Should We Bail Out on Bailing Out the Banks? Not if we don’t want to all go down with them in another Great Depression. The Bail-out Bill offers them a loan they have to repay gradually – with interest – and protection for ordinary Americans

Yes It’s An Unfair Situation

It’s completely true that de-regulation by governments (and possibly to some extent the wrong kind of regulation) caused this crisis. It’s true that bankers and mortgage brokers acted irresponsibly too in taking commissions and bonuses for short term gains from loans and mortgages which they knew were unlikely ever to be paid off.

It’s true that the effects are unfair on people who weren’t responsible for those decisions and that ordinary people were being asked by the Bush administration to pay from their taxes (or from their money being devalued by printing more money)
for the irresponsibility of the government and some very wealthy people.

The banks and the stock market traders have been utterly irresponsible , have lobbied governments to de-regulate – and governments – Republican and Democrat, Conservative and Labour, have irresponsibly agreed for the last 28 years. When the banks fail they believe they can blackmail taxpayers into bailing them out to prevent them dragging the whole economy down with them. This has happened many times around the world with Hedge Funds and other financial institutions. So ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic have been understandably angry at their taxes being used to bail out the wealthiest people in the country, on the basis that it isn’t fair – and they’re right it’s not. Opponents of the bail-out also point out that if their own small business went under the government wouldn’t bail it out. So why should their taxes help bail out big banks or the results of governments’ decisions they ask?

If the banks go down we all go down with them though

The bail-outs have to go ahead though because otherwise panic will continue to spread and more banks will collapse and more people will lose some or all of their life savings or their jobs or their houses. The Great Crash of 1929 started with a rumour about one bank. People began to panic and soon everyone with money in that bank withdrew it all at once. Every bank gives loans and mortgages which total more than the amount of money deposited by their customers. This doesn’t really have any harmful effects as long as most of the banks customers don’t come and demand to withdraw all their money at once (which they almost never do). This may sound worrying as there’s a certain amount of ‘imaginary’ money involved. However this is usually loaned out to people who have just bought a new house and will eventually pay off the mortgage plus interest, or who are setting up a new business or developing a new technology which will create lots of new jobs in the long term (and also repay the loan they took out plus interest). So the ‘imaginary’ money actually allows the ‘real’ economy to grow faster (and when it comes right down to it all money and the value of everything is a matter of how much people will pay for it at that moment).

It’s true that many mortgages and loans were made to people who couldn’t afford to repay them. While many of them have been asked to take ‘their share of the blame’ it’s unlikely that they would have taken on debts they could never repay or ‘variable rate mortgages’ (i.e low interest rate at the start, then it rockets up after a couple of years – or according to variation in base interest rates) if the people selling them to them had told them the full facts and all their options (e.g to take out a fixed rate mortgage). Since the mortgage brokers often got a commission for each mortgage they got someone to take out the long term consequences weren’t of much interest to some of them. Some also claim that government regulations in the US which required banks and other lending institutions to give a certain percentage of loans and mortgages to people from ethnic minorities (mostly on lower incomes) and low income groups with little collateral (i.e whose houses weren’t worth much). This may have been a factor, though companies in the past have been very good at evading regulations they didn’t like by interpreting them the way they wanted to – so it’s unlikely banks gave out many such loans unless they also wanted to because they valued short term profits over long term consequences.

This isn’t a blank cheque – if it’s passed the banks have to re-pay the money eventually and their debtors and mortgage holders will be protected, plus…

So the Democratic leadership in congress (including Senator Obama) demanded that any deal include proper regulation and oversight of the financial industry to prevent a repeat of the crisis. They also demanded that it include some protection for people with mortgaged houses and the condition that when the banks start making a profit again they’d have to start using some of those profits to re-pay the loan from the government – and pay interest on that loan. They also included conditions limiting pay and bonuses for bank managers, so they couldn’t continue rewarding themselves despite having created an international disaster.

There’s no way they could have justified the initial Bush administration plan – which was that tax-payers give the banks a $700 billion blank cheque, with no new regulation, no conditions, no safe-guards for debtors or mortgage-holders – many of whom would risk bankruptcy or losing their home after their taxes paid to bail-out the banks and building societies.

This was agreed on by the Bush administration and the leaders of both parties in congress. Yet when it came to the vote two-thirds of Republicans and one-third of Democrats voted against the bill.

So why did so many congressmen vote against the bail-out bill?

Some Republicans voted from an extreme ideological ‘free market’ view-point which argues (against all history and the Great Depression) that all problems in the economy are caused by government regulation and so the best thing to do is let the wonderful free market fix itself or ‘make an adjustment’ auto-magically. They see any government regulation of or intervention in the economy as a ‘restriction on freedom’ or even as ‘tyranny’. The trouble with this is that, as the Great Depression and John Maynard Keynes showed, the ‘adjustment’ may be to a new equilibrium by itself, but that may well be one in which many more people are unemployed and the economy is much smaller due to a vicious circle of unemployment reducing the amount of money spent causing more unemployment. Unemployment, extreme poverty and dying young after suffering those and resultant stress, malnutrition and illness are a much worse form of ‘tyranny’ than regulating the economy could ever be.

Senator John McCain even backed a plan by some of the right wing among Republicans in congress which contained no provisions for any of the $700 billion ever to be repaid, no protection for people with mortgages or loans that might get called in after the bail-out and a suspension of capital gains tax for 2 years – basically another tax cut that would mostly benefit only the very wealthy. This also almost sabotaged the deal that had already been agreed. Then McCain pretended he had tried to ensure ordinary taxpayers were protected.

Some Democrats probably similarly had an ideological view that it’s unfair for ordinary people to have to bail out the wealthiest. While I’ve sympathy for that view-point the trouble is that if there isn’t a bail-out then almost everyone will suffer from the likely economic collapse – from the richest to the poorest. In 1929 when the Great Crash in the stock market took place many people were unconcerned and thought the bankers had got what they deserved – only later realising they had lost most or all of their own savings as a result.

However I suspect most people in congress who voted against the bill had neither of the above as their main reason. They’ve been getting mail and phone calls and emails from their constituents – and most are asking them not to vote for a bail-out as they see it as unfair that they should have to pay to bail-out banks which, in reversed circumstances, would fore-close on their loan or mortgage. (This doesn't mean the majority of Americans oppose a bail-out - a poll by Zogby polling on 21st September found voters split 46% for and 46% against on whether to back Bush's initial bail-out plan - and that was before all the changes to it negotiated by Obama and the Democrats. So it just means those opposed to any bail-out on any conditions are the ones actively campaigning and lobbying their congress people against it)

I suspect most members of congress know the bail-out has to happen but also know most voters are against it and that there are Presidential and congressional elections coming up. So they gambled that enough of their colleagues would vote for the bail-out for it to go ahead and prevent further damage to the economy and people’s savings and investments, so they could vote against it and get the best of both worlds – economic crisis averted while avoiding voting for the unpopular measure needed to avert it. (This type of behaviour is known as ‘free riding’.)

Some Republican leaders blamed a ‘partisan’ speech before the vote by Democratic Party House Speaker Nancy Pelosi which had blamed the Bush administration. While this may have been a factor I’d have to agree with the Democrat who said it was ‘unbelievably petty’ to decide to punish the whole country because your feelings had been hurt by something someone said (I’d only add it’s likely to punish people in other countries too).

Most Americans who know what the bail-out bill now includes are for it

A poll by Rasmussen polling has found that

"Those who understand that taxpayers will eventually get much of the money back support the bailout by a 2-to-1 margin. Those who incorrectly believe the government will not be getting money back oppose the bailout by a 62% to 18% margin"

The Choice We’re Facing

It’s been shown over and over again through-out history that companies and banks and markets which aren’t regulated by governments collapse and destroy themselves sooner or later – and that the only solution is government intervention and then re-establishing regulation. The suffering caused by economic collapse itself is bad enough – as with the mass unemployment, poverty and hunger of the 1920s and early 1930s. A soar in support for extreme undemocratic political movements – fascism, communism and Nazism – followed (Poverty and suffering caused by civil war in Afghanistan and dictatorship and economic sanctions in Iraq have had similar effects).

Then, when enough people were desperate enough to support any party that would intervene in the economy and give them an income from a job or welfare those extreme parties came to power. Then they started World War Two.

What began in 1929 with the Great Crash of the stock market in the US has come close to happening in the present – but this time we know what we should do to stop this disaster and what will make it worse.

We can still prevent it. Extreme ideologies should not be allowed to blind us to the lessons of the Great Depression – and those manoeuvring for votes in an election year should consider what the result may be if they play chicken with one another for too long. Those congressmen who vote against a deal may gain votes in the short term – but if their actions prevent a bail-out and lead to most of their voters losing their jobs, their houses and their life savings those members of congress can be sure it won’t be long till they’re kicked out of office and replaced by the same voters with someone who will intervene to protect their interests.

