LONDON, 28 April 2003 — A few days before America and Britain attacked Iraq, the cover of Amnesty International’s membership magazine suggested that the human cost of war might be 50,000 deaths, 500,000 civilian injuries, two million refugees and displaced people and 10 million in need of humanitarian assistance.
Amnesty was wildly wrong on the figures but maybe also in its stance. Now that the stories of the extensive cruelty of Saddam’s security forces are being heard in full, an organiszation that is devoted to the eradication of torture must wonder about the wisdom of a position that effectively argued for the continuation of a regime which practiced torture like no other. As of this moment the torture chambers are empty, the executions have stopped and people are no longer losing their ears, eyes and tongues in routine mutilations. Surely that is the only result the charity could have hoped for.
The people at Amnesty are an easy target in these postwar days because that particular magazine cover portrayed exactly the liberal pessimism that neoconservatives in the US claim has been exposed along with the true nature of Saddam’s regime. If ever proof were needed of the caution, hysterical dismay and unyielding self- righteousness of the liberal left on both sides of the Atlantic, then Amnesty seems to have provided it.
Ten days ago The Wall Street Journal — a favourite outlet for neoconservatives — published an editorial that pointed out the lamentable track record of the left’s prewar predictions. The Arab street did not rise; the Turks did not invade northern Iraq; and the war did not involve Israel. It then quoted one of its own columnists, Robert Bartley, who wrote that today’s left “had become a self- insulated elite convinced of its own virtue”.
It’s difficult to argue with that. Since Baghdad fell there has been very little movement on the left to absorb and respond to events. Commentators who got it wrong are busy converting their vision of catastrophe to include an uprising of the Shiites. They still insist on the general evil of the United States and remain rooted in arguments they obtained in the early part of this year, without adapting to the catalyzing effect of the neocon triumph.
The result of this inflexibility is that liberals who were opposed to the war concede a large part of the high ground to the neoconservatives who seem to demonstrate their interest in rights and liberties. The one part of the argument that still belongs to the liberals is the failure of the coalition to produce convincing evidence on weapons of mass destruction. This is no small matter and it may yet prove a serious problem for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but one suspects that the neocons will not be unduly troubled by a failure to locate WMD. Regime change was always their primary objective, Saddam’s arsenal merely the pretext.
What is astonishing is the unabashed nature of the neoconservative views that pour from commentators, editors and academics in Washington DC. Their only concern now is to consolidate the strategic advantages made by the Iraq war. There is no sense of apology and certainly no concession to the liberal consensus. This is in part due to the fact that many neocons like Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Board, and Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy at the Pentagon, migrated from the left after becoming disillusioned with liberal institutions such as the UN. An aura of invincibility surrounds the neocons which may prevent liberals from seeing US plans for the Middle East as being profoundly simple minded. For instance the neocons cannot understand the passion for Islam in the Arab mind.
Neoconservatives are much more inconsistent than most people realise. While they urge democratic reform in Syria, Iran and other countries, they are less enthusiastic about democracy in Palestine. The fabled road map for the Middle East which at Blair’s request received Bush’s backing before the war is now being attacked in Washington. Tom DeLay, the leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, said last week: ‘The Israelis don’t need to change course. They don’t need to travel the path of weakness as defined by the neoappeasers.’
Mindful of the Jewish lobby during an election year, Bush is unlikely to push for an “independent, viable, sovereign and democratic Palestine”, as defined by the road map. He will receive little encouragement to empower the Palestinians from the neocons because one thing that binds them is favoritism toward Israel.
If only liberals realized how damaging this inconsistency is to neocon credibility, they would begin to retrieve some of initiative in the debate. And it is not just in Palestine that the neocon case is exposed. Since 9/ 11, the date which marks the beginning of their takeover of US foreign policy, the Bush administration has been steadily eroding democratic rights in America. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of American citizens have been held by the Justice Department without access to legal representation or judicial procedure. Across the world there are camps where terrorist suspects are imprisoned and tortured by American proxies. Distaste for the war has prevented many liberals from thinking straight and seeing neoconservative policies for what they are. Liberals may have been intimidated by their simplicity of purpose and understanding of power, but sooner or later they will realize that neoconservatism is not an all-conquering ideology but a risky strategic enterprise.
Liberals need to brush off the dust of the Iraq war, look at the new circumstances of the Middle East and meet the neocons on their own terms. This requires realism and a recognition that the idiom and reflexes of the Vietnam era are no longer applicable to a world created by the neoconservatives.
