Strenuously opposed to the war in Iraq, The Independent has covered the conflict with greater consistency than any other British newspaper. The quality of its coverage has owed much to the heroic efforts of Robert Fisk, a journalist who has been reporting on the Middle East for a quarter of a century, never making any secret of his abhorrence of US meddling in the region. It is safe to say that many take the Independent specifically to read Fisk’s fiery dispatches.
Last Wednesday, on the eve of the Iraq elections, the veteran correspondent flew into London from Baghdad to take part in a debate organized by the Independent on whether critics of the war in Iraq have been vindicated. Joining him to speak against the war was the dissenting US political journalist, Charles Glass. Ranged against the two men were the Labour politician and government spokesman, Eric Joyce, and the prolific young Independent columnist, Johann Hari. A voluble champion of the case for toppling Saddam Hussein, the latter has enabled the Independent to sustain an anti-war posture without compromising its much-vaunted commitment to free thinking.
At the outset, the debate threatened to turn into the Robert Fisk Show. For scarcely had Editor in Chief Simon Kellner introduced the Independent’s most celebrated contributor than the 750-strong audience at Church House, Westminster, erupted into furious applause. The ruddy-faced Fisk — who was sporting a heavily bandaged forearm, as if to advertise his penchant for living dangerously — looked embarrassed and delighted in equal measure.
Such was the fervor of Fisk’s admirers that the pro-war speakers seemed in danger of being shouted down. In the event, Hari and Joyce were accorded a grudgingly respectful hearing. Anxious to rebut claims that the British government had acted in bad faith, Joyce pointed out that the British government had been far from alone in believing that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction: Prior to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, this was after all the common consensus among Western governments. As for the current crisis in Iraq, Joyce insisted that it was wrong to “rush to judgment”. In his view, the stated objectives of bringing democracy to Iraq and improving the lives of Iraqi people were eminently achievable.
Brimming with youthful energy, Hari said he never believed the official justification of the war that Saddam needed to be disarmed because of the threat posed by his alleged biological and chemical weapons. It was his crimes against humanity that justified the dictator’s overthrow. Acknowledging that there were good grounds for being skeptical about the motives of the US for invading Iraq, Hari is nevertheless certain that Iraq is an immeasurably better place without Saddam Hussein. He exhorted the audience to consider the many opinion polls indicating that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis were thankful for his removal and anxious for the invasion to succeed. What baffles him is the attitude of the British left. Hari had always thought that it was the job of the left to show solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere. Why then was there not more left-wing concern about the prospects of emergent Iraqi trades unionism?
The contrast between the views of Hari and Joyce and those of Fisk and Charles Glass was stark. Speaking with barely suppressed anger, Fisk said he was not altogether sure if his original reservations about the war had been vindicated. For he had never imagined that the British and American governments were capable of lying so shamelessly or that the occupation would be so “flawed and brutal”. He reserved a special contempt for the notion that Blair and Bush were latter-day counterparts of Churchill and Roosevelt (a claim recently made in the Observer by the noted British historian, Martin Gilbert.) The truth was that the Iraq war had culminated in disaster, with the most densely populated areas of the country completely outside of government control. Clearly unimpressed by Hari’s claim that opinion polls showed how much Iraqis supported the invasion, Fisk reported that he constantly met people who, despite the hatred they felt for Saddam, longed for the security they enjoyed under his regime. The coming elections, he maintained, would be every bit as unrepresentative as those that took place under the old regime; many Sunnis — whether as the result of intimidation or disaffection — would not be voting. He could not emphasize sufficiently the terrifyingly lawless state into which Iraq had been plunged. The Iraqi people’s true war of liberation, he declared, was only just beginning: it would be a war to liberate themselves from their unwanted occupiers.
Charles Glass recalled a meeting in London before the war began at which the British peace campaigner Bruce Kent accurately predicted that US President George W Bush’s doctrine of unilateralism would prove a recipe for anarchy. What was now all too apparent was that Bush’s cure for Iraq was worse than the disease. Invoking the dubious record of American foreign interventions, he reminded the audience that the US had been backing oppressive regimes for the past fifty years. It was hardly surprising if many Iraqis took fright when the US announced that it was coming to liberate them. If anything, Glass was even more pessimistic about the prospects for Iraq (and for the Middle East in general) than Robert Fisk. He fears that, having put down key strategic bases in Iraq, the US is set to remain in the country for many years and could ultimately be responsible for as many as two million deaths.
The debate concluded with a heated question-and-answer session. One member of the audience, a notably strident opponent of the war, very nearly had to be placed under physical restraint. Not unexpectedly, the relationship between Israel and the US figured large in the exchanges, with Fisk making trenchant comments on the subject. He did not demur at the suggestion that Israel was “at the heart of US foreign policy” but confessed he would have no objection to this if only US stewardship of the Middle East were “genuinely neutral”. There would be no hope of peace until it was.
What gave him a measure of hope was that attitudes among the US Jewish community were changing. On American lecture tours, Fisk has found a new disposition on the part of American Jews to question US/Israeli policy in the Middle East.
Within the next few months a general election will take place in Britain. It will soon become clear how far British people in general share the outrage over the Iraq war that found such passionate expression at Church House last week.
