The House of Commons debated Iraq today for the first time in Government time for two years.
You would have expected that the issue of Iraq was so critical that Parliament would have received a report on the progress of the US/UK strategy from the Prime Minister and MPs would have been allowed to vote on Britain's role in the future.
No chance! The Prime Minister refused to even attend the debate and the Government refused to allow a vote on its strategy.
Instead, Mr Blair attended a meeting with representatives from big business and, although MPs tried to engineer a procedural vote, the manoeuvring of Government whips made this impossible.
Apart from me not a single candidate for either leader or deputy leader of the Labour party condemned this display of contempt for Parliament or made any public statement today on the need for a change of strategy.
Virtually every week now at the beginning of Prime Minister's questions, the Prime Minister and MPs offer their condolences to the family of yet another British soldier, who has lost his life in Iraq.
Surely the continuing loss of lives on such a large scale amongst Iraqi civilians and both British and US servicemen and women warrants the Prime Minister accounting to Parliament for his actions.
In addition, there is now even greater confusion about what strategy the Government is pursuing as the Prime Minister hints at the withdrawal of some British troops later this year and yet the Bush administration has indicated that it would expect the scale of the British presence to be maintained.
What is increasingly apparent to both MPs and the general public is that there is no realistic British strategy to extricate ourselves from the nightmare that is Iraq and that the US strategy of pouring in more troops holds out no prospect of success and is more likely to replicate Vietnam.
It is even more imperative now for us to step up the "Stop the War" campaign on the broadest front to demand withdrawal. The longer the delay for withdrawal the greater will be the loss of life and human suffering.
33 Comments:
Political posturing by MPs. We have all been informed endlessly by the PM, Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary and Chiefs of Defence Staff about troop deployment in Iraq. Us citizens believe that the Military will decide when the mission is completed or withdrawal should occur.
I listened to the CBI debate on public services as well as the debate in the House. As a mature citizen from a military family, I know where I wanted the PM to be. At the CBI discussing the importance of providers from whatever sector ensuring that I get a decent service - particularly Health Care. Yes I am a Labour Party member but I am not fixed on the NHS being the only provider of this service. It was a superb contribution by the PM - I welcomed his input and felt he was looking after me.
No person I know in the Military would countenance "cutting and running" from Iraq.
"Us citizens" didn't want the mission to start in the first place and don't want it continuing a moment longer.
Can you explain Sham why it is - if Tony Blair was motivated by the wish to get rid of dictatorships - that he refused to sign a parliamentary Early Day Motion condemning Saddam's regime after Halabja (when Bush senior was still funding and allied to Saddam and his Ba'ath regime)?
Halabja is rightly denounced as a war crime and part of Saddam's genocide against the Kurds in the 80s - but Blair and Bush senior didn't care about it at the time.
Did Blair's lack of interest in Halabja - and his sudden decision 20 years later - have anything to do with simply following whatever the current US President wanted to do?
And the torture practised by the new government in Iraq and its death squads (very similar to those of their enemies) - can you tell us why they are preferable to Ba'ath party torture (they use the same methods Saddam did) or Ba'ath party murders? - http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/26/iraq10053.htm
That's not to mention the policy of torture which Human Rights Watch (based in Washington) report the Bush administration are running. http://hrw.org/wr2k6/introduction/2.htm#_Toc121910421
And what about Saudi Arabia or many of the other gulf states where torture and execution without fair trial are just as common as in Iraq? Why are the government still supporting them and selling them weapons if the aim is to get rid of dictatorships?
Well said, Duncan. Your background knowledge on Iraq and its history is far more comprehensive than mine but there's one thing I know.At a time when soldiers and civilians are dying daily, at a time when even Republican senators are denouncing Bush's policy, when a massive 75 percent of the American public is against the war in Iraq, it's an utter disgrace that Blair chose to be in the company of the fat cats at the CBI rather than stand his corner in the HOuseof Commons. Actually, I wasn't even disgusted. It's precisely the kind of behaviour we have come to expect from an increasingly dysfunctional PM who is now on another political planet from even Cabinet colleagues.I would expect "my" Prime Minister to at least have the decency to defend his position.But Blair is not "my" anything."My" Labour Party, however, would not kow-tow to the CBI, wreck the NHS, ot put networking and schmoozing with potential employers before a serious Parliamentary debate.But that's New Labour for you, and how utterly sick of it we socialists are.
