David Wearing | ukwatch.net

The end of capitalism, and other questions

JamieSW — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:40:12 +0000

“So, we should be really, really wary of this claim that we’re hearing that free market ideology is dead, that this marks the end of, you know, of capitalism. You know, I’m sorry, that is not the case. It may be going dormant for a little while to rationalize these massive bailouts, but it will come roaring back, and the crisis that is being deepened right now through these bailouts will be invoked for even more radical deregulation, privatization, tax cuts and so on. ” – Naomi Klein

As the Anglo-American banking system goes into meltdown, all sorts of unlikely people are beginning to ask, ‘is this the end of capitalism?’ A couple of weeks ago it would have been ideological treason to so much as think such a beastly thing. Now, with ancient financial institutions keeling over everywhere you look, the question is cropping up all over the corporate media.

So what’s the answer? Well the answer’s ‘no’. Or if you want me to flesh that out a bit, the answer’s ‘no, now get a grip’. But really, the problem lies with the question. There are other questions we should be asking, but I’ll come on to that later. For now, lets look at what’s wrong with asking ‘is this the end of capitalism?’

What do we mean, or what do most people understand, by the term ‘capitalism’? Practically every economy you can think of is one where commercial activity occurs, where there are goods and resources which are privately owned and that are bought and sold for profit. Alongside this private sector sits a public sector where, in democratic countries, resources are owned by the public as a whole and distributed according to decisions made by their elected government. Pure capitalism, and pure socialism, remain purely theoretical.

Across the world, what you invariably have are mixed public-private economies where the debate is about which sector of the economy is responsible for the distribution of which resources, and how those responsibilities will be discharged (e.g, to what extent should the private sector play a role in the provision of education and healthcare?). That’s by no means an insignificant debate, but we should be clear on what that debate is about. It is not about whether or not we have the buying and selling of private property or whether or not we have capitalism. The debate is about what kind of capitalism we have in a democracy: which version of capitalism and what mixture of public and private economic activity will produce the end results valued and desired by a society organised on democratic principles.

Different countries strike the balance in different ways. As I’ve noted previously, the Nordic model has been far more successful than the Anglo-American neoliberal model in maximising the well-being of the population. The crisis of the last few weeks was born of the deregulated financial markets characteristic of neoliberal economies, wherein unrestrained greed drove debt to be managed in an increasingly reckless way – one which was proven conclusively to be unsustainable as the last of the pure investment banks on Wall St disappeared.

This is a serious malfunction of one version, not any and all versions, of capitalism. The collapse of institutions like Lehmann Brothers and the dangers of sub-prime mortgage lending don’t necessarily say very much about the forms of capitalism practiced in other countries. Neoliberals like to talk about their version of economics as though it is synonymous with capitalism itself, hence the talk of capitalism failing, but pretending there are no alternatives is just a neat way of sidestepping debates about what kind of capitalism societies should opt for.

Not only is the end of capitalism itself not occurring, it is not even being called for, at least not in any meaningful way. Only an infinitesimal minority on the left advocate the total abolition of all private property and commercial transactions. I hesitate to use the word ‘advocate’ because advocacy involves setting out serious proposals, and I’ve yet to see any serious proposal that explains how a non-capitalist society is going to be brought about. By that I mean a plan that describes in all the necessary fine detail how we get from here to there, dealing effectively with all the obstacles in the way. A plan that explains how we persuade the public to accept our proposed non-capitalist society, bring to power a government willing to effect the plan, and then enact the massive transformative program needed to entirely eradicate commercial activity and introduce a vast array of new social structures, habits and forms of interaction. Even if a workable plan of this kind, with a desirable end product, was formulated (I don’t completely rule that out) it would take many, many decades to implement. Such a plan does not exist, as far as I’m aware, even amongst those whose opposition to capitalism is the strongest.

No one, therefore, is proposing the end of capitalism itself in any serious way. For the most part, what’s called ‘socialism’ is just a take on how mixed public-private economies should be organised, rather than a total rejection of capitalism itself. Even the Venezuelan government, as it proclaims its mission to pioneer “21st Century Socialism”, allowed the private sector of the economy to grow relative to the public sector during its first decade in office.

Similarly, even the most swivel-eyed free-market extremists don’t advocate, in any serious way, the total abolition of the public sector and its replacement with pure capitalism. In fact, even in the neo-liberal citadels of Britain and America, the rigours of the free market are often quietly avoided and the state called upon for assistance. Think no-bid contracts for Halliburton in Iraq. Think of the UK arms industry’s incestuous links with government, where ministers on overseas trips (including the Prime Minister) practically act as salesmen for the likes of British Aerospace. Think of how the US economy boomed in the post war era, in no small part due to government defence budgets socialising research costs for technologies that were subsequently turned over to the private sector for profit; like aeronautics, computers and even the internet. Those who say they advocate the free market have very little to say about the nanny state when its nursemaiding the rich. Only when it attends to the needs of the public are objections raised.

The debate that occurs between left and right on economics is not between absolute socialism or absolute capitalism but between democracy and private power. The left does not oppose globalisation [.pdf], or even capitalism for the most part. What it takes issue with is a particular form of global economic integration that privileges the demands of private power and undermines the role of the democratic public sphere. The right does not object (aside from in rhetoric) to a role for the state within the economy, provided that role is to serve the needs of elites rather than those of the population.

So the real question, in the midst of the Anglo-American banking crisis of 2007-2008, is how our version of capitalism is now going to be reformed, and specifically where the power will lie. We need not expect, as Naomi Klein points out here, that neoliberalism will automatically be replaced by some benevolent form of social democracy. On the contrary, state-corporate elites are already moving to exploit the political conditions created by the crisis to extend the same neoliberal model that caused the financial collapse.

In her recent book “The Shock Doctrine”, Klein describes how the neoliberalisation of economies (privatisation, deregulation, stripping away of public programmes etc) has often been rammed through the legislative process in times of crisis. This is because while the public often opposes these measures, crisis situations offer policymakers brief moments when democracy can be suspended or circumvented while people are disorientated by shock and briefly willing to acquiesce to “firm leadership”.

Klein points out that this is exactly what is happening now in the US, in respect of the emergency economic measures formulated by the Bush administration. What is being not so much proposed as demanded is a 0.7 trillion dollar buy-up, by the US taxpayer, of all the toxic and often worthless securities that have caused the current financial meltdown. It is demanded that no democratic, administrative or judicial oversight be applied to this process. It is demanded that legislators approach this in a “bipartisan” fashion and pass the measures quickly (that’s political language for not arguing and doing what the President tells you – now). The measures are being drawn up and will be enacted by people like Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who, as head of Goldman Sachs, did so much to promote the reckless practices that caused the ‘Nightmare on Wall St’. In summary, the same people who wrecked the US economy are now demanding that the traumatised and fearful taxpayer gives them 0.7 trillion dollars to clean up the mess they made and hold them harmless from the consequences of their actions, no arguments and no questions asked.

You could call it crawling to the nanny state and begging for a hand-out. Klein, with perhaps a little more accuracy, calls it a “stick-up”. Either way, its not the free market, but it is very neoliberal.

Klein also warns that this is just the first stage. The US is already deeply in debt, and this bailout will make matters much worse if passed in its proposed form. The usual corporate lobbyists, think tanks and Friedmanite academics will then take that opportunity to demand that the books be balanced. This might involve chipping away at unnecessary public programmes like healthcare, education, public housing etc etc, while the essentials, like Washington’s gargantuan military (which costs more than the rest of the planet’s military spending combined) go entirely untouched. It might involve tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. It will certainly involve exploiting the situation to push measures that serve the interests of the most powerful sections of society which, rather than theoretical “free markets”, is what neoliberalism is really about.

The scenario in the UK is only slightly different. Social democratic instincts still flicker in some corners of the political class. But despite Gordon Brown’s recent rhetorical tilt towards the left, New Labour remains a classic party of neoliberalism, and the Conservative party likely to succeed them in government by 2010 is even more so. In spite of current events, neoliberals could well dominate the policy debate on how to deal with the economic crisis on this side of the Atlantic.

Klein quotes neoliberal don Milton Friedman describing in candid terms how his disciples should use the Shock Doctrine to push forward their policies. “Only a crisis, actual or perceived,” he says, ”produces real change. And when the crisis occurs, the change depends on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to keep the ideas ready until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable”. An example is Chile in the 1970s, where Friedman had to wait until after a military coup had taken place to find a government willing to enact his policy prescriptions, which had been overwhelmingly rejected in earlier democratic elections.

The collapse of Western financial markets, whose devastating effects are only beginning to be felt, does not mark the end of capitalism, and may perversely only mark the acceleration of neoliberism out from the ashes of its own bonfire of the vanities into new and yet more dangerous territory. That depends entirely on who wins the current debate on what emergency measures should be taken and how the system should be reformed long-term. The neoliberals, led by Secretary Paulson, are keen to avoid that debate. Those who oppose them should note this, because it betrays the neoliberals’ fear, even expectation, that this is an argument they would lose. Our task is to ensure that the shock of the past few weeks is not exploited by its authors, but instead that its lessons are learnt and that failed economic models are replaced by something more just and sustainable. In formulating our own proposals, for the immediate and the longer term, we can begin by pointing to the more successful capitalist systems in place in other countries, and take things from there.