Members of congress have also been contacted by massive numbers of voters from their districts asking them to vote against the bail-out. If they continue to get a majority of congress to vote down the bail-out though then they all risk losing their own jobs, investments, pensions and savings the same way people did after the 1929 crash. The Rasmussen poll shows Americans who know what the bail-out bill includes are for it by a 2 to 1 margin. Only among those who wrongly think it's a blank cheque is there a majority against it. So those who're for the conditional bail-out need to contact their congress-people asking them to vote for the bill - and set up their own blogs and websites campaigning for it, so congress people don't get the false impression that most people oppose it just because its opponents are the most vocal.

The bill includes full eventual repayment of the $700 bn – plus interest; it protects people in debt or with mortgages; it regulates the banks so this can’t happen again; it limits bank managers’ pay and bonuses so they aren’t rewarded for this. It’s the smart thing to do. It doesn’t let the big money institutions blackmail us into giving them a blank cheque, but it means we don’t all go down with them either.

Voters in the US could even demand that when some of the banks start making a profit again and the government starts taking a share of those profits in repayment that it then return that money to every US citizen in equal payments, much like the one-off, token 'economic stimulus' payments to every American made by the Bush administration, but continuing until the $700 billion plus interest is re-paid.

The Lecturer Has No Clothes

Blair’s recent appearance on the Daily Show showed that he still has his facts wrong and his theories are still delusional. He learned nothing in his decade as Prime Minister, yet Yale University is now letting him teach undergraduates who are being groomed to run Washington’s foreign policy.

After seeing Tony Blair interviewed on the Daily Show it’s clear that not only was he ignorant on foreign policy on coming into government – but that he’s managed to maintain either total ignorance even after a decade’s experience as Prime Minister – either that or he’s very dishonest.

On one visit to Iran in 2006 Blair was asked by an Iranian student who Mohammed Mossadeq was. He replied that he had no idea. Mossadeq was the first (and only) democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran after World War Two. He was overthrown in 1953 by the military dictatorship of the Shah with aid from the CIA and MI6 after Mossadeq’s government put forward a bill to nationalise Anglo-Iranian oil (now BP) when that company refused to give a fair share of profits to Iran in taxes or to increase wages for its Iranian employees – who lived in wooden shacks on slave wages.
the UK's Channel 4 News anchor John Snow has also said Blair had no idea who Mossadeq was in conversations (1).

On the Daily Show on Friday (19th September) Blair told John Stewart that Hamas, Al Qaeda and Iranian backed Shia militias are “all part of the same movement” which we’re fighting “in Iraq and in Afghanistan.” (2). No-one can have told Hamas, who were involved in a fight against the Al Qaeda inspired ‘Army of Islam’ in Gaza on 16th September (the day before the interview). Several people died (3).

Blair is relying on the (highly unreliable) claims of the Israeli government and Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, the latter being involved in a civil war with Hamas. Previously Israel have said Fatah are linked to terrorism and not to be trusted – but after Hamas’ election victory the propaganda line changed and Fatah became ‘the forces of peace’ as Israel allowed Egypt to arm Fatah forces with AK47s by the thousand (4).

Blair did concede that many members of Hamas merely wanted a Palestinian state – but rather than thinking we should negotiate with them to isolate any who might want to ally with Al Qaeda he seemed to think a strategy treating them all as part of Al Qaeda was the best one – a strategy calculated to try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of the worst possible outcome.

Blair was certainly right that there are Iranian backed militias in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the ones in Afghanistan are our allies. They’re members of the ‘Northern Alliance’ (or United Front), our allies against the Taliban. The Shia militias in Iraq are fighting both our forces and Al Qaeda. Neither they nor the Iranian government are allied to Al Qaeda, who follow an extreme version of Sunni Islam. Some in Al Qaeda see all Shia (like the Iranian regime) as heretics to be slaughtered. So there’s no love between Al Qaeda and the Iranian government (5), (6), (7).

So once again Blair’s conspiracy theory about all Islamic fundamentalist groups and governments being one undifferentiated enemy that we have to fight as if they were all part of Al Qa’ida looks not only totally wrong but also the worst possible advice to follow.

Bush, Blair and Cheney have always been out of touch with reality though. They backed Musharraf as military dictator of Pakistan and heaped him and Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence with vast amounts of money in military aid while both double-crossed them by continuing to train, fund and share intelligence with the Taliban as their counter to the Indian backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan (8), (9), (10).

At the same time Musharraf and the ISI followed past western-backed military dictators of Pakistan by backing Islamic extremist parties and armed fundamentalist terrorist groups in Pakistan itself to try to keep civilian politicians getting power back from the military government. They did the same in Kashmir and India as part of their crazy attempt to defeat the much stronger Indian military by the indirect approach of backing terrorist groups (11), (12), (13).

If you feel charitable towards Tony Blair or Bush or Cheney you could say they’re all ignorant or mistaken on all these points. If not they’re outright liars who are deliberately dumbing down the world. Either way it’s a big mistake to treat their wildly inaccurate claims and theories as a guide to policy. They are no wise elder statesmen but the joint architects of one bloody disaster and loss of human life after another.

Despite this Blair has not only been appointed Middle East Peace Envoy for the G8 but Yale University have also given him a position as a lecturer, but that’s obviously not because he has much to teach anyone – except how to obey orders from the right wing of the Republican party and the big multinational oil and arms firms, no matter the cost in other peoples’ lives. That can’t do anything but make people wonder whether experts who graduate from Yale University in the future are knowledgeable about anything except doing what they’re told.

Blair was dangerously unqualified to be Prime Minister not only because he didn’t know any, even recent, history of the Middle East but also because he had no interest in learning about it and based his actions on whatever conspiracy theory he could cobble together to justify doing what whoever happened to be President of the US at the time wanted to do. He’s dangerously unqualified to be a Middle East Peace Envoy for the same reasons. He has nothing to teach potential future politicians except as an example of what terrible mistakes and delusions to avoid.


(1) = Independent 7 Aug 2006, ‘Johann Hari : Tony Blair's tragedy is to be right about Islam, and wrong about the United States’, link

(2) Daily Show 18 Sep 2008, http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=185186&title=tony-blair-pt.-2&byDate=true (see especially 6 mins 30 seconds to 7 mins 45 seconds)

(3) = International Herald Tribune 17 Sep 2008, ‘Hamas strikes at Gaza clan known for criminal activity’, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/17/africa/17gaza.php

(4) = Haaretz (Israel) 28 Dec 2006 , ‘Israeli defense official: Fatah arms transfer bolsters forces of peace’, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/806603.html

(5) = Rashid , Ahmed(2001) 'Taliban' Tauris,London ,2001

(6) = Rashid, Ahmed (2008) 'Descent into Chaos'

(7) = Gerges, Fawaz A. (2005) ‘The Far Enemy: Why Jihad went Global’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York 2005

(8) = Haqqani, Husain (2005) , ‘Pakistan : Between Mosque and Military’ , Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C. , 2005

(9) = Rashid , Ahmed(2001) 'Taliban' Tauris,London ,2001

(10)= Rashid, Ahmed (2008) 'Descent into Chaos'

(11) = see (8) above

(12) = see (9) above

(13) = see (10) above

McCain and Palin's Racist Friends

The above sign was placed by one Andy Lacasse - a 78 year old Korean war veteran living in Florida.

We can clearly see his racial superiority not only in his confused belief that Obama is a Muslim (he has in fact been a Christian all his life) but in his awsome inability to distinguish between a religion and a type of cloth.

Lacasse wasn't finished there though. To underline his membership of the master race he went on to tell a local news station :
"I got nothing good to say about Obama. If I see anybody touching that sign, I got a club sitting right over there."(1).

Eloquently put, sir. Eloquently put.

During the Korean war other veterans and historians say they obeyed orders from the highest level to shoot unarmed refugees by the thousand while sergeants screamed 'kill 'em all'; men, women, children - all unarmed. Still - they weren't the same race as Andy Lacasse. Not even half-breeds. Just 'gooks' - a term of abuse that developed first in World War Two and the Korean War - and continued during Vietnam. Some other veterans still have nightmares about it (2), (3).

According to US veterans of the Iraq war the equivalent form of abuse which US army recruits are encouraged to use is 'Hajii'; so if an Iraqi civilian is killed it was 'just a Hajii' , not a human like one of us (4), (5). At least three hundred civilians were killed in the US assault on the Iraqi town of Fallujah in April 2004 alone, many killed by American snipers targeting ambulances and civilians(6), (7). American veterans say they're still being killed by all sides - including Coalition forces - today (8). Obama has opposed the Iraq war from the start. McCain still supports it and Palin prays it is 'a mission from God'.

