On the anniversary of 7/7

One of the strange things about having a blog - and keeping it going (well, just about...) for over a decade - is that when anniversaries come around, you think - 'hang on, I wrote something about that'. Anyway, for what it is worth - this is the piece I wrote in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings at the time: The roar of bombs and the deep sleep of England - for the record, my opinion about British foreign policy has not changed - and as the British ruling class prepare to contemplate a fresh imperialist slaughter in Syria, I guess it remains worth reposting.

How Blair can help the Labour Party win

The fact that Ed Miliband seems to think that Tony Blair might be an electoral asset tells you everything you need to know about the desperation, weakness and general uselessness of Miliband's leadership. But Tony Blair has offered to 'do whatever it takes' to ensure a Labour victory in May - given this, here are a few things any Labour leader who actually wanted to win should suggest Blair goes and does:

1) Resign from the Labour Party
2) Call for any remaining Blairites in the Labour Party to do the honourable thing and also resign
3) Resign as Middle East Peace Envoy, and from all his lucrative advisor posts to big business / banks / dictatorships internationally - and give his riches to charities such as the Red Cross and Medical Aid for Palestinians
4) Apologise for the Iraq War
5) Hand himself into the International Criminal Court and ask to be tried for war crimes

International Socialism # 145 out now

In the latest issue of International Socialism, Anne Alexander puts forward a Marxist analysis of ISIS, Philip Marfleet surveys the Palestinian movement in an era of neoliberalism and revolution in the Middle East, Ron Margulies looks at the Kurdish struggle in Turkey and we carry an article on sectarianism and nationalism by Lebanese Marxist Bassem Chit who died tragically young in October. 

Simon Joyce asks why there are so few strikes in Britain today and Chris Fuller looks back at the mass strikes during the First World War. Plus analysis by Alex Callinicos on the crisis of the political system in Britain and by Spanish activists on Podemos, feedback on anti-politics and on the dialectics of nature and book reviews on the Haitian Revolution, the Comintern and the African Atlantic, climate change, Leninism and more.  People can subscribe to the journal at www.isj.org.uk or email isj@swp.org.uk for more information. 

The Bassem Chit Internet Archive

Friends of the late Lebanese Marxist Bassem Chit (1979-2014) might be interested to know that his selected writings are slowly being compiled online at the Marxists Internet Archive - here: http://marxists.org/history/etol/writers/chit/index.htm

Alex Callinicos on the multiple crises of imperialism

If the United States remains the command centre of global capitalism, a multiplicity of crises has been flashing up on its screens in the past few months. Let’s consider them in ascending order of importance from the perspective of US decision makers. First, there was Israel’s latest war on Gaza—not a crisis for Washington, more the kind of violent outburst through which a kind of equilibrium is re-established, but for growing numbers of people around the world an outrage and a crime. Secondly, there was the war—now halted by an uneasy ceasefire—between the pro-Western government in Kiev and Russian-backed forces in south eastern Ukraine. Thirdly, there is the US bombing campaign to halt the advance of the jihadi group that calls itself the Islamic State, but which we will continue to call ISIS, in Iraq and Syria. And, finally—not yet a crisis, but potentially the most serious conflict—there’s the increasingly intense interstate competition in East Asia in response to China’s growing power...

For revolutionaries, opposing Obama’s bombing campaign—and whatever other military actions follow—should be straightforward. (We should also, of course, oppose NATO expansion in Central and Eastern Europe.) But this opposition needs to be informed by an understanding that the latest US intervention in the Middle East takes place against the background of a renewal of inter-imperialist rivalries on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War. Anti-imperialism during that era required, not simply opposing our “own” imperialism, but also refusing to prettify the actions of its rival and acknowledging that it too operates according to an imperialist logic. The same stance is required today, with the complication that today we are seeing multi-polar interstate competition. This is clearest in East Asia. On a global scale, the US remains the only world power, but it faces serious regional challenges from Russia and China, and within the Western bloc Germany and Japan are newly assertive.