Victory in Iraq? Not so much

JamieSW — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:35:40 +0000

“They create a desolation and call it ‘peace’” – Tacitus

US Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin last week accused Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama of failing to recognise the “coming victory in Iraq“. What’s the nature of this “victory” that Palin’s talking about? Has the US finally won the Iraq War?

Not so much.

For the last few months its been taken as read by many in the political mainstream that the “surge” of extra US troops into Iraq “worked” in quelling the violence that had been reaching cataclysmic levels by late 2006. In fact, this is a vast over-simplification, if not a self-serving lie put about by the war’s supporters. A number of other factors have contributed to bringing down the levels of daily killings (which still remain extraordinarily high). The “surge” is merely one of these, at best is possibly the least of them, and at worst has in some respects been a countervailing force.

The principal factors behind the decline in violence are:

the unilateral ceasefire of Moqtada al-Sadr’s anti-occupation Shia militia;

the decision made by nationalist Sunni insurgents, before the “surge” was conceived of, to concentrate their fire on the extremist “al-Qaeda” elements amongst them that had been responsible for the major attacks on Shia civilians; and

the fact that the civil war in Baghdad has essentially played itself out, with Sunnis and Shia respectively expelled from mixed communities, the two groups divided, and no more ‘sectarian cleansing’ to be done (the outcome being a net win for the Shia forces).

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

The Mahdi Army ceasefire may have been called with one eye on the coming influx of US troops, but it was still a unilateral decision. The fact is that Moqtada al Sadr continues to defy the US, five years after the occupiers set out to “kill or capture” him; as we saw in March when attempts to go after his Mahdi Army met with humiliating defeat. The US always wanted al-Sadr out of the way. By now, he’s more powerful than ever. No US “victory” here.

Then there’s the decision of Sunni nationalist insurgents to turn on al Qaeda, i.e. the foreign religious extremists who had come to Iraq to wage jihad both on the US and the Shia population. This has been hugely significant, and one cannot discount the effect of the US decision to stop fighting these nationalists guerrillas (who were always the bulk of the insurgency) and to pay them to concentrate on fighting and killing off al Qaeda. But the Sunni backlash against the religious extremists was not a US invention. It began as far back as 2005, and US backing for the movement was as much a pragmatic recognition that (a) it could not defeat the nationalist insurgency and (b) only those nationalists could defeat al Qaeda. Paying people to stop shooting at you and to instead fight some other people that you can’t beat either is not in anyone’s definition of “victory” as far as I’m aware.

And as for the third and possibly most important factor – the final Shia victory in the sectarian “Battle of Baghdad” which saw mixed neighbourhoods purged and thousands driven out of their homes – this is not merely a question of the US not being able to take credit for the relative peace that came after the civil war burnt itself out. No small amount of blame attaches to the US military itself for these gruesome events. As Michael Schwartz has argued in this indispensible analysis of the “surge” in Baghdad, US tactics may actually have facilitated the sectarian cleansing and effective Shia takeover. Either way, violence appears to have petered out in large part because one group of armed thugs achieved victory over the other, at massive cost to the civilian population, and not because the US stepped in as peacekeeper to enforce an early end to the fighting.

So the US mostly isn’t fighting the Shia nationalists anymore because the Shia nationalists stood down of their own accord. It mostly isn’t fighting the Sunni nationalists any more because (a) its paying them to fight Al Qaeda instead (which they were already doing) and (b) it couldn’t beat them anyway, so its had to learn to live with them. It isn’t fighting Al Qaeda anymore because its paying the Sunni nationalists to do that for it, since it couldn’t beat Al Qaeda itself. And the Sunni and Shia aren’t fighting each other anymore (or are doing so a lot less) because that battle’s (mostly) over (at least in Baghdad) and the Shia won. The case for saying that US “surge” has “worked” and that Washington can soon declare “victory” is, therefore, a little on the thin side.

What’s also misguided is the related insinuation that Iraq has become in some way peaceful. Iraq is still one of the most violent places in the world, with levels of daily killing equivalent to those of the Lebanese civil war. Last month at least 360 civilians were killed and more than 470 wounded in violence. Adjust that for the size of the total population and you’re talking about the equivalent of 800 plus British deaths and over a thousand injuries in political/military violence over 31 days. Imagine that occurring in a Soviet-occupied United Kingdom, while Kremlin leaders prattle on about “victory” and “success”. And remember that these are just the deaths that journalists and officials know about and are able to verify.

Yes, things aren’t as bad in Iraq as they were in 2006. But the fact that the blood now washes up to your waist, as opposed to your neck, doesn’t make Iraq something other than a bloodbath. Demanding that people accept some of the worst levels of violence on earth as some sort of good news story displays a pretty low regard for human life on Palin’s part.

The people best placed to judge the success of US military strategy are those who have to live with it on a daily basis: the Iraqi public. They don’t get interviewed at length by the major news networks, or write op-eds for the Washington Post, but their opinions are relevant nonetheless. By March 2008, when this [.pdf] poll was taken, it was already close to being conventional wisdom in the West that the “surge had worked”. Clearly a lot of Iraqis hadn’t received the memo.

The poll asks whether the “surge” has helped in the five areas where beneficial effects were promised: security where troop levels have increased, security in other areas, conditions for political dialogue, the ability of the Iraqi government to operate, and the pace of economic development. On each of those areas, the proportion of Iraqis saying the “surge” had been beneficial ranged between 21 and 36 per cent. Between 42 and 53 per cent said it has made things worse. The balance was made up by those saying it had made no difference. So in each area, between 63 and 79 per cent of Iraqis say the “surge” had made things worse or made no difference. That’s between 63 and 70 per cent in the case of security and 79 per cent in the case of political reconciliation (the latter of which we’re given to understand was the overall purpose of the “surge”).

Of course, the real aim of the “surge” was for the US to get Iraq properly under its control, not to perform an act of altruism or humanitarian relief work from which it has nothing to gain for itself, though that is exactly how the “surge” has been described, practically without exception, in our media and amongst our politicians. The question of whether it is for one country to forcibly place another country under its control, for its own purposes and against the wishes of majority of people in the latter country, is hardly one that should be ignored – though it has been. In any event, the “surge” appears to have failed in this respect. With the Iraqi government apparently now moving to reject the US demand for a permanent military presence and privileged access to oil reserves, the real reason for the 2003 invasion. What was supposed to be an US-client government in Baghdad now thumbs its nose at Washington and sidles up to, of all people, the Iranians. Do Palin and McCain really call that success, even on their own warped terms? Apparently dishonesty and greed now battle it out with rank stupidity for control of the United States government.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq devastated the country, driving well over 4 million Iraqis out of their homes (or around one in every six of the population) and killing perhaps a million (or around one in every twenty-nine of the population) according to the best estimates available. The refugees included many of Iraq’s former professional classes, driven into poverty and marginalisation in neighbouring countries, their children into malnutrition, their daughters into prostitution. Those left behind fare little better, be they the maimed, the bereaved, the unemployed, the impoverished, the imprisoned or the tortured. Nothing can erase the suffering that has taken place over the last five years, or return the hundreds of thousands of dead to their loved ones. This tsunami of grief was delivered to Iraq by an aggressive war of choice, instigated under a cloak of propaganda and straightforward lying, that was aimed at no more lofty a goal than the acquisition of greater wealth and power. To talk of “victory” in Iraq is obscene, as indeed is any reaction from anyone in Britain and America other than outright cringing shame.

Yet not only is it a commonly accepted truth, here and in the US, that the “surge has worked”, but early backers of the “surge” are now lauded as wise sages of military and foreign policy. A little over a year ago John McCain’s bid for the White House was seen as little more than the quixotic last gasp of a failed militarist, his approval rating for the Republican candidate languishing in the single digits. McCain’s subsequent political resurrection rested almost entirely on the notion that “the surge worked”, as he had doggedly insisted it would, and it is in many ways to this misapprehension that we can attribute the now present danger of a McCain-Palin Presidency from January 2009, with all the chilling prospects that raises for the United States and the world.

George Monbiot on a Nuclear Iran

JamieSW — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:58:45 +0000

George Monbiot had a good article on the Iran nuclear issue in the Guardian earlier this week, wherein he identified the bottom line: that if Iran does want nuclear weapons, the reasons will most likely have to do with the clear security threats that it faces. Aside from the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons and those of the UNSC P5, who are obliged to disarm under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (the same treaty they wave at Iran) but refuse to do so, Monbiot could also have mentioned that Iran has Pakistan and India’s weapons in its neighbourhood as well, plus US bases/allies in practically every neighbouring country and US warships in the Persian Gulf. Plus the US has invaded and occupied two of Iran’s neighbours, justifying those actions with similar accusations to those now made against Tehran. And Israeli and US politicians continue to implicitly or explicitly threaten to attack Iran militarily (threats of force being illegal under the UN charter).

But I appreciate that newspaper columnists have to work within the constraints of space, and Monbiot’s article was focused on upholding the international mechanisms for non-proliferation and reminding us of Britain’s own flaunted obligations in that regard. So the above isn’t a criticism, more an addition to the point he was making in the article.