Korean civilians huddled in fear during the Korean war. Many thousands were killed by US forces on the orders of commanders, just in case one spy might get through among all the refugees

Iraqi children in hospital in Samarra after a US/Coalition/Iraqi government offensive in 2004. Of 70 bodies in Samarra General hospital on one day of the offensive 23 were children and 18 women (9).

What's most inspiring is that this veteran of a 20th century war, living in the 21st century in a country where around a third of the population own two or more automatic weapons, has remained true to his racial heritage by relying on a pre-pre-pre-pre-historic weapon. Not a weapon used by those inferior homo sapiens hunter gatherers. No bows. No throwing spears or Atlatls. No - an honest to goodness club as used by homo habilis (handy man) before all those filthy homo sapiens began walking upright and making 'tools' and 'weapons'. Andy Lacasse is racially pure. Not a single human gene to pollute the knuckle dragging. Pure homo habilis. Even cave-men were racially impure compared to him - far too much human in 'em.

What's even sadder though is that John McCain and Sarah Palin have not said they don't want racist votes. They've not made it clear that Obama is not and never has been a Muslim - or that most Muslims are not terrorists. They're quite happy to quietly allow racism and religious bigotry to be core planks of their campaign. In fact many of the lies about Obama, much of the bigotry, is spread by email by Christian fundamentalists in the US - people of similar beliefs to Sarah Palin who has said she prays that the Iraq war is a "mission from God" and whose minister (whose views she has not disowned) says that anyone who has criticised President Bush will "burn in hell".

McCain and Palin are also happy to use sexism against Obama, with the sexist argument that women voters should vote for a woman rather than a man, irrespective of what policies they support and what policies the candidate supports (Palin's and McCain's policies mostly being the opposite of not only Obama's but also Clinton's policies).

Racist votes, sexist votes, the votes of backward dinosaurs - they'll accept them all without ever criticising any of it - then they'll tell you they stand for principles and American values.

If they really stood for American values wouldn't they tell racists like Andy Lacasse and the many like him, but less blatant, that they condemn all racism and bigotry and don't want the votes of anyone who's voting because of a candidate's race, religion or gender?

Is this how the Republican Party really wants to end? On political life support from it's racist friends?

Iraq veteran Joshua Key has a message for McCain and Palin. In his book 'A Deserter's tale' he wrote : "I never thought I would lose my country and never dreamed it would lose me. I was raised as a patriotic American, taught to respect my government and believe in my President.A decade ago I would have laughed out loud if somebody had predicted that I would live as a fugitive in my own country and turn my wife and children into refugees as I fled with them across the border"

If McCain and Palin are elected then real patriots like Joshua Key, who risked their lives for what turned out to be lies, will continue to be forced into exile, while racists prosper and pointless wars kill more Americans and more non-Americans alike.

Sources

(1) = Channel 13 Sep 2008, 'Obama Sign In Yard Stirs Up Neighbors', http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2008/9/10/obama_sign_in_yard_stirs_up_neighbors.html?refresh=1

(2) = BBC History, 'Kill 'em All': The American Military in Korea'
By Jeremy Williams (following on from a 1999 investigative report by the Associated Press) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/korea_usa_01.shtml

(3) = Hastings , Max (1987) 'The Korean War' PanMacMillan , London , 2000, pages 290 , 301 ,306-308

(4) = Guardian 29 Mar 2006, ‘'If you start looking at them as humans, then how are you gonna kill them?'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1741699,00.html ; Also see The Nation 30 Jul 2007, ‘The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness’ ,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

(5) = Key, Joshua & Hill, Lawrence (2007) ,'The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq' Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007


(6) = Iraq Body Count 26 Oct 2004, 'No Longer Unknowable: Falluja's April Civilian Toll is 600', http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/press-releases/9/

(7) = BBC News 23 Apr 2004, 'Picture emerges of Falluja siege', http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3653223.stm

(8) = See (4) above and also http://www.duncanmcfarlane.org/who's_right_on_Iraq/bothsides/ and http://www.duncanmcfarlane.org/replytogray/Iraq/ and sources in links for both.

(9) = The Independent 04 Oct 2004, 'Civilians bear brunt as Samarra 'pacified'',
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/civilians-bear-brunt-as-samarra-pacified-550807.html

Three actions we can take for Georgia

While there's plenty of blame to go round, who is to blame for starting the war between Georgia and Russia is now irrelevant. Georgian forces have been utterly defeated and Russian forces are in control in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

They were always committing as many war crimes as the Georgians - now the Russians and their Ossetian, Chechen, Abkhazian and other militias are the only ones committing these crimes (1), (2), (3). Russian claims to be withdrawing their forces also seem to be empty (4).

The same Russian troops and pro-Russian Chechen militia-men who tortured, stole, murdered and raped their way across Chechnya for a decade, when Chechnya attempted to declare independence from the Russian Federation, are now burning Georgian villages, raping women and stealing from and firing at journalists, UN staff and foreign aid workers in central Georgia and South Ossetia - or at least the militia-men are while the Russian regulars (probably under orders from superiors) let them. Georgian men and boys considered 'of military age' are being taken away to unknown fates - possibly killed (5), (6), (7), (8), (9).

The EU and the US aren't prepared to put troops in to stop this, given the serious risk of a major war - and possibly even nuclear war. There are still actions we and our governments can take (one already taken by Bush being to send unarmed troops to Tbilisi to discourage Russian forces from entering it).

First our governments can put forward a motion to the General Assembly of the UN calling for an immediate withdrawal of Russian forces (including all militias allied to them) from central Georgia and from those villages in South Ossetia mostly inhabited by Georgians. The motion should also provide authority for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to deploy on both sides of the border between the South Ossetian region and central Georgia and along the main roads from Tbilisi airport to South Ossetia to protect civilians and allow humanitarian aid to be distributed.
This will not have the same weight as a UN Security Council motion but the Russian government will be unable to veto it and it's the next best thing to a UNSC motion.

A second motion should call for the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to be determined by referenda organised by the UN on independence, autonomy within Georgia or re-unification with Georgia. If these republics vote to become independent they can hold their own referenda on whether to then join the Russian federation. Russia cannot be allowed to conquer territory through war in breach of the UN Charter.

Second they could expel Russia from the G8 economic policy making group and refuse it entry to the World Trade Organisation. Third we could make it clear EU governments won't pay for Russian oil or gas until Russian forces and allied militias withdraw from central Georgian and allow UN peacekeepers into it and South Ossetia. Since Russia's economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports this would hurt Russia's economy as much as the EU's. They may be able to re-direct some exports to China and the far East - but the price they get for them would drop.

Georgian civilians lives are important enough to make it worth suffering power cuts until the Russian government relents or we can get alternative energy sources or reduce energy use through energy efficiency measures like government subsidised home insulation. It's also necessary to send a message to Russia that while we accept its right to defend itself and Russian citizens in South Ossetia we won't stand by, mute while they annexe territory by force or let militias murder civilians.

Of course we can also donate to the ICRC or other charities providing aid to Georgians, Ossetians and others - but the first three measures would make it easier and safer to get more aid to those who need it as soon as it's needed.

(1) = Herald (Scotland), 'Civilians allege militias raped and killed',
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2426955.0.0.php

(2) = Human Rights Watch 14 Aug 2008, 'Russia/Georgia: Investigate Civilian Deaths
High Toll from Attacks on Populated Areas', http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/13/russia19620.htm

(3) = Human Rights Watch 15 Aug 2008, 'Georgia: Russian Cluster Bombs Kill Civilians'http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/14/georgi19625.htm

(4) = BBC News 15 Aug 2008, 'Day-by-day: Georgia-Russia crisis',
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7551576.stm

(5) = see (1) above

(6) = Channel 4 News 14 Aug 2008, 'War of words breaks out between Russia and the US; tanks remain in Gori', http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/war+of+words+breaks+out+between+russia+and+the+us+tanks+remain+in+gori/2400822 , (see first video on that page)

(7) = Human Rights Watch 13 Aug 2008, 'Georgian Villages in South Ossetia Burnt, Looted', http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/13/georgi19607.htm

(8) = Amnesty International 14 aug 2008, 'Georgia, Russia: Suffering of civilians must stop and abuses must be investigated', http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR56/007/2008/en/4dfeef19-6a25-11dd-8e5e-43ea85d15a69/eur560072008eng.html

(9) = Amnesty International 14 Aug 2008, 'Civilians vulnerable after hostilities in Georgia', http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/civilians-vulnerable-after-hostilities-georgia-20080814

I should have said we should favour the weaker side as their civilians are likely to make up most of the victims of any conflict

I've made a mistake in saying the EU should stay entirely neutral in the conflict between Georgia and Russia.

I still suspect President Saakashvili of Georgia wanted this conflict, thinking it might bring enough pressure on Russia from the EU and US to get Russian troops to leave South Ossetia and Abkhazia and allow him to fulfill his election pledge to re-unify Georgia, despite the majority of the populations of South Ossetia and Abkhazia never having wanted to be part of Georgia - and fearing a repeat of the ethnic cleansing carried out by both sides in the 1992 civil war.

