged from the frenzy of meetings between his office and the Ministry of Defence. In some ways more damaging is the cynical use of language to describe what the strategy should be and the fears of what Dr Kelly knew or was prepared to say.
The declaration of a conflict with the BBC by Alastair Campbell did not have the effect of assisting the Government; more than anything it encouraged the feeding frenzy of the media and the huge coverage the inquiry has received.
In normal times all the cynical notes and intense petty differences that are the daily life of Government and politics are safely hidden away from the public gaze in vaults in Kew at the Public Record Office for 30 years or in some cases 75 years. Now it is all instant and very damaging for that.
The Government used the arguments about Weapons of Mass Destruction and the fabled 45 minutes to the full in the run up to the March vote in Parliament; it did have an effect on some of the public and some MP’s seized on the dossiers with alacrity to prove their own position, and others were deeply troubled by the “revelations” and thus abstained or voted for war.
Whilst it is obviously a very important inquiry that Lord Hutton is presiding over it is not an inquiry into the war itself. Two Parliamentary votes have taken place on this and on both occasions the Government Whips have succeeded in persuading enough Labour MPs to vote not to do this. They were talked out of it on the basis that the Security Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee were going to hold their own inquiries. The negotiations and conditions laid down for appearances by the Defence Secretary do rather damage the credibility of the process and surely strengthen the argument for a full inquiry.
But what really strengthens the argument for a full inquiry is the situation in Iraq. This was supposed to be a war to liberate Iraq and eliminate the threat to neighbours. Already more US and UK soldiers have died since the end of the war than during it; the instability and violence are worsening day by day.
The attack on the United Nations and the carnage that followed suggests that the opponents of the US/UK presence will target anyone associated with the invasion.
Whilst the obvious answer is to remove the whole concept of “occupying powers” from the scene and agree on some form of reconstruction with international help the US/UK position is even more sinister.
Using the understandable sympathy for the victims they are both pleading for more international forces to be sent to Iraq “to restore order”. Thus a new round of UN debate gets underway with the old familiar lines of disagreement emerging. No other Security Council member is prepared to get involved unless that responsibility passes to the United Nations. Anything less is in reality a cipher for the occupation.
This is opposed by the US, with Britain in its familiar “me too” mood because it strikes at the very heart of what the whole policy is.
In the day to day turmoil it is easy to forget that there is an overall US strategy of wars for military power, raw materials and threats. Iraq fits into all three categories.
Whilst chaos may have been the order of the day in Iraq after the invasion, and for most Iraqi’s it still is, other things have happened. The murky Iraqi Assistance Fund continues, contracts are handed to US companies and the threat of example is there for the rest of the world.
Just as the Hutton Inquiry is providing excellent political education fore the British public the Senate Inquiry in Australia is having a similar effect. The huge opposition to the war in the early part of the year has kept the spotlight on the realities of war, and the utter cynicism of those that lead us to it.
Now is the time to build up and unite opposition to the war and the US/UK occupation of Iraq. This weekend’s Stop the War Peoples Assembly will give an opportunity for more discussion about the nature of the conflict we are in. Are we to live for the foreseeable future in a war footing as the US administration carries out its own awful logic of war or will we move to a more rational world?
In opposing the war in Iraq we are really opposing the power of the west to declare war on the poorest and most mineral rich regions of the planet. The next staging post in this is the Stop the War march on September 27th. Coming before the Labour Party Conference it will give an opportunity to show that the anti war movement is here to stay.
