Tony Blair has recently gone on the
defensive about the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. He
proceeds to claim that the current invasion of Iraq by ISIS is a
phenomena of 2014 which could not have been envisaged in 2003.
What Tony Blair is avoiding is any mention
of the catastrophe of the occupation of Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
The USA took responsibility for
re-building the country and so for several years they ruled Iraq.
But what was Iraq under Saddam ? Saddam may have been a dictator but
the underlying political philosophy was that of the Arab Socialist
Ba'ath Party. Iraq was a socialist country. And who did George Bush
select to run Iraq ? It was a collection of people selected for
their fanatical right wing beliefs.
The people Bush set up as rulers and
administration for Iraq were simply unable to accept the socialist
principles on which the country had been run up to that point. So
they dismantled everything. Many, many perfectly functional
institutions in Iraq were dismantled because they were socialist.
For years and years afterwards there
were barely simple services like fresh water and electricity to the
houses and apartment blocks. Everyone, quite literally everyone,
became unemployed. The only effective political impact was from the
mullahs at the mosque at Friday prayers. They may not have been fans
of Saddam Hussein but at least under the former regime, most men had
a job to go to, from which they earned self-respect. No-one was a
fan of total unemployment, of a country where even the banks were
closed where no-one could do anything, where even the most basic
services were fragmentary at best. So the mullahs preached against
the Americans. But a large proportion of unemployed men were ex-army
and had skills with weapons and explosives and they all had their
rifle and some a side arm at home. The Americans had refused to pay
the Iraqi army and sent them home from their barracks. It is not
un-natural in a country where nothing works and there seems to be no
prospect of anything working but so many people are armed and being
preached at by firebrand mullahs, some of them Shia and some of them
Sunni, that quasi-military insurgent groups started to form. After
all men gain their self-respect by doing things and joining the
insurgency felt like doing something. At least it was better than
sitting in the cafe nursing a single cup of coffee all day and just
talking.
And so the insurgency began and it is
really not surprising given the whole series of crazy decisions made
by the Americans who could not abide anything that smelt of socialism
which everything did in Iraq.
If the Americans had taken the slow
route of simply funding the socialist economy of Iraq until the oil
fields could start selling Iraqi oil to the world and Iraq could fund
itself, there would have been no insurgency. Because there would
have been more or less full employment. Guys like to go to work to
bring home money for the family. If they can do that reliably, they
don't want war, they want peace. The insurgency was the response of
the Iraqi people to the American occupation. The insurgency was a
response to total unemployment, total despair and total hopelessness.
The slow route of funding the socialist country until with its own oil sales it could fund itself would also have been far, far cheaper for the taxpayers of the USA.
The slow route of funding the socialist country until with its own oil sales it could fund itself would also have been far, far cheaper for the taxpayers of the USA.
Individuals mostly do not have wide
political horizons, they want to be part of a family and men want to
be the breadwinner for that family. Their perspective is the family
and the roles within in. George Bush and his crew came along with
their wide political horizons and could not see the individuals in
Iraq and their issues. They destroyed the lives of so many of these
individuals and so the insurgency began and it was a horrible
surprise to the Americans. But really it should not have been.
Tony Blair regards the removal of
Saddam Hussein as an isolated event. It was not an isolated event,
it brought about the American occupation. And the American occupation was a
huge disaster for the Iraqi people. And we cannot say that ISIS is
unrelated to the insurgency created by George Bush's peace. Tony
Blair's analysis, picking and choosing the events he wants to
consider and ignoring what he does not want to think about, is an
appalling misstatement of recent history in the middle east.
Useful resource books about the American occupation of Iraq:
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