I still suspect the Bush administration has fuelled the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili not to compromise with the Russians or separatists and vague but tough sounding promises of support.

However the Russian government and the South Ossetian and Abkhazian militias all have a record of ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses as bad and probably even worse than that of the Georgian government - and South Ossetian forces bombardment of Georgian villages on August 1st may have been co-ordinated with Russian forces which built up rapidly in the area in the months before war broke out. What's more Russia's military is so much larger and better equipped than Georgia's was that it should have been obvious that Russian forces would win and so the biggest threat was of Russian and South Ossetian forces killing Georgian civilians rather than Georgian forces killing South Ossetians.

Western journalists and UN observers have reported that Russian forces are standing by while South Ossetian militia-men steal from, rape and murder Georgian civilians (e.g watch the first video on this page from Channel 4 News, UK).
HRW Report the militias have burned Georgian villages in South Ossetia.

Nor do Russian forces have any right to still be in the main part of Georgia - where the majority of the population want to be part of Georgia, or to have continued airstrikes even after the Georgian military was defeated. Human Rights Watch observers say Russian planes have killed civilians by using cluster bombs on Georgian towns. This is a war crime - just like the same practice by NATO forces in Kosovo in 1999 - and one war crime does not cancel out another. Both sides have also used rocket launchers in town centres, killing civilians - the Russians in Gori in Georgia and (before Georgian forces' defeat) by both sides in Tkhsinvali in South Ossetia.
Russia's government and military are responsible for this and for the actions of the Ossetian militia-men they arm, train and fight alongside.

Russian troops have also aided Ossetian civilians in south Ossetia to escape from the war zone to North Ossetia - but this may be as much for propaganda value as for humanitarian motives.

This all seems like another set of moves in the international chess game among governments for power and influence. None of the players can be entirely absolved of responsibility for treating their own and other countries' people as pawns whose lives can be sacrificed to achieve 'strategic aims, but when, as with Georgia and Russia, the two sides are so unequal in power, we should favour the weaker side to try and prevent the stronger one allowing its proxies to run riot killing Georgian civilians.

That probably requires a new UN peacekeeping force in a zone on either side of the border between central Georgia and South Ossetia. This would help humanitarian aid and observers to get to civilians and internally displaced refugees of all ethnic groups. A UN General Assembly resolution calling for this and for Russian forces to withdraw back to their positions of July 31st this year and prevent Ossetian militias targeting Georgian civilians in Ossetia could also be put forward, since Russia could veto any Security Council resolution.

The Russian government is in the ascendant now - but it should remember it may need to build up good will for when the wheel of fortune turns again

It seems now that Russian regulars and Ossetian and Abkhaz militias are burning Georgian villages on the road to Tbilisi.

Ideally the soveriegnty of democratic states should be upheld unless their governments have started killing instead of protecting their own citizens. The UN's Responsibility to Protect report called this 'conditional sovereignty' - meaning that a government's sovereignty is not absolute but conditional on it carrying out its responsibility to protect the lives of its own citizens.

The report laid out a duty to intervene militarily if necessary to prevent other governments killing civilians - but also made it clear that this should only be done if widespread massacres or genocide were taking place, since otherwise military intervention would be likely to kill more people than it saved. Since in every conflict around half the casualties are civilians this is a wise provision.

The west is not prepared to go to war over Georgia - a country which is not an EU or NATO member and whose government's democratic and human rights record is almost as bad as Russia's and includes ethnic cleansing of Ossetians in the 1992 civil war just as Ossetian separatists and Russian forces seem to be forcing out Georgians. Russia is prepared to go to war to re-establish it's influence over a former client state of the Soviet Union and a part of the Russian Empire before that.

In these circumstances any NATO military intervention would only change who was ethnically cleansing or massacring who - and probably expand the war into other countries and lead to a huge rise in casualties. Without clear evidence of one side committing large scale massacres against the other's civilians it would also be likely to end up killing more people - and more civilians - than it saved.

Russia's claim that it's motives are humanitarian - to prevent the massacre of Ossetian civilians in South Ossetia by Georgian forces - is dubious. There is no doubt that in the civil war of the early 1990s Georgian forces targeted Ossetian civilians and vice-versa - and the same has probably happened again now, but Human Rights Watch reports that Russian claims of 1,500 to 2,000 civilians killed by Georgian rocket attacks are exaggerations - and are causing revenge attacks on Georgian civilians by Ossetian militias.

Russian public opinion may have been brought behind military action by the argument that Russia must protect Ossetians with Russian citizenship, but Putin has never shown any concern for the lives or human rights of Chechen - or Georgian - civilians so the humanitarian war claim is weak.

Control of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline and preventing Georgia joining NATO or the EU are probably his main motives.

The option of economic sanctions on Russia or expelling it from the G8 have also been raised, but Russia would almost certainly respond by cutting off gas supplies to the EU, leading to, at the least, black outs across much of Europe. So this is unlikely.

So the options are limited to putting some troops into Tbilisi - which Bush is already doing by sending them to For once this seems like a well judged move by Washington, making it clear that it will not stand for Russian troops entering Tbilisi and overthrowing its government, but without threatening Russia.

The only other thing we can do is warn the Russians that the wheel will keep turning.
The Russian government were enraged by NATO's similar campaign in Kosovo and Serbia in 1999 and by Kosovo's declaration of independence under the protection of NATO peacekeepers. Their proposal now for referenda on independence and joining the Russian federation in the South Ossetian and Abkhazian regions of what Georgia claims is its territory may be revenge for Kosovo.

The US has lost a lot of respect and influence internationally and made many enemies through its ruthless invasion of Iraq. The US is undoubtedly the world's strongest power but as it's power wanes it will have to rely more and more on the good-will which it's current administration has squandered through ruthless brutality. Even Clinton's decision to allow a third phase of bombing of civilian targets in Kosovo and Serbia had a similar effect.

Russia's government should consider whether it's now about to make the same mistake - and remember that the wheel of fortune will turn again. With new technologies, such as a breakthrough in solar power's use to fuel hydrogen cells, Russian oil and gas may one day not be so vital to the EU - so in the present Russia would be wise to build up good-will with other states that it may well need in future rather than squander it through reliance on force alone.

Apart from that it should consider whether it is now aiding or committing exactly the same crimes it accuses Saakashvili and his forces of.

Nations don't die or grieve - People Do - so why kill and die for empty words?

What the fighting in Georgia comes down to is a struggle between competing nationalisms. Russian nationalists believe this war shows Russia is a 'Great Power' again, it's past 'humiliations' put behind it, just as American nationalists believed the 1991 Iraq war had 'exorcised the ghost of Vietnam'. Saakashvili as a Georgian nationalist hoped to reassert Georgian 'sovereignty' and 'national unity' by reintegrating the secessionist region of South Ossetia into Georgia.
If success in imposing their will on other people by killing large numbers of them - half of whom are always civilians - gives anyone a feeling of 'pride' it's a sad reflection on them.

At the end of the day all these 'nations' , 'sovereignties','prides' and 'humiliations' are just abstract ideas compounded by primitive instincts. No nation ever suffered the agony of physical pain that actual wounded and dying people do. No nation ever grieved its 'humiliation' the way someone grieves the death of a loved one.

There is no moral high ground for either side either. In the 1992-4 civil war Georgian forces ethnically cleansed Ossetian and Abkhazian civilians. Ossetian and Abkhazian paramilitaries have almost certainly done the same now. Putin and the Russians may provide protection to Ossetians but its unlikely they provide much to Georgians in South Ossetia, especially given the history of massacres and systematic torture of Chechen civilians by Russian forces under Putin in Chechnya.

So it's merely sickening for either side's political leaders to talk of high principles - 'the nation', 'pride', 'sovereignty', 'preventing genocide' while the fighting goes on. If Russia's or Georgia's governments want the respect of the world the best way to get it would be to end all military action and negotiate whatever compromises they each need to make to satisfy both sides. Above all they need to start talking and stop killing now.

If that means abstract ideas like 'sovereignty' or 'the pride of the nation' need to be compromised by both sides those are casualties far more acceptable than one more life.

Saakashvili's conditional unconditional ceasefire

It turns out that Saakashvili's ceasefire offer includes a demand for Russian withdrawal from South Ossetia. He must know they'll refuse.

The Herald newspaper reports :

Yesterday's military developments came as Saakashvili said he had signed an internationally-brokered ceasefire proposal that will be taken to Moscow by the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will also visit Moscow today in another attempt to broker a ceasefire.

A Georgian National Security Council official said the document signed by Saakashvili called for an unconditional ceasefire, a non-use of force agreement and a withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory, including the South Ossetia region.

