Is it Bosworth Field time for George Bush, the neo-cons and New Labour in Iraq?
Could an unwinnable war be won by the Iraqi resistance?
Well from Northern Europe who knows really. Some things are apparent in the mists.
Firstly, clearly this is more like Vietnam than Puerto Rico for the US, clearly there is no US military solution. Kidnappings, US deaths and citizen casualities accelerate. The 'surge' has clearly failed and there are a number of other new developments.
Sadr has called for unity between Sunni and Shia resistance against all foreign occupying forces and there are reports that Sunni military leaders are listening.
Sunni assaults on Al Queda will if true make Sunni/Shia unity a stronger possibility.
Turkey is increasingly concerned with the threat from the free Kurdish informal state in Northern Iraq and may intervene military, causing chaos.
Greens need to be calling all the more strongly for an end to occupation, against Turkish intervention and against US threats to Iran.
The Second Gulf War has damaged the US greatly but more significantly has led to the loss of 100,000s of innocents.
Who funded Saddam Hussein in the first place, well Britain and America?
How have the most regressive forms of Islam grown? With motives and monies again from the US.
Self determination and human rights in Iraq are a long way off but US interventions globally look far more difficult.
I guess they will be calling Chavez a dictator and calling for democracy in Venezuela.
American democracy is the democracy of the death squad.
The ordinary Labour Party member, concerned, opposed to Blair, wanting peace...ultimately you have each taken a gun and shot a child in Iraq. Are you going to stop the killing? Love to see you all sat in the road with the rest of us opposing the arms trade...but I guess I will have to wait a long time to see you put your weapons away and stop the killing.
22 comments:
The ordinary concerned Labour member: done nothing more nor nothing less than the average Green to prevent this. We were on the anti-war marches alongside you. We disrupt the EXCeL conferences alongside you. We are at Faslane and the G8 alongside you. We struggle alongside you, and if you don't know we're left Labour, then that's because it's hardly a badge of pride at the moment.
The 251 Labour MPs who voted for the Iraq War are no more or less responsible than the other few hundred MPs who voted for it.
The people who lied about WMDs, from Hans Blix (if the report they cite in the debate on intervention in Hansard is correct) to Tony Blair to anyone who was in on the truth, must bear a heavier moral burden than anyone, IMO. Being sectarian about this helps no-one.
The ordinary concerned Labour Party member has allowed the party to become a prop for the military-industrial complex.
I am not sectarian, merely very angry.
Hi Derek,
I'm a Labour activist who has in the past worked closely with the Greens, both on campaigns and in the council. I can't understand what you think this diatribe might achieve.
What we need is for people, regardless of their party affiliation, to work together on common causes, be it Iraq, climate change or whatever. There are more people who campaigned against the Iraq war in the Labour Party than there are in the entire Green Party, and it is a desperately curious way to try to build links to accuse them falsely of murdering children.
Rather than this kind of self-indulgent and counterproductive moralising, why not join the people, in your party, in the Labour Party and in neither, who have been working to offer support and solidarity to people in Iraq?
Donpaskini - well said.
Unfortunately Mr Wall doesn't do debate as he doesn't have any answers.
We all share the blame for Iraq. I went on the 1/1.5/2 million strong march and wrote emails and letters to those who I thought might be able to put a stop to it. When our country joined the neocon invasion I felt trembly and sick going to work, like I'd just heard a close friend had died.
What did I do? Not much. Wrote some more letters, got a bit fatalistic that that massive, historic march was just swished away by Blair and vanished from the news media in 48 hours (contrast that coverage with little missing Maddie) and that was about it.
I comfortably did my job and went about everyday life while my tax money fell on Iraq killing thousands. I went on a couple more protests, I railed against Bush, Blair, Halliburton, neocons big oil to those who'd listen.
