Anti-War Rally Dublin
15 Feb 2003
This great assembly, made up of people of many political views, comes together in a common cause - to express our outrage at the forthcoming gulf war.
For myself I wish to state that I am not by conviction a pacifist. I do not believe that we can be neutral in all circumstances. I support the concept of a common European foreign and security policy and I approved of the US intervention in Kosovo and said so publicly.
I have no antipathy to the American people. As a matter of fact there are very close institutional and personal relations between Congress and AFLICO (the US umbrella trade union body). But I most certainly disapprove of the current US administration and its war policy.
In my opinion the case for war must be made on legal, humanitarian and strategic grounds. The case has not been convincingly made, much less proven.
There is no precedent in international law for use of force as a preventative measurer when there is no actual or imminent attack by the offending state. It is not clear to me how we got from September 11th to war with Iraq. Is Iraq any different today than it was a year ago? In reality Iraq is in a glass jar. Every move it makes is under surveillance. Attempts to prove a linkage to Al Quaida have been ham fisted. Iraq does not constitute a threat to any of its neighbours.
The same of course cannot be said of the poor people of Iraq with respect to the tyrant, Saddam Hussein. He is a very bad man and I for one would shed no tears at this demise, if that could be achieved at any reasonable cost. The trouble is that it cannot be so achieved and the horror of the human rights abuses of the regime would surely be surpassed by the horror of war.
Ms Clare Short, the International Development Secretary said in the House of Commons on Wednesday that there was a serious risk that the UN Food-for-Oil programme would collapse in the event of war. Oil fields could be set alight, chemical weapons released and the country split asunder.
This is a potential humanitarian catastrophe. Sixteen million people depend on the UN Food-for-Oil programme. If it collapses they will be in danger of starvation. Add to this the likely destruction of roads and bridges and you can see that the challenge of mounting a humanitarian aid programme is formidable. The UN estimates that war will displace four million people and large refugees encampments in neighbouring countries will also have to be provided for. The potential for death and disease is enormous.
This is without mentioning direct casualties of the war which will be in hundreds of thousands.
Remember too that this is a country of 13 million children. Approximately 500,000 of them are acutely malnourished or underweight. These children are particularly vulnerable to disease and death should war occur.
It seems to me that the sheer scale of humanitarian risk outweighs the undoubted benefits that could be got by toppling the regime.
Finally I want to mention the strategic question. Even if one assumes a benign intention to replace an evil despot with a pacifist model democracy as an example to the region, one has to evaluate the prospects of success. There may be unintended outcomes. One such is the possibility that the region would actually be destabilised. Another is the release of uncontrollable forces within Iraq itself. The British experience in the 1920's was that they could not control the country without the Ottoman officials which they intended to purge. Who can say that the same would not happen again? Perhaps Saddam Hussein will be deposed, but the institutions and personnel who served him might have to be kept in place. America's recent history of nation building is not perfect. They went into Somalia with the best of intentions but they left in chaos.
What is the alternative say the pro-war parties? It is hardly a fair question given that the crises was deliberately precipitated.
The Franco/German proposal is more sane. At least it ensures that war would be the very last resort - not the first resort.
It seems to me though that any serious project to stabilise the Middle East and Gulf must first bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to an end. It is the primary cause of instability and as long as it remains a festering sore on the body of humanity there can be no military solution to the problems of the region. An end to that conflict would release many possibilities for the establishment of human rights and democracy in the Arab nations that use it as a justification for their own shortcomings.
The irony of this situation we are in is that the only winner will be Osama Bin Laden. He knows that every shot of an Iraqi child being pulled lifeless from the rubble will send hundreds of recruits flocking to Al-Quaida's banner.