While I wholly agree with the main thrust of the article, I’d respectfully take issue with a couple of points Monbiot makes within his argument. He tries to portray his position as being on a sensible middle ground between Western governments who say Iran definitely does and “some anti-war campaigners” who say it definitely does not have a nuclear weapons program. But in fact he offers no challenge to the position of the former group; only to the latter. He actually seems pretty certain such a program exists, and that’s a highly problematic stance.

Personally, I don’t say unequivocally that Iran does not want the bomb. I note for example Israeli historian Martin van Creveld’s statement that, given the security threats mentioned above, Iran would be “crazy” not to build a nuclear weapon. But nor do I think we can state unequivocally that Iran does have a nuclear program, or even say (as Monbiot seems to) that we can pretty much assume that it does. It’s important (a) to acknowledge that we don’t know one way or the other, and (b) to also note the evidence that and reasons why Iran might not have such a program. These remain just as significant as the evidence that and reasons why Iran would have a weapons program. And one can’t overstate the importance of looking at this particular topic in as balanced and accurate a way as possible, given what’s at stake.

Monbiot accuses some anti-war folk of “clutching” at the recent US National Intelligence Estimate’s (the consensus opinion of all US intelligence agencies) conclusion that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. He points out that the NIE also said that Iran’s uranium enrichment activities are such that if it decided to start a weapons program it could do so quite swiftly. Fair enough. But it’s hardly valid to skip lightly over the difference between having a weapons program and not having one (but being able to start one quickly) as though the difference between the two doesn’t exist at all. Moreover, Monbiot is failing to join the dots between this and his overall argument (that Iran wants the bomb as a deterrent). Whether the difference between Iran having a peaceful nuclear program and having a weapons program is a substantial one or not depends on the security environment. To the extent that the West continues to start wars all over the Middle East, fill the region with troops, military bases and aircraft carriers, arms its allies to the teeth and threaten war on anyone who challenges its hegemony, then yes, it becomes increasingly likely that the difference between a peaceful and a non-peaceful Iranian nuclear program will be an academic one. Monbiot could have drawn this into his overall argument if he’d seen what appears to me to be a fairly obvious connection.

Monbiot says that the International Atomic Energy Agency has many questions outstanding in relation to Iran’s activities. But he should also have mentioned – because (as I point out above) it is not exactly irrelevant – that the IAEA has also said there is no evidence of a weapons program existing. What we cannot do is, to use Hans Blix’s memorable phrase, turn question marks into exclamation marks in respect of this issue. That takes us into the same territory of false logic as the pre-Iraq war US and UK governments and the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. People are not convicted on suspicion; there’s a very good reason why the burden of proof is on the party making the accusation and not on the party being accused.

(It is also, I regret to say, a little cheap of Monbiot to declare – with an adjective substituting for a properly functioning argument – that people citing a strong source of evidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons program – the NIE – are in some way desperately “clutching” at something flimsy. When the IAEA and the NIE both tell us that Iran is not making nukes, that has a good deal of authority, and for Monbiot to challenge this he needs to offer better arguments than these).

Monbiot says, rightly in my view, that “those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad’s claims of peaceful intent”. However, as Juan Cole has pointed out, “the [Iranian] Supreme Jurisprudent has given a fatwa against having or using nuclear weapons as illicit in Islamic law. You can’t acknowledge that Iran is a dictatorial theocracy and then turn around and say that his fatwa is irrelevant.”

Recall that it is the Supreme Jurisprudent, not Ahmedinejad, who in ultimate charge of Iranian government policy. Note also that Khamenei’s power is not simply material; it also rests on his credibility as an Islamic cleric. To flagrantly breach his own explicit ruling would clearly diminish his clerical and therefore his political standing, and that’s something he’d have to take into account if he decided that Iran should have the bomb. That’s not to say he would never do it, but it’s a non-trivial barrier for him to overcome, which may mitigate against it happening. Again, this is not something we can simply ignore.

Monbiot asks,

“Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states, if it accepted the UN’s terms?”

There are three answers to this.

First, it would clearly make far more economic sense for Iran to maximise the amount of oil and gas that it can sell on the international markets rather than hand out at subsidised rates to its own people. That should be fairly plain. Yes, it could (and should) address this via renewable energy. But Iran’s hardly the only nation on the planet that’s woefully behind the curve on that issue.

Second, Iran may want to assume the position of “nuclear ambiguity”: not having the weapons, but being in the position where its enemies are aware that it could assemble them in short order, and are deterred from attacking it as a result.

But third, and perhaps most importantly of all, the Iranian ruling class are highly ambitious; aspiring to the status of regional power in accordance with their nation’s historic role. Iran’s willingness to stare down the West and insist on nothing less than its entitlements under the NPT needs to be seen in that context. If you look at the rhetoric, you see a recurring theme of Iran insisting on its “rights”. This subtext is key, in my view. What Tehran is really insisting on is its desired status as a serious player on the international stage. Using solar power does not offer Iran the opportunity to make this sort of a stand. The NPT does.

So I would caution against ascribing a very high degree of probability to the idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Absent any certain knowledge, and with evidence pointing in both directions, Monbiot’s approach needs to be more circumspect. Those best placed to judge say there is no evidence of such a program, and much of the Iranian behaviour which Monbiot cites as indicating the existence of that program can be plausibly explained in another way. I should neither be surprised nor unsurprised to learn for certain that Iran is trying to build a bomb. The fact is that we don’t know, and in my view we can’t call this in either direction with any serious level of confidence. Given the dangerous nature of the current stand-off between Iran and the West, a high degree of circumspection is essential to keep the temperature of this issue at a non-threatening level.

I should conclude by saying that I acknowledge Monbiot’s sound intentions to prevent a war with Iran (which would make the bloodbath in Iraq look like a tea party) and to hold our own governments to account for their role in nuclear proliferation. But I feel that his speculation on current Iranian activities leaves a little bit to be desired. He may actually be undermining his own aims by propagating the myth that Iran definitely or almost certainly does have a nuclear weapons program. It is important to fully acknowledge the fact that this accusation is a long way from being proven; not least because many thousands of lives may depend on how that question is answered.

Islamophobia: The Bigotry You Can Vent Without Shame

Tim Holmes — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:41:13 +0000

Yesterday evening, Channel 4 showed a wonderful documentary, “Dispatches: It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim“, an example of that rare and precious thing called public service broadcasting. It is my view that every last person responsible, from the tea-boy up, should be given a knighthood. At least.

Journalist Peter Oborne investigated

“the rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims….He discover[ed] that for many in the Muslim community, Britain is becoming a very frightening place. Dispatches [met] a range of British Muslims who now live in daily fear, some because their homes are constantly vandalised, others because they or family have suffered devastatingly violent attacks.”

The Language of Hate

Some important and authoritative research was commissioned by the film-makers, which will serve as valuable resources for those fighting Islamophobia in the future. There’s a report by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, which found that

“the bulk of [press] coverage of British Muslims – around two thirds – focuses on Muslims as a threat (in relation to terrorism), a problem (in terms of differences in values) or both (Muslim extremism in general).” “Decontextualisation, misinformation and a preferred discourse of threat, fear and danger, while not uniformly present, were strong forces in the reporting of British Muslims in the UK national press.”

The Cardiff School of Journalism report is a very solid bit of social science research and well worth reading in full. Like the documentary as a whole, it provides a thorough analysis of how a dangerous bigotry is constructed and maintained in public discourse. The British press is shown to constantly present Muslims as an alien presence; a threatening “other”. Rarely if ever in the coverage is it accepted that if a person lives, works, votes, pays their taxes and abides by the law in this country then they are no less British if they are a Muslim than if they are CofE or anything else. Instead, Islamic traditions are presented as a threat to a nebulous concept called “our way of life”, from which British people of Islamic faith are excluded by definition. It is clear that, for the press, “Britishness” means a narrow concept of white Anglo-Saxonism; and that should be a cause for concern to a great many of us besides Muslims.

The other point about the press coverage is that so much of it is simply false, to the point where it appears that many journalists are in the business of systematically lying about the subject. It becomes plain that the assumption you should work from when you see a scare-story about Muslims in the gutter press, or even the broadsheets, (“Muslims Ban Christmas”, “Mosques Beat Churches”, “Gay Muslim Paedophile Asylum Seekers May Cause Cancer/Fall in House Prices”) is that the story is probably false.

Furthermore,

“Oborne conclude[d] that in today’s climate the media say things about Islam and Muslims they would never say about other groups [and this includes supposedly liberal commentators like Polly Toynbee]. When he replace[d] the word’ ‘Muslim’ in some recent headlines with ‘Jews’, ‘Blacks’ and ‘Gays’ and show[ed] them to members of the public, they [found] those headlines deeply offensive”.

A particularly interesting moment came when Oborne interviewed Rabbi Pete Tobias, a expert in the anti-semitism of early twentieth century Britain. Tobias showed Oborne an Evening Standard article from 1911, a time when many Jews were arriving in the UK from Europe. The language was familiar: dangerous and backward people from the east threaten our values and way of life by swamping our communities and refusing to integrate or submit to our superior culture. Chilling to consider that, even after the twentieth century, the essential components of racist discourse are still not being recognised for what they are (see the election of the lovable clown Boris Johnson, for a separate example).