Grasping this complexity is not an academic exercise. If we assign a “progressive” role to America’s rivals, we lose hold of the thread of class struggle. The main antagonism in the world becomes that between states rather than classes. But, beyond their real conflicts of interest, all the leading capitalist states are united by their common dependence on the exploitation of wage labour. As Lenin and Luxemburg understood so well in 1914, the critique of the imperialist system is an essential political tool in uniting workers against capital.

Read the full article, from the forthcoming issue of International Socialism, online here

Why we need a socialist alternative to Labour

On 28 September 1864, 150 years ago, a mass meeting was held in St Martin’s Hall in central London to launch a new organisation, the “International Working Men’s Association” (IWMA) - the First International. In the IWMA's Inaugural Address, written by Karl Marx, the group stressed the importance of workers challenging the “criminal designs” of their own capitalist class, their “playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people’s blood and treasure”.

 Sadly the IWMA fell apart in the 1870s, but the Socialist (Second) International which was formed in 1889 to replace it on paper at least continued something of this honourable anti-imperialist tradition. For example, in 1906 the Labour Party in Britain, an affiliate of the Second International in 1906 declared it was against 'wars fought to make the rich richer,' while 'underfed schoolchildren are still neglected'. Tragically, the Second International famously failed the test of the First World War, as the majority of its affiliate organisations voted to support this bloody inter-imperialist conflict. The leaders of the organisations which make up what is still nominally called the Socialist International - which include the Labour Party in Britain - have not learnt anything from its past mistakes with respect to history, at least not if the Iraq wars past and present are anything to go by. In 2003, a majority of Labour MPs voted to support Bush and Blair's criminal and disastrous Iraq War - with only 139 voted against. In 2006, only 12 Labour MPs voted for an inquiry into the Iraq War. Now with Cameron's current Iraq War, only 23 Labour MPs voted against - and the vast majority of Labour MPs who forgot the lessons of past imperialist interventions from 1914 onwards and voted for war are below:

