Getting back to fundamentals in Iraq

In the early 20th century the American satirist Ambrose Bierce said, “War is God's way of teaching Americans geography”. For the 21st century the truth still resonates, more so if we replace the updated jargon, “the coalition of the willing”, for “Americans”.

The phrase itself has a particularly eerie biblical symbolism, especially “the willing”. It is like “the damned”, “the virtuous” or the “the raptured”.

In regards to the second war with Iraq, the satire present in Bierce’s phrase captures the religious undertones of the coalition’s campaign, as well as the continued cultural and geo-political ignorance suffered by many concerned citizens of the West.

God may be using war to teach the US, UK, Australian, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Romanian, Georgian, Danish and other governments Iraqi geography, but he certainly has used the two major leaders of this coalition - Blair and Bush - in a cheap trick of blind belief (though the Almighty has worked in mysterious ways, from time to time).

We who seek justifications for the war in Iraq can no longer be satisfied with such justifications as the need to locate weapons of mass destruction, overthrow a dictator, secure a monopoly of a global commodity, or settle regional tension. Nor can we accept that this war started with the word of God into Bush’s ear and ends with the word of God into Blair’s ear.

In a moment of spiritual reflection, which should have been confined to a diary or Mrs Blair, the Prime Minister said on the Parkinson program on March 4, 2006 that God will be the ultimate judge of his actions in invading Iraq. “If you have faith about these things then you realise that judgment is made by other people. If you believe in God, it’s made by God as well,” Blair said.

Taken by itself, Blair’s comment is not particularly illuminating or shocking, but it does mark the most irrational kind of theory in a series of myth-making theories that have been tried and tested to describe the presence of the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq.

A good way to summarise these theories is to imagine the way the Iraq war might be taught in a victor’s high school history textbook.

Theory 1: The Iraq war was motivated by the US’ desire to overthrow a dictator, Saddam Hussein, who was a threat to the Iraqi people and to the world at large, by withholding and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Hussein was successfully tried and convicted of committing gross human rights abuse. As yet no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Assess and discuss.

Our children might learn that dictators all over the world have not only oppressed their people, happily knowing that the US will not interfere, but that in many cases the US has happily assisted dictators to maintain geo-political control in their respective regions - such as in the case of Idi Amin’s Uganda, both Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier’s Haiti, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Pinochet’s Chile, Afghanistan and Mobuto Sese Seko’s Zaire.

Our children might also discuss how Hans Blix, Bill Tierney, David Kay and Scott Ritter debunked the “weapons of mass destruction” thesis.

Yet for good history, one needs context. The second theory might present a more measured analysis of the Iraq war within its geo-political context:

The Iraq war was motivated by the US’ desire to continue to establish pro-Western nations in the Middle East, to continue its trade relations with Middle Eastern countries, to continue to undermine Russia’s power and to keep a check on India’s interests. Discuss.

This is the kind of theory that ex-federal department employees, senators and even a few from the political elite would not deny in 20 or 50 years time, maybe in a moment of charismatic confession à la Robert McNamara’s narrative on the destruction of Vietnam in the documentary, The Fog of War.

This historical narrative is also beautifully sterile and non-personal. It avoids the occurrence of uranium-laced weapons bombarding the Iraqi landscape, it ignores the haphazard killing of Iraqi civilians, it ignores the torture and murder of Iraqis through interrogation and imprisonment, and it ignores the curfews, the starvation and disease, the violence between Iraqi and Iraqi, the hopelessness of it all.

To touch on the personal, the detritus, the history books might say:

The extended campaign of US coalition forces endeavoured to control sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’a religious groups vying to gain control in a post-Saddam environment. Do you think they succeeded? Discuss.

Here we have a statement that is now a tragic cliché among news reports and commentaries, and might evolve into an authoritarian summary of why the US continue to reside in Iraq.

It is a virtuous and moral justification, completely ignoring another theory - that the Iraq war might be motivated by the US’ desire to destabilise the Organisation of the Petroleum Producing Countries’ (OPEC) monopoly over 70 per cent of Iraq’s untapped oil reserves (which is anywhere between 120 and 300 billion barrels of oil).

