The
most common misunderstandings
about Iraq
Speech
given by Jan Oberg in Berlin, November
2002
By
Jan
Oberg
TFF
director
December 27, 2002
Peace operations successful,
the patients unfortunately died…
Thank you very much, herzlichen Dank. It's about 30
years ago that I spoke German, so I don't want to make
you a victim of whatever might be left of that language
in my hard disk!
I am honoured to be invited and discuss with you what
is so terribly important and urgent, and could have such
disastrous consequences for many. May I suggest to you
that each one of you promise yourself to speak with at
least ten people next week and discuss what you heard and
learned during this conference? There's only one way
compatible with democracy: to spread the word and work
with nonviolent means. Also, to show the contrast with
the undemocratic leaders - including those in so-called
democracies - who get their point through by
violence.
I'm not an expert on Iraq. I happen to know a little
bit about conflicts as I have worked with conflicts
during the last 25 years, but predominantly in the
Balkans, in the Caucasus, in Burundi and elsewhere.
We have just seen the deeply moving pictures of the
children and adults who suffer so terribly in Iraq. I've
seen those children too, but that is not what I am going
to address here. I've been to Iraq once, I've been there
for two weeks. With my colleague from the Transnational
Foundation I spent day and night talking with as many and
different people as possible, among them the deputy Prime
Minister, the Chairman of the National Assembly, the
women's organisation and university scholars. We went to
the countryside to meet ordinary citizens in the historic
town of Babylon.
We had one thing in mind that Westerners are not good
at, but which you can learn if you want, perhaps with a
little help from Gandhi or Buddhism: to listen to what is
said and not said instead of imposing you own
preconceived ideas. Western conflict (mis)managers are
now known around the world as those people in three-piece
suits who come rushing into the airports in trouble spots
and, almost before they have set foot on the ground,
declare something like, "Hey, you guys, we know who among
you are the good guys and the bad guys! We also know
what's good for you! If, therefore, you don't sign this
peace agreement that we wrote up on the plane coming
here, you're gonna be bombed..!"
It's not that respectful of people's feelings
and suffering. It lacks every diagnostic curiosity and,
of course, it ignores the root causes, although it may
sometimes stop the fighting, at least for a while and as
long as there are heavily armed "peace"-keepers flown
in.
The so-called international community - it is
not a community but a handful of self-asserting
presidents and prime ministers…- has left behind an
ethnically poor Croatia, a non-viable Bosnia and put
itself in prison in Kosovo; in the latter place, there
are no more solutions that will provide for co-operation,
trust or reconciliation and forgiveness between Serbs and
Albanians living there. But there could have been.
I have been working there since 1991, so I know a little
bit about the place.
Last year this quite ignorant international
"community" came disastrously close to demolishing
Macedonia. We've not solved that many problems in Somalia
either - another country I have worked in (1977-81). And
if you think there's peace in Afghanistan, you have been
a victim of Western propaganda. Probably Mr. Karzai
controls some 15 kilometres around Kabul, a civil
war-cum-hunger catastrophe looms around the corner. Well,
since I haven't been there, I should not say too much -
like a doctor should not speak about a patient he/she has
never seen. But it looks quite gloomy even in Western
media reports.
In summary, I am afraid that many "patient" countries
and peoples have more or less died under the peace
surgery of the international community. With these
experiences of failed peace-making during the 1990s, I
predict that there is hardly one single problem that will
be solved by a) bombing, b) invading, c) occupying, and
d) controlling Iraq. But there will be no limits to the
new ones we will all face in the aftermath of the unwise,
un-stateman-like and ill-intended policies of the Bush
regime (In what follows I shall call it a regime as it
was not democratically elected but selected).
Leila and Saleih: Iraq means
people like you and I
I would like to start out with a little quotation from
one of my own articles about two people I met in Iraq.
Then I'll go on to the misunderstandings or, rather,
propaganda points. (It's not on manuscript yet, because
the way I work is to speak with people first at
opportunities like this one and to listen and then get it
onto paper). Here is the quotation:
"The United Nations Development Program, UNDP, takes
me to various micro credit projects outside Baghdad.
