The media and Iraq

The prescient strategic analyst Gary Brown, also a noted critic of Government action, observed that the Iraq war was due to a “mad ideological belief that democratic institutions can be imposed on any country by force and made to work”, a view now “utterly discredited”. (On Line Opinion.)

Robert Manne, Australia’s leading public intellectual, in The Sydney Morning Herald has written of a similar democracy promotion ideology held by the neo-conservatives who “fantasised that if only Iraq could be democratised it might provide a model for the entire Middle East”.

But the thinking person finds something very strange in all this. Occupying powers do not have rights. They have only responsibilities. Yet it is we that are debating the future of Iraq, even though the water crisis, interest rates and carbon trading are not much debated in Baghdad. It is a strange democracy where the key debates are occurring a world away from home.

Notice that this also applies to the terms of our military presence. It is not for us to debate about, and ultimately decide upon, whether a surge or a withdrawal of combat troops and such is a good idea or not. That is for the Iraqis to decide.

Public opinion in Iraq is clear. Overwhelmingly, the population of Arab Iraq would rather the US, and by implication Australian and UK, troops be withdrawn. Arab Iraq just so happens to be where the troops are deployed. If Iraq were a democracy then there would be no outside Western military presence in Iraq and certainly we would not be deciding upon the matter here.

We do not need much more than that to see whatever our motive for being in Iraq, democracy isn’t it.

If Iraq was a democracy then the government would reflect the needs and concerns of the Shia dominated population. An Iraqi Government accountable to its people, rather than the master in Washington, would be interested in greater regional integration, particularly with Iran.

Also, the Shia have traditionally been the downtrodden in Iraqi and Arab society. Any government in Baghdad that would address their needs and concerns would be social democratic in character, using the indigenous resource wealth of the country to redistribute wealth and power to the destitute. Instead, Iraq’s wealth is to be plundered by US investors. The interests of Washington are diametrically opposed to the interests of Iraq’s population.

Initially the US sought to create a “caucus” political system whose effect would be to dilute popular sovereignty, given that Washington is well aware of the conflict of interests it has with Iraq’s people. The Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani expressed his opposition to this scheme and, fearing a Shiite revolt, Washington backed down and allowed elections for a parliament to proceed. However, despite this, as Seymour Hersh has shown, Washington sought at once to undermine the elections by a covert operation to boost the vote of its preferred candidate. This has not prevented Team Bush from subsequently using these forced elections, which it attempted to subvert, in a cynical attempt to enhance its democratic credentials.

The US objective in Iraq is to institute a stable neo-colonial dependency in the oil rich Middle East, not to redistribute wealth and protect and develop Iraqi industry. Washington’s contempt for democracy was well symbolised by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s use of Saddam era anti-union laws to bust up the labour movement; even Saddam was into "WorkChoices".

US planners have always regarded the energy resources of the Middle East as a “stupendous source of strategic power” the “greatest material prize in world history” that gives it “veto power” over the policies of its main industrial rivals. Controlling the Middle East gives Washington critical leverage in international relations.

A recent study has re-affirmed that Iraq holds the second largest reserves of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia. The looming peak in global oil production with non-OPEC oil estimated to peak in 2010 made Iraq, which was known to be defenceless, a very tempting target for planners in Washington given the role that energy plays in the global system of power.