But it is a virtuous and moral justification that has two assumptions. First, there are two religious groups attacking each other in a geographically based struggle across Iraq. Second, the US coalition forces are neutral, they may be primarily Christians or atheists, but the question of religion does not undermine their ability to contain violence and weed-out insurgents.

However as various “ordinary Iraqis” keep pointing out in the Western media, how can Iraq have such widespread “sectarian violence” when the vast majority of Sunni’s and Shi’as are intersected via marriages, within a vast family networks and who have lived as neighbours in peace?

And if a minority of Iraqis, motivated by their sectarian beliefs, resorted to such violence as retaliation killings or the bombing and shooting of US or US-affiliated targets, how can this be independent to the US’ presence in Iraq?

Though most Iraqi insurgents have a religious motivation to their endeavours, can we say the “coalition of the willing's" war in Iraq is implemented by the secularised democratic ideals we in the West are supposed to cherish?

I pity the student who reaches the inevitable conclusion. The answer, which dare not speak its name in pluralist democracies lest it is uttered in Bush’s or Blair’s ear, is that it is the word of God and He has said: “go forth and conquer.”

The secular democracy underlying the US, Australian and UK government dictates that religion and state are firmly separated in the governance of its peoples. This form of democracy saw in infancy, as a precaution against a monopoly on scientific, philosophical and aesthetic beliefs, inequality among all citizens and a caste or feudal system in society.

A primary concession during this evolution of democracy was that religion was valued in shaping the moral and ethical beliefs of individuals, if so they chose, to support rational decision-making, never to undermine it. One would assume that secular democracy would influence the strategy, orientation and world-view of the coalition’s invasion of Iraq, but sadly, both Blair and Bush have made God’s whisper a public spectacle.

Bush repeatedly made fundamentalist public gaffs an art form in the constant praise of God in White House addresses: particularly alongside the terms “war in Iraq”, “the tragedy of September 11” and “the hunt for al-Qaida”, and through the infusion of political speech with such terms as “the coalition of the willing”, “the good and the willing”, “evil people” and a whole list of biblical compound nouns.

It is regretful that Tony Blair uttered such a silly statement, a statement that brings to light the prominence of fundamental religious motivation to political decisions. Furthermore, it contradicts his earlier statements on the role of religion in politics. For example, in 2005 he said in a BBC report that faith was very important on a personal level however it could quickly become misinterpreted if brought into the public sphere.

"I don't want to end up with an American-style type of politics with us all going out there and beating our chests about our faith," he said.

The most current implications of such “chest-beating” can be seen in the killing of American peace activist Tom Fox, whose body was found on  March 9, 2006 in the Mansour district of the capital, Baghdad. Fox, who had been shot dead by unknown assailants, was among four peace activists kidnapped in Iraq last November. The activists were from the “Christian Peacemaker Teams” NGO.

But this is only one example shown by the hostility of Muslims worldwide against what they see as a Christian invasion in their lands.

In 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan arrested Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer for trying to convert families in Kabul. Bonnie Witherall was killed in Lebanon while working in a Christian mission in November, 2002. Martin Burnhamin was kidnapped and murdered in the Philippines in November, 2002 and three Southern Baptist missionaries were killed in Yemen in 2003.

Bringing God into a justification for invading another country undermines not only the death of British soldiers, as family members of those who died pointed out in a BBC report of March 4, 2006, but it also undermines the spiritual and moral values of many Iraqis who died and the Iraqi’s who continue to suffer.

As more resistance grows against the war from people of all religions and none, let neither Blair nor Bush shift responsibility for what they have done onto God. And if God ultimately bears responsibility for the destruction of an entire nation it is not up to Blair to communicate this to the public.

For as Ambrose Bierce and the doctrines of Islam and Christianity imply, it is humankind, not God, who need to be responsible for what they have learned, and what it took to get there.