Leila is a young woman, sitting in her wheelchair, she
tells me that she recently completed her computer
engineering education at the university of Babylon. She
then applied for UNDP's small learn program and received
750 US dollars or the equivalent of that and got
recognised by the Iraqi Labour Ministry. She is now in
charge of various courses for all sorts of students in
her combined shop and classroom in Babylon. A humble
young woman who has been given a chance of education and
investment of capital to start her own business and help
young people &endash; and older people &endash; work with
computers and get access to the world.
I'm also taken to visit Saleih, a middle aged single
carpenter, born without legs in 1964. He's fixing a huge
rococo chair with a thin coat of gold on it as I walk
into his shop. He has received in the same program a 500
dollars equivalent, and he is paying back 25 dollars a
month. Lying on the floor is an enormous cabinet that
Saleih is working on nowadays, and it's worth
approximately 80 dollars, that's what he sells his
products for.
He will probably be able to pay back his loans within
a few years. He's also supporting his whole family and
many others on this income, since his enterprise is
slowly growing. Saleih recently invested in a saw - it's
quite good to have a saw as a carpenter - but his highest
hope is to be able to buy a wheelchair that costs about
75 dollars. A man with no legs since 1964, and he wants
to buy a wheelchair that costs 75 dollars! I leave him
with a feeling of hope; he has a chance to succeed,
because he's working hard and creating incredible things
with his hands, moving around on his floor with no legs.
And no wheelchair. It is impossible not to see the sense
of pride in his brown eyes when he looks up on me when I
leave and seems grateful that I have come the whole way
from Sweden to speak with him. Not that many foreigners
have done that, particularly not academic foreigners.
Here like everywhere else in Iraq I met friendly and
welcoming people. I would not have been surprised, if
someone among them had believed - since I'm European, I
look like a European, even like an American - I was
somehow responsible for the sanctions and the suffering
they have caused. But I felt safe. Everywhere. Shop
owners smilingly said "Welcome, welcome, where 're you
from?" - and asked me to visit their shops and stalls,
invited me to sweet teas and showed me their neat and
tidy goods.
It is to people like Leila and Saleih that my thoughts
and emotions go when I listen to Western leaders saying
that Iraq must be bombed and destroyed. It is their hopes
and dreams that the war will kill - along with the dreams
and hopes of 25 million other innocent Iraqi
civilians! But Bush wants you and I to think of only
Saddam, that one person, and not of the rest of the
people.
And that's the dangerous thing: that image of Iraq in
the Western media and the Western discussions.
Until we learn to talk about human beings in politics,
things will go increasingly mad toward the dissolution -
at some point, finally of civilisation itself.
The common mistakes, or
propaganda points, about Iraq and the conflict
1. The sanctions do give Iraq a
chance of development.
They don't! The Oil-for-Food Program also does not.
There is no cash component in Central Iraq (there is in
the North). There is virtually nothing that comes in
legally that is not decided by the United Nations
Sanctions Committee. The reason they have some money
available - as far as I have understood - is a) the
Mafia, b) private trade over the border, i.e. people
driving their cars over, taking the goods in and selling
them, and c) there is some secret oil export and a secret
pipeline that the West more or less turns the blind eye
to in order to have some cash coming in to the Iraqi
system. This is a DE-development and a socio-economic
destruction of a country. It would be good if people in
the West would understand that there is something more
important than money: there is also social structure, and
there are things we cannot count in money terms. Iraq is
a country that cannot develop, although no doubt some
goods do reach the people.
2. It is Saddam's fault that
children are dying.
It's often said in the media that Saddam deliberately
(mis)uses the sanctions as an excuse and causes the
suffering we have seen on the pictures earlier today.
Some add that his regime sees to it that the medicine
does not reach the people. I can't say that I
investigated that or did research on it. But I can tell
you that I heard only one story about that from
one person in one international aid agency among all and
among other international organisations working in Iraq.