Crucially, the documentary gave many British Muslims the chance to speak for themselves, which makes a change from having other people talking about them. And their responses to the prejudice that had been thrown their way were the best and most telling of all. Asked about the Sun’s political editor’s comment that it is correct to spotlight Muslims because of Islamist terrorism, one Muslim cleric asked, if all rapists are men, then why don’t we spotlight the entire male gender for the issue of rape? A Muslim medical student said that when Muslims like her get abused or attacked by white British people then no one asks broad questions about the defects of white British culture, but when a Muslim commits a terrorist act then every member of the Islamic faith is held guilty of hate-filled extremism until proven innocent.

This gets right to the crux of it. In reality, we do not have a problem with Islam; we have a problem with terrorists. Actually, we have a problem with terrorism and with bigotry towards Muslims, which often manifests itself in Muslims being violently terrorised.

Terrorising Muslims

The documentary makers commissioned a poll, one of the most important results of which illustrated the fact that Islamophobia does a lot worse than hurt people’s feelings. Fully thirty seven percent of Muslims – over one in three – says they have been subjected to hostility or abuse since 7 July 2005 because of their religion. Oborne interviewed people who had had their houses and cars vandalised, been abused in the street, beaten and stabbed, and targeted by fire-bombings.

The information pamphlet accompanying the programme (also well worth a read), describes an incident where

“[o]n Wednesday 7 May 2008 in Bolton a group of young people allegedly chased a group of Muslim men shouting racial and religious abuse. A chainsaw was allegedly held to the throat of one man. A 17-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man have been charged with affray and possession of an offensive weapon, and are awaiting trial”. Elsewhere “[a] Methodist chapel being converted into an Asian community centre in Quenchwell, near Carnon suffered an Islamophobic attack in early June. In the wake of a local row about the plans to create an Asian centre at this location urine was found inside a builder’s helmet. The words “Fuck off you Asian bastards” were written on a table. On the morning of Monday 2 June a pig’s head was found nailed to the door in a clear attempt to offend Muslims. The words “God says fuck off” and a cross were daubed on the door”.

“On 17 April three men were jailed for three years for a campaign of racial harassment lasting nine months against a Muslim colleague, Amjid Mehmood, who was tied to railings and force-fed bacon, which he cannot eat because of his religious beliefs. His attackers filmed the whole incident on a mobile phone. In total, nine separate incidents of racial harassment occurred over the period. A rucksack with protruding wires was put on his locker and his trousers were set on fire. During the Birmingham riots he was driven to an Afro-Caribbean area and told locals were “coming to get him.””

Its never been a secret that the language of racism is spoken with fists and knives as much as it is written in newsprint or insinuated in the statements of politicians. But many powerful people seem happy to ignore this, while the costs are paid by ordinary and entirely innocent Britons of Islamic faith. Violence is of course the logical consequence of a public discourse in which Muslims are constantly demonised and lied about. Thus, the self-styled victims of fictional Muslim aggression become the enablers of actual aggression against Muslims. The press and politicians (like the odious Jack Straw whining about how veiled women discomfort him, or any given right-wing hack complaining about “political correctness gone mad”) portray themselves as the pitiful victims of extremist Islamism. But when Muslims then suffer actual physical aggression as a result of this demonisation, politicians and the press have nothing to say.

Attitudes: differences and similarities

The poll also shows, as other polls have done, that Muslims are not significantly less tolerant than non-Muslims, which sweeps away at a stroke the fantasy of an ultra-conservative Islamist invasion. So we can expect the press to ignore that completely, since it doesn’t fit with the approved story.

Speaking generally, the poll results highlight the sorts of differences in perceptions of Islamophobia that you’d probably expect between Muslims and the rest of the population, which are certainly dismaying, and a serious level of prejudice obviously exists. But I hope I’m not being panglossian in saying that this prejudice is also not as widespread as it could be, given the nature of press coverage and elite political discourse. Note for example that 78 per cent of Muslims and 70 per cent of non-Muslims agree that “there is more … religious prejudice against Muslims in Britain today since the London bombings in July 2005“. Most non-Muslims felt that Muslims were bearing the brunt of unjustified criticism (51 per cent) while 31 per cent felt that the level of criticism was justified. When you subtract the decent people who have just been misled by politicians and the press (and would probably change their minds when presented with the facts) from that third of the population, then you’re left with a small minority of bigots. Which is not to say that a small minority of bigots can’t be very dangerous, but it does help to put a rather frightening picture of British Islamophobia in some sort of context. In a way, it shows what polls often show, that the public are largely decent and reasonable people, and that the political class (media and politicians) is broadly to the right of the general population. Islamophobia is propagated by the political class and a potentially small minority of the public; making it dangerous, but not invincible.

The political utility of hate

Finally, I’d like to make a point that wasn’t made in the documentary but which I think is essential for putting all of this in context. We should bear in mind the central, enabling role that Islamophobia plays in the War on Terror, and the potential usefulness to the political class of this species of bigotry.

The documentary aired 3 years to the day after the London tube and bus bombings. As I wrote at the time, the security services had repeatedly warned the government that Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq strongly increased the chances that attacks like this would occur. The government joined the US invasion of Iraq – a country that posed no threat to us – in spite of these warnings. It is a truism that one is responsible for the predictable consequences of ones actions, so on the afternoon of 7/7/2005 the British government had a serious problem, as indeed did the media that had played a key enabling role in taking the country to into an unpopular war. It was then extremely convenient for these elites to change the subject from Western foreign policy, the known inspiration for these brutal terrorist crimes, and instead place the focus on the Muslim community. And when you observe the people who run our country first starting a war of aggression that has by now claimed probably over a million lives, and then passing the blame for one of the predicted consequences of that war onto one of the most vulnerable communities in the UK (many of whom had actually voted New Labour, incidentally), then you get the measure of the sheer moral bankruptcy of British ruling elite.

It should also not be forgotten that the demonisation of Islam plays a broader enabling role for Western foreign policy. As I noted in this article, which I wrote in response to the controversy over the Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad:

“It is no coincidence that those who most enthusiastically peddle the fiction of a “clash of civilisations” also portray the opposing “other” as a force that seriously threatens to destroy “our way of life”, and therefore advocate an aggressive US-led military strategy across the Islamic world. Manichean rhetoric eulogizing the liberal idealism of “our values” and the necessity of defending them against those who “hate our freedoms” has been the very essence of Western pro-war advocacy in recent years. Observing essentially imperial foreign policies being depicted as altruistic endeavours aimed at bringing enlightenment to backward, inferior (if exotic) cultures, or at least at defending us against them, hardly places us in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, subjugation almost invariably goes hand in hand with the deliberate dehumanisation of those who are being subjugated by those responsible for or whose acquiescence is essential to the act of subjugation”.

As competition escalates for strategic control over the planet’s dwindling oil reserves, the need for our esteemed leaders to present aggressive imperial policies in Western Asia within the conceptual framework of a “clash of civilisations” will only increase. Violence against innocent people on the streets of Britain will be but one lamentable but neccessary byproduct of this propaganda campaign, along with the massive violence meted out to the people of the region and the predictable terrorist backlash against our own country. Such are the calculations made by the statesmen who run the world on our behalf.

Conclusion

But while the documentary did not place British Islamophobia into this broader context, it should still be applauded for giving such serious treatment to an important subject, and for speaking out with a strong moral voice against this dangerous tide of hatred. Hopefully before too long, Islamophobia will go the way of anti-semitism and anti-black racism, becoming seen as something you at least don’t say out loud, as a prelude to it and those other forms of bigotry disappearing forever. If that is to happen, then people like Peter Oborne and the Dispatches team will have played their part. If only more of their peers could say the same.

Liberalism in 'Londonistan'

JamieSW — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:26:10 +0000

Much has been heard from Britain’s political class in recent years about the role of “values” in the fight against terrorism. The problem, we are told, is that the Muslim community in the UK is failing to integrate with British society and accept our nation’s intrinsic liberalism.

The message has been imparted to us in several ways. According to a recent study, over 90 per cent of the articles referring to Muslims or Islam in British newspapers on a typical week presented the religion and its adherents in a negative light. The picture presented by the media was of a strict and irreconcilable dichotomy between Islam and British “values”, with the former posing a serious threat to the latter. (1)

The “emotive…abusive” language identified by the report has by no means been the sole preserve of the press. No less a figure than world renowned British author Martin Amis recently spoke of the demographic threat of being “outnumbered” by Muslims; of the need for the Islamic community “to suffer until it gets its house in order” through perhaps “strip-searching…..discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children”. The response from the political class to Amis’ naked, virulent racism has been near total silence. (2)

In this febrile atmosphere, there can be little doubt about which prejudice Gordon Brown was nodding knowingly towards when he told the Labour Party conference last year: “I believe … that we the British people must be far more explicit about the common ground on which we stand, the shared values which bring us together, the habits of citizenship around which we can and must unite. Expect all who are in our country to play by our rules.” (3)

One reads countless complaints in the British press about the fearsome dominion of a left-wing, minority-favouring “political correctness” that stifles free debate. Yet it does appear that, in respect of this one minority at least, the political class feels a remarkable degree of freedom to say exactly what it pleases.