Whether Russia will agree to a ceasefire even if Georgia makes an unconditional offer remains to be seen. Putin may well be aiming at installing a pro-Russian government in Georgia anyway, but until Saakashvili makes a genuine unconditional ceasefire offer we won't know, it'll be impossible for the EU to put much effective pressure on Russia and people will keep dying.

So does Saakashvili want peace or is he determined to try to reconquer South Ossetia at all costs?

P.S on South Ossetia, Georgia and Russia

After the confirmation that Russian troops have invaded the main part of Georgia - and a reply from Ola Szkudlapska on my first post on South Ossetia - i'd like to make it clear that i don't think Russian forces have any right to be in any part of Georgia outside of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and also that Russian airstrikes on civilians are not justified in any way.

I also realise that Putin and the Russian government are attempting to re-build the Russian empire that never ended, even under the Soviet Union.

Saakashvili's government is guilty of human rights abuses - including attacks on civilians in South Ossetia, dubious elections and jailing of political opponents - but then so is the Russian government on an even larger scale.

The overthrow of the Georgian government by military force would make things worse, not better and western governments are right to call on Russia not to take any such action and to withdraw its troops from central Georgia.

This is not another Prague Spring – More Like Another Yugoslavia and the New Great Game

Georgia’s President Saakashvili has presented the war between Georgia and Russia as another Prague Spring or German invasion of Poland, as ‘freedom’ threatened by dictatorship (1). Certainly Russia’s elections are rigged and it has a bad human rights record. Georgia’s not much different though. OSCE election monitors found that the Presidential elections in Georgia in January this year involved intimidation of voters, effectively bribery through handouts of ‘social vouchers’ and that many complaints of electoral “irregularities” were never properly investigated (2). Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report that Georgian police have carried out violent attacks on peaceful anti-government protests and torture prisoners (sometimes to death) – just like Russian police. Political opponents of the Georgian government have also been jailed after unfair trials, just as in Russia. (3), (4).

The fighting in South Ossetia and Georgia is not the result of an attack by Russia on Georgia but an attack by Georgian forces on the separatist ‘Republic of South Ossetia’. South Ossetia has many Ossetians who want to be part of Russia among its population (North Ossetia being a Republic within Russia).

There have been Russian troops in Georgia’s separatist regions of Ossetia and Abkhazia since separatist groups in both defeated Georgian forces in a civil war in 1992, the year after the collapse of the Soviet Union. During that civil war both sides targeted civilians, leading to 100,000 Ossetians fleeing from South Ossetia to Russian North Ossetia and thousands of Georgians fleeing towards Tbilisi in Georgia. This will almost certainly be matched by more ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the current fighting (5), (6).

Neither South Ossetia nor Abkhazia have been formally recognized as independent states by any government – not even Russia’s, but they have had independence in practice, guarded by Russian ‘peacekeepers’ for over a decade. This is not that different from the status of Kosovo, formally part of Yugoslavia, then Serbia, but in practice independent under NATO peacekeeping forces until its formal recognition as an independent state by the US and various EU governments this year. This may have heightened the Georgian government’s fear of South Ossetia being formally recognized as independent by Russia.

Georgia’s President Saakashvili was well aware of the presence of Russian forces and must have known that any movement by Georgian forces into South Ossetia would mean war with Russia. He would also be aware that Georgian forces would almost certainly lose that war. So his aim must have been to raise the profile of the South Ossetian issue and get international pressure for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region. The Bush administration may well have promised him support – certainly political support such as the UN Security Council tabled by the US condemning Russian actions in Georgia - and possibly even arms and training for Georgian forces.

Georgia has applied for membership of NATO – something the Russian government is keen to prevent. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline bringing Caspian oil and gas to the Mediterranean also passes through Georgia’s capital Tbilisi – making influence over Georgia’s government a prize for both Russia and the US and EU to fight over (7), (8). A Georgian government spokesmen interviewed on the BBC’s News 24 presented Russian troops’ presence as a threat to western energy supplies from the Caspian (9).

This is not another Prague Spring. It’s more similar to the break-up of Yugoslavia, in which both Croat and Serb forces under extreme nationalist authoritarian governments committed atrocities against civilians euphemized as ‘ethnic cleansing’ – or Afghanistan, where conflict over another potential oil pipeline route providing western companies with an export route for former Soviet republics’ oil and gas is one ulterior motive for the conflict.

The best response the EU and the British government could make would be to remain neutral and call for a ceasefire involving the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Georgia (excluding South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and a negotiated solution to both the Ossetian and the Abkhazian issues – allowing either autonomy or autonomy leading to independence for both. War will only lead to the killing and ethnic cleansing of civilians by both sides – and then by whichever wins.


(1) = BBC 9 Aug 2008, ‘No quick fix to S Ossetia conflict’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7550780.stm

(2) = Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
GEORGIA EXTRAORDINARY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 5 January 2008
OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report ,
http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2008/03/29982_en.pdf

(3) = Amnesty International Report 2008 – Georgia ,
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/europe-and-central-asia/georgia

(4) = Human Rights Watch reports on Georgia,
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=europe&c=georgi

(5) = Human Rights Watch 1992, ‘BLOODSHED IN THE CAUCASUS
Violations of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in
the Georgia-South Ossetia Conflict’,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/g/georgia/georgia.923/georgia923full.pdf

(6) = Kleveman, Lutz (2003) , ‘The New Great Game’, Chapter 3, pages 31-50

(7) = Kleveman, Lutz (2003) , ‘The New Great Game’, Chapter 3, pages 31-50

(8) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan_pipeline

(9) = BBC News 24 10 Aug 2008

Policy Changes - or clear policy positions from politicians - would make a difference - vague talk about 'change' or a change of Prime Minister or Party in Government will make none in themselves

David Miliband’s Guardian article was remarkable only for recycling Blairite rhetoric from 1997 and for the complete absence of any clear policy positions whatsoever, making it fairly obvious that his policies don’t differ from Blair’s, Brown’s, Cameron’s or most of the Lib Dem’s.

His ‘for the many not the few’ rhetoric repeats the existing gap between rhetoric and policy.

Do we need yet another politician who talks about change while failing to explain what kind of change and continuing to back the same disastrous policies? Do we need another politician who won’t do anything significant about the two main causes of unemployment – the shortage of apprenticeships in trades and unconditional trade deals with repressive governments like China’s that allow them to keep jailing, torturing and organ harvesting their own people and banning independent trade unions? Trade deals that exploit people abroad on slave labour, 19th century, wages and conditions which allow their country’s exports to undercut ours on price and cause unemployment here?

Do we want to keep paying more taxes to increase NHS spending only for the result to be cuts in the total number of beds and staff as all the new money goes to PFI consortia and investors? Do we want to keep paying to subsidise private rail companies with public money while they raise our train fares at rates several times higher than inflation?

Do we want to keep increasing taxes on the majority to fund tax cuts for high earners and big firms?

Do we want more nuclear power stations when the current cost of decommissioning the old ones is an estimated £73 billion and rising, plus more leukaemia deaths? Even when a recent report found that relatively modest increases in government subsidies to help with energy saving measures such as home insulation could save as much energy annually as five nuclear power stations could produce?

Do we want another war against a non-existent ‘threat’ from a Middle Eastern country, despite it’s government having shown itself unwilling to commit suicide in the past and willing to negotiate, so a ‘threat’ easily deterred, then negotiated with?

If so vote for Brown, or Miliband, or Cameron, or for the Lib Dems (who, to be fair, are at least against war on Iran). Everyone has their own preferences on personalities, but at the end of the day rivalries between different personalities in politics are trivia. What matters are the policies – they are what make a difference to people’s lives – or cause their deaths. A new Prime Minister or a new party in government will make no difference without real policy change.

How Can We Deal With the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons?

There are six options - four military and two non-military - but only one option is viable

Has Iran’s government said it wants to develop nuclear weapons?

No. The problem is not that the Iranians have said they are determined to make nuclear weapons. In fact they’ve said they only intend to use nuclear power for civilian electricity production (thus allowing them to use less oil for this purpose and sell more, boosting their economy). Iran’s religious and political ‘Supreme Leader’, Ayatollah Khameini, has also re-issued the late Khomeini’s fatwa condemning the production, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons as ‘un-Islamic’. The problem is that there is no way to verify this is true and many people disbelieve them, especially given elements of Iran’s nuclear programme which it only revealed and gave access to the IAEA in the last few years.

This is exacerbated by statements by past and present Iranian Presidents on the destruction of Israel. The most worrying of these was not actually Ahmadinejad’s but Akbar Rafsanjani’s. To understand both speeches and Iran’s conflict with the US, Britain and Israel we need to look at their history.

Has Iran’s government said it wants to destroy Israel using nuclear weapons ?
Ahmadinejad’s and Rafsanjani’s Qods Day Speeches

This depends on how some of their speeches are interpreted, whether they really mean what they may seem to say and whether the views of current and former Presidents are shared by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini.