 The Labour MPs who voted in favour were: Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East & Saddleworth), Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East), Douglas Alexander (Paisley & Renfrewshire South), Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East), Dave Anderson (Blaydon), Mr Jon Ashworth (Leicester South), Ian Austin (Dudley North), Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West), Willie Bain (Glasgow North East), Ed Balls (Morley & Outwood), Gordon Banks (Ochil & Perthshire South), Kevin Barron (Rother Valley), Hugh Bayley (York Central), Dame Margaret Beckett (Derby South), Hilary Benn (Leeds Central), Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree), Clive Betts (Sheffield South East), Roberta Blackman-Woods (Durham, City of), Hazel Blears (Salford & Eccles), Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South & Cleveland East), Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central), David Blunkett (Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough), Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West), Lyn Brown (West Ham), Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East), Russell Brown (Dumfries & Galloway), Karen Buck (Westminster North), Richard Burden (Birmingham Northfield), Andy Burnham (Leigh), Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill), Alan Campbell (Tynemouth), Sarah Champion (Rotherham), Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill), Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley), Vernon Coaker (Gedling), Ann Coffey (Stockport), Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford), David Crausby (Bolton North East), Mary Creagh (Wakefield), Stella Creasy (Walthamstow), Jon Cruddas (Dagenham & Rainham), John Cryer (Leyton & Wanstead), Alex Cunningham (Stockton North), Jim Cunningham (Coventry South), Tony Cunningham (Workington), Simon Danczuk (Rochdale), Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West), Wayne David (Caerphilly), Geraint Davies (Swansea West), Gloria De Piero (Ashfield), John Denham (Southampton Itchen), Frank Dobson (Holborn & St Pancras), Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline & Fife West), Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South & Penarth), Jim Dowd (Lewisham West & Penge), Gemma Doyle (Dunbartonshire West), Jack Dromey (Birmingham Erdington), Michael Dugher (Barnsley East), Angela Eagle (Wallasey), Maria Eagle (Garston & Halewood), Clive Efford (Eltham), Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central), Natascha Engel (Derbyshire North East), Bill Esterson (Sefton Central), Chris Evans (Islwyn), Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South), Caroline Flint (Don Valley), Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield), Hywel Francis (Aberavon), Mike Gapes (Ilford South), Barry Gardiner (Brent North), Pat Glass (Durham North West), Mary Glindon (Tyneside North), Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland), Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen & Hamilton West), Kate Green (Stretford & Urmston), Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South), Nia Griffith (Llanelli), Andrew Gwynne (Denton & Reddish), Peter Hain (Neath), Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East), Harriet Harman (Camberwell & Peckham), Tom Harris (Glasgow South), Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney), John Healey (Wentworth & Dearne), Mark Hendrick (Preston), David Heyes (Ashton Under Lyne), Meg Hillier (Hackney South & Shoreditch), Julie Hilling (Bolton West), Margaret Hodge (Barking), Sharon Hodgson (Washington & Sunderland West), Jim Hood (Lanark & Hamilton East), George Howarth (Knowsley), Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central), Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore), Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Kilburn), Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock & Loudoun), Major Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central), Graham Jones (Hyndburn), Kevan Jones (Durham North), Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South), Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich & West Norwood), Mike Kane (Wythenshawe & Sale East), Elizabeth Kendall (Leicester West), Sadiq Khan (Tooting), David Lammy (Tottenham), Christopher Leslie (Nottingham East), Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields), Ivan Lewis (Bury South), Andy Love (Edmonton), Ian Lucas (Wrexham), Steve McCabe (Birmingham Selly Oak), Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow), Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East), Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham & Morden), Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough), Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East), Alison McGovern (Wirral South), Jim McGovern (Dundee West), Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North), Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr), Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham Ladywood), Seema Malhotra (Feltham & Heston), John Mann (Bassetlaw), Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South), Michael Meacher (Oldham West & Royton), Alan Meale (Mansfield), Ian Mearns (Gateshead), Ed Miliband (Doncaster North), Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port & Neston), Madeleine Moon (Bridgend), Jessica Morden (Newport East), Meg Munn (Sheffield Heeley), Jim Murphy (Renfrewshire East), Paul Murphy (Torfaen), Lisa Nandy (Wigan), Pamela Nash (Airdrie & Shotts), Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central), Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock), Albert Owen (Ynys Mon), Toby Perkins (Chesterfield), Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South), Stephen Pound (Ealing North), Lucy Powell (Manchester Central), Nick Raynsford (Greenwich & Woolwich), Jamie Reed (Copeland), Steve Reed (Croydon North), Rachel Reeves (Leeds West), Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East), Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge & Hyde), John Robertson (Glasgow North West), Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West), Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes), Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd), Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central), Andy Sawford (Corby), Alison Seabeck (Plymouth Moor View), Virendra Sharma (Ealing Southall), Jim Sheridan (Paisley & Renfrewshire North), Gavin Shuker (Luton South), Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith), Angela Smith (Penistone & Stocksbridge), Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent), Owen Smith (Pontypridd), John Spellar (Warley), Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston), Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South), Mark Tami (Alyn & Deeside), Gareth Thomas (Harrow West), Emily Thornberry (Islington South & Finsbury), Stephen Timms (East Ham), Jon Trickett (Hemsworth), Karl Turner (Hull East), Derek Twigg (Halton), Stephen Twigg (Liverpool West Derby), Chuka Umunna (Streatham), Keith Vaz (Leicester East), Valerie Vaz (Walsall South), Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North), Dave Watts (St Helens North), Alan Whitehead (Southampton Test), Chris Williamson (Derby North), Phil Wilson (Sedgefield), Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central), John Woodcock (Barrow & Furness), Shaun Woodward (St Helens South & Whiston), David Wright (Telford) and Iain Wright (Hartlepool).

 These pro-war Labour MPs have let down themselves and their voters very badly indeed - sanctioning a return of Western imperialism to the scene of its greatest crime in recent memory - and all of them deserve to face a left wing challenge to them in the general election. All socialists in Britain should surely now work together - whether in TUSC, Left Unity, Respect or whatever - to unite and rally around credible candidates in each area who can stand against as many of these people and raise the banner of 'Welfare not Warfare - Stop the Cuts - Stop the Bombing of Iraq'. Organising to stop the war in Iraq and organising for an anti-war left wing challenge in the 2015 general election is the best tribute we can pay to those pioneers - including Karl Marx himself - who formed the First International 150 years ago - and restore some honour to the words 'socialist internationalism'.

