Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a The testimony of the dead
The Observer continues its baffling (given its traditional political stance) support for the war in Iraq through statments, in leader columns, like “Too many people have been given grounds to challenge the legitimacy of the war.” Because obviously, to challenge its legitimacy is to out yourself as a paid-up member of the Baath party (Overseas division) and to aver that actually, the “coalition” might not be acting entirely in the best interests of the Iraqi people is to be the worst sort of seditionary.
However, there on the page, sat next to The Observer’s woefully misjudged leader column is Mary Riddell’s counter, as well-argued a piece as there’s been in the past few days for an end to the war:
“In theory, the Iraqi regime could fall at any moment, but for now it looks more solid than ever. The coalition has unearthed rumours but no chemical weapons. The third-string rationale, a moral crusade to free the desperate, has been exposed as deluded fantasy. In these admittedly early days, the only tangible results of this people’s war lie in morgues and hospital beds. Mourn first the Iraqi children, innocents who deserve none of this. Consider Iraqi soldiers, or ‘fanatics’ as our politer newspapers call those whose crime is to defend their land. A headline reading ‘175 Iraqis dead’ is longhand for ‘Gotcha’.”
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That ‘Too many people…’ line is peculiar, as is the whole leader - the Observer position seems to be that the war is good/acceptable/inevitable but also that US motives are suspect, and therefore more emphasis should be put on the ‘good’ reasons for war. I don’t think they’re implying what you infer as an attack on those ‘too many people’ though, just that The Observer want Blair to somehow transform a war about resources and US dominance of the Middle East into a war about democracy and humanitarian aid, as if a doublethink change in public perception can actually make the war just…
But, yeah, I find it most unsettling that The Observer is taking this broadly speaking pro-government, pro-war stance. It’s like Tommy Sheridan turning around and saying, ‘You know what, I actually think that Poll Tax was a cool idea’
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But isn’t The Observer’s position of trying to downplay the oil and resources reasons for the war in favour of the “good” reasons for the war implicity dismissive of those who don’t want war at all? And a means of accusing them of missing the point, so to speak? I don’t know.
I’m now thinking that they might be meaning something different: the US’ headlong charge into this has been so relentless, so obviously imperialistic, and has given so many people grounds to challenge its legitimacy, that the war is in danger of being exposed as being about what it’s actually about, rather than being about what we’re constantly told it’s about. Which again, I think, has an implicit air of “Look, if you’d just swallow the propaganda and not worry your pretty little heads about trifling things like ethics and unilateral militarism, you’d all be a lot happier.” And that’s certainly not what I ever bought The Observer for.
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