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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4897671-103677,00.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4897671-103677,00.html</a><br><br>
<br><br>
Bush and Blair have lit a fire which could consume them <br><br>
The Iraqi uprising will drive home the forgotten lessons of empire
<br><br>
Seumas Milne<br>
Thursday April 8, 2004<br>
The Guardian <br><br>
Where are they now, the cheerleaders for war on Iraq? Where are the
US<br>
Republican hawks who predicted the Anglo-American invasion would be
a<br>
"cakewalk", greeted by cheering Iraqis? Or the liberal
apologists, who<br>
hailed a "new dawn" for freedom and democracy in the Arab world
as US<br>
marines swathed Baghdad in the stars and stripes a year ago? Some, like
the<br>
Sun newspaper - which yesterday claimed Iraqis recognise that occupation
is<br>
in their "own long-term good" and are not in "bloody
revolt" at all - appear<br>
to be in an advanced state of denial. <br><br>
Others, to judge by the performance of the neocon writer William
Shawcross<br>
and Blairite MP Ann Clwyd, have been reduced to a state of
stuttering<br>
incoherence by the scale of bloodshed and suffering they have
helped<br>
unleash. Clwyd, who regularly visits Iraq as the prime minister's
"human<br>
rights envoy", struggled to acknowledge in an interview on Monday
that<br>
bombing raids by US F16s and Apache helicopter gunships on Iraqi
cities<br>
risked causing civilian deaths, not merely injuries. The following day,
16<br>
children were reportedly killed in Falluja when US warplanes rocketed
their<br>
homes. And yesterday, in what may well be the most inflammatory act
of<br>
slaughter yet, a US helicopter killed dozens of Iraqis in a missile
assault<br>
on a Falluja mosque. <br><br>
The attack on a mosque during afternoon prayers will, without doubt,
swell<br>
the ranks of what has become a nationwide uprising against the
US-led<br>
occupation. By launching a crackdown against the Shia cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr<br>
- and, in an eloquent display of what it means by freedom in occupied
Iraq,<br>
closing his newspaper - the US has finally triggered the
long-predicted<br>
revolt across the Shia south and ended the isolation of the resistance
in<br>
the so-called Sunni triangle. Bush, Blair and Bremer have lit a fire in
Iraq<br>
which may yet consume them all. The evidence of the past few days is
that<br>
the uprising has spread far beyond the ranks of Sadr's militia. And far
from<br>
unleashing the civil war US and British pundits and politicians have
warned<br>
about, Sunni and Shia guerrillas have been fighting side by side in
Baghdad<br>
against the occupation forces. <br><br>
This revolt shows every sign of turning into Iraq's own intifada, and
towns<br>
like Falluja and Ramadi - centres of resistance from the first days
of<br>
occupation - are now getting the treatment Israel has meted out to<br>
Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus and Rafah over the past couple of years.
As<br>
resistance groups have moved from simply attacking US and other
occupation<br>
troops to attempts to hold territory, US efforts to destroy them - as
an<br>
American general vowed to do yesterday - have become increasingly
brutal.<br>
Across Iraq, US soldiers and their European allies are now killing Iraqis
in<br>
their hundreds on the streets of their own cities in an explosive revival
of<br>
the Middle East's imperial legacy. <br><br>
For Britain, Iraq has turned into its first full-scale colonial war since
it<br>
was forced out of Aden in the late 1960s. And the pledge by US commanders
to<br>
"pacify" the mushrooming centres of Iraqi insurrection echoes
not only the<br>
doomed US efforts to break the Vietnamese in the 60s and 70s, but also
the<br>
delusionary euphemisms of Britain's own blood-soaked campaigns in Kenya
and<br>
Malaya a decade earlier. The same kind of terminology is used to damn
those<br>
fighting foreign rule in Iraq. Thus President Bush's spokesman
described<br>
Shia guerrillas as "thugs and terrorists", while his Iraqi
proconsul Paul<br>
Bremer - head of a 130,000-strong occupation force which has already
killed<br>
more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians - issued a priceless denunciation of
groups<br>
who "think power in Iraq should come out of the barrel of a gun ...
that is<br>
intolerable". <br><br>
The bulk of the media and political class in Britain has followed this
lead<br>
in an apparent attempt to normalise the occupation of Iraq in the eyes
of<br>
the public. The fact that British squaddies shot dead 15 Iraqis in Amara
on<br>
Tuesday has had little more coverage than the shameful beating to death
of<br>
Iraqi prisoners in British custody. Both the BBC and ITN routinely refer
to<br>
British troops as "peacekeepers"; private mercenaries are
called "civilian<br>
contractors"; the rebranding of the occupation planned for June is
described<br>
as the "handover of power to the Iraqis"; the Sadr group always
represents a<br>
"small minority" of Shia opinion; and a patently unscientific
and<br>
contradictory poll carried out in Iraq last month - in which most
people<br>
said they were opposed to the presence of coalition forces in Iraq -
is<br>
absurdly used to claim majority support for the occupation. <br><br>
The growing panic in Washington over what Senator Edward Kennedy
calls<br>
"Bush's Vietnam" is now focused on the date for the formal -
and entirely<br>
cosmetic - transfer of sovereignty to a hand-picked Iraqi puppet<br>
administration, currently timetabled for June 30. The original idea of
an<br>
early date was to give the appearance of progress in Iraq before the
US<br>
presidential elections. But there was also an anxiety that pressure for
an<br>
elected transitional government would become unstoppable if the
transfer<br>
took place any later - and like all occupying powers, the US fears
genuinely<br>
free elections in Iraq. In any case, according to existing plans, the
US<br>
will maintain full effective control - of security, oil, economic
policy,<br>
major contracts - under a rigged interim constitution whenever the
formal<br>
"transfer" takes place. <br><br>
The current uprising increasingly resembles the last great revolt
against<br>
British rule in Iraq in 1920, which also cost more than 10,000 lives
and<br>
helped bring forward the country's formal independence. But Britain<br>
maintained behind-the-scenes control, though military bases and
ministerial<br>
"advisers", until the client monarchy was finally overthrown in
1958. If<br>
Iraq is now to regain its independence, the lessons of history are that
the<br>
Iraqi resistance will have to sharply raise the costs of occupation,
and<br>
that those in the occupying countries who grasp the dangers,
unworkability<br>
and injustice of imperial rule must increase the political pressure
for<br>
withdrawal. <br><br>
Unlike in, say, Spain or Australia, we are hamstrung in Britain by the
fact<br>
that all three main political parties are committed to maintaining
the<br>
occupation, including the Liberal Democrats - whose former leader
and<br>
Bosnian governor Lord Ashdown yesterday argued for at least another
decade<br>
in Iraq. But opposition to such latter-day imperial bravura is strong
among<br>
the British public and across all parties, and must now find its
voice.<br>
There is a multiplicity of different possible mechanisms to bring about
a<br>
negotiated, orderly withdrawal and free elections. Tony Blair calls
that<br>
"running away" and admitting "we have got it all
wrong". But he and Bush did<br>
get it wrong: there were no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq wasn't
a<br>
threat, there was no UN authorisation, and the invasion was
manifestly<br>
illegal. Foreign troops in Iraq are not peacekeepers, but aggressors.
The<br>
lessons of empire are having to be learned all over again. <br><br>
<<a href="mailto:seumus.milne@guardian.co.uk" eudora="autourl">mailto:seumus.milne@guardian.co.uk</a>>
seumus.milne@guardian.co.uk <br><br>
<br>
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