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THE FIRE THIS TIME
An introduction by Grant Wakefield
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
- Pericles, 430 BC
"I believe that if we had, and
would, keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these nations
so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And
if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the
"haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method,
at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't
want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans."
- General David Sharp, former United States Marine Commander, 1966
Even a cursory examination of this prevaling 'truth' about Western policy towards Iraq reveals clearly that bombing Iraq does not remove Saddam Hussein from power, and that sanctions do not work. It is as simple as that. In fact, sanctions have strengthened Saddam Hussein's grip on Iraq. The civilian population suffers terribly while the elite rulers flourish. It is true that Saddam Hussein is a brutal, murdering tyrant. Yes, he used poison gas on the Iranians and the Kurds. Yes, he tortured and murdered political opposition. Yes, he bombed the Marsh Arabs in the South of the country. Yes, yes, yes, but he did all of those things with Western complicity, equipment and help. The US and UK, amongst others, supplied the raw materials for the gas, the means to make the gas, and the containers the gas was carried in. His conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical warfare programmes and capability were all provided by the very same countries who now proclaim Iraq as their sworn enemy. They knew exactly what Hussein was like, but business was booming, and they quite literally queued up to help him. More than just rumour places former Conservative MP David Mellor in Baghdad itself on March 16th 1988, the day that Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja that killed 5000 people. What was he doing there_ More than rumour has it that he was shaking the hand of the 'Butcher of Baghdad', and laying the groundwork for an export credit deal to Iraq that would cost the British taxpayer a stupendous £340 million, and further furnish Hussein's monstrous military machine.
Nevertheless, it is morally necessary to be opposed to Saddam Hussein, but simultaneously be equally, perhaps even more, opposed to the continued imposition of sanctions on Iraq. The two positions are not mutually exclusive. You can be anti-sanctions and anti-Saddam.
The American, British and other Western countries' lack of restraint and logic about Saddam Hussein contributed to one of the most bloody and futile wars in Middle Eastern history, and has since led to one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time. Having supported Hussein throughout the Iran / Iraq war, their position now is that to punish a murderer, we must murder his people, utilising a system of harsh economic sanctions that have never been paralleled. In the name of protecting the repressed population of Iraq, these sanctions, and the ongoing bombing, have killed to date approximately 1.5 million people. We've killed more of the traditionally repressed peoples of Iraq than Saddam Hussein has ever dreamt of. We make him look like a rank amateur. And always the leaders are exempt. It is the people, removed from the decision making process, who are forced to bear the burden.
And it is common for those us fortunate enough to live comfortable, consumerist lives, to raise our hands in consternation and apathy about the less fortunate people in the 'Third World' who suffer and die in phenomenal numbers. What can be done, we ask_
Policy planners in the US and UK have no such consternation, nor apathy. They are hard at work deliberately engineering the physical and economic conditions to maintain this status quo, and indeed expand it, via economic and physical warfare. The structure of the globalising economy revolves in large part around this system. At this point I can imagine economists and political commentators lining up to denounce what they would claim is an ill informed and judgemental statement. I can picture them shaking their heads pityingly at me, mouthing words like 'conspiracy,' and 'ignorance,' but the simple fact of the matter is that for the last fifty years this has been genuine, official United States government policy:
‘We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its’ population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. [....] We should cease to talk about such vague and - for the far East - unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."The fact that in this statement Kennan was referring specifically to one region of the world, the far East, does not negate the thinking behind the policy formulating institutions of the US. His thoughts were not merely echoed by many as regards the rest of the world, but acted upon with immense violence in dozens of countries. (To read Kennan's full statement, please click HERE).
For all the horror of the Ba'ath Party regime and the Iran/Iraq war, the people of Iraq emerged from under the dominance of colonialist rule and transformed their country. Within twenty years of the nationalisation of their oil fields, a modern civilian and industrial infrastructure had been built. Iraqis enjoyed the highest standard of health care in the entire Middle East. Immunisation programmes reached 95% of the population. Access to clean water reached 90%.
Students even earned a salary to study abroad, with their travel and tuition paid for by the Iraqi government. Iraq developed from 'Third World' status to 'Middle Income Developing Country' status in a time span probably unmatched by any other country in the world. In 1989 the World Health Organisation reported that the greatest nutritional disorder in Iraq was, of all things, obesity.And in 42 days it was all gone.
Now the WHO reports that one third of the entire child population of Iraq is chronically malnourished. By 1993 the Iraqi people were trying to survive on a calorific intake lower than the famine stricken countries of sub-Saharan Africa. But this was not a natural disaster - this was the intention.