All the others told me straight away, no hesitation: that
the regime is remarkably efficient in getting those food
packages and that medicine out to all corners of society.
But of course there is mismanagement, lack of resources
as well as human failures - - as can be expected of a
country in war.
3. The UN inspectors were thrown
out by Saddam Hussein in 1998.
They were not. I'm not going into this detail, I'm
sure Scott Ritter will do that much better. But the basic
thing is: there was somebody who insisted on
investigating, having access to the Baath party
headquarters and somebody said 'no' at the same time as
they found out that some of the inspectors were also
spies. With inspectors present who are also spies, you
please mention a country that would not have a right to
ask them to leave. But they were not thrown out, they
were withdrawn on the recommendation of Mr. Butler and
because heavy bombings were resumed.
By the way, may I tell you what the leaders I met said
about letting the inspectors back in. They said, "We have
no problems with the inspectors coming back, but we
insist on two conditions be fulfilled: 1) there must be a
time table, we would like to know before they come,
whether they want to stay here for three days, five
months, one year, two years, whatever. We must have a
deadline, because we just can't keep on twelve more years
having this game going on. And point 2) we will not
accept a single spy. No more people who work to find out
something about the Iraqi society instead of doing the
inspection of our weapons as is intended."
I don't think there is any Western government
that would not put up at least these two conditions too
were they ever to be the object of such inspections.
4. Iraq is a threat to her
neighbours and to the world
It is often said that Iraq as it is today and has
acted the last twelve years is a threat - to its
neighbours, to the region, to the Western world and to
the United States. To the best of my judgement: it is
not. It is true that Iraq invaded Kuwait, it was stupid
and in contravention of all international laws even if
they had their reasons and another interpretation of
history than the rest of the world. But Iraq is no longer
in Kuwait and it works to repair that relationship
through talks with Kuwait. You just do not hear about it
in the media. And not even the Kuwaiti foreign minister
thinks it is a good idea to bomb Iraq. If anybody should
be enthusiastic about bombing Iraq and getting rid of
Saddam, it would be Kuwait, would it not?
Iraq has not invaded anyone since that. To the
best of my knowledge, the Iraqi regime has not
threatened anybody. Some experts believe that Iraq
might have a military system that is about a fifth of its
capacity then - - in terms, that is, of military quantity
and quality. It is hardly higher when it comes to human
strength and fighting moral of what it had ten or twelve
years ago. Further, even if you have nuclear devices - -
remember, no research institute or intelligence agency
has proven that Iraq has - - it would take some means to
fire it over there, on Israel or wherever else you might
think Saddam Hussein would strike. The Israelis obviously
think that he might use biological weapons, because they
are one of three countries that have now purchased
practically all vaccine against smallpox available. The
other two are Great Britain and the United States. Which
leaves their friends and allies much closer to Iraq
unprotected…
As far as we know from research institutes, Saddam
Hussein does not have anything with which he can threaten
Western Europe and nothing with which he can threaten the
United States. And even if he did have, international law
does not permit us to bomb, commit aggression,
invade, occupy and control a country just because we
think there is reason to believe that sometime into the
future that country may become a threat. This is a
weird theory that exists only in the minds of the clique
surrounding George W. Bush. The idea of preventive
conventional and - God forbid! - mass-destructive war or
the exercise full-spectrum dominance does not exist in
international law. Some may not like it, but to attack a
country before it has committed aggression makes the
aggressor a threat to international peace and security -
as did NATO/the U.S. on Yugoslavia and the U.S. on
Afghanistan. But that does not seem to bother too many
people, presumably because it's a bit difficult to
imagine how we should organise a UN-sanctioned bombing of
the United States followed by a peace-keeping mission on
the ground. In short, we all feel powerless somehow when
confronting the strongest military power in human history
that incidentally happens to also be deficient, even
depleted, in terms of moral and intellectual power.
5. Inspectors will be able to
write a report permitting the UN to lift the
sanctions.