Should the politicians be blamed? Well, I knew full-well that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Why? Because I knew that that country had precious few weapons of conventional destruction and had been ravaged by 10 years of bombing and its people had suffered years of sanctions. I knew getting Iraq was a long-term neocon goal. If hundreds of highly-paid MPs couldn't be even mildly informed about a massive global issue we should ask what they're even doing there?
We are all to blame for Iraq. We are all to blame for the rotten lot at Westminister. Not Tories, not Labour party members, not 'New Labour'. All of us.
Check out the housing charity Shelter's video on YouTube, which shows a generic NuLabourtive politician throwing away a baby. A respectable charity now sees nothing wrong with depicting a politician as a heartless baby-thrower to get the point across.
Out there in the country it's hard to describe the apathy and anger people have for the political establishment. Talking about the 'labour left' as if that means the 'good guys' doesn't wash. Meacher's on the Labour left and talks about defending council homes one minute and then is off speculating on property investments the next. How many times are 'left-wingers' found circumventing the hoi polloi they claim to 'care about' by sending their kids to elite selective or private schools or using their now generous salaries to have a flutter on speculative markets?
I think it is fair to say that there is a lot of anger and yes of course, the 'extraordinary' minority of Labour Party members who worked for John McDonnell deserve our thanks.
My fear is the if Iraq is Vietnam, Iran could be the next Cambodia.
It probably doesn't do any good to get angry about the average Labour Party member....but one feels that diplomacy is dead.
Congratulations. I'll not be voting Green in European elections any further.
For all I know you might vote George Bush any way and be happy to support Gordon Brown when he supports Bush and bombs Tehran.
I'm sure my £12pa was absolutely vital to Blair's plans for war. Especially as we all know that Prime Minister Duncan Smith would have been right out there on the streets of London with the rest of us in 2003 protesting the US invasion. It must be this astute sense of politics which has made the Green Party such a powerhouse in England and Wales.
Derek, I think you'll find the 'ordinary concerned Labour Party' hasn't 'allowed' (or otherwise) anything to happen since electing Blair in 1994. To assign moral blame to the Labour grassroots just because of your frustration with the failure of the anti-war movement is insulting and silly.
As for snide comments about the "extraordinary" minority, I'm sure the thousands of party and union members who supported John McDonnell appreach your munificent solidarity.
Regards,
The Child-Killing Military-Industrial Complex Fan Club
appreciate*
It would be nice to have seen some action to boot out Labour MPs who voted for war or see the Labour grass roots revolt against the BAE scandal.
At least in the 1970s the Labour government didn't actually go into Vietnam with the US.
Believe you me all radicals would love to see members of the Labour Party making a noise on peace, justice and the environment.
You seem to be spending a lot of energy on my comments, which are common currency, rather than on refining your opposition to the 'military-industrial complex'.
Frankly to give another example when Labour Party minister Dennis McShane supported the coup in Venezuela, where was the roar of protest from 'ordinary labour members'?
Frankly you may want to silence the messenger but this is not an adequate response
I'm sorry Derek, but I'm not leaving the Labour Party.
It would be very easy to just opt out, join the Green Party (or more probably not) and smile a smug middle-class smile at not having any responsibility for the carnage in Iraq. But in fact, stopping war is the respon sibility of us all.
So I'm going to stay where what I say and do can have the most effect. I happen to believe in the necessity of a mass party linked to the workers' movement. I can't conceive war bein g stopped by anything else. If that party has been taken over by a bunch of neo-liberal warmongers, well that's partly my responsibility, but I'm not going to shirk that responsibility.
I am happy to work with all manner of people on a non-sectarian basis against war. I hope you are too. Denunciation, though all too common on the left, isn't a particularly good means of building coalitions.
Gosh Derek how can you bring yourself to use this product of the 'military-industrial complex' to spread your noble message? Don't your hands freeze on your keyboard at the thought of all those children whose lives you have deliberately shortened by using the products of capitalist run sweat shops? Or were your computer and all those by means of which this blog can be read hand knitted?