National Stop the War Demonstration on 4 October

From the Stop the War Coalition:

Stop the bombing of Iraq - don't attack Syria
National demonstration, Saturday 4 October

Assemble 1pm, 
Temple Place, 
London WC2R 3BD

Parliament has voted for the third Iraq War. The last two have brought almost unimaginable suffering to the people of Iraq and have helped to create the current chaos, driving the country to the brink of break up.

They claim this is a humanitarian operation to defeat Isis. In fact Isis is backed by various middle east powers and a new aerial bombardment will not defeat it. It will however kill innocents, further fragment the country and inflame violence. 

The record of the west's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya show that as well as creating misery and mayhem, western military interventions make the world a more volatile, dangerous place.  

Cameron's new war has built-in mission creep. Discussions are already underway for Britain to join the bombing of Syria, and there are growing calls for boots on the ground.

The Stop the War Coalition is asking every one of its supporters to throw themselves in to the campaign against the insanity of another war on Iraq. Spread the word everywhere about next Saturday's demonstration.
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Joe Glenton on the root causes of the Woolwich killing

Excellent response by former soldier Joe Glenton - author of  Soldier Box - his personal account of fighting in - and then rebelling against - the 'war on terror' - to the murder in Woolwich.

Edited to add: Stop the War Coalition statement and petition

 Edited to also add: 

London UAF counter demo on Monday 27 May, 3pm, Downing Street

Hoping to grow off of the back of the attack in Woolwich the EDL have called a demo at Downing Street on Monday 27 May at 3pm. UAF have called a counter demo, assembling at 2pm at Downing Street. Please bring trade union banners.

Tony Blair does his bit for the unemployed

Readers of Histomat currently out of work might be interested in the following 'job' I came across recently:

Senior Research Analyst
Tony Blair Faith Foundation
Location: London

Report to: Director of Projects and Corporate Operations

Start: Immediate start

Application Close Date: Friday 10th February

About the role

The faithandglobalisation.org site will be a factual and analytical tool designed to inform users about the role of religion in the world. It will be a pioneering online database of key facts about religion and globalisation, using mapping based technology to bring the data alive from a range of authoritative resources. This combined data will be brought to life through cutting edge research, analysis, debate and daily news updates. We will engage some of the world's foremost thinkers to lead the debate on how faith interacts with globalisation.


The 'main duties' include 'maintaining a rigorous and ethical approach to the quality of research' and 'required skills' include 'high attention to detail' and would 'suit post-holders' if they are 'keen to be involved in a ground breaking project', 'mature in attitude' and above all 'well presented and business-like'.

Its nice that Blair seems to have learnt something about the importance of 'rigour and ethics in research' since his infamous bullshit over the dodgy Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction dossier, but I'm guessing those who think that one particularly 'ethical' way to contribute to a debate about how 'faith interacts with globalisation' might be to bring the founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation himself to an international criminal court for war crimes need not apply - however 'well presented and business-like' they were. They would doubtless be displaying an 'immature attitude'.

John Pilger on the warmongers wanting your vote

Here in Britain, Polly Toynbee anoints the war criminal Tony Blair as "the perfect emblem for his people's own contradictory whims". No, he was the perfect emblem for a liberal intelligentsia prepared cynically to indulge his crime. That is the unsaid of the British election campaign, along with the fact that 77 per cent of the British people want the troops home. In Iraq, duly forgotten, what has been done is a holocaust. More than a million people are dead and four million have been driven from their homes. Not a single mention has been made of them in the entire campaign. Rather, the news is that Blair is Labour's "secret weapon".

All three party leaders are warmongers. Nick Clegg, the darling of former Blair lovers, says that, as prime minister, he will "participate" in another invasion of a "failed state" provided there is "the right equipment, the right resources". His one reservation is the standard genuflection towards a military now scandal­ised by a colonial cruelty of which the Baha Mousa case is but one of many.

