Jeremy Corbyn
Blood, war and Blair
JEREMY CORBYN on more depressing news from Iraq as the warmongers aim for Iran.
THE news from Baghdad is universally awful and depressing. Even as the Prime Minister spoke commemorating the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samara a year earlier, another attack was taking place. This time, 71 people were killed.
Every day, the violence gets worse. Monday's death toll was over 100.
The US Congress will vote this week on a motion which has been drafted by the Democratic leadership. It censures President Bush for the deployment of an extra 20,000 troops into Iraq, while, bizarrely, supporting the continued presence of 140,000 US troops at the same time. It seems that the newly elected Congress is trying to have it both ways, rather like Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry at the last election.
The only modern parallel with the Iraq disaster is the Vietnam war. The notorious Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was concocted using fabricated evidence, was used to unleash a massive bombing raid on Hanoi and other towns in North Vietnam.
More recently, the supposed "dove" in the Bush administration Colin Powell showed some absurd photographs to the UN general assembly in September 2002 which allegedly proved the existence of Iraqi biological weapons laboratories.
Not to be outdone, the British government produced its famed dossier on the weapons of mass destruction at the same time, which is now a collector's piece in deception.
While Tony Blair used the dossier to persuade a very sceptical British public that Britain had to support the US, George Bush never used this argument. The US President always argued for an invasion without placing conditions on its execution.
Only a few weeks ago, James Baker and the Iraq Survey Group produced a report which was designed to provide an exit strategy for the administration, arguing, quite correctly, that a long-term peace in the region had to involve neighbouring countries in Iran and Syria.
But, following the usual huddle with Blair, Bush decided to do the exact opposite, increasing troop numbers and announcing a new offensive in the suburbs of Baghdad.
There has been a qualitative change in the war in Iraq, with the insurgent forces now capable of downing US helicopters. The confidence of Iraqi groups is high enough for them to talk openly of negotiations with the occupying forces.
The recent US rhetoric against Iran marks a dangerous new phase in the conflict. Washington's policy towards Iran has been unremittingly hostile ever since the fall of the puppet Shah in 1979. The hostility reached new heights following the hostage-taking of US students, an event that subsequently cost Jimmy Carter the 1980 election.
While former foreign secretary Jack Straw departed from the usual pro-US line, even travelling to Tehran, and gave every indication that he opposed any military action against Iran, he was suddenly removed from the post.
His replacement Margaret Beckett has given no such undertaking about Iran. Instead, she has given blanket support to US strategy in the Middle East, declining to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon until Washington did so and supporting the cruel and ruinous boycott of Palestine, which has resulted in misery, hardship and violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
Quite rightly, the regime in Iran has been condemned around the world for its human rights record.
But it should be noted that there have been signs in Iran of growing internal opposition to President Ahmedinejad's government.
Iranian exile groups, as well as many groups operating within Iran, are united in their opposition to a threatened US attack on Iran and the support offered for these threats by Britain and some European countries.
Any attempt to extend the failed war in Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran would be incredibly dangerous and, at the very least, it would cause tens of thousands of deaths across the region.
At worst, it could set in train a series of conflicts reaching well beyond the Middle East.
The pretext for the policy being pursued by the US and its allies is that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. So, while Tehran is condemned for not fulfilling the voluntary additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the British government sanguinely proposes to spend £25 billion on replacing our own nuclear missile system.
Britain is hardly in a position to lecture the rest of the world on non-proliferation when we ourselves are proposing to break the one treaty that has done something to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons across the globe.
The tragic times in which we now live have seen the deaths of nearly a million people in wars in the Middle East. The death toll in mineral-related wars in Africa also runs into millions.
Blair will soon be leaving office, which ought to be an opportunity for a complete change of direction by the Labour Party and by the government.
However, only leadership candidate John McDonnell MP is offering an alternative vision.
Let it not be forgotten that Blair's designated successor Gordon Brown recently managed the incredibly callous feat of going to India to promote globalisation and praising pacifist icon Mahatma Gandhi, before returning home to announce that he favours replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.
The power of mass protest LAST weekend, a very well-attended Stop the War Confer-ence was held in Glasgow, where the issues of Trident, Pales-tine and the war in Iraq were addressed and preparations made for the next big demonstration on February 24.
The increasingly aggressive warlike activities by the US, closely followed by Blair, have brought about a much more divided world. But we have also witnessed a greater sense of international unity among peace and anti-war groups on both sides of the Atlantic and throughout Europe.
It is often very frustrating to feel that all we can do is march and express ourselves at public meetings and rallies. But no-one should underestimate the cumulative effect of a snowball of public opinion around the world, as the rejection of the politics of global terror and war gathers pace.
The media could even start to obsess with the total numbers of people who have done something practical to bring about peace, rather than the motoring lobby's obsession with road charges.
• Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