It's an absurdity to believe that you can send a
number of inspectors to a territory which has - if I
remember correctly - a million square kilometres, much of
it desert, and that they would one day write a report
stating that "we have now investigated every square inch
of this territory and we solemnly declare to the world
that there is not as much as five hundred gram of some
kind of substance that could be used for the production
of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons or biological
weapons." In and of itself this is an absurdity. It is
Mission Impossible and it always was. And if this is so,
you will NEVER see a Security Council Resolution that
lifts the sanctions. Because, as you all know, these two
things are tied to each other; it is only when the
inspectors report that they know Iraq has disarmed
completely, has no means and substances for mass
destructive weapons that the sanctions shall be
lifted.
This is the ideal game for keeping on annoying,
bothering and harassing one another for years, no end. Of
course they are playing a cat and mouse game. And of
course the Iraqis will not let foreign inspectors with
bodyguards and armed people get into the sleeping room of
Saddam Hussein and his wife. Who in this room would
accept, without advanced notice or warning, strangers
coming into your private home? Which government would
accept their most sensitive laboratories being inspected
meticulously? To my knowledge there is no other country
in history in which such an inspection has ever taken
place. In spite of the terrible invasion of Kuwait, we
must ask: why Iraq and only Iraq?
6. International law permits
this kind of war.
Some seem to think that international law makes it
legitimate to bomb a country because of what it has done
in the past, because it has a dictatorial leadership,
because it has violated human rights or because it looks
like it could become a threat to the international peace
and security. However, neither the Charter of the United
Nations nor other parts of international law support such
arguments.
On the website of the Transnational Foundation,
www.transnational.org…you
know, every serious subject has to be interrupted by
commercials nowadays…you'll find a number of the
world's leading scholars on international law such as
Richard Falk, David Krieger, Lawyers Against the War and
several others we have collected, who unanimously come to
the conclusion that according to what we find in
international law you cannot bomb Iraq , or any other
country, for the reasons I just mentioned.
7. The decision by the UN to
bomb can be delegated to a member state.
Some may also believe that a mandate or the decision
to use violence by the UN can be delegated to a member
state. It can not! The United States tried to force
through a resolution in the Security Council stipulating
that if Iraq doesn't comply and behave themselves, then
the U.S. would have the powers to make that judgement and
proceed automatically to warfare. This would be a
violation of the Charter! And nothing in the Charter can
be interpreted to support such a delegation. Neither the
UN nor the Security Council as such can delegate a
decision that authorises single countries or coalitions
to use violence in the name of the United Nations. Now,
ask yourself why this has not been brought up in the
Western press as an attempt to violate the Charter
8. A UN mandate makes this war
OK.
You have probably seen many editors and columnists
write that if only there is a Security Council Resolution
endorsing the bombing, then it becomes acceptable. It is
as if a "UN mandate" should be a magic formula helping us
to feel better about this war. The Swedish government,
for instance, seems to hope that it will not be forced to
criticise the United States. Because if there is such a
UN mandate, it would be possible for it to say, "well, we
don't like wars, but this one has a UN mandate, the
Security Council is behind it, and therefore it is
acceptable to us."
Wrong again! The Bush regime plans to bomb, destroy,
invade, occupy and control Iraq. It plans to install a
U.S. general to run Iraq for 5-6 years, presumably
building on the model of MacArthur in Japan in 1945. This
is the present plan in Washington! Getting a UN mandate
for THAT will do nothing but undermine the United
Nations, the finest organisation we have.
If you think war against and occupation of Iraq is
immoral, inhumane, counterproductive, dangerous, or a
violation of international law, it does NOT become
legitimate, even if it has the support of the Security
Council. Neither is that 15-member body identical with
"the international community."
To put it crudely, if George W. Bush wants to destroy
Iraq, he should go it alone! The UN must never be misused
to provide fig leaves for bellicose policies of any
member state. The UN must not be undermined even more
than it has already been during the last ten years in
Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Somalia,
Afghanistan. I prefer our world to be running according
to the norms of the UN, not the US! If the
Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, makes use of Chapter 99
and 100 of the Charter, it will not happen. But - will
he?