For Clegg, as for Brown and Cameron, the horrific weapons used by British forces, such as cluster bombs, depleted uranium and the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of its victims' lungs, do not exist. The limbs of children in trees do not exist. This year alone, Britain will spend £4bn on the war in Afghanistan. That is what Brown and Cameron almost certainly intend to cut from the health service.

Edward S Herman explained this genteel extremism in his essay "The Banality of Evil". There is a strict division of labour, ranging from the scientists working in the laboratories of the weapons industry, to the intelligence and "national security" personnel who supply the paranoia and "strategies", to the politicians who approve them. As for journalists, our task is to censor by omission and make the crime seem normal for you, the public. For, above all, it is your understanding and your awakening that are feared.

John Pilger on the warmongers running for Parliament who may not have 'broken Britain' but who collectively have done a pretty good job of 'breaking' both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Regime Change Begins At Home

As John Pilger notes, 'in the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies, shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite love America because America allows them to barrack and bomb the natives and call themselves "partners". We should interrupt their fun...' The Stop the War Coalition has a few ideas about how to use the election to begin to go about this...

Three protests for Londoners

THREE PROTESTS ON FRIDAY 5 MARCH

1. ANTI-EDL EMERGENCY PROTEST
The EDL is marching to welcome the anti-Muslim Dutch political leader, Geert Wilders, who is visting Parliament. Wilders' exteme racism led to an earlier government ban on him entering Britain. The emergency protest, which has been called by Unite Against Fascism, and is supported by many organisations, assembles at 11am outside Parliament (DETAILS: http://bit.ly/cAsu6T ) .

2. GORDON BROWN PROTEST AT IRAQ INQUIRY
A short walk from Parliament is the QEII Conference Centre, where Stop the War will hold its protest from 8.30am to 10.30am, as Gordon Brown's gives evidence to the Chilcot Committee (DETAILS: http://bit.ly/14uRwZ ).

PICKET OF JOE GLENTON'S COURT MARTIAL HEARING The picket of the court when Joe Glenton will be sentenced for refusing to fight in Afghanistan, will take place at 9.30am. (DETAILS: http://bit.ly/41D2DP ).

International outrage as 'bomber' goes free

The man wanted in connection with the criminal bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan is free and greeted by Col. Gaddafi instead of spending the rest of his life in prison

Irresponsible Historians # 94: Sir Martin Gilbert

'Historical responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men'.
- Lord Acton, historian, 1887

With that quote about 'historical responsibility' with respect to 'great men' in mind, meet Sir Martin Gilbert:

Exhibit A, 'Statesmen for these times' by Sir Martin Gilbert, dated December 2004:
'Many comment that today's leaders look small compared with the giants of the past. This is, I believe, a misconception...Although it can easily be argued that George W Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did - that the war on terror is not a third world war - they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill...'

Exhibit B, news report dated June 2008:
'Mr and Mrs Bush went on to Downing Street last night for an informal dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with the Browns and three historians...David Cannadine, Churchill's official biographer Martin Gilbert and Simon Schama, presenter of the popular television series A History Of Britain, were invited after Mr Bush expressed an interest in meeting some historians, a No 10 source said'.

Exhibit C, news report dated August 2009.
In mid-June Gordon Brown announced that there would be a "non-judgmental", behind-closed-doors inquiry into the Iraq war, conducted by hand-picked insiders...members of the inquiry include historian Sir Law­rence Freedman, who helped Blair develop the doctrine of "liberal interventionism" that he used to justify the war. Historian Sir Martin Gilbert, who wrote an article in 2004 saying Blair and George Bush could one day be compared to Churchill and Roosevelt, is also a member of the inquiry.