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I knew very little about Iraq until four years ago. I only remember watching the coverage of the Gulf war with unease, thinking that here was the fuse for the World War III. Then it was over. In the words of a newsreader too shameful to name: "….that was a report on the casualties of the war, but let’s just move away from that and on to some sports news." The co-writer of the CD is a remarkable woman by the name of Miriam Ryle. She was among the first westerners to visit post war Iraq, and she made an extraordinarily good documentary in 1994 abut the terrible conditions there, called 'VOICES FROM IRAQ', which pre-dated John Pilger’s more famous film ‘PAYING THE PRICE’ by over six years. Only one station in the whole of Europe, and of course none in the US, would show Miriam’s film at the time. Such was the resistance to the information in conventional broadcasting circles. In 1998 she lent me a book by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark. It was called THE FIRE THIS TIME. A savage indictment of the US led bombing of Iraq, the effect this book had on me was profound.In April 1999 Miriam and I travelled to Iraq intending to update her documentary. As well as broadcast quality footage of life in and around Baghdad, we shot several key interviews, including one with the new United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Hans Von Sponeck. The replacement for Dennis Halliday
who had resigned in protest at the impact of sanctions six months previously, Von Sponeck, a UN diplomat of 32 years experience, had been in charge of the UN's entire programme in Iraq for six months. In our exclusive interview, he went on record for the first time to say that he too, had come to believe that the sanctions 'experiment' was over and, furthermore, to accuse Britain and America of manipulating the sanctions to their own agenda and at the cost of Iraq's civilian population. On our return we offered the footage - unedited - to both the BBC and Channel 4.BBC World's response to Von Sponeck's interview was:
'We do not accept rant pieces.'Channel 4 News' only - and utterly absurd - question was:
'Did you film any executions_'In our shock we didn’t think to say yes. We had indeed filmed executions……in Iraqi hospitals, dozens of examples of the estimated 5000 children that die every month in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions.
Another broadcaster told us:
"Oh no, we couldn’t possibly take anything from freelancers. Well, perhaps if you’d made a fluffy little film about people living the mountains, maybe we could have taken that."With a wealth of material from both 1994 and 1999, but largely prevented by mainstream media from ever showing it, I put an idea to Miriam: why not make an audio CD_ Thus THE FIRE THIS TIME audio project was born.
In the time it took me to make the CD, the mainstream media finally cracked for a while under the weight of grass roots campaigning, and switched sides after eight years of bellicose coverage. Finally the distinction was made between Saddam Hussein and the innocent civilian population of Iraq. What was relatively unknown in 1998, is now common knowledge. We subjected Iraq to the most intense aerial bombing campaign ever waged in the history of war. We deliberately destroyed their civilian and industrial infrastructure. We fired almost a million rounds of Depleted Uranium ammunition at them. We imposed economic sanctions on them that killed 5000 people every month. Our governments lied about it all, and the media, on the whole, either kept quiet or faithfully acted as their mouthpiece.
Even post 9-11, Iraq, and Depleted Uranium ammunition, was front page news, and the public response was huge. There is a clear majority of public resistance to a new war on Iraq, which in turn has been refelected by the growing opposition within the political system. To cope with the bothersome attitude of ordinary people, in the 1980’s, the media invented a term called ‘compassion fatigue.’ That this syndrome exists at all is a myth. And the proof lies in the fact that our governments and their media outlets did everything they possibly could to keep the truth from the public. They knew what our response would be if we found out, which we finally did, and that, to coin their favourite term, would ‘not be in their interests.’‘Interests’ is a word that the US in particular uses to justify just about anything. The dictionary defines it thus:
INTEREST, in’ter-est, vt. To concern; to engage the attention of. –n. Concern or regard; advantage; profit; profit per cent from money lent or invested; influence with a person.
It’s actually quite an appropriate word, especially for Americans whose prime concern is to maintain the most consumptive lifestyle in human history. You can bet your life that Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, and Iraq have all had their attention ‘engaged’. Estimates vary, but American ‘influence,’ in the form of election fixing, military intervention, and sanctions, along with British complicity, military and political support, has killed, directly and indirectly, between 5 and 15 MILLION people since 1950. Countless millions of others have been reduced to maimed, burnt, cancer ridden, poverty stricken and stunted lives. And all because it’s in the American and British ‘interest’ to do so.