There is of course much benefit to be gained from the demonisation of Muslims. Powerful people throughout history have recognised the value of stigmatising, or “othering”, a given minority. In addition, there is an immediate need to portray the current terrorist threat as stemming from the deviant pathologies of a backward Muslim culture. This diverts attention from the broad consensus among security experts that the threat in fact stems from, and is being escalated by, the government’s foreign policies. (4)

However, self-serving narratives constructed by the powers-that-be do not always sit well with the empirical evidence. According to a recent poll, 96 per cent of London’s Muslims, along with 97 per cent of Londoners as a whole, “think that everyone should respect the law in Britain”; 89 per cent of Muslims and 88 per cent of all Londoners “believe that everyone in Britain should be free to live their lives as they want so long as they do not prevent others from doing the same”; 94 per cent of Muslims and 92 per cent of all Londoners “believe that everyone in Britain should have equal opportunities”; 95 per cent of Muslims and 86 per cent of all Londoners “think everyone should be free to practise their religion openly”; and 86 per cent of Muslims and 91 per cent of all Londoners “also think it is important that the Metropolitan Police work closely with communities such as the Muslim community to deter terrorist attacks”. These results, like those of any opinion poll, should be approached with caution. But if accurate, they indicate that liberty and security are highly valued by both Muslim and non-Muslim Londoners alike. (5)

One wonders how the highly-developed rationality of Amis and other self-styled “Enlightenment liberal” critics of “Islamofascism” will compute this latest piece of empirical data. Might they be moved to consider the possibility that liberal values are human values – not to be claimed as Western or British? Might they acknowledge that liberty has found expression (and found enemies) in both Western and Eastern history, and that no culture has monopoly ownership of either tyranny or freedom even in the present day?

The various peddlers of Islamophobia present us with a clear dichotomy. On the one hand we have the West; steeped in the tradition of Enlightenment philosophy, which values personal freedom and cool rationality based on empirical fact. On the other hand, facing the rational, liberal West, stands an unreasoning, fanatical Islam bent on its destruction.

Yet, while Islam no doubt has its own characteristics, a Muslim cannot simply be thrown into the box marked “illiberal” without considering not only what kind of a Muslim that person might be, but also what other facets – gender, nationality, economic circumstances, and so on – may contribute to their individual make-up and political outlook. Any rational assessment reveals that identity is far more fluid and complex than is allowed for by the simplistic binaries of the “clash of civilisations”. Our political class would do well to remember this if it really wishes to honour the Enlightenment values that it loudly claims to uphold.

David Wearing writes for Le Monde Diplomatique and UK Watch. His website is www.democratsdiary.co.uk

References

(1) “The search for common ground: Muslims, non-Muslims and the UK media”, Greater London Authority, London, November 2007.

(2) “Shame On Us”, The Guardian, 19 November 2007

(3) Speech to Labour Party conference, Gordon Brown, 25 September 2006

(4) “Ignoring the Intelligence: How New Labour Helped Bring Terror to London“, David Wearing, www.democratsdiary.co.uk, 22 July 2005

(5) “GLA telephone survey of Londoners with Muslim booster”, Greater London Authority, London, November 2007

Britain’s failure in Iraq

JamieSW — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:40:40 +0000

Last month’s announcement of substantial withdrawals of British troops from southern Iraq is a useful vantage point from which to review Britain’s part in the occupation. The role of the United States has been the more important, and is far better documented and understood. But Britain’s role has not been insignificant, especially for the people of southern Iraq.

In 2003, Britain promised a post-Saddam Iraq that would be “a stable, united and law-abiding state providing effective representative government to its own people.” That those ambitions have not been realised is now widely acknowledged even within the political establishment. A recent report by Michael Knights and Ed Williams described Iraq’s deep south, the area for which Britain is responsible, as “a kleptocracy” where “well armed political-criminal mafiosi have locked both the central government and the people out of power” (1).

Britain’s official goals have now been significantly downgraded to keeping violence at a manageable level, and leaving local administrators and security services to deal with the situation. Even this is far from being achieved, and Britain faces these problems in near isolation from the international community. British policymakers and analysts will be asking themselves what went wrong for many years to come.

While Washington’s aim in Iraq was to establish a military presence and a client government in the heart of the world’s principal energy producing region, securing a major source of global strategic leverage, Britain’s aims were far less grand, as befits its status as a second-tier power. It sought to act as a transatlantic bridge between a sceptical Europe and the belligerent foreign policies of the US post-9/11, and to prove its worth as a military ally to Washington.

But British diplomacy failed to dissuade Germany and France from objecting to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and many of those European countries that did join the US-led coalition left as the post-war security situation deteriorated sharply. Even in financial donations to the Iraqi reconstruction effort, the European contribution was minimal, despite British pleas (2).

When its first major objective – acting as a transatlantic bridge – collapsed, Britain was left mostly isolated beside the US, and concentrated on its second aim: providing military support to the US-led occupation by running four provinces in the south. This area – containing 71% of Iraq’s oil reserves and its second city and main port Basra (population 1.3 million) – provides 95% of central government revenue. The task was not insignificant, so it is all the more notable that the region has, according to Knights and Williams, “suffered one of the worst reversals of fortune of any area in Iraq since the fall of Saddam’s regime”.

Immediately after the invasion, Britain made two decisions that were crucial in precipitating the eventual collapse of order in the south. The first was the failure or refusal of British forces to prevent the looting that quickly followed the demise of the Ba’ath regime. Britain described this as a “redistribution of wealth” (an echo of Donald Rumsfeld’s callous phrase “stuff happens”), demonstrating an unwillingness to discharge the responsibilities that it had unilaterally assumed by invading the south, and sending a clear message to various forces that an anarchic space would be available for them to exploit.

The second decision gave the lie to lofty Anglo-American rhetoric about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. In May 2003 the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) decided to clamp down on a spontaneous eruption of indigenous democracy already taking place at local level. Popular local councils had begun to form, with plans underway for small caucuses or even one man, one vote elections.

Seeing in this nascent self-government the threat of a new Iraq forming in an unsuitable manner, the British, on orders from CPA Baghdad, launched Operation Phoenix, described by Knights and Williams as “a civil-military operation to dissolve all unofficial councils and remove them from government premises”. By occupation decree, municipal government was to be run by Iraqis hand-picked by the coalition, a measure which led thousands to take part in public demonstrations denouncing British rule as anti-democratic. One might speculate as to how local government would have fared in securing political stability if homegrown systems of administration had been allowed to develop naturally and by common consensus.

British rule did not prove effective either for Iraqi or British purposes. Unlike the brutal approach taken by the US in Baghdad and central Iraq, Britain preferred to choose those local actors most favourable, or least unfavourable, to its interests, and then to stand in the background as much as possible. By cultivating links with the coalition, the Iranian-backed Islamist group Sciri (now Siic) was able to take the role of local enforcer at an early stage. Local government positions fell easily into its grasp, while its Badr militia took over the security services and ran death squads to eliminate former Ba’athists and any potential moderate, secular opposition. Though it was clear that Badr was responsible for many atrocities, Britain was unwilling or unable to stop it.

Elections, held earlier than the CPA had planned following massive national demonstrations, brought other Islamist parties (principally Fadhila and the Sadrists) into the picture. The new order rejected the authority of central government and of the British, filling local security forces with party-militia personnel and turning local government into a spoils system to embezzle the region’s wealth.

As the parties began to act like mafia gangs and turf wars broke out, Britain realised it had serious problems and attempted to break the power of the militias. But it was too late. The factions were prepared to defend the spoils system and refused to bow to a foreign authority that was widely viewed as illegitimate. Attacks on British troops rose from 1.2 a day between February and June 2005 to eight a day between February and May 2007.

In August 2006 the British were forced to abandon Camp Abu Naji near Amarah under heavy fire from the Sadrist Mahdi army. That October most of the staff of the British consulate in Basra had to relocate to the remote base near the local airport, under heavy mortar fire. Operation Sinbad, a last-ditch initiative similar to the US surge, provided only a brief and fleeting illusion of security. In September 2007 the British army withdrew from its last base in Basra city, repositioning its remaining troops at the airport. Now many of them are scheduled to be withdrawn early in 2008.

What are the prospects for Britain’s future involvement in Iraq? The prime minister, Gordon Brown, has said any continuing military presence will be justified only on the basis of advice from his generals. Yet senior military commanders have already said that Britain can achieve nothing more in Iraq (3). In fact, it is as much the strategic Anglo-American relationship as the military realities on the ground that define the British mission, and cast doubt on the likelihood of a complete British withdrawal in the near future. For example, the withdrawal from Basra palace to the airport outside the city was, according to a senior British officer, delayed for five months due to political pressure from Washington (4).

The US clearly plans a long-term military presence in Iraq (5) and is unlikely to want the British presence to be any shorter. The US needs protection for its supply lines from the Gulf and, for domestic political purposes, to sustain the illusion of being part of an international coalition. Downing Street may only be able to offer limited troop draw-downs to mollify voters and a restive military.

What caused Britain’s failures in Iraq? Two key factors can be identified: a lack of capability and of legitimacy. Britain is experiencing a miniature version of the current US imperial overstretch. Britain had neither the diplomatic influence to act as an effective transatlantic bridge nor the military capacity to control its zone of operation in the south. It has found that attempts to conquer third world countries in the 21st century are not as feasible as they were in the 19th century. Decades of anti-colonial struggles, military and political, have engendered a substantial ability to resist domination.