John Pilger on breaking the lie of silence

Vintage Pilger:

Britain's political conference season of 2008 will be remembered as The Great Silence. Politicians have come and gone and their mouths have moved in front of large images of themselves, and they often wave at someone. There has been lots of news about each other...The club is celebrating itself, including all those, Labour and Tory, who gave the war criminal [Tony Blair] a standing ovation on his last day in parliament and who have yet to vote on, let alone condemn, Britain's part in the wanton human, social and physical destruction of an entire nation. Instead, there are happy debates such as, "Can hope win?" and, my favourite, "Can foreign policy be a Labour strength?"...The Guardian's economics editor, Larry Elliott, has written that the Prime Minister [Gordon Brown] "resembles a tragic hero in a Hardy novel: an essentially good man brought down by one error of judgement". What is this one error of judgement? The bank-rolling of two murderous colonial adventures? No. The unprecedented growth of the British arms industry and the sale of weapons to the poorest countries? No. The replacement of manufacturing and public service by an arcane cult serving the ultra-rich? No. The Prime Minister's "folly" is "postponing the election last year". This is the March Hare Factor. Reality can be detected, however, by applying the Orwell Rule and inverting public pronouncements and headlines, such as "Aggressor Russia facing pariah status, US warns", thereby identifying the correct pariah; or by crossing the invisible boundaries that fix the boundaries of political and media discussion. "When truth is replaced by silence," said the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "the silence is a lie."

Histomat Picture Exclusive: Bush's Iraq 'uprising'

When George Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by claiming that thanks to the recent 'surge' of the US military, 'In Iraq, we're witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden', to be honest I was initially somewhat sceptical. Probably I had fallen for some of the left wing propaganda about Iraq that circles around the blogosphere. But now, as I think readers of Histomat will surely agree, the astonishing picture above, exclusive to this blog, suggests Bush may well have been onto something...

Madeleine Bunting on the disaster of Iraq

Good article in today's Guardian:

Can we claim innocence of the chaotic violence of Iraq now normalised into the background of our lives? Suicide bombs have long since become routine radio noise. We're numbed to the atrocities; except for some stalwarts, the initial anti-war activism has been crowded out by other responsibilities. Life goes on, even if in Baghdad it frequently doesn't.

And to accompany the indifference is the creeping denial of responsibility. Government ministers now talk of Iraq as a tragedy, as if it was a natural disaster and they had no hand in its making.

Edited to add: The following letter in response to Bunting the next day:

Madeleine Bunting (Comment, November 5) overlooks some others who might examine their actions in the making of war on Iraq: the Stop the War Coalition. It is likely that Saddam Hussein saw TV news reports and used them to judge the popular mood around the world on his refusal to allow WMD inspections. And what would he have seen? Millions of people marching in support of Stop the War. Might he not have thought "they won't invade - their voters would never forgive them". In the latter he was right, but in the former most tragically wrong.
John Goldman
London

Lets get this right - so the people to blame for the criminal and disastrous war on Iraq were not the warmongers themselves but er, the millions who marched against the war on the grounds that it was not only criminal but would lead to disaster? I am sorry but words kind of fail me at this point...

Cowards in the face of Iraq

I don't really normally have much time for the team around Spiked magazine, but Brendan O'Neill hits the nail firmly on the head when he notes that, for the Labourites, their care is not for the people of Iraq but their own positions of power:

'In the ranks of the Labour party, and among its supporters in the press, many are covering their backs on Iraq by claiming they were conned, misled or downright duped by Bush and Blair's pre-war claims. They seek to blame Blair and his coterie of advisers for the war in Iraq, when in truth a majority of Labour MPs voted for the war and most of the Labour party membership went along with it with a kind of shoulder-shrugging indifference to what its consequences might be. Never has Labour members' slavish acceptance of the leadership's line been so deadly as it was in 2002-2003. Those who claim to have been duped should bear in mind the words of American historian Carl Becker: "One of the first duties of man is not to be duped, [but] to be aware of his world."

Harman is disavowing responsibility for Iraq in a desperate bid to save Labour's skin. She says: "Party membership has halved and people are disillusioned ... The symbol of that has been our foreign policy, particularly Iraq." She is opportunistically distancing herself from the Iraq debacle in order to gain credibility amongst the disorientated members of her party. Gordon Brown is attempting a similar trick. His proposal to allow critics of the war to demonstrate outside parliament is largely a sop to Labour party members, an attempt to show them that, although he also backed the war to the hilt, he's a little bit apologetic so please, please forgive me!