In the early 1970’s, ‘Tricky Dicky’ US President Richard Nixon formulated an official policy, nicknamed ‘The Mad-Man Theory.’ The US government was to project an image of derangement and unpredictability to the world. It was to appear as dangerous, insane and happy to go nuclear. This was to discourage their former ally, the Soviet Union, that they better not say or do anything to threaten the American ‘interest.’ This policy, of course, was tremendously successful, and the irony is not lost the American government genuinely was, and still is, dangerous, insane, and happy to go nuclear. The Japanese know this only too well. This policy was revived by the US National Security Council in 1995
And the British government wants to climb into bed with this dangerous, insane policy, to ally itself with a nation where six year old children shoot each other in classrooms. Why_ Perhaps a clue can be discerned from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s famous article: ‘The Golden Arches Theory of Peace.’ Friedman pointed out that no two countries with a MacDonalds had ever gone to war against each other. And that "….the market requires a hidden fist. MacDonalds can not flourish without McDonnel-Douglas, the designer of the F-15."
Business is still booming, if you’ll pardon the pun.
And this is the ‘New World Order’ – a term in itself that differs only from Hitler’s vision of a ‘World Order’ with the addition of the word ‘New.’ But buried beneath the slick image of America as a land of freedom and plenty are terrible and surprising facts. You will find many of them in this site, but there are three I’d like to stress here:
1.
America is the most indebted country in the world. Its’ foreign debt is twice
that of the entire Third World debt. In 1991, American debt stood at 3599 BILLION
dollars. It is entirely possible that without access to cheap oil supplies, and control of
the pricing mechanism, America faced an economic calamity. Their previous average annual
‘defence’ budget of $320 billion was an inconsequential figure in comparison. In
a typically sick and perverse way, for them it was money well spent.
2.
America's image as a generous, caring 'patriarchal' figure, dedicated to the
establishment of democracy and aid to the poor repressed people of the world, is a triumph
of public relations. The complete opposite is true - not only is US history is littered
with military invasions of dozens and
dozens of countries all over the world, it
has provided outright support for some of the most brutal regimes in history.
Additionally, its foreign aid percentage per Gross National Product is the lowest of the
industrialised world. Denmark donates 1.01% of it's GNP to aid programmes. The US, the
richest country in the world, donates only 0.1%, sometimes with many conditions that cause
great harm to the recipient's long term economy.
3.
Iraq was a favoured friend and ally of the US (and UK), and had been since 1963 - the year that the CIA aided Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party
into power, decribing the coup as "...a
great victory; it was an operation where all the 'T's were really crossed..." The US and UK continued to be allies and prinicple arms
suppliers throughout the Iran/Iraq war and all the way through til mid 1990. On April 12th
1990, whilst still very much in the US' good books, Saddam Hussein offered to destroy his
arsenal of chemical and non-conventional weapons if Israel agreed to destroy its nuclear
and non-conventional weapons. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher transmitted
the response of a group of US senators, which told the Iraqis that they welcomed the offer
but opposed the link "....to other
issues or weapons systems...." Boucher
could not even mention the word 'Israel' in the response, as this would call into question
why all US aid to Israel was not illegal under the Foreign Aid Act that bars aid to
countries engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons development. And thus Saddam's offer was
politely rejected and the matter was dropped.
Let's go over that again, as it seems a little hard to believe: Saddam Hussein was an ally, he offered to destroy his weapons of mass destruction in 1990, and the US turned him down.
And having received no condemnation from the US or UK whatsoever, indeed direct and almost reverential support, for his invasion of Iran, Saddam Hussein took matters into his own hands when Kuwait began driving down the price of oil after that war ended. In doing so, he invited a calamity. Not that he would have known this from the prior statements of the US Congress, the US Ambassador to Iraq and the US State Department, all of whom clearly indicated a 'hands off' stance in matters of Arab/Arab conflicts.
What happened to Iraq in 1991 was a template for future wars. It was devastatingly simple. Destroy the means of industrialised civilian life, destroy the water supply and sanitation system, destroy the electricity supply, freeze their assets, isolate the country with sanctions, gag the media, then sit back and relax whilst an entire nation degenerates into epidemics, poverty and starvation. And as a shattered future generation emerges, you will find the people more malleable and receptive to your ‘influence’.
Except the last part hasn’t happened. The Iraqi people, the vast majority of whom hate Saddam Hussein, have taken a stand. They see clearly that the greater enemy to their well being and culture is not a tyrant dictator who was helped into power by Western intelligence agencies in the first place, but the Western value system itself. Anyone who’s been to Iraq will tell you that the Iraqi people are kind, courteous, generous and intelligent. Their history and identity is strong. I sat with these people in Baghdad, April 1999, watching the cross-hair gun camera footage of the bombing of Kosovo. They shook their heads in sorrow. Some cried. They knew what it really meant to be the target of Western ‘humanitarian bombing,’ a term that would have bewildered even George Orwell.
