Dear Ms Rachel Squire,
The record shows that you have consistently supported the government on matters of war. In my humble opinion, all recent military interventions have directly inflicted death and destruction and sown the seeds of more interethnic violence. I doubt you have time to investigate the complex history of foreign involvement in civil wars still raging or simmering in Afghanistan and the Balkans, so let us consider the government's stated aims and its true motivations behind the recent invasion of Iraq, which you supported wholeheartedly.
So far, five reasons have been given to justify an expenditure of $120 billion, money - I hasten to add - that could work wonders if invested in sustainable development in the world's poorest countries. All prove fallacious under closer scrutiny.
- The pre-invasion Iraqi regime had weapons of mass destruction. We now know it did not, but any chemical and biological weapons it might have had were remnants of stock supplied in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan's and George Bush Senior's administrations, under which many members of George W Bush's cabinet worked, had friendly relations with the Baathist Regime. Key evidence publicised by the mass media, in particular, the Sun and Daily Record read by many traditional Labour voters here in Scotland, proved to be based on false evidence.
- Saddam Hussein collaborated with Al Qaeda. Utter nonsense, not a shred of evidence. The only real link between the two is that the US government supported them in previous guises in the 1980s.
- We need to impose democracy on the region by overthrowing a brutal dictator. That Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator is beyond dispute. But he would never have gained power without US support. More important, by democracy the US administration clearly means compliance with the dictat of unaccountable multinationals. Most of Iraqi industry has already been privatised and the oil ministry will continue to work under the watchful guidance of US-based oil corporations and be required to pay off debts that date from the 1980s war with Iran.
- By removing an inimical regime, the world will be a safer place. Clearly fallacious, no-one outside a small pro-US or pro-Israeli elite seriously believes Iraqis will have any effective control after the staged handover of power on 30th June. The newly appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi is a former CIA and MI6 asset (very much like Saddam Hussein).
- Iraqis will benefit from greater economic prosperity. Actually, despite the war with Iran and despite the regime's undeniably repressive nature, the 1980s marked the heyday of the Iraqi economy as a sizeable proportion of oil revenue filtered back into the economy. The 1990s witnessed a collapse in oil exports (to less than 1/4 of the previous level) and a harsh sanctions regime, that both Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck have described as genocidal.
Yet while Labour MPs such as yourself fell victim to a campaign of deception, the world is experiencing another crisis, much bigger and more dramatic in scale than the threat posed by any dictator of a medium-sized nation. In one word, OIL. Our economy depends on material growth, which is rapidly outstripping supply. Recent price rises are but a foretaste of things to come. We'd need hundreds of thousands of wind turbines blighting our landscape to substitute a sizeable fraction of the energy we get from fossil fuels. Other alternatives such as nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, biodiesel etc. all have their limitations. Hydrogen is but a carrier requiring electricity for electrolysis from water or fossil fuels. Cold fusion is at best 30-40 years from the making and at worst a myth that contradicts the laws of thermodynamics.
In short control of the world's last plentiful and cheap supply of fossil fuels in Iraq and neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Iran plays a pivotal role in the continued supremacy of a world order centred around US multinationals. The evidence linking leading members of Bush regime to the oil industry is compelling. The Project for a New American Century urged the occupation of Iraq back in the mid 1990s. Indeed it has long been their intention to create a situation, in which the US could justify a permanent presence in the region. IN this context one understands much more lucidly the role played by the infamous Saddam Hussein. First they armed his regime, next they tricked him into invading Kuwait, then they imposed sanctions against his people while ensuring his regime stayed in intact and lastly they occupied his country less than two years after a terrorist attack on the US. Without Saddam Hussein none of this would have been possible.
It seems blatantly clear to me that the last thing the corporate powers behind Tony Blair's leadership want in Iraq is for the people of the Middle East to control their own destiny. Thanks to your vote, millions more will die in a long and protracted war that will dwarf the US misadventure in Vietnam. More to the point the real reasons for this war, greed and control, go against everything the Labour movement has ever stood for.
I invite you to justify your stance and debate the issue at a time and place of your choosing.
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