9. This is rational policies
operated by psychologically balance people.
A further misunderstanding is that these types of
policies are rational and made by accountable people. I
would argue that these are psychologically distorted
policies. Those who plan this war are, as I see them, not
people in psychological harmony and balance with a normal
capacity for empathy. As you know I am not a
psychologist, but I believe that what we see here is what
Janis years ago called "group think". This little group
in Washington is increasingly autistic (= does not take
in information from the outside); whatever slips through
is interpreted as favourable. Even information that might
be scary from the viewpoint of their own policy and
decision-making is added as proof that might makes right.
They are totally convinced that they have the truth on
their side and the moral right to do what they do. They
live and operate, it seems, in their own world.
It does not seem to me when I watch and listen to
Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Perle etc. that there
is the slightest sense of dignity or seriousness, let
alone any kind of awareness how complex the situation is,
what terrible human suffering and other consequences
their actions may have. In short, I don't think they are
up to it in terms of human maturity, given the power of
death and destruction they command. Frankly, they make me
scared.
I would not be surprised if what we see is some kind
of sadism and one not necessarily unrelated to the fact
that Bush Jr. may want revenge for the attempt, allegedly
by Saddam Hussein, to kill his father in Kuwait. Isn't it
reasonable to call it paranoia when the United States
today stand for half of the world's military
expenditures, more than US$ 400 billion? Are the wars on
Afghanistan and Iraq attempts to deal with a suppressed
feeling of guilt, of having caused at least some of the
conditions of the terrorism it says it is fighting? Why,
we must ask, is it so impossible for the Americans - that
open society - to discuss the possible links between its
own global policies and terrorism? I cannot tell the
degree to which this paranoia holds the entire American
people collectively in its grip or only the American
leadership, but the sheer intensity of the hate,
demonisation, blaming, projection, black-and-white
reasoning, revenge, self-righteousness, etc. are the
kinds of psychological mechanisms that catastrophes are
made of. How, I ask you, could this regime's policies
ever be a blessing to humanity?
Contrast this with what we can read in "Wilson's
Ghost," a marvellous book by former U.S. secretary of
state, Robert McNamara. Here you find transcripts of some
of the discussions going on in the Oval Office during the
Kennedy administration, in the Cuban Missile Crisis days.
(It's one of the best and most positive books about what
we should all learn from the 20th century and what the
United States should do now. It's written by a man born
in 1916 who has repented for what he has done and has
tried to achieve some kind of reconciliation with the
Vietnamese. Reading it you will experience how, in
contrast to the Bush regime, these people KNEW that they
were playing with the future of humanity, they knew the
risks they were facing, they knew that their decisions
could have terrible consequences! I am not saying they
were right, but at least some of them could think complex
thoughts and act as serious human beings (although also
lacking in empathy, for sure, when it comes to the
Vietnamese). They seem to have faced the real world, not
one of games, and they seem somehow to have believed in
what they did and in their visions of the future.
On the other side, of course, we face the psychology
of Saddam Hussein. He got his first revolver when he was
ten and was beaten up on his way to school, allegedly
because he was what they call an illegitimate child of a
lonely mother in Tikrit. He is protected 24 hours a day,
allegedly sleeping in different locations every night and
having done so for years. Heroism, splendid isolation and
brutality sometimes go hand in hand. What do we think a
person ends up like when he or she can never feel secure,
never take a walk around the corner, never be spontaneous
and never deal with what we must believe is a feeling of
guilt?