Moreover, while Britain and the US have adopted different approaches to counter-insurgency in their respective areas, what they have had in common was always more important: a lack of legitimacy among the population (unlike the regional government of the Kurdish north). Britain has claimed legitimacy for its presence in Iraq on the basis of an endorsement by the UN Security Council. But a decision taken by 15 foreign governments in New York can hardly legitimise an occupation opposed by the majority of the Iraqi population (6). An occupation cannot be sustained in such circumstances.

Britain joined the invasion of Iraq with an inflated sense of its diplomatic and military capacity, coupled with a casual disregard for the wishes and rights of the Iraqi population that long predates even British government backing for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. As a result, five years after the Blair government’s propaganda drive about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the presence of a dwindling number of British troops on the outskirts of Basra and the violent disintegration of Iraqi society in the south are now all that remain of Britain’s policy.

References:

1. Michael Knights and Ed Williams, “The Calm Before the Storm: the British Experience in Southern Iraq”, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 2007. This account of the British occupation draws substantively on this report.

2. Glen Rangwala, “Deputising in War: British Policies and Predicaments in Iraq”, International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, Bristol, forthcoming.

3. “Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay”, The Independent, London, 19 August 2007.

4. “US delayed UK pull-out from Basra”, The Daily Telegraph, London, 12 September 2007.

5. Tom Engelhardt, “Everlasting US pyramids in Iraqi sands”, Asia Times Online, 9 June 2007.

6. “Secret MoD poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops”, The Daily Telegraph, 22 October 2005.

United By A Goal

Alex Doherty — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:41:49 +0000

If ever there was an example of a sporting event bearing a wider social significance, then Iraq’s heroic victory in football’s Asia Cup would be it. The Iraqi team have not only scored one of the history’s great sporting achievements but have also produced a symbolic event of substantial weight. Because right in the middle of one of the worst civil wars in living memory, their victory has provided both their nation and world with a shining example of the strength of that most beleaguered and underrated of Iraqi political trends: pan-ethnic and pan-sectarian nationalism.

But before considering the wider political context, let’s start by considering this greatest of sporting achievements. Refugees from their home country, the Iraqi team was prepared for the tournament by their Brazilian manager Jorvan Vieira from the Iraq Football Association’s makeshift base in a Jordan hotel lobby. Vieira told the Guardian recently “I don’t have one person in this group who hasn’t lost someone from their family because of this war”. (1) The players ply their trade with unfashionable clubs in the Middle East and Cyprus, far from the high-level football and the outrageous salaries of the club game’s pinnacle – the European Champions League. In short, Iraq were nobody’s favourites going into the tournament.

And yet these global minnows became continental champions, slaying comparative giants on their road to glory. They finished top of their first round group, winning 3-1 against an Australian side that had itself come within a whisker of knocking Italy, the eventual champions, out of last summer’s World Cup. After beating joint hosts Vietnam in the quarter-finals, Iraq then beat South Korea on penalties in a hard-fought semi. Recall that South Korea’s impressively mobile and technical side reached the World Cup semi finals five years ago, beating Portugal, Italy and Spain along the way. Frankly, Iraq had no business taking these scalps. But take them they did.

So to a final against rivals and neighbours Saudi Arabia. And it would have been a hard heart indeed that was left unmoved by the sight of Iraqi captain Younes Mahmoud charging in at the far post to power an unstoppable header past the Saudi keeper, thus securing a fairytale victory that sent his country into raptures. A more emphatic, more viscerally satisfying way to claim the prize than Mahmoud’s imperious, thumping header could not have been imagined. As the net bulged, millions of Iraqis watching the game on television flew up from their chairs, arms aloft, their hearts seized by a long-forgotton feeling: joy.

The team’s successes caused scenes in Iraq of a kind totally opposite to those normally associated with that tortured country. McClatchy reported that after the victory over Vietnam, “Police danced at checkpoints and gunmen fired their weapons in celebration … thousands of jubilant Iraqis poured into the streets of Baghdad” as an “impromptu citywide parade” began. “Children, typically shut indoors for their protection, whooped and jumped in the middle of intersections. Iraqi women trilled from balconies, while throngs of ecstatic young men peeled off their shirts and waved them in the air”. (2)

Before the South Korea game, one Iraqi, Ibrahim al-Musawi, told Reuters, “This is one of the strongest Iraqi sides ever and they fill us with pride…We are tired of the sadness that always surrounds us. I sometimes wish we are always playing in international tournaments so we can remain happy”. (3)

Bringing such rare happiness to their compatriots was in itself an act of heroism on the part of the national team. But beyond the sporting achievement and the pleasure it brought to so many people in desperate need of the smallest chance to experience such feelings, there is another significance to the rise of the “Lions of Mesopotamia”. For as manager Vieira points out “I have different groups [in the team], different sects, like in Iraq, but here nothing happens and everything is OK. I have Sunni and I have Shia and there is no problem. They are very close”. The Lions’ achievement is the achievement of a united Iraq; a nation dismissed by many Western pundits as a doomed colonial fabrication but one cherished, even now, by a great many ordinary Iraqis. “By this game, we are united! By this game, we are defiant!” chanted one group of youths, wrapped in Iraqi flags. After the final, that flag could be seen flying all over the country – even in the famously independent Kurdish north.

This comes as political nationalism in Iraq appears to be beginning a tentative resurgence. Writing for US political weekly The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss recently observed that notions of Iraq’s inevitable demise as a unified state “are being challenged by a nascent bloc of Iraqi nationalists who, against all odds, are working to put together a pan-Iraqi coalition that would topple the US-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Maliki’s ruling alliance includes separatist Kurdish warlords and Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists, both of whom want to carve out semi or wholly independent statelets. Although it has not yet jelled, Maliki’s opposition—which includes Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, as well as Christians, Turkmen and others—is within striking distance of creating a functioning parliamentary majority. More important, outside Parliament the nationalists represent an overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Iraqis.” (4)

In addition, a political front has emerged uniting several of the nationalist groups within the Iraqi insurgency who condemn sectarianism and the killing of civilians. This evokes the early days of the insurgency in Spring 2004, when a palpable sense of pan-Iraqi nationalism could be observed among those sympathetic to the various guerrilla groups fighting Western forces from Sunni Anbar province to the Shia south. (5) One of the guerrilla leaders told the Guardian last month, “Our position is that there are two kinds of people in Iraq: not Sunni and Shia, Kurdish and Arab, Muslim and Christian, but those who are with the occupation and those who are against it…… the innocent must not be touched.” (6) The group’s aim is to join other nationalist anti-occupation forces to negotiate an American withdrawal, and then hold free elections for a new independent government.

Plainly no amount of victories on the football field can end the American occupation, defeat sectarian forces or rebuild Iraq’s shattered society. But the Iraqi team’s victories speak eloquently, and forcefully, in favour of that nation’s best hope for a better future – a unified nationalism crossing ethnic, religious and tribal lines with the strength to defeat both the occupation and the sectarian terrorists and death squads. As 1920’s nationalist revolution against British rule demonstrated, a popular sense of patriotism has been present in Iraq since very early in the life of the country. If it is an idea whose time has come again, then the national football team will have played a significant role in rekindling it in the nation’s heart. The power of symbolism in politics should never be underestimated. Nor should the emotional power of sport, and its capacity to produce such potent symbols.

Of course, it may be that it is simply too late for Iraqi nationalism. Iraq is, after all, ruled not by its people but by an astoundingly unscrupulous political class who have rejected any notion of civil society in the public realm in favour of a self-enriching communitarian feudalism. Furthermore, the American occupier that stands above these politicians is unlikely to welcome a nationalism whose first goal will be the expulsion of all foreign armies from Iraq.

However, if the worst does happen, civil war continues and the Iraqi nation meets a painful and divisive end, then the success of the Iraqi football team should at least help to remind us of one thing. Iraq’s disintegration was not inevitable or preordained. The war the West started and the removal of the “strongman” Saddam did not simply provide the context in which the natural Iraqi state of affairs – communitarian antipathy – could re-assert itself. Such superficial and self-serving views should not obscure the reality that Iraq, at least at one time, had within it social bonds strong enough to hold that country together. The fact is that all nations have – and live with – their own demographic complexities. It is instability, violence, economic deprivation and other failures of the state that turns those complexities into divisions and causes fragmentation. Few societies could have suffered what Iraq has suffered over the years and survived intact.

As we watch the red, white and black tricolour fluttering above crowds of briefly joyful Iraqi football fans, we would do well to reflect that if their dreams of unity are broken it will be, in no small part, because of our own governments’ policies and not because of any cultural or sociological deficiencies on Iraq’s part. In those heartening celebrations, one hopes that we have glimpsed something that might yet prevail, and not merely something that we have already destroyed.

