As I write there are reports of yet another massive car bomb in Iraq. This one has killed over a hundred people. It is one of the most catastrophic bombings in the present phase of Iraq’s most recent phase of war. Further descent into chaos seems inevitable, even as they move towards a referendum on the proposed constitution.
The savagery reminds one of other war-torn countries. It’s not yet on the scale of Rwanda, but it’s much the same as Bosnia. The 20th century spews on.
Are these the freedoms that George Bush says the coalition of the willing has brought to Iraq?
One might have hoped for something better. That it wasn’t just to do with terminating his father’s nemesis Saddam and, of course, capturing oil and construction contracts for his father’s cronies.
The warnings were clear. Like Yugoslavia before it, Iraq was an uneasy whole, riven with ethnic and sectarian tensions. The probability that it would collapse into a multipartite civil war was high. Anarchy was but a breath away.
Sadly, it looks like the worst scenarios will prevail. There is a real prospect of civil war with possibly tens of thousands of deaths. The state may break up into three statelets, none with international recognition or fundamental infrastructures.
Nobody living there, whether in a unified state or a provincial statelet, will have the human and civic rights taken for granted in the West. Women will certainly be reduced to second-class status: that is, to a much greater extent than is already the case at present.
Inevitably there will be massive repression to keep some semblance of order. There will be secret police and concentration camps. There may not be chemical weapons to target Israel, but there will be wave after wave of suicide bombers. What can’t be done one way will be done another.
And there will be Islamic fundamentalism. In some areas it is already reported that a Taliban-like regime has been imposed by militias.
It now seems that post-Saddam Iraq is even more lawless and dangerous than pre-Saddam Iraq. Other than in tokenistic ways – elections, a draft constitution – Iraq is no better or more ‘free’ for the ordinary person in the street.
But then, many people in America are themselves questioning the presumptions that underpin the Bush regime’s avowals of ‘freedom’. This is in the light of the catastrophe triggered in Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina.
Human inertia and mismanagement turned a natural disaster into a catastrophe. In what is acknowledged as a first for him, Bush accepted responsibility. Most observers say he was merely bowing to public opinion…
That it will cost at least as much to rebuild as the war on Iraq adds a note of karma to the proceedings. In addition, rebuilding the civic infrastructure may take as long as rebuilding Iraq.
The thing is, the storm blew and washed away the myth that the West’s ‘freedoms’ bring prosperity to all. They don’t. Those at the bottom of the barrel in America are not appreciably better off than those at the bottom of the barrel in Third World countries, especially if you calculate their spending power relative to the wealthiest members of the society they live in.
There is also anger at the depiction of black people searching for food as looters. The fundamental racial divide that still exists in America, as elsewhere in the world, was exposed.
We needn’t be smug. Even as Ireland becomes the second richest country in world, passing out both the US and Japan this year, we also have our third world within. Our rich-poor gap is one of the worst in the world.
The riches are the principal reason why there has been so much immigration into the country. And Jesus, we were poor for so long we should be allowed to be happy to be rich. But it shouldn’t blind us to the poverty as well, here or in the USA.
A major American city has become a ghost town overnight. They were warned that the levees could break. They knew what would happen and they knew it would happen for some time. They gambled. Louisiana lost. New Orleans is lost.
They were warned about Iraq too. In spades. What the doomsayers said would happen is happening. Overthrowing dictators does not automatically bring freedom. Throwing out the seeds of ‘freedom’ won’t yield a crop unless the ground has been well prepared.
If George Bush were to phone Roy Keane, Roy could sort him in one sentence – Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Others take note. b