Britain is braced for George W. Bush’s arrival. London police leave has been canceled, and the Stop the War Coalition is planning demonstrations and civil disobedience to “unwelcome” the President. The highlight will be the toppling, Saddam-style, of a Dubya statue in Trafalgar Square. Although Bush will not move into his guest suite at Buckingham Palace until Nov. 19, the action starts this Wednesday when protesters will be burning him in effigy. For activists lacking the necessary skills, the coalition’s website offers a DIY Dubya mask. “Print George and photocopy him on to A3 paper or card,” the instructions read. “Color and bend him to your satisfaction, and attach him to a guy (effigy) of your own choosing.” Burning George, it promises, will generate “a warm feeling”.
But not, naturally, the comforting glow that Tony Blair envisaged when planning the first state visit by a US president. By now, weapons of mass destruction should have been secured, Iraq should be a secular democracy, and Bush should be emblazoned in glory rather than torched in paraffin. Instead, the president has placard trouble. At home, he is haunted by the “Mission Accomplished” banner strung behind him on the USS Abraham Lincoln when he declared the Iraq war over. Now he is pretending, not quite accurately, that it was all the navy’s idea, rather than the White House’s.
Those of us who opposed the war can claim that we were more right than we thought. There were no WMDs, no nuclear program, no legal case and no link with Al-Qaeda, until Bush and Blair invited them along. And yet the anti-war movement, whatever its stake on prescience, has proved a depressingly negative force, too. The populist spirit that politicized a generation and illuminated mass marches has curdled into pessimism and posturing.
This is Britain’s war, too. Yet the prime minister, its joint impresario, has faced nothing more irksome than a few “Bliar” placards and the sideshow of the Hutton inquiry. March against Bush by all means, but wonder, also, why we absolve our own politicians from intensive scrutiny and protest. In the US, by contrast, every CNN phone-in program reeks of fury. Almost 60 per\cent of Americans now want their troops reduced or out. Bush’s $87 billion adventure is so unpopular that he may get his exit papers as well. A presidential race is on, the body bags (360 to Britain’s 51) are coming home, and Iraq still inflames public debate
Bush, cornered and in danger, has made a series of catastrophic decisions, culminating in ordaining a privatized future in which Iraq would get industrial oligarchs and a private healthcare system for the destitute. But he has also, more commendably, overruled the Democrats’ wish that half the $19 billion rebuilding costs should be loaned, not given. As for the loathsome neocons, they grow more humble by the day.
Defeat makes hard men malleable. If the Bush administration is to be persuaded of a sensible way forward, then this may be the last, frail chance. The proconsul, Paul Bremer, should be replaced by someone with UN legitimacy, and the Iraqi police and army expanded as fast as possible. There must be a timetable for a handover, but also the recognition that democracy (very probably an Islamic one) cannot be forged without the rule of law.
Elections without security achieve nothing, as Bosnia proved. That is not to argue against fast tracking US troop withdrawal or to deny that American soldiers inflame the current problems. Even so, to walk away from a disaster of our making would be an unthinkable betrayal.
Yet, at this vital juncture, the leading anti-war movement parades only one idea. The US pullout “within months” desired by the Stop the War Coalition is also the dream of cost-cutting Americans. The fact that Bush may himself feel secretly tempted to leave Iraq to anarchy or civil war makes it imperative that he and Blair, the architects of this disaster, are held accountable by the coherent and the peaceful.
No doubt George W. Bush would be delighted to learn that some British opponents will be torching his image on bonfire night, perhaps with their children looking on. Such gestures, vapid and vaguely savage, are a gift. They make it easier for our leaders to ignore the demands of the quiet millions who abhorred their war but who now look forward. We want solutions and progress, not revenge.
