Peter Wilby: The last excuse for the Iraq war is founded on a myth
[Peter Wilby is a former editor of the New Statesman
peter.wilby3@ntlworld.com.]
Now it is clear that Saddam Hussein had no WMD, that al-Qaida has become stronger in Iraq, and that liberal democracy has failed to spread through the Middle East, one fallback justification for the Iraq invasion remains: it overthrew a murderous, fascist dictator.
ven if it went catastrophically wrong, runs the argument, the invasion had a good, liberal, humanitarian cause embedded in it. In that sense, as Tony Blair often suggested, it was like the second world war. Much of what the allies did between 1939 and 1945 - the blitz on German towns and cities, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - may have been morally questionable, but the ultimate war aim of overthrowing fascist regimes was irreproachable.
But was the second world war quite what we think it was? I have just read Human Smoke, by the American author Nicholson Baker. It has caused controversy in the US, and will probably be the most hotly debated book of the year when it reaches Britain next month.
Essentially, Baker puts the pacifist case against the second world war. I am not a pacifist and, therefore, do not accept it. The historical evidence that Baker adduces is selective and sometimes unreliable: for example, Hugh (later Viscount) Trenchard, the founder of the RAF, is frequently quoted as though he were a figure of some importance which, by the 1940s, he wasn't.
Baker's account, however, reminds us that the war was not fought for humanitarian or democratic ends. Britain fought Germany for the same reason it had always fought wars in Europe: to maintain the balance of power and prevent a single state dominating the continent. America fought Japan to stop the growth of a powerful rival in the Pacific.
The book ends on December 31 1941. At that moment, he says, "most of the people who died in the second world war were still alive". They included nearly all victims of what we now call the Holocaust. Did waging the war "help anyone who needed help"? Baker asks rhetorically, and gives his answer through a series of documentary snapshots. But, historically, it's the wrong question. The war wasn't supposed to "help" anybody.
The idea that wars can be "helpful" is a relatively new conceit. The second world war was fought as an instrument of British and, later, American foreign policy. To be sure, it started when Britain went to "Poland's aid". As AJP Taylor pointed out in The Origins of the Second World War: "In 1938, Czechoslovakia was betrayed. In 1939, Poland was saved. Less than one hundred thousand Czechs died during the war. Six and a half million Poles were killed. Which was better - to be a betrayed Czech or a saved Pole?" Both countries, he might have added, were ultimately "liberated" from Hitler only to be handed over to Stalin....
Read entire article at Guardian
peter.wilby3@ntlworld.com.]
Now it is clear that Saddam Hussein had no WMD, that al-Qaida has become stronger in Iraq, and that liberal democracy has failed to spread through the Middle East, one fallback justification for the Iraq invasion remains: it overthrew a murderous, fascist dictator.
ven if it went catastrophically wrong, runs the argument, the invasion had a good, liberal, humanitarian cause embedded in it. In that sense, as Tony Blair often suggested, it was like the second world war. Much of what the allies did between 1939 and 1945 - the blitz on German towns and cities, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - may have been morally questionable, but the ultimate war aim of overthrowing fascist regimes was irreproachable.
But was the second world war quite what we think it was? I have just read Human Smoke, by the American author Nicholson Baker. It has caused controversy in the US, and will probably be the most hotly debated book of the year when it reaches Britain next month.
Essentially, Baker puts the pacifist case against the second world war. I am not a pacifist and, therefore, do not accept it. The historical evidence that Baker adduces is selective and sometimes unreliable: for example, Hugh (later Viscount) Trenchard, the founder of the RAF, is frequently quoted as though he were a figure of some importance which, by the 1940s, he wasn't.
Baker's account, however, reminds us that the war was not fought for humanitarian or democratic ends. Britain fought Germany for the same reason it had always fought wars in Europe: to maintain the balance of power and prevent a single state dominating the continent. America fought Japan to stop the growth of a powerful rival in the Pacific.
The book ends on December 31 1941. At that moment, he says, "most of the people who died in the second world war were still alive". They included nearly all victims of what we now call the Holocaust. Did waging the war "help anyone who needed help"? Baker asks rhetorically, and gives his answer through a series of documentary snapshots. But, historically, it's the wrong question. The war wasn't supposed to "help" anybody.
The idea that wars can be "helpful" is a relatively new conceit. The second world war was fought as an instrument of British and, later, American foreign policy. To be sure, it started when Britain went to "Poland's aid". As AJP Taylor pointed out in The Origins of the Second World War: "In 1938, Czechoslovakia was betrayed. In 1939, Poland was saved. Less than one hundred thousand Czechs died during the war. Six and a half million Poles were killed. Which was better - to be a betrayed Czech or a saved Pole?" Both countries, he might have added, were ultimately "liberated" from Hitler only to be handed over to Stalin....