David Wearing’s website is www.democratsdiary.co.uk

Notes

(1) “‘If some of these players go home they will be killed‘”, The Guardian, 30 June 2007

(2) “Jubilant Iraqis celebrate their soccer team”, McClatchy Newspapers, 21 July 2007

(3) “Soccer-Iraqi fans stock up on petrol and ammunition”, Reuters, 24 July 2007

(4) Robert Dreyfuss, “Saving Iraq”, The Nation, 27 June 2007

(5) “Sunnis and Shias Uniting Against U.S.”, Inter Press Service, 14 May 2004

(6) “Out of the shadows”, The Guardian, 19 July 2007

Still Time for War With Iran

eddie — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:13:55 +0000

Monday’s Guardian cites Washington sources who believe that military action against Iran is still being given serious consideration by the White House. It had been thought that administration figures such as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates had persuaded President Bush to put less emphasis on the military option. Today’s report suggests that the pro-war camp, led by Vice-President Dick Cheney, is now winning the internal argument.

It would appear that reports of the death of the Bush/Cheney Presidency have been greatly exaggerated. The world has eighteen months of this administration left to endure and little reason to assume that the incumbents intend to go quietly.

Escalation

This latest report comes after news last week that a third US aircraft-carrier battle group – led by the USS Enterprise – is now on its way to the Persian Gulf

As the Guardian reported, “The Fifth fleet battle group will join what is already the US Navy’s biggest show of force in the Gulf since the Iraq war began in 2003.”

If this looks like sabre-rattling, that’s because it is. The US Navy says that ““[The carrier] Enterprise provides navy power to counter the assertive, disruptive and coercive behaviour of some countries“.

“Some countries”, meaning Iran?

““These operations are not specifically aimed at Iran … we consider this time unprecedented in terms of the amount of insecurity and instability in the region,” Denise Garcia, a navy spokeswoman, said, citing Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.“

Well since Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan all have US backed regimes in place, I think we can safely assume that the US doesn’t see any of them as countries that need aircraft carrier battle groups on their doorstep to curb their “assertive, disruptive and coercive behaviour”. In fact, we might almost take Washington’s bothering with no more than a derisory, half-assed denial as tantamount to confirmation that this show of force is indeed aimed at Iran. One thing we know about this administration is that when it really wants to lie about something, its prepared to make a considerable effort.

The Pentagon says that the Enterprise is being sent as a replacement for one of the carriers currently stationed in the Gulf, and that there will be no overlap where there are three carriers off the coast of Iran simultaneously. But of course, the fact that the Enterprise is now heading to the Gulf means that precisely such an overlap will become an option for the US in the very near future.

There had also been talk of a third carrier battle group arriving in the Gulf earlier in the year but, according to historian and analyst Gareth Porter, the idea was stamped on by Admiral William Fallon, then Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM) region which includes the Middle East. According to Porter’s sources Fallon “vowed privately [that] there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM“.

Porter continued: “Fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch“.

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, “You know what choices I have. I’m a professional.” Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, “There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box.”“

The problem is that “the crazies” include Cheney, perhaps the most powerful vice-president in US history, probably more powerful than Bush, certainly more powerful than Fallon, and a law completely unto himself. The recent sight of Cheney standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier 150 miles from the Iranian coast, bellowing threats at Tehran, need not be seen as a display of over-compensation for strategic impotence, as Iran takes advantage of Western blunders to extend its power across the region. Don’t imagine for a moment that Cheney will tolerate the Iranian advance, or that he won’t be prepared to consider extreme measures (even, according to Seymour Hersh, the nuclear option) to either put Tehran back in its box or even to topple the government there altogether. Regime change in Tehran is a long-standing mission of Cheney’s cabal, and the urgency of that task from their point of view has increased massively in recent years, in direct proportion to Iran’s regional empowerment.

Imperial credibility

Recall that the neo-conservative plan was to forge a new Middle East settlement on the anvil of US military power. Iraq was to be a demonstration act (in that sense, a classic case of terrorism) with those who failed to collapse at the masters feet, quivering with “shock and awe”, to be dealt with in subsequent exertions of industrial-scale violence. The result was to be a region transformed into one populated entirely by client states and dotted with US military bases. China, India and other global powers would be left having to accept access to desperately needed energy reserves on Washington’s terms, and global dominance would be secured for a “New American Century”.

Instead, the invasion of Iraq has been a demonstration, not of America’s power but of its impotence, with the greatest military machine in all history humiliated by a few thousand tribesmen and ex-Iraqi Army personnel, augmented by a small but lethal cadre of foreign fanatics and armed only with improvised explosives and relatively light arms. To suffer defeat in such circumstances is no small matter for a global hegemon. Power after all depends on “credibility”, that is to say, others believing in your readiness and ability to subject them to your will, brutally if necessary. Michael Ledeen – a scholar close to the Bush administration – is reported to have put it this way: “Every ten years or so the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”. After Iraq, Cheney et al must be more conscious than ever of the need to send such a message to the world.

Washington’s thinking in the wake of 9/11 provides an illuminating precedent. Mark Danner notes that “Henry Kissinger, a confidant of the President, when asked by Bush’s speechwriter why he had supported the Iraq war, responded: “Because Afghanistan was not enough.” The radical Islamists, he said, want to humiliate us. “And we need to humiliate them.”

In other words, the presiding image of the war on terror — the burning towers collapsing on the television screen — had to be supplanted by another, the image of American tanks rumbling proudly through a vanquished Arab capital.”

So what of the current image: of countless US soldiers “burning in their tanks“ to borrow the sinister phrase of the long forgotton Ba’ath propagandist “Comical Ali“? What of the image of an imperial hyperpower so unable to effectively subjugate a crippled third world country than it now finds itself trying – and failing – to re-conquer the capital city, over four years after President Bush declared “major combat operations” to be at an end? What new image, in the minds of statesmen like Kissinger and Cheney, will be needed to replace these in the interests of maintaining imperial prestige and “credibility”? “Shock and awe” in Tehran?

They wouldn’t, would they?

In arguing that such a move is unlikely, three principle arguments tend to be made. The first is that the US is tied down in Iraq with barely enough troops to lose that war, let alone start another. But from what is known or reasonably suspected of the Iran plans, there is no suggestion of a major troop deployment, much less a boots-on-the-ground occupation. The US Army may be tied down in Iraq, but the Navy and Air Force are not, and it is they – it is said – that will lead the assault, in the hope that the ensueing chaos will prompt US-friendly elements within Iran to rise up and remove the leadership. Recall that it was mainly US air power and Special Forces, allied to local elements, that overthrew the Taliban in the autumn of 2001.

Secondly, it is argued that with Iraq forcing Bush’s poll ratings to historically low levels the White House could not possibly sanction another war. But Bush and Cheney are not up for re-election, so unpopularity can do little more than hurt their feelings. Furthermore, when the Republicans got a thumping in the congressional elections of November last year – which was widely understood as a message from the voters to draw down or end altogether the US involvement in Iraq – the White House responded by increasing troop numbers. This is an administration quite happy to do as it pleases. US casualties in any air war on Iran are likely to be low. And leading Democrats may well support air strikes. So the political fallout is likely to be minimal.

Thirdly and finally, it is noted that a naval build-up in the Gulf does not in itself constitute the commencement of war. The intention may simply be to make a show of force that will incentivise Iran to “change its behaviour” (a threat of violence which, as well as being a form of terrorism, is also illegal under international law). This is true, but there is also no guarentee that the US – especially the current White House administration – is capable of both escalating and controlling these tensions. The level of instability in the Middle East now is comparable to that in Europe in 1914. Now, as then, one unforseen incident could ignite a chain-reaction through various inter-linked crises and conflicts that leads to a generalised disaster. The US naval build up increses not only the temperature in the region but the liklihood of such a scenario occuring, whether intentionally or not.

Of course, none of this proves that war will occur. But it does show, as I argued two years ago, that a US attack on Iran remains a distinct possibility; one not to be idly dismissed. That being the case, the sensible thing would be to start looking at possible consequences and asking ourselves, ‘what if the worst came to the worst?’

Consequences of a war

An authoritative joint report produced last year by 15 organisations – including think tanks, aid agencies, religious groups and trade unions – warned that the consequences of a war would not be constrained by Iran’s borders. As well as resulting in large civilian casualties within Iran itself, Iranian allies in places like Iraq and Lebanon could retaliate against various targets, thus escalating various existing crises and raising the spectre of a regional war. The situation in Iraq in particular could markedly deteriorate even from its current state.

Iran has said that it could launch missile strikes on 600 Israeli targets in the event of Israeli involvement in any attack. The irony is that an Iranian-instigated offensive war on Israel, for all the Western propaganda, remains inconceivable while Israel retains its formiddable nuclear arsenal. But subjected to an aggressive war, Iran could hit Israel with devastating consequences. So much for the purported neo-conservative claims to want to defend the Jewish state.

Within Iran, Tehran hardliners would be strengthened rather than weakened as Iranian nationalism surged. After all, why should the White House believe that what worked for them post-9/11 – when political dissent in the US was practically suspended as the country rallied round the flag – wouldn’t work for Iranian President Ahmedinejad in the event of a US assault? This would only set back the chances of serious democratic reform in Iran. In fact, crackdowns are already occuring, as the hardliners seize the gift handed to them by Washington.

It is unlikely that the consequences of a war would be restricted even to the Middle East. Disruption to the flow of the twenty per cent of global oil supply that comes out of the Gulf via the straights of Hormuz (once described by the former Iranian Shah as “the West’s jugular vein”) could send inflationary shockwaves right through the world economy, with unpredictable and possibly severe consequences playing out on a global scale. And this is before we consider the substantial boost to international radical islamist terrorism that a new US imperial war in the Middle East would represent.