In 1979, after the Iranian revolution which overthrew the western backed dictatorship of the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini made a speech on ‘Qods day’, which in Iran is a religious day dedicated to opposing Israel’s control of Jerusalem (Al Quds or Qods being Arabic for Jerusalem). In this speech he said that he hoped ‘the regime which rules over Jerusalem [i.e Israel] will be removed from the pages of time’.

Israel is reviled by Iran’s rulers for at least five main reasons. First because its government were allies of the Shah’s corrupt dictatorship – and are still allies of the US government, which was also allied to the Shah and remain hostile to Iran’s new regime. Second because fundamentalists among Shia Muslims believe all secular government is illegitimate and against God’s will. Third because Israel continues to occupy Palestinian land and kill Palestinians – and many (though not all) Palestinians are Muslims like the Iranian government (though most are Sunnis while Iran’s government is overwhelmingly Shia. Fourth because by backing the Arab Palestinians the (mostly) non-Arab Iranians get support from and influence over Arabs – like the influence they have over Lebanon by backing the Shia group Hezbollah there. Fifth – but not least – because since 1967 Israel has had a growing array of nuclear missiles which, combined with its large US funded and supplied military, make it feared across the Middle East (in fact Israel’s military remains stronger than that of the rest of the Middle East combined, to say nothing of its ally America’s – whose annual military spending exceeds that of the rest of the world combined).

The US and Britain are equally distrusted and feared for their role in the operation by the CIA and MI6 in 1953 which aided Anglo-Persian Oil (now BP) to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq and replace him with the dictatorship of the Shah (who claimed to be a hereditary monarch but in fact was the grandson of a previous military dictator who had been overthrown by the British after he allied himself to Nazi Germany to try to escape the British Empire’s dominance in Iran.)

They also (along with the Chinese, Soviet and most European governments) armed and funded Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. In 1980 Saddam invaded Iran. Even after his gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 the Bush (senior) administration kept funding Saddam under the guise of ‘agricultural aid’, which only ended in October 1990. This made many Iranians feel that the ‘international community’ which backed Saddam for 8 years while he gassed their troops and his own people, is not to be trusted or relied on. It may also have made some of think that having their own nuclear deterrent to prevent others using WMD on them in the future might be worth considering.

So to be seen as ‘soft’ on Israel, the US or Britain in Iran would lose Iranian politicians support just as much as being seen as ‘soft on terrorism’ or ‘soft on rogue states’ would lose Israeli, British or American politicians support.

This is probably the main reason why Iranian politicians have made a speech including a similar call to Khomeini’s for Israel to be ‘removed from the pages of time’ every year on the same day. Ahmadinejad as President quoted Khomeini on this in his Qods day speech in 200?. This followed a passage in Ahmadinejad’s speech in which he said the Soviet Union and the Apartheid government in South Africa no longer existed – and in an interview on French television he later clarified that he had meant he hoped Israel would cease to exist in the same way the Soviet Union and Apartheid had – through a peaceful referendum of all ‘Palestinians…Christian, Jewish and Muslim’. However the ‘wipe Israel off the map’ translation had already been widely disseminated – and even confirmed by some over-zealous PR men working for the Iranian President.

Supreme Leader Khameini and even some officials of the Iranian foreign ministry (whose ministers are appointed by the President) immediately said that if Ahmadinejad had said Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’ he did not speak for the Iranian government. (another widespread misconception is that Iranian Presidents are powerful – in fact the Presidency is a very weak office in the Iranian system, has no control of the military and certainly would not decide whether Iran developed nuclear weapons, much less have the power to use them – those powers lie with the unelected ‘Supreme Leader’)

Rafsanjani’s speech in 2002 was less reported but actually more worrying. Rafsanjani is a former Iranian president and a political rival of Ahmadinejad’s who has been highly critical of Ahmadinejad’s intransigence on the nuclear issue and has long been seen as a ‘moderate’ advocating compromise and negotiations with ‘the West’. By 2007 he had been elected to the chairmanship of several of Iran’s governing councils which are second only to the ‘Supreme Leader’ in influence and power. (Iran’s system of government has one similarity to America’s – there are many different centres of power in it which each act as checks and balances on the others, the difference being that the strongest, the Supreme Leader (equivalent to the President in the US) is unelected and the holder must be an ‘Ayatollah’).

Rafsanjani said that

‘Because colonialism and imperialism will not easily leave the people of the world alone. Therefore, you can see that they have arranged it in a way that the balance of power favours Israel…They have supplied vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction and unconventional weapons to Israel…They have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles and suchlike.

If one day ... Of course, that is very important. If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.’

There are two elements to this speech – one is the conventional and WMD threat from Israel, which is both worrying to Iranians, who have no nuclear deterrent and is useful to Iran’s government in directing Iranians’ attention outwards to external threats as opposed to the actions (and oppression) of their own government.

The other is more ambiguous and potentially very worrying. It could be interpreted as meaning that if an Islamic country (such as Iran) develops nuclear weapons then a Cold war style stalemate would develop – or it could be interpreted as saying that if Iran developed nuclear weapons it could use them on Israel (a relatively small country in size and population, though not in military power) and destroy it without having to worry too much about the retaliation.

Since the US possesses an arsenal of thousands of inter continental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads and would certainly use them on Iran if Iran used nuclear weapons on Israel this speech seems at first glance to bolster the claims of those who say Iran’s regime is suicidal and irrational.

However there is actually nothing unprecedented in Rafsanjani’s statements. During the Cold War Chinese Communist leaders frequently claimed that in the event of nuclear war they could win as they had a larger population and land mass than the US or Russia and could afford to lose tens of millions of people and survive. Yet nuclear war never came. Rafsanjani’s statements may well be a similar attempt at deterrence – we shouldn’t forget that from many Iranians’ point of view the problem is how to deter us from attacking them directly or (as in 1953 and the Iran-Iraq war) by proxies. Even if they aren’t Iran’s government will realize that while “the Islamic world” might survive a US counter-strike, Iran would not.

What are the Options to meet the potential Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and are any of them viable?

The first option is the one followed so far – to use sanctions and diplomacy to try to get the Iranian government to stop enriching Uranium and agree to only use uranium refined for them by other countries (such as Russia) to ensure it isn’t enriched to a level that would allow it to be used to produce nuclear warheads. This is a reasonable option on the face of it but the trouble is that there is no way to verify whether the Iranian government were genuinely complying or not if they did accept the offer – and so far they’ve refused the offer in any case.

There’s also a serious question mark over whether any level of access for IAEA inspectors would be accepted by the US and Israeli governments as proving Iran wasn’t trying to develop nuclear weapons. In Iraq in 2002-2003 the Bush administration invaded despite UNMOVIC weapons inspectors saying they were being granted access to all the sites they requested to say and despite them being in the middle of overseeing the destruction of Saddam’s longest ranged missiles (those with a range of just over 150 kilometres) when war was declared. (In fact the original withdrawal of the previous inspection teams in 1998 was not – as often wrongly stated – due to Saddam’s regime expelling them from the country but actually due to impending Anglo-American air strikes. After these Saddam refused to allow inspectors back into the country as he suspected the inspection teams had been infiltrated by CIA agents who were identifying sites for bombing in the 1998 ‘Operation Desert Fox’ – and in fact some members of the UNSCOM teams admitted this had been the case).

Sanctions and diplomacy to secure inspections or persuade Iran’s government to agree to enrichment by a third country are not a bad thing in themselves, but they will provide no guarantee that the US or Israel won’t attack Iran even if the Iranians are complying with their demands, partly because elements in both governments have ulterior motives (regional dominance in the case of Israel and control of the second largest proven oil reserves in the world plus global hegemony in the case of the US) and partly because it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to be certain whether the Iranians would secretly continue enrichment for nuclear weapons.

This is especially the case because currently the logic, following that in Iraq, is that if sanctions and diplomacy ‘fail’, all options are potentially on the table as Bush and Rice have put it. That means war in one form or another – and as we’ll see these military options are unlikely to be effective in securing an end to Iran’s nuclear programme and would have many other serious negative consequences (not least large numbers of civilian deaths and a boost in support for hardliners and extremists at the expense of moderates in Iran and across the Islamic world, possibly including more Iranian style Islamic revolutions.)

The Four Military Options
– Why none of them would work and all of them would make things worse

The second option, if sanctions and diplomacy fail, or the US and Israeli governments claim they have failed, would be the first military one - limited airstrikes and missile strikes on suspected or known nuclear sites in Iran. Military experts have pointed out that this would be unlikely to do more than delay Iran developing nuclear weapons for 5 to 7 years at most if it continued to want them. Morally this option is likely to result in civilian casualties. This would also be certain to give a boost to hardline Islamic fundamentalists and nationalists in Iran and weaken the position of democrats and those wanting to negotiate with the west – just as the September 11th attacks increased Christian fundamentalism and nationalism in America, made even liberals rally behind the Bush administration and allowed them to paint the opposition as ‘unpatriotic’ or even ‘traitors’. As a result it would make Iran more likely to develop nuclear weapons and strengthen support for extremists who might actually consider using them. This is obvious from the election of Ahmadinejad, whose campaign gained a boost from the US invasion of Iraq and US and Israeli threats to attack Iran next.