Others are urging Brown to go further. They have called on him to "lance the boil of Iraq" in order to save Labour from oblivion. John Harris, author of So Now Who Do We Vote For?, has complained that "no one under 25 [will] join the Labour party until it [has] lanced the Iraq boil". Note this is not a demand to end the war and occupation, much less to challenge future military interventions; rather it is a call to squeeze the "Iraq boil" that sits like an ugly, pus-ridden blemish on the most important thing of all: Labour's reputation. The concern is to save Labour, not Iraq.

Writing in the Guardian before the last general election, Madeleine Bunting was even more explicit. She called on Labour under Brown to execute a "surgical strike" and "lance the Iraq boil before the left is irrevocably split": "Lance the boil and let Blair pay the price for Iraq. Prime Minister Gordon Brown would then reposition the line on Iraq ... It would liberate the next election from endless questions about trust that have dogged Blair's political career. It would give a fresh impetus to New Labour's political project, which would give it a fighting chance of two more terms."

Some on the Labour left are clearly more concerned with "liberating" British politics from pesky questions about Iraq than they are in liberating Iraqis from endless western meddling. The reduction of Iraq to a "boil" - how inhumane! - sums up what is motivating much of the Labour-left criticism of Blair over the war: a self-serving desire to repolish Labour's image, and thus secure re-election, rather than a desire to kickstart a debate about war and democracy.'

Iraq was on course until 2003 bombing - Blair

From the Guardian:

Tony Blair yesterday warned the west that he was personally losing the will to win the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as he hit back at those who claim Iraq has gone wrong because of a lack of planning. The prime minister said the real turning point in Iraq came on March 20 2003, when 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' began with the unfortunate dropping of a series of bombs by the US Government.

Mr Blair told the Commons liaison committee in his 11th and last evidence session: "I thought in July 2002 we had contained a terrible dictator, we had got in place UN weapons inspectors and the Labour Party were going to remain the elected government in Britain for the foreseeable future.

"What happened in March 2003? The US went in and began to murder innocent Iraqi people. At that moment I had a fundamental decision to make as an international statesman- did I say to the US 'I am not going to let you succeed' or did I say 'this is going to be really difficult to sell to the British people but fuck it - lets go to war'?"

Apparently giving in to suggestions from MPs that his premiership had been ruined by his misjudgment over backing the US in Iraq, the prime minister attacked the idea that a lack of planning was to blame. "It is so comforting to say that there was an error in the planning - someone did not spot what was going to go on. In reality, that is not what has created the problem, the problem was the initial idea that bombing innocent people was going to be the thing that liberated them."

Mr Blair also attacked the imperialist idea that democracy comes about through the West exporting it by bombing. "Please do not believe that the ordinary Arab does not want democracy or freedom in the way we do," he said. "What country has ever chosen not to be a democracy - it is nonsense. It is what oppressors do to justify their oppression. They say democracy and freedom are western values. It is rubbish. They are universal values of the human spirit and they always will be."

Mr Blair went on to disclose the limits of British prime ministerial authority by revealing that he was personally opposed to three recent planks of US government policy: their rampant military imperialism; their lack of respect for the environment; and their general lack of respect for democratic rights, but he was unable to persuade George Bush to change policy despite the 'special relationship'. He urged people to attend the Stop the War Coalition's lobby at the special Labour Leadership conference in Manchester on June 24th...

Or maybe not...

Paul Rogers on a clear and present danger

In The fire next time, Rogers notes that the anti-war movement needs to 'be prepared' over the coming weeks:

'To sum up: the US position in Iraq is in trouble, with the surge failing so far to deliver the expected results and a further expansion therefore planned; reinforcements have had to be sent to Afghanistan; meanwhile, the Iranian government is being particularly forceful and US naval forces have moved into close proximity to Iran in the Persian Gulf.

These circumstances will not necessarily result in a tipping-point on the other side of which is war, but at a time of pre-existing tension which they in turn reinforce they do present particular dangers. These are the circumstances in which there is a risk of unexpected events developing rapidly into confrontation, even where the latter is not the intended result. That is the situation the region and the world now faces, and there is little indication that it will ease in the coming weeks.'