It is fair to say that, factoring in its regional and global implications, an attack on Iran could make the disaster of Iraq look like a relatively tame affair by comparison. There’s no way of knowing whether that’s the road we’re heading down, but there are many reasons to believe that it remains a realistic possibility.

The spear-carrier’s role

For those of us in Britain, its worth noting that for all the talk of a fresh start on foreign policy under Gordon Brown’s premiership, UK involvement in any attack is far from unthinkable. Two years ago the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that military action against Iran was “inconceivable” (whether he meant it or not is another matter). The Financial Times reports that Brown’s new Foreign Secretary David Miliband “repeatedly refused to repeat this statement” in an interview with the paper last week.

Though it is perhaps unlikely that British armed forces would be involved in the front line of any action, the UK can be expected to play the important political, diplomatic and military support role that it performed during Israel’s savage pounding of Lebanon last summer. Britain’s involvement in that war was strongly opposed by the public. In the eventuality of a new war against Iran, that opposition will have to be turned into effective political action if vast new horrors are to be averted.

[For more background on Western-Iran relations, see my recent article “The Iran hostage crisis in context“ or listen to my interview on Nadim Mahjoub’s show “Middle East Panorama”.]

David Wearing is a frequent contributor to UK Watch, and blogs at “The Democrat’s Diary”:http://www.democratsdiary.co.uk/.

The Liberties of Boris Johnson

Tim Holmes — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:31:37 +0000

News that Boris Johnson is likely to be named as the Tory candidate in the upcoming London mayoral elections has been warmly greeted by many within the political class. Johnson is widely seen as a major asset to British politics on the grounds that, whatever you think of his politics, he’s certainly a “character” and, we’re told, politics needs “characters”.

It was this same off-hand, middlebrow assessment of what matters in politics that engendered the equally underserved popularity of the endlessly loathsome Alan Clark. Clark – a casual racist who, as a Tory Defence Minister, helped arm Saddam Hussein and other odious regimes – enjoyed cult-hero status in the political world on the basis of his playboy lifestyle. He may have called Africa “bongo-bongo land” and armed mass murderers, but these were inconvenient details to be put to one side. The main thing was that Clark was a bit of a rascal, and his sort of rakish behaviour livens up politics no end.

It is of course, easy for some to see politics as occuring entirely in the realm of the abstract, with no costs or implications attached to the behaviour of the various actors – at least none worth detaining ourselves with. Easy for some, and harder for others.

Now, another Tory mediocrity stands ready to bask in the same dubious form of adulation. Johnson’s claims to fame – the quotes, the anecdotes etc – are too tedious to recount. Suffice to say that his Wikipedia entry describes him as “a self deprecating, straw-haired eccentric, disorganised and scatty”. And whilst all this is no doubt the last word in entertainment (at least for people who look to politics for their entertainment) the image rather glosses over aspects of Johnson’s career and his views that are altogether less amusing.

Take Johnson’s own “bongo-bongo land” episode: his recent comment that “we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing” which elicited an understandably brusque rejoinder from the Papua New Guinean High Commissioner. Johnson’s reply was that he would gladly add the insulted nation to his “global itinerary of apology”, racked up from past gaffs, and that he “meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity”. Johnson’s half-suppressed smirk was palpable. It was plain that Papua New Guinea might as well have been Narnia as far as he was concerned. His feeble explanation that his remarks had been inspired by “relatively recent” photos in a Time Life book, which he was “fairly certain” depicted Papua New Guinean cannibalism, hardly helped matters.

But more revealing still was Johnson’s approach to Spectator columnist Taki while Johnson was editor of that magazine from 1999 to 2005. Taki’s racism is of the decidedly non-casual variety. In his Spectator columns New York Puerto Ricans have been described as “a bunch of semi-savages … fat, squat, ugly, dusky, dirty”, Kenya (with echoes of Clark) as “bongo-bongo land”, and black people referred to as “Sambo”. After Charlene Ellis, 18, and Latisha Shakespeare, 17, were shot dead in Birmingham in 2003, Taki blamed “black thugs, sons of black thugs and grandsons of black thugs,” adding for good measure that “West Indians were allowed to immigrate after the war, multiply like flies and then the great state apparatus took over the care of their multiplications”.

In response to this latter outburst by his employee, Johnson mumbled something about the column being “terrible”, but there was no apology and Taki remained in his job. Over six years, Taki’s racist bile enjoyed a home on Johnson’s Spectator magazine. Here, playing the bumbling eccentric toff, ruffling one’s unruly hair and burbling “cripes” or some such, simply doesn’t wash. Taki’s poisonous bigotry was conveyed to the world by the magazine Johnson was in charge of at the time, making Johnson as responsible as Taki.

Declaring his intention to stand for Mayor, Johnson said “I am convinced that in 100 years we will look back at the racism of our age and wonder, ‘what the hell was that all about?“’ Rarely more so, surely, then when considering the racism that Johnson blithely indulged at the Spectator.

Is Johnson a racist himself? Probably not. More likely the victims of Taki’s malice and his own infelicities of expression are people that he simply does not consider until he finds himself having to apologise to them. But this unthinking attitude is more than a personality trait (Johnson is entitled to those) – it goes to the core of his political outlook.

Johnson is what is often referred to as a “Libertarian”, once the name of a proud philosophical tradition but which has sadly now come to describe little more than the articulation of self-entitlement on the part of the privileged. The Libertarians of today’s Western political class mount strong principled arguments in defence of their own rights whilst exhibiting little concern or even appreciation of the existence of the rights of others. For the modern Libertarian, rights are not equal. His own rights are absolute, and if his exercising of those rights results in the rights of others being circumscribed then mere mention of this, let alone any attempt to ensure that conflicting rights are equitably reconciled, constitutes an unconscionable form of tyranny.

On climate change for example, Johnson muses that “People … want the sweet moralistic feeling of telling someone to stop doing something … the moralising mumbo jumbo becomes more important than the scientific reality”. For Johnson, the actual “scientific reality” of man-made climate change ushering in disastrous consequences for global society in the not-to-distant future is but an abstraction compared to the more pressing concern that averting the crisis may involve him having to “stop doing something”.

The right of Johnson to do as he pleases is central. By contrast, the right of humanity not to suffer what former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern warned could be “major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th Century” is something for Johnson to explain away. According to the development charity Christian Aid, climate change will create 150 million environmental refugees, cause acute water shortages for 1-3 billion people and trigger an agricultural recession that will result in 30 million more people going hungry. Johnson the Libertarian apparently has nothing to say on the rights of these people not to endure such suffering, or on the freedoms they will be denied by the consequences of climate change. For the Libertarian, rights and freedoms are for me, but not for thee.

If the climate change warnings are correct, Johnson opines, then “there is not a lot we can do, and we might as well enjoy our beautiful planet while we can”. Stern’s view is that the cost of dealing with the crisis would be around one per cent of global GDP by 2050. But plainly this is too onerous a price for Johnson if he is being asked pay any part of it, so what he wistfully calls “our beautiful planet” will just have to wither away, with all the associated consequences … for other people.

There is something slightly pitiable about Johnson’s self-absorbed moral-absenteeism, and his distasteful attempts to dress up his blasé sense of entitlement in the language of rights and freedom. When children are first born their focus, necessarily, is on their own needs. The essence of our development and growth into adulthood is our becoming aware of the needs, wants and rights of others, as we take on the responsibilities of family and society as a whole. The maladjusted Libertarianism that Johnson espouses is the political equivalent of arrested development – a permanent intellectual pre-adolescence where whatever intelligence and knowledge gained is placed entirely in the service of an effort to explain why one should have one’s own way at all costs. Children are more or less entitled to behave in this fashion. Adults, politicians and editors of political magazines, rather less so.

Johnson, however, merely embodies an accentuated version of broader trends working at different levels in politics. The veneration of the Clarks and the Johnsons by the political class on the grounds that they provide us with entertainment, irrespective of the less palatable words and actions of these individuals, indicates an indifference to the fact that, in the real world, politics has consequences.

Beyond this, the central philosophical creed of the capitalist West – Liberalism – has since the industrial revolution operated as the religion of bourgeois privilege rather than as the principled expression of human equality and freedom that it was originally conceived as. Domestically and internationally, the prescriptions of liberty, democracy and the free market have been applied in highly selective fashion by those in power. Johnson-style Libertarianism is simply a more obvious manifestation of this. The limits of his politics and of his valuation of liberty are an expression of similar limitations that run throughout our political discourse. In this sense, and contrary to his image, Johnson is no maverick. He is firmly embedded in a long established political culture and tradition.

In 2008, London may find itself, as a city comprising hundreds of ethnic groups and nationalities, run by a Mayor who displays, at best, an unthinking attitude to race relations. It may find itself, as a city which will both effect and suffer from the effects of climate change to a serious extent, run by a Mayor who fails to grasp environmental issues at even the most basic level. It may find itself, as a city of over 7 million people, run by a Mayor whose stunted view of politics contains little room for the legitimate rights and needs of others. At that point, Johnson the Libertarian, Johnson the character, may, for some at least, lose a good deal of his entertainment value.

David Wearing is a frequent contributor to UK Watch, and blogs at The Democrat’s Diary.