It would also be likely to increase support for anti-American and Islamic fundamentalist groups worldwide – especially those in Pakistan, which already has nuclear weapons and even many Islamic fundamentalists in its military and military intelligence.

It would result in Iranian counter-attacks – probably the closure of the straits of Hormuz, pushing up oil prices further and possibly even missile attacks on our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran would definitely step up arms supplies to insurgents in both those countries – and Hezbollah and Israel would probably end up at war again as they were in 2006, causing many casualties, mostly civilians, in both Lebanon and Israel again.

The third option would be an air campaign combined with a ground invasion of ‘regime change’ as in Iraq. We’ve already seen the disastrous effects of this – and despite upbeat talk by General Petraeus and others it continues to result in the deaths of many Iraqi civilians killed in fighting between pro and anti government and occupation forces, is still increasing membership of extremist groups and sectarian and criminal violence and additionally causing deaths due to There had been systematic torture by coalition forces as well as by Iraqi government police and military – who use the same methods employed under Saddam. In addition many Iraqis are suffering hunger and malnutrition on a scale unseen even under sanctions and Saddam and from dysentery caused by lack of clean drinking water (an epidemic of a disease unknown in Iraq even under Saddam). So we can safely say that, as in Iraq, an invasion, regime change and occupation would make things worse rather than better – even taking into account the brutality of the Iranian government which includes the torture and murder of critics of the government and even in one case the killing of a woman by religious police for the “crime” of holding her fiancée’s hand in public.

The fourth option would be to use a massive campaign of bombing and missile strikes from air and sea to destroy Iran’s economy in order to weaken it to the point that it couldn’t afford to produce nuclear weapons. This would be morally highly questionable and the other negative effects would be the same as those for the second option, but on an even larger scale, with Islamist revolutions likely across the Muslim world – including in nuclear armed Pakistan. It might not even prevent the Iranian government putting all its remaining resources into developing nuclear arms.

The fifth option would be to destroy Iran and its people entirely with massive nuclear strikes on the grounds that it's them or the Israelis. This would certainly end Iran's nuclear programme, but only by committing a crime as terrible as the one it would be designed to prevent (the possible future nuclear annihilation of Israel by Iran) with additional negative effects as for the third option above. Luckily the sixth option makes it totally un-necessary.

The Best Option? – Deterrence and negotiations

The sixth option is simply to deter Iran by making it clear (as has been done many times already) that if Iran was to develop nuclear weapons and use them on Israel then France, the UK, the US (and possibly even Russia) would respond by massive nuclear strikes on Iran which would ensure it would not survive either – and that the same would result from any nuclear attack on Israel by Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah.

This could be combined with peace negotiations between Iran, Israel and the US along with separate but simultaneous Israeli-Palestinian-Arab negotiations on solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the enduring hostility between Israel and some Arab states.

Some will immediately object that Iran cannot be deterred.

Can Iran be Deterred by the nuclear arsenals of Israel’s allies?

Iran’s government is supposedly uniquely irrational because it has a religious ideology which will make it commit national suicide, something which, the argument goes, no secular regime would do. This argument is full of holes though. During the Cuban missile crisis several high ranking generals and advisers to President Kennedy pushed for him to order a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union by the US as the only way America could ‘win’ the ‘inevitable’ nuclear war. Kennedy, luckily for all of us, refused – but it showed that secular nationalists can be every bit as extreme and irrational as the most extreme religious fanatics. It also showed that while there were some elements in the US and Soviet government and military who were irrational enough to push for collective suicide the majority reined these extremists in and vetoed this insanity.

The history of the Iranian government since 1979 suggests exactly the same is true of ‘the Ayatollahs’. When, in 1988, an American ship misidentified an Iranian passenger plane as a military one and shot it down the Iranians believed this had been a deliberate act signaling that US forces were about to join in the Iran-Iraq war on the Iraqi side. They were wrong – but the decision that followed from their mistake was entirely rational. Almost the entire Iranian military, religious and political establishment lobbied Khomeini to negotiate peace before the Islamic Republic’s government was defeated and overthrown. Khomeini agreed. Those who persuaded him included Ali Khameini – now the Supreme Leader, who is Commander in Chief of Iran’s military and would have his finger on the nuclear trigger if Iran ever developed nuclear weapons ; Rafsanjani (now one of the most influential politicians in Iran, elected to chair several Governing councils),– and the officers of the Revolutionary Guards (of which President Ahmadinejad is a former member).

In 2003, after the US defeated the Iraqi military in a matter of weeks, the Iranian government (with the approval of Khamenei as ‘Supreme Leader’) made offers of negotiations to both the Israeli and US governments on a comprehensive peace settlement covering signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, giving full IAEA access to nuclear sites, putting a freeze on the nuclear programme, recognizing Israel, ending Iranian supplies of arms and training to Hamas and Hezbollah

Once again they were willing to compromise to preserve their own power or security. Many in all three governments were for going ahead with negotiations. Yet Sharon and the neo-conservatives among the Bush administration refused any negotiations, arguing that they could extract all the Iranian government had offered and more by force without making any concessions.

Saddam, who was also supposedly too mentally unstable to be allowed WMDs, did not use them when he did have them – because deterrence worked on his regime too. In 1991 he had chemical warheads for his scud missiles – but he didn’t use any of them on in his missile attacks on Israel or coalition forces – because the Bush senior administration had made it clear that if he did the response from the US would be massive and nuclear.

Deluded or brave individuals may be persuaded into committing suicide for the good or their religion or nation (depending on your viewpoint and the exact form of the suicidal mission) but there has never been an entire nation or an entire government and military which will permit some of its members to bring national suicide on all of them. Japanese troops were often willing to die ‘for the Emperor’ on the ground or as kamikaze pilots – but when Japan’s fleet and air force were defeated and its main islands empty of troops the Emperor began suing for peace – even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So deterrence can work between Iran and Israel and its’ allies just as it worked between the Soviets and NATO in the Cold War.

The current President of North Korea and his predecessor have been notoriously irrational and ideologically extreme – and North Korea, unlike Iran, actually has nuclear weapons and middle to long range missiles capable of delivering them at least to Japan and possibly to the US and has carried out tests of them firing over Japan. Yet the Bush administration has accepted that the North Korean government can be deterred from using these weapons and possibly persuaded to renounce them through concessions offered in negotiations. So why the refusal to take the same position on Iran?

Deterrence is the only option which can give a pretty solid guarantee of safety for Israel and the world. All of the others fail to provide any guarantee of safety while actually increasing the threat – and resulting in the deaths of many more civilians and soldiers than would otherwise be the case.

The Other Benefits of using Deterrence rather than
‘pre-emptive’ Military Strikes or the threat of them

Focusing on our ability to deter any possible future nuclear strike on Israel by Iran (or vice-versa) would also allow us to stop threatening pointless ‘pre-emptive’ or ‘last ditch’ military attacks on Iran to prevent it developing nuclear weapons – which, as we’ve seen, couldn’t achieve that aim anyway and would make things rapidly worse.

These threats of military action have a similar effect on Iranian public opinion to the one that perceived external threats – such as Al Qaeda – have on western public opinion. They strengthen the position of the current Iranian government and boost hardliners and extremists against those who favour greater democracy and negotiations with Israel, the US and the West – who can be painted as ‘unpatriotic’ or even ‘traitors’ and ‘foreign agents’ by the current regime – much as the Bush administration and its supporters (including American nationalists and Christian fundamentalists) have done with critics labelled ‘liberals’ and ‘leftists’ in the US.

copyright©Duncan McFarlane2008

Blair's Recycled Propaganda

Tony Blair has now claimed in a speech to his old ally Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg (the mayor of New York) that people are wrong to think that Islamic terrorist attacks have been “provoked” by our governments (1).