Notes From the Colonies.
Please anyone don't take offence I mean nothing personal. I have tried to phrase my request in the manner to which I think you are accustomed, but you know Americans putting their foot in their mouths....
Your Blair is one of the puppet masters pulling our cowboy idiots strings.
Getting rid of your hemroid will greatly help aleviate ours.
Please do what you can to jetison your flotsam.
A goodly portion of the blame for the commencement in Iraq rest on "your" countries shoulders. Blair taking advantage of our simpleton to further the British Empires goals. Very noble of you people.
Please have your guy tell our guy he should get out, so we can have won and start leaving. It really is about that simple.
And since I'm through reading you blokes the riot act I'll finish with this more serious note....
Your country and society as you know it is in certain peril. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.... We have legions upon legions of dedicated young men enlisted as young as 7 years old. Training day and night. Sleeping with their instrament of your destruction. These acadamy students sole purpose in life is to carry on a "Great Campaign" to utterly humiliate and defeat the Crown of England.
My eight year old proudly wears his colors. Some day he will be cause for great tremor in the knees of your finest goalkeeps.
Beckham deciphered the hieroglyphics. Surly you also can read the writing on the wall.
USA Division One Travel Teams. Thats where all your scouts will apt to be found loitering.
As to the afore mentioned rectal blight. We'd have our hemeroid removed save for the fact the one that'd pop-up after is certain to be bigger and more bothersome. Please pass it on to help us folks over here about Iraq and I'll tell my kid to not make your tenders look totally inept when he sending them in. Not.
You talk about removing regimes by force as if the only casualties would be members of those regimes.
Your question also assumes that going to war is the only way to get rid of dictatorships - in cases like the Saudis we only need to stop buying their oil, stop selling them arms and stop providing them with a guarantee that we'll send our military to defend them against their own people.
We didnt support the war because we believe the number of people killed as a result of it would be far more than the number of deaths prevented by it, most of those people would be civilians - and the very people the war was supposedly meant to save - and so you should only fight a war when you have no other choice.
If we had gone to war in the 80s when Saddam was committing genocide against the kurds then war would have been justified - we would have prevented more deaths than the war was likely to cause. Even in 1991 at the end of the war in that year intervention similar to that which took place in the northern Kurdish areas (which everyone supported) could have prevented the massacre of Shia rebels in the South.
In 2002-2003 that wasnt the case. There were no massacres going on. Everyone knew war would cause far more deaths than Saddam was causing at that point.
What's more we were being asked to support a war by people who were lying blatantly to us - including some of the architects of the death squads in the americas in the 80s (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Negroponte,Bremer). On that basis there was no reason to believe that they would allow a new government any less brutal than Saddam's - and there still isnt with their new Iraqi version of the 'Phoenix programme' -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/04/wirq04.xml
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1683578,00.html
So why support a war the price of which will be tens of thousands of dead civilians in order to replace one lot of torturers and death squads with another?
Sham,
Perhaps you should put your money where your mouth is and enlist in the Army. At least that way you will be true to your principles rather than shouting from the trenches when others are getting shot at.
As Sham never bothers to read what anyone actually says or indeed reply to it in any way that makes sense can we make a pact to just ignore his rants.They are all over the blogosphere and they are very very tedious. So bad indeed I had to come out of hiding to advise you all.Sham of course will not know who I amwhich makesit all the more fun.
the thing with Blair is that he always has an excuse (in yesterday's Mirror the report stated that whatever the excuse was; something like it's not necessary or protocol for a PM to be there in an anti-war debate; i could go and look it up but there's no point because it is just posturing as been said above - basically all common sense and dare I say it common or garden morality for that matter would mean that in a debate on war the Prime Minister shlould turn up as he/she is in charge of the country's actions's during conflict as at any other time. There's just no excue for ducking out of it; what kind of leadership is that??
