LONDON, 16 February 2003 — Protest marches have an uncertain record of changing government policy. Arguably, the anti-war demonstrations in the late 1960s helped Harold Wilson to keep Britain out of Vietnam, while the rally in Trafalgar Square in 1990 drew attention to the depth of public hostility to the poll tax. But most of them are ignored, either because their demands are unrealistic, such as those of the CND rallies, or because they are incoherent, as were those of the Countryside marches.
We hope today’s demonstration will have an effect. Not that it alone is likely to prevent the United States from going to war. But the timing of war can still be influenced, and the longer it can be delayed the greater the chance either that Saddam Hussein’s regime will comply with United Nations resolutions or that the pressure will cause the regime to implode. This march can have an effect because Prime Minister Tony Blair is in such an excruciating position. He knows public opinion is against a war at the moment, but he never believed it would come to the point when he had to choose between popularity at home and his special relationship with the US president. He always thought the renewed inspection regime would produce the evidence that would convince reasonable people everywhere of the reluctant necessity for war. Yesterday, it did not work out like that. Far from it. Hans Blix’s short and factual presentation was almost wholly positive about the growing Iraqi cooperation with the UN inspectors. He was politely but firmly dismissive of US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s intelligence information presented last week. And he concluded by saying, in effect, that it was perfectly possible for Iraq to be disarmed in accordance with the requirements of Resolution 1441 in a “short” time. In which case, the “serious consequences” threatened in that resolution ought to be called off.
Most difficult for Blair was that the one straw which he has been clutching over the past few weeks was missing from Blix’s words. In his report 18 days ago, the chief UN weapons inspector made it clear that Saddam’s regime was still failing to cooperate fully. On Friday, he conspicuously failed to repeat that charge. Without it, Blair has no prospect of persuading the British people that war is necessary.
And yesterday, the skepticism of British public opinion was made vivid in Hyde Park. When the prime minister has to make the decision about whether British forces will fight alongside the US in Iraq, one of his mental pictures will be of the sea of people opposed to the war in the streets of Britain’s cities. “Stop the war” is a simple message. That is its great advantage. It unites those who are opposed to war under any circumstances with those who believe that the case for war has not been made yet, but that it could be. The difficulty is that there is not much room for subtleties on a demonstration; no scope for nuances on a placard.
The Independent respects many of the arguments in favor of the use of force. We should worry, deeply, about the plight of the Iraqi people. We should be concerned that few Iraqi exiles joined the march. We need to make it clear that Saddam Hussein is a monster, and that Tony Blair and many Americans, even George Bush, sincerely believe that a war will make the world a better place. Just because we disagree with them does not make them evil. Nor do we have to fall back on conspiracy theories about Israel to explain their actions.
However, we believe the case against war is compelling, and stronger on Friday than it was on Thursday, before Blix’s report. Unless one believes that the international community should simply remove Saddam in order to liberate his unfortunate, oppressed people — which has never been the primary objective of the US, Britain or the UN — it is impossible to resist the case for giving the disarmament process more time.
Thus we support the march, although not in an uncritical or a partisan spirit. We rejoice in the diversity of the minorities that have coalesced in the march, and which represent a majority of the British people. We are a little puzzled by the way some other newspapers have covered the build-up to the march. The Daily Telegraph, we notice, has not prominently featured pictures of pretty young women who intend to be on the demonstration, as it did with the Countryside marches. Nor has it dwelt on one of the fundamental differences between the two, namely that the Countryside marchers were motivated primarily by self-interest, while today’s are altruistic. Indeed, the right-wing newspapers that patronize the marchers as Saddam’s muddle-headed fellow-travelers now have as much of a problem as Blair.
They ought to know, and the prime minister ought to know, that the numbers on the streets will have been swelled by two things.
One was the bellicosity of President Bush in addressing sailors on the USS Philippines Sea this week. His conflation of the war on terror with that on Iraq was unstatesmanlike: “The terrorists brought this war to us — and now we’re taking it back to them.” Of course, we know the link of logic, in that if Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons they could come into terrorist hands. But the implication that invading Iraq is the counterpunch to Sept. 11 is dishonest. And the gloating over the deaths of 3,000 suspected terrorists in Afghanistan — “they’re not a problem any more” — was offensive.
The other factor swelling the numbers is Blix’s report. His calm and factual approach showed another form of the “backbone and courage” demanded of free nations by President Bush. Blix was properly skeptical of Saddam’s “closed society” and fully aware of the “history of inspections” that have turned into a game of deception. Yet he scrupulously recorded the lack of firm evidence that Saddam still possesses or is trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Yesterday was the day for the considered opposition of the British people to war to be seen and heard. (The Independent)