(You can see a video of the speech on this link)

It’s not that Blair’s and Bush’s government’s have “provoked” Islamic terrorist groups. It’s that they’ve created more recruits for them who want revenge for the many thousands of Muslim civilians killed as collateral damage, in war crimes and by systematic torture by NATO and coalition forces. Mr. Blair is fond of claiming that it’s not “our troops” that are killing and torturing civilians it’s the people they’re fighting. In January 2007 he claimed “It's not British and American soldiers that are killing innocent people, we're trying to protect innocent people.” (2)

Yet in Afghanistan this year
NATO air-strikes have killed more civilians than the Taliban (3). It was British troops who beat Iraqi waiter and father of three Baha Mousa to death and tortured the civilians taken prisoner with him on suspicion of being insurgents (4), (5), (6). Neither that nor Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents as Amnesty International , Human Rights Watch , Iraqis and dozens of British and American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan report (7), (8), (9), (10), (11). The officer who oversaw Mousa’s torture has been promoted and is training new recruits (12). In the November 2004 coalition assault on Fallujah Iraqis and western journalists and aid workers – said American snipers shot civilians and ambulances (14), (15), (16), (17). Civilians were killed the same way in Samarra, with half the dead women and children (18). More recently 15 civilians including 9 children were killed in a US air strike in Iraq (19). These are just a few examples out of many. US Government Accountability Office statistics show that in the majority of cases neither coalition troops nor insurgents are targeting civilians (20). The fact remains both kill them in large numbers, usually as collateral damage due, sometimes – as in some suicide bombings and the massacre by US troops in Haditha, deliberately (21).

Yet instead of asking forgiveness for their involvement in supporting war crimes and systematic torture Blair and Murdoch pat one another on the back and call for another war on another country. US-led wars are not only killing as many civilians as Islamic terrorists they are also giving these terrorist groups more recruits.

They increase support for Al Qa’ida the same way September 11th gave more support to extreme nationalists like Cheney and Christian fundamentalists in the US. Bombing Iran would also kill civilians and have a similar effect on Iranian public opinion – boosting support for Islamic fundamentalists and extreme nationalists.

As Condoleeza Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 nuclear deterrence does work against “rogue states” like Iraq under Saddam and Iran now (22). Saddam did not use chemical warheads for his scuds in 1991 when he did have them because he was deterred by the nuclear arsenals of the US and Israel (23). Iran’s government would never use nuclear weapons on a nuclear armed Israel with a nuclear armed US ally for the same reason, even if it developed them. The “threat” posed by Iran’s nuclear programme is as mythical as that of Saddam’s WMDs.

It would also be nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with controlling Iran’s oil – just like the 1953 coup backed by the CIA and MI6 which overthrew the elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq for attempting to nationalise Anglo-Iranian Oil (now BP) in Iran (24), (25), (26) ; but then Blair doesn’t even know who Mossadeq , the most famous Iranian politician in Iran's entire history, was.

It's not the 20s or 30s we're in Mr. Blair (unless you mean the growing fascist culture on the right of American politics with Iraq as Czechoslovakia and Iran as Poland) - it's much more similar to 1953.

The risks of bombing Iran (not least to Iranian civilians) are vast. The risks posed by Iran developing a nuclear deterrent are non-existent. Iranians are under far more threat of attack by the US and Israeli governments than Israelis are from Iran’s government.

As for Blair’s accusations that Iran is “prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace”, what about the Bush administration’s co-operation with the torturing dictators of Saudi Arabia to fund and arm Sunni terrorist groups like Jundullah in Pakistan in its terrorist attacks inside Iran or for Sunni terrorist groups who target Shia and Christians in Lebanon as reported by ABC News and by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker? (27), (28) For that matter what about US and British forces’ killing and torture of civilians on the orders of their superiors and governments in war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan?

We should remember the thousands of innocent people killed on September 11th. We should also remember the tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed since, as many by US and British air-strikes, torture and snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq as by the Taliban or suicide bombers. We should also remember the thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli bombs and shells supplied by the US via British airbases as much as the Israeli civilians killed by Iranian supplied rockets fired by Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups.

Listening to another word Tony Blair has to say on fighting terrorism and threats to lives and democracy would be as pointless as listening to Bin Laden. These people and their simple minded irresponsible warmongering are the problem not the solution.

If you really want to end the terrorism Iran backs which has been carried out by Hamas and Palestinian groups against Israeli civilians Tony then start opposing the occupation of Palestinian territory by Israeli forces, the killing of Palestinian civilians by them and the starvation of the entire population of Gaza through sanctions which you have supported.

As for Rudy Giuliani trying to link Iran to Al Qaeda that’s about as convincing as the same nonsense about Saddam. Al Qa’ida are Sunni extremists who consider Shia to be apostates who should be killed. The Iranian government are Shia. In the popular American phrase “do the math” Rudy – Iran aren’t aiding Al Qa’ida.



(1) = Guardian Unlimited 19 Oct 2007, 11.30 am update, ‘Blair accuses Iran of fuelling 'deadly ideology' of militant Islam’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2195043,00.html

(2) = BBC News 16 Jan 2007, ‘UN marks soaring Iraq death toll’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6266393.stm (see under heading ‘Sectarian Clashes’)

(3) = USA Today 24 Jun 2007, ‘Afghan civilians reportedly killed more by U.S., NATO than insurgents’, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-24-karzai_N.htm

(4) = Amnesty International 15 March 2007 , ‘United Kingdom Court Martial acquittals: many questions remain unanswered and further action required to ensure justice’, http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engEUR450052007?open&of=eng-GBR (see set of bullet points half way down page)

(5) = Scotsman 19 May 2004 - ‘Soldiers 'took turns to beat Iraqi captives'' - http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=404&id=199022004 (quotes a soldier testifying in court that he saw soldiers take turns to kick and bunch captives and that their screams kept soldiers in neighbouring barracks awake )

(6) = Guardian 21 Feb 2004 ‘They were kicking us, laughing. It was a great pleasure for them’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1153011,00.html
(quotes surviving Iraqis tortured along with Mousa)

(7) = Amnesty International 1 Nov 2005 ‘TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT IN THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’’, http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engact400142005

(8) = Amnesty International 6 Mar 2006 - ‘Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq' - http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde140012006

(9) = Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 - ‘Torture and Inhumane Treatment: A Deliberate U.S. Policy’ - http://hrw.org/wr2k6/introduction/2.htm#_Toc121910421

(10) = The Independent 27 Feb 2007 - ‘UK troops 'beat relatives of Camp Breadbasket captives'' - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article13069.ece

(11) = Washington Post Wednesday, September 28, 2005; A21,‘ A Matter of Honor’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701527_pf.html

(12) = Panorama programme transcript BBC One 13 Mar 2007 - ‘A Good Kicking ' - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6455113.stm

(13) = Iraq Body Count Press Release 26 Oct 2004 , ‘No Longer Unknowable: Falluja's April Civilian Toll is 600’, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/press-releases/9/

(14) = BBC News 23 Apr 2004 , ‘Picture emerges of Falluja siege’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3653223.stm

(15) = Guardian 17 Apr 2004, ‘Getting aid past US snipers is impossible’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1193717,00.html

(16) = Guardian 19 Apr 2004, ‘Children hit by 'random shooting'’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1194878,00.html

(17) = BBC News Online 11 November 2004 , ‘Eyewitness: Smoke and corpses’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4004873.stm

(18) = The Independent 04 October 2004 , ‘Civilians bear brunt as Samarra 'pacified'’,
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article39655.ece ( Part of 5th paragraph reads ‘Of 70 bodies brought into Samarra General Hospital, 23 were children and 18 women, said Abdul-Nasser Hamed Yassin, a hospital administrator. There were also 23 women among the 160 wounded….. from 6th paragraph ‘Another resident, Mohammed Ali Amin, said: "There were American snipers on rooftops who were shooting people trying to get to their homes. Even at the hospital the Americans arrested injured boys of 15 saying they were insurgents.’)

(19) Guardian 12 Oct 2007, ‘UN calls for US to publish facts on Iraqi deaths’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2189559,00.html

(20) = United States Government Accountability Office 23 Apr 2007, GAO-07-525T , ‘STABILIZING AND REBUILDING IRAQ’, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07525t.pdf - see table on page 7 'ENEMY-INITIATED ATTACKS AGAINST THE COALITION AND ITS PARTNERS'.

(21) = Guardian 22 Dec 2006, ‘Four US marines charged with Iraq murders’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329669554-103681,00.html

(22) = Rice, Condoleeza (2000) in Foreign Affairs January/February 2000‘ - 'Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest' http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20000101faessay5-p50/condoleezza-rice/campaign-2000-promoting-the-national-interest.html

(23) = Nye , Joseph S. & Smith , Robert K. (1992), ‘After the Storm' , Madison Books , London , 1992 , - pages 211-216 (Nye is a former CIA officer)

(24) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(2004), ‘The Persian Puzzle', Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition - pages 27-140
(25) = Curtis, Mark (1995), ‘The Ambiguities of Power : British Foreign Policy since 1945', Zed Books, London & New York, 1995 paperback edition - pages 87-96

(26) = Takeyh, Ray (2006), ‘Hidden Iran', Times Books , New York, 2006 - pages 83-96

(27) = ABC News 03 Apr 2007, ‘ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran’,
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html

(28) = New Yorker magazine ‘The Re-direction’ by Seymour Hersh
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh