Thoughts from London

War and peace and so much humbug
War and peace. By any measure of reasoning they are polar opposites. But are they so different to those who pursue war or peace? The history of man, both in war and peace, is replete with disinformation, misinformation, cover-ups and all manner of mischief and mayhem to achieve national or private political ends.

So it does not really matter whether one is at war or is in search of peace, lies and falsehoods are acceptable currency as long as they serve the purpose for which they are used. In the five weeks or more I spent in Sri Lanka recently the course of peace pursued by the UNF government dominated conversation. Whether one supported the peace dialogue or opposed it hardly mattered. It was the common refrain.

But it is not a subject that concerns only Colombo society. The real interest that delegates to the Commonwealth Press Union's Conference in Sri Lanka last month showed in the on-going political dialogue following the incisive overview given by Minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris to these foreign participants was indicative of an international interest since many of the participating journalists came from countries which were accustomed to such conflicts or still face similar problems.

After those weeks in Colombo I had no doubt there is a definite popular groundswell in Sri Lanka for a return to peace. But that longing for peace is tempered by a real concern that the truth is not being told, that the government and the Tamil Tigers are responsible for hiding facts from the people. So there seems to be a suspicion that manifests itself in a hesitancy to support the process fully.

Now that I am back in London I read and hear nothing but talk of war and more war. It comes as no surprise. Very much like how the Sri Lankan people were prepared for months to believe in the transformation of the LTTE from its terrorist past to a genuine political organisation eager for peace, Bush and Blair had been trying for months to convert the world to accept their messianic mission to rid the world of the mother of all dictators.

Each time we turn on the TV now all we see are images of war as though there was nothing else happening in the world. Bush preaching from his White House pulpit, Blair trying not to sound like Washington's pet poodle or some pocket Patton in Kuwait or Qatar quibbling over military misadventures and civilian casualties like some Panchikawatte mechanic trying to fiddle the repair bill to hoodwink insurance, are all grist to our mill for vicarious thrills.

The TV channels that devoted long hours in the first days of the war, covering it with rolling news because they were made to believe the war is a cakewalk for the coalition, are now slowly eating their words. Someone once said that truth is the first casualty of war. True, but it is also a casualty of peace.

In the UK, the anti-war opinion has only whittled away. That is not because of a realization that the war launched by the sole surviving superpower and their own Labour government is just, legitimate under international law and is sanctioned by 21st century morality.

This change is the consequence of a specious argument constantly drummed in by the British government and the protagonists of war that an anti-war sentiment is now futile since the country is already at war and loyalty requires one stands behind Queen and Country.

But I suspect this is only a part of the answer for the change in attitude. Behind this emotional reaction is a much more serious issue that worries western society.
That concern has again begun to manifest itself after a few days into the war when things are not going the way high-ranking US Defence Department officials such as Donald Rumsfeld and his warmongers had expected.

It is difficult for western society that considers itself superior in many ways to other peoples to understand how their technologically advanced countries with all the resources at their command and a complete superiority in hi-tech weapons are unable to crush a rag tag and bob tail army systematically denuded of its armaments and with no air or naval power to speak of.

Their weapons have become smarter than the smart bombs they dropped on Iraq a decade ago, though obviously who fire them have not got smarter in the meantime, to judge by the numbers killed in "friendly fire". So when western society sees that their technological and resource advantages are failing to conquer a weak enemy as quickly as expected and instead more of their troops are killed by their sophisticated technology than by the enemy, they develop a larger mentality not dissimilar to the American pioneers who circled their wagons tightly at the first sight of American Indians or other enemies.

The western mind is still grappling with the fact that Christendom's civilising mission to the Holy Land from the 11th century to make the Moslem lands safe for Christian Europe ended with the Moslems chasing the infidels all the way back to their homes.
So ended the Crusades in devastating failure, a fact that the western psyche still cannot accept just as the American mind cannot fathom the far more recent US military debacle in Vietnam caused by a peasant society in black pyjamas and straw hats.

The simple truth is that the west cannot and will not accept that its superiority can be countered and even conquered by the forces of strong nationalism and an atavistic hatred for centuries of injustice done to various peoples by western colonialism and now a neo-colonialism.

This war, like others before it, has produced its stock of lies, half truths, deceptions and cover-ups. Western leaders who have waged this war now try to cover up their moral nakedness by a sudden resort to the Geneva Convention and other international treaties and protest loudly when the faces of their prisoners of war are shown on TV.
But they ignore the fact that western television had in the very first days of this war shown Iraqi prisoners forced to their knees and dozens of others with their hands tied at their backs.

Such images of force being applied on captives still continue to haunt us as modern television coverage brings the frontlines into the sitting rooms. Those who remember western TV coverage of the first Gulf War will hardly forget the visuals of bodies of Iraqi soldiers lying in the desert and the close-ups of captured Iraqi soldiers.

Western double standards have begun to be increasingly applied by both western political leaders and their media acolytes since the war began nearly three weeks ago.
It is excruciatingly funny when those who so willingly abandon their own ethical standards when it suits them, cry foul when others are seen to do what they themselves have done for decades.

Equally, the falsehoods, deceptions and cover-ups began not after the so-called coalition invaded Iraq but in reality months back in peace time when the Americans were looking for excuses to launch this attack to eliminate Saddam Hussein and found a ready friend in Tony Blair, the White House pet.

This Phoney Blair and his Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon- sometimes called Buff Hoon - list the grave misdeeds of dictator Saddam. Dictator he might be and even worse. But what is not told is that the West created Saddam and helped him develop the weapons of mass destruction. In the build-up to war they accused Saddam of the genocidal gassing of Iraqi Kurds and used this as a justification.

What the British Government hides from the world is this. That shortly after the gassing in 1988, Britain's Trade Minister Tony Newton flew out to Baghdad with 20 British officials and offered this same "Butcher of Baghdad" £ 340 million worth of British trade credit- more than twice that granted in the previous year. Why did the British bolster Saddam if he was such a genocidal maniac?

What these western governments, so eager to wage war and protest when a couple of their soldiers are killed, have not told the world is this story from the first Gulf War.
Then thousands of Iraqi soldiers, mainly conscripts, retreating from Kuwait along the road to Basra were shot in the back by American airplanes and bulldozers dug mass graves in the desert sand to bury the bodies and hide the evidence. If truth is the first casualty in war, it is not far behind in times of peace.

That is why, as Sri Lanka engages in the peace process, it is necessary for the media and the public to be extra vigilant that truth and accountability do not share adjoining beds in the casualty ward.

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