'If that party has been taken over by a bunch of neo-liberal warmongers, well that's partly my responsibility, but I'm not going to shirk that responsibility.'
is certainly a bit more convincing to those of us who fear 'that most labour party members have become Tony Blair's willing executioners'.
The vast majority of labour party members have shirked the responsibilty, which is exactly why my comments were necessary.
I would say they I have been impressed by the actions of campaign groups like Cornerhouse in fighting the Labour government's love affair with BAE, you could do worse than support their efforts whatever party you are involved with.
As to anon, I would love to see more open source software than micro soft.
It may be a compromise to use a computer but it is a lesser one than being politically inactive in such dangerous times.
Incidentally I may be middle class but I am not smiling smuggly, I thinking will the US with the support of the British Labour Party bomb Iran.
Compromise, you do compromise?! And I thought you said being green was all "very simple"?
Open source software will do nothing to help those who build the hardware you smug nitwit...
I'm full square behind Blair.
I find your happiness that a bunch of murdering sectarian nutjobs and out and out terrorists like Al Qaeda might obtain power in Iraq appalling. Just how peaceful are they going to be?
We should be supporting Iraqi democrats. That means opposing murderous filth who set off car bombs in markets and who abduct and murder trade unionists. It's really THAT simple.
I like the (snide)remark about the (fake)Greens being a powerhouse.
Indeed, they won just one seat in the north of England (in Mr. Blunkett's Sheffield)and lost 5 valuable seats in Scotland's Parly, where they have no council seats outside Glasgow & Edinburgh.Presumavly being afraid of the countryside.
Ok, so they didn't do well in the elections. Presumably you were supporting the Blairite candidates who came away with a magnificent 27% of the vote in England - slightly lower in percentage terms than achieved under Michael Foot, and on a much more right-wing platform too?
Gooooo mass party of the working class! :D
Point of order: those who actually funded and armed Saddam were China, France and Russia - coincidentally those countries most opposed to humanitarian intervention. This information comes from those well-kknown neocon shills, the Stockhom International Peace Research Institute.
France deserves particular criticism, for giving Saddam nuclear technology and expertise.
However, I expect such factual subtleties will evade a Green party member.
Regards
Triangular Bread
"I guess they will be calling Chavez a dictator and calling for democracy in Venezuela."
No, I'm sure the 75% of people who didn't vote during Venezuela's 2005 elections love living in a country where one man can rule by decree and there no opposition parties are represented in the legislature. Because that's the definition of democracy. Oh, wait...
This is an extraordinary advert for Green lucidity. If you're on homeopathy you need to just tweak the 'dose' up a bit. Or you could just go and lie down in a darkened room for a month.
[aside]Delighted that your readers overwhelmingly believe that oil will never run out. I voted that it will run out this year because I thought that'd really show you Greenies what's what.
But I bow to the democratic voice that says oil supplies are eternal.[/aside]
139 fucking Labour MPs voted against this fucking stupid war matey. Not just John McDonnell. Labour led the opposition on this.
Your party strangely don't have any fucking MPs, frankly because of utter rubbish like this on your flob a lob blogs.
"I'm full square behind Blair.
I find your happiness that a bunch of murdering sectarian nut jobs and out and out terrorists like Al Qaeda might obtain power in Iraq appalling. Just how peaceful are they going to be?
"We should be supporting Iraqi democrats. That means opposing murderous filth who set off car bombs in markets and who abduct and murder trade unionists. It's really THAT simple."
Well said anonymous the statements made by Derek in this article are exceptionally reckless and indeed stupid. I mean he lionises those he calls 'the resistance' as though they are a homogenous bunch of patriotic democrats? Talk of Shia and Sunni uniting against the US, get real Derek. I know you are unlikely to reply as unfortunately eco socialists like you inhabit a world of dogma rather than reason. Your naive comments reflect this. Look at Ramadi, the US is winning even though you would wish a defeat by terrorists upon UK/US troops.
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