THE FIRE THIS TIME is my contribution to those people. It is also my response to the blatant cruelty and insanity of American and British policy towards Iraq. And I decided on an audio CD as a format for this message as newspapers and television programmes tend to be somewhat temporary.
It was my sincere hope that the CD would be a permanent record of the fate of Iraq, a guide to the language of mainstream propaganda, and a warning for the future. The two questions at its’ heart were simple: When would this lunacy ever end_ And who would be next_
Well, Afghanistan found that out. And soon Iraq may once again be on the receiving end of US benevolence, who, having imposed sanctions for nearly 12 years on the pretext of weapons inspections, have suddenly changed their mind. Now the US claims that such inspections won't actually acheive anything anyway, and that Saddam has to go. 'The people of Iraq would be better off without him' opine high ranking members of the US and UK governments. They are undoubtedly correct, so let us all look forward to the day when thousands more civilians are killed and starved, whilst democracy is established in Iraq, just as it has been so successfully established in Afghanistan. Let us look forward to the announcement that 'stability' has been restored to Iraq, just as it was restored to Pakistan by the military dictator General Musharraf. Let us look forward to the day when a 'war' will be fought to bring peace to the region, and damn anyone who dares say that this is not a 'war', but an attack, pure and simple. Most importantly, let us remember the words of George Bush Sr.'s assistant Richard Haas who said in 1991: "Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime."
Yet, the biggest question of all still remains: why should we pay for all this_ Why should we, the tax payers, who pay the salaries of politicians who lie to us, pay tax to our governments so that they can fund and supply arms to brutal dictators all over the world_ Why should we then give them more tax to send our, apparently expendable, 'brave boys and girls' of the armed forces to destroy the weapons and bring down the regimes that our governments supplied and supported in the first place when these regimes fail to tow the prescribed line_ And do we want our 'brave boys and girls' to be poisoned by our own military who insist that coating shells with nuclear waste is perfectly safe_
I think not.
I’d like to say that I went to a great deal of effort, on every single point, to ensure that I got my facts right. Everything you hear on the CD, and everything that you read in the CD booklet and on this site is true and correct to the best of my knowledge. It would, however, be the height of ignorance to proclaim that I have acheived this goal 100%, so I want to hear about any mistakes. Nothing is more costly to the practice of peace activism than to make a mistake. Just one, and your entire work can be rendered void by the clamour of so-called 'respectable commentators'. Never mind that 99.99% of the rest of your information is correct. Additionally, you are strongly advised to check all the information for yourself.
I would also like to make clear that I fully expect to receive a great deal of criticism over the CD, particularly in light of what it leaves out from the historical record. This occurred for two reasons, one practical, one moral. The practical reason is that the CD covers a period of history stretching from 2300 BC, up through two world wars, the Iran / Iraq war, the Gulf war, and 10 years of sanctions - all in 77 minutes. It was simply not possible to include everything. The original 72 page booklet that was designed to accompany the CD would have gone a long way to redressing that. Thus it is posted here on this site along with a great deal of other relevant information. Overlapping this is the moral reason. So much has been written of the horrors of Saddam Hussein and his regime that I felt that balance, however small, at the very least deserved to be in the public domain. So rarely did the western press write of the horrors of Saddam Hussein when he was an ally and a principal arms buyer. The fact that they dedicate vast amounts of press to him now that he's the 'enemy' fits the propaganda model proposed by Chomsky and Herman so closely that it is difficult to find a more revealing example. But to this day the voices of ordinary Iraqis are almost nowhere to be heard in the mainstream. It is their voices I wished people to hear.
I also want to stress in no uncertain terms that nothing in this site or on the CD is designed to provoke or justify terrorism of any kind whatsoever. The site and CD are designed solely to contribute to the debate on the nature of power and the seemingly rapidly eroding process of democracy. I additonally hope against hope that it will contribute to the process of changing the policy on Iraq, and the ordering of world affairs in a more rational, peaceful and long term way. Just one single step in this direction will have made my efforts worthwhile.
Lastly, I want to thank again all the artists who so generously contributed such great music. To them, and to everybody else who helped me to make THE FIRE THIS TIME, particularly those insiders of the music industry who supported the project and helped clear a path for me against almost impossible odds, I couldn’t have done it without you. You have my eternal gratitude.
Grant Wakefield