When I was there I talked with people who believe that
the single wish of Saddam Hussein is to stay in power, no
matter how empty that power is, power for the sake of
power. The regime has no more visions (as it actually did
have in the past) for the Iraqi society. If you have been
in power for more than 35 years and have abolished all
serious opposition, how do you develop, get new ideas,
face new challenges? Right, you probably turn
intellectually and morally dead, lose hope, humanity and
honour. And under strong pressure from the outside you
don't need any visions because they can't be realised, so
you become a custodian of the empty museum! I went to
Babylon on the walls of which the visitor will see
numerous small brass plates that tell that Saddam
Hussein, the protector of the nation, is rebuilding
Babylon; his role model seems to be king Nebuchadrezzar
II (born 630 BC). Add to that the thousands of
sculptures, monuments and pictures, sometimes 3-4 in the
same little room, and you are coming closer to the
perverse psychology of the struggle for immortality. I am
not sure this is healthy; it seems like Saddam Hussein is
less interested in the present but obsessed with securing
immortality.
For these and several other reasons, I tend to see
George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein as some kind of Siamese
conflict twins. They need each other and fit each other
excellently. They may both be psychologically distorted.
However, we in the West should be more concerned about
the former than the latter, because George W. Bush is
destroying some fundamental values of Western
civilisation; in addition he is the more dangerous of the
two because of the weapons he has at his disposal. On
that scale, Saddam Hussein is a military dwarf.
10. The war is about noble aims
rather than mundane interests.
The PR image of this war is that it is basically about
human rights, democracy, stability and peace. I think it
is about none of it! To the Bush regime, it is rather
about oil, strategic gains and some kind of weird
perception of a future civilisational confrontation with
China and other non-Western actors.
What we hear leaders talk about at press conferences
is motives, and they are all noble, of course. But it's
public relations and psycho-warfare with you and I as
target groups. The United States today has a propaganda
campaign going worth US$200 million to influence people
like you and me and the Arab world to be in favour of the
war. I wonder about the free press that is not present
here today: is it able to select news and manuscripts
according to whether they are true and genuine or the
products of PR companies, propaganda, deception and
worse? (I always say: use the internet which is the most
pluralist and free medium we have, far more so than your
local or national newspaper).
This coming war is also about the expansion of the
Western market, Western liberal capitalism, which is the
largest killing system ever invented in human history,
because it takes the lives of between 60,000 to 100,000
innocent people unnecessarily every a day! They are the
civilian 'damned of the earth' who still cannot get pure
drinking water, food, medicine and shelter in this world.
(Compare with 3,000 human lives lost one time on
September 11).
This coming war is about keeping Russia down once and
for all, exploiting that Russia is on it's knees right
now. It is about a strategic game of which Iraq is only
one piece; it was initiated by Bill Clinton and heavily
influenced by Zbigniew Brezinski's book "The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives." An Iraq that is not obedient to the West is
lying in the way and must be controlled somehow.
Furthermore, look at the triangle of the Balkans, the
Middle East and the Caucasus/Central Asia and you begin
to see single events as part of a larger pattern - which
is what the media prevent us from with their modus
operandi of one-event-at-one-place-and-at-one-time.
This coming war if about the Middle East and it is
about Saudi-Arabia and its oil. It's about the
forthcoming, let's say 20 to 30 years ahead, conflict the
two large civilisations of the Orient and the Occident.
The Occident could turn out to be an Accident!… if
we continue to have this U.S. leadership and these
NATO-allies and friends of the United States and security
experts none of whom have the civil courage to present
alternatives to these terrible perspectives for the
future.
We have not done our duty for peace. It is not
enough to say no to war. We must say yes to honest
information and open debate and use that to present the
alternatives to warfare. Conflict-resolution, mediation,
diplomatic pressure, together with face-to-face
exploration with "the other" of what it is all about:
these are some of the alternatives that provide for
civilised conflict-management.
We are living in increasingly dark times and therefore
we must constantly remind ourselves of the fact that
those of us who want peace is a majority. Very few people
on earth want war. Wars come to an end, peace never does;
we can always do better and work harder for peace.
We must eradicate the mistakes, the propaganda and the
deliberate lies on which all wars are based. They must
not continue to blind us and to hide that there are
always alternatives to war. Gandhi argued that the coward
should take to violence because nonviolence requires a
lot of courage. May I add that the intellectually lazy
fellow chooses violence before even thinking of
nonviolent options.
©
TFF & the author 2002
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