If he was so sure his actions were right he would face the music and have some courage.
Is anyone writing John's biography??
Glad to see Sham's back and berating us all again, we missed you (not!)
All comments by Sham will now be immediately deleted because of his extremely abusive attacks on other contributors. I'd ask everyone to ignore future posts by Sham before they are deleted. Thanks.
He did actually ask a relevant question in one post in this thread even if i disagree with him.
When the troops are finally withdrawn, who should the Labour and Trade Union Movement seek to give moral and practical support to inside Iraq? Surely we should not then ignore the well being of the Iraqi people. So will we THEN seek to advance democracy, social justice, equality, freedom of expression and association;plus secular constitutional and legislative provisions? By, for instance giving moral and practical support to bodies such as their Trade Union Movement? If so, should we not also be on their side at NOW? Including opposition to actions to impied their progress from whatever source, be it Government edicts, American and British pressures, sectarian acts and terrorism?
All comments by Sham will now be immediately deleted because of his extremely abusive attacks on other contributors. I'd ask everyone to ignore future posts by Sham before they are deleted. Thanks.
finally! i've not contributed so far because the discussion has been dominated by sham's abuse. i dunno if anyone saw his comment yesterday suggesting that john mcdonnell is a hitler supporter (!!!)
Maybe i missed a post by Sham that's already been deleted but while i disagree with him and yes, some of his posts were just irrelevant and smart-arse, some of them did ask relevant questions. Would it be possible to only delete his posts if they are actually seriously abusive(e.g swearing at people, personal insults etc) and let his others stay?
oops no - missed that one Dan - does Sham know about Godwin's law? I'm finding it hard to see the similarities between John and Hitler - Hitler was anti-war was he? new one on me. Maybe some spurious nonsense about Hitler being a socialist(despite the fact he jailed all the socialists and trade unionists on getting into power)?
Harry i agree with a lot of what you're saying and i think your position (against the invasion but for troops there to manage the transition now?) is perfectly legitimate even if i'm not sure about it myself.
I've a couple of questions though - bearing in mind i'm no expert on this and i really am asking about this based on what little i know.
Are the new government in Iraq or the British or American governments actually recognising independent trade unions in Iraq or only the same state controlled ones established by Saddam?
As far as i've read (and i won't have read or heard everything) the Coalition Provisional Authority didn't recognise independent trade unions at all - only the same government controlled unions set up by Saddam and the Ba'athists. The Bush administration and its backers as youve said yourself arent exactly pro-union. In fact US forces seem to have been suppressing many independent trade unions ,arresting their leaders and beating demonstrators.
One of the biggest examples is the Iraqi Union of the Unemployed which - since at least 60% of Iraqis are now unemployed - is probably the largest in Iraq ? (you probably know it was formed after the Iraqi army was disbanded and many other Iraqis fired in preparation for the total privatisation of all Iraq's public industries and services)
Then there are the independent unions of Iraqi state employees like the Southern Oil Union which don't seem to be recognised by the US either according to this article by one of their leaders ?
How can British and American troops' presence in Iraq protect the rights (and lives) of these trade unionists if they seem to be instead in many cases (for US troops at least) trying to replace independent trade unions' members with foreign contractors and break any protest strike?
Does the TUC and do you recognise trade unions in Iraq other than the state approved IFTU which many Iraqis( including the one who wrote the article linked to above - and Iraqi exiles - like Sami Ramadani in this report ) say is not independent at all but the same state controlled one that existed under Saddam?
Duncan,
Thanks for raising serious points. I will work on these and put an item or items on my own blog in response. Hopefully, I will have something by tomorrow evening (29 January). There is a complex legal situation.
The most important and accessable publication is "Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions" by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson (the later is the academic and not the Government Minister). It was published by the TUC towards the end of last year.
