Thoughts from London

Civilising the world- U.S and British style

More than 30 years ago in Honolulu I was with 10 other Jefferson Fellows and graduate students of mass communication at the University of Hawaii listening to an American journalist introduced to us as the doyen of the Vietnam press corps. If my memory serves me correct, his name was Keyes Beach from one of the well-known Chicago newspapers.

At the end of his rarefied peroration I asked him whether he was so certain that America would win the Vietnam war.

He looked at me and smiled condescendingly. Did I have any doubts, he asked, that American military power would not soon overcome a rag-tag band of fighters in black pyjamas and straw hats?

America would defeat communism and bring freedom and democracy to Indo-China. With that salutary promise, he left for Chicago, better known to the rest of the world as America's gangland.

Some 20 years later one of my colleagues on a Hong Kong newspaper with whom I shared the job of editorial writing, was Eric Cavaliero, the last American journalist standing when Saigon fell. He reported the ignominious retreat of the US as helicopters flew the last Americans and their Vietnamese supporters out from rooftop helipads at the American Embassy. In four years Keyes Beach's prophecy was interred along with other American bluster.

Cavaliero who was later interned by the Vietnamese authorities, had some horror stories to tell about the Vietnam war.

American journalists like Keyes Beach were not alone in defending and even praising Washington's great political mission.

Readers of an earlier vintage might remember the weekly preaching of conservative columnist Bernard Levin who found a pulpit in the pages of that rightwing newspaper "The Times" of London.

Even today, as America and Britain step deeper into the morass of their own creation in Iraq, there are journalists here, who like the Bourbons of France, have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

In the very same newspaper in which Levin delivered his regular sermon, others-William Shawcross and Michael Gove to name two- have taken the task of justifying the West's actions in West Asia and elsewhere as a genuine war against terror and to rid those countries of brutal dictators.

That a newspaper such as The Times should carry such conservative views comes as no surprise.

But when a respected liberal newspaper such as The Observer lends itself to editorial misrepresentations and a columnist, David Aaronovitch, tries tangentially to minimise the abuse of human rights by American and British troops in Iraq and elsewhere, one begins to wonder whether the propagation of such views helps to cleanse the Augean stables of American and British violations.

Such views are a matter of concern because they come right smack in the middle of widespread and growing allegations of torture and abuse of the human rights of detainees held by America and Britain in prisons and detention centres in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Belmarsh and others that have yet to reach the public domain.

Last Sunday The Observer wrote editorially: "America and Britain invaded Iraq to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction, to replace a vicious dictator and to help build a new democracy in the Middle East that respected human rights and the rule of law."

To remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction, yes. That was the publicly declared objective and it was Saddam Hussain's continued refusal to abide by UN Security Council resolutions that was adduced as the reason by Washington and London to invade Iraq. Both relied on UNSC resolutions including one dating back 12 years before the invasion to provide a dubious legal justification for military action.

Saddam Hussain might indeed have been a repulsive dictator. He might have denied freedom and liberty to the Iraqi people. He might have done even worse. But replacing him was not one of the publicly declared reasons for attacking Iraq.

Nor was bringing democracy and establishing the rule of law one of the reasons presented by US and Britain during the UN debate when the coalition partners were trying to get a Security Council resolution authorising military action.

The American and British people were told that they faced a clear and imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction and that is why Iraq had to be invaded to destroy them.

The other reasons that The Observer mentions were tagged on later in a desperate effort to justify sending troops into battle. Those other reasons came more and more to the fore as the chances of finding weapons of mass destruction receded rapidly, exposing western duplicity.

So now Bush and Blair, sounding like a well rehearsed chorus say never mind the weapons, we got rid of an evil man.

The same day as the editorial, David Aaronovitch, who stoutly defended the invasion of Iraq and won a journalism award apparently because he was a dissenting voice when others about him were condemning it, says that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is indefensible

" Yet there are some other hard facts to contemplate. The most obvious is that much worse torture has been-and in some cases still is- used by countries with whom we have good relations and whose human rights abuses never make it to the front page."

Aaronovitch argues that much of this happens in Arab countries as well as Israel.

On the face of it this seems fair enough, as an argument. But what he deliberately or otherwise ignores is that some of these countries belong to the axis of evil. Since their leaders are deemed barbaric because of the way they treat their people, their inhuman and degrading ways should not surprise anybody, especially Bush and Blair who have condemned them as uncivilised.

On the other hand Bush and Blair constantly talk of the "civilised world" meaning they and their countries. It is their mission to civilise these barbarians.

The trouble is that these civilised leaders who want to bring civilisation, democracy and the rule of law to the rest of the world are themselves being accused by their own people of jettisoning the civilised values and legal and constitutional norms they advocate for others.

That is not all. Take the history of American and British relations with some of the West Asian countries and beyond. Have not some of the countries castigated by Aaronovitch as despotic and violators of basic human rights been-or still are- the closest friends and allies of the West. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran under the Shah, Indonesia under Suharto, the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Haiti under "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier were all propped up by the West. Some of them still are.

So where was this concern for human rights, rule of law and democracy then?

Aaronovitch like other supporters of an illegal and unpopular war might blab, pointing the finger elsewhere.

But the truth is that like in Vietnam, the torture of prisoners, the killing of innocents and the degrading humiliation of people go on.

Only the "ism" has changed. It was communism then. It is terrorism now.

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