I have a longish blog item on Iraqi Trade Unions entitled "Iraq: The Third Big Issue" posted on 23 October 2006.
I am critical of aspects of the two sources you provide links with and believe the role of the Oil Union in Basra and of the Unemployed Workers Union is overplayed; although I appreciate that people are seeking to work in terrible circumstances. The General Federation of Iraqi Workers have Arab Trade Union and International recognition and link closely with the Teacher's Union and with their sister organisations in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Can you let me know which "Duncan" you are on your blog?
Thanks i'll read those - they sound interesting. I know we're not likely to agree on everything but it seems to me that with unemployment in Iraq at over 60% from most reports and unemployment benefit low for those who get it at all the union of the unemployed has to represent more people than any other union in Iraq?
I'm the Duncan who spends too much time arguing on the internet and posting on websites and not enough on sorting everything else out ;-).
Re: Sham
I hadn't read his latest posting anyway as I can imagine what it'll be like and I've often only got time to skim read so he gets missed out for being anyway
I was joking about being glad he was back but I'm not sure irony works on the web
he was wasting valuable time that could be better spent discussing more important issues
I've seen it now - i.e. that Sham said that John was a Hitler supporter -that's just nutty! I thought it was bad when John Harris wrote in the Guardian letters page that time that John was "incredibly dour" - I nearly thought it was a misprint as this is of course the phrase that's often been said about Gordon Brown though I don't know him personally and you shouldn't make personal remarks of this nature really anyway in politics or anywhere else! For the record it sounds to me as if Sham or John Harris have not properly met John; if they've met him at all, mind you there has been a media blackout of his campaign so they may not have had a chance to form a balanced impression of him but to say that John is politically like Hitler is just simpply NUTTY! I know you get some nutty views on websites though so I usually ignore them and just engage with the issues worth engaging with. I should imagine you could still be sued for libel; defamation of character etc Sham though so be careful as you wouldn't be able to hide the evidence!
to get back to the issues in hand I though Blair on The Politics Show today was talking in the past tense as if he was going soon and the NEC is meeting soon to draw up leadership contest rules isn't it so let's focus on the policies....
I've also just heard Kitty Usher on Radio 4 mention that she's going through a trigger ballot with her CLP (i.e. as to whether they will re-select her or not??)I wonder how many Blair loyalists are???
Then the Sunday Supplement part of the Westminster hour was Gyles Brandreth's assessment of what a PM needs to do the job such as incredibly thick skin for all teh criticism; absolutley no sleep like Maggie Thatcher; able to wade through miles of detail which is all urgent workwise etc....they came to the conclusion that no-one would be able to do all this. But someone must and I think John could do it from what I've seen of his work.
I hope you John will be on the Today programme (too early in the morning for me to listen to anything really but you have to try although then you have to go out before it's finished most likely so I don't know why the nation is so obsessed with this programme...!but I digress; it's better than Question Time anyway, that's full of whingers and show-offs) and from seven thirty all week this week they are going to discuss where the money has gone within the NHS - sounds like articles you could say a lot about!
As for John Reid et al no-one is resigning or getting sacked but it is getting quite farcical really is it not??!
chnage the subject again: has anyone got any ideas for a campaign song (apart from The Red Flag of course, I mean a pop song as well).
by the way above I meant thick skinned as in able to ignore inaccurate criticsm not as in a personality defect
I think the Duncan confusion is because there's also me who's a Duncan as well... Shall I go back to being 'doctordunc' to assist with differentiation?
This is a problem which affects Duncans everywhere.
i can post as 'DuncanM' (so i can sound like 'Malcolm X' ;-) ) ?
Duncan,
On my own blog, I have published a 7 page reply to the points you raised here. It is entitled "A Reply To Duncan On Iraq". John McDonnell and company are more than welcome to read it.
the legacy: a comedy of terrors
Great new E-novel.
The consequences of unchecked governance, when the ridiculous becomes sublime.
http://blog.myspace.com/153506273
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